restraining hand on McGarvey’s arm, and Hammond sat back smiling. “You will leave my wife out of this,” McGarvey said, barely in control of himself, “Or what, Mr. McGarvey?” “Or I will withdraw my nomination, which would make me a private citizen,” McGarvey said, steadying down somewhat. “That’s something you don’t want, Senator. Not that way.” “See here ” Brenda Madden shouted, but Hammond held up a hand for her to be silent. “Is it a fact, Mr. McGarvey, that at a recent staff meeting the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a career intelligence officer who has time and again demonstrated a steady hand on the helm while you were off shooting up the countryside his name is Richard Adkins suggested that you step down as director? Not only that, but take your family to a safe place until the real professionals at the CIA and the FBI find out who is trying to harm you, your family and your friends? Is that true?” “Yes, that is true,” McGarvey said, settling down. He knew what he was fighting now. And for whom. It was as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes. “At that highly classified staff meeting we also decided that running away would do us no good. I’m needed to help find out what’s going on. If I go into hiding, then the person or persons who are after me will simply hunker down and wait for me to come out of hiding.” McGarvey pushed the microphone away and got to his feet. “We’re not finished here,”
Hammond blustered. “We’ll find out who your source is inside the Agency,” McGarvey promised. “When we do, he or she will be prosecuted under the National Secrets Act, which carries with it a sentence of life imprisonment.” “You will sit down, McGarvey,” Hammond shouted.
“Sorry, Senators, but I have work to do,” McGarvey told them. He turned, and with Paterson right behind him, left the hearing chamber.
Hammond was banging his gavel, and Madden was shouting something in her nasal voice.
TWENTY-FOUR
LIVING THE LIE FOR JUST ONE DAY MEANT HE COULD NEVER GO BACK.
Dick Yemm had felt terrible all month. The weekend’s events, and his meeting with McGarvey this morning had done nothing to dispel his gloomy mood. Sitting in his personal car, a pearl white Mercedes SUV, in the Springfield Mall, watching the shoppers and traffic on this busy Monday afternoon, his mood deepened. Most people only had to worry about keeping the kids out of trouble, paying the mortgage and kissing enough booty during the workweek to remain employed. They didn’t have to deal with murder, treason or insanity. And all of that against a backdrop of an increasingly hostile world. India-Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Africa, Greece, Mexico, Brazil; on and on, seemingly ad infinitum. Piss on one fire, and a dozen others sprang up around you. Finger one terrorist cell, and two dozen others came into existence as if from thin air. Unravel one alliance, and three dozen others emerged to threaten another 9-11.
Yemm was just the DCIs driver bodyguard and number two in the Office of Security. But he saw things, he heard things that he sometimes had trouble dealing with. Troubles that his wife used to be able to help him with. But she was dead. On some days he was reconciled to her absence. The accident had happened ten years ago. But on other days, like now, he felt a deep ache that he could not salve. She was gone, and he missed her because she would listen and then she would give her advice. “The way I see it, Dick…” she would invariably begin. And invariably she was right. He made a cell phone call to Annandale, just off the Beltway five miles north. “Hello,” a recorded woman’s voice answered. “Thank you for calling Aldebaran Projects. If you know the extension for the person you wish to reach, you may enter it now…”
He entered 562. The call was transferred to the direct line of Janos Kurcek the founder and president of the computer systems design company. “This is Kurcek.” Janos was a former Polish intelligence officer under the old regime. It had been fifteen years since he’d gotten out, but his accent was still strong. “Janos, I want to talk to you,” Yemm said. “Bring a laptop, I have a secure phone.” In the aftermath and confusion of the Soviet Union’s breakup, a lot of men in Kurcek’s position did not survive the witch-hunts. Even though he’d worked as a double, selling information to the U.S.” he was a marked man by the new democrats, who mistrusted men like him because they had no loyalties to Poland, and by the old hard-line communists, who hated him for his betrayals. It was in the spring, April, if Yemm remembered correctly, though some of his recollections of the operation were a little fuzzy. He was assigned to the U.S. consulate in West Berlin, where he made forays into the east zone at least once a month to organize escapes over the wall. Otto Rencke, who was the whiz kid reorganizing the CIA’s computer system, came over to Berlin in person and took Yemm out to dinner and drinks at a sleazy night-blub on the Ku’damm. He had a friend stuck in Gdansk who needed help getting out.
