Dance with the Dragon

by Hagberg, David

  “She’s going to help you.”

  “Not a chance,” Shahrzad protested. “If he finds out that I’ve gone to the CIA he’ll kill me.”

  “I don’t think so,” McGarvey said. “First he’ll want to find out what I’m doing here. Maybe I’m part of Perry’s blackmail scheme. Maybe I’m here for something else.”

  “Right,” Gloria said. “You didn’t come to Mexico to investigate Louis’s death, or to find out if Perry is running a scam. So what exactly are you doing here?”

  “Liu has been coming down here for ten years. I want to know why.”

  “If we go after him he’s bound to smell a rat,” Gloria said. “Honestly, I don’t think he’ll give either one of us the time of day.”

  “I’ve told everybody that Shahrzad was my girlfriend and I was looking for her,” McGarvey said. “After our little show on the dance floor he’s got to be curious about you. And tonight when I show up with both of you he’ll have to ask himself what game I’m playing.”

  “He’ll still suspect that it’s a setup.”

  “Not after Roaz kicks me out of the club, and his people try to kill me,” McGarvey said.

  “What are you going to do?” Shahrzad asked, wide-eyed.

  “I’m going to get pissed off when the two of you leave me for each other.”

  Shahrzad didn’t get it at first, but Gloria did and she laughed.

  “That’ll get his attention. But seeing a couple of dykes going at it in public won’t make him suddenly tell us all of his dirty little secrets.”

  “No, but it will get him to invite you to one of his parties,” McGarvey said. “Either down here at his house, or up in Chihuahua where Louis was killed.”

  “And then what?”

  “I’ll tell you when the time comes,” McGarvey said. “First we’re going to get the two of you noticed.”

  Gloria was intrigued, but she shook her head. “A dozen things can go south with a plan like that,” she said.

  “A hundred,” McGarvey replied. “Are you in?”

  “You know I am,” she said.

  “What about you?” he asked Shahrzad.

  “Do I have a choice?” she asked.

  “No,” Gloria answered before McGarvey had the chance.

  Shahrzad looked at both of them. “Bastards,” she said softly.

  “If we’re going out tonight we’ll have to get some sleep,” Gloria said. “And we’ll have to get her some party clothes unless she has something in the bag.”

  “I left everything behind,” Shahrzad said.

  “In that case we’ll definitely have to do some shopping,” Gloria said. “What about you?” she asked McGarvey.

  “I’m going to try to draw out the opposition, see if they’re still interested.”

  “Are we in any real danger yet? Should I carry a piece?”

  “You should be okay,” McGarvey said. “And I’ll be around if you need help. Anyway, Liu’s people won’t let you get close if you’re armed.”

  “Same time as last night?” Gloria asked.

  “Yeah,” McGarvey said. “I’ll pick you up around midnight.”

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  THE CITY

  McGarvey drove over to San Angel and got lucky with a parking space across from the Chinese embassy on Avenida Rio Magdalena. As soon as he pulled up, the security officer at the embassy’s front gate picked up a telephone and called someone.

  A minute later two uniformed security officers came out of the main building and walked out to the gate, where they exchanged a few words with the guard, then looked across at McGarvey.

  One of them pointed what was most likely a video camera at McGarvey’s car, but none of them made a move to come across the street to ask what the hell he thought he was doing here.

  While they were watching him, McGarvey made a show of making a call on his sat phone. The embassy’s roof bristled with at least a dozen types of antennae and satellite dishes. He figured at least one of them would be picking up his call. But it would be an exercise in futility. The phone’s encryption program was unbreakable.

  Rencke answered on the first ring. “Oh, wow, Mac, someone’s trying to bust your algorithm. Sloppy, sloppy. They’re leaving a trace. Where are you?”

  “In front of the Chinese embassy. They’ve taken an interest, but no one’s made a move so far.”

  “You picked up Shahrzad with no trouble?”

