Together they got Kathleen dried off. McGarvey picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, where Gloria threw back the covers. He got her into the bed and pulled the covers up. Kathleen was shivering again, but she wasn’t convulsing. Stenzel appeared in the doorway, took one look, then came over and brushed them aside. He checked Kathleen’s pupils and took her pulse. “What the hell is happening to her?” McGarvey demanded. “It’s a delayed reaction from last night,”
the psychiatrist said. “She’s gone into overload.” He prepared a syringe with twenty-five milligrams of Librium, swabbed Kathleen’s right arm, and administered the drug. She watched everything he did, but she didn’t fight him. “We can’t take her back to Bethesda,” McGarvey said. “No, but I’m going with her,”
Stenzel replied. He checked her pupils and pulse again, and grunted in satisfaction. “How are you doing, Kathleen?” She smiled wanly.
“Better now,” she answered. She looked over at her husband and at Gloria Sanchez, and gave them a smile. “Sorry. I’m not as strong yet as I thought I was.” “You’ll be okay now,” Stenzel told her. He tucked her bare arm under the covers. “I want you to relax for a little while.” “But I’m not tired,” she objected. “I know. But I want you to take it easy. Just for a half hour or so. Will you do that for me?” She nodded. “Sure.” She closed her eyes. She was asleep almost immediately. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep her on track,” Stenzel told McGarvey out in the hall. “She needs to be hospitalized. In a clinic somewhere where she can get some proper rest.” Chris Bartholomew got a towel from the guest bathroom down the hall and gave it to McGarvey. “Thanks,” he told her. She nodded and went into the bedroom to help with Kathleen and help clean up. “We have to get past this first,” McGarvey said. He felt impotent to stop the threat to his family and what it was doing to them all. Yet he could not back away. He couldn’t run. Not this time. “I know. But the sooner that’s done, the sooner I can start to help your wife.”
“What’s wrong with her, Doc?” A troubled, pensive expression came over the psychiatrist’s face. “She’s ” He shook his head. “I don’t know.
She has the classic symptoms of a half-dozen psychoses, but not all the symptoms of any one of them. Deepened emotions, grandiosity, depression, bouts of violence and abnormal muscle strength, irritability, hallucinations, seizures, paranoid suspicions, loss of libido followed by hyper sexuality Stenzel spread his hands. “I don’t know.” “Will she be able to travel in an hour?” “She’ll be sedated.
Not out of it, but calmed down. The move shouldn’t disturb her.”
Gloria Sanchez came out of the bedroom. Kathleen was already up. She had put on a robe and stood in the middle of the room looking at them.
She was smiling timidly. “Tony has a priest at the front door, says he would like to see Mrs. McGarvey. His name is Janis Vietski of Good Shepherd Church here in Chevy Chase. He checks out.” “I know him,”
McGarvey said. “Tell him that we appreciate his coming over, but not now.” “Yes, Kirk,” Kathleen said. “Please. It would mean a lot to me before we leave.” McGarvey looked to Stenzel for an opinion. The doctor shrugged. “Can’t hurt,” he replied in a soft voice that wouldn’t carry. “Might even help calm her down.” “Would you like to get dressed first?” McGarvey asked his wife. “No. I’d like to talk to Father for just a minute, then I’ll get ready, and we can leave.” She seemed to be brittle and withdrawn. But that was to be expected.
McGarvey gave Gloria the nod. “Have him come up.” The security officer said something into her lapel micA minute later Father Vietski, looking something like a shaggy bear with longish dark hair and beard, a stained black jacket and clerical collar, and unbuckled winter boots appeared at the head of the stairs. He laid his topcoat and hat on a chair and shambled over, a look of sympathy on his pleasantly broad Slavic peasant’s face. He didn’t appear to notice that McGarvey was wet. “Mr. Director, I came right over the moment I heard the terrible news,” the priest said, shaking McGarvey’s hand. His voice was rich and warm, concerned. “God bless us all that you and Mrs. McGarvey were not injured.” “Thank you,” McGarvey said. He’d never really examined his faith, although he knew that he sided with Voltaire in his distrust of organized religion. But Katy got comfort from the Church. At this point that meant a lot to him. And Vietski seemed to have a genuine regard for her. The priest noticed Kathleen standing in her robe in the bedroom. “My dear sweet Kathleen, what has happened to you?” he said warmly. With eyes for no one else but her, he entered the bedroom, waited until the security officer got out, then closed the door. “Five minutes, then I want him out of here,” McGarvey told the security people.
“Yes, sir.”
“When he’s gone, I’d like you to help her get ready to travel,”
McGarvey said. “I’m staying with her,” Stenzel said. “Good,” McGarvey replied. “Now, where’s Jim?” Jim Grassinger had taken over as head of McGarvey’s security detail. “He’s in the dining room. You need to get out of those wet clothes, sir,” Gloria Sanchez said. “I will,”
McGarvey said. He gave her a smile. “Thanks for your help.” “Yes, sir.” McGarvey changed clothes, then went downstairs. He stopped in the front hall. Everything was unraveling around him. Katy’s disintegration and seizure. Liz and the baby. And last night Dick Yemm’s death. That part should not have happened. The security team in the van was too good to let someone in an unknown car get that close to them. And Yemm should have known better than to barge into the van the way he had without backup. The Bureau had found no trace of the blue Mercedes that Kathleen had seen from the window. But when they did finally run it down it would help clear up some of the mystery.
Grassinger was in the dining room with three other security officers.
Detailed maps of the Washington area, including the small town of Cropley a few miles up the Potomac from the capital, were spread out on the table. Grassinger, a tall, square-shouldered, serious man was on the encrypted phone to Operations at Langley. “I’ll get back to you,”
he said. He broke the connection. “Gloria tells me that we can get out of here within the hour,” McGarvey said. “What’s the drill?”
“We’re driving you and Mrs. McGarvey out to Cropley in the spare limo.
The long way.” “Norm Stenzel will be riding with us.” “Okay, Dr.
Stenzel, too, plus two security people and your driver,” Grassinger agreed. “We’ll do a number of switchbacks and feints, which will give our chase cars room to make sure that we get out clean. We’ll have two helicopters in the air, at a distance, to help cover our tail as well.