Basulto shrugged. “There were a few. I couldn’t tell you about any of them though. I was pretty young, and my eyes were filled with stars. This was the big time for me. I was going to be a spy.”
Just then Basulto’s words reminded McGarvey of Evita’s. When she’d been turned in Mexico City she too had been young, with stars in her eyes. It almost sounded like a well-used script.
“Were they all Americans? Can you remember that, Artime?”
“All Americans. WASPS, they were.”
“Young? Old? Remember anything on that score?”
“They were older than me. I was just a kid. But I suppose they all were in their twenties, early thirties. Ex-military, I think. I remember they sometimes ran the place like boot camp.”
“Not a foreign accent in the lot?”
“No.”
“Southerners, some of them, do you suppose?”
“You mean like Alabama or Mississippi?”
“Or Texas?”
“There might have been.”
“East Coast, Artime? Intellectuals. Maybe some young kid with a holier-than-thou attitude? Silver spoon in the mouth?”
“They were all intellectuals.”
McGarvey looked at him. “It’s important.”
“Why do you keep asking about it?” Basulto asked, his voice going a bit soft.
“I didn’t know I had.”
“What the hell is so important about an East Coast snob anyway? Who gives a shit. It doesn’t make any difference. Yarnell wasn’t there, otherwise we would have nailed him then … me and Roger Harris.”
There it was again, McGarvey thought. Basulto, for all his isolation, knew too much. Yarnell’s mob. And now the fact there might have been an East Coast snob. Someone important. Someone such as the man Evita told him about for whom Baranov had had a great deal of respect. It was beginning to come together now for him.
“Did Roger Harris have a name for him?”
“For who? What are you talking about?”
“The East Coast snob?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The man Roger Harris hired you to find for him, Artime, who did you think I was talking about?”
“I haven’t got a clue,” Basulto said, but this time McGarvey could see that the Cuban was lying. His eyes were wide, and a small bead of perspiration had formed on his upper lip.
McGarvey got slowly to his feet, lit another cigarette, and stood at the window looking down into the night again. If anything, it was quieter on the street now than when he had arrived. Hialeah was holding its breath. He had underestimated Roger Harris. As early as the late fifties Harris had known about Baranov and had suspected that the Russian was running at least one American. He apparently had not suspected Yarnell but had targeted someone else. The same one, possibly, who had shown up at the party in Mexico, and the same one who might have stopped by the training house here in Miami to see how young Basulto’s indoctrination was coming. Harris had figured on using Basulto as his eyes and ears. First here in Miami, next in Havana, and finally in Mexico, where Baranov kept his headquarters. Sooner or later, Harris figured, his suspect should have shown up and Basulto would finger him.
Basulto had not moved from the table. He was looking up at McGarvey.
“I didn’t understand until now, Artime,” McGarvey said, sitting down again. “I’m out of practice, or something.”
“Understand what?” Basulto asked warily.
“What Roger Harris really wanted from you.”
Basulto didn’t speak.
“It didn’t make any sense to me, your emergency signal for Mexico City. You were supposed to telephone Roger Harris’s sister in San Antonio, Texas, with the single word alpha.”
“In case of an emergency.”
“Right. But what emergency, Artime? I mean, what constituted the emergency that Roger Harris prenamed alpha? An earthquake? A tornado? A riot? The appearance of Baranov with an American?”
“I was supposed to watch the Ateneo Español … .”
“For who?” McGarvey asked. “Did he give you a name?”
Basulto was cornered. “No name.”
“A description?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“We’re getting into an area here that I don’t want to get into,” Basulto cried desperately.
McGarvey sat forward, slamming his palm on the tabletop, the noise like a pistol shot. “You little sonofabitch!”
“There’s no call for that,” Basulto squeaked.
McGarvey was feeling mean again, to the point where he was almost frightened of himself. Yet a great clarity seemed to come over him, as if he could see everything and everyone, all the relationships in this business, all the truths and the lies from the fifties all the way to this moment. He’d asked if there was a bridge between then and now; Day had called it the “Golden Gate.” He pulled out his gun, pulled the hammer back, and pointed it across the table into Basulto’s face. The Cuban went white.
“What did alpha mean? Who was alpha?”
“I don’t know. I swear to God. Cristo!”
“Talk to me, Artime.” McGarvey began to squeeze the trigger.
“It was a voice,” Basulto blurted. “Nothing more.”
“What voice?”
“An East Coast voice. Connecticut or something. An intellectual.”
“I’m listening.”
“Back in Washington Roger overheard a telephone conversation between a Russian and this American.”
“Baranov?”
“Yes, Baranov and this American.”
“Where?”
“At CIA headquarters.”
“The American was CIA?”
“Yes. Roger thought so.”
“He was talking with Baranov from a telephone within the building?”
“Yes.”
“So he sent you to Mexico City to watch for Baranov and an American? Any American?”
“Yes.”
“If you saw an American you were to call with the code word alpha. But what about the voice?”
Basulto said nothing.
“The voice, Artime? How were you to recognize the voice unless you were near enough to hear it, which you could not have done from your room overlooking the Ateneo.”
