“Keep in touch.” “You too.” McGarvey had Ms. Swanfeld call the White House. They got Anthony Lang, the President’s chief of staff.
“He’s on an extremely tight schedule today, Mr. Director,” Lang told McGarvey. “I need a minute of his time,” McGarvey insisted, “He’ll call you from Ottawa. His helicopter is here ” Lang was interrupted.
“Just a minute.” The President came on. “You’ve certainly put a burr under Hammond’s saddle. If he could arrange for a firing squad, you’d be against the wall before sundown.” “He has an inside source here at the Agency,” McGarvey told the President. “When we run him down, I’m going to nail Hammond publicly.” “Not such a good idea,” the President disagreed. “You and I are in a tough spot right now. I have a vote on my armed forces modernization bill coming up that Hammond and Madden are going to pull out all the stops to oppose. And some nut with a grudge is out there gunning for you and your family. “Now, I’m not willing to kiss Hammond’s ass, just like you’re not going to surround yourself with the National Guard. When you find your leak, you can hang him or her. They’ll deserve it. But not publicly. We’re going to give Hammond that round. In return he’s going to give us your nomination, and he’s going to roll over and play at least neutral if not dead on my bill. It’s two for one. Not a bad return.” “Until the next time ”
“Tom Hammond is an elected representative of the people.
He’s not going away anytime soon, and I wouldn’t want him to. He serves a very useful purpose. He’s part of the system, and we’ll live with him. In the meantime, give me what I want, and Hammond will give us what we want, which should clear the way for you to find out who’s after you.” “No further hearings.” “Not until you’re in the clear.”
McGarvey could hear the deal maker in the President. Haynes was famous for it. Someone trying to harm the director of the Central Intelligence Agency was a big deal. But not as big a deal as arms limitation talks, or world trade agreements, or terrorist attacks in Washington and New York. Every event had its own perspective against the backdrop of the world’s problems. One man, even one as important as a DCI, could not swing the balance of millions of lives in jeopardy.
It was a fact of life. Reality. “Have a good trip, Mr. President,”
McGarvey said. “You’ll find out what’s happening. You always do,” the President said. “But stay safe.” Lawrence Haynes was the most popular president since Reagan because he was an honorable man with a squeaky clean past and a picture-perfect wife and daughter whom the American public had adopted from the beginning of his campaign in New Hampshire.
But he had retained his popularity because he kept his administration simple. Simplicity had become the White House watchword. The most complex and perplexing problems were broken into their constituent parts, each much simpler and easier to deal with than the whole. His staff found the new way of thinking a breeze. And so did the public.
McGarvey got up and went to the windows that looked over the Virginia countryside toward the Potomac River. Snow was falling in delicate, almost weightless flakes. The whispering nagging was there at the back of his head, but he was beginning to understand the why of someone coming after him, and he felt that Nikolayev might have the answers to the how. It was something psychological. Keep it simple. Always simple. When he had the answers to the first two elements the why and the how he would have two legs of an isosceles triangle, and the third would be a fait accompli.
THIRTY
“MY HUSBAND KILLED HIM, YOU KNOW. SHOT HIM RIGHT THROUGH THE OLD EYEBALL.”
Norman Stenzel tapped a Marlboro out of his pack and lit it, tossing the match in the ashtray on the long conference table. His neurologist friend, Dr. Robert Love, sat across from him. They’d been going over Kathleen McGarvey’s medical file and the results of her tests or rather, the lack of results for the past hour. As far as Stenzel was concerned he was no closer to understanding what was happening to the woman than he had been in the beginning. The joke among psychiatrists when they didn’t know what was wrong with a patient was to simply say that they were nuts. “There’s nothing wrong with her, Norm,” Dr. Love said. He and Stenzel were opposites. Love was a precise man, in his manner, in his impeccable suits and hand-tailored shoes and two-hundred-dollar haircuts, in the twelve-cylinder Mercedes that he drove. Stenzel, on the other hand, was a dreamer, a speculator. He looked and acted shoddy; his hair was too long, his corduroy trousers were baggy and his eleven year-old Chevy Blazer was pockmarked by rust and dents as if it had been in a war zone. But they respected each other’s professional abilities, and they were friends. “Except that she’s nuts,” Stenzel replied. “There’s nothing wrong inside her head.
No lesions, normal EEC, nothing from the MRI, no tumors, no bleeders, no asymmetries. Nothing showed up from the lumbar tap, her sugar level was normal. Nothing obviously wrong with her blood chemistry. She has a slightly higher than optimal B/P, her cholesterol is at 190, her lipids and tryglicerides are just about what you’d expect for a woman of her age and lifestyle.” Dr. Love spread his hands. “She’s as healthy as you or I.” “Puts the ball back in my court,” Stenzel said.
Which was about what he figured would be the case. Though it would have been easier had they found a small lesion or even a benign tumor somewhere on her temporal lobe. It would have made understanding and then treating her symptoms a lot simpler. “Schizophrenia?” “That was my first thought, but I’ve gotten a lot of contradictory test results.”
Stenzel frowned. “Something else is happening. It’s as if something’s pushing at her. Something that she’s terrified of.” Dr. Love closed the folders he’d been reading from. They’d met at the hospital rather than at their offices for convenience sake. “Well, from what you’ve told me about her situation, it’s a wonder she’s not a raving lunatic.”
“That’s precisely the problem, Bob. She isn’t raving. At least she’s only lost control the one time, so far as we know. But the life she’s had, and especially what’s been going on over the past week or so, should have forced her into nervous collapse.” “She’s tough. She’d have to be, to be married to someone in her husband’s position.”
Stenzel shook his head. “That’s the other part of the problem. Her position. She’s carrying around a load of guilt issues, just like the rest of us. Most of them are crap. But she’s taken on the problems of a half-dozen charities, including her church, as if they were her own.
The things they’re saying in her husband’s Senate confirmation hearings are depressing her. And she’s gone through her daughter’s pregnancy and miscarriage as if she had been carrying the baby herself.” “She sounds like the typical Beltway wife. But, look, I’ll run the tests again. Maybe we missed something.” “No, I don’t think so. If you thought it was necessary to redo the tests, you would go ahead and do it.” Stenzel looked away for a moment, resigned. Dr. Love got up. “We’ll see you and Marie Saturday night, then?” Stenzel nodded. “Yeah. Thanks for your help, Bob.” When Dr.