The Kill Zone Read online

  “That’s correct, Senator.”

  “Good. Let’s talk about Santiago, Chile. Operation Title Card.” She smiled. “You people at Langley come up with the most interesting code names.”

  “A machine picks them,” McGarvey said.

  “Yes, I know,” she said. “It’s too bad that the entire Agency couldn’t be run with such imagination.”

  Title Card was not on Paterson’s list. It was a Track III ops, but tame by comparison with some of the other operations McGarvey had been involved with. But she would milk it for all it was worth. Sensationalizing a dismal mission that had satisfied no one. Hopefully she was so blinded by her own agenda that she would miss the connection between Santiago and two other operations that sprung out of it. One involved a director of the CIA and a former U.S. senator. The other involved a president of the United States.

  “What would you like to know?” McGarvey asked.

  “Tell us about the operation, in your own words,” Brenda Madden said.

  “I was sent to assassinate Army general August Piñar, who had been indicted by a U.S. court for ordering the deaths of more than two thousand civilians, most of them dissident students, some of them the wives and mothers of the opposition party, and several of them Americans.”

  No one stirred. This was the first time in history that such a high-ranking officer of the CIA had made such an open admission.

  “Actually I didn’t catch up with him until three days after I got to Santiago and checked in with the chief of station. The general suspected that he was being targeted by us and barricaded himself with his wife and three children in their compound in San Antonio, about sixty miles outside the capital on the coast.

  “I had seen the documentation, the pictures of the bodies lined up inside the Estadio Chile, audio recordings of torture sessions, and three film clips of three groups of women and some children lined up on their knees in front of a long trench. Officers walked down the line firing their pistols into the backs of the prisoners’ heads. The bodies fell or were pushed into mass graves. Some of them were still alive, raising their arms for mercy.

  “General Piñar was in all three of the film clips. He personally shot at least a dozen women, and when it was over he refused to order his soldiers to fire the coups de grace into those still alive. Instead he ordered the bulldozers to bury them alive.”

  The picture had been so vivid in McGarvey’s mind that when he arrived in Santiago he was sure that he could smell the stench of the rotting corpses. He shuddered.

  All eyes were on him. Even Brenda Madden had nothing to say for the moment. Paterson looked at him with an expression of sorrow mixed with a horrified fascination.

  “I am what I am,” Mac had once admitted to Larry Danielle. “An assassin.” The acting DCI had been an old man then, with his own memories starting as a senior member of the OSS during the war, and participating in the formation of the CIA. The motto in the early days at the Agency had been Bigger than State by ‘48. They’d gotten their wish and then some. “What you are is a product of this business, dear boy,” Danielle told him in his fatherly way. “Get out while you still can.”

  Turn away now and run, run, run. Don’t look back. Get out while there’s still time to save Katy and Liz and the baby. Hide. Jump out of the light, and pull the shadows back in around you.

  “I got to him by subduing one of his guards, dressing in the man’s uniform and entering the compound. He was in bed asleep with his wife. I shot him once in the head with a silenced pistol, and then got out of there, back to Santiago. The next morning I flew home.”

  “Did you harm his wife or children?” Senator Clawson asked.

  “No.”

  Brenda Madden roused herself. But for the moment even she was subdued. “His wife had to have been damaged psychologically.”

  “I’m sure that she was,” McGarvey admitted. What he hadn’t told the committee, or anyone else for that matter, was that the general was not asleep. He and his wife had been in the act of lovemaking. His wife spotted McGarvey and was about to cry out, alerting the guards just outside, so McGarvey had killed her.

  “Who issued the orders?” Clawson asked.

  “Mr. Danielle. He was acting DCI at the time.”

  “That’s very convenient. He is now deceased,” Brenda Madden said. “But your orders were changed. A Senate intelligence oversight committee voted to reject the assassination, and you were ordered not to go through with it. Yet you ignored those orders and went ahead on your own. Isn’t that so?”

