past. Someone like poor Evita Perez and Darby Yarnell and that crowd.
All of them were dead, too. But there were undoubtedly others.
Sleepers, the Russians used to call them. Deep-penetration agents who worked in ordinary jobs in their host countries. Barbers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, even intelligence officers. People who lay low, sometimes for years, until one day they were called into action. People whose loyalty was assured because they were paid well, and because of the promise that when their missions fully developed they would hit the jackpot a big payoff. They crossed the river on 1-495 and a few miles later merged with 1-270, which formed the northern curve of the Beltway around Washington. McGarvey looked up. Yemm was speaking on the phone. He had sped up considerably despite the heavy traffic and the increasingly slippery road. Something was wrong. “What’s going on, Dick?”
“Parker’s not answering. Neither is Janis. I’m trying Peggy’s cell phone now.” Yemm’s replied were curt. McGarvey speed dialed his home number. Kathleen answered on the first ring. “Hello?” McGarvey forced himself to calm down, to keep an upbeat tone in his voice. “Hi, sweetheart. I’m on the way home. What’re the girls fixing for dinner?” “Don’t be mad, Kirk. I just couldn’t stay another night in that hospital. The place was driving me crazy.” “I’m glad you’re home. I missed you,” McGarvey assured her. “You must have just got there. Anyway let me talk to Peggy for just a minute, would you?”
“They’re still out talking to the guys in the van and the chase car,”
Kathleen said lightly. “What chase car’s that?” McGarvey asked. All the gravity suddenly leaked out of the limo. It felt as if the elevator cables had snapped. “It’s a Mercedes. Dark blue.” “Are you sure?” “I’m standing at the front window looking at it.” “Listen to me, Kathleen. I want you to lock the front door, then go upstairs to our bedroom. There’s a pistol in my nightstand. I’ve shown you how to operate the safety.” “Kirk?” Kathleen’s voice was small. “Do it right now, Katy.” “What’s wrong?” “Maybe nothing, but just in case there is, I want you to do that for me right now. Lock the door, then go upstairs and get the gun.” “All right, if you say so,” Kathleen said. McGarvey held his hand over the phone. “My wife’s alone in the house. She says that Janis and Peggy are talking to the guys in the van and in a chase car. Dark blue Mercedes.” “No chase car, boss,”
Yemm said grimly. “I’m alerting Maryland Highway Patrol and our people. Tell her to sit tight, we’ll be there in a flash.” “Okay, Kirk, the front door is locked,” Kathleen said. “Are the girls still out by the van?” “Just a minute,” she said. “Yes, they’re still there.” “Can you see inside the car? How many people there are?
Maybe just the driver?” “I can’t see a thing. I think the windows are tinted or something.”
“Go upstairs now and get the gun. I don’t want you to let anybody in the house. Nobody, do you have that?” “Nobody except for you, Kirk?”
she asked in a tiny voice. McGarvey wanted to reach through the phone and hold her. “Just me, Katy. I’m coming to you as fast as I can.”
“Please hurry, darling.” “Go upstairs, but stay on the phone with me,”
McGarvey said. They came to the Connecticut Avenue exit, and the limo’s rear started to drift out as Yemm took the ramp too fast. But he was an expert driver, and after the car fishtailed twice he had it back under control, blasting through an orange light and heading south, through traffic. “MHP has a unit about ten minutes out,” Yemm said.
“Are you upstairs yet, Katy?” McGarvey asked. He cradled the phone between his cheek and shoulder. “Yes.” McGarvey took out his pistol and checked to make sure that it was ready to fire, then laid it on his lap. “Get the gun.” “I’m getting it.” “I want you to switch the safety off,” McGarvey said, as Yemm raced through a red light. Several cars slid off the side of the street into parked cars. “It’s off.”
“Now I want you to turn off the bedroom lights, and sit down in the corner so you can see the bedroom door.” “I don’t understand ”
“Just do it, Kathleen,” McGarvey ordered. “Then stay there until I get home.
