were studiously poring over the maps.
“Have I made myself clear?” “Perfectly, Mr. Director,” Whittaker replied. His tone was frosty.
“Good,” McGarvey said. “I want you to talk to Otto this morning. He was shook up, but he said that he had an idea for a trap.”
“He took the Gulfstream back to France last night. Lynch said he’s already in-country.”
McGarvey wasn’t surprised. “I think that he’s trying to make contact with Nikolayev. Have Paris station keep an eye on him, but tell Lynch not to interfere.”
“All right.”
“Let me know as soon as he gets back to Washington. And in the meantime I’ll want regular staff reports. We can teleconference over the secure TV link. I’ll let you set up the times. Anything above the line occurs, I want to hear about it immediately. I’m going to Cropley, not Mars.”
“Yes, sir,” Whittaker said. He hesitated. “Mac, I understand about Dick. It’s a tough call, but you’re the one in the hot seat. We’re all with you. One hundred percent. And not just until this situation is resolved. I mean for the long haul.”
“Thanks, David. It’s good to hear that.”
Kathleen refused to be bundled up in a blanket, or in any other way pampered. “I’m worn-out, I’m not a cripple,” she said crossly. She and McGarvey sat in the backseat of the limo. Stenzel and Gloria Sanchez sat in the facing seats, and Grassinger drove with Chris Bartholomew riding shotgun. Media trucks and vans were parked along the side of the street almost all the way back to Connecticut Avenue.
Chevy Chase police and Montgomery County sheriffs units held the reporters at bay and kept them from taking up the chase. The limo’s windows were tinted so that no one could see inside, anyway. And fifteen minutes earlier, one of Grassinger’s people had delivered a one-page news release promising that the DCI would hold a news conference at Langley sometime later today. “It’s a feeding frenzy,”
Stenzel observed, as they were passed through the checkpoint. They headed north on Connecticut Avenue toward the Beltway and sped up. The news media had finally gotten onto the story that at least two attempts had been made on the life of the director of the CIA, the latest attack in front of his house.
“It’s been a slow season,” Gloria said. “One good thing with all this attention, no one in their right mind would try to do anything,”
Stenzel said. Gloria shook her head. “I hate to disagree, Doc, but this sort of confusion can work as a very good cover.” It had begun to snow again. When they reached the Capital Beltway and turned west, Kathleen turned and watched out the window. The trees and the hills were being covered with a fresh blanket of snow that made the world look clean and pretty, like a Currier and Ives Christmas lithograph.
She was smiling, but she said nothing, and McGarvey was content just to look at her. One other time in their marriage he had been as frightened of her fragility as he was now. It was a couple of days after Elizabeth was born, when they brought her home to their small apartment in the city. Kathleen’s pregnancy had been a normal one, no emergencies, no terrible cravings or debilitating morning sickness. But it had been long, and they were both glad the night her labor pains began and her water broke. McGarvey had done her breathing exercises with her so earnestly that night, that he had hyperventilated and almost passed out waiting for her to get ready to go to the hospital.
In those days, in a lot of hospitals, prospective fathers were not allowed into the delivery rooms. They had to remain in the waiting rooms, pacing the floor, having no idea what was happening until a nurse came out to tell them. When they got home with Elizabeth, Mac Garvey and Kathleen were determined to be the perfect parents, despite McGarvey’s job with the CIA that was starting to take him away from home for long periods. Kathleen did not breast-feed, so McGarvey was able to help with the bottles and formulas. He had also practiced changing diapers on a doll that Kathleen had bought for him. The first time that it was his turn, Kathleen was in the kitchen doing the formula. He went into the baby’s room and stopped in the doorway. The shades were drawn and the room was in semidarkness. Liz was awake and mewling softly, but not really crying yet. He could clearly remember her baby smell, how tiny beads of perspiration formed on her rosebud lips. She scrunched up her face and looked at him as if she knew who he was and exactly why he had come to her crib. She was bundled up in a pink blanket. He laid out the tiny diaper and baby powder, undid the blanket and started to undo the bottom of her night shirt when he felt something on her stomach. He reared back in a sudden, absolute panic. His and Katy’s biggest concern throughout her pregnancy was that she would lose the baby, miscarry. But another concern for McGarvey, one that he never shared with Katy, and one that kept him awake nights during the nine months, was that the baby would be born malformed. With a club foot, or a harelip, or blind, or with too many fingers or toes or arms. He gently felt the front of Liz’s nightshirt, and it was still there. A tiny lump in the middle of her belly. Sticking straight up. His worst fears were true. Somehow Katy hadn’t seen it, and the doctor and nurses hadn’t said anything. Or maybe they all knew and were afraid to tell him. Liz had something growing out of her belly. It was a third arm. He was convinced of it.