Name was Janos Kurcek, and there was an arrest warrant out for him already, so there was no time to mount a proper operation. Besides, Otto had worked with Kurcek for the past couple of years on some back channel exchanges of information. It was technical means that got Otto access to the old regime’s computer systems. He and Kurcek had developed a secret pipeline all the way back to KGB headquarters in Moscow. But the only way the arrangement would continue to work was for it to be kept an absolute secret. The more people who knew about the pipeline, the less likely that became. “I’m putting our lives in your hands,” Otto said earnestly. “If the KGB finds out, Janos will be a dead man, and they’ll come after me.” He shook his head. “But, oh, wow, I read your file. Green Beret. “Nam. Man, you been there, done that. Cool. And you know Mac. He thinks you’re good people.” “He’s a good man,” Yemm said. He had worked briefly with McGarvey in Saigon, and he’d been impressed. McGarvey was steady. “The very best, ya know,” Otto said solemnly. “You gonna help?” “I’m taking all the risks. What do I get out of it?” Yemm asked. “If I get caught I’m going to jail, at the very least.” “Favors,” Otto said. “Beaucoup favors, kimo sabe. You want something, Otto and Janos will come running.” Otto looked a little sheepish. “Anyway, if you want to stay in this business, favors are a good thing to have in the bank, ya know.” The operation was set up for three days at midweek, starting on a Tuesday. Yemm was to make his regular run across the border, but instead of making his rendezvous in East Berlin he was to change identities with papers that Otto provided and take the train directly to the Polish shipbuilding capital. Later Yemm could claim that he had got the rendezvous place mixed up, and could make the run to East Berlin again the following week. Things like that happened from time to time. In Gdansk he was to meet with Kurcek at a fish restaurant called Ka-shubska. There were three times: noon for lunch, four- fifteen for cocktails, and eight for dinner, with a fallback at a park one block away. Kurcek would be wearing a lime green sports coat and would have a bandage on his left cheek where he’d cut himself shaving. From there, Yemm who would be traveling as an American tourist driving a rental car from the train station, would take Kurcek to the Baltic coast town of Swinourjscie right on the German border where Kurcek would take the ferry to Copenhagen using the papers that Yemm was bringing him. From there Yemm was to return to East Berlin and make his way back to the west zone as usual. It had worked exactly as planned until the very end. Kurcek was in the park at four-fifteen and they drove like crazy, making the 8:30 P.M. ferry. During the four hours they were together Kurcek poured out his entire life story to Yemm, and by the time he was boarding the boat for Copenhagen and safety they were best of friends. “I will never forget you, Richard,”
Kurcek said. “You have saved my life here.”
The next morning, back in East Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie, Yemm was arrested by the Stasi and held for ten days. Nothing was asked about his trip to Poland; evidently the Stasi knew nothing about it. They were only interested in his activities in East Berlin over the past year and a half.
Eventually he was released, not too much the worse for wear, except that some of the interrogation methods they’d used on him at the Horst Wessel Center left his head a little fuzzy. He never had all the dates and times straight in his head afterward except that he’d been released on a prisoner exchange. He’d evidently been grabbed solely for that reason.
He was immediately flown to the air force hospital at Ramstein for a checkup, and from there back to Langley, where his debriefing lasted the better part of two weeks.
After that he was given a thirty-day leave, and then reported back to duty, this time in Madrid.
The CIA never asked him about his trip to Poland. They, too, were evidently unaware of his extracurricular activities, and he never volunteered the information. By then he had been in the business long enough to understand that oftentimes the best and most useful alliances were the ones kept closest to the vest. Living the lie for just one day meant that he could never go back, but neither could Janos, who within the year was in
