Critical Mass Page 12

  “If this group of ex-STASI officers is the same group who went after the engineers at ModTec, and from what you’re telling me it looks as if that’s the case, and if they’re being funded by the Japanese, possibly the government …”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but there’s no evidence to that effect.”

  “If that’s the case, Roland, then it could mean that the Japanese are in the market for nuclear weapons technology.”

  Murphy sighed deeply and sat back. “I simply don’t know.”

  The President had another thought. It was clear from his expression that he was still on the same path Murphy had gone down.

  “Could this walkie-talkie the French found have been designed and manufactured by a Japanese company?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Is it likely?” the President pressed.

  “I can’t answer that, sir,” Murphy said. There was more to come.

  The President’s eyes narrowed. “What was Jim Shirley involved with when he was assassinated in Tokyo?”

  “He was meeting with a man who claimed to be a Belgian banking adviser to a consortium of businesses in Japan. But he was an imposter, and there is no such consortium.”

  “Coincidence?”

  “On the surface one would have to say no. But only on the surface. There is absolutely no solid connection between Japan and this STASI group. Nor has there been the slightest hint that the Japanese, that anyone in Japan, has the slightest interest in nuclear weapons technology.”

  “Give me a reading on this, Roland,” the President said.

  Murphy shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but I can’t do that.”

  “What is being done?”

  “We’re investigating ModTec to see if anyone else has been approached, and to see if the technology has already changed hands. We’re also looking into the French assertion that the STASI accounts exist and that they’ve received Japanese currency payments.”

  “And in Japan?”

  “We’re investigating Jim Shirley’s murder, of course. But beyond that … I’ll need your authorization. Considering the pending trade agreement between our countries, if it were to come out that the CIA is spying against Japan it would go badly.”

  “You have my authorization, Roland,” the President said. He sat forward. “Let me make myself perfectly clear. You are to take this investigation to its logical conclusion. No matter what resources you have to use to do it, and no matter which nation you’re led to scrutinize.”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “I want results, Roland. Soon.”

  Carrara came up as soon as Murphy returned from the White House. The DDO was harried. He’d been on the job, or at least in the building, for more than seventy-two hours. Ever since 145 had been shot down.

  “We’ve got the green light to step up the investigation in Tokyo,” Murphy said.

  “How far can we go?” Carrara asked.

  “All the way, Phil. You’ve got carte blanche on this one.”

  “If we’re caught there’ll be a lot of political trouble, not only from the Japanese, but from the Swiss as well.”

  “This is your operation …” Murphy said, but Carrara interrupted, which in itself was a mark of his tiredness.

  “Yes, it is, sir. But I just wanted to make sure that everyone understands exactly what we’re up against. Lynch thinks that the Action Service is playing us both ends against the middle, and although Kelley Fuller is going back over, she’s going to be hard to control.”

  Murphy was impatient.

  “What I’m getting at, Mr. Director, is that so far as I see it, either operation could blow up in our faces.”

  “We’ll take the risk,” Murphy said. “Now, where the hell is McGarvey? Is he here in Washington or isn’t he?”

  “He came through Dulles last night, but then he disappeared.”

  “Find him,” the DCI ordered.

  “We’re watching his ex-wife’s house. He’ll show up there sooner or later.”

  “Good. The minute he does, I want him up here.”

  20

  OTTO RENCKE THOUGHT IN COLORS. HE HAD BEEN DOING SO for seven years, ever since he’d stumbled across a series of tensor calculus transformations concerning bubble memories that he could not visualize.

  He’d hit on the notion of thinking of his calculations in a real-world fashion, coming up at length with the question of how to explain color to a person who’d been born blind.

  With mathematics, of course. And he’d devised the system, which turned out to be his bubble memory transformations. If it worked in one direction, there was no reason to think it couldn’t work in the other.

  Lavender, for example, was among the simplest of all. In his mind’s eye he could visualize an entire multidimensional array of complex calculations that described a many-tiered and interlocking series of traps leading into the CIA’s computer system.

  Someone had found and negated his old screen door program, which would have allowed him fairly easy access, replacing it with a complex system of fail-safes. Enter the program from the outside, or in an improper manner, and the incoming circuit would be seized, traced to its source, and an alarm automatically issued … all without the intruder knowing he’d been discovered.

  A few minutes after ten in the morning, Rencke suddenly smiled.

  On his main monitor, which glowed lavender, the CIA’s logo appeared in the upper left hand corner, beneath which the agency’s computer asked him:

  WELCOME TO ARCHIVES

  DO YOU WISH TO SEE A MENU?

  He jumped up and went into the kitchen where a half-dozen cats swarmed around him, meowing insistently. “Yes, my little darlings, I hear you,” he cried. “Patience. The color is lavender and you dears must have patience.”

  Opening several cans of cat food and distributing them around the kitchen floor, he took a nearly full half-gallon carton of skim milk back into the living room, drinking from it as he went, milk spilling down his front and soaking his sweatshirt. But he didn’t give a damn.

  “The sonsabitches thought they could fuck me,” he shouted, dancing around the lavender screen. “But they were wrong. Hoo, boy, they were wrong!”

