In two days he had a friend at the Bureau send him a hard copy of the FBI’s files, and his problem had been solved. He would blackmail Liu for some serious money. If the general refused, Perry planned on burning him. His stock within the CIA would rise, and he could claim a decent amount of money in expenses for what he would manufacture into a major operation.
Of course, that extra money would have been only a Band-Aid on a hemorrhage, but his tradecraft was good; he would have found another source.
It hadn’t been necessary, because Liu had agreed at once. He had even agreed each time Perry had raised the amounts. Only later did Perry realize that the general might have been only too eager to go along because he had something else, something even more important, to hide from the CIA.
Involving Louis was a terrible mistake, but by then Perry was beginning to understand that all good things came to an end sooner or later. And when this operation went south he’d wanted to be insulated. He hadn’t thought Louis would actually get himself killed. And when he tried to point his staff in directions that would lead them to believe that Louis had been shaking down the general, he never suspected that Adkins would send somebody like McGarvey to figure everything out.
But that’s exactly what had happened, what was happening. The message recalling him to Langley was proof that it was over.
Perry smiled wryly. He would have liked to live in Washington as one of the players. He would even have enjoyed the confirmation hearings, which were often brutal. He would especially have liked the respect that he would have earned.
“Fuck it,” he mumbled.
He flicked the safety lever off, raised the muzzle of the pistol to his temple, and without hesitation pulled the trigger.
EIGHTY-FOUR
XOCHIMILCO
McGarvey, dressed in black, night-vision glasses hanging by a strap around his neck, waited in the willows at the side of the road twenty-five yards from the compound wall. He’d driven over to the Four Seasons to retrieve his equipment in the aluminum case and had gotten down here less than a half hour behind Liu and the girls.
Nothing moved in the night, and no sounds marred the stillness. Even the light breeze that had rustled the leaves had calmed down.
Everything depended on Gloria. If he was right about her he would be walking into a trap, but other than house staff he didn’t think there would be many of Roaz’s people over there this morning; and there would be Liu’s driver and the two bodyguards who had followed in the AMG.
He sincerely hoped he was wrong about both of the women. But he suspected that Shahrzad worked for Iranian intelligence and that Gloria had become an independent operator even before she’d gone back into Cuba with her new husband.
Too many coincidences had accumulated around both of them to be merely coincidences.
What he couldn’t fathom was what all the pieces added together could possibly mean. If it weren’t for Otto’s programs turning up lavender and now violet he would have bet almost anything that this was nothing more than a shakedown operation that had gone sour. Updegraf was assassinated when he and Perry pressed too hard. Shahrzad was a walk-in at the embassy to put the pressure back on Perry, and the congressman’s oil deal between the Chinese and Mexican governments was nothing more than a smoke screen.
But to hide what?
The lights along the top of the compound walls suddenly went out.
McGarvey got to his feet, slung his small pack over his shoulder, made his way to the water’s edge, and headed along the shoreline in knee-deep water. In addition to his Walther PPK, Rencke had sent down a suppressed version of the Steyr AUG assault machine gun that fired subsonic 9 mm ammunition, making it deadly and silent.
Gloria was expecting him to come up the road, where she was supposed to open the main gate. If it wasn’t a trap, she would be waiting alone for him. Otherwise Liu’s bodyguards would be there.
McGarvey wasn’t going to risk his life to find out that way.
He reached the wall on the west side of the compound, facing the lake, in ten minutes. It was plaster painted white over concrete block, and was twelve feet tall. Lights rose from short stanchions every twenty-five feet. Closed-circuit television cameras were mounted at the corners and above the front and rear gates. The motion detectors and infrared sensors that Rencke’s ESMs receiver had picked up when McGarvey had been here last were hidden from view. If this was a trap, whoever was manning the surveillance equipment knew that he wasn’t coming through the front door.
The countdown clock was ticking now.
McGarvey took from his pack a grapnel with big padded hooks attached to one hundred feet of nylon line, made sure the line was coiled properly, and tossed it up and over the wall.
It caught on the first throw, and after a moment to listen for an alarm to be sounded, he clambered to the top of the wall and eased his head high enough to see down into the compound.
A slightly built figure stood in the shadows by the front gate about seventy-five feet away. Nothing else moved in the compound.
McGarvey took a couple of turns of the rope around his left arm, and pulled the night-vision glasses up to his eyes with his free hand.
Gloria’s figure fluoresced dark green in the glasses. He scanned the parking area and the front of the house, but as far as he could tell no one else was there.
He lowered the glasses, pulled himself up and over the wall, retrieved the grapnel and line, and dropped soundlessly to the ground on the inside.
He pulled the Steyr from its sling on his back, charged the weapon, and switched the safety to the off position. With his finger outside the trigger guard, he straightened up and started across the compound, all of his senses superalert for any sign that this was a trap.
The night remained silent. No shots were fired from somewhere inside the house. No lights suddenly blazed, no sirens blared.
He got within a few feet of Gloria before she sensed something and turned around. Her hand went to her mouth and she stumbled backward against the partially open gate.
