Once they had entered Mexican airspace up around Tampico the pilot had announced their intention to fly directly to Mexico City with a U.S. diplomat aboard. No special services were required other than an early morning customs and passport check. The aircraft would require refueling, and would depart for Miami immediately.
The door to the cockpit was open when McGarvey went forward. The attendant stepped aside, and the pilot and copilot looked up.
“Good flight. Thanks, guys,” he said.
“Glad to be of service, Mr. Director,” the pilot said.
“You sure you got all your things?” the attendant asked.
“Yes, thanks.”
Outside, McGarvey handed his diplomatic passport to the official, who flipped it open, glanced at the data, then looked up to compare the photo with McGarvey’s face.
“Do you wish me to stamp your passport, señor?”
“It’s not necessary,” McGarvey said.
“Welcome to Mexico. Your rental car is waiting in front.”
The kerojet truck was just pulling up to the Gulfstream when McGarvey went through the deserted terminal. A light gray Volkswagen Jetta was parked just outside. A bored cop sitting behind a glass booth looked up when McGarvey tossed his bag in the backseat, then looked away.
The fact that an American diplomat had arrived in the middle of the night with no one to meet him raised no eyebrows. But this was Mexico. Almost no one would have taken notice if he had flown in from Colombia, or from Mars. In many respects Mexico was a perfect place for a man such as Liu. Almost anything was possible here for the right amount of money.
Traffic on Boulevard Puerto into the city was almost nonexistent, and in less than forty minutes he was downtown, where he parked on a side street a couple of blocks from the Hotel Catedral on Donceles, then went back on foot.
The city center was normally a busy, dangerous place to be after dark. But this time of the morning was too late for the pickpockets and thieves. In an hour the first deliverymen would begin their rounds, but for the moment it seemed as if the D.F. were holding its collective breath. It was a city asleep.
The night clerk at the old but still respectable hotel, which very few Americans and certainly no businessmen or diplomats ever used, came out to the front desk when McGarvey rang and checked him in, under another work name.
“Do you wish for the services of a bellman, señor?” the young, pimply-faced kid asked, handing over the old-fashioned room key.
“No,” McGarvey said.
“Do you wish for a wake-up call?”
“No.”
“Welcome to Mexico, señor,” the clerk said, still half asleep, and he disappeared into the night office before McGarvey got halfway across the marble lobby to the elevators.
Upstairs in his fifth-floor room facing the spires of the Catedral Metropolitana, McGarvey stopped a moment to look out. He had a sense that rough beasts were slinking around in the dark, and that whatever solutions he found, the answers would be anything but simple, anything but easy.
He broke the diplomatic seal on his hanging bag, finished unpacking, and retrieved his pistol, holster, and spare magazine of ammunition. He dressed in jeans, low-topped sneakers, a short-sleeved pullover, and a dark nylon windbreaker against the morning chill. Mexico City could be blazingly hot during the day, while at night it often cooled down to near freezing.
Downstairs he crossed the empty lobby and walked back the couple of blocks to where he’d parked his car. It had not been disturbed yet, but he would have to find a secure parking place before it got dark again. At the very least thieves would strip the wheels, smash the windows, and steal anything inside.
He drove the few blocks over to the U.S. embassy on the Paseo de la Reforma, the streets just starting to come alive with the first trucks and vans, but cruised past the front entrance without stopping. If Perry had put the embassy on emergency footing because of Updegraf’s assassination, no outward signs of it were visible from the street; no heightened security measures such as a sandbagged entry, no guards on the roof.
Next he went out to the Chinese embassy in Colonia Tizapan San Angel and cruised slowly past its front entrance. He had no real idea what he was looking for, but if he’d expected that the Chinese had done more than the Americans to prepare for the coming troubles, he was disappointed. So far as he could see it was business as usual.
A storm was gathering, and there were people in both places who knew it, yet the castle gates had not been closed nor had the moat been flooded.
Finally, he drove over to Colonia Lomas Altas, past the Iranian embassy, also quiet this morning, and up the hill to Gloria’s apartment complex, where he parked next to her Mini Cooper.
He sat thinking about the other times and places he’d holed up waiting for dawn to come, and for the battle to begin. Most of the time he’d gone into the field alone, no one to help or hinder him. He’d always preferred it that way.
But now he was going to have to juggle a dancer and a spy against a consummate, dangerous player in the new world order.
Just as the eastern sky was beginning to lighten, McGarvey got out of the car and headed down the path to the park bench that over looked the city, deciding once and for all that there would be no more nightmares and regrets.
Since last year, when he’d put a bullet in Osama bin Laden’s brain, a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He’d finally begun to accept himself for who and what he was. In that he was a step behind Katy and a couple of steps behind his daughter, but now that he had made the transition he was ready to go to work with a clear conscience.
The legendary spymaster Lawrence Danielle, his mentor in the early days, had once told him that he was a kid with the fire in his belly.
