choice. Mac was his friend. Mrs. M. and Liz were like family. He had to help them. He had to be here in Washington near them, to keep them out of trouble, to keep them safe from harm. But the truth of the matter was that he’d searched for legitimacy all of his life. When he was fourteen his father started beating him and calling him a queer boy. And that same year his mother, in a drunken rage, told him that she wished that she’d had an abortion rather than giving birth to him. In college he’d been treated with some respect because he was bright, but he’d been kicked out when they found him screwing the dean’s secretary on the dean’s desk. That was at a Jesuit university. They didn’t even ask him to leave. He just packed up that afternoon and got out. And in the air force he’d been treated okay, that is after he’d made it through basic training, because he had a handle on mathematics. But that job had lasted only a couple of years, when he was caught having sex with a supply sergeant.
A male supply sergeant. In the CIA, after he’d doctored his records, he thought that he’d found a home. Though he didn’t have a lot of friends in those days, at least he had some respect, even though he knew that they called him names behind his back. Then Mac came along.
Right off the bat Rencke knew that McGarvey was his kind of a person.
Just standing in the same room with him gave you a confidence you never had before. And when Mac patted you on the shoulder and told you that you did good, it was like a frosty pitcher of cream and a plate of Twinkies. It didn’t get any better. But Mac was drawn again and again back to Washington. So Washington had become Rencke’s magnet because Mac was a friend and because Mac believed in him. Mac had given him the legitimacy that he had searched for all of his life. Rencke had a place.
The helicopter touched down at the far end of the cul-de-sac just long enough to drop Rencke off. He turned away as it rose into the blowing snow and peeled off to the south. There were police cars, fire rescue units, two ambulances and a dozen civilian vehicles choking the street.
All of them had their red or blue lights flashing. The effect was surreal in the snow. Police tactical radios were blaring, and there had to be at least fifty uniformed cops along with FBI agents in blue-stenciled parkas and a lot of civilians, most of whom were CIA security officers. Rencke made his way over to the remains of the van and the burned-out shell of the DCI’s limo. The Bureau’s forensics people were sifting through the wreckage, finding and removing bodies and body parts. Flash cameras were going off all over the place. A Montgomery County sheriffs deputy intercepted Rencke. “Let me see some ID.” Rencke held up his CIA card, and the cop shined a flashlight on it, comparing Rencke’s face to the photograph. “Mr. McGarvey’s over in his driveway,” the cop said. Rencke mumbled his thanks and skirted the people and equipment gathered around the remains of the van. It was probably one of the onstation vehicles they’d used to stand watches in front of the house. The explosive device that had destroyed it had been very powerful. There was debris all across the cul-de-sac and up in people’s front yards. The force of the blast had been enough to partially destroy the limo parked several yards away. Looking at the wreckage of the scene reminded him of what the aftermath pictures of the chopper explosion in the Virgin Islands looked like. McGarvey stood at the end of his driveway with a group of CIA security people, a MHP captain and the FBI’s Fred Rudolph. They looked up as Rencke approached. “Where’s Mrs. M.?” Otto asked, unable to contain himself any longer. McGarvey smiled tiredly and laid a comforting hand on Rencke’s arm. “She’s okay. She’s inside, and there’s somebody with her.” “Oh, wow, I was really scared, ya know.” Rencke glanced over his shoulder at the technicians and security people working around the van. “Where’s Dick?”
“He didn’t make it. He’s dead,” McGarvey said. “He got caught in the explosion.” “Who else?” Rencke asked. His throat was constricting.
“Janis and Peggy, and a couple of guys from Security. Looks like they had been shot to death before we arrived. Then the van was booby-trapped. Whoever it was drove a dark blue Mercedes.” Rencke closed his eyes. He was sick at his stomach. He felt like a traitor.
Dick Yemm had been on his short list of suspects. He and his Beltway computer friend, who was ex-KGB.” “We’re heading to the safe house in the morning,” McGarvey said. “Why not now?” Rudolph interjected.
“Not in the dark,” McGarvey told him. “And not until we can get everybody calmed down.” “We’ll set a trap,” Rencke said. “You and I, Mac, wherever it leads. We’ll set a trap. Cause I know…” “You know what?” McGarvey asked sharply. He was concerned, troubled, even a little apprehensive. Rencke had never seen that kind of a look on Mac’s face before. It frightened him badly. He stumbled back a pace, confused now by all the lights and movement. He felt like a moth that was fatally caught in the light of a very powerful flame. A seductive flame. He was being drawn to his destruction. “We’ll do it, Mac,” he cried in anguish. Tears streamed down his cheeks, his long, frizzy red hair whipped wildly in the wind, and his jacket was open, revealing his dirty MIT sweatshirt. He began hopping from one foot to the other The cops and security people watched him in open amazement. He was a spectacle. He looked up and spotted a pale, round face in an upstairs window for just a moment before it disappeared. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he muttered.
THIRTY-FOUR. THE 23RD PSALM
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways I to die and you to live. Which is better God only knows.
Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away … A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him.
WEDNESDAY
THIRTY-FIVE
“VAS HA WAS FAMOUS FOR SPREADING LIES AND DISUNITY LIKE ROSE PETALS ON FRESH GRAVES. HE ALWAYS MANAGED TO INCLUDE THE THORNS.”
Six miles above the unforgiving winter ocean, Otto Rencke tried to put a cap on his fear. The cabin aboard the Company’s VIP Gulfstream was luxurious compared to the cramped cockpit of the Aurora. But the jet was slow, and Rencke was impatient. The only light came from the open cockpit door. It was four in the morning, and the crew thought that he was sleeping. They left him alone, which is what he wanted, what he needed, so that he could put his thoughts in order. Nikolayev was the key to the puzzle. Otto had known it almost from the very beginning, in August, when the KGB psychiatrist had walked away from Moscow. Some premonition, some inner voice, something inside of his gut started telling him that there was an operation brewing. Sometimes they started that way. A spy drops out of sight. Classified records turn up missing. The authorities in the host country pick up their heads and the hunt begins.
But he hadn’t been one hundred percent sure, so he brought Elizabeth into his confidence. She was in the middle of researching her father’s old files for his CIA biography, so she had become something of an expert on the subject. Nikolayev was an old man, a name out of the Baranov past. He had been a Department Viktor man, which
