The Kill Zone

by David Hagberg

  Who watches the watchdog? It was a fundamental problem that every intelligence organization faced. And one that every intelligence officer had to grapple with at his own personal level. The business got to some good people —burned them out, ruined them, so that when they retired they were no longer fit to stay in the service; nor were they equipped to step so easily into civilian life.

  “If you don’t have someone you can trust, you have nothing,” his father had advised him when he was having his troubles in high school. “Don’t give in to the Philistines, but don’t close your heart.”

  He’d mistaken his father’s meaning for years, thinking that the old man had meant that he should find a woman to fall in love with and make a life. He’d tried in college and again in the military, but until Kathleen every woman he’d gotten close to finally repelled him. Either they were idiots, figuring that they could catch a man by playing dumb, or they made it their life’s ambition to transform him into something he wasn’t; into what their ideal man was supposed to act like, dress like, talk like. When he met Katy all that changed. The first time he saw her, his chest popped open, and his heart fell out onto the floor. She was good-looking, and she was smart. A bit arrogant, somewhat self-centered and opinionated, but so was he all those things, and she was all the more interesting for those traits. In the end, though, after Elizabeth was born, and after his first few years with the CIA and the unexplained long absences and finally Santiago, she had finally tried to change him, mold him to her own ideal image. She gave him the ultimatum: Quit the CIA or leave. He left. His father had been wrong.

  Only his father hadn’t been wrong. A few years later, when John Lyman Trotter called him back from an uneasy retirement to unravel a problem at the highest levels within the CIA, he found out the hard way that without trust, without honor, there was nothing. In the aftermath of those difficult times the best DCI ever to sit on the seventh floor was dead, the victim of a General Baranov Department Viktor plot; Kathleen’s onetime lover, Darby Yarnell a former spy himself and a former U.S. senator, lay shot to death in front of the DCI’s house, and ultimately, John Trotter, one of the few men McGarvey had ever trusted, was dead as well at McGarvey’s hands. Trotter had been the ultimate spy within the CIA, the deeply placed mole that Jim Angleton had nearly brought down the Agency trying to catch.

  His father had been right after all. If you have no one to trust, then you have nothing. That was his life for a lot of years until he came back. Until he and Kathleen remarried, until their daughter came back into his life, until he brought Otto in from the cold, until he surrounded himself with good people. Yemm, Adkins, Dave Whittaker, Carleton Paterson.

  “Trust,” he said to himself, unable finally to hold back his fears. He couldn’t trust any of them. And yet for his own salvation he had no other choice.

  He turned as a very large man in a dark suit and clerical collar emerged from the elevator and shambled like a bear up the corridor to the nurses’ station. He wore old-fashioned galoshes, unbuckled, but no overcoat. There was something vaguely familiar about the man, though McGarvey was certain they’d never met. Peggy Vaccaro got to her feet, and McGarvey walked back to her.

  “Are we expecting anyone?” he asked.

  “Someone called from Mrs. M.’s church a couple of hours ago, asking about her.”

  A nurse came out of the station and brought the cleric back. “This is Father Vietski from Good Shepherd Church. He asked if I would verify who he was.” She was grinning. “He’s okay, as long as you don’t let him get started telling jokes about the Lutherans and Baptists.”

  “Next time I have a story about evil nurses,” Vietski said. His voice was rich and deep, with maybe a hint of a New York accent.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” the nurse said laughing, and she left.

  The priest gave Peggy a warm smile, then turned his gaze to McGarvey, a little sadness at the corners of his mouth. “I’m Kathleen’s parish priest. You must be Kirk McGarvey.”

  “I don’t think we’ve ever met,” McGarvey said. “But you look familiar.”

  “I have one of those faces,” he said. “And maybe you saw one of our church bulletins. Kathleen has been helping out in the office whenever she can.” He glanced at the door. “Will she be all right?”

  “We hope so,” McGarvey said.

  “The poor woman has been driving herself unmercifully lately. Trying to be all things for everyone. She can’t go on.”

  “What do you mean?” McGarvey asked, careful to keep his tone neutral. This was something new, something he didn’t know anything about.

  “The church,” Vietski replied. He shook his head. “Good Shepherd is falling apart. We need eleven million dollars to rebuild, and dear Kathleen has taken it upon herself to raise the money. All of it.”

  “I’m sorry, she hasn’t said anything to me about it,” McGarvey admitted. “We’ve had some family problems—”

  Vietski reached out and touched McGarvey’s arm. “No need to explain,” he said. “All of us have our trials. And I think at times she might be a little ashamed of her faith, if you know what I mean.”

  It seemed to McGarvey that the priest was reaching out for his own assurances. It was as if he was trying to draw strength instead of give it. “I don’t think that my wife would have remained with something she didn’t believe in.”

  Vietski smiled and nodded. “May I go in for just a few minutes?”

  “Maybe later, she’s sleeping now.”

  “I won’t wake her, I promise,” Vietski said earnestly. “But just a few minutes. I’d like to sit with her and say a little prayer. I think it would mean something to her.”

