The Kill Zone Read online

  The fifth folder contained Otto’s own dossier, without notes other than Stenzel’s psychological profiles on him.

  “Unique, wouldn’t you say, for a chief investigator to name himself as a suspect,” Nikolayev said.

  McGarvey made no comment. How much control or self-awareness would a brainwashed person have? Maybe none.

  The sixth and seventh file folders contained dossiers on Dick Adkins and on Todd Van Buren. Adkins was old enough to have come under Baranov’s influence while the general was still alive, but Todd had been a young man then. Still in grade school or junior high. Otto’s notes listed him as a “secondary,” but a suspect nonetheless.

  “A recruit trained by the original agent’s handler,” Nikolayev explained. “But you need to know something else, Mr. Director. In fact if there is a possibility of identifying and catching the killer, it will be because of the existence of a second group. One even more important than the list of suspects themselves.”

  “What are you talking about? What group?”

  “Their control officers.” Nikolayev became introspective. He looked away momentarily. “When we were doing this work we succeeded brilliantly. The conditioning could be done in a week’s time. But there was always a problem that we could not overcome. The conversions last only seven days, sometimes as long as eight or nine days, but that’s it. After that the subjects slowly began to return to normal, or at least to a near-normal psychological state. In fact within twenty-four hours of the deadline, the subjects became useless for our purposes.”

  Something else dawned on McGarvey. “You were in on it from the beginning. That’s why you came out to try to stop Martyrs. Your conscience was killing you.”

  Nikolayev nodded heavily. “I directed the project.”

  “Knowing what Baranov was going to use it for?”

  Again Nikolayev nodded. But he looked up. “I won’t make excuses, except to say that you were our enemy. Americans might have feared that our nuclear weapons would rain down on their heads, and rightly so. But Russians were just as frightened. We wouldn’t have spent billions of rubles building our subway system as bomb shelters.”

  “Point taken,” McGarvey conceded. “If we find out who has a control officer, and keep them apart long enough, we’ll have our sleeper. How?”

  “You must offer yourself as bait. It will mean shutting down your security measures at the safe house Otto has told me about. Sending away your security team. And then inviting each person on the list to come out for a chat. One-on-one.”

  McGarvey put the folders aside. “Did Otto give you any hints who the eighth suspect might be?”

  “No.”

  They were his friends, most of them. Even family. It was monstrous. Worse than he had feared. But despite himself he could see the logic in Otto’s list of suspects. They were the people who, in the deepest recesses of his heart, he himself had suspected. “What about Runkov and the dossier Otto designated as unknown? How do we get word to them?”

  “Otto has access to your law enforcement computer systems in the Washington area. He can place your present whereabouts on those Web pages. En claire. The right people will see it soon enough.”

  “The assassin won’t come.”

  “Yes he will, and you know it. Most of those people are your friends. But so will the assassin’s control officer have to make an appearance. To reinforce the conditioning.”

  “You’ll be waiting.”

  Nikolayev nodded. “With help. Someone from the FBI or from your Office of Security. Once the principals show up, whoever comes next will be our link to the assassin.”

  “I’ll have Jim Grassinger assign someone to you. In the meantime, you’ll remain here.”

  “I suggest that we get this over with as soon as possible, Mr. Director.”

  “Tonight,” McGarvey said. “It gives us the entire day to get ready.” At the door he turned back. “But what did the sonofabitch hope to accomplish by killing me? I’m just one man.”

  “He’s already done more than that if you stop to think about it,” Nikolayev said. “Nobody in the intelligence community in Washington completely trusts anyone else. You don’t trust your own friends. I’m sure that the mistrust at Langley is hampering operations. From what I read in the newspapers you and the President are at odds with Congress. You’re so distracted, in fact, by the attacks on your family, that your job is suffering. And were Baranov alive now, I have no doubt that he would have planned for some spectacular event to happen in the midst of all the confusion.”

  “But he’s not,” McGarvey said, once again seeing Baranov pitch forward dead.

  Nikolayev nodded. “Good luck, Mr. Director.”

  McGarvey returned to the dayroom, where he took Todd aside. “I want you to stick around here and keep an eye on him for the rest of the night. We’ll send out your relief. Then I want you to go home, get something to eat, grab a shower and get some sleep.”

  “Did he tell you anything that’ll help?”

  “Not much. I want you to come out to Cropley tonight. At eight.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I’m relieved here—”

  “Eight,” McGarvey said.

  Todd wanted to argue, but he nodded. “How’s Liz?”

  “She was finally sleeping when I left.”

  “Good.”

  McGarvey took Otto downstairs, Grassinger right behind them.

  “I want you to go home and get some sleep now, and that’s an order,” McGarvey told him.

  “Okay, Mac, whatever you say. But did Nikolayev give us anything?”

  “He said that you have an eighth suspect.”

  Otto’s head bobbed up and down as if it were on springs. “But I’m not sure yet. Honest injun.”

  “Give me a name.”

  “No,” Otto said. He was acutely distressed.

  “I’ll need to know pretty soon,” McGarvey said. “I can’t do this in the dark.”

  Otto held his silence. He looked guilty of something.

