“We’re not going to have time to send another man down there,” Danielle was saying. “And this time is different from Cuba. Back then we had time for a blockade. This time all six of their installations are nearly operational.”
“I should have seen it,” Powers mumbled, his mind still on Baranov, the charmer, Baranov, the magic man, the Houdini.
“You’re talking about Jules and Asher last year? We’ve gone over it before, but I just don’t see the connection. It’s too farfetched. He’d have to have someone here. Someone either within the agency or certainly here in Washington with top-level sources.” Danielle had said it all before. “Trotter found nothing in the hijacking to suggest a larger plan. And he’s a damned good man. One of the best. Something would have shown up. We would have gotten at least a glimmer in Mexico City.”
That in itself was the most surprising, Powers thought. An operation this big would have had some fallout somewhere. Too many people would have to be involved for no leaks to occur. But where were they? No one had yet invented an airtight operation. But there’d been nothing. Not so much as a hint except for Jules and Asher. And except for the fact that eighteen months ago Baranov had allowed himself to be seen. Just once, in public. And Powers thought of it as “allowed” because Baranov never made mistakes. He was incapable of that kind of error. No, something else was missing. Powers could feel it. The battle was mounting, but he still had no idea what the final weapons might be, or even where the battlefield would be located except that an ugly dark cloud seemed to be rising in the south. Christ, Baranov had never, not ever, been as obvious as he was being now. There was more. But what did he want?
“Donald?” Danielle said gently.
Powers looked up and nodded. “I’ll see the president first thing in the morning. I want to get past Nicols’s broadcast schedule and then I want to see what the KH-10 picks up at dawn before I rush off half-cocked.”
“We know what will show up.”
“Yes, we do, Lawrence. And I’m afraid it’s going to get a lot worse than even we can imagine.”
21
Washington seemed empty and somehow very dangerous now to McGarvey. Dangerous for himself, dangerous for his ex-wife and daughter, dangerous in fact for anyone connected with this business. It was midafternoon by the time he arrived, rented a car at National Airport, and then fetched his few things from the Sheraton-Carlton Hotel in the lee of Yarnell’s office building. Driving back across the river he could see the Capitol on the hill in his rearview mirror. The buildings, he thought, were fine and sturdy, but the institution—despite the fact it had survived for more than two hundred years—was in fact nearly as fragile as its weakest link. The thought gave him very little confidence about what might be coming. But, he tried to console himself, we had survived the Kennedy years, the Bay of Pigs, and the Cuban missile crisis; we’d even survived Nixon’s downfall.
He checked into the huge Marriott Hotel directly across from the Pentagon, where he took a shower, changed his clothes, and had a quick meal in the dining room. He kept seeing Owens’s palsied, thin hands, kept hearing the old man’s voice, kept smelling the rising sea wind; and finally he could see clearly in his mind’s eye the flames and sparks rising into the night sky.
Plónski and Owens were dead. Who would be next? And why? There was someone else involved here in Washington other than Yarnell. McGarvey could feel it. A sixth sense, a premonition, whatever.
The night was dark. A chill rain was falling. He had taken a taxi down to Arlington and had walked from St. Mary’s Academy in Monticello Park, watching over his shoulder, making absolutely certain that he was not being tailed. Since Long Island he had become very jumpy. There was absolutely no pedestrian traffic tonight on these streets which made him somewhat conspicuous. But so, too, would be a follower.
Reaching a curved avenue in Braddock Heights, he stayed well away from the streetlights, keeping as far into the shadows of the tall shrubberies and thick trees as possible. A car came up the street and turned into a driveway halfway up the block, the garage doors opening silently. He hung back until the car was inside and the garage doors closed before he continued. He heard a television playing in one of the houses and voices raised in anger. A window was open, or perhaps a door was ajar; he couldn’t see in the darkness.
