Maybe he would save them the trouble and resign. He brought the Bloody Marys into the large, comfortable family room off the kitchen. Katy was hunched in front of the shelves below the television looking through their videotapes and disks. She was dressed in CIA sweats and fuzzy slippers which made her seem smaller, younger, defenseless. McGarvey stopped and looked at her. She was working very hard to make their marriage work this time against terrible odds. Memories of bad men coming after her and Elizabeth, trying to kill them; memories of her husband living with other women, two of whom had been killed because they had gotten too close to him; memories of what he’d done for the past twenty-five years and what he was still capable of doing. Memories, even, of her own past indiscretions; the haughtiness and aloofness that had isolated her like an ice queen in an unassailable palace. But all that was in the past. They’d finally shown each other their vulnerabilities. “Find anything good?” he asked, putting the drinks on the coffee table. She looked up and smiled. “You have your choice. Platoon or The French Lieutenant’s Woman.” “Any other possibilities?” “No.” “Compromise?
Flip a coin?” She laughed, the sound light and musical. “You should see your face.” She held up the disks. “What’ll it be?” “I’ve always been a sucker for a good love story.” She laughed again. “Platoon it is.” She loaded the disk into the player. “What’d Otto want?” “What do you mean?” “I think I passed him on Connecticut. Wasn’t he here?”
“Not this morning,” McGarvey said, and for the life of him he didn’t know why he had lied to his wife. She gave him an odd look; one of patient understanding, like she knew that he was lying but she wasn’t going to ask him why, then came over and settled next to him on the couch. “Hmm. Nice,” she said.
MONDAY
FIVE
AN AIR OF MYSTERY HERE … A DARK, CATHEDRAL HUSH ONCE YOU WERE ADMITTED TO THE INNER SANCTUM SANCTORUM OF AMERICA’S INTELLIGENCE ESTABLISHMENT.
The snow stopped sometime in the middle of the night. McGarvey got up twice to go to the bathroom and then take a turn around the house checking doors, windows, the alarm system. As acting DCI he rated a full-time bodyguard, but he had refused for no other reason than he didn’t want the formality that went with a job he wasn’t sure that he was going to keep. Foolish, as were some of his other habits. He stood for a long time looking out the kitchen window across the golf course. It was two in the morning, and he wanted a cigarette for the first time since he had quit several months ago. The stars were ultrabright hard points in the moonless sky; cold and very distant.
This time when McGarvey went back to bed he slept without dreams, as if he had been drugged; hammered into something like a deep coma. When he awoke a minute or two before the six o’clock alarm he felt more refreshed than he had for months, but the same nagging whispers that something was about to go wrong were back in full force. Kathleen was already up, had the coffee on and was out for her 5-K run. He splashed some water on his face, then put on a tee shirt, a pair of shorts and gym shoes. He turned the television to CNN and started on the treadmill; slowly at first, with a moderate resistance, the machine automatically building to its maximum within a few minutes. It was a mindless physical routine that felt good. His body was even leaner and harder with more stamina than a few months ago when he still smoked, and he was tromping across the mountains in Afghanistan. But his mind wandered away from the television and he was back in the tunnels beneath the ruins of a sixteenth- century castle in Portugal. No lights, water running because the pumps had failed, explosive charges ready to go off, trapping him in a permanent coffin beneath millions of tons of rock. Somewhere in the blackness Arkady Kurshin was waiting to kill him. I won’t die here. Not now, not like this. Panic rising like a secret monster; jaws agape, claws coming to reach. Christ He came back to the present, forty minutes later, his shirt plastered to his body, the muscles in his legs beginning to bunch up, his gut hollow. He switched the treadmill to the cool down mode and looked at the television. Nothing new happening. Still trouble in Afghanistan; an American tourist murdered in Havana; Pakistan reneging on its promises to hunt down al-Quaida terrorists, Iran, Iraq, North Korea.
The treadmill was slowing down. Why had the business with the Russian assassin Arkady Kurshin come to mind now, of all times? He touched the scar on his side, where he had lost a kidney and nearly his life.
Kurshin was dead. The era was gone. He took a long, hot shower and when he had shaved he came back to the bedroom, where Kathleen had laid out a pair of gray slacks, blue blazer, white shirt and club tie.
Old-fashioned, but utilitarian; the clothes had become his new uniform.
Downstairs Kathleen was seated at the kitchen counter, the television on Good Morning America, reading the morning paper with her coffee.
Her cheeks were rosy from outside, and without makeup, her hair undone she looked fresh. “Good morning, darling,” she said, looking up.
“Sleep well?” “Like I was hit over the head.” McGarvey poured a cup of coffee and, standing on the opposite side of the counter from his wife, reached over and gave her a kiss. “How about you?” “Must have been something in the water. I slept like I was dead.” She smiled warmly.
“But then making love with you always does that to me.” “Maybe I should get a patent.” She chuckled at the back of her throat. “Do you want some breakfast?” McGarvey glanced at his watch. It was already coming up on eight. He shook his head. “Dick will be here in a couple of minutes, and it’s going to be a heavy day.” He shrugged. “Mondays.
How about you?” “I have some shopping to do, and Elizabeth and I are having lunch somewhere downtown, if she can get free. She’s supposed to call. At two I have a Red Cross executive board meeting, and I’m supposed to call Sally about the Beaux Arts Ball. Oh, and I’m interviewing two housekeepers, and the carpenters are supposed to start on your study this morning.” He’d forgotten about that. Before he’d moved back the room had been a catchall, a place to iron, and sew on a button, a place for the odd cardboard box. With his Voltaire studies, the room had become a serious workplace. Katy had ordered built-in bookcases, recessed lighting, a new desk and computer station, and a cabinet with long shallow drawers to store maps and large manuscripts flat. “How long’s that going to take?” “A few days. They promised they’d be done by Friday at the latest.” “No chintz.” “No chintz,” she agreed. “Saturday night we’re having the party, so don’t forget.”
They were having the former DCI Roland Murphy and his wife over for cocktails and a buffet supper. It was supposed to be a surprise party for him. She’d invited some of his old friends from the other law enforcement and intelligence agencies in town, a couple of generals from the Pentagon and a few congressmen from the Hill. Inappropriate because of the upcoming hearings? He’d wondered about it, but she didn’t think that it was a problem, and she knew about things like that. “You worry too much,” she said, reading his mind. “Anyway, is there anything you should lock up in your study?” “Voltaire is in the safe, and there’re no Agency files.” “Guns, bombs, missiles?” He laughed and shook his head. Her sense of humor had come back since they were remarried. She wasn’t so desperate to be formal and proper like she used to be. “Seriously, where’s your pistol?” “One is upstairs under my side of the bed, one’s out in the garage ” He opened his coat and turned to reveal the quick draw holster at the small of his back. “And this one.”
“Sorry I asked.” She was suddenly serious. But it was something that she had to deal with if they were going to be together. They had discussed the situation more than once. It’s what I do, he’d told her, and she’d given him the same uncertain look then as she was giving him now. But she was trying. The doorbell rang. “You okay, Katy?” “I’m fine. Something light for supper tonight?” “Sounds good.” He kissed her on the cheek, got his topcoat from the closet and went outside.
His driver bodyguard Dick Yemm was waiting with the armored Cadillac limousine, his eyes constantly scanning the neighborhood. “Mornin’, boss.” He opened the rear door. He was an ex-SEAL, smart, competent, alert and very tough, hard as bar steel and just as compact. “Good morning, Dick. Good weekend?” “Not bad.” McGarvey climbed into the car, and Yemm went around to the driver’s side. “I went down to the Farm to do a little shooting
