He took a cab to the Marriott Key Bridge Motel and after it was gone he took another cab across the river to Union Station, where he took still another cab to the Holiday Inn Georgetown where he registered under the name of Tom Patton, paying with some of the cash he’d changed at the airport. For the moment, at least, he wanted anonymity here in Washington.
As of a couple of years ago, Rencke lived with his computers and a dozen cats in an ancient brick house that had once been the quarters for the caretaker of Holy Rood Cemetery. Then he had been a computer systems consultant on a freelance basis for the Pentagon and the National Security Agency. His particular talent was an almost superhuman ability to visualize entire complex systems, including supercomputers, satellite links, data encryption devices, and all the peripheral equipment and connections that linked them, and make them user friendly.
But at thirty-nine he was already a has-been from a dozen different jobs and callings.
Trained as a Jesuit priest, he’d been, at twenty, one of the youngest professors of mathematics ever to teach at Georgetown University. But he liked women too much, so in 1974 he’d been fired from his job and defrocked all in the same day.
From there he’d enlisted in the army, as a computer specialist, but he’d been given a bad conduct discharge nine months later, because he also liked boys if there were no girls immediately available.
For a year he’d dropped out of sight, but then had shown up on the CIA’s payroll, his Jesuit and Army records apparently wiped completely clean, so that he passed the vetting process with ease.
McGarvey had run into the man on several occasions at Langley, where Rencke had taken charge of the Agency’s archives section, bringing it into the computer age.
They’d worked together again in Germany, and once in South America where Rencke had come to straighten out the station’s electronic equipment.
In his spare time, Rencke had updated the Company’s entire communications system, standardized their spy satellite input and analysis systems (so that CIA machines could crosstalk, thus sharing information, with NSA equipment), and devised a field officer’s briefing system whereby pertinent, up-to-date information could be funneled directly to the officer on assignment when and as he needed it.
His past had caught up with him a few years ago, and like McGarvey, he’d become a pariah across the river.
It was after ten by the time McGarvey had reassembled his pistol (the Swiss had returned it to him on condition he show them how he’d gotten it through Cointrin’s X-ray equipment) and he walked across the street into the cemetery. The evening was dark, the sky overcast and the air extremely humid. A light fog had formed from the river, muffling sounds and forming halos around the streetlights. It was a Sunday night; nothing much was moving in Washington.
The small, two-story house at the rear of the cemetery looked to be in reasonable condition, but deserted. There were no curtains or blinds in any of the windows, except one large bay window on the ground floor, nor was there a car in the carport, or a lawnmower, or paint cans, or anything else that would indicate Rencke was still in residence.
McGarvey stood in the shadows across a narrow lane watching the front of the house for any signs of life. As he remembered, Rencke had been a night person, preferring to sleep during the day. Of course there was no reason to believe that he was still here, or that something else in his past hadn’t caught up with him and landed him in jail. But there also was no reason to believe he wasn’t still here.
“Boo,” someone said softly behind him.
McGarvey, startled, reached for his pistol, but then relaxed and turned around. It was Rencke; he’d recognized the voice, even in that one word.
The computer whiz looked like a twenty-year-old kid, with long, out-of-control frizzy red hair, wild eyebrows, and a gaunt, almost ascetic frame. He was dressed in Nikes, ragged blue jeans and a Moscow State University sweatshirt, its sleeves cut off at the shoulders. He was grinning.
“So, Mac, what’re you doing wandering about in a cemetery in the middle of the night?”
Rencke asked. “Let me guess. You’re looking for bad guys. You’re working freelance, still. And you’ve come to ask for my help. Is that about it?”
McGarvey had to smile. “You could have gotten yourself shot, you stupid bastard.”
Rencke’s head bobbed as if it were on springs. “Your control is better than that.
I’m not stupid. And I’m not a bastard. Oh, well, I figure one out of three isn’t so bad under the circumstances.”
“I am here to ask for help, but what were you doing sneaking around in the cemetery at this hour? I thought you’d be at your computers.”
“I had a Twinkie attack.” Rencke wasn’t carrying a bag. He grinned sheepishly. “Couldn’t wait, so I ate them already. Bad me.”
“I need to get into Langley archives, and maybe an operational file or two,” McGarvey said. “Possible?”
Again Rencke’s head bobbed up and down. “Anything is possible, Mac. Weren’t you taught that in school? Come on, let’s see how tough they’ve made it these days.” He winked.
“Of course it depends on whether they’ve discovered my screen door.”
“Screen door?” McGarvey asked, as he followed Rencke across to the house and inside.
The front door wasn’t locked.
“We can put a screen door into a computer program… most of them leak like a sieve, you’d be surprised… but no one’s figured out how to successfully install a screen door in a submarine. Especially a Los Angeles class boat. Right? Right?”
Rencke was almost bursting with suppressed humor and enthusiasm.
“So you’ve kept up with me,” McGarvey said. He’d been involved with an incident over a hijacked Los Angeles class sub a couple years ago. “Why?”
Rencke led them into the living room, packing paper taped up over the bay windows.
Soft lights automatically came on, as did a half-dozen monitor screens. He stopped and turned back to McGarvey.
“Do you want me to tell you something, Mac?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer.
“Okay. I find you endlessly fascinating. You’re like a computer, only I can’t figure out the CPU. I haven’t even got your clock speed yet. So I keep watching. It’s better than the Dodgers used to be.”
“The man’s name is Karl Boorsch. He was the shooter at Orly on Friday. Did you hear about it?”
“The Swissair flight. It was in all the newspapers. I’m not a hermit here.”
“He’s ex-STASI, I recognized him, and the SDECE made him as well. They suggested that he might be working for a well-funded organization of ex-STASI officers on the run from the new German government.”
“Just like the Odessa,” Rencke said. “The organization of former Nazi SS officers, you know. Big thing in the fifties and sixties. They mostly all died off, though.”
“There were a couple of Agency types aboard that flight. Probably Boorsch’s target.”
Rencke’s head was bobbing. “You want to know about this STASI outfit. You want to know who funds it. You want to know who they are, where they’re hiding these days, and who their leaders are.” He took a deep breath. “And, you want to peek at operations to see what they had cooked up. That about it, Mac?”
McGarvey nodded. “The general wants to see me, and I wanted to be prepared before I went over there. I don’t like surprises.”
“I see what you mean,” Rencke said knitting his eyebrows. His complexion was very pale, his lips red. “Surprises are fun unless they start shooting at you.” He dropped into a chair in front of a terminal and pulled up a telephone line.