bodyguards. They waited at the Charge of Quarters station in the front hall while Mac splashed some water on his face, and joined them. It was a few minutes before noon.
“They’re waiting for us, Mr. Director,” Tomlinson said. He was cool; everyone had a great deal of respect for McGarvey, but the Company was under siege. A CIA officer had been gunned down in broad daylight and his father-in-law knew something about it.
“How about my wife and daughter?” McGarvey asked.
“Mrs. McGarvey was given a sedative, and she’s resting now in the infirmary. Mrs. Van Buren is in the conference room. She won’t start without you.”
“I see,” McGarvey said, his heart torn between wanting to go to Katy to make sure she was okay, and being with Liz to get the debriefing over with as soon as possible, and with as little additional emotional damage to his daughter as was possible under the circumstances.
The Farm was in lockdown for the remainder of the day and all of tomorrow until a new sitrep was prepared; no one was in the Yard when McGarvey and his bodyguards walked across past the center circle, the flag at half-staff, over to headquarters and upstairs to the camp commandant’s briefing room on the third floor.
Double-paned windows, with electronic white noise continuously transmitted in the gap between the glass panels, looked down the hill through the woods toward the York River, the firing range, and the starting block of the confidence course, deserted now.
Elizabeth sat hunched in a chair on one side of the conference table that had places for fourteen people, her head down, her hands clasped between her knees. She was still dressed in the same jeans and plain sweatshirt she’d worn to the hospital and the mop of short blond hair on her head was a mess.
The debriefers, Dan Green, a little person shorter than four-six, with a broad head, hawklike nose, wide, soft brown understanding eyes, and oddly shaped hands and distorted fingers sat across from her, next to his partner Pete Boylan, who was a vivacious woman in her early thirties, short dark hair, vividly blue eyes, and a voluptuous figure that could have landed her a place in Hollywood. Everyone back at Langley was afraid to approach her; the men because she was beautiful and they figured they wouldn’t have a chance, the women because they felt they would appear frumpy next to her, and the clients whom she debriefed because they instinctively felt she would know when they were lying. But she had a reputation of being friendly not aloof, and kind not harsh. She and her partner were people who understood things, and were sympathetic.
“Mr. Director,” she said, looking up when McGarvey came into the room.
Green simply smiled sadly, an expression of near absolute devastation on his face. Their method was simple: Pete was the interrogator and Dan was, in the end, the priest to whom you confessed.
Liz looked up at her father and managed a weak smile. She’d finished crying, and now she seemed determined, the beginning of anger and raw hate starting to show up in the set of her mouth and eyes.
McGarvey sat down next to her. “I don’t think my daughter knows anything that might be of use at this point.”
“Yes, sir,” Pete agreed. “But she asked if she could remain.”
“I want to know what’s going on,” Liz said. “No one’s told me why he went to Washington, except to see a friend who you told me had been killed. But why?”
“We don’t know yet, sweetheart,” McGarvey said.
“Have you had a chance to take a look at the material on the disk that was found in Mr. Van Buren’s car?” Pete asked.
“His name was Todd,” Liz said sharply. “Let’s just start there, okay?”
Pete nodded, her eyes not leaving McGarvey’s.
“I’ve not seen it, but Otto Rencke filled me in.”
“What do you think?”
“Nonsense, of course.”
“Of course,” Pete said. “Not worth killing a CIA officer for. But your son-in-law, Todd, telephoned you from his car apparently less than a minute before the incident. What did he say to you?”
“That he had a meeting with Josh Givens in Washington, a friend of his from college, about some sort of conspiracy involving the Friday Club.”
“Did he say how he felt about the information he’d been given?”
“He thought it was unlikely, but he told me that Givens apparently believed it.”
“What was your advice to him?” Pete asked.
“I told him to discuss the situation with Mr. Rencke.”
“Was there any urgency in your