“Who else is coming?” Todd asked. He knew that something was going down, but not exactly what.
“Just Otto for now,” McGarvey told him. The phone rang in the hall.
“That’s him.” McGarvey went to answer it. “Who is it?” he asked softly. “Otto Rencke,” Grassinger replied. “Okay, keep your eyes open. I don’t know who else might show up, or how long it might take, but just keep your eyes open.” “Will do, sir,” Grassinger said.
“Watch yourself down there. Give a whistle, and we’ll come running.”
“There’s been no movement behind the house yet?” McGarvey asked.
“Nothing. Not even a deer or a rabbit.” McGarvey put the phone down on the hall table and stood stock-still for a long moment. He could hear the murmur of low conversation in the living room, but he couldn’t make out what was being said. Headlights flashed in the woods, and McGarvey went to the door as Otto came down the hill in an Agency Ford Bronco. He parked behind the line of cars in the driveway. He jumped out and rushed up the walk, slipping and sliding in the snow. His frizzy hair flew in every direction, his coat was unbuttoned, his sweatshirt was dirty and his jeans hung loosely on his hips. In the glare of the porch light his face was sallow. “Oh, wow, Mac, am I late?” he gushed, scuttling across the covered porch. “You’re just in time,” McGarvey told him. “I’m glad to see you.” He gave Otto a warm embrace. “Did you bring a gun with you tonight?” he whispered into Otto’s ear. “I don’t have a gun, Mac. Honest injun.” He swallowed hard. “I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I had it. Probably shoot myself in the foot or something, ya know?” “Okay,” McGarvey said, and he brought Otto into the house, where they hung his coat in the closet and joined the others in the living room. Otto stopped in his tracks. “Oh, wow,” he murmured. He hopped from one foot to the other a couple of times, looking at each of them, his mouth opening and closing as if he were a fish out of water. These people were on his list; all of them except for Runkov, the one unknown, and the eighth name, which he wouldn’t tell anybody. And Yemm, of course, who was dead. McGarvey watched the play of emotions on Otto’s face, trying to judge what it was his old friend was thinking. But with Otto that was almost always impossible. Sometimes Otto admitted he didn’t know what he was thinking. No one knew what to say or do. McGarvey motioned for Otto to have a seat in front of the fireplace, but no one else moved.
They were waiting, like lovers just before the climax: breathless, unfocused, thinking only of themselves at this exact moment, wondering how it was they were here, and exactly what would happen next. McGarvey walked over to the sideboard. He poured a small brandy and drank it. These were friends.
Longtime friends, some of them. Loves. Acquaintances. But McGarvey had no questions about how he had gotten here. He’d built this prison for himself brick by painful brick over a twenty-five-year career with the CIA. Overzealousness. Not staying within the strict letter of the law. Taking matters into his own hands. Straying from the fold.
Running with the wolves in the night; or rather not running with the wolves. His entire career he had been guilty of the sin of individualism. Working under his own charter. Operating by his own set of rules. His own personal code of honor, if an assassin could be said to have such a code. He’d been called an anachronism, finally, by a deputy director of Operations in the Company a few years ago. The West had won the Cold War. The bad guys had all packed up and gone home. McGarvey’s brand of justice was no longer required. Thanks, but now it’s time for you to go. But that was before Osama bin Laden and his ilk. Besides that he could not go. Because he’d never found the answers to the questions that were at the core of his existence. He had a sense of honor, but it never seemed to square with the real world. He thought he knew what a hero was, but the older he got the less certain he became of that. Duty. Responsibility. Passion. The nineteen men who died striking the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and those heading for the Capitol Building who crashed in a field in Pennsylvania all felt that they had duties. They certainly had passion. And they accepted a warped sense of honor and responsibility. For a time they’d even been heroes to some people; to a lot of people actually. And not just Afghanis or Islamic fundamentalists, but some Americans and French and Germans. People who believed that the U.S. was evil and needed to be struck down. Did he understand any of that yet? McGarvey didn’t think he did. In fact he felt that he had never been further away from understanding anything than he was at this moment. He turned to face them. “Somebody is trying to kill me. And one of you may know who it is.” “It could be somebody else,” Otto cried. “Honest to God, I’ve tried to find out.
I’ve done everything I could.” He lowered his head. “Honest injun, kimo sabe. Honest, honest.” He began to cry, his shoulders shaking.
But no one reached out to him.
She makes us blindly play her terrible game, and we never see beneath the cards. Fate. Luck. Chance. Destiny. Voltaire had believed in all of that, but McGarvey wasn’t sure that he did.
In the SUV beside the highway, Grassinger’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel. If all the principals were already in the house, and the only one they were waiting for now was the assassin’s control officer, then didn’t it make sense to reactivate the defenses along the driveway? He had a mind to call McGarvey and suggest just that. But the director would be having a busy time of it right now, sorting out the who’s whos. He had wanted to station a couple of Blatnik’s people in the house, or at the very least outside nearby, but McGarvey had been very specific on that point. It was dead cold in the car with the engine off. He glanced at Nikolayev, who was hunched down in his overcoat and appeared to be dozing. Not as cold as Moscow gets. Or Siberia. “There’s a car coming your way,” Tony Blatnik radioed.
“Stand by.” Grassinger spoke into his lapel micHe reached over and nudged the Russian, whose eyes opened. “Someone’s coming.” Nikolayev sat up and brought the binoculars to his eyes as there was a flash of headlights up on the highway. Grassinger entered all but the last number of McGarvey’s cell phone. The headlights briefly illuminated the trees as the car slowed and turned down the driveway. It was an RAV4 sport utility vehicle. Grassinger recognized it immediately. “A woman,” Nikolayev said. Grassinger raised his binoculars to make sure, although he knew who it was. Louise Horn’s profile showed up clearly for a moment until her car disappeared into the woods. Of all the suspects down at the house, Otto Rencke, in Grassinger’s mind, was the worst-case scenario. “It’s Louise Horn. Otto Rencke’s friend,”
Grassinger said. He didn’t know how McGarvey was going to take the news. He hit the last number of McGarvey’s cell phone, then started his car and eased it out of the ditch and up toward the highway.
McGarvey’s phone rang once, and then a recorded voice came on. “The number you are trying to reach is busy. If you wish to leave a message please touch star and wait for the tone.”
Grassinger broke the connection and tossed the phone aside. “Tony, we have a problem,” he said into his lapel mic. “We’re moving now,”
Blatnik’s voice came back. “Who is it?” “Rencke.” Two Agency SUVs with Blatnik and three of his people made it to the driveway by the time Grassinger and Nikolayev reached the paved surface. “Tell them to be careful,” Nikolayev cautioned. “Rencke could have contingencies.”
Grassinger immediately understood what the Russian meant. If it was Rencke, he might suspect that someone was up here. Once Louise Horn was safely down the driveway he might switch the defensive measures back on. There were stop sticks out to one hundred yards from the clearing above the house. Inside that line were contact mines that would explode if a vehicle passed over their pressure pads.