If anyone comes through the door, I don’t care who, besides me, I want you to point the gun at them and pull the trigger. And keep pulling the trigger.” “Hurry,” she said. “I’m frightened.” “We’re only a few blocks away,” McGarvey said. Yemm took the Mac 10 submachine gun from its holder on the transmission hump, took his left hand off the steering wheel long enough to yank back the cocking handle on top of the receiver, then powered down the passenger-side window. “I’ll make one quick pass,” he said. “Concentrate on the Mercedes, I’ll watch the van,” McGarvey said, powering down his window. “Kirk, are you talking to me?” Kathleen asked. “No, sweetheart, I’m talking to Dick. Hang on.”
Yemm slowed down as they passed the golf course, and he turned down Country Club Drive. The house was at the end of a cul-de-sac. The van was parked in front, but there was no sign of the Mercedes. Nor was there any sign of the girls or of Parker or Hernandez. “We must have just missed them,” Yemm said. “Katy, are you okay? No one has tried to come into the house?” “I’m okay, Kirk. All the doors are locked.”
“Sit tight, we’re right outside.” Yemm raised the Mac 10 as he drove slowly past the van. There was no movement. The van’s windows were all closed, and they couldn’t see anyone inside. It simply looked like a vehicle parked on the side of the street. They drove around the circle and stopped in the middle of the street just behind and to the left of the van. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the neighborhood. The snowfall was heavier than it had been at Langley, and already whatever tire marks or footprints there might have been had completely filled in. “Stay here, Mr. Director,” Yemm said, getting out of the car. “Yeah, right,” McGarvey replied. He climbed out of the limo on the opposite side from the van, behind Yemm. “Goddammit-“
“I’ll cover your back, Dick,” McGarvey said. “But take it nice and easy.” Yemm decided not to argue. He moved around the front of the limo. McGarvey slid into place behind him so that he had a clear sight line over the long hood. Keeping the Mac 10 trained on the driver’s side window, Yemm gingerly approached the van. He bent down and looked under the vehicle, then studied the area around it before he cautiously looked through the window. For several long seconds he just stood there, but then he lowered his gun and looked over his shoulder.
“They’re all in the back.” The hairs prickled on McGarvey’s neck. He knew what Yemm was going to say next. “There’s a lot of blood. I think they’re all dead.” “Christ.” McGarvey turned and looked at the house. “Wait for the backup,” he shouted, and he sprinted across the street and up the driveway to his house. On the porch he fumbled his keys out of his pocket, hurriedly unlocked the front door and shoved it open with his foot. He slid left, out of the firing line from anyone in the stair hall
There was nothing. No movement. No sound. Not even the alarm.
Kathleen had forgotten to turn it back on. “Katy?” he shouted. He’d left his phone in the car. “Kirk?” she called from upstairs. “It’s me. Are you okay?” “Oh, Kirk, thank God,” Kathleen cried. She appeared at the head of the stairs, the pistol still in her hand, pointed toward the open front door. “Put the gun down, Katy.
Everything’s fine now ” A tremendous explosion shattered the night air, flashing like a strobe light off the thickly blowing snow, the noise hammering off the fronts of the houses in the cul-de-sac. McGarvey fell through the doorway and turned in time to see a huge fireball, blown ragged by the wind, rising into the sky from where the van and Yemm had been.
THIRTY-THREE
MAC HAD GIVEN HIM THE LEGITIMACY THAT HE HAD SEARCHED FOR ALL OF HIS LIFE. RENCKE HAD A PLACE.
Arkady Aleksandrovich Kurshin was the only man ever to have nearly bested McGarvey. Looking up from the covering file for Operation Countdown, Rencke wondered how he could have forgotten the Russian assassin’s name. Baranov had been the manipulator behind Kurshin’s delicate, even balletic, but deadly moves. And yet it was Kurshin who had stolen a nuclear missile from a U.S. storage bunker in what was then West Germany. It was Kurshin who had managed to hijack a U.S. Los Angeles class nuclear submarine and kill its entire crew. It was Kurshin who had nearly embroiled the entire Middle East, including most of the oil-producing nations, in a nuclear confrontation with Israel.
And it had been Kurshin who had finally led McGarvey to his face-to-face confrontation with Baranov. McGarvey had been maneuvered to the meeting with the KGB spymaster in a Soviet safe house outside of East
