“Are we expecting some trouble that you haven’t mentioned?” she said.
“Schlagel’s in town.”
“Did he follow us here from Hutchinson Island?”
McGarvey shook his head. “I don’t think he knows we exist yet. He’s evidently got a permit to stage a demonstration outside the Fox News television studio downtown, and I was asked to provide a little backup security.”
It suddenly dawned on Gail what McGarvey was talking about. “Dr. Larsen asked,” she said, an odd set to her mouth.
“I think that she and her project could be the next target. Norwegian intelligence asked the CIA to watch out for her. Apparently there’ve been threats against her safety, maybe from a religious group or groups who might show up in Oslo for the Nobel ceremony.”
Gail was intrigued. “Schlagel?”
McGarvey shrugged. “Unknown. But if he was somehow connected with Hutchinson Island and Princeton he might be taking another step tonight.”
“He’s not going to be that open about it,” Gail said. “I mean if he makes himself so visible like this, and then something happens to the lady scientist it’d be all over for him.”
“Not if he didn’t strike the blow himself. It’s like the crazies who bomb abortion clinics and kill the doctors and nurses because they’re whipped up by the rhetoric. When it happens, which is inevitable, the same people who ranted and raved about the baby killers deny any knowledge or responsibility. They make a big public show of deploring the bombings and killings.”
“I see what you mean. But what’s your part?”
“I got her off Hutchinson Island before the meltdown, and she thought she’d like to have me around after the TV show, just to get her past the crowd.”
Gail started to say something, but then shook her head. She went into the kitchen and poured a glass of Merlot. “Do you want some?” she asked.
“No.”
She came back to the counter and sipped the wine, an intensely thoughtful expression in her eyes. “What about Oslo? Are you going with her?”
“I’m thinking about it,” McGarvey said, knowing that’s exactly what he was going to do, because Eve Larsen was the key.
“You’re going to use her as bait,” Gail said in wonder. “And you’re going to put yourself directly on the firing line.”
McGarvey got up and holstered his pistol at the small of his back. “It’s the only game in town until we find out who the contractor is.”
“Rain check on dinner?” Gail asked.
“Yes.”
THIRTY-NINE
McGarvey’s cell phone rang as he was passing the Kennedy Center on his way over to pick up Eve Larsen at the Watergate. It was Otto. “How’d it go with Page?”
“He wants me to be the unofficial point man on the investigation,” McGarvey said. “They said you’d left the building. Anything I need to know?”
“Sorry, Mac, but we didn’t want to worry you until we were sure. It’s about Audie. We took her to the doctor this afternoon.”
Something so cold, so alien, so completely beyond understanding flashed through McGarvey’s body, nearly causing him to run off the street. But then he got hold of himself. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing, honest injun. It’s just an ear infection. The doc gave her some antibiotics and eardrops and said she’ll be fine.” Rencke was talking in a rush. “But she had a fever last night so Louise stayed home with her, and she called me this morning. Anyway, it’s okay now.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah,” Otto said. “Raising a kid isn’t as easy as Louise and I thought it would be. But I’m not complaining. We love her, and there’s nothing we wouldn’t do for her. And not a day goes by when I don’t think about Todd and Liz who should be here with her.”
McGarvey settled down and it was like starting to hear again after being temporarily deafened by a sudden loud noise, and things seemed to be just slightly out of focus. “I’m on my way over to pick up Eve Larsen and take her to the Fox studio on North Capitol. Get into the D.C. police system and see if Reverend Schlagel has a permit to stage a demonstration on the street.”
“Just a sec,” Otto said.
McGarvey turned off New Hampshire Avenue at the parking entrance for the Watergate Mall and the East and South buildings, and drove around to the lobby of Eve’s building.
Otto came back. “Yup. Leonard Sackman, who’s the Soldiers of Salvation Ministry special events coordinator, if you can believe that, arranged for the permit. It’s been limited to one thousand people, for ninety minutes from six thirty to eight. So if you’re on the way you’ll definitely run into them. But there’ll be plenty of cops, and none of those people will be allowed inside.”
“Have you tried to get anything from the computers in Schlagel’s organization?”
“Yeah, and it was easy, but nothing important’s there. It looks like all the major decisions are made face-to-face. Probably paper records at their McPherson headquarters. I suppose we could find someone willing to break in and give it a try.”
McGarvey had been born and raised on a ranch in western Kansas and he knew the state well. Most of the towns out on the plains, well away from Kansas City and Wichita, were small. Just about everybody knew just about everybody else. Strangers tended to stand out. It was one of the reasons the FBI had such a tough time getting any in-depth information on the reverend. “Take a look at their security measures. If you can get inside the system without attracting any attention, do it. And find out about the local and county cops. See what sort of a relationship they have with the church.”
“Or if any of them happen to be on the payroll.”
“It’s worth a shot,” McGarvey said, pulling up under the sweeping portico of the East Watergate building. “I’m at the Watergate now, I’ll talk to you later.”
