Without Honor - 01

by David Hagberg

Fuelm was at the bottom of the stairs. “I was just coming up.”

  McGarvey hesitated on the bottom tread. Outside, the blue van passed on the street.

  “Kirk?” Füelm said softly. “Are you feeling well this morning?”

  “Just fine, Dortmund. What was it you needed?”

  Füelm eyed his wet jacket. “Are you going back out?”

  “An errand to run. Was there something you wanted to ask?”

  “I can’t quite seem to put my hands on the Oxford Aquinas.”

  “Upstairs on my desk. There’s a hold on it for Herr Bergmann. He said he’d be in later this week for it.”

  “That explains the mystery,” Füelm said, stepping aside to let McGarvey pass. “Everything is fine with you?”

  McGarvey looked at him. “Marta telephoned?”

  Füelm nodded. “She was worried.”

  McGarvey patted him on the arm. “It’s all right, believe me, Dortmund, it’s all right. But just now I have to run.”

  “When will you be back …?” Füelm called, but McGarvey had spun on his heel and hurried to the back of the shop, into a tiny storeroom and book-repair area. He opened the alley door and looked outside. A delivery truck was parked near the east end, but in the opposite direction he was in time to see two young girls with the umbrella whom he had passed on the stairs below his apartment, coming up from the corner. They spotted him and immediately turned and disappeared back the way they had come.

  There was more than one team! It meant they had been at his house. They had been watching him, without him detecting it. For how long? Long enough to have a handle on his routine.

  He stepped out of the doorway and raced down the alley, the cobblestones slippery in the rain. He reached the narrow side street that led to the broad Avenue d’Ouchy. The girls were just crossing the street and he had to hurry not to lose them in the heavy traffic, nearly getting run over by a bus as he crossed.

  He caught up with them as they waited for the light to change on the Avenue de la Gare across from the Victoria Hotel. He put his hand in his coat pocket, his fingers curling around the Walther’s grip.

  At a distance the girls had seemed very young. Close up he could see that they were at least in their late twenties. For a moment or two they just looked at him without saying a word. He felt silly. He was on a fool’s errand. He was tired, hung over, and was still feeling a lot of guilt about what he had done last night to Marta. He was chasing after hobgoblins now.

  He turned and looked the way he had come as the man in the tan mack came around the corner. The van came up behind him and slowed down.

  McGarvey turned back, suddenly angry. It had not been his imagination. The girls were staring at him. Across the avenue the man with the dark coat was watching them. His right hand was in his pocket.

  “We mean you no harm, Mr. McGarvey,” one of the girls said. Her face was round, her nose tiny, her eyes a pretty blue.

  There were a lot of pedestrians around them, waiting for the light to change, indifferent to everything except the nasty weather and getting to where they were going.

  “Please. We wanted contact with you, without alerting the Swiss authorities.”

  “For what purpose?” McGarvey asked. His adrenaline was pumping, he could feel his heightened awareness, the tensing of his muscles. The tan mack was holding back. The van passed through the intersection, then pulled into a parking space in front of the hotel.

  “There is someone who wishes to speak with you. We have gone through great effort,” the other girl said. The hair sticking out from beneath her scarf was red. Her eyes were wide, and there were freckles on her nose and cheeks. For some reason McGarvey thought of the German word for freckles … sommersprossen.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. If they meant to harm him, he was cornered on three sides. But they had left him an escape route: east along the Avenue de la Gare. If they were driving him, the assassin would be waiting somewhere out ahead. The erratic behavior of a field man apparently on the run will tumble the best laid plans. Wasn’t that the drill? But it had been a lot of years.

  He glanced again at the tan mack. That’d be the direction. Through the back door.

  “Please, sir,” the blue-eyed girl said. “Just listen, that’s all. It’s Mr. Trotter. John Trotter. You were old friends.”

  A bus rattled by, exhaust fumes rising up into the cold drizzle. The freckled girl was getting nervous. Trotter, here? Why?

