there alone, on an emotional limb. It made him vulnerable. And vulnerable men were almost always the first to fall.
Rick Ames was a drunk, and he liked to spend more money than he earned.
On top of that he had a raging ego that allowed him to believe that he was truly smarter than everyone else. So he had sold out to the Russians. He was no different than most other spies, including Robert Hanssen, who traded his secrets for money. He, too, had had a huge ego, thinking that he was better than everyone else. And he, too, had had his point of weakness in the stripper whom he had befriended and supported. Of course for every spy who turned out to have his vulnerabilities, there were ten thousand really vulnerable men who were not spies. McGarvey simply could not be certain about Adkins. Not now, not with so much going on around him. Even if it meant pushing away the very people who could help him the most, he had to have people he could trust. Whittaker saw the struggle in McGarvey’s face.
“Sorry, Mac. I shouldn’t have run off at the mouth like that.” “Yeah, I know the feeling,” McGarvey said. “Are you still interested in the job? Because I need somebody up here who knows the drill.” Whittaker nodded. “Am I going to have to move into Dick’s office?” “It’d make life easier.” Whittaker nodded again. “I have a few things to square away with my people first, but I’ll be in place by noon tomorrow.”
“Fair enough. You’ll be briefed then.” “Right,” Whittaker said. He headed for the door, but McGarvey stopped him. “One thing, Dave. I don’t want you talking to Dick until he’s cleared.” Whittaker wanted to object, but he realized the necessity of keeping his distance. “Okay,”
he said. When Whittaker was gone, McGarvey flipped through the phone messages his secretary had handed him. Fred Rudolph had called a couple of minutes after five, followed by his son-in-law Todd, and then Stenzel. It was after six, so he told Ms. Swanfeld that she could leave for the day, and gave Yemm the heads-up that there would be no swim today, and that they were going over to the hospital as soon as he cleared up a few things on his desk. Rudolph was still at his desk in the J. Edgar Hoover Building when McGarvey’s call went through.
“Whoever says government servants don’t earn their pay is nuts,”
McGarvey said. “What else would I be doing if I wasn’t here? Having a drink in front of the fireplace at home while my wife made dinner and my adoring children brought me my slippers and pipe?” “You don’t smoke. And anyway you’d be shoveling off your driveway. Have you looked outside lately?” “No, and I don’t want to. That’s where all the bad guys are lurking,” Rudolph said. “The Russians are hunkering down. Not just Runkov, but all the Russians.” “What about the ambassador?” “Except for Korolev. He’s skiing with his family in Aspen. All that’s left at the embassy is a skeleton staff. And it’s the same in New York. The entire Russian delegation to the UN went on recess.” “When?” “Over the past few days,” the FBI’s Special Investigative Division director said. “But not one of them has returned to Moscow.” “Have you found Runkov yet?” “Yeah, he’s been home all along. Just keeping his head down like all the others. We got a good picture of him through an upstairs bedroom window. But he hasn’t been outside even to pick up his newspaper.” “Korolev is skiing, and everyone else is hiding.” “Whatever is going to happen will go down soon,” Rudolph said. “Maybe it’s time that you duck for cover yourself.” “I’m considering it.” “I think you should do more than that.” “Right, Fred. Keep me posted, would you?” McGarvey said.
“Okay. But let me know what you decide.” “Will do,” McGarvey promised, and he hung up. Rudolph was wrong. The Russians had been lying low for more than the past few days. Runkov’s absence last week at the hearings had sent a clear enough message. Something that they did not want to get blamed for was about to happen. In the meantime, he would have Internal Affairs start Adkins’s background investigation before they got the FBI involved. He got an outside line. The number Todd had left was for his cell phone. His son-in-law answered on the second ring. “Hello.” “Where are you?”
“Hi, Mac. We’re home. But you better get over to the hospital before it’s too late. Mrs. M. was agitating to get out of there.” That was what Stenzel’s call was probably about. “I’ll head over there right now. But what’s going on, Todd? Why’d you take Liz home? She was supposed to stay the night.” “I couldn’t stop her. She and her mother had a long talk, and when Liz came out she was pissed. She insisted that we were going home.” “What’d they talk about?” “I can’t get a thing out of her, except that she wants to get back to work.” “It’s out of the question.” “That’s what I told her. But she thinks that something’s going to happen any minute now.” “So do I,” McGarvey said, making his decision. “I’m taking Liz and her mother out to the safe house first thing in the morning.” “That’s a good idea. I can get back to work and help stop this guy, whoever the hell he is.” “Do you have a security detail out there with you?” McGarvey asked. He was having strong premonitions of disaster now. Especially because Todd and Rudolph were telling him practically the same things. “Parked out front.” “Okay, stay tight for tonight, and I’ll see you in the morning.” “All right,” Todd said. “But I meant what I said before.