  “Okay, get some sleep, and then you can work on it this afternoon. I want you to come out to Cropley tonight around eight. Alone.”

  “The trap?”

  “We’ll talk about it then,” McGarvey promised. “And have Louise fix you something decent to eat. You look like hell, Otto.”

  FOUR

  AN ALMOST INFALLIBLE MEANS OF SAVING YOURSELF FROM THE DESIRE OF SELF-DESTRUCTION, IS ALWAYS TO HAVE SOMETHING TO DO, VOLTAIRE WROTE A COUPLE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. IT WAS JUST AS TRUE NOW AS IT WAS THEN.

  CROPLEY

  McGarvey stood at the front door in the stairhall, looking out The narrow window. Clouds had moved in again, lending the distant woods a forbidding feeling. Creatures were gathering up there in the darkness. Watching, plotting, waiting for the correct moment to strike.

  Nothing moved that he could see. Blatnik’s people were well hidden in the trees and brush flanking the long driveway. The rear of the house was covered by motion detectors and infrared sensors. If anything stirred up there, alarms would sound in the house.

  It was after lunch. Everyone had gotten at least a few hours’ rest, and over a large lunch of fried chicken and potato salad that Elizabeth made, the mood was light. Even Jim Grassinger, who refused to have a beer but instead drank warm Coke straight from the can, had eased up and cracked a joke or two.

  Liz and her mother were outside behind the house making a snowman or something under the watchful eyes of Gloria Sanchez and one of Blatnik’s people.

  McGarvey was unsettled. Running away to choose the time and place for his battles had always minimized the risk to his family but did nothing to protect them from harm. Bringing them out here did the opposite: It actually maximized the risk to them. But he would be here at their side when the bad guys came calling.

  There was no mistake in his or anyone else’s mind that he wasn’t the only target. Kathleen and Elizabeth were targets, too. Their deaths at the hands of an assassin would almost as effectively d
estroy his usefulness as a DCI as would his own death. No one talked about it, but he’d heard the apprehension in Whittaker’s voice, and seen it on the faces of his staff this morning during the teleconference.

  Stenzel came down the hall from somewhere in the back, and McGarvey turned away from the window. Now it would begin, he thought.

  “They said that you wanted to see me, Mr. Director,” Stenzel said.

  “I’m sending you back to Langley this afternoon,” McGarvey told the psychiatrist.

  Stenzel was startled. “What’s up? Is something wrong? I mean it’d be a lot better if I stuck around to monitor your wife’s condition.”

  “It’s just for overnight,” McGarvey explained. Grassinger appeared in the doorway from the dining room, which they continued to use as their operations center. “Dr. Stenzel is leaving. Get somebody to take him back to Langley, would you?”

  “Sure thing. When?”

  “Now,” McGarvey said.

  “Well, let me have a word with her first—”

  “No. I want you to leave right now.”

  Stenzel glanced up the stairs. “What about my things?”

  “You can come back out first thing in the morning,” McGarvey said. “This is only for tonight.”

  Grassinger was surprised, but he said nothing. He stepped back into the dining room, issued an order into his lapel mic, then returned with Stenzel’s coat. A minute later one of Blatnik’s people drove up.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Stenzel asked. He was vexed. “Your wife could have another breakdown at any moment.”

  “It’s a risk we have to take,” McGarvey said. “Until morning.”

  Stenzel appealed mutely to Grassinger, who didn’t blink. He pulled on his coat, gave McGarvey another look, then left without a word.

  “What’s going on tonight, Mr. Director?” Grassinger asked. “Does it have something to do with the Russian?”

  “I have a couple of phone calls to make, and then we’ll talk. I’m going to force the issue, and I’ll need your cooperation, your full cooperation. Do you understand?”

  “No, sir. But we’ll do whatever it takes. We can’t go on like this forever.”

  “No we can’t,” McGarvey agreed.

  He crossed the living room and went into the study in the opposite wing of the house from the dining room and kitchen. He kept the door open so that he could see anyone coming, and telephoned the Agency locator at Langley, who rang through to Bob Johnson in Technical Services.

  “Good afternoon, Bob, this is Kirk McGarvey, I need a favor sometime tonight, if you guys aren’t too busy.”

  “No, sir. Let me get Jared—”

  “No, I don’t want to bother him. He’s got his hands full with the VI and Vail investigations, and I just need someone who understands alarm systems. But I don’t want just anyone. I need someone I can trust.”

  “Yes, sir,” Johnson replied cautiously. “What can I do for you?”

  “Something’s not right with the system here. Could be that someone’s tampered with it. I just don’t know. Can you come out here tonight. Say around eight to take a look?”

  “I could come right now.”

  “No, later. I don’t want to make a production out of this, in case someone has sabotaged the system. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir. Perfectly. I’ll be there at eight.”

  “Good man. See you then.”

  “Let your security people know that I’m coming.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about them. That’s why I want the alarm system checked.”

  Next he called Fred Rudolph at his office in FBI headquarters. “I need a favor, no questions asked.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Rudolph said. He was straitlaced. He did everything by the book. Or at least he tried to do it that way. He and McGarvey were opposites, but they respected each other. “What can I do for you, Mac?”