“Mother of God,” she blurted. “Kirk.” She was dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a white T-shirt.
McGarvey stepped into the shadows, his back to the wall. “You came here in a party dress,” he said.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, I don’t know whose shit this is,” she shot back. She was wired. “If we’re going to run I needed something better than a dress.”
“Where’s Liu?”
She hesitated for just an instant. “In the master bedroom.”
“What about the guy on surveillance?”
“He’s down, but I didn’t have time to take out Liu’s driver and bodyguards.”
“Did you give him the coke?”
She nodded. “It didn’t work. He didn’t tell me anything.”
“Take me to him.”
“Goddamn it, he’s out of it. Won’t do us any good.”
“Now,” McGarvey said. He was getting an itchy feeling between his shoulder blades. No trap had been set at the front gate, but he still didn’t trust her.
“You’re playing with fire,” she said. “We’re outgunned.” She turned and padded off in the dark.
McGarvey followed her into the house, keeping within the deeper shadows as they crossed the expansive living room. They went out onto the pool deck and then through the open sliding glass doors into the master suite.
Liu was lying on his back in the middle of a very large bed with black silk sheets. He was naked, one muscular leg crossed over the other, his eyes fluttering. Shahrzad lay crumpled, half bent over, next to him. Her head was twisted at an impossible angle, her neck obviously broken.
“He killed her,” Gloria said from behind him.
“Why?”
“He said she was an Iranian spy.”
“I thought the coke didn’t work,” McGarvey said. He crossed to the bed and felt for a pulse at Liu’s neck. It was strong but irregular, as if he had a heart murmur. It was what the fact
sheet Kraus had sent with the compact had said to expect.
“We have to get out of here before someone checks with surveillance,” Gloria said. “The people around Liu don’t sleep through the night. Never.”
“Where’s your weapon?”
“I didn’t bring it. Remember?”
McGarvey took out his Walther and tossed it to her. “Watch my back.”
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“What I came here for,” McGarvey said.
“The son of a bitch doesn’t know anything.”
“Go,” McGarvey ordered. “I’ll just be a minute.”
Gloria looked at Liu’s figure on the bed. “He’s not worth it,” she said. For just that moment she sounded like a feral cat ready to pounce, a low rumble at the back of her throat.
She turned and left, disappearing around the corner back into the living room.
McGarvey looked down at the general, who was still out of it, then quickly searched the suite, finding a laptop computer on a desk in an adjacent alcove. He laid the Steyr on the desk and turned the computer on. When it booted up, a message prompt in Chinese script dropped down with a blank box. It was asking for a password.
He turned it off, closed the lid, picked up the gun, and turned around.
Liu, still naked, stood in the doorway, a SIG-Sauer pistol in his hand, no signs whatsoever that he had taken the doctored coke.
“You have a heart murmur,” McGarvey said.
“Since I was a child,” Liu replied pleasantly.
“My people know that I’m here.”
“I’m sure they do, but I’m curious to know why you have come here like this. What do you want, Mr. McGarvey? Surely not to arrest me for some trumped-up charges of rape and murder back in the States. I won’t go back with you.”
“Not that.”
“Fair enough.” Liu nodded. “Gloria tells me that you are an assassin. Did you come here with the intent to murder me?”
“That’s part of why I’m here,” McGarvey admitted. He held up the laptop. “This is the rest of it, unless you want to tell me what you’ve been doing down here for the past ten years, and what it has to do with Iranian intelligence.”
“Poor Shahrzad?” Liu asked. “I didn’t kill the girl. Gloria did it.”
“I meant the intelligence officer who was at your party here, hiding in the shadows.”
For just a moment Liu was nonplussed, but then he laughed. “You got a photo of him that night. But it mustn’t have been a very good one if you thought he was Iranian.”
“Middle Eastern.”
“No, his mother was a Siberian, I think. He was an intelligence officer, but he worked for the FSB.”
“Russian,” McGarvey said, surprised. “What the hell are you doing with them?”
“Yes, Russian. But you did manage to get part of it right. Viktor was freelancing, this time for Iran, which is why Shahrzad came here to keep an eye on me.”
“And Updegraf?”
“That was her idea, to keep me on the straight and narrow. And by the way, it was her idea to have him eliminated when he started to get too close. I turned him, and it was easier than you think, him and that utter fool Perry.”
“It still brings us back to Iran,” McGarvey said. “They were paying you a great deal of money, but why? What have you been doing for them right under the noses of your own people?”
“That’s something you’ll never know,” Liu said, and he raised his pistol. “Put my computer back on the desk, please. Even if you managed to get out of here with it, the machine would be of no use to you. One wrong keystroke and the hard disk will fry itself. But that’s a moot point after all, because you’re not getting out of here.”
EIGHTY-FIVE
THE COMPOUND
Gloria appeared in the doorway behind Liu. She was out of breath, her lips parted, her nostrils flared. Her eyes were on McGarvey’s.
“I never meant for it to come to this,” she said.
“Very touching,” Liu said. “Kill him.”
