Critical Mass

by David Hagberg

  Lipton zigzagged to the east stairway. When he was in place he motioned for Tyrell to take the west stairway, and for Wasley to remain where he was.

  Whatever had happened here was bloody and final. Lipton wasn’t at all sure he wanted to know what was upstairs on the balcony, but he figured that McGarvey had probably made his stand here … and lost?

  He pointed up, and he and Tyrell started up the stairs at the same time; silently, their weapons at the ready.

  The balcony was mostly in darkness now that the flames from the courtyard had died down, so it took Lipton several moments to regain his night vision. When he did he nearly staggered backward off-balance.

  McGarvey, blood streaming from several wounds in his neck, face and body, stood in the shadows, the heavy Kalashnikov assault rifle held over his head like a club, ready to smash Lipton’s head.

  Slowly, he lowered the rifle, and managed a slight smile. “Kathleen and Elizabeth?” he asked, his voice barely audible.

  “Safe,” Lipton said.

  “Then let’s get out of here. I could use a drink.”

  BOOK FOUR

  62

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  JULY 16, 1992

  ROLAND MURPHY WATCHED FROM HIS SEVENTH-FLOOR OFFICE at CIA Headquarters as the sun came up on what promised to be a beautiful day. His mood, he decided, should be expansive, instead it was dark with worry.

  Unable to sleep, he’d had his driver bring him back at four this morning, and he’d had the overnight supervisor bring him up to speed. The world situation was reasonably calm; no major wars or conflicts involving American interests, no serious threats to any of their in-place networks, no crises needing immediate attention.

  Nothing doing, in fact, except for the situation they’d hired McGarvey to investigate. It had not changed. The threat still existed, but no one had so much as a clue what to do about it.

  Murphy’s secretary wasn’t here yet, so he got an outside line himself and called the fifth-floor isolation ward at Bethesda National Naval Medical Center.

  “This is Roland Murphy. If you need to confirm that, I’m at my office. I’ll instruct the Agency operator to put your call through.”

  “I’m Dr. Singh, and that won’t be necessary, Mr. Director, I recognize your voice.”

  “How is your patient?”

  “We’ve had him here for less than twelve hours,” the doctor said cautiously. “But he is by all appearances a singularly remarkable man. He is already on the mend.”

  “How long?”

  “For what, General?”

  “Until he will be fit to resume his … duties.”

  “Under normal circumstances, three months, perhaps four,” Dr. Singh said. “But if his presence is of vital importance, all other considerations secondary, I would say six weeks at the minimum.”

  “Is he conscious?” Murphy asked, masking his bitter disappointment. McGarvey was a man after all, not a superman.

  “Oh, yes, he is very much conscious. He refuses all pain medications and sedatives.”

  “Someone will be along this morning to interview him,” Murphy said.

  “Seven days.”

  “This morning.”

  “General, I could refuse you.”

  “I think not,” Murphy said. “But we’ll wait until this afternoon. We’ll give you that much time.”

  “Him, General, not me. You need to give him time to heal.”

  Murphy called a meeting for his top three at 8:30 A.M. in the small dining room adjacent to his office. Besides the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Lawrence Danielle, the Deputy Director of Intelligence Tommy Doyle and of course the Deputy Director of Operations Phil Carrara, CIA General Consul Howard Ryan was at the breakfast gathering.

  Murphy dropped the bombshell.

  “I was told earlier this morning that McGarvey will recover from his wounds, but he’ll be out of commission for at least six weeks, perhaps longer.”

  “Shit,” Carrara swore crudely, but he noticed out of the corner of his eye that Ryan had a smug look. “Then whatever did or did not happen on Santorini, K-1 was successful. They wanted him off the case, and that’s what they got.”

  “It would seem so,” Murphy answered heavily. “He’s awake and apparently coherent. Phil, I want you to go over there this afternoon and talk to him. He must have seen or heard something that’ll be of use to us.”

  “Yes, sir,” Carrara said. “In the meantime we’ve come up with a tentative identification on the woman that Elizabeth described for us.” He took several black and white glossy photos from a file folder and passed them across the table to Murphy. “Her name is Liese Egk.”

  “Former STASI?” Murphy asked, studying the photos, then passing them over to Danielle.

  “Yes. Her speciality is assassination.”

  Danielle’s eyebrows rose, and Ryan took the photos with interest.

  “Still no trace of her or Ernst Spranger?”

  “None,” Carrara said. “The Greeks are, needless to say, oversensitive just now. Apparently there were two local businessmen who somehow got involved, and got themselves killed, in addition to the two fishermen whose boat was found abandoned in the port of Thira.”

  “The Navy wants to be keyed in to what we’re doing,” Danielle said softly. “Admiral Douglas telephoned yesterday afternoon after you’d already gone for the day. One of their boys was killed on the island.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That we’d get back to him, but that the young man definitely did not give his life on some fool’s errand.”

  “That’ll have to do for now,” Murphy said. “If he presses, invite him over for lunch. I’ll talk to him then.”

  There was a momentary silence that Tommy Doyle finally broke.