  “I thought I might have attracted some interest at the airport, but if we were tailed they were damned good.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “She’s staying with Gloria,” McGarvey said. “I’m sending both of them out tonight. In the meantime I want you to find out about her family in Paris. According to what she’s told me the Ministry of Intelligence had her mother and family killed, and she’s next.”

  “If they’re still alive they shouldn’t be too hard to find,” Rencke said. “Did you believe her?”

  “I don’t know anymore,” McGarvey said. “One minute I want to toss her back on the street, and the next I’m feeling sorry for her. But if Iranian intel has a price on her head, then who the hell is the guy in the pictures?”

  “My program is chewing on it, but I need another head shot, something I can use to compare. As it is I’ve run through all the images we have of every intelligence officer from Saudi Arabia to Iran and back.”

  “No matches yet?” McGarvey asked hopefully. Any near misses?”

  “A half dozen that have risen to a forty percent confidence level,” Rencke said. “But that’s less than fifty-fifty, kemosabe. Nothing you could take to the track with your rent money.”

  “What’s your gut feeling, Otto?”

  “This time I don’t know,” Rencke replied without hesitation.

  The two uniformed security officers had come out of the gate and were looking for a break in traffic so they could cross the street.

  “Looks like I’m going to have some company,” McGarvey. He started the car and put it in gear with one hand. “Call me as soon as you have something.”

  “Take care,” Rencke said.

  The security officers were just starting across the street when McGarvey caught a break and pulled out. He glanced in the rearview mirror in time to see one of them take a photograph of the Jetta’s tag. As soon as they got to a computer they would find out that the car had been rented in the name of Martin Saint, a low-level American diplomat who was not on the roster of U.S. embassy personnel here in Mexico City. It wouldn’t take long for them to identify McGarvey from the photos they’d snapped, which would leave them with a question: What was the former director of Central Intelligence doing snooping around their embassy in a car rented to a nonexistent person?

  With any luck word would get back to Liu, and perhaps the ambassador might ask some embarrassing questions of the general.

  It wouldn’t do much, but it might add just a little extra pressure.

  He drove toward the U.S. embassy, taking a roundabout route to make it difficult but not impossible for someone to tail him. A few blocks out, he suddenly sped through an orange light just as it changed to red. Traffic with the green surged through the intersection, making it impossible for anyone to follow him. But if he had picked up a tail, they would report to their handlers that McGarvey had apparently gone directly over to his embassy.

  His attempt at misdirection was purposely crude, but if it was noticed and word got back to Liu, it might give the general a small measure of false confidence that he was dealing with an amateur, or at least with a man whose tradecraft was rusty.

  * * *

  McGarvey got back to Lomas Altas a little before noon. He found a parking spot and walked two blocks back to a sidewalk café in the shopping plaza that faced the Paseo de la Reforma. He was between the Iranian embassy and the street up to Gloria’s apartment. From where he was seated under a bright green market umbrella he could see both ways up the street. When the girls left the apartment to go sho
pping he couldn’t miss them, nor would he miss seeing if they’d picked up a tail.

  He ordered a Dos Equis, an enchilada, and rice and beans and settled down to watch and wait.

  It didn’t take long before Gloria’s bright yellow Mini Cooper flashed around the corner at the end of the block. Instead of heading away, it came straight past where McGarvey was seated. Gloria was behind the wheel, intent on her driving, but he got the distinct impression that Shahrzad had spotted him but then had looked away at the last second as if she didn’t want to be made.

  If he hadn’t known better he would have suspected the woman of practicing a bit of tradecraft just then.

  He waited until they were out of sight, lost in the traffic, before he paid for his lunch and headed back to where he had parked his car. So far as he’d been able to tell, no one had followed them.

  That situation, he expected, would change after tonight.

