Without Honor - 01

by David Hagberg

  She had trouble downshifting and ground the gears badly coming through the trees. She headed up the steep driveway to the plateau on which the house and grounds had been constructed. All of a sudden, coming over the crest of the driveway into the front courtyard, it struck her what she had done and why she had come here tonight. The car bucked and stalled out, rolling to a stop in the middle of the parking area twenty yards from the house, the headlights shining on the front veranda. Very little had changed in twenty-five years. The rambling one-story ranch-style house still seemed new and modern and prosperous. The living room windows were dark, but the east wing where Darby’s study had been located and where the master suite looked back toward Mexico City, was lit up. There were no cars parked in the driveway. The garages were around back. He was probably in the city at the embassy. Tonight had been a fool’s errand. Her hands shook very badly as she opened her purse and pulled out the automatic. She toyed with the safety catch, switching it down and then up and then down again. She couldn’t remember about it and she could feel panic rising in her chest. He would have a staff out here. Perhaps even bodyguards. He was an important man. They would probably shoot first and ask questions later. Maybe she didn’t care. She opened the door and got out of the car, standing for a moment on wobbly legs before she started up to the house, the pistol in her right hand hanging at her side.

  “Trust in me,” he had told her. “I have enough strength for you as well as for Darby.” His words seemed to hang in the crisp mountain air. “Someone is coming,” he’d told her in New York. “I need your help. It’s time now to repay old debts.” She’d laughed then and she laughed now, because if there had been any debt owed it was his debt to her for everything he and Darby had done to her. Yet she had done exactly what he had asked of her. She’d told McGarvey everything. She’d even slept with him. And now she felt truly dirty for the first time in her life. It was even worse for her now than it had been in the old days.

  The sliding glass doors to the living room were open. Baranov stepped out of the darkness onto the veranda. Evita stopped short. He had changed and yet he hadn’t. He was short and stocky, his thick neck was like a bull’s, his features were dark and broad and very Russian. But even from a distance of twenty feet, she could feel heat radiating from him as if he were a furnace. She could feel his power, his self-assurance, and even a bit of his humor from where she stood. He wore khaki trousers and an open-necked shirt. A bit of gold chain around his neck was illuminated in the already fading glow of the Volkswagen’s headlights. She felt a silly urge to run back to the car and switch off the lights before the battery was fully dead. It would be hard starting the engine when it was time to return to town.

  “You are a wonderful girl,” Baranov said softly. “I thank you for your help. You did good.”

  Just let go, she thought, and there was a certain comfort in the notion. Give in. Don’t fight him, because winning is impossible. She closed her eyes, and she could see a kaleidoscopic image of her entire life; Valentin, Darby and Juanita. All ruined. All gone. All harshly used.

  “McGarvey knows about Darby,” she said, opening her eyes again. “And about you. Everything.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “That doesn’t matter to you?”

  “On the contrary, it matters very much to me, Evita. In this you must believe me. Before this night is over, we will have triumphed, you and I.” He smiled. She could clearly see his perfectly white teeth. He beckoned to her. “Come. We’ll wait together.”

  “They’re going to arrest Darby,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “They know that he’s working with someone inside the CIA.”

  “Worked,” Baranov corrected her.

  Evita felt light headed. “What?”

  “Darby hasn’t been active for years and years, my dear. Didn’t you know? Hadn’t you guessed?”

  “Then why …?”

  “It wasn’t him I was after. It was someone else.”

  “There were people killed.”

  “Not Darby’s doing, believe me.”

  She shook her head.

  He smiled sympathetically. “I’d sincerely hoped you would show up here tonight, you know. You can wait here. In the morning I’ll drive you down to the airport. I don’t think Mexico would be such a good place for you just now.”

  “You bastard,” she said. She raised the gun and switched the safety catch down and fired, the pistol jumping in her hand. Baranov didn’t move a muscle. She fired again, breaking something inside the living room. She started forward, firing a third time and a fourth, still Baranov didn’t move, his eyes locked into hers, a slight smile creasing his features. She fired a fifth and sixth time, her elbow aching from the recoil, her ears ringing from the noise. He was invincible, invulnerable; nothing could hurt him. He was God, he was untouchable. She had known that from the very first day she had laid eyes on him, and here, now, the wild thought ran through her mind, was the living proof. He was not an ordinary mortal man. He could not be killed with bullets. He would live forever.

  She held the pistol in both hands and sighted on the middle of his chest. She stood flat-footed about fifteen feet down from the veranda. He held up a hand, like a benediction.

  “It’s enough, Evita,” he said sadly.

  She squeezed slowly on the trigger, like McGarvey had told her to do, tears slipping down her cheeks, a great big hollow feeling inside of her. Her life had come down to this one act: either she would kill him and continue to live, or she could not and she would have to die.

  He moved to the left at the same moment the gun went off, and he staggered backward against the edge of the doorway, a big splotch of blood suddenly appearing on his left arm, just above the elbow.

  She took another step closer and fired a second shot, this one catching Baranov high in the left shoulder just below the collarbone. He cried out in pain and slumped to the floor, half in and half out of the house.