  McGarvey paid off his cabby and stood for a moment or two at the end of the long driveway leading up to his ex-wife’s house in Chevy Chase. The country club was across the street, and in the distance he heard someone shout: “Fore!”

  The house was an expensive two-story colonial set well back on a half-acre of manicured lawn. A half-dozen white pillars supported a broad overhang protecting a long front veranda.

  Whatever Kathleen was or was not, he thought, starting up the walk, she was a classy woman. They’d been divorced for eight years now, after a twelve-year marriage, and it was often difficult for McGarvey to remember clearly what their life together had been like, but it had been stylish.

  Stormy at the end, though, in those days when he was gone more than he was at home. She’d guessed, in an offhanded way, that he actually worked for the CIA, that he was, in her words, a macho James Bond spy. But she’d fortunately never guessed the true extent of what he did, the fact that he had killed people in the line of his assignments.

  But she’d always maintained a lovely, proper home (she had come into their marriage not wealthy, but certainly independent), and in public she presented a self-assured, dignified image. Not aloof, or snobbish, simply well put together.

  It had come to a showdown: He’d had to choose either her, or his career. He’d just returned from Santiago where’d he’d taken out a Chilean general who would have probably taken over the country by coup. But his orders had been changed in midstream. The general was not to be killed. Even though the change in orders reached McGarvey too late, he’d been fired from the CIA.

  On that night, not knowing what had happened, Kathleen had issued him the ultimatum. Even though her demand that he quit the business had been a moot point at that moment, he’
d turned her down.

  “We cannot have a marriage in which one of us dictates the other’s life,” he told her.

  “You’re right,” she said, and he’d turned around and walked out, not even bothering to unpack his bag from his trip.

  He’d been younger then, more sure of himself, more arrogant, and yet in some respects more frightened that something out of his past would be coming after him now that he no longer had the backing of the Agency.

  What he hadn’t counted on was the loneliness, and the missing his daughter, who when he had left was eleven years old.

  Kathleen answered the door almost immediately. She was dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt, her feet bare, her hair pinned up in back, and no makeup, yet she looked like a model out of a fashion magazine. Her neck was long and delicate, her features precise yet not hard. But it was her eyes that most people noticed first. They were large beneath highly arched eyebrows, and were a startling, almost unreal shade of green.

  She smiled. “Hello, Kirk. When did you get back?”

  “Last night. But it was too late to call.”

  She stepped back. “Come in,” she said.

  He followed her through the house to the large kitchen overlooking the swimming pool. The sliding glass doors were open, the odor of chlorine sharp.

  “Sorry about the awful smell, but the poolman was just here,” she said. “Coffee?”

  “Sure,” McGarvey said, sitting at the counter. “What have you heard from Liz lately?”

  “Elizabeth,” Kathleen corrected automatically. “Everything is fine. She loves school, but she misses home a little. That I got between the lines.”

  “Does she need anything?”

  “No,” Kathleen said, bringing their coffee over. “She called Saturday. Said everyone at school was talking about the Swissair flight that was shot down …” She stopped in mid-sentence.

  “Everybody in Paris was talking about it too,” McGarvey said, sidestepping Kathleen’s next question. “There’ll always be crazies out there.”

  “The news said that the terrorist had been cornered by an unidentified American.”

  “So I heard.”

  Kathleen was staring at him. “Are you home for good this time?” she asked stiffly.

  “Almost.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Almost?” she asked. “Almost, as in, not yet?”

  “There’s something I have to take care of first …”

  “No,” Kathleen said simply.

  “I’m sorry, Katy, but it’s important.”

  Kathleen reared back. “My name is Kathleen,” she screeched. “Not Katy.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “I want you to leave,” she said. “Now! I want you out of my house, and I don’t ever want to see you back here!”

  The doorbell rang again.

  “All right,” she screamed. She spun on her heel and stormed back out to the stairhall.

  McGarvey got up and went to the kitchen door as Kathleen opened the front door, and he just caught a glimpse of two men dressed in light slacks and sportcoats standing on the veranda.

  Kathleen said something that he couldn’t quite catch.

  McGarvey ducked back. They definitely were Company. The Agency would have to know that he would show up here sooner or later. They’d merely misjudged their timing, but not by very much. Whatever Murphy wanted, it had to be important to go to these lengths.

  In the old days, Kathleen had always kept the car keys on a hook by the garage door. It was tidy, she said, and the keys would never be misplaced.

  He hurried silently across the kitchen and into the laundry room. A set of car keys was hanging on a hook next to the door into the garage. Snatching them, he slipped into the garage and got behind the wheel of Kathleen’s 460 SL. With one hand he started the car, while with the other he hit the garage door opener.

  As the service door slowly rumbled open, he watched the door from the laundry room.

  It was snatched open a couple of seconds later, and McGarvey got a brief glimpse of a man in a sport coat. He dropped the gearshift into drive and slammed the gas pedal to the floor, the low-slung car shooting out of the garage, just clearing the still-opening main door by no more than two inches.