  “I wasn’t informed of the new orders until after I had returned to Washington.”

  “According to you.”

  “Yes, Senator, according to my sworn testimony, then and now.”

  “But you were sacked anyway, weren’t you?” she continued to hammer.

  “Yes.”

  Senator Clawson interrupted. “Knowing what you know now, would you have gone ahead with the assassination?”

  McGarvey had agonized over that question for a very long time. He could never forget the horrifed look on the woman’s face, knowing that she was about to die. It wasn’t until years later that he had learned that Christina Piñar had styled herself as a female Mengele. She had tortured many of the prisoners, and had even ordered the harvesting of their hair and gold fillings, the money going directly to her. Knowing that she was a monster just like her husband did not erase his memories, however. Nor did they ease his pain. He had murdered two defenseless people.

  He nodded. “Yes. General Piñar was a bad man. He would almost certainly have continued killing innocent people. The CIA thought that there was a real possiblity that he would take over the military government.”

  “Why were you fired?” Clawson asked.

  “Political expediency,” McGarvey answered without hesitation. “The CIA is an executive branch agency. The Senate was trying take control, as it has on several occasions since.”

  “Oversight—” Hammond blustered.

  “Yes, Senator, I agree that the CIA needs oversight. But responsible oversight.” He looked directly at Brenda Madden. “I have no doubt that I’ll read about my testimony in tomorrow’s Washington Post.”

  There was an angry stir from the senators as well as from the audience. Hammond banged his gavel for order.

  “You’re not doing yourself much good here,” Senator Clawson said, not unkindly.

  “You’ll either recommend to confirm me or you won’t. But for the sake of the men and women working for me I want you to understand that you’re putting their lives at risk by criminally sloppy security measures. If you want answers, then understand that the information you’re looking for could cause the United States a great deal of damage if it becomes public.”

  “Like everything you’ve ever been involved with, the outcomes have always been the same,” Brenda Madden interjected. “Bodies stacked like cord-wood. Yet you have the gall to sit there and point a finger at us?”

  Hammond was again banging his gavel for order.

  “I have just one further question for Mr. McGarvey,” Brenda Madden said.

  Hammond stopped his gavel in midswing, and Brenda Madden turned back to McGarvey. Her voice was calm now, soft, even reasonable.

  “Do you know how many men, and probably some women, whom you have murdered in your career, Mr. McGarvey?” she asked. “Do you even care?”

  “I know the number,” McGarvey replied softly. It was etched on his soul. “And yes, I do care.”

  They were coming for him now. Back from the grave. From a past that he could not change.

  This time he could not stand up and face them because he didn’t know who they were, or from what direction they were coming.

  ELEVEN

  “YOU’RE THE DCI. SOMEBODY’S ALWAYS AFTER THE DCI. IT’S WHY YOU HAVE BODYGUARDS AND RIDE AROUND IN AN ARMORED LIMO.”

  LANGLEY

  Early in the afternoon McGarvey and Paterson rode back to CIA headquarters. The hearin
g had dragged on for nearly five hours without letup and Mac was bone weary.

  “Reading the records and hearing about those kinds of things in person are two wholly different experiences,” Paterson said.

  “Living through them is even worse,” McGarvey replied. He managed a tired smile. “Still with me, Counselor? Still think that I’d make a good DCI?”

  Paterson nodded. “My friends call me Pat. If anything I know for sure now that you’ll make a damned fine DCI.” His lips compressed. “People like Senator Madden have their circles of friends. But they’re usually very isolated and they know it. Makes them bitter. Most Americans are reasonable people. That includes politicians.”

  McGarvey had to laugh. “You’re becoming more convinced, and I’m becoming less convinced.”

  “Come on, Mac, you can’t believe that the direction they’ve taken will hold up in the full Senate. It’s primarily Hammond and Madden who want to dump you. The others are, at worst, neutral.”

