“How about dinner tonight after the show,” she said. “I could use an escort. Someone who knows his way around.”
“Sorry, Doc, but I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” McGarvey said. “What show?”
“I thought you knew. Fox News is doing a special on my energy program tonight at seven. They did some of the taping last year aboard the ship I was using for the first in-water experiment, and more aboard the oil rig and up at GE’s Stamford facility where they’re building my impeller-generator sets. Anyway they want me live at their studio on North Capitol Street. I’ll be out of there by seven thirty.”
Then he knew what she was talking about, and he could hear a little bit of concern in her voice. “Are you expecting trouble?”
“After last night, sure. But you should watch TV sometime,” she said. “Reverend Schlagel and his bunch are planning a demonstration in front of the studio. I’m told that the police will be there, and the network’s own security people won’t let any of them into the building.” She hesitated.
“Where are you staying?”
“I have a small apartment at Watergate East.”
“I’ll pick you up at six.”
And he could hear her relief now. “Thanks. I’ll be waiting in the lobby. And if we’re going to dinner tonight, you’d better start calling me Eve. My friends do.”
McGarvey was back at his apartment around noon where he had a quick sandwich and bottle of beer before he changed into sweats and Nikes and headed across the street into the park for his run.
Five miles used to be his daily routine, and when he was in Florida on the beach, he would swim that far in the Gulf. But since Katy’s death and the deaths of his daughter and son-in-law he’d slacked off a little. Training NNSA field officers hadn’t been much of a strain.
But running now, alternating his pace from easy to occasionally flat out, he felt as if he needed to get in good shape as quickly as possible. And after the first couple of miles, his shirt soaked, he was gratified that he hadn’t lost as much of his edge as he thought he had, and getting past the first burn when his body finally started to process the energy demands being placed on it, he felt good. At least physically good.
He’d lost a good man at Hutchinson Island, and at Lundgren’s funeral he’d met his wife who’d wanted assurance that Alan’s death hadn’t been in vain. What he gave his life for was worth something. Her two teenaged sons, who were totally devastated by their father’s death, hung on every word.
“What he did down there saved a lot of lives,” McGarvey told them. “And he wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
“Other people were killed trying to help out. Did they know my husband?”
“One of them did. Her name was Marsha Littlejohn and she was sitting next to him trying to defuse the explosives the same as he was.”
Lundgren’s wife was a sturdy, no-nonsense woman from somewhere in the Midwest, and she looked up into McGarvey’s eyes. “No lies?”
“No,” McGarvey told her.
Before she walked away, she touched McGarvey’s arm, and managed a tiny smile. “Thank you,” she said. “Alan said that you were the best man he’d ever worked with.”
The boys shook his hand, and mumbled their thanks, and went with their mother back to the limousine.
And it was Arlington and the same kind of limo that Katy and Liz had driven away in, and running now along Rock Creek he’d remembered that he’d almost lost it at that point. But he’d taken a deep breath and sucked it up as he’d been told to do when he was training at the Farm.
The afternoon was pleasantly cool, and a lot of people were out jogging or biking, and though lost in thought McGarvey was completely aware of his surroundings, of the people on both sides of the narrow, winding creek, others seated at park benches or picnic tables, cars and the occasional taxi passing on the road, the rooflines of the buildings in the distance, even the woods where a lone man with a silenced sniper rifle could be concealed. That too was a part of who he was.
A call to arms, he thought. At last. And he welcomed it.
Most of the time when McGarvey was in Washington in the past year and a half he’d found no need to drive his own car, but this evening was different. If there was trouble, he didn’t want to rely on getting out of there in a cab. He kept his metallic blue-gray Porsche Cayenne SUV in a concierge garage a block and a half from his apartment. It was always kept washed and gassed, and once a week the service took it up the GW Memorial Parkway past the CIA, and before turning back the driver looked for incipient problems that would immediately be tended to.
At three he called to ask that the car be delivered and parked as close to the apartment as possible. The concierge rep, an older man in a dark blue blazer, showed up fifteen minutes later with the key, and had McGarvey sign for the car. “We managed to get you a spot right outside the front door.”
“That’s lucky for this neighborhood.”
“Yes, sir. Will you be needing your vehicle picked up later this evening?”
“Not till first thing in the morning,” McGarvey said. “I’ll call first.”
Gail got back to the apartment shortly after five just as McGarvey finished cleaning and loading his pistol at the kitchen counter and she pulled up short, dropping her purse on the chair, a quizzical expression on her face.
“Are we expecting some trouble that you haven’t mentioned?” she said.
“Schlagel’s in town.”
“Did he follow us here from Hutchinson Island?”
McGarvey shook his head. “I don’t think he knows we exist yet. He’s evidently got a permit to stage a demonstration outside the Fox News television studio downtown, and I was asked to provide a little backup security.”
It suddenly dawned on Gail what McGarvey was talking about. “Dr. Larsen asked,” she said, an odd set to her mouth.
“I think that she and her project could be the next target. Norwegian intelligence asked the CIA to watch out for her. Apparently there’ve been threats against her safety, maybe from a religious group or groups who might show up in Oslo for the Nobel ceremony.”
Gail was intrigued. “Schlagel?”
McGarvey shrugged. “Unknown. But if he was somehow connected with Hutchinson Island and Princeton he might be taking another step tonight.”
“He’s not going to be that open about it,” Gail said. “I mean if he makes himself so visible like this, and then something happens to the lady scientist it’d be all over for him.”
“Not if he didn’t strike the blow himself. It’s like the crazies who bomb abortion clinics and kill the doctors and nurses because they’re whipped up by the rhetoric. When it happens, which is inevitable, the same people who ranted and raved about the baby killers deny any knowledge or responsibility. They make a big public show of deploring the bombings and killings.”
“I see what you mean. But what’s your part?”
“I got her off Hutchinson Island before the meltdown, and she thought she’d like to have me around after the TV show, just to get her past the crowd.”
Gail started to say something, but then shook her head. She went into the kitchen and poured a glass of Merlot. “Do you want some?” she asked.
“No.”
She came back to the counter and sipped the wine, an intensely thoughtful expression in her eyes. “What about Oslo? Are you going with her?”
“I’m thinking about it,” McGarvey said, knowing that’s exactly what he was going to do, because Eve Larsen was the key.
“You’re going to use her as bait,” Gail said in wonder. “And you’re going to put yourself directly on the firing line.”
