Face Off--A Kirk McGarvey Novel

by David Hagberg

  “Home sweet home?” she said.

  “Until tonight,” Najjir answered pleasantly.

  Miriam had gotten out on the other side, and she went across and unlocked the door to the tiny ground-floor landing. Six mailboxes were set into the wall next to the stairs—two apartments for each of the three floors. There was no elevator, and the building smelled very old, the paint peeling and the stamped tiles of the tin ceiling faded and water damaged in numerous spots.

  “Peachy,” Pete said.

  Miriam prodded her up the stairs to the third floor, where she unlocked the door to the apartment at the rear and went in, Pete behind her and Najjir following.

  The place was small. A tiny living room, a galley kitchen to the left, an open door to the single bedroom at the rear, the bathroom to the right. It was furnished minimally, with nothing on the walls or even a television.

  “Lay out something for her to wear,” Najjir told Miriam, who stood across the tiny room, her right hand in her jacket pocket.

  “And?” she asked.

  “Walk back to Les Puces, take a cab to the train station, and return to London.”

  “What about the woman?”

  “I’m taking her back.”

  “I meant later?” Miriam asked. “What’s to become of her?”

  “That depends entirely on Mr. McGarvey.”

  “We’ll want a share of the product,” she said, her accent, for a moment, Russian.

  Pete suddenly realized what had bothered her about the woman. She was a Russian operative. Almost certainly working for the SVR. “I’d expect that, with all of your problems in Ukraine and Syria, and lately in Belarus and Lithuania, you guys might want to stand down for a bit,” she said, but the woman ignored her.

  “I’m sure that it can be arranged,” Najjir said.

  “Yes, arranged,” Miriam said.

  “Trying to fuck with a former DCI might be a bit out of your league,” Pete said.

  “We know all about your Mr. McGarvey, and we’ve been waiting for a long time to have a private little chat with him,” Miriam said. “But I never thought that he’d fall into our laps so easily.”

  “Careful what you wish for; it might jump up and bite you on your ass.”

  Miriam laughed. “Weren’t you taught at your Farm that attachments are the bane of every operative? It’s universal, ducky. Look at what it’s done for your boyfriend. Every skirt he’s ever got close to—including his wife and daughter—has lost their lives because of him. Didn’t you know that going in? Or is he such a fantastic lover that you simply didn’t give a good goddamn?”

  “I’ll be there when he puts a bullet in your brain, podruga,” Pete said, hiding as best she could the fact that she couldn’t feel Mac’s presence. She was no longer sure that he was out there somewhere, coming for her.

  SIXTEEN

  McGarvey, seated at a metal table in a small room with what he took to be a one-way glass, looked up as the door opened and a young, attractive woman in khaki slacks, a white blouse, and a blue blazer came in and sat across from him. She’d brought several thick file folders marked “Le Plus Secret”—Most Secret—which she placed on the table.

  It had been one hour since he’d been arrested outside the church. His wrists and ankles had been shackled, a black hood had been placed over his head, he’d been hustled into the back of a van and driven off with no sirens. The hood and shackles had been removed in this room fifteen minutes ago.

  “I was with a woman, has she been found?” he asked.

  “Not at this time,” the woman said. “I am Lieutenant Dominique Carrel and I have several questions for you.”

  “You hold a civilian, not a military, rank, mademoiselle. Those are DGSE files, which means you know who I am.”

  “Yes, Mr. Director, I do. What were you and Ms. Boylan doing at the Tour Eiffel during the attack?”

  “Having lunch, of course,” McGarvey said. “What is being done to find her?”

  “A witness saw her being taken from a van into the church by several men. But she has disappeared.”

  “They took her away, probably in a car. There may have been another witnesses.”

  “Not to this point.”

  McGarvey looked inward for a long moment or two. It was bad. This was not going to happen. Not again. He would find her at whatever the cost. Anyone in his way would go down. But an all-out search had to begin soon. If her kidnappers were given more than a few hours they could easily get out of the city, or completely disappear in some neighborhood somewhere.

  “Have the Sûreté issue an all-points. I’ll give you descriptions of the man and woman who took her.”

  “We found the bodies of the seven men who you killed in the church—six with a pistol and one in hand-to-hand combat—nothing else.”

  McGarvey rose from his chair, his movements nonthreatening, his temper carefully in check. “If you know who I am, then you know what I’m capable of. You have questions, I want answers. Which I’ll find on my own, if need be.”

  “You’re not advancing your case. Sit down.”

  “I’ll find her myself if need be.”

  “It is impossible.”

  “I’ve walked out of the Swimming Pool before, I can do it again,” McGarvey said. The headquarters of the Directorate-General for External Security—the French equivalent of the CIA—was located on the boulevard Mortier. Insiders called it the Swimming Pool because it was located next door to the Piscine des Tourelles, which was the home office of the French Swimming Federation.

  Carrel reached inside her jacket and drew a big SIG Sauer pistol.

  McGarvey leaned forward and snatched it out of her hand before she had a chance to bring it into a firing position.

  She reared back. “Merde.”

  McGarvey, never taking his eyes off the woman, ejected the magazine and thumbed out all the bullets, letting them fall as they would. He ejected the round from the firing chamber and then disassembled the pistol before laying the frame and pieces in front of her on the table.