  McGarvey pulled himself out of his downward slide. “You’re right, Pat.” He glanced out the window at the snow piled along the road up to the headquarters building. Already it was dirty; mixed with salt, oil, dust. The next snowfall would cover it, but a day later it would be grungy again. He turned back to Paterson. “Postpone tomorrow’s hearing until Monday. I need a couple of days off. Can you do that without creating a firestorm?”

  “Sure. I don’t blame you; we all could use a break.”

  “I’m taking Katy out of town for a long weekend.” He caught Yemm’s eye in the rearview mirror.

  “Good. Don’t even think about this place while you’re gone,” Paterson said.

  They went through security together at the executive entrance. Paterson headed off to his office, leaving McGarvey to ride up with Yemm.

  “Do you want me to have travel section work out something?” Yemm asked.

  “Yeah. Let’s go down to Jeff Hamil’s place.” Hamil had been the deputy director of Operations during planning stages for the Bay of Pigs. He had set up a CIA-owned compound on St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands to train some of the top Cuban officers. In addition to the old sugar plantation great house with its long verandas, there were a half-dozen outbuildings, some of them barracks, that the National Park Service sometimes used for ranger training. Most of the island was national park land. McGarvey had been down there a couple of times with Roland Murphy, but Katy had never been. He expected that she would fall in love with the place, as he had. It was an idyllic tropical paradise.

  “When do we leave?”

  “I have to take care of a few things in the morning. Let’s say we leave at noon, and come back Sunday afternoon.”

  “Just you and Mrs. M.?” Yemm asked.

  “I’ll ask the kids if they want to tag along.”

  “Safety in numbers,” Yemm murmured.

  McGarvey turned. Yemm had an odd, hooded look on his face, as if he was hiding something. “What are you talking about?”

  “In case somebody wants to take a potshot at you, boss. The more people that are around you, the tougher it becomes for an assassin to get close.”

  “I didn’t know that anyone was after me.”

  Yemm shrugged. “You’re the DCI. Somebody’s always after the DCI. It’s why you have bodyguards and ride around in an armored limo.”

  Dick Adkins agreed to take care of the President’s Friday briefing. Mac would come in for a couple of hours to help put it together. There was nothing urgently pressing on the horizon. Even the Watch Report, which covered hot spots where fighting was taking place or was about to erupt, was mostly clear.

  “How’d it go on the Hill today?” he asked.

  “About how you’d suspect,” McGarvey said.

  Adkins shook his head. “I don’t know why the hell you put up with it. If it was me, I’d tell them to take the job and shove it where the light never shines.” He was bitter. “Murphy finally did, but at least he had a few friends up on the Hill. You don’t have anybody. They all want to see you dead.”

  “Is that the consensus around here?” McGarvey shot back. He was getting irascible. His confrontation with Otto yesterday afternoon still weighed on his mind. Last night Katy had been in one of her dark moods because Liz hadn’t called her. Senator Madden had gotten under his skin. Even Yemm had sounded a bleak note of discord. And now, Adkins.

  “You know what I mean, Mac,” Adkins said, not backing down. He looked like he wanted to hit something.

  “No, I don’t.”

  Adkins finally turned away. “Ah, hell. What’s the use anyway?”

  “What’s the matter? Is it Ruth?”

  “She’s made up her mind to go the radiation and chemo route, rather than a mastectomy. She’ll be sick as hell for months, but she wants to stay … intact for as long as possible, even though it might kill her.”

  “I’m sorry, Dick.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you want me to stick around for the weekend? Katy and I can go later.”

  Adkins shook his head. “You need the break worse than I do. I gotta keep busy, and you need to recharge your batteries for the big fight coming up.”

  “Do you think that the Senate is going to bounce me?”

  “Of course not. I meant keeping you alive once you’re sworn in. There’re a lot of people out there who could come gunning for you and feel like they were doing the world a big favor.”