A carriage light illuminated the driveway to number 224. It was a large, two-story brick house set well back from the street, and most of the ground-floor windows were lit up. McGarvey stopped a moment to make sure he wasn’t being observed, then he crossed the lawn and pushed open a gate in the tall wooden fence, following a walkway that led around back. Once inside he felt a lot safer. It wasn’t likely he’d be seen back here. The patio was bricked, the rear door was Dutch, with curtained windows in the upper half. He pushed the bell. From inside he could hear a chime. A moment later the patio lights came on.
The door opened and Trotter stood there peering out into the night. McGarvey stepped back a little, directly under the light so that there would be absolutely no mistaking who it was. He thought about double agents, about traitors, about murders, and liars, but Trotter, he thought, was the one person in the world he felt he could trust. Completely. At times the man was a fool, but he was honest.
“Kirk,” he said, opening the door wide and moving back. “What in heaven’s name are you doing here? Has something gone wrong?”
McGarvey stepped inside, and Trotter closed and locked the door.
Trotter was still wearing his tie. He’d exchanged his suit coat for a shawl-collared sweater, however, and his shoes for slippers. He smelled of brandy. From the front of the house music was playing; it sounded like Mahler to McGarvey, who was feeling jumpy. The kitchen was large and very modern. Trotter and his wife had been famous in the Washington area for their dinner parties here in this house. The spotless kitchen somehow seemed like a mausoleum.
“What’s wrong, Kirk?” Trotter asked again. “What are you doing here? Is it still raining out there? You look as if you’ve walked five miles.”
“Are you alone tonight, John?”
Trotter sucked a deep breath all at once as if he’d just had a very sharp pain. He let it out slowly. “I’m alone.”
“There’s been another killing. And you’re next … or me, or Leonard Day. It won’t stop.”
“Goddamn you,” Trotter said softly. His lips were red. Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead. McGarvey thought the man’s eyes were suddenly larger than normal. It made his old friend seem vulnerable somehow.
McGarvey unbuttoned his sodden overcoat and took it off. He looked for a place to hang it, then laid it on top of one of the tiled counters. Trotter was watching him as if he were from Mars. He didn’t want to become contaminated by some outer-space bug.
“Who was it this time?”
“Darrel Owens.”
“Yarnell’s supervisor from the old days?” Trotter asked. “Retired to upstate New York somewhere. Maybe Long Island. We looked at him, of course. But he was clean as far as we could tell.”
“I went to see him. Asked him about Yarnell. Told him I thought Yarnell had killed Roger Harris and was probably working for the Russians.”
“Bloody hell.”
“He wasn’t shocked. Called Yarnell a prick, in fact. And now he’s dead.”
“Did you see it, Kirk? Were you actually there? Did you see the body?”
“His house burned down.” McGarvey once again saw Owens standing at the door, walking up the beach, stopping and turning back, his eyes wide, his slight frame bent as if against a terrible wind. McGarvey wondered what he himself would look like at seventy, if he lived that long.
“You’re sure he was in the house? You’re absolutely sure he didn’t get out?”
“Yarnell is not working alone here.”
“The arrogant bastard.”
“He has help, John. Here in Washington. He knows too much. He’s too many places all at the same time, without moving from his spot.�
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“What are .you saying to me? Just what is it you’re trying to tell me?”
“He knows about me. He knew I’d gone up to see Owens.”
“He has his army here, Kirk, you know that,” Trotter said quietly. “You were warned.”
“I wasn’t followed.”
“Can you be so certain?”
McGarvey nodded.
“How then? Even I didn’t know where you had gone off to. Leonard didn’t either. We’re not following you, Kirk. We’re not watching you. You have my word on it.”
“I know, John. It’s why I came to you like this. But you and Day both know what it is I’m after. Who else knows?”
Trotter drew himself up. “What are you getting at? Exactly, now.”
“Who else is in on this besides you, Day, and whoever you have manning your emergency switchboard?”
“He doesn’t know anything.”
“Who else, then? The bureau’s director? Do you report to him?”
