“I agree,” Yemm said. “You were the target on Hans Lollick. Nothing else makes much sense. And Otto, if that was an attempted hit, was misdirection to make us look elsewhere. Same with your daughter.”
“Hell, they could be thumbing their noses at you,” Adkins said. “But I’ll tell you one thing. It’s someone very close to you. Someone who knows your schedules, your habits, your tradecraft. Someone you’ve crossed paths with before. Someone who’s made a complete study of you.
Like a stalker would.” Another word, other than stalker, came unbidden to McGarvey, but he pushed it aside. “And that includes most of us,”
Yemm said. “Maybe Otto, too. And Todd Van Buren.” A silence descended over them because of the enormity of what Adkins and Yemm were suggesting. Was it better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one, McGarvey wondered, as Voltaire had. Or was he required now to trust no one? He had retired from field operations because he was sick and tired of constantly looking over his shoulder; forever wondering from which direction the bullet would come; forever looking for hidden meanings in what everyone said or did. He wanted a normal life. One in which he was finally free to love and be loved.
Yet he’d wanted to make a difference. To prove himself worthy of his friends, his family, his sister in Utah, with whom he had not spoken in years. Ever since Santiago, however, he’d had trouble trusting his own judgment, his own worth. Now he was being asked to mistrust everybody else. Everybody. Get out. Run, run, while you still can. The monster was coming. Even now it was gaining on him, and he was afraid to look over his shoulder for fear of what he might see. “That’s one possibility, Dick,” he said, trying to sound reasonable. “But not the only one. We need to reexamine Otto’s car, and we need to cross-match the Semtex in Hans Lollick with what they used in Vail. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” No one responded. They were waiting for him to make a point. Even now they wanted his protection. “We need a motive,” he finished lamely. “Someone doesn’t want you confirmed as DCI,” Adkins said. “That’s simple.”
“Beyond that,” McGarvey said. “I can’t buy someone thumbing his nose at me, as you suggest. It would be a stupid risk for him to take if he wanted me out or dead.” He shook his head. “Something else is going on that we don’t know about.”
“Relieve yourself of duty, Mac,” Adkins suggested earnestly. “Postpone the Senate hearings. Take your wife and daughter to Cropley. Let us work it out.”
McGarvey wanted to be angry, but he couldn’t be. Not with Adkins or the others. Elizabeth and the baby weighed too heavily on his mind. He looked down at the open NIE briefing book.
The telephone at his elbow chimed softly. He picked it up. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr. Director,” Ms. Swanfeld said. “But there is trouble at your home.”
It was another hammer blow to his system. “What is it?” he asked mechanically.
“Security didn’t say, except that Dr. Stenzel is en route, and that they would like you to come home immediately.”
“Tell them that I’m on my way,” McGarvey said. “But my wife is not to be moved from the house until I get there.”
“I understand.”
Yemm was already at the door.
McGarvey got to his feet. It was hard to keep his head on straight.
“You might be right about Cropley after all,” he told Adkins. “In the meantime, I want you to call Fred Rudolph over at the Bureau. I’d like a twenty-four seven surveillance operation placed on the Russian embassy, specifically on their known or suspected SVR people.”
“Do you think the Russians are behind this?” Adkins asked. He seemed startled.
“I don’t know. But we need to get some answers. Something that makes sense.”
McGarvey was always glad to get home. But this morning the house did not seem warm or inviting. The windows were dark and somehow forbidding, as if they contained horrible secrets within. A neighbor, whom he didn’t know, was in his driveway across the cul-de-sac. He wore a bright plaid robe. He’d come out to get the Sunday paper. He raised his hand and waved. McGarvey waved back.
“Brian Conners,” Yemm said at his shoulder. “His wife is Janet. They check out.” McGarvey could only guess what the Connerses thought about the goings-on over here. If they knew the extent of the trouble, there would probably be a moving truck in their driveway right now. The two officers in the van at the foot of the driveway had the windows down.
They looked cold but very alert. Yemm gave them a curt nod, then hustled McGarvey up the walk to the house. Peggy Vaccaro let them in.