“So long as it doesn’t end up consuming you in flames, you’ll make one hell of an opponent for the other side.”
Danielle’s battle had been with the OSS against the Germans during the war, and then with the newly formed CIA against the Soviets at the start of the Cold War.
He had died in his bed years ago, but he would easily have recognized the new war for exactly what it was: a conflict with an order of fanatics bent on nothing less than the destruction of modern civilization. Such a thing could never happen, short of the result of a global thermonuclear war, but that wouldn’t stop the jihadists, who had to be destroyed. It was this that Danielle would have understood with a clarity that seemed to have gone missing just about everywhere.
“You came back,” Gloria said from over his shoulder.
McGarvey looked up. Gloria, dressed in a track suit, a towel around her neck, her hair plastered with sweat to her forehead and the sides of her neck, was grinning. “You’re out early,” he said.
“Have to keep in shape,” she replied. “Is it time now?”
McGarvey nodded. “But it’s going to be tougher than I first thought. Especially for you.”
She had been moving from foot to foot, keeping warm so that she wouldn’t stiffen up in the morning chill, but she stopped, the smile fading from her lips. “You’ve come to tell me something.”
“It’s about your father.”
“What about him?”
“He’s dead. He was shot to death yesterday in his apartment.”
Gloria held McGarvey’s eyes for a long beat, but then turned away and looked down toward the city. “¡Hijo de puta!” she said half under her breath. “It’s the DGI. They were going to get him sooner or later.” She turned back. “The old fool wouldn’t take care of himself.”
“I think it was Liu,” McGarvey said.
She didn’t believe it. She shook her head. “But why? It makes no sense, unless he somehow knows that I’m working with you again.”
“I went to Miami to see your father. That night after I left he was hit.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What did you want from him?”
“I wanted to know how the DGI got to your husband. Somebody probably fingered you. I thought he mig
ht have had contacts down there who might have known something.”
She shook her head again. “It was a coincidence, your being there.”
“A few days ago I talked to a woman in New York, one of Liu’s girlfriends from when he worked out of the UN. Within a couple of hours after I left her apartment she was murdered.”
Gloria’s eyes were filling, but she was angry. “Why didn’t you warn him?”
“I warned his bodyguards.”
She looked away again, trying to assimilate what she was being told. “It still doesn’t make sense,” she said. “If Liu wants to stop you, why go after the people you talk to? Why not you?”
“He’s tried twice, three times if you count the night I went out to his compound.”
A wan smile returned to the corners of her mouth. “My father always knew that he would never make it back to Cuba. He knew that he’d be hit either in Washington or most likely in Little Havana. But he never really took any precautions.”
“We think that one of his security people might have been in on it. Otto’s checking it out.”
She straightened her shoulders. “Now we know Liu figures you’re too tough to screw with, at least directly, so he’s going after the people you get close to. I’m next.”
“Something like that.”
“Okay,” she said. “How do we start?”
SIXTY-TWO
THE WHITE HOUSE
At nine in the morning Adkins was chauffeured over to the White House, where Dennis Berndt met him at the corridor into the West Wing.
“What news of McGarvey?” the president’s national security adviser asked.
“He’s back in the field,” Adkins said. “He came out to Langley last night and we talked. He brought me up to date, and I don’t think the president is going to like what I’m going to have to tell him.”
“From the look on your face, I don’t expect he will.”
They went down to the Oval Office, where President Haynes, already in shirtsleeves, was just ending a phone call. He hung up and waved them in. “Good morning, Dick.”
“Good morning, Mr. President,” Adkins said. “I’ll take only a few minutes of your time this morning.”
“This is about McGarvey and the business in Mexico, I presume.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The situation may be changing,” the president said. He motioned for Berndt to close the door and for him and Adkins to have a seat. “I’m going to Beijing in two weeks to discuss a number of trade issues, among them this business about Mexican oil, which I think is nothing more than a damn fool stunt that Walt Newell got himself mixed up with. But Hu is bound to bring up the arms-for-Taiwan deal that’s on the table, and that could cause us serious trouble down the road.”
Selling antimissile defense systems to Taiwan was nothing new, except that China had been rattling its sabers with increasing frequency and intensity over the past six to eight months: missile drills on the mainland, naval maneuvers in the strait, and mass demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.
“I understand, Mr. President,” Adkins said. “But the problem in Mexico will not disappear on its own.”
“We can’t afford to jeopardize our trade relations with China. Not now. Possibly not for another ten years, until South America is brought online.”
One of President Haynes’s goals was to provide enough aid and direction to countries like Brazil and Chile, where labor was much cheaper than in the U.S., so that manufacturing jobs lost to China could be brought back to the Western Hemisphere. It was a long-range goal that had bipartisan support, although no one had a clear-cut vision of how such a thing could be accomplished.
“Yes, sir,” Adkins said.
Haynes glanced at Berndt, then nodded. “You understand the situation we’re faced with, so tell me what’s happening in Mexico. Have we identified Updegraf’s assassins?”
