The Kill Zone Page 31

  Rick Ames was a drunk, and he liked to spend more money than he earned. On top of that he had a raging ego that allowed him to believe that he was truly smarter than everyone else. So he had sold out to the Russians.

  He was no different than most other spies, including Robert Hanssen, who traded his secrets for money. He, too, had had a huge ego, thinking that he was better than everyone else. And he, too, had had his point of weakness in the stripper whom he had befriended and supported.

  Of course for every spy who turned out to have his vulnerabilities, there were ten thousand really vulnerable men who were not spies.

  McGarvey simply could not be certain about Adkins. Not now, not with so much going on around him. Even if it meant pushing away the very people who could help him the most, he had to have people he could trust.

  Whittaker saw the struggle in McGarvey’s face. “Sorry, Mac. I shouldn’t have run off at the mouth like that.”

  “Yeah, I know the feeling,” McGarvey said. “Are you still interested in the job? Because I need somebody up here who knows the drill.”

  Whittaker nodded. “Am I going to have to move into Dick’s office?”

  “It’d make life easier.”

  Whittaker nodded again. “I have a few things to square away with my people first, but I’ll be in place by noon tomorrow.”

  “Fair enough. You’ll be briefed then.”

  “Right,” Whittaker said. He headed for the door, but McGarvey stopped him.

  “One thing, Dave. I don’t want you talking to Dick until he’s cleared.”

  Whittaker wanted to object, but he realized the necessity of keeping his distance. “Okay,” he said.

  When Whittaker was gone, McGarvey flipped through the phone messages his secretary had handed him. Fred Rudolph had called a couple of minutes after five, followed by his son-in-law Todd, and then Stenzel.

  It was after six, so he told Ms. Swanfeld that she could leave for the day, and gave Yemm the heads-up that there would be no swim today, and that they were going over to the hospital as soon as he cleared up a few things on his desk.

  Rudolph was still at his desk in the J. Edgar Hoover Building when McGarvey’s call went through.

  “Whoever says government servants don’t earn their pay is nuts,” McGarvey said.

  “What else would I be doing if I wasn’t here? Having a drink in front of the fireplace at home while my wife made dinner and my adoring children brought me my slippers and pipe?”

  “You don’t smoke. And anyway you’d be shoveling off your driveway. Have you looked outside lately?”

  “No, and I don’t want to. That’s where all the bad guys are lurking,” Rudolph said. “The Russians are hunkering down. Not just Runkov, but all the Russians.”

  “What about the ambassador?”

  “Except for Korolev. He’s skiing with his family in Aspen. All that’s left at the embassy is a skeleton staff. And it’s the same in New York. The entire Russian delegation to the UN went on recess.”

  “When?”

  “Over the past few days,” the FBI’s Special Investigative Division director said. “But not one of them has returned to Moscow.”

  “Have you found Runkov yet?”

  “Yeah, he’s been home all along. Just keeping his head down like all the others. We got a good picture of him through an upstairs bedroom window. But he hasn’t been outside even to pick up his newspaper.”

  “Korolev is skiing, and everyone else is hiding.”

  “Whatever is going to happen will go down soon,” Rudolph said. “Maybe it’s time that you duck for cover yourself.”

  “I’m considering it.”

  “I think you should do more than that.”

  “Right, Fred. Keep me posted, would you?” McGarvey said.

  “Okay. But let me know what you decide.”

  “Will do,” McGarvey promised, and he hung up. Rudolph was wrong. The Russians had been lying low for more than the past few days. Runkov’s absence last week at the hearings had sent a clear enough message. Something that they did not want to get blamed for was about to happen.

  In the meantime, he would have Internal Affairs start Adkins’s background investigation before they got the FBI involved.

  He got an outside line. The number Todd had left was for his cell phone. His son-in-law answered on the second ring.

  “Hello.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Hi, Mac. We’re home. But you better get over to the hospital before it’s too late. Mrs. M. was agitating to get out of there.”