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  THE DOLL HOUSE

  McGarvey had gone back to his hotel for a few hours’ sleep, something he thought was going to be in short supply over the next couple of days. It was dark outside when the sat phone buzzed softly, but he was awake instantly, even though he’d been deep into an erotic dream.

  He was back at the club and Gloria was all over him, as she’d been last night, and he was responding even though he knew that something very bad was going to happen. Suddenly Gloria’s image morphed into that of Marta Fredricks, the Swiss federal cop he’d lived with during his self-imposed exile in Switzerland. He kept trying to push her way, but she wouldn’t let go of him. She was clinging around his neck, kissing him, rubbing her body against his, telling him that she loved him, that she would never leave.

  When he was finally able to pull free, he was standing at the end of a runway watching a commercial jet take off. He could see her face in one of the windows, and he tried to wave good-bye. He wanted to tell her that leaving was for the best. But before he could raise his hand the airplane exploded in midair, and someone was calling to give him the bad news.

  He got out of bed and reached the phone on the second ring. “Yes.”

  “Are you okay?” Rencke asked. He sounded worried.

  “I was catching a few hours’ sleep,” McGarvey told him. “It could be a long night.” He looked at his watch. It was a few minutes before ten. He’d slept nearly eight hours. For the first time in years he wanted a cigarette, and he realized how jumpy he’d become. “What did you find out?”

  “Plenty,” Rencke said. “But I’m telling ya, Mac, it beats the shit out of me what’s going on.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You were right about Shahrzad. She’s lying through her teeth. There’s apparently no reason for her to be in Mexico City trying to raise money to come to the States. Her father’s dead, that part she told the truth about. But her mother is still alive. She’s in a mental institution outside of Versailles, and has been there for eight years, ever since she and her four sons moved to Paris to live with her parents. Her father was a pioneer in the French computer industry and is worth something in the low billions. He’s sorta the Bill Gates of France, only with hardware, and on a much smaller scale.”

  “Did Shahrzad move to France with them?”

  “Apparently she did, seventeen years ago. But five years ago she quit her job with her grandfather’s company and moved to London, where she lived in an expat neighborhood of mostly Muslims off Queen Street near the river.”

  “What’d she do there?”

  “Worked as a secretary for a small insurance company.”

  “Iranian intel?”

  “That was my first guess,” Rencke said. “But if it was a front it was damned good. I haven’t turned it. Thing is, they could have learned a lesson from Mossad. Remember during the Eichmann operation? The Israelis set up a series of travel agencies across Europe to funnel their agents into Argentina for the kidnapping. Afterward they kept the agencies open because they were making a profit. Some of them are still up and running. Could be that the Iranians have done the same thing. Could be the MOIS has set up insurance agencies in Muslim communities, wherever.”

  “Which would make Shahrzad an Iranian intelligence agent.”

  “Yeah. But what the hell was she doing in Mexico screwing around with one of our guys so that she could get to Liu?” Rencke asked.

  “Unless Liu was working some sort of a deal with the Iranians, and they didn’t trust him,” McGarvey suggested.

  “They might have sent one of their people to check on him,” Rencke finished it. “What the hell is he up to?”

  “It’s worth risking some assets to find out,” McGarvey said. “But her being here in Mexico City could be for something entirely innocent.”

  “Poor little rich girl out to prove herself?” Rencke asked.

  “Something like that.”

  “Mac, do you really believe it?”

  McGarvey walked over to the window and pulled the curtains aside. “I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

  “If that’s all it is, she’s got herself in over her head and she’s lying her ass off to try to figure a way out,” Rencke said. “And it’s definitely going to get worse for her.”

  “So why doesn’t she just run?” McGarvey asked.

  “The sixty-four-dollar question.”

  A short, slender man stood in the shadows of a doorway across the street. McGarvey pushed the curtain farther aside, and the figure suddenly stepped out of the doorway and headed down the street.

  A mistake? he wondered. Or had he just been sent a message?

