He took the elevator to the top floor, and using the lock pick set he’d taken after all, he spent a half minute opening the door to 8B, and let himself in.
The small, neatly furnished apartment smelled slightly musty. The CIA had owned it for ten years, using it first in a surveillance operation against DarbyYarnell, and since then as a safe house for the occasional clandestine meeting.
So far as Otto Rencke had been able to find out, the place hadn’t been used for nearly thirteen months. Nobody had been here to clean or to check on the place. The rent was paid on time every month by housekeeping at Langley, and so far as the neighbors were concerned the renter was likely a government employee of some sort, off on another long foreign posting.
McGarvey moved slowly across the living room and down the corridor to the back bedroom. The window blinds were partially drawn allowing sunlight to cast stripes on the pale gray carpeted floor. Keeping to one side, he eased one of the slats upward and peered across at Yarnell’s old house. An instant rush of memories came back at him.
Lorraine, the field officer with the Sommersprosse who’d been on the team that had come for him in Lausanne, had been up here. So had a couple of Trotter’s people, a man whose name might have been Sheets, or something like that, and another named Gonzales. They thought that Yarnell was a spy for the Soviet government, and they were watching the comings and goings at his house.
The apartment had been filled with surveillance equipment, including a big Starlight scope on a sturdy tripod.
Tell them I came, and no one answered, that I kept my word.
It was the same bit of de la Mare that had come to him then. The listeners, waiting for the lone rider to bang on the door, find that no one was home and then leave again.
Gonzales had been on the Starlight. “Maybe you want to take a look; maybe you don’t.” He nodded toward the scope. “But it’s something.”
A man and a woman stood locked in an embrace next to a four-poster bed in an upstairs bedroom. The man’s back was toward the window. When they parted, McGarvey was looking into Kathleen’s face. She was flushed. Then the man half turned, giving McGarvey a clear view of him. Yarnell.
Oh, Kathleen! he’d thought then and now. She’d always played dangerous games, but she hadn’t known just how precarious her position really was. And here she was again.
The street below was quiet, and there were no sounds in the apartment. It was as if this part of the capital city was holding its collective breath, which in a way it was.
The waiting had always been the hardest part. And now it was made infinitely more difficult because it was Katy over there again.
McGarvey slowly lowered the slat back into place, and then adjusted the blinds so that he could see outside. Taking off his jacket, he laid it on the bed, then took the small lamp off the nightstand and pulled the little table over to the window. He pulled the easy chair from the corner and positioned it next to the table so that when he was seated he could look out the window and see the street and front entrance to Yarnell’s old house.
Katy would be frightened but defiant. By now Khalil would be figuring out how to let McGarvey know where he had her. That would take time, during which Katy would be relatively safe.
Hold on, darling, he thought.
He used his cell phone to call Liese in Switzerland. She answered out of breath on the first ring.
“Oui.”
“Are you ready?”
“Very nearly,” she answered. “Within the hour.”
“Be careful,” McGarvey said. He broke the connection and called Rencke, who also answered on the first ring as if he too had been expecting the call.
“There’s a storm sewer that opens at the rear of the embassy. You can get into the tunnel on G Street just off Juarez Circle.”
“Have you faxed that on an open line to my house yet?” McGarvey asked.
“It’s set to go by fax and by unencrypted e-mail to the house,” Rencke said. “I want to make it real easy for them.”
“Do it,” McGarvey said. “Then keep your head down; there’ll be a lot of heat.”
Rencke laughed, but it sounded vicious. “They don’t know what heat is if they hurt Mrs. M.”
“Nobody knows where I am.”
“Right,” Rencke said.
A Mercedes pulled up in front of Yarnell’s old house. A slightly built man in a shirt and tie but no jacket, carrying what looked to be a small briefcase, came out of the Arab Center, passed through the gate, and got into the car, which immediately departed.
McGarvey got the impression that the briefcase might have been a doctor’s bag, but he didn’t want to take that thought any further. For the moment he was doing everything he could.
He telephoned his daughter, and she answered immediately.
“Daddy, are you ready?” she asked. There were traffic sounds in the background.
“I’m in position,” McGarvey told her. “Where are you?”
“In front of the embassy, and there are a lot of nervous-looking people over there. Soon as I pulled up and started taking pictures, three guards came out. They’re there right now, taking pictures of me.”
It was what McGarvey had expected would happen. Now he wanted to ratchet up the pressure. “How many people have you got over there?”
“Just me for now,” Elizabeth said. “But Todd is on the way with three surveillance teams and vans. They should be here any minute, and we’ll hit them with everything we’ve got.”
“No gunplay,” McGarvey warned. “If it seems to be heading that way, call DC Metro and get the hell out of there.”
“Soon as Mom’s free.”
“What about their utilities?”
“Their water goes off in about five minutes, and Otto gave me a computer program to cut electricity. Soon as you give me the word, it’s a done deal.”
Down on the street another black Mercedes passed in front of the Arab Center, but did not stop.
“Thirty minutes, sweetheart,” McGarvey told his daughter. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“No,” she promised. “We’re just going to make the bastards real nervous.”
McGarvey broke the connection, laid the telephone on the small table, then unholstered his pistol, placed it next to the phone, and sat back to wait.
SIXTY
Inside the embassy an extremely nervous Nuaimi finished his difficult phone call to Riyadh. Neither the ambassador nor Crown Prince Abdullah had offered to help with what was escalating into an impossible situation. They were leaving the problem to him.
No matter what happened he would take the blame. In the end he would be recalled home in disgrace.
His telephone rang, but it was Ali bin Besharati, chief of embassy security. “In addition to the car there are now four vans across the street. They are bombarding us with electronic and laser pulses.”
“Get rid of them,” Nuaimi shouted.
“I’m sorry, but that’s impossible. They are on a public street and are breaking no American laws. I can direct one of my people to walk over and ask them to leave.”
Nuaimi tried to get himself together. He lowered his voice. “No, that’s not advisable. Just have your people hold their posts. No one is to be allowed in or out of the building for the time being.”
“I understand,” bin Besharati said.