  “Which brings us back to Tokyo. We’re getting a lot of mixed signals from the Japanese on the official as well as the unofficial level.”

  “What about the news media?”

  “So far they’ve been relatively silent about the killings, which in itself is spooky.”

  They were all looking at Doyle.

  “What are you trying to say, Tommy?” Murphy asked.

  “It’s my guess that whatever is going on has at least the tacit approval of someone at ministry level or higher.”

  “Tough charge,” Ryan suggested, but Murphy ignored the comment.

  “It’s time we pulled Kelley Fuller out of there,” the DCI said. “With McGarvey out of commission she’s on her own.”

  “You don’t mean to write off our Tokyo station,” Carrara said. “Not now, General.”

  “We’ll have to restaff. There’s not much else for it. In the meantime it’s possible that McGarvey’s action on Santorini scared them off, or at least delayed their plans.”

  “Six weeks is a long time,” Doyle said.

  “Send someone else,” Ryan suggested.

  “Who?” Murphy asked bluntly.

  “I don’t know. We must have a Japanese expert on staff somewhere who could make some quiet inquiries for us.”

  No one said a thing.

  “We don’t have to send a maniac whose solution to every problem seems to be shooting up the local citizenry.”

  “Right,” Murphy said. He turned back to Carrara. “As soon as you talk to McGarvey get back to me, would you, Phil?”

  “Yes, sir,” Carrara said. “Maybe we’ll have something by then.”

  63

  THE MORNING WAS BEAUTIFUL. MCGARVEY STOOD AT THE window, his body cocked at an odd angle, his neck, right arm and shoulder and his right leg swathed in bandages. He’d gone from night into day; from danger to safety, but the assignment wasn’t over.

  A CIA psychiatrist who’d examined McGarvey after a particularly harrowing operation early in his career had come to the conclusion that though McGarvey had a low physical threshold of pain response, he had an extremely high psychological threshold. He felt pain easily, but he was able to let it flow through a
nd around him without it affecting his ability to function.

  He was in pain now, but he continued to refuse any medication, preferring to keep his head straight. Spranger and the woman with him were gone. Lipton had admitted it before they’d left Santorini. And as long as that monster was still on the loose none of them would be truly safe.

  McGarvey’s right shoulder had stiffened up and his burns still hurt, but his biggest problem was the flesh wound in his right thigh. Walking was difficult at best. If he found himself in a situation where he had to move quickly to save his life, he might not make it.

  But lying in a hospital bed fretting wouldn’t help despite what the doctors told him. They’d backed up their warnings by posting a guard at the door. At least he hoped the hospital had ordered the security and that it hadn’t been done at the Agency’s request.

  Someone knocked at the door and he turned around as Kathleen came in. Her left eyebrow arched when she saw him standing at the window, but she said nothing, closing the door.

  “Good morning,” McGarvey said. He decided that she didn’t look any the worse for wear, except in her eyes, which seemed to have lost their usual haughtiness. She was dressed in street clothes, a blue scarf on her head.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I’ll live. You?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Elizabeth?”

  “She wants to see you.”

  McGarvey tried to read something from his ex-wife’s expression, her tone of voice, but he couldn’t. He’d never been able to predict her.

  “How is she holding up?”

  Kathleen shook her head, but she made no move toward him. “I honestly don’t know, Kirk. She’s definitely your daughter. She stood up to them, and probably saved my life in the doing despite what they … did to her. But she won’t talk to me about it. She just sidesteps the questions. Says she’ll live, whatever that means.”

  “What now?”

  “You tell me,” she said. “The FBI is guarding us. They said something about temporarily placing us in the Witness Protection Program. Either that or taking us into protective custody.”

  “Not such a bad idea …”

  “For how long, Kirk?” Kathleen cried. “From the day I met you this has been going on. How much longer must I endure it?”

  “I’m sorry …”

  “We’re divorced. Stay away from me and Elizabeth! Please! If you love your daughter, as you profess you do, then leave us alone!”

  He felt badly for her, but he knew that there was nothing he could do to alleviate her pain and fear except do as she was asking: Stay away from her, and in the meantime go after Spranger and what remained of his organization.

  “If you think it’s for the best.”

  “I do,” she replied.

  McGarvey nodded. “Will you let me talk to her now, for just a minute?”

  Kathleen stared at him for a long second or two, her rigid expression softening a little. “I don’t think I could stop her,” she said. “The doctor certainly could not.”

  “Get out of Washington, Katy. Let the Bureau take care of you.”

  “My name is Kathleen,” she corrected automatically. “And Elizabeth and I are going to do just that. No one will know where we are. No one.”

  She turned and left the room, giving McGarvey a brief glimpse of Dr. Singh in the corridor before the door closed again. He hobbled back to the bed and got in. A moment later Elizabeth, wearing faded jeans, a pink V-neck sweater, and a head scarf, came in.

  For a long time she stood stock-still, looking at her father, the expression on her face even less readable than her mother’s, except that she was frightened.

  “Liz?” McGarvey prompted.

  “Daddy,” she cried and she came into his arms, a sharp stab of pain hammering his right side.