Some tiny, but horribly grotesque growth out of her body. He looked over his shoulder at the open door. Katy was just down the hall. How in God’s name could he tell her about this? He was the father. This was his fault. He was one hundred percent convinced of it. The shame was almost more than he could bear. His heart hammered as he carefully untied Liz’s nightshirt and pulled it back. He had to see. He had to know so that he could figure out how to break it to Katy. For several seconds he stared at his daughter’s rounded belly. A small bandage had been placed on the end of the tied-off umbilical cord. He looked at it, and he knew exactly what he had felt, and the mistake he had stupidly made, and yet he had a very hard time coming down. His heart pounded all the way through the diapering. When Katy came back with the bottle she stopped in the doorway, a smile on her face, just like her smile right now looking out at the fresh snow. McGarvey looked up at her. “She’s perfect,” he said. “So are you,” Kathleen had told him. He had never told her about that incident. And, he figured that if he searched his memory he could probably come up with other things that he hadn’t told her. When this situation was resolved, he promised himself that he and Katy would start over. Really start over this time. Grassinger took the Beltway Bridge across the river back into Virginia and immediately turned south on the George Washington Memorial Parkway to the CIA. Chris Bartholomew was in constant encrypted radio contact with Operations, who kept up a running report on the traffic behind and in front of them.
There were a number of news media vans and trucks at the front gate as the DCI’s limo was passed through. Grassinger drove directly across the Agency’s grounds to the south exit, on Pike Road, which led back to the Beltway. They recrossed the river, still clear according to their chase units. Grassinger drove north to River Road, which was Highway 190, and turned west toward the town of Potomac. He was making a big circle around Cropley. He was taking no chances with the DCI’s safety.
Chris Bartholomew turned around. She was from Wisconsin and tiny, just making the Agency’s minimums for height and weight. Her husband argued that good things came in the smallest of packages. Everyone in the Office of Security agreed. “Mr. Van Buren and your daughter are at the safe house, Mr. Director,” she said. “They had no trouble.”
“Good,” McGarvey replied. “What’s our ETA?” “We’ll be there in about twenty minutes,” Grassinger told him. “I’ll let Mr. Van Buren know-“
“No,” McGarvey said. “You may tell security on the grounds. But no one else.” Grassinger gave him an odd look in the rearview mirror.
Chris Bartholomew didn’t miss a beat. “Yes, sir,” she said. She turned back to the radio. Kathleen ignored the exchange. It was the Librium that Stenzel had given her. The drug made her docile. “Is there something we should know about, Mr. Director?” Gloria Sanchez asked. “There might be bugs in the house,” McGarvey said lamely.
“Besides, there’s staff out there.” “The house was swept about an hour ago, and we sent the staff away four days ago, sir,” she said. “The only people with Todd and your daughter now are John Blatnik’s team.
Four inside and six outside. They’re rotated by pairs every two hours.” “It’ll be a moot point in twenty minutes,” McGarvey said, closing the conversation. Gloria nodded, and Stenzeps attention remained fixed on Kathleen. McGarvey turned back to his thoughts. He’d made an automatic decision that he refused to examine. The problem he’d faced all of his life was when you don’t trust your friends and the people nearest to you, who can you trust? Who should you trust when you have to place your personal safety into the hands of relative strangers? This was an odd and troubling time. For the first time in his life he was coming face-to-face with himself, with what