  “We can’t stand here like this,” Freckles said.

  “Mr. Trotter is waiting in the van in front of the hotel,” the other girl said.

  “Why didn’t he telephone?”

  “Your girlfriend is Swiss police, didn’t you know?”

  “He could have called at the store …” McGarvey started, but he had an idea what was coming next.

  “Liese Fuelm is also Swiss police, assigned to watch you.”

  Christ, he thought. He glanced across the avenue to where the van was parked. Someone in a light raincoat had gotten out. He was tall and very thin. He wore no hat. From here McGarvey could see the glasses, the very large nose. There was no mistaking who it was. But why here, like this? What did they want?

  He was coming down, his anxiety that he was finally being flushed turning to anger. “I’m out of the business,” he snapped.

  “He would just like to talk to you, sir,” the one with the freckles said.

  The light was changing. McGarvey suddenly pivoted to the right and skipped across the street, traffic surging angrily behind him, momentarily cutting off the two girls and leaving the tan mack on the opposite side of the street.

  Trotter raised his hand, as if in greeting, and McGarvey had the feeling he was back ten years. Trotter had been pretty good at what he did in operations, and although they had never worked directly with each other they had liaised from time to time.

  McGarvey glanced back. The girls were gone, as were the tan mack and the man in the dark raincoat. He pulled up short.

  “Hello, Kirk,” Trotter said.

  “What do you want?”

  “We’ll stop so that you can telephone the bookstore and Marta. I don’t want them looking for you,” Trotter said. He seemed somewhat agitated. “You’ll be back in time for dinner.”

  Trotter had changed a lot. There was gray in his hair, and his glasses seemed thicker. He used to worry about losing his eyesight. But more than that was the change in his face. He was a different man. Older than his years. Worry. Stress. It was all there.

  “Are you back with the Company?”

  “The bureau. We need your help, Kirk.”

  McGarvey shook his head. “I’m out of the business, you know that. Coming here was a waste of your time.”

  “Just listen to us, it’s all we want. No strings attached. I absolutely promise it. You have my word. On my honor.”

  “Who is the ‘we’?”

  “Someone from Justice, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. He wasn’t much of a power when you were around. Name of Len Day. He’s a deputy attorney general.”

  “Here in Switzerland to see me?”

  Trotter nodded. “Honestly, Kirk, we do need your help. You can turn it down after you’ve listened, but at least give us that much.”

  “Who suggested me?”

  “I did.”

  “Why?”

  Trotter looked away, his eyes narrowed. He took off his glasses, which were dripping with rain, and rubbed his eyes. “It’s getting strange out there, Kirk,” he said, as if he were taking great care with his words. He put his glasses on and turned back. “I know you can be trusted. In fact, it’s why you got the ax. You were too damned honest.”

  “That was then. How do you know what I’ve become in the meantime?” McGarvey asked. This was all so odd. He felt as if he were looking through the wrong end of a telescope at his life.

  Trotter smiled. Shook his head. “Oh, no, Kirk, you haven’t changed. Of that, at least, I am certain.”

>   4

  They had stopped at a gas station outside fashionable du Mont Blanc on the scenic route to Morges, so that McGarvey could telephone Füelm at the bookstore and Marta at the apartment. Fuelm was understanding, but Marta was hurt that he wanted to go off by himself for the day. He could tell from her voice that she thought he was still angry from last night. But in the end she accepted his explanation that he simply wanted to be alone with his own thoughts, to work out his problem his own way without the pressure of the shop and so that he wouldn’t be able to hurt her again. In any event, McGarvey thought, she was in no position to come after him. Short of turning out the federal police and issuing an all-points bulletin, what could she do? He and Trotter sat in the back of the van while the taciturn driver concentrated on traffic. Most of the others on Trotter’s team would make their way down to the airport in Geneva. Now that McGarvey was in the bag, they were done and could return home. Trotter couldn’t explain how he came to know Marta and Liese were Swiss police, and for a while McGarvey toyed with the idea that he was under arrest for the business in Chile. But something about his old friend didn’t seem to gel, and he began to get the feeling that something was about to happen that he wasn’t going to like.

