Her voice was soft. Barely a whisper. “Hello.” “This is Kirk McGarvey. I’d like to speak with Dick Adkins.” “Yes,” she said. Her voice was innectionless, like a zombie’s. “Father,” she called away from the phone. “It’s Mr. McGarvey.” Adkins came on almost immediately. “Hi, Mac.” He had already talked to Whittaker twice about coming back to work. McGarvey could only imagine what was going on at his house with his daughters.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t call sooner,” McGarvey said. “I couldn’t believe the news when David told me. I’m really sorry, Dick.”
“She hid it the whole time. She was driving up to a cancer clinic in Baltimore for the past year. Sometimes the girls took her. I never knew.”
McGarvey didn’t know what to say that was appropriate. Katy would know, but he hadn’t told her. “Ruth was a strong woman.”
“That she was.”
“Will there be a memorial service?”
“On Saturday at Grace Lutheran. But of course we don’t expect you or Kathleen to be there, under the circumstances.”
“We’ll be there, Dick. This other business will be settled by then.”
“Oh?”
“I hate to ask this, but can you come out here tonight?”
“Cropley? Sure. What time?”
“Eight,” McGarvey said. Adkins had practically jumped at the invitation. Whatever was going on at the house could not be pleasant for him.
“Let security know I’m coming.”
“That won’t be a problem. Just drive up to the house. I’ll see you then.”
Adkins wanted to say something else. McGarvey could hear it in his hesitation. “Okay,” he said at last. “See you then.”
When McGarvey came into the dining room Grassinger was looking out the bow windows toward the horse barn and riding arena. His hands were clasped behind his back and he rocked on his heels as if he was thinking about something in time with a beat. He was alone. “I’ve been asking myself what does it mean by ‘forcing the issue.” I can think of a dozen different possibilities, not one of them with a shred of common sense to it. And needing my cooperation, my ‘full cooperation,” is something even more worrisome to me. I’m saying to myself that since we can’t go back to business as usual until the operator or operators are bagged we need to do something really creative to get the job done. Offer them bait. I think that’s what the director is suggesting. The bait being himself, of course. Now, that’s not acceptable, not within my charter. So what to do? Maybe reason and logic?” “They have all the time in the world, Jim,”
McGarvey said. “But that’s a luxury we don’t have. As long as I stay in the bunker they’ll bide their time.” Grassinger turned around. He wasn’t a happy man. “So we just open the doors to the keep for them, Mr. Director? Is that what you’re asking me to do?” “Something like that.” “Then they’ll waltz in here and kill you and your family. They will have won.” McGarvey smiled faintly. “It might not be all that easy for them.” “No offense intended, sir,” Grassinger apologized.
“None taken. I’m not suggesting that we lower our guards and turn our backs. But it has to look that way, and it has to be convincing.”
Grassinger was somewhat mollified. He nodded. “Well, sir, what do you have in mind?” “Who’s with Nikolayev at Andrews?” “I sent young Chris Bartholomew. She knows what she’s doing.” “I want him brought out here tonight around seven. Find a place along the highway so that he can see someone coming from the city. He’ll have to be hidden, but near enough so that he can identify whoever is in the car coming down the driveway.” Grassinger nodded. “I know a couple of spots that might work. Is Chris to stay with him?” “No, I want you there. You might have to move your people in a big hurry.” “Who are you expecting, sir?” Grassinger asked. He had a sour look on his broad face, as if he knew that he was going to hear something disagreeable.
“Dick Adkins, Otto Rencke, my son-in-law and Bob Johnson from Technical Services.” “I know them all.” “They’ll be the ones coming in the open, but there might be someone else in the first batch who won’t want to be seen.” “Russians, maybe? That’s why we have our own Russian watchdog?” “That, but there’s more,” McGarvey said. This wasn’t easy.
Grassinger nodded, tight-lipped. “There always is, isn’t there.”
“All of those people are suspects,” McGarvey said. It took a moment for the implications to set in and Grassinger reared back, but he recovered. “Dear Lord,” he said. “Does Nikolayev know who it is?
Will he recognize this person?” “The assassin has been brainwashed.
Sometime in the past. By the Russians. Nikolayev was one of the designers of the program, and according to him the conditioning doesn’t last very long. So the killer needs a control officer. Someone to reinforce the training on a regular basis. He thinks that the assassin’s control officer will try to come out here tonight, too.”
Grassinger worked to grasp the enormity of what McGarvey was telling him. “Why would they expose themselves like that?”
“I don’t know,” McGarvey said. But he had his guess. If the killer was one of his friends, they would need to be reinforced in order to pull off such an act.
“Whoever comes out in the end will be the control officer,” Grassinger said. “All we have to do is match that person with one of the people in the house.”
“You can deploy your officers along the highway, out of sight.”
“But they’re your friends, Mr. Director. Your own son-in-law.”
“I know,” McGarvey said. “I’m going to shut down the alarm system and forward defensive measures. But I’ll leave the detectors in the woods behind the house active in case someone tries to sneak through the back door.”
“I’ll put a couple of people up there.”
“Okay. But nobody moves until Nikolayev or I give the word. We’re going to do this once, and only once.”
An almost infallible means of saving yourself from the desire of self-destruction, is always to have something to do, Voltaire wrote a couple of hundred years ago. It was just as true now as it was then.
Grassinger got on the radio to summon Blatnik as McGarvey walked back to the garden room and stepped outside.
On the snow-covered back patio McGarvey watched Kathleen and Elizabeth together. It was like the early days, before the split, mother and daughter together and happy. They were close again after years of distance: For Katy because she saw so much of her estranged husband in her daughter’s actions and mannerisims. And for Liz because her mother refused to consider allowing Kirk back into her life, even though it was clear that she’d never stopped loving him. But that was the disagreeable then. This was the hopeful now, because even though they had this trouble hanging over them, they were together. That’s all that really mattered. “Very impressive, but what’s it supposed to mean?” McGarvey asked, starting across the backyard to them. They had finished with the sixth figure. Kathleen spun around so fast at the sound of his voice that she slipped and fell on her rear. For a moment no one moved, but then Elizabeth shrieked with laughter and helped her mother up. “Why it’s Aku-Aku, dear,” Kathleen said, taking a sideways glance at their handiwork. She and Elizabeth exchanged a knowing look.
“Easter Island, Daddy,” Elizabeth explained. “You know, the statues.”
Gloria Sanchez shook her head. She had no idea what it meant. “Okay, so you’re tired of the cold and snow and you’re pining for a South Seas cruise? Is that it?” McGarvey asked. Something was odd here.
Something off. But he felt as if he were the only one sensing it.
“It’s Mom’s idea,” Elizabeth said. “They’re waiting for the dawn, Kirk,” Kathleen told him. “You know, it comes up in the east. Morning.
The new day and all that.” She got the pensive look that had been so common lately. “Todd and Elizabeth are going to adopt, so we’ll be grandparents after all. Ruth is no longer suffering, the poor dear.
And tonight you’re going to catch the killer. I just know it.” She glanced again at the snow figures. “So all we have to do is survive until morning.” There was nothing McGarvey could say. Kathleen smiled. “Close your mouth, dear,” she told him.
