Without Honor - 01

by David Hagberg

  Each question raised a dozen more. Each possibility admitted a thousand dark avenues down any one of which was some unknown danger.

  I want you to pay real close attention. This Cuban we’re talking about worked for the Company a long time ago. He might still be working for the Company.

  For whom, Kirk? he wanted to ask. The back door was wide open, and no one was there covering it for him. The next time he was going to get more information before he went off half-cocked.

  For the next half hour he made himself work through the remainder of the files he had requested, going through all the motions of checking them against the card catalog. When he was finished, he bundled up his own files and put them back in his briefcase along with his tablets and pencils. Mary came over from the counter.

  “Well, how’d we do this time, Janos?” she asked. She did not seemed worried, nor did it seem to him that she could see he was upset.

  “You were a little slow on 201,” he said casually. “But it was within limits. I’m not a hardass here, Mary.” He got up. His legs felt a little weak. It was from sitting in the car, and then here at the table.

  She laughed. “Oh, I don’t know about that.” She glanced at her watch. “Are we done here? Can I get these back to the roost?”

  “Sure. You did a good job here, Mary, as usual. All of you did.” He locked his briefcase and hefted it.

  “Are you heading back to Langley?” she asked.

  “Why?”

  “I thought I’d buy you a drink at the club. Something I’d like to talk to you about.”

  He looked guiltily down at the files. Had she found him out? She was sharp. Christ, she could have looked in each jacket before bringing them over to him. She could have seen what Basulto’s contained. Now she wanted to find out from him why he hadn’t said anything about it. And that was the least of it. At this moment there should have been a four-alarm fire beneath the tail of every man, woman, and child on this post. Or, she could be working for whoever was still running the Cuban.

  “Janos?”

  “Another time, Mary,” he blurted. Careful, Janos he cautioned himself. “I’ve really got to get back.”

  Disappointment showed on her face. “How about later this week, then? I could drive up to your office. I’d really like to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “Maybe I’d like to apply for another position.”

  “What?” he asked stupidly. He felt dense.

  “At Langley. In computers.”

  Then he understood, and he laughed in relief. “Sure,” he said. “Sure thing, Mary. But I’ve got to go now. Call me later this week. Better yet, next week. I need a … I’m busy this week. Next week we’ll talk.”

  “Thanks,” Mary said.

  In the front office, Lieutenant Guthrie had stepped out. Janos signed himself out, then headed north again, sweat making his shirt stick to his back. This time he had no stomach for music, Russian or otherwise. He could only think what a disappointment McGarvey had been. He was an old friend and yet he hadn’t warned Janos—at least, he hadn’t made his warning clear enough. Be careful, Janos, he could have said. I mean be really careful, Janos. I don’t want you to get hurt. You are a good friend. I want to protect you. Right now there could be a lot of trouble coming down—for all of them. It was all right for Kirk, the man had resilience; he was like a rubber ball. When he was knocked down, he always seemed to come back up with just as much strength as before. But for Janos, who felt as if he were a man out on a very long, shaky, and dangerous limb, it wasn’t all right.

  Ten miles north of Charlottesville, he pulled off at a Mobil station, where from a pay phone near the men’s room, he telephoned a number McGarvey had given him. It was answered on the second ring by a gruff male voice. “Yeah?”

  Janos could hear a lot of talking and laughter in the background. It sounded like a bar.

  “Is Mack Kirtland there?” he asked.

  “Who’s calling?” the man demanded.

  “His mother,” Janos snapped. The man laughed. Janos glanced out at his car. The attendant was washing the windows.

  “Hello, mother,” McGarvey came on the line.

  “Three jackets. Nothing in any of them. Someone was there first.”

  “Easy now,” McGarvey said soothingly. “You’re calling from a secure phone?”

  “Absolutely, Kirk. I swear it.” Trucks were rumbling by on the highway.

  “Tell me what happened, then, Janos. Everything.”

  Janos told him everything he had found and exactly how he had gone about it. He also share his speculation that the files could have been cleaned out at any time after the date in June 1964, and before the archives had been moved down to McGillis.

  “But I’m mad, Kirk, that you didn’t give me a better warning.”

  “Nothing has happened yet, Janos,” McGarvey said. “But if it’s any consolation, I had no idea someone would have wiped out his files. There wasn’t a thing?”

  “Nothing, Kirk. Now what happens?”

  The line was silent for a second or so. When McGarvey came back his voice sounded strange. “Go home, Janos. Just go home, now, and forget about it.”

  “What’s going on?”

  McGarvey hung up.

  A dark blue Mercedes had come into the gas station, and two men got out as Janos hung up the telephone. He stood by the telephone for a moment or two as one of them came across from the island.

  “Through with the telephone, sir?” the man said.

  Janos looked at him. He was short, thin beneath a well-tailored blue pinstriped suit. But there was something about his eyes, something dark and cruel, something Janos had seen before.

  The man suddenly had a large handgun in his right hand. It was an automatic, but it was silenced. In a fleeting. instant before he was shot and killed, Janos realized that he not only recognized the gun, he understood exactly what was happening. He never heard the shots that killed him.

