Stenzel nodded. “I’ve called Bob Love, a neurologist friend of mind, to look at her. The Company has used him from time to time. He’s about the best in the business. He said that he’d stop by around nine this morning. I expect he’ll order some pictures, probably a CAT scan, an MRI, an EEC, then some blood work and possibly a lumbar tap.” “What are you looking for?” “Physical causes first,” Stenzel said. “Maybe a lesion in her brain. Maybe unbalanced sugar in her spinal fluid, something going haywire with her blood chemistry.” He shook his head.
“Maybe even temporal-lobe epilepsy. We’re not ruling anything out.”
“Did they tell you everything she said and did?” Stenzel nodded. “Are there any drugs in the house?” “If you mean marijuana or speed and shit like that, no. We’re both pretty conservative people.” “Right,”
Stenzel replied dryly. “Did you ever see the movie The Exorcist)”
“What, do you think she’s possessed?” McGarvey asked. He wasn’t amused. “No. But I think your wife’s problem is in her head, not in her physical brain or in her blood. But we have to eliminate all the obvious things first, which Bob Love is going to do for us.” “Assuming it is in her head, then what?” Stenzel shrugged. “Then I give her some tests.” “Like the ones you gave Otto?” “More or less. We’ll try to find out what’s bothering her in a general way, then narrow it down step-by-step until we get to the specific problem or problems. Sorta like a jigsaw puzzle. We’re looking for the one piece that makes some kind of sense out of the rest.” “What’s your gut reaction?” McGarvey asked. “You talked to the doctors in San Juan, and you talked to her when we got back. Now this.” Stenzel frowned. “I don’t know. I mean someone is trying to kill her husband and now her daughter. Any woman would pitch a fit under the same circumstances,” he told McGarvey. “But it’d be just that. She’d raise holy hell and demand that the people she loved were pulled off the firing line right now. Nothing would stand in her way. You know, like the mama bear and her cubs. Threaten her babies and watch out.”
“But that’s not what she’s done,” McGarvey said. He was tired, mentally as well as physically.
“No. Which leads me to suspect that something else is going on.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry about your daughter. But from what I’m told she’ll mend.”
“Physically,” McGarvey replied. Another stab of pain tore at his heart. Liz’s baby had been a girl.
“This will pass, Mr. Director,” Stenzel said with sympathy. “Bob Love will check out your wife, and by this time tomorrow we’ll have a much better idea what we’re dealing with and we can go on from there.”
McGarvey rose to go. “I can’t walk away from the CIA with this hanging over our heads.”
Stenzel shook his head. “It wouldn’t do your wife any good if you did.
Right now she needs stability. Change, any sort of change, would be bad for her.” He gave McGarvey a critical look. “Any idea who’s gunning for you and your family? Or why?”
“A couple,” McGarvey said. “We’re working on it.”
“Then go do your job and let me do mine. You can’t help your wife by staying here. She wouldn’t have any idea that you were in the room even if you were holding her hand.”
McGarvey knew better. “Take care of her, Doctor.”
“Count on it.”
The full Monday work shift had already arrived when McGarvey got back to the CIA. Thankfully the media hadn’t gotten onto the incident with his daughter in Vail. The CIA’s press officer, Ron Hazelwood, was giving his weekly briefing in the ground-floor conference room. At least to this moment he hadn’t sent up the red flag for an instant read on some issue he was being pressed on. It was something he would have done had Vail come up. Yemm had recruited someone from Security to do the driving this morning. All the way out, riding shotgun, he spoke in low tones on the encrypted phone. McGarvey didn’t pay much attention; his thoughts were on his beleaguered family. Counting Otto, attempts had been made on all their lives, and it made no more sense to McGarvey now than it had in the beginning. What the hell were they after?
Every scenario he came up with to bring reason to the facts was filled with holes large enough to drive a truck through.
Yemm rode with him on the elevator as far as the glass doors to his office suite. He was preoccupied. “I’d like a couple minutes of your time sometime today,” he said. “I want to run something by you.” “How about right now?” McGarvey asked. “I’ve got a couple of things to check out first.” McGarvey looked a little closer at Yemm. “Anything urgent I need to know about?” “I’m not sure, boss.” “Okay,” McGarvey said. “When you’re ready.” He went in, and Ms. Swanfeld jumped up and followed him through to his office. “Good morning, Mr. Director,”
she said. “How is Mrs. McGarvey?” “They’re going to do some tests this morning, so we won’t know anything until she gets through with that.” McGarvey handed his coat to her and went to his desk as she hung it up in the closet. “She’ll be fine, we’re all certain of it,”
Ms. Swanfeld said. She poured McGarvey a cup of coffee as he flipped through the stack of phone messages and memos that had already piled up this morning. “Has Dick arrived yet?” “Yes, sir. He wants to see you first off.” McGarvey looked up. Dahlia Swanfeld was tough. She’d been through her share of crises in her thirty-plus years with the Company. But she was taking this one more personally than most. The CIA was her family. “This will pass,” he told her, using Stenzel’s words because he couldn’t think of his own. “Yes, sir,” she said. She wanted to ask something else. But she hesitated. “What is it?”
McGarvey prompted. “It’s about your daughter and the poor baby,” Ms Swanfeld said. “I was wondering if sending her a little something would be appropriate under the circumstances? Flowers? A sympathy card? A stuffed animal? Something.” She was distraught. McGarvey’s heart softened. He smiled. “I think she’d like that very much.” “Yes, sir. I’ll tell Mr. Adkins that you’re ready for him. And, Mr.
Paterson would like to have a word with you this morning before ten.
He said that it was extremely urgent.” I’ll call him-” “He would like to see you in person.”
“Okay, ask him to come up now,” McGarvey said. “Then get my son-in-law on the phone. And sometime before lunch Dick Yemm wants to see me. Fit him in please.” “Yes, sir. You might want to look through your agenda as soon as possible. I’ll need to know what to cancel.” “We’re canceling nothing, Dahlia,” McGarvey said sternly. “Business will continue as usual. For everyone. Do I make myself clear?” “We’ll do our best, Mr. Director,” she said, and she left to get started.
McGarvey sat down and sifted through the stack of memos again, but he couldn’t keep his mind off Liz and the baby. Knowing that she had lost the child was terrible enough for him. But the knowledge that it was a baby girl was something far worse. It wasn’t a shapeless blob growing inside her body. It was a human being who would have grown up to be another Elizabeth, another Kathleen. His secretary buzzed him. “Mr.
Rudolph from the Bureau is on one. Do you want to take it?” “Yes,”
McGarvey said. He hit the button for one. “Good morning, Fred. Do you have something for me already?” “Not yet. But I need a couple of answers from you. For starters, who are we supposed to be watching at the Russian embassy other than the crowd we normally watch?” Fred Rudolph was the director of the FBI’s Special Investigative Division.