The Kill Zone Page 9

  “I’m keeping him until tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with him?” McGarvey asked.

  “His injuries from the accident are superficial. Not serious. But the poor man is tired, anemic and quite possibly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Good heavens, I’m told that he possibly eats nothing but junk food.”

  “He’s been under a lot of pressure.”

  “He’s sleeping now, and we’re filling him with vitamins to build up his system. I suggest that you go easy on him.”

  “Yes, thank you, I’ll try.”

  “I have told your security people that he is to have no further visitors.”

  “Who has come to see him?”

  “In addition to his friend who will stay the night, only Mrs. McGarvey.”

  “Take care of him, Doctor. We need him back here.”

  “Better that you take care of him so that he doesn’t come back to me.”

  On the way home, traffic snarled because of the heavy snow, McGarvey had time to put everything that had been happening into some sort of perspective. Troubles came in threes. There were weird weeks in which everything seemed to go wrong at once. The trick was to take it a step at a time. All things would pass, even the bad times.

  “Has Liz called yet?” he asked Kathleen. “They’re back down at the Farm for the next couple of days. But she promised that she would call you.”

  “Not yet, but she will,” Kathleen said brightly. Her dark mood of last night and this morning seemed to have dissipated.

  They kissed, and he sat down at the counter as she stirred a pot on the stove. “Smells good whatever it is.”

  “Spaghetti. Is that okay?”

  “More than okay, I’m starved.”

  She gave him a smile. “What’ll it be, a double or a triple?”

  “How about a beer?”

  She laughed as she got him his beer. “Tom Hammond must be slipping.”

  “Did you watch any of it?”

  She shook her head. “Between that arrogant prick, and that tight-assed Madden broad I didn’t dare. I might have been tempted to storm down there and rip out their tongues.”

  McGarvey was shocked. He’d never heard his wife talk like that.

  “Close your mouth, dear,” she said sweetly. “There are times when only a certain kind of language seems appropriate.”

  “It’s a good thing that you didn’t watch.”

  “That bad?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. But from their standpoint they’re right.”

  “Oh, for goodness sake, think about what you’re saying.”

  “When we get into the closed sessions there’ll be a lot of … incidents out of my past laid on the table.” He looked inward for the flash of an instant. The image that remained in his mind’s eye, like a sunspot on his retina, was of a hell in which dozens of people were falling back in slow motion; blood splashing in every direction; rivers of blood; people screaming in terror, their hands out in supplication. He flinched.

  Kathleen poured a glass of wine. She put it down and came around the counter to him, a look of deep concern on her face. “What’s the matter, Kirk?”

  For a moment longer McGarvey couldn’t speak. He shook his head and looked up into her eyes. “I’ve done the right things, haven’t I?”

  She took him in her arms. “Not always, my darling. None of us ever do, didn’t you know that?” She looked down at him and offered a small reassuring smile. “But on balance you’ve always been headed in the right direction. That’s a lot more than most people can say.”

  “They were bad.”

  “Yes, they were. And if you didn’t have a conscience, if you didn’t feel remorse almost all the time, you would be no different than they were. Nothing more than mindless, immoral thugs.”

  WEDNESDAY

  EIGHT

  MAYBE IT WAS HIS PAST CATCHING UP WITH HIM.

  WASHINGTON

  McGarvey arrived at the Hart Senate Office Building a few minutes before 10:00 A.M. wearing a dark blue suit with side vents, a pale blue shirt and plain matching tie. Kathleen had laid out the clothes for him, as she did most mornings. If Hammond and the others were going to shoot him down, at least he’d crash in style.

  Two dozen newspaper and television reporters were waiting in front of the Capitol as McGarvey’s limousine pulled up.

  Yemm headed a phalanx of four bodyguards, who escorted McGarvey and Paterson across the sidewalk and up the broad marble stairs, keeping the media at arm’s length. The extra muscle was the Office of Security’s idea, and though McGarvey initially objected Paterson convinced him to go along with it. “Hell, if nothing else a little extra show of force right now might put a burr under Hammond’s saddle.”

  McGarvey had to smile. He was being manipulated. But it was for his own good, though it was still another thing he was having trouble getting used to. “Well then, I guess it’s the least we can do.”

  McGarvey’s name had never been exactly a household word, but after yesterday’s televised hearing and the front-page stories in the Washington Post and New York Times, in which he was characterized as having drawn the battle line in the sand, he was becoming fair game for the crazies.

  Before they left Langley Yemm insisted that McGarvey wear body armor under his shirt. “You’re a tempting target now, boss,” Yemm said, trying to keep it light. But he was deadly serious.

  “If they know what they’re doing, they’ll go for a headshot.”

  “Nothing we can do about that, but even guys like Begin would have come out alive if they’d been wearing.”

  The vest was light, and not noticeable, but it was hot. McGarvey figured that it was going to be a bitch of a day on more than one account. But at least the process had begun. There would be no more waiting for the other shoe to fall, no more wondering if he should take the job or even if he was going to be confirmed.