  She came up on the veranda as Baranov was trying to crawl into the house. He stopped and looked up as she reached him.

  “You sonofabitch,” she cried. She raised the pistol to his head, the barrel inches away from his temple.

  His eyes softened. “You will not kill me. Not after what we have been through together, you and I.”

  Her hands were shaking so badly that she could barely keep the gun pointed at him. There was no fear in his eyes, however, and it infuriated her. But it frightened her, too.

  “I will require some medical assistance, so it will be best that you not stay here this evening after all.”

  “Fuck you,” she said and she pulled the trigger. The hammer slapped on an empty chamber.

  Baranov managed a slight, depreciating smile. “Mr. McGarvey has always had the habit of loading only eight bullets into his Walther. Fortunate for me, his predictability.”

  Evita pulled the trigger again, but nothing happened. She could not believe that she had come this far, had come this close, and still had lost. “No,” she cried.

  “Go,” he said. “Killing me wouldn’t have done much in any event, except land you in jail. The die is cast, my dear. You must see that now.”

  She looked down at him in sudden horror, thinking that she had ever believed in him, that she had slept with him and done his bidding. Perhaps it was the blood on his arm and shoulder, and the pain which she could clearly read in his eyes, that made him somehow more human for her than before. He wasn’t a god, at all. Nor was he an infallible giant. He was only an ordinary man. An extraordinarily evil man. But simply a man for all of it. She stepped back and let the gun fall to the floor.

  “No one will be coming after you,” he said. “You are safe. Trust me.”

  She turned, crossed the veranda, and started for her car. He said something to her from the house, but she couldn’t quite make out the words. She looked back but she couldn’t see anything in the darkness, and now the house was a stranger’s house to her. She had never been h
ere, not to this place. Nor would she ever have a desire to return. That much she knew for certain. Everything else was a mystery to her.

  Francisco Artime Basulto stepped from the airplane at Havana’s José Marti International Airport and breathed deeply of the warm, moist night air. He was home at last and he felt ten feet tall. At the very least he would get a medal along with his promotion. And he damned well deserved it and more, by his reckoning. The past few months had been bad for him, much worse than he had suspected, especially with McGarvey. He’d get that man’s ass sooner or later. Baranov had promised him. “You will get everything coming to you, Artime,” the Russian had said at their first meeting nearly a year ago. “Believe me when I tell you that everyone will be satisfied.” What’s not to believe, he’d wondered. With Baranov anything was possible. The sky was the limit.

  Twenty or thirty people had come on the late-night flight from Mexico City, and Basulto went with them across the parking ramp and into the customs hall of the big terminal. They’d been held on the plane for nearly a half hour while their luggage had been off-loaded and brought in. He would stay downtown for the weekend and have a little fun. He deserved it. Monday would be soon enough for him to check in. Baranov would be coming over and they would go through the debriefing together. Even the colonel would be impressed.

  He stood in line at the check-in counter and when his turn came he surrendered his passport and baggage claim ticket. He was tired and wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. He was out of cigarettes, he was hungry, and he needed a drink. A big drink.

  The clerk, an older, horse-faced woman in a militia uniform was staring at him. There was something about the expression in her eyes that was bothersome.

  “Is there something wrong?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, Comrade. Is there?” she asked.

  A bulky man in civilian clothes came across the hall. He was smiling. “Ah, Comrade Basulto, welcome home, welcome home,” he said effusively, and the knot that had suddenly tightened in Basulto’s gut immediately began to loosen.

  “Thank you,” he said. “It’s good to be back among friends.”

  “Colonel Alvarez would like a word with you before you go into town,” the civilian said. He took Basulto’s passport and baggage claim ticket from the woman and motioned for Basulto to come with him.

  “I hope this won’t take long. I’m tired and I—”

  “Yes, we understand,” the civilian said pleasantly. “It will take just a moment, believe me.”

  They went past the customs inspection counters to the back of the hall where a door to an office stood open. Several soldiers were gathered around a table on which Basulto’s suitcase lay open. Ten feet away he could see that there was something packed in his suitcase that he hadn’t put there. For just an instant he was confused. But then he recognized what he was seeing and he stopped short. Inside his suitcase there had to be at least twenty kilos of cocaine wrapped in one-kilo plastic packages. He’d handled the stuff enough to recognize it when he saw it. He had been set up.

  “Comrade?” the civilian asked, turning around.

  “No,” Basulto said, taking a step backward. “That’s not mine.”

  “Just come in and we’ll straighten it out,” the civilian said reasonably.

  They didn’t give a shit about him. He had served his purpose, and now.they were throwing him on the trash heap. Cristo! He wasn’t going to spend his life in Uncle Fidel’s jail.

  The civilian was reaching in his suit coat as Basulto turned and bolted for the main doors. Not like this, goddamnit! It wasn’t going to end like this! Someone shouted to him, but he didn’t understand. Not like this!

  Something very hot and hard slammed into his back and he could feel himself being propelled forward, off his feet, the sound of a gunshot booming in his ears. Before he hit the floor a million stars burst in his head and he was dead.

