Someone knocked at the door and he turned around as Kathleen came in. Her left eyebrow arched when she saw him standing at the window, but she said nothing, closing the door.
“Good morning,” McGarvey said. He decided that she didn’t look any the worse for wear, except in her eyes, which seemed to have lost their usual haughtiness. She was dressed in street clothes, a blue scarf on her head.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I’ll live. You?”
“I’m all right.”
“Elizabeth?”
“She wants to see you.”
McGarvey tried to read something from his ex-wife’s expression, her tone of voice, but he couldn’t. He’d never been able to predict her.
“How is she holding up?”
Kathleen shook her head, but she made no move toward him. “I honestly don’t know, Kirk. She’s definitely your daughter. She stood up to them, and probably saved my life in the doing despite what they… did to her. But she won’t talk to me about it. She just sidesteps the questions. Says she’ll live, whatever that means.”
“What now?”
“You tell me,” she said. “The FBI is guarding us. They said something about temporarily placing us in the Witness Protection Program. Either that or taking us into protective custody.”
“Not such a bad idea…
“For how long, Kirk?” Kathleen cried. “From the day I met you this has been going on. How much longer must I endure it?”
“I’m sorry…
“We’re divorced. Stay away from me and Elizabeth! Please! If you love your daughter, as you profess you do, then leave us alone!”
He felt badly for her, but he knew that there was nothing he could do to alleviate her pain and fear except do as she was asking: Stay away from her, and in the meantime go after Spranger and what remained of his organization.
“If you think it’s for the best.”
“I do,” she replied.
McGarvey nodded. “Will you let me talk to her now, for just a minute?”
Kathleen stared at him for a long second or two, her rigid expression softening a little. “I don’t think I could stop her,” she said. “The doctor certainly could not.”
“Get out of Washington, Katy. Let the Bureau take care of you.”
“My name is Kathleen,” she corrected automatically. “And Elizabeth and I are going to do just that. No one will know where we are. No one.”
She turned and left the room, giving McGarvey a brief glimpse of Dr. Singh in the corridor before the door closed again. He hobbled back to the bed and got in. A moment later Elizabeth, wearing faded jeans, a pink V-neck sweater, and a head scarf, came in.
For a long time she stood stock-still, looking at her father, the expression on her face even less readable than her mother’s, except that she was frightened.
“Liz?” McGarvey prompted.
“Daddy,” she cried and she came into his arms, a sharp stab of pain hammering his right side.
He grunted involuntarily, and Elizabeth immediately reared back.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she apologized, her hands going to her mouth.
“It’s okay, Liz,” he said. “It’s okay.” He held out his hand to her.
She hesitated. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t. Now come over here and sit down. I want to hear everything that happened to you and your mother, and then I want you to do me a favor.”
“Anything,” Elizabeth said, gingerly sitting on the edge of the bed.
“I’m going to need some clothes.”
She looked sharply at him. “What do you mean?”
“I’m getting out of here.”
“But you can’t. You’re hurt.”
“It’s all right,” he said, patting her hand. “Believe me. But first I want to know about Ernst Spranger and the woman with him.”
A dark cloud passed over Elizabeth’s features and she flinched. “Her name is Liese.
The others are murderers, but she’s worse. Much worse.”
“What happened?”
Elizabeth turned away. “I can’t…
“Your mother said you won’t tell her.”
“I’m afraid.”
“You’re safe here.”
She turned back to her father. “Not for me,” she said. “For you.”
Suddenly McGarvey was cold. He’d been told what condition Kathleen and Elizabeth were in when Lipton’s team had found them but he’d not seen either of them until this morning. They both wore wigs beneath their scarves, and although they seemed pale they appeared to be uninjured. Yet he wondered, his mind going down a lot of dark corridors he wanted to avoid.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Elizabeth’s eyes widened, and she shook her head. “No,” she blurted. “That’s wrong.
Mother’s wrong. You’re not responsible for the bad people in the world. It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“If I hadn’t been involved none of this would have happened to you and your mother.”
“Don’t say that,” she cried, tears suddenly filling her eyes. “Don’t ever say that.”
“It’s okay, Liz,” McGarvey said, reaching for her.
Elizabeth stared at him for a long time, as if she’d never seen him before. “If not you, who can I believe in?” she asked finally.
A battered Volkswagen van with Italian plates pulled up at the Villa Ambrosia overlooking Monaco around five in the afternoon. So far as Liese could determine the compound was just as they had left it. She’d half-expected to see yellow Do Not Pass tapes across the doors, or an Interpol surveillance unit parked nearby. But she’d made three different approaches to the house, and had spotted nothing.
“How does it look?” Spranger asked from the back of the van. His voice was muffled but recognizable, which was, as far as Liese was concerned, enough for the moment.
“Clear,” she answered. “I’m going to release the alarms and open the gate.”
“Watch out for a trap.”
They’d been over this same ground for two and a half days all the way from Athens, across Italy and along the Riviera. Spranger’s intense hatred and desperate need for revenge had distorted his perception of everything. He had ranted and raved about striking back, getting even, killing,
More than once Liese had been brought to the brink of putting a gun to the back of his head and pulling the trigger. But each time she’d backed off at the last moment because she needed him. Needed his voice for what remained to be done. Their field officers were in place and ready to go to phase two, but they would only move on Spranger’s direct orders. Without him the entire operation would fizzle and die.
Checking the rearview mirror again to make certain no one was coming up the road, Liese got out of the van and cautiously approached the tall wooden gate in the thick concrete wall that surrounded the compound.
None of the three hidden switches that activated the villa’s extensive alarm system had been tampered with, and she released each of them, the gate’s electric lock cycling open, and the gate swinging inward.
Back in the van she drove into the compound, and parked at the rear of the house.
Before she helped Spranger out, she closed and locked the gate, and reset the alarm system.
Spranger was a mess. The Greek doctor on Santorini had been an incompetent fool, his methods and most of his equipment 1940s-vintage war surplus. He’d dug McGarvey’s bullet out of Spranger’s shoulder successfully, but he’d done too much cutting and when the wound healed, scar tissue would be bunched up as big as a clenched fist.
He’d set Spranger’s broken arm and collarbone poorly, and whatever salve he’d used on the extensive burns had a terrible odor. Within twenty-four hours noisome fluids were freely suppurating from it, horribly staining his clothing and bandages.