  That was what Stenzel’s call was probably about. “I’ll head over there right now. But what’s going on, Todd? Why’d you take Liz home? She was supposed to stay the night.”

  “I couldn’t stop her. She and her mother had a long talk, and when Liz came out she was pissed. She insisted that we were going home.”

  “What’d they talk about?”

  “I can’t get a thing out of her, except that she wants to get back to work.”

  “It’s out of the question.”

  “That’s what I told her. But she thinks that something’s going to happen any minute now.”

  “So do I,” McGarvey said, making his decision. “I’m taking Liz and her mother out to the safe house first thing in the morning.”

  “That’s a good idea. I can get back to work and help stop this guy, whoever the hell he is.”

  “Do you have a security detail out there with you?” McGarvey asked. He was having strong premonitions of disaster now. Especially because Todd and Rudolph were telling him practically the same things.

  “Parked out front.”

  “Okay, stay tight for tonight, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “All right,” Todd said. “But I meant what I said before. When we get this guy he will not stand trial.”

  McGarvey closed his eyes for a second. That was the old way. His old way. “I hear you,” he said, and he hung up.

  He called for Yemm, but the night officer of Security said that Yemm was on his way up.

  Next he called Stenzel, catching him in his car about a mile from the hospital. He was on his way back to the CIA. He sounded out of breath, as if he was sprinting down the highway and not driving.

  “Your wife checked herself out of the hospital about fifteen minutes ago, Mr. Director.”

  A cold fist clutched at McGarvey’s heart. “Why didn’t you stop her?”

  “I’m her doctor, not her jailer,” Stenzel shot back angrily. “Besides, I was going to release her in the morning anyway. She’s not cured. She’s a long way from that. But she is much better.”

  “Are her security people with her?” McGarvey demanded at the same moment Yemm walked into his office. His bodyguard nodded that they were.

  “They weren’t very happy, but there wasn’t much that they could do except go along with her.”

  “Okay, I’m heading for home now. Is there anything else I need to know? Anything that I can do to help?”

  “Get her out of town, Mr. Director,” Stenzel offered. “I don’t give a damn where you take her, just make sure that it’s someplace safe.”

  “First thing in the morning.”

  “About time. Let me know where you wind up, because I want to keep seeing her. I think that I might be able to get a handle on her problem if I have just a little more time. I’m almost there.”

  “I know the feeling,” McGarvey said for the second time in less than ten minutes.

  Yemm got McGarvey’s coat from the closet. He was agitated. “I just found out about it myself a few minutes ago,” he said. “Janis called me and said that they were headed back to the house.”

  “Who else is with her?” McGarvey asked, as they headed out of his office and down the corridor to the executive elevator.

  “Peggy Vaccaro is with them. They got one of the surveillance vans that Tony Parker and John Hernandez were using. They all went together.”

  “Did you cal
l for backup?”

  “We’ll get to your house first,” Yemm said. “And at this point there’s nothing wrong, boss. Mrs. M. checked herself out of the hospital, and she agreed to do what her security team told her to do.”

  “Where are they right now?”

  “When I talked to Tony they were just leaving the hospital parking lot. It’ll take them fifteen minutes to get to your house. It’ll take us thirty.”

  Downstairs they got into the DCI’s limo. As soon as they cleared the building, McGarvey tried his home phone number. On the second ring it rolled over to his own cell phone. Katy wasn’t home yet.

  He lowered the bulletproof partition to the front seat. “There’s no answer at the house. Try the security detail.”

  Yemm had the car phone in his hand. “They’re coming up on the Connecticut Avenue exit. Do you want me to call the MHP for backup? They might have a unit in the vicinity.”

  “Do you think it’s necessary?”

  “We’d have to give them an explanation,” Yemm said. “Do you want to talk to your wife?”

  McGarvey looked out the window as they merged onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway. There was a lot of traffic tonight, slowed by a heavy, wind-whipped snow that was already piling into drifts. “No,” he said. “Just get me home as quickly as you can, Dick. It’s a bad night.”