“You can’t kill a former DCI.”
“We had no idea who he was, just some intruder with a grappling rope coming over my wall. One of my men shot him to death. Sorry. But he should have knocked on my front door. I would have met with him. In fact, it is I who’ll telephone the authorities, as soon as his body is put in place and you’re out of here.”
“By tomorrow morning they’ll come down on you so hard even your own government won’t be able to bail you out,” Gloria said. “You won’t be able to run.”
“I don’t intend to go anyplace,” Liu said mildly. “Either kill him or get out of here.”
“He can’t let you leave alive,” McGarvey suggested.
“I know,” Gloria said, and she jammed the muzzle of the Walther into the back of Liu’s head. “Nobody has to die tonight,” she said. “Put down the gun.”
“It’s a little late to switch sides again, my dear,” Liu said. “The man isn’t stupid. He knows that you’re a double. You either take your chances with me, or return to the States and go on trial for treason. If you’re lucky you’ll get life in prison.”
“Fuck you,” Gloria said, and she pulled the trigger, the hammer slapping on an empty chamber.
Liu was distracted for just a split instant, time enough for McGarvey to bring the rifle up to his hip and squeeze off two rounds, catching Liu in the middle of his chest and under his chin as he staggered backward, the second bullet spiraling up into the general’s brain, killing him instantly.
He went down hard, his head bouncing on the tile floor, blood pooling like a halo.
Gloria was staring at McGarvey. “You knew all along,” she said. “The gun was empty.”
“I wasn’t sure until just now,” McGarvey said.
She was figuring her options—he could see it in her eyes.
“What if I just turned around and walked out of here?” she asked.
“I’d stop you.”
It was the answer she’d expected. She nodded. “I would have killed him, you know. For you.”
“Why?” McGarvey asked.
“Why was I working with Liu?”
“Why were you working for everybody except us?”
She shrugged. “I couldn’t very well go back to Cuba—my father took care of that for me nineteen years ago. And the States was never home. Nobody there, including my father, gave a shit about me. My mother was gone. My aunts and uncles and cousins were in their own little worlds. And it looked as if guys like Perry and poor, stupid Updegraf were going to end up on top. Talk about the dumbing down of America. You have no idea.”
“So you decided to work for yourself,” McGarvey prompted.
“Me is all I’ve ever had,” she said. “Until you.”
“What was going on?” McGarvey asked. “What was Liu doing?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But you have his computer. If you can get it out of here tonight and up to Otto, he’ll figure it out.”
“How many men are in the compound?”
“Six, I think,” she said. “They know you’re here. They’re just waiting for Liu to call them in, or for you to try to get out.” She looked down at Liu’s body. “I thought he would kill you, and it drove me crazy. It’s why I came back.” She looked up. “I love you. That part’s never been a lie.”
McGarvey took out his sat phone and speed-dialed Rencke’s number.
“It won’t work inside the compound,” she said.
The no-signal indicator came on.
He looked up. “You can come with me or stay,” he told her, though for the life of him he didn’t know why he had changed his mind about taking her back. It certainly wasn’t love.
She was surprised. “There’s nothing for me back at Langley,” she said. “I won’t sound the alarm or try to stop you. But if you get out of here in one piece I’ll disappear.”
“And if I don’t?”
She looked away. “I don’t want
to think about it,” she said softly. “No matter what happens I’ll never see you again.”
McGarvey felt a genuine sorrow for her. Almost everything that had happened in her life after her father had defected had been her fault. Yet she’d done some good work for the CIA, and she had a lot more to give. But there was no chance for her now, which put him between a rock and a hard place. He couldn’t take her with him. As she said, there was nothing but prison for her back home. Nor could he kill her.
“Someone will probably be coming after you.”
“I know,” she said.
He stuffed the laptop in his backpack.
Gloria held out his pistol. “Do you want this?”
McGarvey reached into his pocket, pulled out two magazines of ammunition, and handed them to her. “You might need these.”
She nodded tightly. “Thanks.”
As he stepped past her back into the bedroom, she reached up and kissed his cheek. “Good-bye, Kirk,” she said. “Watch your left.”
McGarvey passed through the bedroom and held up just at the open sliding glass doors. He pulled the night-vision glasses up to his eyes and searched the deeper shadows around the pool. One man, holding what appeared to be an AK-47, was hiding in one of the cabanas. A second, also armed with a Kalashnikov, was crouched behind a stack of pool chairs and chaise longues. Neither weapon was equipped with a suppressor. Evidently they didn’t care how much noise they made.
He raised the Steyr, the sighting awkward because of the bulk of the night glasses, and squeezed off one shot, taking down the guard behind the chairs. The man’s body pitched backward, his gun clattering on the pool deck.
The one in the cabana stepped around the corner to see what the noise was all about and McGarvey double-tapped him, once in the chest and the second time in the head, and he crumpled to the deck.
Gloria suddenly appeared out of the darkness behind him, and before he could pull off his glasses and turn around, she was at his left shoulder, the Walther in her hand.
Dance with the Dragon Page 38