“I was a member,” Basulto said softly.
“Of the Ateneo Español?”
“Yes.”
McGarvey lowered the gun. It had become too heavy for him; his trigger finger had begun to shake. “You didn’t see Baranov and Yarnell from the window. You saw them inside. You were down there with them, then.”
Basulto nodded. “But it wasn’t him. His voice was different.”
“The voice Roger Harris was looking for wasn’t Yarnell’s.”
“No,” Basulto said, hanging his head.
“Then why did you call San Antonio? Why did you use alpha?”
“I was frightened. Roger knew about one of them, but there was someone else working with Baranov. I thought he would want to know.”
McGarvey holstered his gun and got to his feet. He looked down at Basulto for a long time. There were still many questions, many holes in the man’s story, but for the most part he had got what he had come looking for; confirmation that Yarnell wasn’t Baranov’s only conquest. That there was indeed someone else in the equation.
“I’ll come back for you. In a few days.”
“We’re going to burn Yarnell?”
McGarvey nodded. “Him and the other one.” At the door he hesitated a moment. “At the Ateneo, did Baranov see you? Does he know your face?”
“Yes,” Basulto said. “God help me, yes.”
“Well, we’re going to burn him, too, Artimé.”
25
The lake near Leonard Day’s house was calm, not the slightest breeze rippled the water. There were no fishermen this morning, nor was there any traffic on the road that led back through Indian Creek Park to Kenilworth Avenue
. It was Tuesday; everyone was at work in the city by now. McGarvey had caught Day and Trotter before they’d left for work, and they’d agreed to meet with him. At McGarvey’s suggestion they talked outside as they walked around the lake. Trotter was highly charged, he half walked and half ran along the footpath. Day, on the other hand, seemed contemplative, as if he were deeply troubled but by something else. He seemed distracted. They made an odd trio, McGarvey thought; the bureaucrat, the cop, and the spy.
“When John first came to me with this problem, and mentioned your name in conjunction with it, I was frankly skeptical,” Day said. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his maroon jogging suit. He wore a sweatband around his head, making him look boyish. “I’m still skeptical.”
“Good heavens, Kirk, even you have to see that what you’re saying is hard to swallow,” Trotter piped up, looking back. He was nervous around Day after what McGarvey had told him two days ago.
“But we’re stuck with it,” McGarvey said. He’d expected the objections, but he wanted to see how Day would react.
“We can hardly turn from it. Not at this stage of the game, especially not now.”
“Yarnell is almost certainly still actively working for the Russians, and he almost certainly has a contact man in the CIA.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. But it’s someone at high levels.”
“What makes you believe that?”
“The quality of his information.”
“Such as?”
“He knew that I would see Darrel Owens, his old boss. He also knew that I’d sent Janos Plónski searching after Basulto’s files.”
“Which means, of course, that he knows you’re coming after him,” Trotter said.
“Then why hasn’t he had you eliminated?” Day asked sharply. “I’d do it.”
It was the one question for which McGarvey had found no satisfactory answer, but he gave voice to the only possibility that even seemed plausible. “Because something else is happening, or is about to happen, and I’m an important source for him.”
Day pulled up short, a dangerous glint in his eyes. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s a two-way street. I check on him, and in the process he finds out about me.”
Trotter had stopped a few feet farther along the path, and he was looking back now, his eyes wide behind his thick glasses.
“What else?” Day demanded.
McGarvey took out a cigarette and lit it. He gazed across the lake. “John knows why I was called back to the States, and so do you. Who else?”
“Basulto,” Trotter said.
“He’s isolated,” McGarvey replied, his eyes never leaving Day’s. “Who else?”
“No one,” Day said evenly. The morning air seemed to have gotten thin.
“There’s my team,” Trotter chirped.
“Do they have contact with the agency?”
“No.”
“I do,” Day said. “But I have discussed this situation with no one.”
“Have you made notes? Left them on your desk?”
“Nothing has been committed to paper. Not by me.”
“Mentioned it to Powers, or the president?”
“No.”
“Discussed it on the telephone with John?”
“My telephone, along with John’s, is swept.”
“That’s right, Kirk,” Trotter said. “Absolutely. There simply are no leaks.”
“Yes there are,” McGarvey said softly. “We just haven’t found them yet.”
“Perhaps it’s you,” Day suggested. “His people could have spotted you from day one.”
“He would have to have been tipped off as to why I came back.” McGarvey was thinking about his ex-wife and her lawyer boyfriend. It was not coincidence that they were friends of Yarnell’s. But that had been going on for more than a year now. Where was the logic?
“Could be Yarnell’s ex-wife,” Trotter said. “You went to see her. What’d you two talk about?”
McGarvey turned to him. “About the fact that Yarnell was working for the Russians as early as the late fifties in Mexico City. It’s one of the reasons he married her. For cover.”
“Mexico City?” Day asked.
“He was stationed out of our embassy until after the Bay of Pigs thing. Then he moved to Washington and finally out to Moscow. Each time his control officer went with him.”
“You know this man?”
“Valentin Illen Baranov,” McGarvey said. “Now he’s back in Mexico City, running what’s called the CESTA network.”
