“What the hell are you talking about?” Adkins responded angrily. “You’re the deputy director of Operations, for Christ’s sake. You’re not supposed to move out of this building without a bodyguard. Murphy’s having a fit every hour on the hour. He.expects me to keep track of you.”
“Otto found out where the guys who hit Cropley probably went. Wasn’t much time to tell you about it. As it was I got there about the same time they did.”
“Shit,” Adkins said. “What happened?”
“They’re dead.”
Adkins gave him a hard glance. “Why didn’t I think of that,” he said, resigned. He studied McGarvey. “You were right about one thing. You sure the hell aren’t an administrator.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. What do you want me to tell Murphy?”
“The truth,” McGarvey said, tiredly.
“He’ll fire you,” Adkins warned.
McGarvey stopped. “It was personal, Dick. They came after my wife and daughter. Twice. I wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be a third time.”
Adkins backed down. “Okay, Mac. I guess I can understand what you did. Doesn’t take much of a leap. But what’s next? If all the bad guys are dead, who do we go after now? Or are you going to hold that from me too?”
“What about Joseph Lee? Anything from our networks?”
“He hasn’t returned to his house in Taiwan, and he hasn’t come back here. But we’re still beating the bushes.”
“Is his wife still here?”
“So far as I know, she is,” Adkins said. “The Bureau is watching her.”
“I want to know the moment she leaves,” McGarvey instructed. “She’ll be taking the Gulfstream back to Taiwan. Probably in the next day or two.”
Adkins stared at him for a few moments. “I thought it would be different, somehow, with you as DDO.”
McGarvey smiled. “I can’t change now.”
Adkins shook his head. “No, I don’t expect you can. The Company is going to have to change, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing.”
“Lean on our Taiwanese and Japanese networks. I’d like to know where Lee has gotten himself to.”
“I’ll double our assets out there. Beyond that there isn’t much we can do.”
“I appreciate that,” McGarvey said. “But we’ll have some kind of an answer one way or the other in the next couple of days.”
“Are you going to be here for the rest of the morning?”
“Probably not.”
Adkins smiled. “Keep me posted, Mac. Can you do that much? It’d make my job a hell of a lot easier.”
“Sure,” McGarvey said, but the answer convinced neither of them.
Ms. Swanfeld looked up from her computer when McGarvey walked in. He’d been on the job for nearly a week, yet he hadn’t spent more than a few hours behind his desk. The day-to-day operations of the DO were overseen by Adkins and Ms. Swanfeld, and the strain was showing on her face. He had warned them. Nevertheless he felt badly for her.
“Boy, am I glad to see you.” She gathered a stack of files and memos and got up. “Your phone’s been ringing off the hook, Mr. Murphy wants to see you immediately and you’ve got one problem you’re going to have to deal with first thing.”
McGarvey held her off. “Have you been here all night?”
She looked at him as if he’d just asked a stupid question. “Naturally. I had work to do.”
“Go home.”
“Not a chance, boss. We’re still swamped here.” She smiled. “Besides, I still don’t feel half as bad as you look.”
“I could fire you.”
“That you could.”
McGarvey shook his head. “Okay, but when we get past this, you’re taking a vacation, and that’s an order.”
“Right,” she said. “First off—”
“First off I want you to get the President’s appointments secretary Dale Nance on the phone. Then I want to see Otto.”
“He asked me to let him know the moment you arrived.”
McGarvey went to his office. “Oh, and see if you can rustle me up some breakfast. I’m starved. Lots of coffee.”
Ms. Swanfeld was already dialing the White House. “You’re going to want to see Mrs. McGarvey as soon as you can.”
“After I talk to Nance and Otto.” McGarvey took off his jacket, tossed it over a chair and went into the bathroom where he splashed some cold water on his face. He was haggard, but he’d looked and felt a lot worse. Killing the terrorists had done nothing for him. It was as if it had never happened. They’d made some stupid mistakes, and he’d taken advantage of them. Routine. Nothing out of the ordinary.
He studied his face and he tried to order his thoughts. Killing those four men was no more important to him than stepping on four bugs. And that frightened him to the bottom of his soul. He had seen the same lack of emotion in the eyes of one or two shooters he’d killed. Mokrie dela. Wet work, in the old KGB parlance. Department Viktor had attracted men, and some women, who were completely devoid of emotion when it came to taking human lives.
Not a night went by, however, when McGarvey did not see the last look of surprise on the faces of every person he’d assassinated. The number wasn’t huge, but each night they came to him in his sleep, haunting his dreams, so that each morning when he awoke it was as if he was returning from a graveyard.
But he didn’t feel that way about the men he’d killed on the bridge, or the four tonight. And he studied his eyes to make sure that he wasn’t seeing the same utter lack of emotion he’d seen in the eyes of at least two of the shooters he’d killed. Bad men. Sociopaths. Emotionless killing machines.
Staring back at him in the mirror was the reflection of a man who’d done so much that he was hurting and frightened. Somehow, just now, those emotions were comforting.
He went to his desk and lit a cigarette as his telephone rang.
“It’s Mr. Nance,” his secretary called from the outer office.
McGarvey picked up his phone. “Mr. Nance, this is Kirk McGarvey. I’d like to have a couple of minutes with the President this morning to finish last night’s briefing.”
“Good morning, Mr. McGarvey. That won’t be necessary. The general will be briefing the President this afternoon at two.”
“I have some new information—”
“I’m sorry about the attack on your family; it was an outrageous act. The President asked me to pass along his concern is well. Everything is being done to find the people responsible.”
“He’ll either see me this morning, or I’ll go to Sam Blair.”
“That’s your prerogative,” Nance said coolly. “Although it would probably mean your position.”
“Tell the President that I have some new information.”
“We’re busy over here just now.”
“Do it,” McGarvey said. “He’ll want to know about this right now. I’ll hold.”
“Send it over.”
“I don’t think so. And neither would you. Now tell him, goddammit. I’ll hold.”
“Very well,” Nance said after a moment. He was gone for about a minute and when he came back he sounded angry. “Ten o’clock.”
“Thank you,” McGarvey said.
“Don’t be late.”
McGarvey hung up and went to the door. Otto was just coming in. He looked like he’d been put through the wringer, his out-of-control red hair practically standing on end. But he had a gleeful look in his eyes.
“Oh, boy, you did it again,” he said, his boyish voice hoarse.
“Have you eaten anything this morning?” McGarvey asked. “Other than Twinkies?”
Rencke shrugged indifferently, as if the thought of food was the farthest thing from his mind.
“There’s enough breakfast coming for both of you,” Ms. Swanfeld said. “But Mr. Murphy called again, and you have to speak with Mrs. McGarvey.”