“No one in the bureau.”
“What about Day? Who is he reporting to?”
“I don’t know. But even if he was reporting everything to the attorney general, and I’m not saying he is, Kirk, remember that; but even if he was, no one knew you were going to see Owens. We keep coming back to that.”
“If it had gotten back to the Company, someone there could have put it together.” McGarvey had figured it out on the flight down. “If anyone inside knew that I was going after Yarnell, and had an idea why, they could be second guessing me all the way, keeping an eye on my likely targets. Owens, as Yarnell’s boss from the old days, would have been one of the logical choices.”
Trotter saw it, too. It was written in his eyes. “And Plónski,” he said, as if he were afraid of the name. “Another logical choice.” He turned away. “But that would mean …”
“It means someone is working with Yarnell here in Washington. Someone besides Baranov, his Soviet control officer. Someone active within the CIA.”
“It would have to be someone high up. At least within operations.”
“Someone with an unlimited, unquestioned access to records, as well as operational plans and programs.”
Trotter finally turned back. His eyes were round and moist. He took off his glasses and cleaned them with a handkerchief. He looked naked. “I’d have no idea who to trust over there, Kirk. Everyone I know, everyone I work with, is at high levels and therefore suspect.” Another thought struck him. “Christ, he might even have the ear of Powers himself.”
“Day is the conduit.”
“He’s not a spy, for God’s sake, Kirk. Not Day.”
“An unwitting source. This whole thing has him scared shitless. It’s only logical he’d be trying to cover his own ass.”
“So what can we do?”
“Lock him out. This is between you and me from this moment on, until I get my operation lined up.”
Trotter put on his glasses and peered myopically at McGarvey. He was shook. “You’re ready to … move?” His reticence just then was boyish.
“Not quite. But listen to me; when it comes, it may not be quite what you thought it would be.”
Trotter nodded his understanding. “You’re going after Yarnell’s source within the CIA as well.”
“That too.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s more here, John. Something else is going on, too. I have a feeling that whatever is happening at the moment with Yarnell and his Company source is part of an operation that we’ve either stumbled onto or that was set up just for our benefit.”
“What makes you say that? Christ, Kirk.” This was getting to be too much even for Trotter, but then he’d been thinking about Yarnell’s assassination; McGarvey was thinking about something else.
“Yarnell is still active, you know that.”
“It’s obvious …”
“But he hasn’t come after me. Just Janos, and then Owens. Nor is my ex-wife’s involvement simply happenstance.”
“That’s been going on for more than a year,” Trotter protested.
McGarvey nodded, a sour knot in his stomach. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, just how deeply they planned this thing. Whose idea was it, John, to hire me?”
“Mine.”
“Yours alone? Day had no say in it?”
Trotter was about to reply, but he held himself off. Thinking back to his conversations with Day. He shook his head after a moment. “Leonard suggested an outsider, but someone who knew the business intimately. Someone who wouldn’t be afraid to act. Someone we could trust.”
“So my name came up.”
“I brought it up, Kirk.”
“But Day approved your choice.”
“Yes,” Trotter said glumly. “Wholeheartedly.”
“Keep him insulated, John,” McGarvey said grabbing his coat.
“Where will you be?”
“Around. I’ll let you know when I have everything set up.” At the door McGarvey turned back. “One last thing. Have you any idea where Yarnell’s control officer, Baranov, is keeping himself these days? Moscow, perhaps?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could you find out for me without making waves, and without going through Day?”
“I’ll try, Kirk. But, Christ, be careful. This entire thing could blow up in our faces. I don’t want you jumping at shadows.”
“CESTA is no shadow.”
An odd expression came across Trotter’s features. “CESTA?” he asked.
“Baranov’s old network. Used to run it out of Mexico City. It’s where he and Yarnell presumably first met.”
Trotter nodded.
“Anyway, shadows don’t kill people, John.”
“No,” Trotter said absently. “No, I suppose they don’t.”
