as now that Germans, at least at the governmental level, were still trying to live down the Nazi era, and never knew quite how.
“Yes, you were here, I saw that in your record,” Mueller said. “So, you have a very good memory, which will be excellent for our purposes.”
They pulled up to a gate at the Kaserne, which was opened by a uniformed civilian guard with a sidearm under the watchful eye of another guard just at the doorway to the security office.
“May I call my consulate here in Frankfurt?”
“I’m sure that whoever you sent those photographs to will have already notified your people,” Mueller said. “And we’ll find out who you called.”
McGarvey couldn’t help himself, and he smiled. “I don’t think so.”
“We have some pretty good people on this side of the pond, too, you know, you arrogant bastard.”
Another little bit of the puzzle dropped in place for McGarvey. “What exactly is it that Administrative Solutions does for the German government? Can you at least give me a hint?”
But Mueller said nothing, until they stopped at a nondescript, one-story building near the rear of the installation, and he and his partner got out and Mueller opened the rear door.
McGarvey got out and went into the building, which looked very much like a military interrogation and holding center, and was led down the corridor to a small room furnished only with a metal table and two chairs. The walls were bare concrete, the floor plainly tiled, with a single dim lightbulb set into the ceiling and covered with wire mesh.
He sat down at the table and Mueller sat across from him; his partner leaned against the wall beside the door.
“Shall we begin with why you came to Germany under a false passport, but aboard a CIA aircraft?” Mueller said.
“To talk to Roland Sandberger, as I’ve told you.”
“Why did you bring a pistol?”
“I always travel armed. Have for years.”
“And what about the silencer?” Mueller asked. “Were you planning on killing Herr Sandberger?”
McGarvey shrugged. “Only if I felt that it was necessary.”
“What would have constituted a necessity?”
McGarvey took a moment to answer. “I had a reasonable expectation that either he or his bodyguards would have tried to assassinate me.”
Mueller glanced over his shoulder at his partner then turned back. “I see. And now what are your expectations, Herr McGarvey?”
“That you’ve just run out of questions. That you’ll be reporting this to your superiors in Pullach. That you will not interfere with the movements of Sandberger or his employees. That this incident has been reported to the consul general here in Frankfurt, and most likely via some old-boy connection to Langley. And that sometime tomorrow someone will show up to fetch me.”
Mueller was not happy.
“Have I left something out?”
“Fuck you,” Mueller said, and he and his partner left the interrogation cell.
“And the horse you rode in on,” McGarvey added.
SIXTEEN
It was around two the next afternoon when David Whittaker, the deputy director of the CIA, showed up at the Drake Kaserne and McGarvey was fetched from his VIP guest suite.
Since he’d not brought an overnight kit, he’d been supplied with pajamas and toiletries, had been fed a good wiener schnitzel with boiled potatoes and several bottles of dark Lowenbrau for dinner, and an equally good breakfast and lunch. Other than that he’d been left alone, though the morning English edition of the International Herald-Tribune had shown up at his door, and he’d had a television to watch, but no telephone.
Whittaker was dressed, as usual, in an old-fashioned three-piece suit, bow tie, and wingtips; his eyes wide behind his wire-rimmed glasses. He was the most moral man McGarvey had ever known, and stern because of it. His was just about the last of the old-school East Coast Presbyterians, the kind who had ruled the roost since the OSS days of World War II.
“You’ve become something of a problem,” he said when McGarvey was brought to the dayroom, and they shook hands.
“I always have been,” McGarvey said. When Mac was the DCI, Whittaker ran the Directorate of Operations, and had done a fine job. Now he had risen to his highest level in the Company; it wasn’t likely that he would ever become the DCI, because he was too low key, not political enough. The U.S. was one of the few countries in which the top spy wasn’t a professional intelligence officer, only an appointed, well-connected amateur, and for a long time morale at the CIA had been low. Especially these days when more than fifty