The full Monday work shift had already arrived when McGarvey got back to the CIA. Thankfully the media hadn’t gotten onto the incident with his daughter in Vail. The CIA’s press officer, Ron Hazelwood, was giving his weekly briefing in the ground-floor conference room. At least to this moment he hadn’t sent up the red flag for an instant read on some issue he was being pressed on. It was something he would have done had Vail come up. Yemm had recruited someone from Security to do the driving this morning. All the way out, riding shotgun, he spoke in low tones on the encrypted phone. McGarvey didn’t pay much attention; his thoughts were on his beleaguered family. Counting Otto, attempts had been made on all their lives, and it made no more sense to McGarvey now than it had in the beginning. What the hell were they after?
Every scenario he came up with to bring reason to the facts was filled with holes large enough to drive a truck through.
Yemm rode with him on the elevator as far as the glass doors to his office suite. He was preoccupied. “I’d like a couple minutes of your time sometime today,” he said. “I want to run something by you.” “How about right now?” McGarvey asked. “I’ve got a couple of things to check out first.” McGarvey looked a little closer at Yemm. “Anything urgent I need to know about?” “I’m not sure, boss.” “Okay,” McGarvey said. “When you’re ready.” He went in, and Ms. Swanfeld jumped up and followed him through to his office. “Good morning, Mr. Director,”
she said. “How is Mrs. McGarvey?” “They’re going to do some tests this morning, so we won’t know anything until she gets through with that.” McGarvey handed his coat to her and went to his desk as she hung it up in the closet. “She’ll be fine, we’re all certain of it,”
Ms. Swanfeld said. She poured McGarvey a cup of coffee as he flipped through the stack of phone messages and memos that had already piled up this morning. “Has Dick arrived yet?” “Yes, sir. He wants to see you first off.” McGarvey looked up. Dahlia Swanfeld was tough. She’d been through her share of crises in her thirty-plus years with the Company. But she was taking this one more personally than most. The CIA was her family. “This will pass,” he told her, using Stenzel’s words because he couldn’t think of his own. “Yes, sir,” she said. She wanted to ask something else. But she hesitated. “What is it?”
McGarvey prompted. “It’s about your daughter and the poor baby,” Ms Swanfeld said. “I was wondering if sending her a little something would be appropriate under the circumstances? Flowers? A sympathy card? A stuffed animal? Something.” She was distraught. McGarvey’s heart softened. He smiled. “I think she’d like that very much.” “Yes, sir. I’ll tell Mr. Adkins that you’re ready for him. And, Mr.
Paterson would like to have a word with you this morning before ten.
He said that it was extremely urgent.” I’ll call him-” “He would like to see you in person.”
“Okay, ask him to come up now,” McGarvey said. “Then get my son-in-law on the phone. And sometime before lunch Dick Yemm wants to see me. Fit him in please.” “Yes, sir. You might want to look through your agenda as soon as possible. I’ll need to know what to cancel.” “We’re canceling nothing, Dahlia,” McGarvey said sternly. “Business will continue as usual. For everyone. Do I make myself clear?” “We’ll do our best, Mr. Director,” she said, and she left to get started.
McGarvey sat down and sifted through the stack of memos again, but he couldn’t keep his mind off Liz and the baby. Knowing that she had lost the child was terrible enough for him. But the knowledge that it was a baby girl was something far worse. It wasn’t a shapeless blob growing inside her body. It was a human being who would have grown up to be another Elizabeth, another Kathleen. His secretary buzzed him. “Mr.
Rudolph from the Bureau is on one. Do you want to take it?” “Yes,”
McGarvey said. He hit the button for one. “Good morning, Fred. Do you have something for me already?” “Not yet. But I need a couple of answers from you. For starters, who are we supposed to be watching at the Russian embassy other than the crowd we normally watch?” Fred Rudolph was the director of the FBI’s Special Investigative Division.
He and McGarvey had worked on a couple of sticky situations over the past year or two. They had a mutual respect. “Dmitri Runkov, for one,” McGarvey said. “The rezident is a tricky man. He’s out in the open most of the time, but he does his little disappearing act every now and then,” Rudolph said. “Drives everyone nuts. Do you think that his shop might have had something to do with your brush in the islands?” “It’s a possibility that I don’t want to ignore,” McGarvey told him. Adkins walked in, and McGarvey waved him to a seat. “None of his people came over to watch me do battle with Hammond and Madden.”
