Where were the bridges? Someone came out of the main office by the elevators and headed toward him. He caught the motion out of the corner of his eye, and he turned his head. He knew. It came to him all at once. Suddenly he saw everything. Or at least most of it. All the clues had been in front of him since August, but he had never looked directly at them like he was looking now directly at the clerk.
Delicate. Simple. Even beautiful. And frightening beyond anything that Rencke had ever imagined. A young air force staff sergeant whose name tag read FEDER MAN came down the corridor in a rush. He was agitated. “Mr. Rencke, the operations officer is trying to reach you, sir. It’s urgent.” Rencke looked at the young man, still amazed at what had been hidden in plain sight in front of him all this time.
“Sir, this has to do with the director.” Rencke slowly focused. “What did you say?” “The OD said that there’s been another attempt.” “Shit.
Shit.” Rencke turned and hurried back into the conference room, where he phoned Langley. “Operations.” “This is Rencke. What’s going on?”
“There’s been an explosion in front of Mr. McGarvey’s home in Chevy Chase. Security is on the way, and the Maryland Highway Patrol is already there.” “Was anyone hurt?” Rencke tried with everything he possessed to stay on track. Not to go crazy. But it wasn’t easy. “We don’t have all the details yet, sir. The director was not hurt, but the security detail might have been involved.” “That’d be Dick Yemm.”
“Yes, sir. He does not respond to his pages. Mr. Whittaker has been informed, and he’s issued the recall for all his officers.” “Send a chopper down here for me. I’ll be waiting by the main parking lot.”
“Sir, that won’t be necessary “
“Do it now,” Rencke said menacingly. “Right now.” He hung up, but sat in front of the phone for a full minute as he came to grips with his emotions, which were jumping all over the place. He knew the why, he had a fair idea of the how and a very short list of the who. But he needed the proof, because nobody, not even Mac, would believe him without it. First, he had to make sure that Mac and Mrs. M. were okay. And Liz. He couldn’t forget about Liz. Rencke bundled up his computer, not bothering to shut it down or log off the repository’s mainframe, and took the elevator to the surface. He was stopped at the security checkpoint in the arrivals hall, and his bag was quickly searched before he was allowed to pass through. The snow had tapered off somewhat, but there were halos around the lights. Rencke ran across the driveway, past the flagpole and the bronze Civil War cannon on the median, and stopped at the edge of the nearly empty parking lot.
He started to hop from one foot to the other. The helicopter wasn’t here yet. He cocked an ear, but he could not hear it approaching.
“Goddammit.” If his ride wasn’t here in five minutes, they’d pay.
Someone would pay with their balls. He took out his cell phone and speed dialed McGarvey’s number. It rang four times, then rolled over to the locator at Langley. Rencke broke the connection. Mac had his hands full right now dealing with the mess. He telephoned the hospital and asked for Kathleen McGarvey’s room. “I’m sorry, sir, Mrs.
McGarvey was discharged from the hospital this afternoon,” the operator informed him. “On whose orders?” “I don’t have that information, sir.
You have to talk with the patient’s doctor.” “Okay. Okay. Connect me with Elizabeth Van Buren’s room, please.” “One moment, sir,” the operator said. She came back. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Van Buren was also discharged this afternoon.” Rencke cut the connection and speed dialed Liz and Todd’s home phone. Todd answered on the first ring. “Hello.”
“Is Elizabeth with you?” Rencke blurted. “She checked out of the hospital.” “She’s here, in the tub,” Todd replied. “Is something wrong, Otto?”
Rencke closed his eyes, the cold air suddenly felt good on his hot face. He was relieved. At least Elizabeth was safe for the moment.
“They made another attempt on Mac. There was an explosion in front of his house. But the OD said he was okay.” “What about Mrs. M?” “She checked out of the hospital, and now I can’t reach her.” He heard the helicopter in the distance. It was another cause for relief. “I’m heading over to their house now. Whittaker might recall you, but don’t do it, Todd. Stay there with Liz until we can figure out what we’re going to do next.” “Mac told me that he was opening the safe house in the morning. Told me to stick it out here until then.” “Good idea.”
“Okay, there’s a call on my other line. It’s the Company.” “Take care of Liz.” “Hey, I love her, too, remember?” Rencke speed dialed his own apartment, but there was no answer. He and Louise had agreed that she should return to work at the NRO. She was doing nobody any good by staying home. She wanted to be with him 24/7, but that wasn’t possible. But he had hoped that she might have come home a little early today. He desperately wanted to talk to her. To hear her voice.
He needed comforting. A navy Seasprite Lamps-I, three-man, multipurpose helicopter came in low from the northeast and touched down in the parking lot in a flurry of blowing snow. The copilot helped Rencke into the empty crew seat, and handed him a crash helmet, which he donned and plugged into the ship’s communications system. “I need to get to the director of Central Intelligence’s house,” Rencke spoke into the mic. “It’s up in Chevy Chase. If you don’t know the way, your operations officer can get it from Langley.” “We know the way, sir,” the pilot said, and the machine lifted into the air with a sickening lurch. Rencke hated all helicopters. In fact he didn’t care much for any kind of transportation except the World Wide Web. He hunched down in his seat and pulled his seat harness a little tighter. His shoulder was hurting him, and for the first time today he realized that he was hungry. It was time to go home, where Louise would have something good waiting for him. She claimed that she was a horrible cook, but he knew better.
The view out the cockpit windows was nothing but swirling snow, with a kaleidoscope of meaningless lights somewhere below. Air pockets caused the helicopter to jump all over the place. But the pilot and copilot seemed unconcerned. Washington was like a powerful magnet from which Rencke could not escape. He’d been lonely as hell in Rio, but happy as a clam in France. Until Mac came calling with his problems. He told himself that he had no choice. Mac was his friend. Mrs. M. and Liz were like family. He had to help them. He had to be here in Washington near them, to keep them out of trouble, to keep them safe from harm. But the truth of the matter was that he’d searched for legitimacy all of his life. When he was fourteen his father started beating him and calling him a queer boy. And that same year his mother, in a drunken rage, told him that she wished that she’d had an abortion rather than giving birth to him. In college he’d been treated with some respect because he was bright, but he’d been kicked out when they found him screwing the dean’s secretary on the dean’s desk. That was at a Jesuit university. They didn’t even ask him to leave. He just packed up that afternoon and got out. And in the air force he’d been treated okay, that is after he’d made it through basic training, because he had a handle on mathematics. But that job had lasted only a couple of years, when he was caught having sex with a supply sergeant.
A male supply sergeant. In the CIA, after he’d doctored his records, he thought that he’d found a home. Though he didn’t have a lot of friends in those days, at least he had some respect, even though he knew that they called him names behind his back. Then Mac came along.
Right off the bat Rencke knew that McGarvey was his kind of a person.