  McGarvey glanced at Peggy, who raised her eyebrows. Then he nodded. “Okay.”

  Vietski went into Kathleen’s room, closing the door softly behind him.

  “He’s a troubled man,” McGarvey said.

  “But he seems to care,” Peggy Vaccaro replied. “That’s something.”

  The blinds were shut and the room was dark. Kathleen was asleep. Vietski moved to her side and made a sign of the cross over her head and began to pray, his voice soft, but filled with emotion.

  “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me …”

  THREE

  BLOWBACK

  And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

  The instruments of darkness tell us truths,

  Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s

  In deepest consequences—

  —Wm. Shakespeare

  It’s blowback, plain and simple. The policy was kept from the American public all these years, and now we’re reaping the unintended consequences.

  —CIA, anonymous

  TUESDAY

  ONE

  “YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN GOD, BUT YOU DO HAVE SOME OF THE ANSWERS.”

  ANDREWS AFB

  McGarvey was seated in the back of the DCI’s limo headed east on I-495 across the river, lost in thought, as Dick Yemm expertly maneuvered the armored Cadillac through the lunch hour traffic. Otto Rencke sat in back with McGarvey. Yemm had snagged him at his apartment before coming out to Chevy Chase.

  “Liz is going to want to see you,” McGarvey had explained to Otto.

  She’d sounded distant and frightened on the phone last night. He glanced over at Otto, who was staring out the other window, then at Yemm, who was watching in the rearview mirror. Everyone’s imagination was working at full tilt. All of them were waiting for the next shoe to drop, for the next attack to come. And everyone was looking to him for support, for answers.

  They passed Temple Hills as an air force transport took off from Andrews a couple of miles away. He felt a spasm of fear for his daughter, for w
hat this latest attack was doing to her spirit. Losing the first baby had been almost more than she could endure. Only Todd had been able to bring her back, to make her laugh again. This time was worse. The loss wasn’t a natural miscarriage. It was murder. He didn’t know how Liz was bearing the pain and the fear. And he didn’t know if Todd, who was suffering his own demons, would be able to be as strong this time as he had been the first.

  “I’m here, baby,” he mumbled to himself. “This time I won’t leave.” He wanted her to get the message loud and clear.

  “Mac, oh wow, are you okay?” Otto intruded.

  McGarvey came out of his thoughts. Otto’s eyes were round, his hair went in every direction. He was frightened. “I’m okay. How about you?”

  “I shouldn’t have called Mrs. M., ya know. I’m sorry.”

  There. That had been on McGarvey’s mind. Yemm said that Otto told him Katy deserved the truth. But that made no sense under the circumstances. Katy needed protection. There was something else. The scratching, nagging was still there. Coming on even stronger than before.

  “No. You shouldn’t have. I would have taken care of it,” he said, and Otto quickly looked away. What to make of his behavior? Whom to trust? Larry Danielle would know. “What’s going on, Otto? I have to know. Talk to me.”

  Otto refused to turn back. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do. It’s why I brought you out here this morning. So we could have a chance to talk.”

  “Nada,” Otto murmured. He laid his forehead on the window.

  “Nada’s no longer an acceptable answer,” McGarvey pressured.

  “I don’t know …”

  “Lavender,” McGarvey prompted. “Start there. You’re searching for something, and it’s coming up lavender.” But Otto didn’t answer.

  They arrived at Andrews main gate, and the air policemen on duty saluted the car and passed them through. Yemm drove directly over to the VIP hangar, where the CIA’s Gulfstream would come after landing. The flight was still at least twenty minutes out, and there was no activity in or around the hangar, though the big doors were open. Yemm parked on the apron in front of the doors.

  “Take a walk, Dick,” McGarvey told Yemm. “Find out when the flight lands.”

  Yemm turned and looked at Otto who stared out the window toward the control tower, then at McGarvey. He didn’t think that it was such a good idea leaving the DCI here unprotected, even if he was with a friend. “I can call Operations.”

  “Get out of here, Dick.”

  Yemm looked at him questioningly. Under the CIA’s Standard Operating Policies he would be within his rights, as the DCI’s bodyguard, to refuse a direct order if he thought that the DCI’s life would be jeopardized because of it. It was the same SOP that the Secret Service agents guarding the President of the United States followed. He knew that McGarvey could take care of himself. Nonetheless, he took his job seriously. But he nodded finally. “I’ll be back in ten.”

  When Yemm was gone, McGarvey got out of the limo, walked around to the front and leaned against the hood. An old KC-135 tanker came lumbering in for a landing. The Boeing 707 was still majestic after nearly a half century of service. He remembered as a kid riding one out to Saigon on his first assignment.

  “I don’t know what holds it up, ya know,” Otto said at his side.

  “Physics?”

  “Nah.”

  “Then it has to be trust,” McGarvey said.

  “Sometimes that’s not so easy.”

  “Between friends.”

  “Yes, especially between friends. Real friends, ya know.”