  13

  Until this day McGarvey had had a fairly clear sense of his own past and at least some idea what possibilities the future might hold. He was not proud of his past, nor did he hold much real hope for the future. But they were his, nonetheless. He’d always thought, for instance, that despite his previous bad luck with women he would eventually settle down with a good one. He could see himself at a ripe old age, finally understood. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  Up to this point he had not really committed himself to Trotter and Day. Oh, he’d gone through the motions all right. He had left Switzerland, hadn’t he? No matter. The end there had been inevitable. And once back he had gone to see Yarnell’s ex-wife, though how much of that had been out of idle curiosity and not his duty was a moot point. And he had come here to Washington to take a run past Yarnell and a brief look see down Basulto’s track. He wanted to do his preliminary sums before he got himself totally committed. A lot of what they had told him in the mountain safe house an age ago didn’t seem to make sense; the twos and fours were coming out nines and thirteens. “After the Bay of Pigs business, Yarnell was assigned to the embassy in Moscow,” was how Trotter had begun to build his case. After that he became assistant DDO, then a U.S. senator, and now he was one of the most influential men in Washington. This morning McGarvey had driven over to Yarnell’s house, where he waited around the corner up on Wisconsin Avenue out of sight of the attic windows, and at ten when Yarnell had emerged, he had followed him over to an office building on 16th, a couple of blocks from the Sheraton-Carlton. The entire day had been a waste. Yarnell had not moved. Once in the first hour, twice in the second, and six times every hour after that, McGarvey had said the hell with it and had started away. Each time something drew him back. Like iron filings to a magnet, or more like a hungry bear to a cache of tender meat, McGarvey returned. At four Yarnell went on the move, and by 4:20 McGarvey had gotten his reward.

  He telephoned from a booth in the International Visitors Information Center across the street fro
m Lafayette Park and within sight of the White House entrance. “I need to talk to Trotter,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, but that’s not possible,” the same voice from before replied calmly. “If you would give me your message …”

  “Listen, you sonofabitch, I want Trotter. I’ll call again in five minutes. He’d better be there or I’ll run down to the Washington Post and tell them everything. Loudly.”

  McGarvey hung up and went outside where he lit a cigarette, then crossed the street into the park. From where he strolled he could see through the Pennsylvania Avenue fence to the north portico of the White House where Yarnell’s car was parked. He’d shown the guards a pass, McGarvey had seen that. And he’d been met at the door. The man was there as a friend of the president’s.

  Someone in uniform came out of the White House, got behind the wheel, and drove off with Yarnell’s car. McGarvey watched until the car disappeared around the back. He threw his cigarette down, turned and went back across the park, crossed the street, and entered the Visitors Center. The five minutes were up. He dialed the number.

  Trotter answered it on the first ring. “Yes.”

  “It’s me.”

  “Where are you?” Trotter demanded. He sounded all out of breath.

  “Across the street from the White House.”

  “What the hell are you doing there? You must leave immediately. But not back to your hotel. Check into another one and then call me here.”

  “Wait a minute,” McGarvey snapped. A clerk was looking at him. He smiled, then turned away and lowered his voice. “Yarnell just drove up. He’s in the bloody White House right this moment. But he didn’t come alone. He’s with a young, good looking woman. I saw her coming from his house yesterday.”

  “Probably his daughter. But don’t worry about her. You must get away from there now, Kirk. It’s very important.”

  McGarvey realized the urgency in Trotter’s voice. “What’s happened, John?”

  “Everything has changed. We’re going to have to meet with Leonard. Now. Tonight.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Maybe nothing, maybe everything. I just don’t know any longer, Kirk, in this you must believe me. I am holding nothing back. Nothing. But it’s … simply too coincidental. Everything is. Believe me, you must get out of there, we’ll talk tonight.”

  “Don’t hang up on me, goddamnit. I want to know.”

  The line was quiet. McGarvey tried to hear any stray noises from the other end, anything that might give him a clue where the number was located. But there was nothing.

  “This may be simply a coincidence, Kirk. Believe me, I hope it is. I just received word that an agency officer was killed somewhere in Virginia. At some gas station along the highway.”

  McGarvey was cold. He looked toward the window that overlooked the park. He was just able to see a portion of busy Pennsylvania Avenue and the edge of the gate house past which Yarnell had driven. “Anyone we know, John?” he asked softly. “Anyone I would know?”

  “You knew him from the old days …” Trotter started, but then he stopped. “Kirk? Christ. It was Janos. Janos Plónski. Was he doing something for you? Did you make contact with him?”

  “How did it happen?” McGarvey asked, his voice choked. It wasn’t possible. It had happened far too fast. He had the terrible urge to throw down the telephone, race across to the White House and put a bullet in Yarnell’s brain. No mercy. No more questions. How in God’s name was he going to face Pat and the children? He should have provided Janos with a backup. It was the least he could have done for an old friend. But then he hadn’t believed any of this nonsense until now; he hadn’t believed Basulto, he hadn’t believed Day or even Trotter. None of it.