  At the bottom of the driveway, he turned east, the opposite direction that the plain gray government Chevrolet was facing, and was around the corner at the end of the block before the two men who’d come after him even had a chance to cross the street.

  The Agency knew for sure now that he was in Washington, and that he was on the run from them. They would be pulling out all the stops to find him. Nobody said no to the general.

  McGarvey parked the Mercedes near Union Station, leaving the keys under the floor mat, then walked a half-dozen blocks down to Constitution Avenue where he caught a cab, ordering the driver to take him back to Georgetown. The police would find the car and would return it to Kathleen.

  “I want you to stop at a grocery store, or corner market on the way,” McGarvey said.

  “Sir?”

  “I need to pick up some Twinkies.”

  21

  MCGARVEY HAD A FAIRLY HIGH DEGREE OF CONFIDENCE THAT Rencke’s intrusion into the CIA’s computer system would not be detected. Nevertheless he approached the house in Holy Rood Cemetery with precautions, passing twice from different directions to make certain the place wasn’t being watched.

  There were a few people visiting graves, and a groundskeeper was mowing the lawn near the Whitehaven Parkway entrance, but no one seemed interested in the house. Nor was anyone stationed at the entrance so far as McGarvey was able to determine.

  He crossed the gravel driveway, mounted the three steps to the porch and knocked on the front door. Without waiting for Rencke to answer it, he let himself in.

  The house was very still. The odors of Rencke’s cats mingled in the air with the odors of electronics equipment. But nothing moved. It was as if the place had been abandoned.

  He’d brought a bag of Twinkies for Rencke. Laying them on the hall table, he took out his Walther, eased the safety catch on the off position, and moved silently to the archway into the living room.

  Nothing seemed out of place except that only one computer monitor seemed to be working. Everything else had apparently been shut off. The one screen that was lit showed nothing but the color lavender.

  Turning back into the stairhall, McGarvey stopped and cocked an ear to listen. Still there were no sounds from anywhere in the house.

  It was possible that Rencke’s computer hacking had been detected and he’d been arrested, but McGarvey doubted it.

  “Otto?” he called out.

  There was no answer. He went to the foot of the stairs and stopped again to listen. Had there been a movement on the second floor?

  “It’s me. It’s Mac.”

  A toilet flushed, and Rencke, still wearing the same clothes from last night, appeared at the head of the stairs.

  “Did you bring my Twinkies?” He asked, yawning as he came down.

  McGarvey smiled and nodded. The man was incredible. “I brought them,” he said, putting away his gun. “The house was quiet, I thought something was wrong.”

  “What were you intending on doing, shooting my cats?” Rencke asked. “They’re outside. Now, my Twinkies, I’m starving.”

  McGarvey gave Rencke the bag and followed him back to the kitchen. Unwashed dishes were piled in the sink, and a pot of something had been allowed to cook down to a charred mass on the stove. The burner had been turned off, but the pan had been left as is. Empty cat food cans littered the floor, and in a back hallway, several litter boxes were full to overflowing.

  Rencke got a carton of milk from the refrigerator. “Did you see it?”

  “What?”

  “My beautiful lavender. Or are you color-blind?”

  “I saw it,” McGarvey said. “Did you get in?”

  “Just like raping a willing virgin,” Rencke said, brushing past McGarv
ey and heading back to the front of the house. “With ease. With ease.”

  “What did you find out?” McGarvey asked, following him.

  Rencke plunked down in front of the lavender terminal. “It’s a scary world out there, Mac. And it’s getting scarier, if you know what I mean.”

  He opened a package of Twinkies, ate them both and then drank nearly half the milk, some of it spilling down his front. No crumbs or milk, however, got anywhere near the equipment.

  “Some Company hotshot evidently found my rear-entry program and replaced it with a fairly sophisticated system of interlocks. They’re finally starting to use their heads over there. A day late and in this case a dollar short, but they’re thinking.” Rencke drank some more milk. “I don’t think there are more than three people in the world besides me who could have gotten in like I did.”

  “Were you detected?”

  “No,” Rencke said. “At least I don’t think so. But this is hot stuff, Mac. I mean short of Russian tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue, the hottest.”

  “Did you make printouts?”

  Rencke was eating another Twinkie. He nodded. “But when I was done I shredded the lot,” he said, his mouth full. “I didn’t want that kind of shit lying around here. I’d rather have a hundred ks of blow with a sign on it on my front porch.”

  McGarvey had pulled up a chair. “Tell me what you found out.”

  “First I want something from you.”

  “Name it.”

  “You said Karl Boorsch was the rocket man at Orly last week. What were you doing there? What was your relationship with him and this STASI group?”

  McGarvey told Rencke everything, including his history with Marta and the Swiss Federal Police, Colonel Marquand’s information, and about the pair who’d showed up at Kathleen’s house this morning.

  “You’re certain they were Company muscle?” Rencke asked.

  “It was a Company car. I have no reason at this point to suspect they were anything but Murphy’s people.”

  “You would have been leaving your ex in a hell of a jam otherwise,” Rencke said thoughtfully.