Baranov had placed you at the head of the list.” “How many others were there?” Nikolayev spread his hands. “Maybe as many as a dozen. But it’s highly unlikely that all of those people are still alive.” “Who is my assassin?” McGarvey asked. “I never saw that list. But from what Otto tells me, it has to be someone very close to you. Or at least someone with reliable intelligence about your movements.”
Nikolayev picked up the stack of file folders and offered it to McGarvey. “These are his suspects.” McGarvey hesitated a moment before he took the files. There were seven of them. He was almost afraid to look at the names. “Did you recognize any of these?” “Not beyond the obvious,” Nikolayev said. “But Otto told me that there might be one more name to add to the list. He wasn’t completely sure yet, but when he was, he would name the person.” The first of the folders was Dick Yemm’s. McGarvey looked up. “This man is dead.” “I know. But Otto said that Mr. Yemm remained a suspect, which in effect would mean that the threat was over.” Nikolayev seemed suddenly very tired. He idly rubbed his chest. “Remember that if the SVR had these names, they would all be targets for assassination themselves.” The second file folder was a dossier on Dmitri Runkov, the Russian SVR rezident at the Washington embassy. He was hiding out in his house, but Fred Rudolph had admitted that if the Russian intelligence officer wanted to get out of there without being seen, it was possible. “I don’t think it would be Runkov himself,” Nikolayev said. “But rather someone who Runkov knows here in the States. A sleeper resource. An agent buried so deep that he’s beyond detection by U.S. authorities, but who could be accessed by a handful of people in an emergency. The Washington rezident being one of them.” The third file folder was marked UNKNOWN.
In it, Otto had laid out the parameters for the assassin. A bulletproof identity, good intelligence, nearness to McGarvey, knowledge of explosives and a dozen other traits. The fourth file folder contained the dossier of Bob Johnson, Jared Kraus’s number two in Technical Services. According to Otto’s notes he was Senator Hammond’s source within the CIA. Otto had learned that from various computer and telephone taps he had conducted of his own accord. He had not blown the whistle on Johnson’s talking to the senator because the man was one of the suspects as McGarvey’s would-be assassin. The fifth folder contained Otto’s own dossier, without notes other than StenzePs psychological profiles on him. “Unique, wouldn’t you say, for a chief investigator to name himself as a suspect,” Nikolayev said. McGarvey made no comment. How much control or self-awareness would a brainwashed person have? Maybe none.
The sixth and seventh file folders contained dossiers on Dick Adkins and on Todd Van Buren. Adkins was old enough to have come under Baranov’s influence while the general was still alive, but Todd had been a young man then. Still in grade school or junior high. Otto’s notes listed him as a “secondary,” but a suspect nonetheless. “A recruit trained by the original agent’s handler,” Nikolayev explained.
“But you need to know something else, Mr. Director. In fact if there is a possibility of identifying and catching the killer, it will be because of the existence of a second group. One even more important than the list of suspects themselves.” “What are you talking about?
What group?” “Their control officers.” Nikolayev became introspective. He looked away momentarily. “When we were doing this work we succeeded brilliantly. The conditioning could be done in a week’s time. But there was always a problem that we could not overcome. The conversions last only seven days, sometimes as long as eight or nine days, but that’s it. After that the subjects slowly began to return to normal, or at least to a near-normal psychological state. In fact within twenty-four hours of the deadline, the subjects became useless for our purposes.” Something else dawned on McGarvey.
“You were in on it from the beginning. That’s why you came out to try to stop Martyrs. Your conscience was killing you.” Nikolayev nodded heavily. “I directed the project.” “Knowing what Baranov was going to use it for?” Again Nikolayev nodded. But he looked up. “I won’t make excuses, except to say that you were our enemy. Americans might have feared that our nuclear weapons would rain down on their heads, and rightly so. But Russians were just as frightened. We wouldn’t have spent billions of rubles building our subway system as bomb shelters.”
“Point taken,” McGarvey conceded. “If we find out who has a control officer, and keep them apart long enough, we’ll have our sleeper.
How?” “You must offer yourself as bait. It will mean shutting down your security measures at the safe house Otto has told me about.
Sending away your security team. And then inviting each person on the list to come out for a chat. One-on-one.” McGarvey put the folders aside. “Did Otto give you any hints who the eighth suspect might be?”
“No.” They were his friends, most of them. Even family. It was monstrous.
Worse than he had feared. But despite himself he could see the logic in Otto’s list of suspects. They were the people who, in the deepest recesses of his heart, he himself had suspected. “What about Runkov and the dossier Otto designated as unknown? How do we get word to them?” “Otto has access to your law enforcement computer systems in the Washington area. He can place your present whereabouts on those Web pages. En claire. The right people will see it soon enough.”
“The assassin won’t come.” “Yes he will, and you know it. Most of those people are your friends. But so will the assassin’s control officer have to make an appearance. To reinforce the conditioning.”
“You’ll be waiting.” Nikolayev nodded. “With help. Someone from the FBI or from your Office of Security. Once the principals show up, whoever comes next will be our link to the assassin.” “I’ll have Jim Grassinger assign someone to you. In the meantime, you’ll remain here.” “I suggest that we get this over with as soon as possible, Mr.
