The Kill Zone (20 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: The Kill Zone
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THE SCRATCHING, NAGGING WAS BACK. THE WATERFALL HURLING ITSELF DOWN A MILLION FEET TO CRASH MADLY ON THE JAGGED ROCKS DROWNED OUT RATIONAL THOUGHT.
CIA HEADQUARTERS
N
o one was safe now, McGarvey thought.
Word about the attack on the director's daughter spread through the building like wildfire. Or at least McGarvey supposed it had. Bad news always traveled faster than good.
It had been a girl. An innocent baby, lost for no reason. Who would be next? he had to ask himself as he sat at his desk once again trying without much success to concentrate on the NIE and Watch Report.
How he was going to break the news about the baby to Kathleen he couldn't even guess. But he had a fair idea what it would do to her when she found out.
No one was safe, he thought, staring at the open folder on his desk. But that wasn't quite true. The run wasn't on the Company; it was on him and his family. Otto was almost like a son to them. There
weren't many people who knew that fact, but it wasn't unknown in some circles.
And now Otto had gone missing again. McGarvey had to hope he was safe. Security had its hands fiill, but they were looking for him, just as they were in Denver protecting Todd and Elizabeth, and just as they were working the puzzle on Hans Lollick Island. But McGarvey wasn't sure of himself, of how he fit here, what kind of a job he was supposed to be doing, or even what kind of a job he was capable of.
The closer people got to him, the more they depended on his good judgment and his strength. That was their common mistake, because the fact was he wasn't any stronger than anybody else. He didn't have all the answers. When it came right down to it, he'd abandoned his wife and daughter when they were young and needed him the most. He'd had his pride; no one was going to tell him how he would conduct his life. So he had run, and no one near him had ever been safe again.
In the end now he had come full circle.
Was it one last go-around? he asked himself. Or was this just another operation in a string of operations that stretched forever into the future?
Ms. Swanfeld came to the door. “Your staff is in the conference room,” she told him. She looked tired and frightened. It was the first time he'd ever seen the combination of expressions on her face. She held a crumpled handkerchief in her left hand. McGarvey recognized that like the others she was looking for reassurance that everything would turn out fine.
“They'll be okay,” McGarvey told her. He was in charge. His blanket of protection covered them all.
“What's happening to us, Mr. Director?”
“I don't know, but I have a feeling that we'll find out pretty soon and put a stop to it.” He gathered his notes and the NIE and Watch Report and went across to the conference room.
Adkins, along with the deputy directors of Operations, Dave Whittaker, and Intelligence, Tommy Doyle, and a few of their key staff were gathered. Missing were Jared Kraus, who was heading up the investigation in the USVI, and the deputy director of Management and Services, whose departments, except for Security, had little to do with these kinds of operations. Dick Yemm sat in for Security and Bob Johnson for Technical Services.
Also still missing was Otto Rencke.
“No word yet on Otto?” McGarvey asked, taking his seat at the head of the long table. The conference room was windowless. It was mechanically
and electronically isolated from the rest of the building, and from the outside. Anything said or done here would leave the room only in the minds and the notes of the people present.
“He's not on the grounds, and he's not at his apartment,” Yemm said. “Major Horn isn't screaming for help, so I don't think that he's in any trouble. But I do have people out looking for him although we're starting to get spread out pretty thin, Mr. Director.”
“Keep on it,” McGarvey ordered. He opened his NIE briefing book, which outlined all the problems worldwide that the CIA was tasked to gather intelligence on. But before he began he looked at his people. Old friends, some of them. They had histories in the CIA. Just like Aldrich Ames, he supposed. But he wouldn't become another witch-hunter. The CIA could not withstand another full-scale mole hunt.
“We have to assume that there's a purpose to these attacks,” he said. “Some sort of an ultimate goal, other than my death.”
“We can't know that,” Adkins replied, as if he had expected McGarvey to say something like that.
“The first attack was against Otto—”
“He admitted working on the brakes himself, Mr. Director,” Johnson reminded.
“Yes, but I want his car checked again. Front to back, including fingerprints and any material containing DNA that you can find.”
“I'll send a forensics unit over first thing Monday morning.”
“Today,” McGarvey countered. “This morning, please.”
“Yes, sir,” Johnson said.
“The second attack was against me, my wife and Dick. We can't assume that the bomb was meant solely for me. The Semtex had probably been placed inside a beach bag that was the exact twin of the one my wife was carrying. Maybe she was the target.”
“I'm sorry, boss, but if it was anyone except for Mrs. M., she would be the prime suspect,” Yemm said. He didn't turn away from McGarvey's sudden flare of anger.
“What are you suggesting, Dick?” McGarvey asked coolly.
“We have to keep an open mind. Just because the bomb was in a look-alike beach bag doesn't mean you
weren't
the target.”
“What about my daughter? Where does she fit into the pattern? Her ski bindings were packed with Semtex. No mistaking who they were after.”
“Let's take the opposite argument then,” Adkins said. “Otto was a target. Your wife and now your daughter were targets.” Adkins shook his head.
“What's the objective? Get you to quit?” He glanced at the others around the table. “It wouldn't make me want to give up. Just the opposite. I'd be a hundred times more motivated to nail the bastards.”
“I agree,” Yemm said. “You were the target on Hans Lollick. Nothing else makes much sense. And Otto, if that was an attempted hit, was misdirection to make us look elsewhere. Same with your daughter.”
“Hell, they could be thumbing their noses at you,” Adkins said. “But I'll tell you one thing. It's someone very close to you. Someone who knows your schedules, your habits, your tradecraft. Someone you've crossed paths with before. Someone who's made a complete study of you. Like a stalker would.”
