11
Georgetown is a lovely section of pretty streets, beautiful old wood-beam and brick homes, the university, and numerous parks. Dumbarton Oaks and Montrose Park that morning were deserted of all but a few tourists and the occasional nanny pushing a baby carriage. Lovers Lane, a pleasantly broad walkway, separated the two, opening at its south end onto R Street.
McGarvey had come directly from the Holiday Inn accross from the Naval Observatory, sure that no one had noticed his arrival in town. It had felt strange to be back in New York, but Washington seemed somehow even more distant for him. He felt as if he were looking through the wrong end of a telescope; it was all so familiar to him, yet everything was out of kilter. He could have been looking at a model of the city, instead of the real thing.
This was Yarnell’s city, McGarvey thought, looking out from the park exit up toward 31 st and 32nd streets with their fancy houses, many of which had limousines parked in front of them. The man had worked as deputy director of operations out of headquarters at Langley. He had served as a U.S. senator from New York, working out of the Capitol. Now he directed Yarnell, Pearson & Darien, one of the largest, most prestigious lobbying firms in the city. Among his friends he counted the president, congressmen, the heads of the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA, the Joint Chiefs, journalists … the power base of the entire country. It was frightening to think not only of the power he had, but of the inroads to sensitive information he possessed.
McGarvey crossed R Street and started up toward 32nd. Yarnell’s house was at the end of a narrow lane that led back into a mew. Trotter had described the place as a fortress; impossible to approach without being seen. The man could stop you in your tracks before you got within a hundred feet of his front door. He has to feel safe back there, McGarvey thought. Protected in his little cocoon. Perhaps safe enough to be lulled into a false sense of security? Perhaps safe enough to get careless?
In the park he had strolled at a leisurely pace. Here he walked faster so as not to attract attention. It was midmorning on a weekday. People were supposed to be in a hurry. Busy. A delivery van rumbled by, followed closely by a Mercedes limo driven by a clearly impatient uniformed chauffeur. The car’s windows were dark so it was impossible for McGarvey to see if anyone was in the backseat. But the limo had to belong to someone important. The car passed through the intersection at 31 st Street and kept going. Perhaps to the White House. Maybe the Pentagon.
McGarvey had to think back to why he ever left. Why he had run to the imagined safety of Switzerland. It was because of the Yarnells of the world, wasn’t it? At least he used to tell himself that. Now he was back again, and the same old gut-wrenching fear was beginning to climb up from his bowels; the same old quickness of breath, the supersensitivity to anything and everything around him.
If you’re not careful, you’ll think that you can see and understand everything. Every car, every truck or bus, every person standing on a street corner, every window up or down, every bit of trash lying in an alley, every chalk mark on every fence post. You can’t, of course, know everything. Drive yourself crazy trying to. So you damned well better learn to be selective if you want to survive.
He crossed with the light at 31st Street and continued up to 32nd, where he turned away from the park and started past Scott Place, on which Yarnell’s citadel was situated. There was a smell of flowers and cut grass and trees from the park, made more noticeable now that he was away from it. This was definitely not the lower end of Georgetown’s socioeconomic scale. Even the street was swept and washed, the cars parked along it all polished, chrome gleaming.
A second, narrower lane led left off Scott Place. McGarvey stopped a moment with his foot up on a fire hydrant to tie his shoelaces. Yarnell’s home was behind a tall brick wall, so that the first floor windows couldn’t be seen. It was a large, three-story European-looking house with several chimneys, dormers across the front, and a steeply pitched roof. It sat at an angle to 32nd Street. A window in what would probably be the attic was open. It caught McGarvey’s eye. The room behind it was dark, but he got the curious impression that someone was there, watching. As he straightened up, he glanced over his shoulder, back the way he had come, following a line from the window back out to R Street. He looked up again. From that window an observer could see the entire neighborhood, north-to-south, along 32nd Street as well as both parks. It would be difficult if not nearly impossible to mount any sort of a serious surveillance operation, at least from this side. Assuming Yarnell had the usual equipment up there — microwave, audio dishes, infrared, electronic monitoring — this side would not provide a safe vantage point.
A small Toyota Celica came out of the lane as McGarvey reached Q Street. He had to wait for it to pass before he could cross. He got a momentary glimpse of a good-looking young woman, with dark hair and an olive complexion, well dressed, alone. She had seemed very intent, as if she were in a big hurry to get someplace important. Again out of old habit he looked at the license plate. It was a D.C. tag. He memorized the number, murmuring a mnemonic as he crossed.
Just around the corner, another narrow lane led back at an oblique angle toward the park. McGarvey stepped down the cobblestoned path, and within fifty feet he could see the back of Yarnell’s house, protected as in front by a tall brick wall. The twin of the front attic window was open, affording a view of Wisconsin Avenue and the other east-to-west approaches.
Yarnell was paranoid, McGarvey told himself backing off. Paranoid men were wont to make mistakes. But more importantly, paranoid men in this business usually had something very concrete about which to feel paranoid. An Achilles’ heel, as Trotter had described Evita Perez. Yarnell had made a dreadful mistake marrying her. What other mistakes had he made? What mistakes might he be making right at this moment? The thought was intriguing.
Once again on the corner, McGarvey could look down the narrow lane as well as down 32nd Street as they diverged. This one spot, and fifty feet or so up either leg of the angle, constituted a blind spot in Yarnell’s surveillance. It was not much, he decided, but it was something.
He walked up to Wisconsin Avenue, which was busy with traffic, and got a taxi within a few minutes, telling the driver the Holiday Inn, which was less than ten blocks away.
It was time for him to get to work now. If he was going to do this thing for Trotter and Day, he would need more information and he would have to start taking some precautions.
McGarvey had lunch in his hotel, then went into town to do the sights. With the weather warming and the cherry blossoms starting to bloom, Washington was filling with tourists. Traffic was terrible, though it still wasn’t quite as bad as Lausanne in the summer. The cabbie left him off at the end of Bacon Drive between the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the Lincoln Memorial. He dawdled for more than an hour looking at the long, polished black stone tablets on which were engraved the names of those who died in the Vietnam War, stopping and starting, hanging his head as if he were in deep sorrow … which in a way he was. It was impossible not to feel something standing in front of such an overwhelmingly tragic reminder of a world somehow gone wrong. As his heart overflowed, his motions naturally became erratic. Twice he thought he might have picked out someone. A pink sweater in the crowd. A torn field jacket across the walkway. But then they were gone, in opposite directions, one by bus, the other on foot. He strolled up to the Lincoln Memorial, where he circled the building with its thirty-six columns, then headed on foot at a brisk pace back up to Constitution Avenue.
He was wearing his tweed sport coat, and a shirt and tie; Washington was warm after Switzerland, and he was sweating. He took a bus to Union Station, where he mingled with the crowds inside for a while; buying a newspaper at a stand, making a phone call to his room at the hotel, getting a cup of coffee in a styrofoam cup and drinking it while he read the newspaper as he had his shoes shined.