  Sitting alone at his desk, McGarvey asked himself the same question that Adkins had posed: Why the hell was he putting up with the pressure? He had an inkling of what a newly sworn in president felt on his first day in the White House. Despite all the Secret Service protection he was given, he was still vulnerable to some nut with voices in his head.

  But if someone decided to come after the Director of Central Intelligence, it would most likely be a professional. The kind of man McGarvey had been. Still was.

  He turned and looked out the windows at the snowy countryside. If someone was coming, it would be a person out of his past. Someone with a grudge? he wondered. Or someone with a darker purpose?

  It would have to be someone who knew about his habits, about his comings and goings. Somebody who even now was watching him. Waiting for him to make a mistake. Waiting for him to slip up; one lapse of caution; the one time he left the house without his bodyguard, or without a weapon.

  He shook his head. Or most likely no one was coming. Paranoia was not just a field officer’s malady.

  In the meantime the CIA needed help. A top-to-bottom reorganization that several directors before him had tried to do but failed. He was just egotistical enough to think that he could do it.

  The President called on the direct line. “I think I’m going to recommend some remedial reading for you. Political science. You need it.”

  “I’m not going to give them the answers they want, Mr. President,” McGarvey said. “And without that I’ll never get confirmed.”

  The President chuckled. “You let me worry about that part. The budget bill is coming up, which gives me some wiggle room. So long as you stick to the facts, you’ll come out okay. But when you try to play their game, they’ll eat you alive.”

  “I’m not a politician—”

  “Nobody expects you are. But as DCI you’re going to have to deal with the bastards whether you like it or not. So you might as well start practicing right now.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Of course I am,” the President said. “You can start by getting back on track with Hammond and especially with Madden. And before you jump up and down, hear me out. Those two are going to be on your back for as long as you’re the DCI. That’s a fact of political life. But Hammond wants to be president, so that’s something I can use against him. And Brenda Madden has a deep dark secret that causes her to be afraid of me and be pissed off at the same time. She’s dangerous, but she can be reasoned with, as long as you don’t try to score points off her. Go along with whatever she says. Answer he
r questions with direct answers. Eventually she’ll stick her foot in her mouth enough times so that Hammond will be forced to put a lid on her.”

  “Are you going to share the secret with me, Mr. President?”

  “Nope. Just take it a step at a time, and we’ll get through this.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “If I didn’t need you, if the Agency and your country didn’t need you, again, I wouldn’t have asked you to take the job. The CIA is in a mess. Fix it, Mac, or we’re going to find ourselves dead in the water as a nation.”

  “Does that mean I can’t shoot her?” McGarvey asked.

  The President laughed. “Anything but.”

  McGarvey had his secretary telephone his son-in-law. She got him on his cell phone. He and Elizabeth were on their way back from the Farm in Williamsburg.

  “How are the roads?”

  “Slippery,” Van Buren replied. “But we’re just a couple of miles from 495.” They lived in Falls Church, so they were less than ten miles from home.

  “If it doesn’t get any worse, how about coming over for dinner tonight?”

  “Good idea,” Van Buren agreed immediately. “Liz wants to talk to her mother, and she wants to get her skis. We’re going out to Vail for a long weekend unless you need us in town.”

  “What’s the doc say?” McGarvey asked, alarmed.

  “He told her to take it easy, that’s all.”

  “We’ll see you in a few hours then.”

  “Right,” Van Buren said.

  McGarvey phoned Yemm to tell him that Todd and Elizabeth were skiing at Vail this weekend, so it would be just the two of them going down to St. John.

  Next he tried to reach Otto, but Ms. Swanfeld found out that he was still in conference with Dr. Stenzel. McGarvey went downstairs and used his security card to gain access to the observation room. They no longer used one-way mirrors; they were too obvious. Instead, they employed hidden cameras. Rencke’s image was projected on the high-definition large-screen closed-circuit television monitor on the wall.

  Two of Dr. Stenzel’s assistants were monitoring the interview and taking notes. They started to get up, but McGarvey waved them back.