  Like yesterday the hearing chamber was packed. Capitol security officers at the tall double doors were turning people away. As McGarvey and Paterson worked their way to the witness table, McGarvey scanned the crowd for any sign of Dmitri Runkov, the SVR rezident. But he didn’t spot the Russian, who would have been sitting with the other foreign service officers.

  “Can we get a list of who was here yesterday and today?” McGarvey asked Paterson as they took their seats.

  “Sure,” Paterson said. “Do you have a reason?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  Almost immediately the clerk of the hearings came in and announced the committee members. Opening the sessions this way was Hammond’s idea. He’d been a circuit court judge in St. Paul before being elected to the Senate. He thought that the clerk added dignity to the proceedings.

  The senators filed in, and when they’d taken their places and the audience was settled, Hammond reminded McGarvey that he was still under oath.

  “I had hoped to be further along then we are,” Senator Hammond said. “But it seems as if there is even more material to cover than I first supposed.” He gave Paterson a stern look. “I would hope that we can keep today’s session on a more businesslike basis in the interest of saving time.”

  “If that is your hope, Senator, it’s our hope as well,” Paterson said with a straight face. “Mr. McGarvey has a very full schedule at Langley, as you can well imagine.”

  “Mr. McGarvey is not the Agency’s director yet,” Brenda Madden interjected.

  “He is working as interim director, Madam Senator,” Paterson said. “And has been for some time now.”

  “Surely the intelligence professionals at the CIA are used to the comings and goings of political appointees and are capable of doing their jobs unsupervised by a titular director for the time being.”

  “On the contrary, Senator Madden, as you well know, Mr. McGarvey is a twenty-five-year veteran with the Central Intelligence Agency. He has earned the respect and loyalty of everyone out there.”

  “Including you, sir?” she
gibed. It was well-known that Paterson had only reluctantly left his New York law practice to help straighen out the sometimes sticky legal positions that the CIA found itself in. Because it was a challenge, and because the previous president had asked him to do it, he had agreed. He had no love for the world of the spy, like his predecessor Howard Ryan had, but he was doing a good job.

  “Yes, including me,” he said.

  Madden’s expression darkened. It wasn’t the answer she’d wanted.

  Hammond glanced over and gave her a questioning look. She shrugged and sat back. Hammond turned to the first of the fat files piled in front of him.

  “I think we can dispense with the usual examination of Mr. McGarvey’s personal data. Let it be noted in the record that Kirk Cullough McGarvey was born October 9, 1950 in Garden City, Kansas. Parents were Herbert Cullough and Claire Elizabeth, both deceased. Attended Garden City elementary, middle and high schools, graduating cum laude in 1966. He attended Kansas State University, graduating in 1970, also cum laude. Two bachelors of science, one in mathematics the other in political science.” Hammond looked up. “That is an unusual combination.”

  “Is that a question, Senator?” McGarvey asked. Kathleen said to push back, and he was already starting to feel irascible. His desk was piled with work.

  “No,” Hammond said after a beat. “I won’t belabor the point, but looking over your high school and college records I see that you were not involved in any extracurricular activities. No sports, no clubs, not the debating team, or the trap and skeet squad. Can you tell us why?”

  McGarvey leaned over to Paterson. “Is this necessary, Carleton? What the hell is he looking for?”

  “Leadership qualities, and they can ask anything they want to ask.”

  McGarvey turned back and shook his head. “None of that interested me, Senator.”

  “What did you do with your spare time? Scouting, fishing, hunting, camping?”

  “I wasn’t in the Scouts, but I did fish and hunt with my father. I helped around the ranch, and when I was fifteen I learned how to fly-fish.”

  “You were a loner even then,” Hammond said, and before McGarvey could say anything, Madden sat forward, a file open in front of her.

  “Were you large for your age, Mr. McGarvey,” she asked. “I mean in school, were you bigger than the other kids in your class?”

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  “Oh, it’s simple. I’d like to know if you were the big kid on the block. You know, the class bully.”

  McGarvey smiled and shook his head. “I was big, but I wasn’t the bully. My father drummed into my head from the start that fighting never solved anything. We had one rule in our house, and that was: no hitting. My father never even spanked me.”

  “What if you did something wrong? Did he send you to bed without supper?” Brenda Madden asked with a smirk.

  “He would explain to me what I did wrong and tell me that he was disappointed in me. That’s all. That was worse than a beating.”

  “That’s a curious view for a man who, along with his wife, worked on nuclear weapons at Los Alamos. Wouldn’t you think?”

  “No.”

  “No hitting,” Brenda Madden mused, as if she found the notion quaint. “And no involvement in the glee club, no homecoming king, or football team—excuse me, I forgot, no hitting. But you didn’t even join the cheerleading squad. Or was it because you were barred from those activities?”

  Paterson’s hand shot out and clamped over the microphone. “What’s she getting at?”

  “I’d almost forgotten,” McGarvey answered.

  “Mr. McGarvey?” Brenda Madden prompted.

  Paterson hesitated a moment, then removed his hand.

  “No, I was not barred from after-school activities. It was a mutual agreement between my parents and the school board. It was a small town, and I was a good student.”

