“Nobody knows what’s going on out there or why. All we can do for now is give the White House as much information as we can get. No speculation or guesswork.”
“Lindsay will appreciate that,” Murphy said. “Did you see his news conference?”
“I was too busy. What’d he say?”
“He called Kimch’aek an accident and said that we were going to cooperate with the North Korean government to find out what happened. About what we expected.”
“Did the media buy it?”
“There were a couple of tough questions, but since there were no Americans on the ground, Lindsay downplayed it as much as possible. The winds out there are blowing the radioactive dust inland over North Korea and into the Gobi Desert, so the impact to human lives will be minimal.”
“What he did was buy us some time,” Danielle said, “which is exactly what we need.
“It’s coming down to a standoff between Japanese and Chinese forces with us in the middle, which makes it political. Secretary Carter is on his way over to Tokyo to see if he can talk some sense into them, and as long as the lines of communications remain open out there, the situation might stabilize.”
“Unless it’s given a nudge,” Murphy said shrewdly.
McGarvey laid a file on the general’s desk. “Joseph Lee, a friend of Lindsay’s. He’s in Taiwan now, so I’ve issued a worldwide bulletin to find out everything we can about him. And I’ve activated all of our in-place networks in Japan, China, Taiwan and North and South Korea.”
“A lot of resources,” Danielle observed.
“One of the terrorists has been identified. He was Japanese, and until a couple of years ago worked for Lee in Hong Kong.”
“Do you think Lee may try to provide the nudge?” Murphy asked.
“I’m going to look for the connections,” McGarvey said. “Coming after me was just too coincidental. Could be something out of my past.”
“What’s your best guess, Mac?” Danielle asked. “What’s your gut telling you?”
McGarvey took a moment to answer. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s the timing that has me wondering. If there’s a connection between Lee and something in my past, why did he wait until I was put up for DDO to act on it? Why right now in the middle of some Japanese operation against North Korea? If there’s a connection, I don’t see it yet.” He looked at the general. “But if it’s there, I’ll find it.”
“Not much time to do it in,” Murphy said.
“In the meantime we have to get you ready for your confirmation hearings,” Paterson broke in.
“Later,” McGarvey said, barely looking at the general counsel.
Paterson started to object, but Murphy held him off. “All right, it’s your call, but since this involves Joseph Lee, with his ties to the White House, I don’t want to be kept in the dark. You have a habit of stepping on toes, and this time the toes are big ones, so watch your step.”
“General, that’s what I intend doing.”
With the DDO off and running for the moment under Dick Adkins’s capable direction, McGarvey began his search through his past looking for connections between him, Joseph Lee and the recent events in the Sea of Japan. Less than one-tenth of one percent of the CIA’s vast repository of files, stored in the vast underground caverns of an abandoned salt mine sixty miles outside of Washington, was accessible by computer. Indexes and précis of files, however, along with the current and most recent case histories, were kept in the Directorate of Intelligence’s Central Reference Service in a subbasement at Langley. Because of his position he was given immediate and unlimited access to the system. By four-thirty he was set up in a small cubicle furnished with a long table, a blackboard and a computer terminal where he started with the files on the FBI’s deep background investigation of him when he was first issued a secret clearance in the air force, through his top secret and cryptographic access clearances when he was hired by the Company and trained as a black operations field officer. All he was coming up with, however, were references to paper files with addresses at the Fort A.P. Hill Military Reservation near Bowling Green. A few minutes after seven his phone rang. It was Otto Rencke.
“Hi ya, Mac, burning the midnight oil?”
“How the hell did you find me?”
“Dumb question,” Rencke said laughing. “You’re leaving a computer track a mile wide.” His voice was suddenly serious. “How’s Elizabeth? I just found out.”
“She’ll be okay, but she was banged up pretty badly.”
“You’re not shitting an old shitter, are you?”
“It was close, but she’ll recover. Anyway, where are you?”
“I’m on the Parkway about two miles out. Can I come in?”
“I’ll leave word at the gate, and I’ll meet you at the main entrance.”
“This is another big one, isn’t it, Mac?” Rencke said. “I mean Murphy finally pulled his head out and made you DDO, and just in time if what I’m reading between the lines isn’t a bunch of Beltway bullshit.”
“This is a big one, and I need you, Otto.”
“Oh, boy, I knew it!” Rencke said excitedly and the connection was broken.
McGarvey phoned the front gate, then took the elevator up to the ground floor and walked out to the main entry hall, quiet at this hour even though most of the building was busy.
He’d known Rencke for a long time, and over the years they’d developed a close, almost familial bond. Otto had been trained as a Jesuit priest and professor of computer science and mathematics, but he’d been kicked out of the church when he’d been caught having sex with the dean’s female secretary. He enlisted in the army, but had been kicked out six months later for having sex with a young staff sergeant — a male. And a year later he’d shown up at the CIA, his record mysteriously blemish free.
But he was a genius, and nobody looked too hard at his past, or wanted to, because he got the job done. It was Otto who’d brought the Company into the computer age, updating its entire communications system and standardizing its spy satellite analytical section so that everyone’s satellites could cross talk and share information on real-time basis with everyone else’s. He’d also come up with an online system so that field officers on assignment could be fed updated material the instant it became available no matter where in the world they were located.
His past had finally caught up with him, though, in part because he was a maverick and men like Ryan were coming into power within the agency, so he’d been dumped. He’d moved to France a couple of years ago.
More than once he’d backstopped McGarvey, most recently in Russia where without him the operation would have been a total disaster. McGarvey and his daughter both would have been killed were it not for Otto. It was a debt of gratitude that would never be called, and could never be repaid.
McGarvey had arranged for an all-sections pass, and he picked it up at the counter just as Rencke came through the automatic doors. He hadn’t seen his friend in four months, but it could have been four hours ago. Nothing had changed. Rencke’s long, out-of-control fuzzy red hair still stuck out in all directions as if he’d never combed it, and he wore the same faded blue jeans, tattered MIT sweatshirt and unlaced high-top sneakers. He carried a satchel slung over his shoulder which he laid on the floor by the security arches before giving McGarvey a huge bear hug.
“Oh, boy, am I glad to see you. You can’t even imagine what a lonely bitch Rio is, especially this time of year.”
“I figured that’s where you went,” McGarvey said.
“It was getting squirrelly in France. The service wasn’t exactly in love with me.” Rencke was hopping from one foot to the other, which he did when he was happy or excited. “Once I was sure that you and yours were okey-dokey I lit out. Retreat’s the better part of valor and all that happy crappy.” His expression suddenly darkened. “Jackie didn’t make it, but you’re sure about Elizabeth? I mean she’s going to be okay, Mac? You weren’t just saying that to make me feel better? Honest injun?”