Director.” “Tonight,” McGarvey said. “It gives us the entire day to get ready.” At the door he turned back. “But what did the sonofabitch hope to accomplish by killing me? I’m just one man.” “He’s already done more than that if you stop to think about it,” Nikolayev said.
“Nobody in the intelligence community in Washington completely trusts anyone else. You don’t trust your own friends. I’m sure that the mistrust at Langley is hampering operations. From what I read in the newspapers you and the President are at odds with Congress. You’re so distracted, in fact, by the attacks on your family, that your job is suffering. And were Baranov alive now, I have no doubt that he would have planned for some spectacular event to happen in the midst of all the confusion.” “But he’s not,” McGarvey said, once again seeing Baranov pitch forward dead. Nikolayev nodded. “Good luck, Mr.
Director.” McGarvey returned to the dayroom, where he took Todd aside.
“I want you to stick around here and keep an eye on him for the rest of the night. We’ll send out your relief. Then I want you to go home, get something to eat, grab a shower and get some sleep.” “Did he tell you anything that’ll help?” “Not much. I want you to come out to Cropley tonight. At eight.” “I’ll be there as soon as I’m relieved here ”
“Eight,” McGarvey said. Todd wanted to argue, but he nodded.
“How’s Liz?” “She was finally sleeping when I left.” “Good.”
McGarvey took Otto downstairs, Grassinger right behind them. “I want you to go home and get some sleep now, and that’s an order,” McGarvey told him. “Okay, Mac, whatever you say. But did Nikolayev give us anything?” “He said that you have an eighth suspect.” Otto’s head bobbed up and down as if it were on springs. “But I’m not sure yet.
Honest injun.” “Give me a name.” “No,” Otto said. He was acutely distressed. “I’ll need to know pretty soon,” McGarvey said. “I can’t do this in the dark.” Otto held his silence. He looked guilty of something. “Okay, get some sleep, and then you can work on it this afternoon. I want you to come out to Cropley tonight around eight.
A
lone.” “The trap?” “We’ll talk about it then,” McGarvey promised.
“And have Louise fix you something decent to eat. You look like hell, Otto.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
AN ALMOST INFALLIBLE MEANS OF SAVING YOURSELF FROM THE DESIRE OF SELF-DESTRUCTION, IS ALWAYS TO HAVE SOMETHING TO DO, VOLTAIRE WROTE A COUPLE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. IT WAS JUST AS TRUE NOW AS IT WAS THEN.
CROPLEY
McGarvey stood at the front door in the stair hall looking out the narrow window. Clouds had moved in again, lending the distant woods a forbidding feeling. Creatures were gathering up there in the darkness.
Watching, plotting, waiting for the correct moment to strike. Nothing moved that he could see. Blatnik’s people were well hidden in the trees and brush flanking the long driveway. The rear of the house was covered by motion detectors and infrared sensors. If anything stirred up there, alarms would sound in the house. It was after lunch.
Everyone had gotten at least a few hours’ rest, and over a large lunch of fried chicken and potato salad that Elizabeth made, the mood was light. Even Jim Grassinger, who refused to have a beer but instead drank warm Coke straight from the can, had eased up and cracked a joke or two. Liz and her mother were outside behind the house making a snow man or something under the watchful eyes of Gloria Sanchez and one of Blatnik’s people. McGarvey was unsettled. Running away to choose the time and place for his battles had always minimized the risk to his family but did nothing to protect them from harm. Bringing them out here did the opposite: It actually maximized the risk to them. But he would be here at their side when the bad guys came calling. There was no mistake in his or anyone else’s mind that he wasn’t the only target.
Kathleen and Elizabeth were targets, too. Their deaths at the hands of an assassin would almost as effectively destroy his usefulness as a DCI as would his own death. No one talked about it, but he’d heard the apprehension in Whirtaker’s voice, and seen it on the faces of his staff this morning during the teleconference. Stenzel came down the hall from somewhere in the back, and McGarvey turned away from the window. Now it would begin, he thought. “They said that you wanted to see me, Mr. Director,” Stenzel said. “I’m sending you back to Langley this afternoon,” McGarvey told the psychiatrist. Stenzel was startled.
“What’s up? Is something wrong? I mean it’d be a lot better if I stuck around to monitor your wife’s condition.” “It’s just for overnight,” McGarvey explained. Grassinger appeared in the doorway from the dining room, which they continued to use as their operations center. “Dr. Stenzel is leaving. Get somebody to take him back to Langley, would you?” “Sure thing. When?” “Now,” McGarvey said.
“Well, let me have a word with her first ”
“No. I want you to leave right now.” Stenzel glanced up the stairs. “What about my things?”
“You can come back out first thing in the morning,” McGarvey said.
“This is only for tonight.” Grassinger was surprised, but he said nothing. He stepped back into the dining room, issued an order into his lapel mic, then returned with StenzePs coat. A minute later one of Blatnik’s people drove up. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Stenzel asked. He was vexed. “Your wife could have another breakdown at any moment.” “It’s a risk we have to take,” McGarvey said. “Until morning.” Stenzel appealed mutely to Grassinger, who didn’t blink. He pulled on his coat, gave McGarvey another look, then left without a word.