  “I never knew what happened to you,” he said, lighting himself a cigarette. “After I left the Company, I was out of touch with the old crowd.”

  “They were pretty worried about you there for a while. Thought you would go sour on them.”

  “I’m surprised they didn’t come after me. I’ve been watching for it.”

  Trotter laughed. “That was the Carter administration, remember, boy? You were bounced because you followed orders too well. They thought we were getting a bit too much like the Russkies. Mokrie dela … wet affairs … spilling of blood … Department Victor, and all that.”

  McGarvey remembered how it had been after he had returned from Santiago. Operations was in a shambles, field agents were streaming in from all over the place, and every day it seemed there was something in the New York Times naming one deep-cover operative or another in Portugal, in Mexico, in East Germany or Czechoslovakia. The Company was being reduced to satellite surveillance of target countries, and on a much broader scale, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (which was administered directly by the deputy director of intelligence, to whose analysts the product was funneled) reigned supreme for a time. It was a huge, thankless task—listening to foreign broadcasts; reading foreign newspapers, magazines, and books; translating the material; and picking out the significant details. Every field station had its cadre of readers for translation, most of them locals, and in places such as Okinawa, Bangkok, the U.K., and Key West, receiving stations were manned around the clock to monitor broadcasts. It was a factory operation. The translated data was collated into a daily unanalyzed summary which was transmitted to Langley for the desk jocks to pick apart and put together in whatever the reigning pattern was.

  “It’s different now, you know,” Trotter said.

  “The press seems to be in love with the Company. Is Powers that good?”

  “Absolute tops. I mean it. We worked together on the United Nations thing back in the mid-seventies. He was assistant DDO at the time, but he took the case under his wing. I tagged along as a legman. And I’m telling you, Kirk, the man is everything anyone has said about him and more. Absolutely brilliant. First class. A real force.”

  McGarvey had been cold; he was warm now, and he opened his coat. He had never actually worked with Powers. But he’d never met a man in the Company who had disliked him. Unanimously, Powers was considered the man with the right stuff. His appointment to DCI had surprised no one and had pleased a great many people.

  “So what’s the rub?”

  “When you’re in, you’re solid. When you’re out, you’re cold. There’s no real cooperation anymore. The CIA runs its show and we run ours, with very little contact in between.”

  “Sounds like sour grapes to me,” McGarvey said, getting a bad feeling that they might be trying to catch him up in some interservice struggle.

  “It’s nothing like that, Kirk, believe me when I tell you this. We’ve done some work with the Company, of course. Passed a little information back and forth, but not much. Not enough and especially not lately. The lines of communication across the river are closing, and it’s become … ominous.”

  “And now you’re here in Switzerland, outside your charter,” McGarvey said, not wanting to get involved but curious nevertheless.

  This was the sort of thing Marta was watching out for. He had visions of Trotter and the one from Justice asking him to use his connections to ferret out the Swiss bank account number of some nefarious character they were after. Only he didn’t have any connections. Not here. They passed through the yachting town of Morges and the rain began to let up. Back toward Lausanne, the sun even tried to peek out from under the clouds.

  “There’s probably nothing I can do for you,” McGarvey said.

  “We just want you to listen, Kirk,” Trotter said softly. “Nothing more. Afterward we’ll talk. You’ll see.”

  They passed through Saint Prex, Allaman, and Rolle, all little villages along the choppy, gray lake, finally turning inland up into the hills, the snow-covered slopes of Noirmont, ten miles away on the French border, wreathed in a halo of clouds. A large chalet rose at a sheer angle from the roadside; it had a short, narrow driveway to the garage on the ground floor. They turned in and stopped. The driver got out, opened the garage door, then came back and drove them inside.

  Anonymous here in the hills above Lake Geneva, simply another lodge in a region of similar retreats; it was a safe house.