  “He was calling on the telephone and they shot him. No one saw it, no one saw a thing, Kirk. His prints were lifted off the phone. An attendant found his body in the men’s room. I repeat, Kirk, was he doing something for you?”

  “He was working for me. Yes,” McGarvey said. “He was looking down Basulto’s track. The records must have been flagged or something. Maybe they followed him down, I don’t know. But I’ll call you within the next two hours. Set up a meeting with Day, I need some answers.”

  “You had no authorization to approach anyone at the Company, Kirk. Why the hell did you do it …?”

  McGarvey hung up and left. A lot of people had been trusting him lately, and it was getting to be dangerous.

  14

  McGarvey took his time driving out of the city. Cherry blossoms seemed to have appeared overnight; they were everywhere, along with the blossoming tourist traffic. Washington had become somehow garish since he had last been here. Or had he gotten used to a different standard? There seemed to be more people in smaller spaces and more buildings rising vertically in dozens of contrasting and certainly not complimentary architectural styles. He had crossed the district. line into Maryland on Rhode Island Avenue and then headed up through Riverdale toward the University of Maryland’s College Park. In distance it wasn’t very far. But in style it was forever.

  “We’ll meet at Leonard Day’s house on Lake Artemesia. It’s near College Park. Do you know it?” Trotter had said excitedly on the telephone. “Seven o’clock. But for heaven’s sake, make sure you’re not followed.”

  “Anything further about Janos?”

  “Leonard is upset. And I can’t say as I blame him, Kirk. You may have jeopardized this entire project. Or, at least you could have.”

  “What?”

  “It may not have had a thing to do with … you after all,” Trotter said softly. “A Polish activist group has been operating here in the area for the past few months. We’ve been watching them. Apparently they think they’d like to settle some old scores, though they’d all have to be in their fifties or sixties in order to have any memories at all. It’s possible they may have killed him.”

  “I don’t understand, John.”

  “It was his mother. I don’t know if you knew it. She was an activist during the war and then afterward in England.”

  “It’s been years.”

  “What can I say? There are fanatics out there. You wouldn’t believe …”

  “There certainly are,” McGarvey said, letting out his breath.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” McGarvey said tiredly. He was looking out the window of his hotel at Yarnell’s office building. He had checked in to a hotel this close to it as a joke. It was beginning to pale now for him. “I’ll be there at seven sharp. And, John … ?”

  “Yes?” Trotter replied hesitantly.

  “My ass is now on the line for sure. I’ll be wanting some answers.”

  “Remember who hired whom, Kirk.”

  “I think you’re running scared, John. You and Day. I think you need me now more than ever before. Janos was killed because of this. Don’t kid yourself into believing otherwise. And you know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “There’s more going on here than even you or Day can guess. I won’t be followed, just make damned sure you aren’t.”

  The sun was low over the rolling green hills of the university and reflected as a blood red ball in the waters of the tiny lake around which were a few lovely English- and Colonial-style homes that were not quite large enough to be considered mansions but were certainly much too large to belong simply to the upper-middle class. Two men in an aluminum fishing boat were in the middle of the lake just across from the stone entrance to Day’s property. In the distance McGarvey could make out the high roof, dormers, and chimneys above the darkening line of trees. The house disappeared into the woods as he drove up, then suddenly appeared across a broad lawn so well tended it looked as if it were a giant putting green on a championship golf course. It made McGarvey think about croquet in Kansas as a child.

  McGarvey parked behind two other cars near a side entrance under a broad overhang. By the time he had shut off the ignition, got out, and
mounted the two stairs, Trotter had already come to the door. He was still in a business suit, but his tie was loose and his collar undone. He looked frazzled.

  “Were you followed, Kirk?” he asked, stepping aside.

  “If I was it’s certainly too late now, don’t you think?” McGarvey said, brushing past him. He was beginning to feel mean again. He was lashing out because of Janos and because of his own mistakes.

  “Christ,” Trotter swore, hanging by the door a second longer; then he closed it and motioned McGarvey through the mudroom, down a broad corridor, and across the front hall into a huge study with floor-to-ceiling bookcases around which an oak ladder ran on a track. Dominating the far wall was a huge cherrywood desk, to the left of which was a teak buffet and to the right of which was a grouping of mahogany-and-leather furniture. The combination of woods and styles was worse than downtown Washington.

  “Leonard will be with us in just a moment,” Trotter said. “Care for a drink?”

  “Bourbon,” McGarvey said, crossing the room. “Who else is here?”

  Trotter was pouring drinks at the buffet. “What?”

  “There was a second car out there. Besides yours.”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  McGarvey went to the tall windows. He pulled back the drapes and looked outside. From here he could see the front driveway and the road down to the lake. He knew that Trotter was watching him; he could feel the man’s eyes on his back. Who spies on the spy? the old adage went. It was odd though, being here like this; even odder that he hadn’t had as great a reaction to Janos’s murder as he thought he should have.

  “Did you really go see him last night?” Trotter asked. “Here’s your drink.”

  “Do you suppose Yarnell had him killed?” McGarvey asked, remaining at the window. It was pretty here.