that’ll help?” “Not much. I want you to come out to Cropley tonight. At eight.” “I’ll be there as soon as I’m relieved here ”
“Eight,” McGarvey said. Todd wanted to argue, but he nodded.
“How’s Liz?” “She was finally sleeping when I left.” “Good.”
McGarvey took Otto downstairs, Grassinger right behind them. “I want you to go home and get some sleep now, and that’s an order,” McGarvey told him. “Okay, Mac, whatever you say. But did Nikolayev give us anything?” “He said that you have an eighth suspect.” Otto’s head bobbed up and down as if it were on springs. “But I’m not sure yet.
Honest injun.” “Give me a name.” “No,” Otto said. He was acutely distressed. “I’ll need to know pretty soon,” McGarvey said. “I can’t do this in the dark.” Otto held his silence. He looked guilty of something. “Okay, get some sleep, and then you can work on it this afternoon. I want you to come out to Cropley tonight around eight.
Alone.” “The trap?” “We’ll talk about it then,” McGarvey promised.
“And have Louise fix you something decent to eat. You look like hell, Otto.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
AN ALMOST INFALLIBLE MEANS OF SAVING YOURSELF FROM THE DESIRE OF SELF-DESTRUCTION, IS ALWAYS TO HAVE SOMETHING TO DO, VOLTAIRE WROTE A COUPLE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. IT WAS JUST AS TRUE NOW AS IT WAS THEN.
McGarvey stood at the front door in the stair hall looking out the narrow window. Clouds had moved in again, lending the distant woods a forbidding feeling. Creatures were gathering up there in the darkness.
Watching, plotting, waiting for the correct moment to strike. Nothing moved that he could see. Blatnik’s people were well hidden in the trees and brush flanking the long driveway. The rear of the house was covered by motion detectors and infrared sensors. If anything stirred up there, alarms would sound in the house. It was after lunch.
Everyone had gotten at least a few hours’ rest, and over a large lunch of fried chicken and potato salad that Elizabeth made, the mood was light. Even Jim Grassinger, who refused to have a beer but instead drank warm Coke straight from the can, had eased up and cracked a joke or two. Liz and her mother were outside behind the house making a snow man or something under the watchful eyes of Gloria Sanchez and one of Blatnik’s people. McGarvey was unsettled. Running away to choose the time and place for his battles had always minimized the risk to his family but did nothing to protect them from harm. Bringing them out here did the opposite: It actually maximized the risk to them. But he would be here at their side when the bad guys came calling. There was no mistake in his or anyone else’s mind that he wasn’t the only target.
Kathleen and Elizabeth were targets, too. Their deaths at the hands of an assassin would almost as effectively destroy his usefulness as a DCI as would his own death. No one talked about it, but he’d heard the apprehension in Whirtaker’s voice, and seen it on the faces of his staff this morning during the teleconference. Stenzel came down the hall from somewhere in the back, and McGarvey turned away from the window. Now it would begin, he thought. “They said that you wanted to see me, Mr. Director,” Stenzel said. “I’m sending you back to Langley this afternoon,” McGarvey told the psychiatrist. Stenzel was startled.
“What’s up? Is something wrong? I mean it’d be a lot better if I stuck around to monitor your wife’s condition.” “It’s just for overnight,” McGarvey explained. Grassinger appeared in the doorway from the dining room, which they continued to use as their operations center. “Dr. Stenzel is leaving. Get somebody to take him back to Langley, would you?” “Sure thing. When?” “Now,” McGarvey said.
“Well, let me have a word with her first ”
“No. I want you to leave right now.” Stenzel glanced up the stairs. “What about my things?”
“You can come back out first thing in the morning,” McGarvey said.
“This is only for tonight.” Grassinger was surprised, but he said nothing. He stepped back into the dining room, issued an order into his lapel mic, then returned with StenzePs coat. A minute later one of Blatnik’s people drove up. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Stenzel asked. He was vexed. “Your wife could have another breakdown at any moment.” “It’s a risk we have to take,” McGarvey said. “Until morning.” Stenzel appealed mutely to Grassinger, who didn’t blink. He pulled on his coat, gave McGarvey another look, then left without a word.
“What’s going on tonight, Mr. Director?” Grassinger asked. “Does it have something to do with the Russian?” “I have a couple of phone calls to make, and then we’ll talk. I’m going to force the issue, and I’ll need your cooperation, your full cooperation. Do you understand?”
“No, sir. But we’ll do whatever it takes. We can’t go on like this forever.” “No we can’t,” McGarvey agreed. He crossed the living room and went into the study in the opposite wing of the house from the dining room and kitchen. He kept the door open so that he could see anyone coming, and telephoned the Agency locator at Langley, who rang through to Bob Johnson in Technical Services. “Good afternoon, Bob, this is Kirk McGarvey, I need a favor sometime tonight, if you guys aren’t too busy.” “No, sir. Let me get Jared ”
“No, I don’t want to bother him. He’s got his hands full with the VI and Vail investigations, and I just need someone who understands alarm systems.
But I don’t want just anyone. I need someone I can trust.” “Yes, sir,” Johnson replied cautiously. “What can I do for you?”
“Something’s not right with the system here. Could be that someone’s tampered with it. I just don’t know. Can you come out here tonight.
Say around eight to take a look?” “I could come right now.” “No, later. I don’t want to make a production out of this, in case someone has sabotaged the system. Do you understand?” “Yes, sir. Perfectly.
I’ll be there at eight.” “Good man. See you then.” “Let your security people know that I’m coming.” “Oh, don’t worry about them.
That’s why I want the alarm system checked.” Next he called Fred Rudolph at his office in FBI headquarters. “I need a favor, no questions asked.” “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Rudolph said. He was straitlaced. He did everything by the book. Or at least he tried to do it that way. He and McGarvey were opposites, but they respected each other. “What can I do for you, Mac?” “Put me on your medium security website,” McGarvey told him. “I want it to look as if someone released a confidential memo by mistake.” “What memo?” “You’re concerned that the DCI is out here with little or no security because he’s pigheaded. The Bureau needs some direction.” “Who am I supposedly sending this memo to?” “Senator Hammond. But you’re not really going to send it. It’s a draft memo. But I want it on the website.” “So the Russians can see it,” Rudolph said. “If it’s them, they’ll come out guns blazing. Shootout at the OK Corral. That’s your style.”
“Post it a few minutes after six tonight. It’ll look like a shift change error.” “Tell me that you’re not really sending your security away,” Rudolph said. “No questions, Fred, remember?” “All right. I can do that for you. Against my better judgment. But in the meantime, I’m going to double the surveillance on the Russians, and on Senator Hammond’s office because there’s a good chance he’ll see it, too.”
“Your call. But if someone heads out this way I don’t want your people to interfere with them.” “Can we at least give you a heads-up?” “I’d appreciate it.” Rudolph was silent for a moment. “Do you think it’ll go down tonight?” “I hope so.” “Did your people find Nikolayev?”
“He’s here in Washington.” “Okay then, good luck,” Rudolph said.
“Just watch your ass, will you?” “Sure thing,” McGarvey promised. He went down the hall through the garden room so that he could look out a back window. Katy and Liz had built five small snowmen and were working on a sixth. The figures’ heads were larger than their bodies, and they seemed to be leaning backward, looking up at the sky. They all faced the same direction, toward the east, McGarvey realized, and the scene was somehow disturbing. Gloria Sanchez and one of the outside security people stood by watching. McGarvey returned to the study, where he telephoned Adkins’s house. A young woman answered.