  “Put me on your medium security website,” McGarvey told him. “I want it to look as if someone released a confidential memo by mistake.”

  “What memo?”

  “You’re concerned that the DCI is out here with little or no security because he’s pigheaded. The Bureau needs some direction.”

  “Who am I supposedly sending this memo to?”

  “Senator Hammond. But you’re not really going to send it. It’s a draft memo. But I want it on the website.”

  “So the Russians can see it,” Rudolph said. “If it’s them, they’ll come out guns blazing. Shootout at the OK Corral. That’s your style.”

  “Post it a few minutes after six tonight. It’ll look like a shift change error.”

  “Tell me that you’re not really sending your security away,” Rudolph said.

  “No questions, Fred, remember?”

  “All right. I can do that for you. Against my better judgment. But in the meantime, I’m going to double the surveillance on the Russians, and on Senator Hammond’s office because there’s a good chance he’ll see it, too.”

  “Your call. But if someone heads out this way I don’t want your people to interfere with them.”

  “Can we at least give you a heads-up?”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  Rudolph was silent for a moment. “Do you think it’ll go down tonight?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Did your people find Nikolayev?”

  “He’s here in Washington.”

  “Okay then, good luck,” Rudolph said. “Just watch your ass, will you?”

  “Sure thing,” McGarvey promised.

  He went down the hall through the garden room so that he could look out a back window. Katy and Liz had built five small snowmen and were working on a sixth. The figures’ heads were larger than their bodies, and they seemed to be leaning backward, looking up at the sky. They all faced the same direction, toward the east, McGarvey realized, and the scene was somehow disturbing. Gloria Sanchez and one of the outside security people stood by watching.

  McGarvey returned to the study, where he telephoned Adkins’s house. A young woman answered. Her voice was soft. Barely a whisper.

  “Hello.”

  “This is Kirk McGarvey. I’d like to speak with Dick Adkins.”

  “Yes,” she said. Her voice was inflectionless, like a zombie’s. “Father,” she called away from the phone. “It’s Mr. McGarvey.”

  Adkins came on almost immediately. “Hi, Mac.” He had already talked to Whittaker twice about coming back to work. McGarvey could only imagine what was going on at his house with his daughters.

  “I’m sorry that I didn’t call sooner,” McGarvey said. “I couldn’t believe the news when David told me. I’m really sorry, Dick.”

  “She hid it the whole time. She was driving up to a cancer clinic in Baltimore for the past year. Sometimes the girls took her. I never knew.”

  McGarvey didn’t know what to say that was appropriate. Katy would know, but he hadn’t told her. “Ruth was a strong woman.”

  “That she was.”

  “Will there be a memorial service?”

  “On Saturday at Grace Lutheran. But of course we don’t expect you or Kathleen to be there, under the circumstances.”

  “We’ll be there, Dick. This other business will be settled by then.”

  “Oh?”

  “I hate to ask this, but can you come out here tonight?”

  “Cropley? Sure. What time?”

  “Eight,” McGarvey said. Adkins had practically jumped at the invitation. Whatever was going on at the house could not be pleasant for him.

  “Let security know I’m coming.”

  “That won’t be a problem. Just drive up to the house. I’ll see you then.”

  Adkins wanted to say something else. McGarvey could hear it in his hesitation. “Okay,” he said at last. “See you then.”

  When McGarvey came into the dining room Grassinger was looking out the bow windows toward the horse barn and riding arena. His hands wer
e clasped behind his back and he rocked on his heels as if he was thinking about something in time with a beat. He was alone.

  “I’ve been asking myself what does it mean by ‘forcing the issue.’ I can think of a dozen different possibilities, not one of them with a shred of common sense to it. And needing my cooperation, my ‘full cooperation,’ is something even more worrisome to me. I’m saying to myself that since we can’t go back to business as usual until the operator or operators are bagged we need to do something really creative to get the job done. Offer them bait. I think that’s what the director is suggesting. The bait being himself, of course. Now, that’s not acceptable, not within my charter. So what to do? Maybe reason and logic?”

  “They have all the time in the world, Jim,” McGarvey said. “But that’s a luxury we don’t have. As long as I stay in the bunker they’ll bide their time.”

  Grassinger turned around. He wasn’t a happy man. “So we just open the doors to the keep for them, Mr. Director? Is that what you’re asking me to do?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Then they’ll waltz in here and kill you and your family. They will have won.”

  McGarvey smiled faintly. “It might not be all that easy for them.”

  “No offense intended, sir,” Grassinger apologized.

  “None taken. I’m not suggesting that we lower our guards and turn our backs. But it has to look that way, and it has to be convincing.”

  Grassinger was somewhat mollified. He nodded. “Well, sir, what do you have in mind?”

  “Who’s with Nikolayev at Andrews?”

  “I sent young Chris Bartholomew. She knows what she’s doing.”

  “I want him brought out here tonight around seven. Find a place along the highway so that he can see someone coming from the city. He’ll have to be hidden, but near enough so that he can identify whoever is in the car coming down the driveway.”