According to Otto she had set herself up as her father’s biographer.
Looking down his track would affect her. But he didn’t know if he could help her come to terms with what she was discovering, because he himself hadn’t fully come to terms with his own past.
Rencke was already gone, so McGarvey phoned the apartment and got a worried Louise Horn. “I made an appointment for Otto to see Dr.
Stenzel in Medical Services tomorrow at ten. Make sure he’s there, would you?” “I’m worried about him, Mr. Director.” “Yeah, so am I.”
After he hung up he stared out the windows for a long time. The entire world around him was going crazy. But thinking like that was in itself crazy. What price? he asked himself. What price?
THURSDAY
THIRTEEN
THEY WERE COMING FOR HIM NOW. BACK FROM THE GRAVE. FROM A PAST THAT HE COULD NOT CHANGE.
They arrived at the committee hearing room a couple of minutes before 10:00 A.M. McGarvey hadn’t slept well last night, and he looked forward to being here with a sense of despair, of uselessness, of wasted effort. The same media crowd waited on the steps and in the broad marble corridor, but civilian guards at the chamber doors barred their entry. Only those with the proper passes were allowed inside. This morning’s session was to be held in camera. Dark secrets were to be revealed, senators exercising their oversight duties. All patriotic and necessary. But it was a horrible joke as far as McGarvey was concerned. DCIs had been testifying before Congress in secret sessions since before Colby, and reading their exact words the very next morning in the Washington Post or New Tork Times. There were more people in attendance than McGarvey had expected He didn’t know most of them, but the senators had the right to invite anybody they chose. A Senate page brought over a manila envelope to Carleton Paterson. “Senator Clawson sends this to you with his compliments, sir,” the young girl said. The envelope contained lists of everyone who’d attended the hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday, as well as a list of those expected to be here this morning. Dmitri Runkov, the Russian intelligence service Washington rezidenrt name wasn’t on either of the first two days’ lists. Neither were any Russian embassy representatives. Their absence struck McGarvey as ominous. Something was happening.
Something just beyond his grasp. Otto knew about it and was lying.
The Russians not being here meant something. “Problem?” Paterson asked. “I don’t know. Maybe. But it’s nothing urgent.” “Wouldn’t do me any good to press you, I suppose,” Paterson said. He handed another list to McGarvey. This one contained a couple of lines on each of ten supersensitive Track III operations that McGarvey had been involved with during his twenty-five-plus-year career with the CIA. Track I operations were intelligence-gathering missions. Track II, which were more sensitive, involved some type of covert action. Track III actions, the most secret and most sensitive, involved the use of deadly force. In each of the cases on McGarvey’s list there had been a death.
In some cases many deaths. The list brought back a lot of very bad memories for Mac. Too late to erase them now, he thought. Too late to go back and undo what had already been done. We can only hope to change the future, and even that hope is a slim possibility. “Those are the problem areas we discussed,” Paterson explained. “Whatever you do, don’t volunteer information. But if Hammond or Madden has this same list, or even a part of it, we’re in a fair bit of trouble.”
Former CIA director Bill Colby called such operations the CIA’s family jewels. They had to be protected at all costs. McGarvey pulled himself out of his funk, and smiled. “Not too late to pull out, Counselor.”
Paterson shook his head. “I wouldn’t miss this brouhaha for all the world, Mr. Director.” The clerk came in, called the chamber to order and the senators, led by Hammond, filed in and took their places. “I remind Mr. McGarvey that he is still under oath as far as concerns these proceedings,” Senator Hammond said. He looked as if he hadn’t slept well last night either. It was well-known that the senator was a big drinker. Yesterday’s contentious session could not have done much for his stress level. “Yes, Senator, I understand,” McGarvey said, thinking suddenly about Katy. At least she would be spared most of the ugly details today. Paterson sat forward. “Do we have this committee’s assurances that the members of the audience have the proper clearances and have been briefed on the necessary security procedures?”
“That goes without saying,” Senator Hammond sputtered. “Excuse me, Senator, but I’d like to ask a question before we get started this morning,” New York senator Gerald Pilcher said. Hammond motioned for him to go ahead. “Mr. McGarvey, on Tuesday you were asked if you wanted this appointment, and you told us no, that you did not. But that you would accept the job because President Haynes asked you to.”
“That’s correct, Senator.” “Then let me ask you a related question.
Why did you join the CIA in the first place: What was it, twenty-six, twenty-seven years ago? And two follow-up questions: Who recruited you and how was it done?” McGarvey went back. He’d been young, cocky, brash, certainly arrogant. He was doing something that counted, something that his father and mother could be proud of. He caught Brenda Madden’s eye. She was sitting back in her tall leather chair, fingers to her lips, a scowl on her face, her eyes narrowed. She looked like an animal ready to pounce. “The CIA recruiters were on campus in my senior year. I talked to them. But Vietnam was chewing up our people, and I thought that I could do some good in the military rather than dodging the draft. By the time I finished OCS and Intelligence Officers School it was the spring of 1972, and I was sent to Saigon. I did my two tours, came back to the States and resigned my commission in June of 1974.” “Our troops were being brought home by then,” Senator Pilcher said. “That’s correct, Senator. The drawdown began in 1973.” McGarvey was back in full force; all of his memories intact and vivid. “I’d been given a telephone number by the CIA recruiters, so I called it, and the next morning I met with Lawrence Danielle who was the deputy director of Operations. He knew my parents, or knew of them, and he told me that I could do just as important a job, maybe even more important than I had in the air force or than my parents were doing down at Los Alamos. I thought about it and agreed.”
“How long did you think about it?” Brenda Madden mumbled. But everyone heard her. “About five seconds, Senator. I believed in my country just as strongly then as I do now.” “What happened next?”
Pilcher asked. “I went through the CIA’s training program and worked on the Vietnam desk at headquarters until late 1975, when I was assigned back in-country.” Pilcher was startled. “Saigon had already fallen by then, hadn’t it?” “Yes, it had. But besides our POWs who were being repatriated, there were Vietnamese nationals who had worked for us who were marked for arrest and execution. I was sent in to help find them and then get them into Laos and eventually to Thailand.”