Eve, dressed in a stylish charcoal gray pin-striped suit and a white blouse with long collar points under a jacket with turned-up sleeves that showed off the white, came out of the lobby as McGarvey got out of his car and came around to her. She seemed tense, understandably so.
“Thanks for this,” she said, and they shook hands. “Anyway, it’s my treat for dinner.”
“It’s a deal,” McGarvey said. He started to help her into the SUV but she looked at him as if she wondered what he was doing, and he just smiled. The message was clear: she was a capable, self-sufficient woman. Modern. A scientist, not fluff. She was accustomed to opening her own doors.
Heading down Virginia Avenue to Constitution, traffic reasonable at this hour, McGarvey decided to wait until after the program to bring up the security concerns for her at the Nobel ceremonies. And for her part she kept her silence, her thoughts elsewhere, probably a combination of how many of Schlagel’s people would be in front of the studio and what their mood would be and how she would come across in the live segments of the program.
Fifteen minutes later, after turning left at Louisiana Avenue onto North Capitol Street, they got the answers to one of the questions: there were a great many more than one thousand people in the crowd, and Schlagel himself, standing in the bed of a pickup truck, was using a bullhorn to exhort his flock about the extreme danger of allowing someone, anyone, to play God.
Police were everywhere, many of them on horseback, others dressed in riot gear with shields, batons, and helmets with Lexan facemasks, trying to keep the mob to one side of the street. But Schlagel’s people completely ignored them, their attention totally riveted on their reverend.
A half-dozen television vans had gathered at the fringes covering what was turning out to be a major media event, three helicopters circled overhead, and cameramen were shooting the scene from the roof of the building that Fox shared with NBC and C-SPAN.
McGarvey pulled up short. “We’re not getting through this way,” he said.
Eve’s cell phone rang. It was Jeff Meyers, the Fox producer for the special, who told her to stay away from the main entrance and use the E Stre
et doors.
“Someone will meet us there,” she told McGarvey, who made a U-turn onto D Street, up to New Jersey Avenue, and then went east on E Street where he found a parking spot not too far from the side entrance.
Traffic was nearly normal here, but some of the mob had spilled out beyond the intersection a half a block away, and as they hurried up the street they could hear Schlagel’s amplified voice, loud but distorted, echoing and reechoing off the buildings.
A tall, muscular man in a dark blue blazer unlocked the door for them, as a slender man in his late twenties came down the corridor, and introduced himself as the show’s producer.
He and Eve shook hands after she’d stepped through the security arch.
McGarvey held back. He pulled out his NNSA identification wallet and held it up. “I’m carrying a weapon.”
The guard in the blazer stiffened. “You can’t come in here armed.”
“Do you know what’s going on in front of this building?”
“The police are handling it.”
“Mr. McGarvey is providing security for me,” Eve told Meyers.
“He’ll have to leave his gun down here,” the security guard said. “No need for it past this point.”
“Do you know who he is?” Eve said, her voice rising a little in anger.
“Ma’am, I know who he is and I have a great deal of respect for him. But he’s not coming any farther carrying a weapon,”
“Do your interview,” McGarvey told Eve. “I’ll be here when you’re finished.”
“I’d like you to see it,” she said, and from what McGarvey already knew of her, he figured it had to have been tough for her to ask.
“I’ll give you a couple of disks of the program,” Meyers said.
“Fair enough,” McGarvey said, and he gave Eve a smile. “Break a leg, this is the easy part.”
She gave him an odd look as if she didn’t understand what he’d meant, yet she thought she should have, but then she nodded, and headed down the corridor with the producer.
“Sorry, Mr. McGarvey, but I don’t know of any television studio anywhere that allows armed men,” the security guard said.
McGarvey shrugged, because it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be needed upstairs, not until later when Eve was finished. “No exceptions?”
“No, sir.”
“Not even for the president’s Secret Service detail?” McGarvey asked, and the guard, caught out, was suddenly angry.
“Either surrender your weapon or leave the building.”
Or what? McGarvey wondered irascibly. But it was not worth the effort to find out. Instead he went outside and walked to the end of the block to where a couple of plainclothes cops were leaning against a beat-up Chevy Impala across the street from the outer edges of the crowd, which had grown considerably in the past couple of minutes.
McGarvey pulled out his NNSA identification and held it up for them to see, and when they realized the full import of who he worked for and what it might mean right now, he had their attention.
“I hope you’re not here to tell us something bad,” one cop said nervously.
Schlagel had just said something and the crowd roared its approval.
“No,” McGarvey said. “I thought they had a permit for only a thousand people.”
“Nobody’s counting. What are you doing here?”
“I’m riding shotgun for the woman they’re here to protest,” McGarvey said.
The cop glanced back the way McGarvey had come. “She inside already?”
McGarvey nodded. “If they have a television monitor they’ll know she made it, and it won’t take long for them to figure out she came in through the rear door. Can your people keep the crowd back?”
“Not a chance in hell. It’s a peaceful demonstration and they have a permit. Where’s your car?”
“Around the corner on E Street.”
“When is she coming out?”
“The program ends at seven thirty,” McGarvey said. “I’m assuming she’ll be at the door a few minutes after that.”