When we get this guy he will not stand trial.” McGarvey closed his eyes for a second. That was the old way. His old way. “I hear you,”
he said, and he hung up. He called for Yemm, but the night officer of Security said that Yemm was on his way up. Next he called Stenzel, catching him in his car about a mile from the hospital. He was on his way back to the CIA. He sounded out of breath, as if he was sprinting down the highway and not driving. “Your wife checked herself out of the hospital about fifteen minutes ago, Mr. Director.” A cold fist clutched at McGarvey’s heart. “Why didn’t you stop her?” “I’m her doctor, not her jailer,” Stenzel shot back angrily. “Besides, I was going to release her in the morning anyway. She’s not cured. She’s a long way from that. But she is much better.” “Are her security people with her?” McGarvey demanded at the same moment Yemm walked into his office. His bodyguard nodded that they were.
“They weren’t very happy, but there wasn’t much that they could do except go along with her.” “Okay, I’m heading for home now. Is there anything else I need to know? Anything that I can do to help?” “Get her out of town, Mr. Director,” Stenzel offered. “I don’t give a damn where you take her, just make sure that it’s someplace safe.” “First thing in the morning.” “About time. Let me know where you wind up, because I want to keep seeing her. I think that I might be able to get a handle on her problem if I have just a little more time. I’m almost there.” “I know the feeling,” McGarvey said for the second time in less than ten minutes. Yemm got McGarvey’s coat from the closet. He was agitated. “I just found out about it myself a few minutes ago,” he said. “Janis called me and said that they were headed back to the house.” “Who else is with her?” McGarvey asked, as they headed out of his office and down the corridor to the executive elevator. “Peggy Vaccaro is with them. They got one of the surveillance vans that Tony Parker and John Hernandez were using. They all went together.” “Did you call for backup?” “We’ll get to your house first,” Yemm said.
“And at this point there’s nothing wrong, boss. Mrs. M. checked herself out of the hospital, and she agreed to do what her security team told her to do.” “Where are they right now?” “When I talked to Tony they were just leaving the hospital parking lot. It’ll take them fifteen minutes to get to your house. It’ll take us thirty.”
Downstairs they got into the DCI’s limo. As soon as they cleared the building, McGarvey tried his home phone number. On the second ring it rolled over to his own cell phone. Katy wasn’t home yet. He lowered the bulletproof partition to the front seat. “There’s no answer at the house. Try the security detail.” Yemm had the car phone in his hand.
“They’re coming up on the Connecticut Avenue exit. Do you want me to call the MHP for backup? They might have a unit in the vicinity.” “Do you think it’s necessary?” “We’d have to give them an explanation,”
Yemm said. “Do you want to talk to your wife?” McGarvey looked out the window as they merged onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway. There was a lot of traffic tonight, slowed by a heavy, wind-whipped snow that was already piling into drifts. “No,” he said. “Just get me home as quickly as you can, Dick.
It’s a bad night.” “That it is,” Yemm replied. Who to trust? Who to trust? He kept coming back to the same conundrum: Who can a spy trust?
Who can he believe in? His circle of friends and close acquaintances, people he surrounded himself with, people who meant the most to him, was very small. And it was dwindling even more every day. Otto had gone off the deep end again. Yemm was acting strangely. Adkins was under extreme pressure. And even Todd wasn’t himself. Everybody had gone crazy all of a sudden. McGarvey sat back in his seat and unconsciously reached inside the coat for a cigarette, remembering that he had quit. Dr. Anatoli Nikolayev had apparently stirred up a hornet’s nest in Moscow six months ago. The SVR was looking for him, but either they weren’t looking very hard, or he was better than they were. Knowing Baranov and the people who worked for him in the old Department Viktor days, he had a pretty fair idea that it was Nikolayev leading the SVR investigators around in circles. This whole bizarre situation had a Baranov stench to it. But the general was dead. Long dead. McGarvey could feel the recoil of his pistol when he put a bullet in the Russian’s brain. But if it was Baranov after all, if it was some long-range scheme that he had placed on automatic before his death, there would have to be people around with strong ties to that