  He grunted involuntarily, and Elizabeth immediately reared back.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she apologized, her hands going to her mouth.

  “It’s okay, Liz,” he said. “It’s okay.” He held out his hand to her.

  She hesitated. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You won’t. Now come over here and sit down. I want to hear everything that happened to you and your mother, and then I want you to do me a favor.”

  “Anything,” Elizabeth said, gingerly sitting on the edge of the bed.

  “I’m going to need some clothes.”

  She looked sharply at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m getting out of here.”

  “But you can’t. You’re hurt.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, patting her hand. “Believe me. But first I want to know about Ernst Spranger and the woman with him.”

  A dark cloud passed over Elizabeth’s features and she flinched. “Her name is Liese. The others are murderers, but she’s worse. Much worse.”

  “What happened?”

  Elizabeth turned away. “I can’t …”

  “Your mother said you won’t tell her.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “You’re safe here.”

  She turned back to her father. “Not for me,” she said. “For you.”

  Suddenly McGarvey was cold. He’d been told what condition Kathleen and Elizabeth were in when Lipton’s team had found them but he’d not seen either of them until this morning. They both wore wigs beneath their scarves, and although they seemed pale they appeared to be uninjured. Yet he wondered, his mind going down a lot of dark corridors he wanted to avoid.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Elizabeth’s eyes widened, and she shook her head. “No,” she blurted. “That’s wrong. Mother’s wrong. You’re not responsible for the bad people in the world. It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “If I hadn’t been involved none of this would have happened to you and your mother.”

  “Don’t say that,” she cried, tears suddenly filling her eyes. “Don’t ever say that.”

  “It’s okay, Liz,” McGarvey said, reaching for her.

  Elizabeth stared at him for a long time, as if she’d never seen him before. “If not you, who can I believe in?” she asked finally.

  A battered Volkswagen van with Italian plates pulled up at the Villa Ambrosia overlooking Monaco around five in the afternoon. So far as Liese could determine the compound was just as they had left it. She’d half-expected to see yellow Do Not Pass tapes across the doors, or an Interpol surveillance unit parked nearby. But she’d made three different approaches to the house, and had spotted nothing.

  “How does it look?” Spranger asked from the back of the van. His voice was muffled but recognizable, which was, as far as Liese was concerned, enough for the moment.

  “Clear,” she answered. “I’m going to release the alarms and open the gate.”

  “Watch out for a trap.”

  They’d been over this same ground for two and a half days all the way from Athens, across Italy and along the Riviera. Spranger’s intense hatred and desperate need for revenge had distorted his perception of everything. He had ranted and raved about striking back, getting even, killing.

  More than once Liese had been brought to the brink of putting a gun to the back of his head and pulling the trigger. But each time she’d backed off at the last moment because she needed him. Needed his voice for what remained to be done. Their field officers were in place and ready to go to phase two, but they would only move on Spranger’s direct orders. Without him the entire operation would fizzle and die.

  Checking the rearview mirror again to make certain no one was coming up the road, Liese got out of the van and cautiously approached the tall wooden gate in the thick concrete wall that surrounded the compound.

  None of the three hidden switches that activated the villa’s extensive alarm system had been tampered with, and she released each of them, the gate’s electric lock cycling open, and the gate swinging inward.

  Back in the van sh
e drove into the compound, and parked at the rear of the house. Before she helped Spranger out, she closed and locked the gate, and reset the alarm system.

  Spranger was a mess. The Greek doctor on Santorini had been an incompetent fool, his methods and most of his equipment 1940s-vintage war surplus. He’d dug McGarvey’s bullet out of Spranger’s shoulder successfully, but he’d done too much cutting and when the wound healed, scar tissue would be bunched up as big as a clenched fist.

  He’d set Spranger’s broken arm and collarbone poorly, and whatever salve he’d used on the extensive burns had a terrible odor. Within twenty-four hours noisome fluids were freely suppurating from it, horribly staining his clothing and bandages.

  His broken nose and cheeks had swollen up and discolored black and blue and yellow.

  But he was alive, and coherent, and therefore still useful.

  Inside the house, Liese poured him a brandy, then made the first of four telephone calls, this one to a number down in Monaco. It was answered on the first ring by a man speaking French with a Japanese accent.

  “Oui.”

  “Mr. Spranger calling for Mr. Endo, please,” Liese said. Spranger was watching her closely.

  A second later their Japanese contact came on. “Yes, you have something to report, Ernst?”

  “This is me,” Liese said, and she caught the slight calculating hesitation in Endo’s voice.

  “Yes, I understand, please proceed.”

  “Mr. McGarvey has been eliminated as a problem.”

  “I see. And will you now be able to make your deliveries as contracted.”

  “Within seventy-two hours,” Liese said, and Spranger nodded, his hand gripping the brandy glass so tightly she thought it would shatter at any moment.

  “Very well. We look forward to concluding our business then.”

  Liese hung up, got the dial tone again and called the first of their three teams standing by in the field; This one outside of Lausanne, Switzerland, and Spranger put down his drink, ready to do his part.

  64