“Okay, bring your car up to the door and we’ll make a path for her. It’s the best we can do.”
“Good enough,” McGarvey said. He glanced at his watch. It was coming up on seven, and Schlagel’s mob was about to find out that Eve had gotten past them.
He walked back to the side entrance and pressed the buzzer beside the keypad. The security guard looked up from behind his desk, and shook his head.
“I can’t let you in unless you’re willing to give up your weapon,” the man’s voice came from the speaker grille.
“When Dr. Larsen comes downstairs, some of the crowd will probably be just outside,” McGarvey said. “I’ll be parked on the street, and the police will provide her with an escort. Tell her that it’ll be okay.”
The guard looked a little worried. “Do I need to call for backup in case they try to get inside?”
“No,” McGarvey told the man. “They’re just here to make their point.”
A half-dozen uniformed cops came around the corner just ahead of the first of mob, and hustled to where McGarvey stood waiting. The Fox special had started.
“You McGarvey?” one of them demanded.
McGarvey nodded.
“Bring your car up now.”
McGarvey went to where he’d parked, and drove back to the Fox building and pulled up in front of the door as Schlagel’s pickup truck rounded the corner and slowly eased its way through the growing crowd, the reverend not missing a beat.
“Leave God’s business to God,” Schlagel’s amplified voice boomed.
And the crowd responded, “Amen!”
“First it’s nuclear reactors that will poison the earth for a million years, now this work by a godless woman who proposes to change the very air we breathe! We’re not ready! More work needs to be done before it’s too late. Close nuclear power across the country. And put an immediate stop to Larsen’s God Project.”
“Amen! Amen!” the crowd chanted.
“Now,” Schlagel shouted. “Now, before it’s too late!”
“Amen! Amen!”
Some of the television remote broadcast trucks had managed to make their way closer, even as more people filled the streets, and within minutes McGarvey was parked in the middle of a sea of humanity, the six uniformed cops just holding a path open from the door across the sidewalk to the curb.
By the time Eve showed up, E Street was completely jammed with people, and McGarvey had to push his way around to the passenger side of his SUV and open the door.
“The high priestess of evil is among us!” Schlagel shouted, his amplified voice hammering off the side of the building. He was about thirty feet away and he pointed a biblical finger at her. “God’s word is writ in all things in heaven and on earth! Stop your meddling! Stop your God Project now, before you doom humanity!”
“Amen! Amen!” the crowd was chanting.
Sheltering Eve among them, four of the cops hustled her across the sidewalk as a large blond man in jeans and a Midwest Christian College sweatshirt standing between her and curb suddenly lunged at her, his right arm cocked as if he was getting ready to punch her.
McGarvey stepped forward, brought the man’s arm back, breaking it at the wrist, and slammed a quick jab into the man’s throat just below his Adam’s apple, sending him to his knees.
Before anyone could react, McGarvey hustled Eve into the SUV, made his way back to the driver’s side, and eased his way slowly through the crowd that reluctantly parted.
“I didn’t expect it would be this bad,” Eve said.
“I don’t think the reverend and his people like you,” McGarvey said.
FORTY
Eve picked the 1789 Restaurant on Thirty-sixth Street just off the Georgetown University campus — one of her favorites, she told him. Driving over past Mount Vernon Square and taking K Street, McGarvey could see that she was still shook up. “Would they really have tried to hurt me?” she asked.
“I think some of them would,” McGarvey said. “And I have an idea that the number will grow as long as Schlagel keeps pushing his message.”
“The God Project,” she said in genuine wonder. “It makes no sense. I’m offering them cheap, renewable energy and the possibility of making the weather a little better. And he’s fighting it.”
“They don’t give a damn about your work, most of them probably don’t even understand what you’re doing. They’re just following the reverend.”
“And what about him? He was down at Hutchinson Island making trouble, and now this. What does he want?”
“The White House,” McGarvey said. “He wants to be president, and he thinks that you and Hutchinson Island are causes that will get him there.”
“You can’t be serious,” Eve said. “And he’s actually willing to have his people hurt me?”
In her world, scientists didn’t usually get physical with each other or with their critics. Some of them might shout or bluster, but mostly they’d go to their offices and fire off a critical letter to Nature or Scientific American or Smithsonian or some other scientific journal. In her world that and being right were striking the blows.
“That’s exactly what he wants.”
Eve was trying to understand. “The media would be all over him if something happened to me.”
“He’d be the first one to stand up at your funeral and praise your pioneering spirit, and damn the people who brought you down. He’s coming after you, Eve, and he believes that he’ll come out on top no matter what happens.”
She sat back. “I think I need a drink,” she said. Then she looked at him and smiled. “You’re a pretty good man to have around in a pinch. This is the second time you were there when I needed you.”
They used the restaurant’s valet service, and when they were seated Eve ordered a martini straight up with a twist and McGarvey a cognac. And now that she was calming down, he told her the rest of it. “The Norwegian authorities think that you may be in some danger during the Nobel ceremonies, and they asked for our help with security. I’m coming to Oslo with you.”
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