“McGarvey is convinced that Updegraf was killed on General Liu’s orders. We’ll probably never find the contract killers, but most likely they work for one of the drug cartels. We think that Liu is using them for his fieldwork, and probably financing.”
“Financing what?” Berndt asked.
“That’s what McGarvey is trying to find out,” Adkins said.
“Are you saying that whatever it is Liu is up to may be an independent operation?” the president asked. “Something without the sanction of his government?”
“At this point it looks that way.”
Again Haynes exchanged a glance with his NSA. “I may bring it up with the premier.”
“I wouldn’t advise that, Mr. President,” Adkins said.
“Why?”
“In the first place, we don’t have all the facts. McGarvey could be wrong.”
“That’s not likely,” the president said.
“Liu’s background and position have to be considered,” Berndt said. “It would be like the Chinese trying to convince you that one of the Kennedys was a traitor.”
“What does McGarvey think Liu is doing?” the president asked sharply. He was getting frustrated. “Is the man a terrorist? Is he mounting an attack on us? Because if that’s what you’re saying, I can’t buy it. The Chinese are trying to squeeze our balls on trade issues to give themselves leverage on Taiwan. But you sure as hell can’t convince me that one of their top spy agency generals is another Osama bin Laden with a holy grudge against the West.”
“We haven’t come to that conclusion, sir,” Adkins said. “But one of our field officers was assassinated, and coincidence or not, he was targeting Liu for some reason, and he was seen at a party hosted by Liu. The same party that Representative Newell attended. At the very least we need to find out what the connections are.”
“I agree,” the president said after a moment. “We’re not going to let an American’s death go uninvestigated. I promise you that much. But the timing is wrong. Whatever Liu has as his agenda does not involve World War III. So I think it’s safe to suggest that we rein in McGarvey until I return from Beijing.”
“I don’t know if that’s possible, Mr. President,” Adkins admitted.
“We’ve been down this path before,” Haynes said angrily. “I don’t intend doing it again. Get word to McGarvey to back off, just for now.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Adkins said. “What about our ongoing investigation of Mr. Newell?”
“So far as it doesn’t involve the Chinese beyond the oil deal, you may proceed.”
“He’s been to Beijing, and he’s taking soft money from a pair of PACs in Hong Kong that do have a connection with Liu. We’ve come up with that much so far.”
This was unexpected news to both the president and Berndt. “Christ,” Haynes said softly. “How long has this been going on?”
“I’m not sure we know that yet, but we’re working on it from this end.”
“Does the son of a bitch actually think that nobody will find out?” the president asked rhetorically. “If the Post or the Times gets wind of this they’ll have a field day. Which is fine with me. But not yet. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No leaks. Not so much as a hint. Is that also clear?”
“Perfectly, Mr. President,” Adkins said.
Haynes let it hang for just a moment, then softened. “Is there anything else this morning?”
“Just one, Mr. President,” Adkins said. He’d debated with himself bringing this up, but ever since McGarvey had been DCI, the CIA always told the White House the entire, unvarnished truth, whether or not it agreed with the president’s policies. “Our special-projects director believes that the threat level to the U.S. is very high.”
This was something the president definitely did not want to hear. “Are you talking about Otto Rencke?”
“Yes, sir.”
Haynes nodded. “I see,” he said. “Keep me posted. All I need is two weeks of McGarvey not killing someone. Two weeks.”
SIXTY-THREE
COLONIA LOMAS ALTAS
“I’m going to take a quick shower. There’s coffee in the kitchen, but it might be a little strong for you. It’s Cuban.”
“That’ll be fine,” McGarvey said.
She looked at him for a long time, her eyes alive, her dark skin glowing. “It was you who had me fired, wasn’t it?”
McGarvey nodded. “I wanted you to have the freedom to operate independent of the embassy.”
“I knew it,” she said. “The only part that grates was Gil’s attitude. He loved every second of it, the officious prick.”
“What’s his problem with you?”
“He’s never been in control. Drives him nuts.”
“He was your boss,” McGarvey suggested.
Gloria laughed. “What’s the plan for today? What should I wear?”
“Blue jeans. Nothing is going to happen until tonight.”
Her expression darkened. “The clubs?”
McGarvey nodded. “We’re going hunting.”
She smiled. “I don’t suppose you’d care to wash my back.”
“Behave, and I might take you to lunch,” McGarvey said.
* * *
The coffee was extremely strong but very good. McGarvey had opened the sliding glass doors and sat outside on the balcony and was watching the city come alive when Gloria came out to him. She was dressed in designer jeans and a sleeveless white turtleneck, and was barefoot.
“This is the best time of the day,” she said. “But I was going a little crazy with nothing to do, wondering when you would come back.”
“I’m sorry about your father.”
She started to say something, then changed her mind and looked away. It was impossible for McGarvey to gauge her mood, to guess what she was thinking, what she was feeling just then, but he felt instinctively that he was missing something important.
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