  “That it is,” Yemm replied.

  Who to trust? Who to trust? He kept coming back to the same conundrum: Who can a spy trust? Who can he believe in? His circle of friends and close acquaintances, people he surrounded himself with, people who meant the most to him, was very small. And it was dwindling even more every day.

  Otto had gone off the deep end again. Yemm was acting strangely. Adkins was under extreme pressure. And even Todd wasn’t himself. Everybody had gone crazy all of a sudden.

  McGarvey sat back in his seat and unconsciously reached inside the coat for a cigarette, remembering that he had quit. Dr. Anatoli Nikolayev had apparently stirred up a hornet’s nest in Moscow six months ago. The SVR was looking for him, but either they weren’t looking very hard, or he was better than they were. Knowing Baranov and the people who worked for him in the old Department Viktor days, he had a pretty fair idea that it was Nikolayev leading the SVR investigators around in circles.

  This whole bizarre situation had a Baranov stench to it. But the general was dead. Long dead. McGarvey could feel the recoil of his pistol when he put a bullet in the Russian’s brain.

  But if it was Baranov after all, if it was some long-range scheme that he had placed on automatic before his death, there would have to be people around with strong ties to that past.

  Someone like poor Evita Perez and Darby Yarnell and that crowd. All of them were dead, too. But there were undoubtedly others. Sleepers, the Russians used to call them. Deep-penetration agents who worked in ordinary jobs in their host countries. Barbers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, even intelligence officers. People who lay low, sometimes for years, until one day they were called into action. People whose loyalty was assured because they were paid well, and because of the promise that when their missions fully developed they would hit the jackpot—a big payoff.

  They crossed the river on I-495 and a few miles later merged with I-270, which formed the northern curve of the Beltway around Washington.

  McGarvey looked up. Yemm was speaking on the phone. He had sped up considerably despite the heavy traffic and the increasingly slippery road. Something was wrong.

  “What’s going on, Dick?”

  “Parker’s not answering. Neither is Janis. I’m trying Peggy’s cell phone now.” Yemm’s replied were curt.

  McGarvey speed dialed his home number. Kathleen answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

  McGarvey forced himself to calm down, to keep an upbeat tone in his voice. “Hi, sweetheart. I’m on the way home. What’re the girls fixing for dinner?”

  “Don’t be mad, Kirk. I just couldn’t stay another night in that hospital. The place was driving me crazy.”

  “I’m glad you’re home. I missed you,” McGarvey assured her. “You must have just got there. Anyway let me talk to Peggy for just a minute, would you?”

  “They’re still out talking to the guys in the van and the chase car,” Kathleen said lightly.

  “What chase car’s that?” McGarvey asked. All the gravity suddenly leaked out of the limo. It felt as if the elevator cables had snapped.

  “It’s a Mercedes. Dark blue.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m standing at the front window looking at it.”

  “Listen to me, Kathleen. I want you to lock the front door, then go upstairs to our bedroom. There’s a pistol in my nightstand. I’ve shown you how to operate the safety.”

  “Kirk?” Kathleen’s voice was small.

  “Do it right now, Katy.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Maybe nothing, but just in case there is, I want you to do that for me right now. Lock the door, then go upstairs and get the gun.”

  “All right, if you say so,” Kathleen said.

  McGarvey held his hand over the phone. “My wife’s alone in the house. She says that Janis and Peggy are talking to the guys in the van and in a chase car. Dark blue Mercedes.”

  “No chase car, boss,” Yemm said grimly. “I’m alerting Maryland Highway Patrol and our people. Tell her to sit tight, we’ll be there in a flash.”

  “Okay, Kirk, the front door is locked,” Kathleen said.

  “Are the girls still out by the van?”

  “Just a minute,” she said. “Yes, they’re still there.”

  “Can you see inside the car? How many people there are? Maybe just the driver?”

  “I can’t see a thing. I think the windows are tinted or something.”