“C-SPAN. No need for them to be there in person,” Rudolph said. “But it might help if you would level with me up front rather than later.
Hans Lollick wasn’t an accident. Somebody’s after you. Why do you think it might be the Russians? To settle an old debt?” “It might be as simple as that,” McGarvey said. “Dick Adkins is in my office now.
I’ll have him send over a package on a Russian who used to work in the KGB’s Department Viktor years ago. His name is Nikolayev. He’s missing, and the Russians think that he might be somewhere in France.”
“And you think that there might be a connection?” Rudolph asked. He was a lawyer by training. All problems had solutions if you started at A and worked your way directly toward Z. “We’d like to talk to him.”
“I’ll look at your stuff and see what we can do. We have a couple of good people in Paris. In the meantime, we’ll see if Runkov has made any calls to France lately.” “Thanks, Fred. Let me know.” “Will do, Mac. But keep your head down, would you. You can’t imagine the strain it would place on my people if someone bagged a DCI.” The nagging, whispering again. It wasn’t as simple as revenge. But exactly what it was McGarvey had no real idea. Nikolayev was nothing more than a starting point. “I’ll make sure that the file gets over to the Bureau this morning,” Adkins said. “In the meantime, Jared’s people have come up with something. But I’m damned if I know where it gets us.” “It’s Monday morning, what do you expect?” McGarvey said in a poor attempt at humor. “How’s Kathleen?” “They’re doing some tests this morning.
We should know something by this time tomorrow. Could be nothing more than nervous exhaustion. They’re not sure.” Adkins nodded sympathetically. His own plate was full because of his wife’s illness, but he seemed to genuinely care about Kathleen. “They found Elizabeth’s skis and took them to a forensics lab that the Bureau uses at Lowry Air Force Base. Todd was right, it was Semtex. Not only that, it came from the same batch as the Semtex they used in Hans Lollick. Same chemical tags. Jared will have the full report later today, but whoever staged both attacks was playing from the same sheet of music.” It didn’t surprise McGarvey. “What about the fuse in the skis?” “It was an acid fuse, they know that much. But they won’t be able to figure out when it was set until they get the skis back here.
All Jared could tell me was that the delay could have been as long as ninety-six hours.” “Four days,” McGarvey said in wonder. “Starting at Dulles, anybody who had access to the skis could have rigged them.”
“Or it could have been anyone who had access to your garage,” Adkins said softly. Dick Yemm and Otto Rencke were the first two names that came to McGarvey’s mind. He shook his head. He refused to go there.
Dulles and ml. Denver were the best bets. But even if the skis had been rigged at the house, someone could have waited until he and Katy were gone, defeated the alarm system and done their thing. A professional could have been in and out in a matter of minutes. “Let’s develop a list of every person and every opportunity to rig the skis, starting right here in Washington and working forward all the way to Vail. Then develop a separate list for Hans Lollick, and subtract one from the other.”
Adkins nodded. Either list would be large, but the combined list would be very small. Frighteningly small. Ms. Swanfeld buzzed. Carleton Paterson had arrived. “Send him in,” McGarvey said, as Adkins got up to go. “Staff meeting at ten,” McGarvey told him. “I’ll get on it,”
Adkins said, and he walked out as the Company’s general counsel came in. Paterson looked angry. “Good morning, Mr. Director,” Paterson said. “Although for you I shouldn’t think it’s very good at all.”
“There’ve been worse,” McGarvey replied. “How is Mrs. McGarvey? I understand that she was hospitalized over the weekend. She wasn’t injured on Hans Lollick, was she?” “Nervous exhaustion. They thought that a couple days’ bed rest might do her some good.” “Do us all some good,” Paterson agreed. “How is your daughter doing?” McGarvey’s jaw tightened. “She’s safe, and she’ll mend,” he said. He shook his head.
“Beyond that I don’t know yet.” Paterson nodded as if it was the news he had expected. “Well, you’re certainly not out of the woods. Hammond telephoned me at seven this morning. He wants you before the committee this afternoon. Something came up, he told me.” “Not today, Carleton.
You have to stall them.” “Not this time, Mr. Director. Either you show up to answer whatever latest questions they have for you and I expect they’ll have something to do with the attempt on your life or the committee will recommend to veto your appointment. Hammond’s words.” McGarvey closed his eyes. “What time?” “Two.” Ms. Swanfeld called. McGarvey picked up the phone. “Yes?” “Your son-in-law is on three.”