  “But you agreed not to play sports. Why?”

  “I was involved in an after-school fight. It was a long time ago.”

  Brenda Madden held up a Finney County Department of Juvenile Justice file. “There were four of them. Football players. It was strongly suspected that you had used some sort of a weapon. They believe that it might have been a baseball bat. All four of those boys ended up in the hospital, two of them in critical condition.”

  Senator Hammond was beaming. Some of the other senators, however, looked either uncomfortable or puzzled.

  “One of them is still confined to a wheelchair,” Brenda Madden hammered. She looked directly at the television cameras. “But I find it terribly odd that nothing happened as a result except to bar Mr. McGarvey from after-school activities. The families of the four boys didn’t even sue. Certainly your parents had enough money. They owned a rather substantial ranch. In fact they were wealthy by the standards of those days. Yet no lawsuits. Unless payments were made under the table.” She smiled viciously. “Which was it, Mr. McGarvey? Payments under the table, or were the families simply terrified of retribution from a loner. Maybe by today’s standards a Columbine High School odd duck.”

  “Objection,” Paterson broke in. “I assume that those are sealed juvenile court records, Madam Senator.”

  “That’s of no consequence—”

  “There was no weapon,” McGarvey said.

  “You don’t have to answer to such an obvious smear tactic,” Paterson warned. He was angry. Madden and Hammond were loving it.

  “You were saying, Mr. McGarvey?” Madden prompted again.

  “I didn’t use a weapon.”

  “You hurt those boys with your bare fists?”

  “Yes.”

  Madden looked to Hammond, but he shrugged. This was her ball, he would let her run with it. “Over what? Were you arguing over something they said to you. Did they call you a name?”

  “They were gang-raping an eleven-year-old girl in the woods behind the school. I stopped them.”

  Brenda Madden’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  “We’ll check that,” Hammond said. He shuffled some files. “Now, moving—”

  “If Senator Madden had done her homework, she would have discovered that the four boys were sent to juvenile detention until they were twenty-one. One of them died in a knife fight in prison, one of them committed suicide shortly after he got out, and the other two, so far as I know, are still alive. I never followed up.”

  Except for a few sniggers in the audience, the chamber was silent.

  “It’s not something I’m proud of, Senator Madden,” he said. “But I don’t like bullies. Never have.”

  “What sort of chores, Mr. McGarvey?” the committee’s vice chairman Senator John Clawson, asked. He was the senior Republican from Montana, a Westerner, tall, outdoorsy, who felt more comfortable in jeans than in a business suit. He was a rancher.

  “On the ranch?” McGarvey asked.

  Hammond broke in. “I think that we have spent sufficient time on Mr. McGarvey’s youth.”

  “Indulge me, Tom,” Clawson said easily.

  McGarvey shrugged. “Mostly feeding cattle.”

  “While they were out on the range. Probably during the winter when the grass was scarce for them. You rode in the back of a truck or hay wagon, and tossed hay bales to them.”

  “Something like that.”

  “That’s not an easy job,” Clawson said to Brenda Madden. “I did it myself as a kid. Builds up your muscles, gives you a huge appetite. Puts on pounds real early.” He smiled. “No mystery there.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she replied.

  “At least you have one friend,” Paterson said in an aside to McGarvey.

  “I would like to move on, if possible,” Hammond said. “There are a few areas of concern that I’d like to touch on today. If we can get to them we’ll meet in camera tomorrow.”

  There were no objections.

  “You joined the air force directly out of college, finished OCS and were commissioned a second lie
utenant in October. Subsequently you attended the Air Force Intelligence Officers schools at Lackland Air Force Base and Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas, and then were assigned to embassy duty in Saigon.” Hammond looked up from the file he was reading from. “Is all of that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was your job in Saigon?”

  “Senator, I don’t know if that material is still classified. I’ll have to check on it for you.”

  “It’s not classified,” Hammond said. He passed a document to one of the Senate pages, who brought it to the witness table. It was a release of documents form under the Freedom of Information Act.

  Paterson looked it over and gave it to McGarvey. The release contained a list of twenty-one separate operations for a period between the summer of 1970 and the winter of 1972. McGarvey had been there for most of that time. “Recognize any of these?”

  McGarvey glanced through the list, and he knew immediately which operation Hammond would home in on and why. “Most of them.”

  “Operation Phoenix-II,” Hammond said. “Were you involved with it?”

  “Yes, I was,” McGarvey said. Hammond had not disappointed him.

  “Could you tell us about it?”

  “It was a South Vietnamese military operation. Captured VC and North Vietnamese regular army prisoners, especially officers and noncoms, were brought in from the field to a divisional headquarters in Saigon, where they were extensively debriefed. The results were collated and the information was shared with special U.S. and South Vietnamese field units.”

  “What kind of information?” Hammond asked. “What were they looking for, specifically?”

  “They were trying to find out the names, ranks and locations of high-ranking North Vietnamese officers.”

  “For what reason?”

  “They were targeted for assassination.”

  “Were you personally involved in any of these hit squads?” Hammond asked. “Did you assassinate any of the targeted officers?”