“I meant the overall prognosis, Doctor. Am I going to beat this and live a long-enough life to have a dozen grandchildren?”
Franklin was used to dealing with intelligence officers, most of whom were tough-minded, pragmatic people; nevertheless, his simple and direct reply gave even Haaris pause.
“No.”
“I see. Assuming I choose not to go the route of chemotherapy, how long do I have to live?”
“There’s no way to say with any degree of certainty. A year, maybe longer, maybe less.”
“Let me put it another way. I’m in the middle of something quite important. It has to do with the situation in Pakistan. And I can’t walk away from it. How much viable time do I have? Mental acuity as well as physical? I must be able to think straight.”
“Frankly, that’ll depend on your tolerance for pain.”
“I’ve been there before.”
“Six months tops, I’m afraid.”
“I see.” Haaris paused. “Thank you for telling me straight out,” he said. “Now, I don’t suppose I could convince you to withhold your diagnosis from my employer?”
“I can’t do that.”
“Maybe a delay for a week or so?”
“Marty Bambridge is here with your wife,” Franklin said. “I phoned him to come over.” Bambridge was the deputy director of the Clandestine Service, also known as the Directorate of Operations.
A moment of intense rage threatened Haaris’s sanity. For just that moment he was on the verge of coming around the desk and killing Franklin. But it vanished as quickly as it arose. “I will take care of letting my wife know. Are we perfectly clear on this, Doctor?”
“Your call, Mr. Haaris.”
“Yes, my call, as you say.”
Haaris stopped for a second just before the frosted glass door to the visitors’ lounge to gather his wits. The deputy director was a complete idiot, who’d had the solid reputation of caring more for the mission than the man, so getting past him would present no obstacle. He would be perfectly willing to keep the news to himself, so long as the job was being handled. He’d make some noise, of course, and possibly bounce it up to the seventh floor. But six months was more than enough time for Messiah to set things in motion. Payback.
The biggest problem would be Deborah. She and Haaris had been married five years, after a whirlwind romance. She’d been a student at the Farm, where he’d given a brief series of lectures on developing and using psychological profiles of the opposition’s field agents. That included the Chinese, who thought differently than Westerners, and spies sent by America’s “friends” in Canada, England, France and Germany.
She’d been an indifferent student at best, completely in awe of the CIA in general and Haaris specifically, whom she thought was the most sophisticated, kind and gentle man she’d ever met since she’d graduated from Stetson University law school in Florida.
And for his part, he was in need of a bullet-proof cover if he was ever going to be promoted to a high enough level within the Company where his opinions mattered. Single men might make for good field officers, but working at headquarters, they made a lot of people nervous. Where did their loyalties lie and all that?
The woman had been incredibly boring to him from the start. Their sex unimaginative and mechanical. Her cooking, Midwestern meat and potatoes — she was from some small town in Iowa. She lacked any practical education vis-à-vis intelligence work. And most of all, her professed unconditional love and absolute devotion and loyalty were nothing short of stifling. But anyone from the Company who’d ever met her fell totally in love at first sight. She was the quintessential American wife. From the beginning he’d thought of her as a lap dog. The CIA needed people like her for background noise.
He opened the door and went in.
“There he is at last, in one piece,” Bambridge said, getting up. The deputy director was short and slender with dark eyes that were usually angry. He always moved as if his feet were hurting him, and his expression suggested that just about everything he heard or encountered came as a surprise. “Clean bill of health and all that?”
“The doctor says I’ll live at least until the end of the year,” Haaris said. “He’d like to have a word with you.”
Bambridge gave him a searching look, but then nodded. “Are you up for your debriefing this afternoon? Say, four?”
“I’ll be there.
“Lots to tell?”
“Indeed.”
Bambridge left, and Deb, who was five-three, blond and a little on the softig side, jumped up. She was shivering, her face a study of emotions from happiness to fear. She was dressed in a short skirt, with a frilly white blouse and flats, because she’d never learned how to walk in heels.
Haaris opened his arms to her and she came to him. He winced in more pain then he actually felt when she put her arms around him, and she cried out.
“Oh, God, David, I’ve hurt you!”
“It’s all right, sweetheart. I’m just glad to be home in one piece with you.”
FIFTEEN
A car and driver were waiting for McGarvey and Pete at Joint Base Andrews when their CIA Gulfstream landed and taxied to a navy hangar. They thanked the crew and walked over to the Cadillac Escalade, where a very large man in a plain blue jacket opened the back door.
“Welcome back, Mr. Director,” he said. “Don’t know if you remember, but I used to drive you places.”
“Tony,” McGarvey said.
“Yes, sir, good to see you again.”
On the drive out to Langley, McGarvey came to the realization that he would not have answered the summons from the president if he hadn’t been attacked that morning. “How many people knew that you were coming to talk to me?” he asked Pete as they got off the Beltway and took the George Washington Parkway toward the CIA’s main entrance road.
“The president and at least some of her staff. Me, Marty, Walt Page, and Otto, of course.”
“Whose call was it?”
“I guess the president asked Walt to contact you.”
“Last night?”
“I imagine so. Marty called me about three in the morning, said you weren’t answering your phone, so he wanted me to go to Florida and talk to you. Thought you might need some convincing. “
“The guys who tried to run me over did that. Apparently someone doesn’t want me meddling in this business. Someone who has a contact either at the White House or in our shop.”
Pete nodded. “I was thinking the same thing, but it could also be someone who suspected that you might be called in and wanted to stop your involvement even before you got started.”
“That too,” McGarvey said. “But it still points to an insider.”
Haaris and his wife had a nice two-story Colonial just west of Massachusetts Avenue and within a few blocks of the Finnish and Dominican Republic embassies. She drove him home from the hospital, chatting all the way about how she hoped that he would feel better real soon. She was hoping they could fly out to see her parents in Des Moines and maybe even take them for a surprise vacation to Hawaii.
At home he took a quick shower and changed into a suit and tie, Deb dogging his every step, even sitting on the toilet seat while he dried off.
“My God, they beat you terrible,” she said. His chest was black and blue and his face was still puffed up. “We help them and how do they repay us?”
“It’s okay,” Haaris told her, and he had a little twinge of sorrow for her. She would be lost when he was dead, and he felt as if he almost cared.
“No, it’s not. And now you’re going back to work.”