He hurried silently across the kitchen and into the laundry room. A set of car keys was hanging on a hook next to the door into the garage. Snatching them, he slipped into the garage and got behind the wheel of Kathleen’s 460 SL. With one hand he started the car, while with the other he hit the garage door opener.
As the service door slowly rumbled open, he watched the door from the laundry room.
It was snatched open a couple of seconds later, and McGarvey got a brief glimpse of a man in a sport coat. He dropped the gearshift into drive and slammed the gas pedal to the floor, the low-slung car shooting out of the garage, just clearing the still-opening main door by no more than two inches.
At the bottom of the driveway, he turned east, the opposite direction that the plain gray government Chevrolet was facing, and was around the corner at the end of the block before the two men who’d come after him even had a chance to cross the street.
The Agency knew for sure now that he was in Washington, and that he was on the run from them. They would be pulling out all the stops to find him. Nobody said no to the general.
McGarvey parked the Mercedes near Union Station, leaving the keys under the floor mat, then walked a half-dozen blocks down to Constitution Avenue where he caught a cab, ordering the driver to take him back to Georgetown. The police would find the car and would return it to Kathleen.
“I want you to stop at a grocery store, or corner market on the way,” McGarvey said.
“Sir?” “I need to pick up some Twinkies.”
Chapter 21
McGarvey had a fairly high degree of confidence that Rencke’s intrusion into the CIA’s computer system would not be detected. Nevertheless he approached the house in Holy Rood Cemetery with precautions, passing twice from different directions to make certain the place wasn’t being watched.
There were a few people visiting graves, and a grounds-keeper was mowing the lawn near the Whitehaven Parkway entrance, but no one seemed interested in the house.
Nor had there been anyone stationed at the entrance so far as McGarvey had been able to determine.
He crossed the gravel driveway, mounted the three steps to the porch and knocked on the front door. Without waiting for Rencke to answer it, he let himself in.
The house was very still. The odors of Rencke’s cats mingled in the air with the odors of electronics equipment. But nothing moved. It was as if the place had been abandoned.
He’d brought a bag of Twinkies for Rencke. Laying them on the hall table, he took out his Walther, eased the safety catch on the off position, and moved silently to the archway into the living room.
Nothing seemed out of place except that only one computer monitor seemed to be working.
Everything else had apparently been shut off. The one screen that was lit showed nothing but the color lavender.
Turning back into the stairhall, McGarvey stopped and cocked an ear to listen. Still there were no sounds from anywhere in the house.
It was possible that Rencke’s computer hacking had been detected and he’d been arrested, but McGarvey doubted it.
“Otto?” he called out.
There was no answer. He went to the foot of the stairs and stopped again to listen.
Had there been a movement on the second floor?
“It’s me. It’s Mac.”
A toilet flushed, and Rencke, still wearing the same clothes from last night, appeared at the head of the stairs.
“Did you bring my Twinkies?” He asked, yawning as he came down.
McGarvey smiled and nodded. The man was incredible. “I brought them,” he said, putting away his gun. “The house was quiet, I thought something was wrong.”
“What were you intending on doing, shooting my cats?” Rencke asked. “They’re outside.
Now, my Twinkies, I’m starving.”
McGarvey gave Rencke the bag and followed him back to the kitchen. Unwashed dishes were piled in the sink, and a pot of something had been allowed to cook down to a charred mass on the stove. The burner had been turned off, but the pan had been left as is. Empty cat food cans littered the floor, and in a back hallway, several litter boxes were full to overflowing.
Rencke got a carton of milk from the refrigerator. “Did you see it?”
“What?”
“My beautiful lavender. Or are you color-blind?”
“I saw it,” McGarvey said. “Did you get in?”
“Just like raping a willing virgin,” Rencke said, brushing past McGarvey and heading back to the front of the house. “With ease. With ease.”
“What did you find out?” McGarvey asked, following him.
Rencke plunked down in front of the lavender terminal. “It’s a scary world out there, Mac. And it’s getting scarier, if you know what I mean.”
He opened a package of Twinkies, ate them both and then drank nearly half the milk, some of it spilling down his front. No crumbs or milk, however, got anywhere near the equipment.
“Some Company hotshot evidently found my rear-entry program and replaced it with a fairly sophisticated system of interlocks. They’re finally starting to use their heads over there. A day late and in this case a dollar short, but they’re thinking.”
Rencke drank some more milk. “I don’t think there are more than three people in the world besides me who could have gotten in like I did.”
“Were you detected?”
“No,” Rencke said. “At least I don’t think so. But this is hot stuff, Mac. I mean short of Russian tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue, the hottest.”
“Did you make printouts?”
Rencke was eating another Twinkie. He nodded. “But when I was done I shredded the lot,” he said, his mouth full. “I didn’t want that kind of shit lying around here.
I’d rather have a hundred ks of blow with a sign on it on my front porch.”
McGarvey had pulled up a chair. “Tell me what you found out.”
“First I want something from you.”
“Name it.”
“You said Karl Boorsch was the rocket man at Orly last week. What were you doing there? What was your relationship with him and this STASI group?”
McGarvey told Rencke everything, including his history with Marta and the Swiss Federal Police, Colonel Marquand’s information, and about the pair who’d showed up at Kathleen’s house this morning.
“You’re certain they were Company muscle?” Rencke asked.
“It was a Company car. I have no reason at this point to suspect they were anything but Murphy’s people.”
“You would have been leaving your ex in a hell of a jam otherwise,” Rencke said thoughtfully.
McGarvey had had the same thought.
“You weren’t followed here? By anyone?”
“No.”
Rencke looked at the lavender screen. “They’re busy over there this morning, so it’s too dangerous to get back in. If you want to wait until tonight, I’ll show you what I came up with. But if you’re in a hurry-and I think you should be in one hell of a hurry-you’ll have to rely on my memory as well as my veracity.”
“I trust you, or else I wouldn’t have come here in the first place,” McGarvey said.
“What are your intentions? You said you’d meet with Murphy.”
“It might depend on what you’ve come up with. Marta was a good friend.”
Rencke was silent for a long moment or two. McGarvey thought he could hear the cats mewing at the door.
“I dipped into your file while I was at it,” Rencke said. “You’ve been up against the best, and survived, though not without injury. A couple of times you almost bought it.”
McGarvey said nothing.
“This one is bigger, or at least I think it could be. Maybe more important. But you’d be up against a highly trained and well-motivated group. Not just one Russian hitman.”