  “Go upstairs now and get the gun. I don’t want you to let anybody in the house. Nobody, do you have that?”

  “Nobody except for you, Kirk?” she asked in a tiny voice.

  McGarvey wanted to reach through the phone and hold her. “Just me, Katy. I’m coming to you as fast as I can.”

  “Please hurry, darling.”

  “Go upstairs, but stay on the phone with me,” McGarvey said.

  They came to the Connecticut Avenue exit, and the limo’s rear started to drift out as Yemm took the ramp too fast. But he was an expert driver, and after the car fishtailed twice he had it back under control, blasting through an orange light and heading south, through traffic.

  “MHP has a unit about ten minutes out,” Yemm said.

  “Are you upstairs yet, Katy?” McGarvey asked. He cradled the phone between his cheek and shoulder.

  “Yes.”

  McGarvey took out his pistol and checked to make sure that it was ready to fire, then laid it on his lap. “Get the gun.”

  “I’m getting it.”

  “I want you to switch the safety off,” McGarvey said, as Yemm raced through a red light. Several cars slid off the side of the street into parked cars.

  “It’s off.”

  “Now I want you to turn off the bedroom lights, and sit down in the corner so you can see the bedroom door.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “Just do it, Kathleen,” McGarvey ordered. “Then stay there until I get home. If anyone comes through the door, I don’t care who, besides me, I want you to point the gun at them and pull the trigger. And keep pulling the trigger.”

  “Hurry,” she said. “I’m frightened.”

  “We’re only a few blocks away,” McGarvey said.

  Yemm took the Mac 10 submachine gun from its holder on the transmission hump, took his left hand off the steering wheel long enough to yank back the cocking handle on top of the receiver, then powered down the passenger-side window. “I’ll make one quick pass,” he said.

  “Concentrate on the Mercedes, I’ll watch the van,” McGarvey said, powering down his window.

  “Kirk, are you talking to me?” Kathleen asked.

&n
bsp; “No, sweetheart, I’m talking to Dick. Hang on.”

  Yemm slowed down as they passed the golf course, and he turned down Country Club Drive. The house was at the end of a cul-de-sac. The van was parked in front, but there was no sign of the Mercedes. Nor was there any sign of the girls or of Parker or Hernandez.

  “We must have just missed them,” Yemm said.

  “Katy, are you okay? No one has tried to come into the house?”

  “I’m okay, Kirk. All the doors are locked.”

  “Sit tight, we’re right outside.”

  Yemm raised the Mac 10 as he drove slowly past the van. There was no movement. The van’s windows were all closed, and they couldn’t see anyone inside. It simply looked like a vehicle parked on the side of the street.

  They drove around the circle and stopped in the middle of the street just behind and to the left of the van. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the neighborhood. The snowfall was heavier than it had been at Langley, and already whatever tire marks or footprints there might have been had completely filled in.

  “Stay here, Mr. Director,” Yemm said, getting out of the car.

  “Yeah, right,” McGarvey replied. He climbed out of the limo on the opposite side from the van, behind Yemm.

  “Goddammit—”

  “I’ll cover your back, Dick,” McGarvey said. “But take it nice and easy.”

  Yemm decided not to argue. He moved around the front of the limo. McGarvey slid into place behind him so that he had a clear sight line over the long hood.

  Keeping the Mac 10 trained on the driver’s side window, Yemm gingerly approached the van. He bent down and looked under the vehicle, then studied the area around it before he cautiously looked through the window.

  For several long seconds he just stood there, but then he lowered his gun and looked over his shoulder. “They’re all in the back.”

  The hairs prickled on McGarvey’s neck. He knew what Yemm was going to say next.

  “There’s a lot of blood. I think they’re all dead.”

  “Christ.” McGarvey turned and looked at the house. “Wait for the backup,” he shouted, and he sprinted across the street and up the driveway to his house.

  On the porch he fumbled his keys out of his pocket, hurriedly unlocked the front door and shoved it open with his foot. He slid left, out of the firing line from anyone in the stairhall.