“They weren’t very happy, but there wasn’t much that they could do except go along with her.” “Okay, I’m heading for home now. Is there anything else I need to know? Anything that I can do to help?” “Get her out of town, Mr. Director,” Stenzel offered. “I don’t give a damn where you take her, just make sure that it’s someplace safe.” “First thing in the morning.” “About time. Let me know where you wind up, because I want to keep seeing her. I think that I might be able to get a handle on her problem if I have just a little more time. I’m almost there.” “I know the feeling,” McGarvey said for the second time in less than ten minutes. Yemm got McGarvey’s coat from the closet. He was agitated. “I just found out about it myself a few minutes ago,” he said. “Janis called me and said that they were headed back to the house.” “Who else is with her?” McGarvey asked, as they headed out of his office and down the corridor to the executive elevator. “Peggy Vaccaro is with them. They got one of the surveillance vans that Tony Parker and John Hernandez were using. They all went together.” “Did you call for backup?” “We’ll get to your house first,” Yemm said.
“And at this point there’s nothing wrong, boss. Mrs. M. checked herself out of the hospital, and she agreed to do what her security team told her to do.” “Where are they right now?” “When I talked to Tony they were just leaving the hospital parking lot. It’ll take them fifteen minutes to get to your house. It’ll take us thirty.”
Downstairs they got into the DCI’s limo. As soon as they cleared the building, McGarvey tried his home phone number. On the second ring it rolled over to his own cell phone. Katy wasn’t home yet. He lowered the bulletproof partition to the front seat. “There’s no answer at the house. Try the security detail.” Yemm had the car phone in his hand.
“They’re coming up on the Connecticut Avenue exit. Do you want me to call the MHP for backup? They might have a unit in the vicinity.” “Do you think it’s necessary?” “We’d have to give them an explanation,”
Yemm said. “Do you want to talk to your wife?” McGarvey looked out the window as they merged onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway. There was a lot of traffic tonight, slowed by a heavy, wind-whipped snow that was already piling into drifts. “No,” he said. “Just get me home as quickly as you can, Dick.
It’s a bad night.” “That it is,” Yemm replied. Who to trust? Who to trust? He kept coming back to the same conundrum: Who can a spy trust?
Who can he believe in? His circle of friends and close acquaintances, people he surrounded himself with, people who meant the most to him, was very small. And it was dwindling even more every day. Otto had gone off the deep end again. Yemm was acting strangely. Adkins was under extreme pressure. And even Todd wasn’t himself. Everybody had gone crazy all of a sudden. McGarvey sat back in his seat and unconsciously reached inside the coat for a cigarette, remembering that he had quit. Dr. Anatoli Nikolayev had apparently stirred up a hornet’s nest in Moscow six months ago. The SVR was looking for him, but either they weren’t looking very hard, or he was better than they were. Knowing Baranov and the people who worked for him in the old Department Viktor days, he had a pretty fair idea that it was Nikolayev leading the SVR investigators around in circles. This whole bizarre situation had a Baranov stench to it. But the general was dead. Long dead. McGarvey could feel the recoil of his pistol when he put a bullet in the Russian’s brain. But if it was Baranov after all, if it was some long-range scheme that he had placed on automatic before his death, there would have to be people around with strong ties to that past. Someone like poor Evita Perez and Darby Yarnell and that crowd.
All of them were dead, too. But there were undoubtedly others.
Sleepers, the Russians used to call them. Deep-penetration agents who worked in ordinary jobs in their host countries. Barbers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, even intelligence officers. People who lay low, sometimes for years, until one day they were called into action. People whose loyalty was assured because they were paid well, and because of the promise that when their missions fully developed they would hit the jackpot a big payoff. They crossed the river on 1-495 and a few miles later merged with 1-270, which formed the northern curve of the Beltway around Washington. McGarvey looked up. Yemm was speaking on the phone. He had sped up considerably despite the heavy traffic and the increasingly slippery road. Something was wrong. “What’s going on, Dick?”
“Parker’s not answering. Neither is Janis. I’m trying Peggy’s cell phone now.” Yemm’s replied were curt. McGarvey speed dialed his home number. Kathleen answered on the first ring. “Hello?” McGarvey forced himself to calm down, to keep an upbeat tone in his voice. “Hi, sweetheart. I’m on the way home. What’re the girls fixing for dinner?” “Don’t be mad, Kirk. I just couldn’t stay another night in that hospital. The place was driving me crazy.” “I’m glad you’re home. I missed you,” McGarvey assured her. “You must have just got there. Anyway let me talk to Peggy for just a minute, would you?”
“They’re still out talking to the guys in the van and the chase car,”
Kathleen said lightly. “What chase car’s that?” McGarvey asked. All the gravity suddenly leaked out of the limo. It felt as if the elevator cables had snapped. “It’s a Mercedes. Dark blue.” “Are you sure?” “I’m standing at the front window looking at it.” “Listen to me, Kathleen. I want you to lock the front door, then go upstairs to our bedroom. There’s a pistol in my nightstand. I’ve shown you how to operate the safety.” “Kirk?” Kathleen’s voice was small. “Do it right now, Katy.” “What’s wrong?” “Maybe nothing, but just in case there is, I want you to do that for me right now. Lock the door, then go upstairs and get the gun.” “All right, if you say so,” Kathleen said. McGarvey held his hand over the phone. “My wife’s alone in the house. She says that Janis and Peggy are talking to the guys in the van and in a chase car. Dark blue Mercedes.” “No chase car, boss,”
Yemm said grimly. “I’m alerting Maryland Highway Patrol and our people. Tell her to sit tight, we’ll be there in a flash.” “Okay, Kirk, the front door is locked,” Kathleen said. “Are the girls still out by the van?” “Just a minute,” she said. “Yes, they’re still there.” “Can you see inside the car? How many people there are?
Maybe just the driver?” “I can’t see a thing. I think the windows are tinted or something.”
“Go upstairs now and get the gun. I don’t want you to let anybody in the house. Nobody, do you have that?” “Nobody except for you, Kirk?”
she asked in a tiny voice. McGarvey wanted to reach through the phone and hold her. “Just me, Katy. I’m coming to you as fast as I can.”
“Please hurry, darling.” “Go upstairs, but stay on the phone with me,”
McGarvey said. They came to the Connecticut Avenue exit, and the limo’s rear started to drift out as Yemm took the ramp too fast. But he was an expert driver, and after the car fishtailed twice he had it back under control, blasting through an orange light and heading south, through traffic. “MHP has a unit about ten minutes out,” Yemm said.
“Are you upstairs yet, Katy?” McGarvey asked. He cradled the phone between his cheek and shoulder. “Yes.” McGarvey took out his pistol and checked to make sure that it was ready to fire, then laid it on his lap. “Get the gun.” “I’m getting it.” “I want you to switch the safety off,” McGarvey said, as Yemm raced through a red light. Several cars slid off the side of the street into parked cars. “It’s off.”