  32

  McGarvey and Trotter sat in the darkened car watching the gate house and the driveway up to Powers’s residence. Occasionally they would say something to each other, but for the most part they had kept their silence, each absorbed in his own glum thoughts. Powers the traitor. Still McGarvey found it difficult to fathom. Trotter had called a disbelieving Leonard Day, who nonetheless agreed to come over as soon as he possibly could, though it might take him an hour or more because he had guests who wouldn’t be all that simple to shoo away. That had been nearly an hour ago. It had come to McGarvey, in the meantime, that at the very least Trotter and Day were treating this as nothing more than some sort of an unfortunate mistake. Powers simply could not be their traitor. Not Powers. There would be another explanation. There had to be. It also came to him that he had become a worrier. At times like this he thought about the people he knew and how they were making mistakes with their lives. He could see the way clear for each of them, the way out of their troubles. He thought about his sister for whom land, duty, and responsibility were more important than people, and he thought about Kathleen, who was cut of much the same cloth and would never be completely happy until she learned to love herself a little less and a man—any man—a little more completely. Marta and Evita, on the other hand, were the direct opposites of his sister and ex-wife. They were women who loved too completely, at the nearly absolute exclusion of everything else, including their own previous loyalties and common sense. He thought also about Powers and Yarnell, men so far out of what might be considered a “normal” category that they lived their lives unaware of the realities of the majority of the people they had set themselves up to serve. It was not arrogance, he thought, so much as insularity. They were islands unto themselves, for the most part ignorant of the natives on the beaches but forever watching the distant horizons for threats from afar. These sorts, when they fell, were always surprised.

  “At least he didn’t bring his mob with him this time,” Trotter said into the darkness.

  McGarvey glanced over at him. “They’ll have to be dealt with.”

  “That depends upon what happens tonight.”

  “I’m not going to assassinate him for you, John, if that’s what you mean,” McGarvey said. “It’s gone beyond that now. No need any longer to protect Powers.”

  “I meant with Leonard. He’ll have to talk to them.”

  “They’ll deny it.”

  “Probably.”

  “Maybe they’ll shoot him dead.”

  “Good Lord, it’s not Donald Powers,” Trotter blurted. “It simply cannot be. And let me remind you that you don’t have a shred of proof linking him to any crime, to any wrongdoing.”

  Looking out the window again, McGarvey had to admit that it was true. There was no proof. Not even proof against Yarnell now that Basulto had skipped out. Evita’s testimony would be thrown out of any court; she was an ex-wife with a grudge, she was a prostitute, and a drug addict. Hardly a reliable witness. He was an assassin who had been fired by the Carter administration for political unreliability. Owens, with his testimony about the old days, was dead, as was poor Janos and his story about altered records: There was no one left. And all the while, lurking in the background, was Baranov. This was his doing. Why? What had he hoped to accomplish? What were they still missing?

  “It’s all such a mess,” Trotter murmured. “An incredible, stinking mess.”

  They both heard the shot from up at the house, like a tiny firecracker popping.

  “Good Lord,” Trotter said, looking up.

  “Give me your gun,” McGarvey demanded, and he jumped out of the car.

  Trotter fumbled in his jacket pocket, his eyes wide behind his glasses.

  “Come on, John!” McGarvey snapped. He looked over his shoulder toward the house.

  Trotter handed him the gun, a big, bulky nine-millimeter automatic. “What the hell is going on, Kirk?”

  The guard had come out of the gate house. He was looking up toward the house, his pistol drawn.

  “Block the driveway and then get the hell away
from the car,” McGarvey shouted over his shoulder as he raced across the street. He levered a round into the firing chamber and switched the safety off.

  Behind him Trotter started the car and pulled up the street, screeching to a halt just in front of the gate house. The guard had spun around as Trotter, his badge held high over his head, jumped out of the car. “FBI,” he shouted. “FBI!”

  Automobile headlights appeared at the head of the driveway, flashing in the trees and illuminating the thickening fog. A powerful car engine was racing at top speed. Lights were coming on all over the house above, and a siren began to sound, its metallic wail piercing the night.

  The gate guard was looking from Trotter, who had backed away from his car, to the driveway and back again, not quite sure what was happening but understanding that a situation of some sort was rapidly developing in front of his nose. He had not spotted McGarvey, who had taken up position in the shadows off to the side.

  There had been only one shot, but any lingering doubt that tonight’s meeting between Yarnell and Powers had been innocent in purpose was gone. Baranov had set up the mechanism, McGarvey had managed to push all the right buttons, and now the principle players had leapt into action.

  The car’s headlights suddenly backlit the iron bars of the gate, throwing long shadows across the road and over Trotter’s car. McGarvey dropped into a shooter’s crouch, both hands on the pistol, his arms extended. All at once Yarnell’s Mercedes burst into view on the driveway, moving at a high rate of speed. The guard just barely managed to leap aside as the car hit the gate with a tremendous crash, sending one half of the heavy metal structure flying off to one side. At the last possible instant, the Mercedes swung very hard to the left in a futile effort to avoid crashing into Trotter’s car, its right fender caving in Trotter’s door, both cars skidding across the street and up onto the curb.