  “We need to start eliminating the variables,” McGarvey said. “Let’s start with Gil Perry. I want him recalled to Washington to give Dick an update on the situation down here. Have Howard sit in on it. And have Dick put some pressure on both of them.”

  “How long do you want him held up here?”

  “Forty-eight hours,” McGarvey said. No matter what happened, he didn’t think the situation would remain stable much longer than that.

  “Will it be that fast?”

  “I hope so,” McGarvey said. “In the meantime I want a cleanup crew down here asap. But under cover. I don’t want to raise any flags.”

  “What have you got in mind?” Rencke asked.

  “I think Perry is blackmailing Liu over the murdered girls in New York and Washington, and I think Updegraf was in on the deal. The pictures Shahrzad took for him in Liu’s compound, and maybe up in Chihuahua, might have ended up on Perry’s desk. I want his office and his apartment tossed, and I don’t care if they leave any traces.”

  “I’ll send them down first thing in the morning,” Rencke said. “Soon as Perry clears out, they’ll move in.”

  “Send them down tonight,” McGarvey said. “And have the jet standing by. Could be that Liu will take the girls up to Chihuahua. I just don’t know how this is going to play out. But I want to keep my options open.”

  “I’m on it,” Rencke said. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah. Call Katy and tell her that you heard from me. I’ll be home in two days tops.”

  Rencke laughed. “Oh, boy, that’s one call I’m going to enjoy making.”

  SEVENTY-NINE

  THE APARTMENT

  McGarvey left the hotel a few minutes after eleven and headed over to Gloria’s apartment in Lomas Altas. He took care with his tradecraft to make sure that he didn’t pick up a tail. Traffic was steady downtown, and it was relatively easy for him to make a number of last-minute turns, and switchbacks to see if he was clear.

  Twenty minutes later he pulled into the driveway of the complex and parked next to Gloria’s Mini Cooper. She and Shahrzad were flawed women. Whether it was because of their troubled childhoods, or simply the luck of the genetic draw, they had chosen a world that was destroying them.

  Yet if they had been normal women, with nothing more than the garden variety of weaknesses and self-indulgences, they would be of no use against Liu. Gloria was in lov
e with him, and Shahrzad wanted a ticket to the States. But that was just on the surface. What either woman really wanted was still a mystery to him. It was enough at the moment that they had agreed to cooperate with something that had every reason to fail.

  Whatever their reasons, both of them had been doing their little dances, Gloria around Gil Perry, and Shahrzad around Updegraf. Now they would have to dance with Liu, and McGarvey would try to make sure he didn’t get them killed.

  Gloria answered the door. She was barefoot, but her hair had been done up, and she wore some light makeup, a revealing red dress slit up the side almost to her hip, and a small gold chain around her neck.

  “You look nice,” he said, following her into the apartment.

  She smiled with pleasure. “Give us a minute. We’re just about ready. You know where the drinks are,” she said, and she disappeared into the bedroom.

  McGarvey went to the window and carefully pulled the blinds aside just far enough to see out to the driveway and parking area. Nothing moved for the moment, yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was there.

  When he turned away, the women had come out of the bedroom. Shahrzad was in a short strapless dress made of some satin material in gold that was crumpled. Her hair had been piled up in back, and she wore a stunning diamond pendant around her long, slender neck. Both of them wore open-backed spike heels.

  “You’re going to turn some heads,” McGarvey said. “Both of you.”

  Shahrzad smiled and looked away for a moment. “Thank you,” she said softly.

  Gloria brought a bottle of white wine and three glasses from the kitchen. She poured for them, and offered up a toast. “Success,” she said. Her eyes were bright, her moves animated. She’d taken a hit.

  Shahrzad had calmed down from this morning, and she no longer seemed angry or frightened. It was likely, McGarvey thought, that she’d taken a line of coke, too.

  He raised his glass, and they all drank.

  “How are we going to play this?” Gloria asked.