  McGarvey followed Trotter up from the garage into a short corridor that opened into a large entryway. The house was gloomy, with polished dark woods and thick beams. The massive banisters in the stairhall were hand carved in ornate patterns, with intertwined stag horns and leaping fish in bas-relief. They passed through the hall into the living room, which was a long, narrow chamber that ran the length of the house and overlooked the road. Stained glass windows flanked a massive, natural stone fireplace in which three very large birch logs were burning. To the left, along the inner wall, were bookcases looking down on a grand piano, on the other side of which were a library table with a Tiffany lamp and several chairs. To the right were two huge, overstuffed sofas, several armchairs, and a square oak coffee table that looked as if it weighed a ton. The floors were highly polished wood covered in two places by large oriental rugs. Paintings adorned the walls. This was the chalet of a very wealthy Swiss. Probably a banker who came here on weekends.

  “Mr. McGarvey, I’m so glad that you could come down here to talk with us,” Oliver Leonard Day, associate deputy attorney general for criminal justice, said, bounding in from the hallway.

  McGarvey didn’t know Day, but he knew his kind: career bureaucrat who had married the right woman, ran in the right circles, and dined at the right places. He was probably in his mid-to-late fifties, but looked years younger. His eyes were baby blue, his complexion tan, and his thinning hair boyishly sun bleached. He was part of the California health-nut crowd that had invaded Washington on Reagan’s coattails. Marta would probably have a lot in common with him.

  “I don’t know if I’m going to be of any help,” McGarvey said.

  “John told you we only want you to listen,” Day boomed, eyeing McGarvey’s long hair and beard.

  McGarvey nodded.

  “We want you to meet someone, listen to his story.”

  Day seemed to be in constant motion. His eyes darted back and forth; he spoke with his hands like an Italian, or like someone who was very nervous; and he had a habit of shifting his weight from one foot to the other as if he were a boxer ready to dodge any blow that might come his way.

  “You don’t know this person, Kirk,” Trotter interjected. “It’s not someone out of your past.” He turned to Day. “I think Kirk may have gotten the impression that this was going
to be some sort of an interagency squabble. Dredging up old issues from the past.”

  “Heavens, no,” Day nearly exploded with sincerity. “Good grief, we can’t have you thinking that. You can’t possibly think we brought you here for that.”

  Trotter stepped into the breach. “You do agree at least to listen, don’t you, Kirk?” he asked.

  McGarvey nodded. They had gotten him this far, he might as well stay for the main attraction.

  “No obligations, McGarvey. I want you to understand that right up front,” Day said. He stopped his fidgeting and peered more closely at McGarvey, who got the impression that the man needed glasses but was too vain to wear them. “You do, don’t you … understand?”

  “No, I don’t,” McGarvey said pointedly. “I don’t understand at all. But I’m here. I’ll listen to whatever it is you’re about to tell me, afterward we’ll discuss whatever it is you want to discuss, and then I’ll be back in Lausanne in time for dinner.” He turned to Trotter. “That was the deal, wasn’t it, John?”

  “Absolutely.”

  They stood just inside the doorway. The room seemed peaceful, as if it didn’t belong here, as if it belonged to another, less complicated time.

  “Why don’t we just have a seat,” Day said, motioning toward the couches, “while John fetches our other guest.”

  “Yes, sir,” Trotter said. “Care for some coffee, Kirk?”

  “Cognac would be better, I think, with the head I’ve got.” He was starting to feel mean again.

  Day sniffed his disapproval but said nothing. Trotter left the room. McGarvey could hear him going up the main stairs. He had absolutely no idea what to expect. But they had gone through a great deal of trouble to get him here, Trotter seemed on edge, and a high-ranking U.S. Justice Department bureaucrat had come along, presumably to lend his weight to the proceedings. That worried McGarvey the most. What was Trotter up to that he needed to legitimize his efforts?

  “I understand you have lived here in Switzerland for five years now,” Day said conversationally as they sat down, McGarvey in an easy chair beneath one of the windows.