She wasn’t smiling. She looked determined and a little frightened. A bruise was forming on the side of her face. The house was quiet. “Mrs. M. has finally settled down.” “Where is she?” McGarvey asked.
“Upstairs in her bedroom. Janis is with her.” She helped McGarvey off with his coat. “Dr. Stenzel hasn’t been here yet?” “Not yet,” the security officer said. She seemed to be on the verge of collapse. She looked exhausted. McGarvey glanced toward the head of the stairs. The Russian Typhoon clock had stopped. He supposed he hadn’t wound it, but he couldn’t remember. “What happened?” he asked. Yemm had cocked his head to listen to something, and he stared at the alarm system keypad on the wall next to the closet door. The lights were out. “She started making phone calls as soon as you left,” Peggy Vaccaro said.
“She was working on some fund-raising event, because she told us that the best time to catch them with their checkbooks open was on Sunday mornings, when they were still home in their pajamas.” “Did she come downstairs?” Peggy shook her head. “She never left the bedroom. We brought her some coffee, and Janis and I took turns out in the hall by her door until she lost it.” Janis Westlake came to the head of the stairs. She looked distraught. “She’s okay now, Mr. Director,” she called down softly. “It just happened? Out of the blue?” McGarvey asked. His gut was jumping all over the place. He didn’t know where to land. “One minute she was raising money and the next she was hanging from the rafters?” “She got one phone call ”
“From who?”
“I don’t know,” Peggy said. “Check it out,” McGarvey told Yemm. “Then what?” he asked the girl. Peggy looked down, girding herself. “She made another call. It must have been Denver General, because she asked for room five-seventeen.” Peggy looked up. “She was too fast for us.”
McGarvey’s heart was ripped in two. He resisted the urge to shove Peggy aside and race up the stairs. He needed more. Peggy touched his sleeve, her face twisted in an expression of anguish and pity. “She lost it. She started throwing things around. Breaking stuff. By the time both of us got in there, she was trying to bust out one of the Lexan windows with a chair. The big chair in the bedroom. The chaise longue. She was using it like a battering ram.” Peggy shook her head in amazement. “Janis and I had a hard enough time getting it away from her and putting it down, it was so heavy. But she was swinging it around like a toy.” She glanced at Yemm, who had stepped aside and was speaking softly over his headset. “Then she started screaming at us.
Swearing. Calling us all sorts of names.” “Like what?” McGarvey asked. Peggy was embarrassed. “Motherfucking lesbian dykes. Nonsense like that.” She passed a hand across her eyes. “It stopped as fast as it started. One minute she was wigging out, and the next minute she was sitting on the floor crying her eyes out. That’s when we called your office.” “And then you called Dr. Stenzel?” Peggy shook her head. “No. He called us and said that he was on his way.” “The phone call originated here in the Washington area,” Yemrn said. “But it was a block-trace. Possibly a cell phone.” “No way of pinning it down closer than that?” Yemm shook his head. “It could have been from anyone. And anywhere, if they used a re mailer “The Russian embassy?”
“It’s possible,” Yemm said. Peggy paid close attention to the exchange. “Is there something going on here that we should know about, Mr. Director?” “I don’t know,” McGarvey said. “Maybe. But my wife will probably be hospitalized this afternoon, so your operation will move to Bethesda. And afterward probably to Cropley.” “Yes, sir.”
McGarvey went upstairs, gave Janis a pat on the shoulder, then went back to the master bedroom overlooking the fifteenth fairway.
Kathleen stood at the window, her arms clasped across her chest as if she were cold. The room was a shambles. The night lamps were broken into pieces, the lampshades battered out of shape. The bed covers and sheets had been pulled off and tossed aside. Drawers were lying amidst piles of clothing. Her closet mirror was smashed, some of her clothes and shoes pulled out and scattered. Pictures had been snatched from the walls and destroyed. The curtains had been pulled from the windows. And the heavy chaise lounge was shoved up against the bed.