22
A low overcast sky hung over Manhattan, threatening a cold rain at any time; traffic was frantic even for a weekday. This was McGarvey’s third trip back to New York since he’d returned from Switzerland, and this time he had even fewer illusions in his sparse kit after talking with Owens and then Trotter. He had taken a cab directly in from La Guardia Airport, crossing beneath the East River through the Midtown Tunnel and taking the FDR Drive down to Houston Street before heading across town. It was much quieter in the Village. Two young men wearing unlaced combat boots, dirty blue jeans, and leather jackets, their hair cut extremely short, walked arm-in-arm along Houston toward Broadway. He had spent a restless night at the Marriott Twin Bridges and then had taken the shuttle up. Before he left he had called Trotter at his office without giving his name. Trotter had not been happy, but he had understood what McGarvey wanted. “Mexico City,” he said, and McGarvey hung up, pleased with the fast work. Evidently he’d finally gotten to his old friend; Trotter finally was beginning to understand the real problem. Yarnell had been a Soviet agent in Mexico City in the old days. There was little doubt of it. And he had probably murdered Roger Harris in Cuba. There wasn’t much doubt about that either. But Trotter had begun to understand that Yarnell was most likely still active, and that besides his control officer, Baranov, who now apparently had returned to the helm of CESTA in Mexico City, Yarnell had someone else working with him in the States. Most likely in Washington. Merely killing him would do little more than ruffle a few feathers in Moscow; it certainly would not end the network.
Broome Street was quiet. McGarvey paid the cabbie when they got to West Broadway and Grand, and walked back. He’d brought his shoulder bag, which he had checked through on the flight so that he could take his pistol. On the way in the cab he had taken it out of his bag. It felt heavy, but comforting now. A greengrocer’s truck was parked in front of St. Christopher’s. A thick-chested man chewing a cigar and wearing a long dirty apron was loading boxes of lettuce and tomatoes for the club onto a hand truck. The front door was propped open. McGarvey hesitated a moment across the street. The club looked very quiet. No one was around except for the delivery man. Upstairs in Evi
ta’s salon, the curtains were open, but he could see nothing of the inside. He crossed the street and entered the club. The vestibule was open, but no one was around. From within, though, he thought he heard someone talking, a second later a piano started up. It took a moment before he recognized the tune, Stardust. Whoever was playing was very good and played with a lot of emotion and sadness. He went through the frosted-glass doors into the cabaret. Two women sat at the bar; they were eating something. A maintenance man was atop a very tall stepladder doing something to one of the big ceiling fans. He climbed down. Evita Perez, dressed in a pair of baggy shorts, an old sweatshirt, no shoes on her feet, was on the tiny stage playing the piano. Owens had thought she had a lot of talent. Evidently he had meant it literally as well as figuratively.
No one paid any attention to him as he crossed the main floor, dropped his bag on one of the chairs, and perched on the edge of a table just below the stage. He lit a cigarette while she finished playing. She looked pretty good even in the daylight, he decided. Her hair was up, exposing her long, delicate neck. A few lines marked the sides of her cheeks and she had developed just a hint of a double chin, but her arms and legs were still very slim and her feet were surprisingly small and nicely formed. A glass of champagne was sitting on the piano, and the half-empty bottle was next to it.
“Hello, Evita,” he called softly to her when she was finished.
She turned to him. Her eyes were very large, but there was no surprise in them. “What are you doing here?” she asked quietly.
“I wanted to finish our talk while you had the time for it,” he said. “There were a lot of things I wanted to ask you. A lot of ground to cover. I wasn’t sure about some of what you told me.”
“There is no time for you here. I can telephone the police, or I can call for Harry. He’s a man you wouldn’t want to know.”
“I need your help.”
She nodded. “So do the starving kids in Ethiopia. Nothing I can do for them, or for you.”
“Maybe if you’d listen to what I have to say, you’d change your mind.”
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