  “I’d like to think that I have real friends.”

  Otto gave a little shuffle. He was becoming agitated. “You do, Mac. Honest injun.”

  “Special Operation Spotlight.”

  “What?”

  “I want to know what it is. Why it’s lavender. And what it has to do with Nikolayev and your trip to France.” McGarvey gave Otto a penetrating stare. “I want to know what it has to do with me and my family.”

  “It’s nothing more than a research project. I’m running down a few loose ends that Elizabeth came up with in the archives.”

  McGarvey shook his head. “Somebody tried to kill you, me and my wife, and now our daughter. And you tell me that you’re working on a research project? Bullshit, Otto. Pure, unadulterated bullshit.”

  “My machines are running the programs while I’m looking for bad guys.”

  “Okay. What have you come up with?”

  “It’s too early to say.”

  Otto was backing himself into a corner, and McGarvey was worried that he was losing it. He was hiding something. But he always told the truth no matter how painful or embarrassing it might be.

  “Give me one thing, then,” McGarvey said, keeping his patience. “For instance, tell me about Nikolayev. He worked for General Baranov in the old days. Does that have something to do with this?”

  “Nothing …”

  “That’s not true, goddammit,” McGarvey pressed. “You don’t spend that kind of computer time on a research project when someone is trying to kill you and the people around you. And you don’t come up with some bullshit operational title and go off commandeering a hypersonic spy plane to take you to France.”

  Otto was alarmed, he seemed to be vibrating. “that’s not true …”

  “Louise was waiting here to pick you up when the Aurora landed. Dick saw the whole thing. Makes her an accessory. Do you want us to bring her in for questioning?”

  Otto put a hand to his mouth.

  “It wouldn’t do her air force career much good if the headhunters investigated her for murder and treason. Even if she was cleared, she’d be tainted in the eyes of the promotions board. She might even lose her clearances.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I’m tried of screwing around. I want the truth.”

  “I don’t have the answers, Mac. I swear to God,” Otto cried in anguish.

  “You don’t believe in God, but you do have some of the answers.”

  Otto started to dance from one foot to the other. His sneakers were untied again, his shirt was stained with something, maybe mustard, and the welts and scabs on his head punctuated the massive bruising all over the left side of his face. He looked pitiful, even crazy.

  But there was too much at stake to let him off the hook, friend or not. McGarvey had known that it would come to this with Otto. Just as he knew that he was the only one to confront him; he was the only person on the face of the earth other than Louise Horn to whom Otto would listen.

  Stenzel had warned him that confronting Otto head-to-head might drive him over the edge. But then he might already be over the edge and looking for a way back. Sometimes behavior like Otto’s signaled a desperate plea for help. “There’s simply no way to know for sure until he falls apart and we can pick up the pieces.”

  “It’s okay,” McGarvey said. He wanted to put his arm around Otto’s shoulder, friend-to-friend. But he didn’t dare. Otto was simply too fragile now. “It’s okay. Just tell me what you can. I need something to go on.”

  Otto stopped dancing as if he were a mechanical toy winding down. McGarvey glanced toward the active runway. Liz’s plane would touch down soon. She was another fragile spirit he would have to find the strength to protect and comfort. But they still had a few minutes. Otto was staring at him.

  “In August one of my search programs came up with a hit,” Otto said softly, as if he were afraid of being overheard. “An old KGB general was found shot to death in his Moscow apartment. A suicide. But there were questions.”

  “What search program?” McGarvey asked.

  “I got the idea last year when I was digging through your old operational files.” Otto was hesitant. McGarvey nodded reassuringly for him to go on. “You crossed paths with some bad people. I thought that maybe someday one of them might come looking for you. Revenge, ya know. Settle old scores. You
pissed off some serious dudes.”

  McGarvey watched him. Otto was choosing his words with care. With too much care. There were things that he knew that he did not want to reveal. “Who was he?”

  “Gennadi Zhuralev. Nobody important, except that he worked for Baranov, and that program was watching for Baranov connections.”

  “Was he murdered?”

  Otto shrugged. “Probably. But what got me interested was that another old Baranov hand, Anatoli Nikolayev, went missing the very same day, and within twenty-four hours the SVR launched an all-out search for him. That was too coincidental for me.”

  “The Russians traced him to France, and so did you.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But why, Otto?” McGarvey asked. “Why have you gone through all the trouble to find some old Russian?”

  “Because the SVR wanted him big-time. So I figured he had to be worth something.”

  McGarvey shook his head. “I don’t buy it. People disappear from Russia all the time, most of them smuggling something valuable out with them. They’re draining the country, so the SVR wants them back. The FBI usually gets those requests for help, but Fred Rudolph has heard nothing.”

  “He was a Baranov man,” Otto said lamely.

  “Baranov is dead, and Nikolayev is very old. Where’s the interest?”

  “He didn’t want to forget,” Otto said with difficulty.

  “Forget what? What do you mean?”

  “He was reading the old files. Interviewing people.”