Another word, other than stalker, came unbidden to McGarvey, but he pushed it aside.
“And that includes most of us,” Yemm said. “Maybe Otto, too. And Todd Van Buren.”
A silence descended over them because of the enormity of what Adkins and Yemm were suggesting. Was it better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one, McGarvey wondered, as Voltaire had. Or was he required now to trust no one?
He had retired from field operations because he was sick and tired of constantly looking over his shoulder; forever wondering from which direction the bullet would come; forever looking for hidden meanings in what everyone said or did. He wanted a normal life. One in which he was finally free to love and be loved. Yet he'd wanted to make a difference. To prove himself worthy of his friends, his family, his sister in Utah, with whom he had not spoken in years.
Ever since Santiago, however, he'd had trouble trusting his own judgment, his own worth. Now he was being asked to mistrust everybody else. Everybody.
Get out. Run, run, while you still can. The monster was coming. Even now it was gaining on him, and he was afraid to look over his shoulder for fear of what he might see.
“That's one possibility, Dick,” he said, trying to sound reasonable. “But not the only one. We need to reexamine Otto's car, and we need to crossmatch the Semtex in Hans Lollick with what they used in Vail. Maybe we'll get lucky.” No one responded. They were waiting for him to make a point. Even now they wanted his protection. “We need a motive,” he finished lamely.
“Someone doesn't want you confirmed as DCI,” Adkins said. “That's simple.”
“Beyond that,” McGarvey said. “I can't buy someone thumbing his nose at me, as you suggest. It would be a stupid risk for him to take if he wanted me out or dead.” He shook his head. “Something else is going on that we don't know about.”
“Relieve yourself of duty, Mac,” Adkins suggested earnestly. “Postpone the Senate hearings. Take your wife and daughter to Cropley. Let us work it out.”
McGarvey wanted to be angry, but he couldn't be. Not with Adkins or the others. Elizabeth and the baby weighed too heavily on his mind. He looked down at the open NIE briefing book.
The telephone at his elbow chimed softly. He picked it up. “Yes.”
“I'm sorry to interrupt, Mr. Director,” Ms. Swanfeld said. “But there is trouble at your home.”
It was another hammerblow to his system. “What is it?” he asked mechanically.
“Security didn't say, except that Dr. Stenzel is en route, and that they would like you to come home immediately.”
“Tell them that I'm on my way,” McGarvey said. “But my wife is not to be moved from the house until I get there.”
“I understand.”
Yemm was already at the door.
McGarvey got to his feet. It was hard to keep his head on straight. “You might be right about Cropley after all,” he told Adkins. “In the meantime, I want you to call Fred Rudolph over at the Bureau. I'd like a twenty-four/ seven surveillance operation placed on the Russian embassy, specifically on their known or suspected SVR people.”
“Do you think the Russians are behind this?” Adkins asked. He seemed startled.
“I don't know. But we need to get some answers. Something that makes sense.”
 
 
McGarvey was always glad to get home. But this morning the house did not seem warm or inviting. The windows were dark and somehow forbidding, as if they contained horrible secrets within.
A neighbor, whom he didn't know, was in his driveway across the cul-de-sac. He wore a bright plaid robe. He'd come out to get the Sunday paper. He raised his hand and waved. McGarvey waved back.
“Brian Conners,” Yemm said at his shoulder. “His wife is Janet. They check out.”
McGarvey could only guess what the Connerses thought about the goings-on over here. If they knew the extent of the trouble, there would probably be a moving truck in their driveway right now.
The two officers in the van at the foot of the driveway had the windows down. They looked cold but very alert. Yemm gave them a curt nod, then hustled McGarvey up the walk to the house.
Peggy Vaccaro let them in. She wasn't smiling. She looked determined and a little frightened. A bruise was forming on the side of her face. The house was quiet. “Mrs. M. has finally settled down.”
“Where is she?” McGarvey asked.
“Upstairs in her bedroom. Janis is with her.” She helped McGarvey off with his coat.
“Dr. Stenzel hasn't been here yet?”
“Not yet,” the security officer said. She seemed to be on the verge of collapse. She looked exhausted.
McGarvey glanced toward the head of the stairs. The Russian Typhoon clock had stopped. He supposed he hadn't wound it, but he couldn't remember.
“What happened?” he asked.
Yemm had cocked his head to listen to something, and he stared at the alarm system keypad on the wall next to the closet door. The lights were out.
“She started making phone calls as soon as you left,” Peggy Vaccaro said. “She was working on some fund-raising event, because she told us that the best time to catch them with their checkbooks open was on Sunday mornings, when they were still home in their pajamas.”
“Did she come downstairs?”
Peggy shook her head. “She never left the bedroom. We brought her some coffee, and Janis and I took turns out in the hall by her door until she lost it.”
Janis Westlake came to the head of the stairs. She looked distraught. “She's okay now, Mr. Director,” she called down softly.
“It just happened? Out of the blue?” McGarvey asked. His gut was jumping all over the place. He didn't know where to land. “One minute she was raising money and the next she was hanging from the rafters?”
“She got one phone call—”
“From who?”
“I don't know,” Peggy said.
“Check it out,” McGarvey told Yemm. “Then what?” he asked the girl.
Peggy looked down, girding herself. “She made another call. It must have been Denver General, because she asked for room five-seventeen.” Peggy looked up. “She was too fast for us.”
McGarvey's heart was ripped in two. He resisted the urge to shove Peggy aside and race up the stairs. He needed more.

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