“What’s going on tonight, Mr. Director?” Grassinger asked. “Does it have something to do with the Russian?” “I have a couple of phone calls to make, and then we’ll talk. I’m going to force the issue, and I’ll need your cooperation, your full cooperation. Do you understand?”
“No, sir. But we’ll do whatever it takes. We can’t go on like this forever.” “No we can’t,” McGarvey agreed. He crossed the living room and went into the study in the opposite wing of the house from the dining room and kitchen. He kept the door open so that he could see anyone coming, and telephoned the Agency locator at Langley, who rang through to Bob Johnson in Technical Services. “Good afternoon, Bob, this is Kirk McGarvey, I need a favor sometime tonight, if you guys aren’t too busy.” “No, sir. Let me get Jared ”
“No, I don’t want to bother him. He’s got his hands full with the VI and Vail investigations, and I just need someone who understands alarm systems.
But I don’t want just anyone. I need someone I can trust.” “Yes, sir,” Johnson replied cautiously. “What can I do for you?”
“Something’s not right with the system here. Could be that someone’s tampered with it. I just don’t know. Can you come out here tonight.
Say around eight to take a look?” “I could come right now.” “No, later. I don’t want to make a production out of this, in case someone has sabotaged the system. Do you understand?” “Yes, sir. Perfectly.
I’ll be there at eight.” “Good man. See you then.” “Let your security people know that I’m coming.” “Oh, don’t worry about them.
That’s why I want the alarm system checked.” Next he called Fred Rudolph at his office in FBI headquarters. “I need a favor, no questions asked.” “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Rudolph said. He was straitlaced. He did everything by the book. Or at least he tried to do it that way. He and McGarvey were opposites, but they respected each other. “What can I do for you, Mac?” “Put me on your medium security website,” McGarvey told him. “I want it to look as if someone released a confidential memo by mistake.” “What memo?” “You’re concerned that the DCI is out here with little or no security because he’s pigheaded. The Bureau needs some direction.” “Who am I supposedly sending this memo to?” “Senator Hammond. But you’re not really going to send it. It’s a draft memo. But I want it on the website.” “So the Russians can see it,” Rudolph said. “If it’s them, they’ll come out guns blazing. Shootout at the OK Corral. That’s your style.”
“Post it a few minutes after six tonight. It’ll look like a shift change error.” “Tell me that you’re not really sending your security away,” Rudolph said. “No questions, Fred, remember?” “All right. I can do that for you. Against my better judgment. But in the meantime, I’m going to double the surveillance on the Russians, and on Senator Hammond’s office because there’s a good chance he’ll see it, too.”
“Your call. But if someone heads out this way I don’t want your people to interfere with them.” “Can we at least give you a heads-up?” “I’d appreciate it.” Rudolph was silent for a moment. “Do you think it’ll go down tonight?” “I hope so.” “Did your people find Nikolayev?”
“He’s here in Washington.” “Okay then, good luck,” Rudolph said.
“Just watch your ass, will you?” “Sure thing,” McGarvey promised. He went down the hall through the garden room so that he could look out a back window. Katy and Liz had built five small snowmen and were working on a sixth. The figures’ heads were larger than their bodies, and they seemed to be leaning backward, looking up at the sky. They all faced the same direction, toward the east, McGarvey realized, and the scene was somehow disturbing. Gloria Sanchez and one of the outside security people stood by watching. McGarvey returned to the study, where he telephoned Adkins’s house. A young woman answered.
Her voice was soft. Barely a whisper. “Hello.” “This is Kirk McGarvey. I’d like to speak with Dick Adkins.” “Yes,” she said. Her voice was innectionless, like a zombie’s. “Father,” she called away from the phone. “It’s Mr. McGarvey.” Adkins came on almost immediately. “Hi, Mac.” He had already talked to Whittaker twice about coming back to work. McGarvey could only imagine what was going on at his house with his daughters.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t call sooner,” McGarvey said. “I couldn’t believe the news when David told me. I’m really sorry, Dick.”
“She hid it the whole time. She was driving up to a cancer clinic in Baltimore for the past year. Sometimes the girls took
her. I never knew.”
McGarvey didn’t know what to say that was appropriate. Katy would know, but he hadn’t told her. “Ruth was a strong woman.”
“That she was.”
“Will there be a memorial service?”
“On Saturday at Grace Lutheran. But of course we don’t expect you or Kathleen to be there, under the circumstances.”
“We’ll be there, Dick. This other business will be settled by then.”
“Oh?”
“I hate to ask this, but can you come out here tonight?”
“Cropley? Sure. What time?”
“Eight,” McGarvey said. Adkins had practically jumped at the invitation. Whatever was going on at the house could not be pleasant for him.
“Let security know I’m coming.”
“That won’t be a problem. Just drive up to the house. I’ll see you then.”
Adkins wanted to say something else. McGarvey could hear it in his hesitation. “Okay,” he said at last. “See you then.”
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