“Oh, wow,” Otto said, hopping from foot to foot again. But then he stopped, and a serious expression came over his face. “We’ll get them, Mrs. M., the people who did this to Elizabeth. I promise you with everything in my soul, we’ll get them.”
Kathleen looked into his eyes for a long moment. “I know,” she said softly. “But Twinkies? Ugh.”
TEN
Elizabeth was released from the hospital at noon on Monday, a full day earlier than the doctors had forecast because she was healing quickly. McGarvey, after a twelve-hour sleep, was hung up with meetings at Langley so that he could not be there, but Paul Isaacson from the Farm had assured him that he was taking over, and it would take a regiment of marines to break through the security he was planning not only for the move but out at the safe house. Kathleen called around two to assure him that they were safe and sound and starting to settle in already. But McGarvey could hear the concern in his ex-wife’s voice, and it did nothing to dispel his gloomy mood, so that he raced through his final meeting with Murphy over Watchful Thunder and was able to break away by three-thirty and head north on the Parkway, the weather glorious for the fourth day in a row.
The situation in the Sea of Japan would resolve itself either militarily or politically, and there wasn’t much the CIA could do about that except to continue feeding the President accurate intelligence. Rencke was settled in at the CIA’s Bowling Green records repository, and there wasn’t much McGarvey could do to help him either. He would come up with something if it was there. And Adkins was running the DO with a steady hand, which for the moment had no need of McGarvey’s input.
Traffic was light on the interstate — most of it out-of-state plates — when he crossed the Potomac and headed north the final couple of miles. This entire area along the river was federal park land right in the middle of dozens of important Civil War battle sites. The foliage was thick, and seemingly every hundred yards or so there were park entrances, scenic overlooks, historical markers or roadside rest areas with barbecue grills and picnic tables. Just before a curve on the secondary highway he turned right onto an unmarked gravel road that wound its way nearly a mile through a forest dense with undergrowth and marshy patches to a rambling Kentucky horse country house. Three years after the Aldrich Ames case had broken, another mole had been discovered. This one never hit the media because he’d not sold out to the Russians, he’d merely ripped the Agency off for nearly four million dollars. This house and the one hundred acres it sat on had been his, and now it belonged to the CIA. Since there’d been no publicity on the case, and since the thief had worked alone, the Cropley house was unknown and perfectly safe.
The road emerged from the forest to paddocks bordered by white fences, the horse barn and riding arena to the south and the house and five-car garage across a broad lawn, in the center of which was a circular manmade pond complete with a fountain that was lit at night.
There were no cars in sight, nor could he see any activity anywhere, as if the place were deserted, and as he approached the house all sorts of dark visions ran through his head. He parked his Nissan in front and got out. The afternoon was utterly silent. He thought he spotted a movement at the edge of the woods a hundred yards away, and then he caught another movement out of the corner of his eye and he reached for his gun as he turned. One of the instructors from the Farm had come around the corner of the house. He said something into a lapel mike.
“Good afternoon, Mr. McGarvey,” he said, and McGarvey allowed himself to relax.
“I didn’t spot anybody on the way up.”
“No, sir,” the young man said, smiling slightly. “We have a good perimeter.”
Something wasn’t adding up. McGarvey frowned. “How many people do we have out here?”
“Twelve, sir. Of course that’s not counting Mr. Isaacson, Todd Van Buren and the two Frenchmen.”
“Are you expecting trouble?”
The instructor shrugged. “That’s unknown at this point. But we’re ready for it.”
McGarvey glanced again at the woods, but there was nothing to be seen. “Do you want my car in the garage?”
“I’ll take care of it, sir. Mr. Isaacson and the others are waiting for you inside.”
McGarvey got the laptop computer for Liz and went into the house. This place was supposed to be a safe haven where Katy and Liz could hide out. But Isaacson, who never overdid anything, had turned it into a fortress. He found the Camp Perry commandant with two of his people plus the two DGSE officers that Colonel de Galan had sent over in the formal dining room, which had been turned into a command center. Detailed topographic maps were spread out on the table. A powerful shortwave radio and three laptop computers were set up on the buffet and a side table.
“Here he is,” Isaacson said looking up. “Did you spot my people in the woods?”
“Not until I got to the house.”
“Good.” Isaacson introduced the others. Jeff Stromquist and Pat Dyer from the Office of Security, and the two French intelligence officers, Albert Level and Louis Maurois, who were built like Sherman tanks. No one seemed happy.
“What’s going on, Paul?” McGarvey asked. “Why all the muscle?”
“You’re not going to like this,” Isaacson said. He went over to one of the computers and brought up the FBI’s Website. “This is supposed to be secure. But take a look.” He brought up the FBI–CIA liaison page, which detailed not only the location of the Cropley safe house but its current occupants and the reasons they had been brought here.
“When did this show up?” McGarvey demanded, the vise clamped on his heart again.
“We didn’t see it until we got out here, so I brought in some more people. We just finished deploying them.”
“Where are Katy and Liz?”
“In the sitting room upstairs with Todd,” Isaacson said. “And I know what you’re going to say. You want to get them out of here. It was my first thought, but that would be exactly the wrong thing to do. Rudolph is tearing the Bureau apart to find out where the leak came from, but in the meantime there’s no guarantee we wouldn’t run into the same problem at the new place.” Isaacson’s expression softened. “They’re safe here, Kirk.”
“They could have got to them at the hospital,” Level suggested.
“They didn’t have time to plan a new operation,” McGarvey countered.
“But if they are coming, m’sieur, then this is a good place to meet them.” The Frenchman shrugged. “If that’s what you want.”
“It’s my family we’re talking about putting into jeopardy.”
“Before Jacqueline changed her last name she was a Level. She was my sister.”
McGarvey looked at him, but he could detect no anger or resentment, only grim determination. “I’m sorry. She told me that she had a family, but she never mentioned a brother.”
“She would have, eventually. She wanted me to come over to meet you.”
“I was sending her home.”
“Oui,” Level said tightly. “Colonel de Galan told me. The timing was bad.” He held McGarvey off. “That is behind us now. Let’s catch the bastards who did this thing. Is it the Russians?”
“I don’t think so.”
Level shrugged. “Too bad. It would have made things simpler.”
“This attack had nothing to do with Jacqueline?” Maurois asked. “She was merely in the wrong place?”
“That’s right,” McGarvey said.
“Then she was an innocent bystander, which makes it all the more important for us to punish the people behind this act.”