“See you in the morning, then,” he said. He went down to the driveway, got in his Explorer and drove off. McGarvey stood at the open door for a bit, feeling the bite of the cold wind and smelling the snow and the smoke whipping around from a half-dozen fireplace chimneys in the neighborhood. When it snowed, city kids went out to play, but ranchers’ sons, like he had been, went out to work. Snow meant feeding and watering animals. Blizzards meant staying out until lost cattle were rounded up before they froze to death. When he went back inside he locked the door and reset the alarm. He glanced up to the head of the stairs. Kathleen stood there hugging her arms to her chest. Tears streamed down her cheeks. His stomach did a flop, and he hurried upstairs to her. “What’s wrong?” “She told me to mind my own business.” McGarvey took her into his arms, She was shivering and crying, and she clutched the material of his shirt as if she were trying to rip it off his body. “You can’t press her. Remember how she was the last time?” “But I’m her mother, I just want to help.” “I know, but she wants to do this herself. She’s trying to prove that she’s all grown-up now, and not as worried about everything like she was last year.” Kathleen looked into his eyes to make sure that he wasn’t patronizing her. “When she gets herself figured out she’ll come back to you for help. Especially when she realizes that Todd and I are hopeless.” Kathleen smiled hesitantly. “It’s just me,” she said. “I think that I’m more frightened for the baby than she is.”
“So am I,” McGarvey admitted. “But it’s their turn, their baby. All we can do is stand by if they need us.” She lowered her eyes. “It hurts.” “It shouldn’t.” “But it does,” she said. McGarvey held her close again. “I’ll talk to her,” he promised. After a moment Kathleen shook her head. “You’re right, Kirk,” she said. “Elizabeth needs her space. Let her be for the moment.” “You sure?” “Yeah,” Kathleen said, and she started to cry again, but this time without any urgency or tension merely a safety valve for her emotions. “Are you okay?” he asked after a bit. “Just a little tired. It was a tough day. Maybe I’ll take a bath.” “I’m done for the night, too. How about a cup of tea or a glass of wine?” “Some wine.” She brushed her fingers across his lips. “I do so love you.” McGarvey smiled. “I’m glad.” She turned and went down the hall to their bedroom, McGarvey went downstairs, rechecked the alarm setting and the front door, then shut off the lights in his study after locking up the DI reports. He stood in the dark for a few minutes listening again, as he had been doing for the past several days, for something the sounds of the house, the sounds of the wind, the sounds of his own heart, the sounds that the gavel would make tomorrow. “Fuck it,” he said. He went back to the kitchen, where he checked the patio doors. He opened a bottle of pi not grig io from the cooler, got a couple of glasses and went upstairs.
The big tub on a raised step was only one-third full and the water was still running, but Kathleen had already disrobed and gotten in. She was lying back, her eyes closed, a look of contentment on her finely defined oval face. McGarvey sat down on the toilet lid, careful not to clink the glasses or make any noise to disturb her, but she opened her eyes and smiled at him. “If you only knew how good this feels,” she murmured luxuriously. He poured her a glass of wine and set it on the broad, flat edge of the tub. “I’m going to take a shower,” he said, starting to get up. “Don’t go.” “Don’t you want some peace and quiet?” “I had twenty years of that; now I want you.” She ran a hand across the top of her chest, letting droplets of water run down between her breasts. “Even if we were in the same room for the next twenty, it wouldn’t make up for what we lost.” She shook her head thinking back.
“Such a stupid waste, actually. My fault.” “Our fault,” McGarvey corrected. “I had a habit of running away, remember?” “At least you had a reason,” she flared mildly. “I was just… arrogant. Young, dumb, ambitious. I wanted to be a perfect mother, I really did. I loved Elizabeth with everything in my soul, but I wanted my freedom, too.” She absently touched the base of her neck, her collarbones and shoulders. “I tried Valium, because I felt guilty, but it didn’t work for me. Made me sick at my stomach.” She laughed. “The doctor said that I was tense.” “It wasn’t much better for anyone else. It’s time to stop beating yourself up. You were hiding out in the open, and I was hiding underground. You had the tougher assignment.” “Everybody hated the CIA. My friends used to tell me that kicking you out was the best decision that I’d ever made. But they were jerks. The kind of people you and I always hated. I would look at our daughter and wonder why they weren’t seeing what I was seeing; a perfect little girl who was half you.” She closed her eyes and laid the cool wineglass against her forehead. “I wanted to tell them, but I didn’t.” “We spent a lot of time being mad at each other,” McGarvey said sadly. “We both made some dumb decisions.” “When you came back to Washington out of the clear blue sky I thought that you’d come for me. When I found out that the CIA had hired you to dig out Darby and his crowd, I was mad at you all over again.” She was looking inward, regret all over her face. “I threatened to sue you for money, I flaunted myself all over Washington and New York, and I even got word to you that I was thinking about getting married, but nothing worked. Then the CIA comes to see you in Switzerland to offer you a job, and you come running. It wasn’t fair.”
McGarvey didn’t know what to say. It was a time for going back, and the memories were just as painful for him as they were for her. But maybe necessary, he thought. She opened her eyes wide to look at him.
“Do you know the worst part?” she asked. “When I saw you walking down the street it was like someone had driven a stake into my heart. I made a mistake, pushing you away, and here you were back in Georgetown even more inaccessible to me than ever. I had become the kind of person we hated; I had become one of my friends, a pretentious bore.”
“But here we are, Katy,” he said softly. She smiled, some of the trouble melting from her face. “It’s going to be okay, isn’t it, Kirk?” “Guaranteed.”
TUESDAY
NINE
IF KIRK MCGARVEY WERE CONFIRMED AS DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE HE WOULD BE ASSASSINATED.
Nikolayev walked along the country road into town as the sun reached over the distant line of poplars marking the edge of the wheat field He encountered no one this morning. Loneliness, he decided, was a subject on which he could write a very long book. Now there wasn’t even a routine to look forward to as he grew older. He could not return to Moscow, nor would he be able to remain here much longer. Sunday’s edition of the New York Times, Washington Post and Le Monde, carried the same story. Each newspaper had given the facts its own spin: the liberal press was against McGarvey’s appointment; the conservative was for it; and the French press was confused but angry. It was always anger that seemed to fuel the public debate; especially the international dialogue. Nikolayev could have refused to read the newspapers. Not listen to the radio, or watch television, especially not CNN. But the facts would have been there all the same, and he would know it. Like the feral cat crouched in front of the rabbit; the predator did not need to read a book to smell the fear. The ability to sense the real world was built in, and perfected by years of experience. Nikolayev heard the church bell tolling the hour in town.
Turn away. Now, before it’s too late. In the night he felt them at his back. Coming for him. There would be no arrest for him, though; no cell at Lefortovo, no torture, no drugs, no sewing his eyelids open, rubber hoses up his anus, glass rods shattered inside his penis. They were coming with Russian insurance his nine ounces a nine-millimeter bullet to the base of his skull. “Comrade Nikolayev?” He stopped and turned, but no one was there. Only the farm fields, the trees, the white clouds in the blue sky, the empty road and the church bell. The voice had been Baranov’s. He recognized it. But the general was long dead. Killed by Kirk McGarvey outside East Berlin. He walked the rest of the way into town where he stopped first at the boulangerie for his baguette and his morning raisin buns, then around the corner in the square to the little shop selling tobacco, chewing gum, stamps, magazines and newspapers. The old woman had his three newspapers waiting for him. “Bonjour, monsieur” she said pleasantly. “Ca va?”