It had to be the weather. And for him it had to be that he had no real idea why he had accepted the President’s appointment. Time to step down. He’d done his bit. He’d fought the wars, though very often he had to wonder if what he had accomplished had really mattered at all, or if his career had been nothing but a wasted effort. And here he was now at the helm. It was a job he’d never wanted. Yet almost every DCI whom he’d served under had been in his estimation primarily a politician. Not a career intelligence officer, like in Britain. The CIA was falling apart. Had been for years. The Agency had become nothing more than a glorified extension of the White House; DCIs told the administration nothing more than it wanted to hear, when it wanted to hear it. Time for the truth. Trouble was that McGarvey didn’t know if he was up to the job.
SEVEN
SCOUT’S HONOR… THE WORDS WERE COMING BACK TO HAUNT HER.
He let himself in with his key, and his spirits lifted. It was good to be home, another Monday behind him. He entered the alarm code on the touch pad put his briefcase on the hall table, hung his coat in the closet and went back to the kitchen. Kathleen was putting a pan in the oven, and something on the stove smelled wonderful. “Hi, Katy, how was your day?” She gave a sudden start and turned around. She was dressed in a sweatshirt and blue jeans, and wore a pair of his white socks. On her the clothes looked like something out of a fashion magazine. “You startled me.” She looked like she had been pulled back from a mill on miles away against her will, and she resented it. But then she shook her head ruefully. “Sorry, darling. I guess I was daydreaming.” “I know the feeling.” He went around the counter and gave her a kiss. “Do I get to see what’s cooking?”
“Don’t push your luck, I don’t do this for just anybody.” She gave him a stern look, but she couldn’t hold it. She smiled. “Chili, corn bread and a salad. Down-home.” “Sounds good,” McGarvey said. “So, how was your day?” “Busy. How about you?” “It was definitely a Monday.” “Go change. I’ll make you a drink.” “You’ve got a deal,” he said, suddenly weary. He went upstairs, changed into a flannel shirt, jeans and moccasins. His eyes were bloodshot from the pool water, and his muscles were sore. Each year it seemed to get a little bit tougher to come back from a strong workout. He stopped and looked out the window. The wind had risen, and the snow had a definite slant. Bad night to be out. He shivered, for some reason thinking about bad nights like this one, and some a lot worse, when he’d been out; stalking his prey someone unexpected, some monster coming out of the blizzard and darkness. What other monsters were lurking out there now, coming toward them? He couldn’t shake the feeling of foreboding, of menace that had been hanging over him like a dark cloud for the past several days. Time to get out, the thought once again flashed across his mind. Go. Run. Run. Run. Find a hole and jump in like he had done before. For the sake of Katy and Liz. Or for self-preservation?
He’d never had the guts to ask himself that question. Maybe it was time to start. Self-doubt settled heavy on his shoulders, pushing him down; a nearly impossible burden to bear. He walked out of the bedroom and went downstairs, pushing those thoughts to the back of his mind, grasping for a lightness that he didn’t feel because he owed it to his wife to try at least as hard as she was trying. She had poured him a cognac neat, and she was laying out the place settings at the counter.
“I thought we’d eat in here. That okay with you?” She had turned on the gas logs in the French fireplace that separated the kitchen from the family room. McGarvey nodded. “How was your day, Katy?” She shrugged. “Okay, I guess. Nothing unusual.” “You look a little frazzled.” She was on the other side of the counter, and she cocked her head as if she was listening for something. “The confirmation hearings start tomorrow, don’t they?” “Is that what’s getting to you?”
“I saw the Post this morning. They think that you’re going to have a bad time of it. Are they going to stop you?”
He was relieved that that’s all that was bothering her. They’d not talked very much about the Senate hearings except that their lives, hers included, would be under a microscope for a week or two. It was an inevitable part of the process. Worse than running for elected office because you couldn’t campaign. No one was supposed to want this job. If you did, you were automatically suspect. “They might. Would that bother you?” She thought about it. “What if you are confirmed as DCI, Kirk? How long will you keep the job?” “I don’t know. Maybe I won’t take it in the first place. Look, Katy, if ”
“I’m serious. Would you make a career of it like Roland did? Peggy told me that it almost killed him.” She was stressed out. “Now that we’ve come this far I want some time with you.” “I’ll call the President in the morning and tell him I’m out.” “No,” Kathleen replied sharply. “It’s not worth it, what it’s doing to you. I’ll stick it out until they get someone else.” She shook her head as he was talking. “That’s not what I meant. I simply want to know how long you’ll stay.” McGarvey didn’t know what to say. He felt that whatever answer he gave her would be the wrong one. “Three or four years,” he finally said. “I owe them that much.” Kathleen stared wide-eyed at him for a moment or two, then nodded. “I can deal with that,” she said, simply. “I haven’t been confirmed yet.” “You will be,” she said, her mood a lot lighter now.
She laughed. “They’d be fools to let you go. You’re what the Agency needs right now, and everybody knows it.” “Is that the scuttlebutt in town?” McGarvey asked. Katy had always been well connected in Washington. She knew people, heard things, noticed things. “What an ugly word,” she said, amused. “But that’s the consensus.” She turned and got the plates and bowls from the cabinet. “I’m not going to watch on television. Hammond is a pompous ass, and he’ll try to score points off you.” She got the silverware and napkins. “But if you push back, he’ll quit. He’s all bluster.” “That’s about what Carleton said,”
McGarvey replied. “How long before dinner?” “Twenty minutes.”
“Right, I have to make a phone call.” McGarvey took his drink, got his briefcase from the hall table and went into his study. The room was a mess. His desk and chair had been moved to the middle and covered with plastic, but the couch and everything else had been moved out somewhere. Sections of two walls had been stripped to the bare studs beneath the drywall, wires dangled loosely from a hole in the center of the ceiling, plaster dust and sawdust covered every surface, and the blinds had been removed from the big window. The carpenters had left their toolboxes and a portable radio in a corner. He uncovered his desk, found the telephone and called the night duty officer in the Directorate of Operations on the encrypted line. He had thought about this all the way home after seeing the logo on Otto’s computer.
“Four-seven-eight-seven, Newby.” “This is McGarvey. Ho wYe things shaping up?” It was after midnight, Greenwich Mean Time and the twenty-four-hour summaries were starting to arrive at Langley from the foreign stations and posts. “Good evening, Mr. McGarvey,” Jay Newby said. He was one of the old reliable hands who’d cut his teeth in Eastern Europe during the Cold War years. At one time he had been a hell-raiser. But he was on his third marriage now and he had become a stay-at-home, though he didn’t mind night duty. “Nothing significant.”