“Good Lord,” Trotter said. He and Day exchanged glances.
“What is it?” McGarvey asked.
“How certain are you of Yarnell’s connection with this Baranov and CESTA?”
“Very.”
Trotter had been holding his breath. He blew it out all at once as if he were a racer trying to clear his lungs of carbon dioxide. He needed oxygen and he wasn’t getting it.
“That’s it, then,” Day said. “I’ll have to go to Powers and the president with this now. I’m putting you on hold.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” McGarvey asked, trying to keep his temper in check.
“It’s CESTA, Kirk,” Trotter stepped into the breach.
Day shot him a warning glance.
“It’s gone too far, Leonard. We never suspected this connection. Not really. And it’s simply gone too far now. His life is on the line.”
McGarvey waited. He understood at that moment that he had been lied to all along; not lies of commission, rather lies of omission. He had a feeling that what he had not been told was legion compared to what he had.
Day looked away momentarily in disgust, as if he were being forced into a decision he had wanted to avoid at all costs. When he turned back he nodded.
“Seven months ago an Aeromexico flight out of Miami was hijacked and diverted to Havana,” Trotter said. Day was watching him, his eyes big and bright. “The two hijackers got off the plane with two hostages. Before they got ten yards from the plane, all four of them were shot and killed by the Cuban militia.”
“Who were they, John?”
“The hostages had been on their way to Mexico City. Agency for International Development.”
“CIA?”
“Right.”
“Why were they grabbed?”
“We didn’t know at the time. Except that Lawrence Danielle worked with us on the preliminary investigation. He told me that the weapons the hijackers had used had been supplied to them by CESTA.”
“CESTA presumably knew who they were, arranged for the hijacking, and further arranged for their assassination,” Day said.
“Why?” McGarvey asked. He thought about Baranov coming to see Evita ten months ago. It had been barely weeks before the incident.
“I didn’t know about this until two days ago,” Trotter said. “I promise you, Kirk.”
“John came to me with Baranov’s name. Said you thought he was connected with the Yarnell thing.”
“I didn’t believe it at the time. It was impossible—”
Day interrupted. “This is classified top secret, McGarvey. No matter what has happened before this moment, if you release what I’m about to tell you, I will personally see that you are prosecuted under the Secrets Act. To the full extent of the law.”
The man was a pompous ass. “Talk to me,” McGarvey said.
Again Day and Trotter exchanged glances.
“The Russians are apparently building six missile-launching facilities in the Mexican desert barely forty miles south of our border,” Trotter blurted.
McGarvey had come to believe, over the years, that he was sufficiently inured to bad news that his tolerance for shock was high. He could never become nonplussed. At this moment, however, he was truly frightened. He did not know what to say. He could feel it as a weakness in his legs, a hollowness in his gut, and a tightening in his chest.
“CESTA?” he said.
> “They’re almost certainly involved,” Day agreed.
“Baranov, who runs CESTA, is Yarnell’s control officer.”
Day nodded.
“Yarnell has a man in the CIA. He fingered the two AID officers on the plane.”
“It would go a long way toward explaining everything,” Day said heavily.
Another thought struck McGarvey. “How do you know about this?”
For the first time Day suddenly seemed unsure of himself. He hesitated. McGarvey was having a bad feeling.
“Donald Powers is a personal friend of mine.” Day said.
“And Yarnell?”
Again Day hesitated. He nodded. “Darby and I go back a lot of years together.”
McGarvey realized he was shaking. Day stepped back a pace. “I swear to God that I didn’t tell anyone about you. Not even Powers.”
“If I ever find out you lied to me, I’ll kill you,” McGarvey said softly.
“For heaven’s sake, Kirk,” Trotter said.
Day straightened up a little, a determined look coming back into his eyes. “I’m going to Powers and the president with this. No one else. They must be informed. In the meantime you’re to make no move, no move whatsoever, without first clearing it through me.” He said it as an order, but then he softened his tone. “You do understand what’s at stake here. It’s no longer simply a case of proving Darby Yarnell is a spy who works for the Russians. Now it’s a matter of another missile crisis. This one a hell of a lot closer to our border than Cuba.”
“A crisis made impossible for us to win because the CIA is an open book to Baranov.”
“The bastard,” Day said with much feeling.
Driving back into the city, McGarvey tried to put a name to exactly what it was he was feeling. He had a sense that they all were racing madly down a long roller coaster whose brakes had failed, and yet he knew that someone was in control, that someone had planned the ride from the beginning. But to what end? Offensive missiles in Mexico? It was impossible for him to believe even now, although the Russians had gotten what they had wanted in Cuba. In exchange for removing their missiles they had extracted a promise from us that we would never intervene militarily with the Castro government. Perhaps the same things were happening in Mexico. But there was something else as well. Something more. He could feel it. He’d been glad to get out of the agency because of what it had done to him, and what he had seen it do to others. Yet when Trotter and Day had shown up in Switzerland he had almost gladly followed them. Hell, he had damned near jumped into their laps. His retirement had already begun to break down before they’d shown up. But now he wondered if coming back had been the right thing for him.
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