  “I’m not going to let you shoot me,” he said. “But you’re going to escort me out of the building now.”

  The door opened and Milun Alarie, a tall, patrician man in his early sixties, gray at the sides, his suit rumpled, his tie loose, came in. “You may leave us now, Dominique,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and she went out.

  “Old times, Mac, hein,” Alarie said.

  He and McGarvey went back together a number of years. And although they’d never been close friends, there’d always been respect for each other’s abilities and judgment. During his brief tenure as DCI, McGarvey had unofficially consulted with Alarie, who by then had become a fairly high-ranking officer in the DGSE, on a number of developing situations in Europe. And the exchange of information, much of it very sensitive, worked both ways. As of two years ago Alarie had taken charge of the DGSE’s Strategic Directorate, which operated much like the CIA’s Clandestine Services.

  “We don’t have a lot of room here, Milun, but you’re exactly who I hoped would turn up,” McGarvey said.

  Alarie motioned for McGarvey to have a seat. “All of Paris is being thoroughly searched for Ms. Boylan. On that you will have to take my word. You running around won’t solve a thing. So it will not be allowed.”

  “Let me call Otto Rencke. He might be able to give us a lead.”

  Alarie smiled. “He’s threatened to crash our mainframe if he wasn’t allowed to speak with you.”

  “I’ll need my phone.”

  Alarie took McGarvey’s phone out of his pocket and laid it on the table. “My people tell me that’s its encrypted, so I would ask only that you put it on speaker mode.”

  McGarvey did it, and Otto answered on the first ring.

  “Oh, wow, Mac. How are you?”

  “A man and a woman who were seated near the kitchen at the Jules Verne were the control officers. They have Pete.”

  “Just a mo,”
Otto said.

  “What’s he doing?” Alarie asked.

  “I expect that he’s checking the restaurant’s security system. Something your people or the Sûreté have most likely already done.”

  “Got ’em,” Otto came back.

  A video taken at an oblique angle, possibly just below the ceiling, in a corner, came up on McGarvey’s phone. It showed the man and woman being seated at the table.

  “That’s them,” McGarvey said, showing the screen to Alarie. “They both spoke with British accents, but she’s Russian—I’d bet just about anything on it. And I have a hunch that he’s Middle Eastern.”

  “Our old friends the Saudis up to no good again?” Otto asked.

  “He could be a merc working for just about anybody.”

  “Narrows it down a bit, but it could take a few minutes, maybe longer. My darlings will have to work through a range of disguises, maybe even plastic surgery, depending on how serious these people are.”

  “Taking down the Eiffel Tower is a big deal for anyone,” McGarvey said. “But what I don’t understand is what the hell they were doing at ground zero?”

  “Creating a diversion with their staged out-of-control tȇte-à-tȇte,” Otto said. “Check the background out the windows.”

  Two of the terrorists in white coveralls momentarily appeared in the frame, and then they were out of sight.

  “I’ll get back to you,” Otto said.

  “Pete’s out there somewhere,” McGarvey said.

  “I know. I’m sending this to the Frogs.”

  The connection ended.

  “That’s an offensive term,” Alarie said, but there was no heart in his remark. “What now, my old friend? If I release you, where will you go?”

  “Back to the church.”

  “There is nothing else to be found.”

  “We’ll see.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Miriam was only one size larger and an inch taller than Pete, so the cream pantsuit she laid out on the bed looked as if it would fit reasonably well. She’d been waiting in the tiny bedroom when Pete got out of the shower.

  “If you behave yourself you might live long enough for the bruises on your breast to fade,” Miriam said.

  “You get your jollies looking at naked women?” Pete said.

  Miriam shrugged. “I hope they send me pictures of your trial for spying, then your execution. I’m told that the garotte can be painful, even more so than the nail you lost on your hand. That would pique my jollies”

  Najjir came to the door. “Leave us now.”

  “She’s a handful,” Miriam said. “Sure you can handle her alone? I wouldn’t mind coming along to help out.”

  “I think she’ll cooperate.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Pete said, standing in the bathroom’s doorway. She tossed the towel aside and went to the clothes on the bed. There was only her dirty panties, but she put them on, and then the slacks. “The instant we hit the street I’m going to start screaming my head off.”

  “No,” Najjir said.

  He handed a strip of C-4 about the size of a cigarette stub, and a roll of white surgical tape, to Miriam. “Just under her left breast, I would think. And use plenty of tape so that she won’t be able to rip it loose so easily.”

  Pete stepped back and held out a hand. “There’s no fucking way.”

  Najjir just looked at her, a half-amused smile on his elegantly shaped mouth. “What is the old saying? Where there’s life there’s hope? Refuse this and I will shoot you in the head and leave your body here for someone to find. Eventually word will get to your Mr. McGarvey and he’ll move heaven and earth—as you said—to find you. It might take a little longer for he and I to come face-to-face, but it’ll happen with or without your cooperation.”

  Pete spread her arms. “I’ll do as you want, because I want to be there when the two of you do come face-to-face. I want to watch him rip your heart out.”

  Miriam positioned the explosive putty just below Pete’s left breast, securely taped it in place, and stepped back.

  Najjir raised a cell phone. “All it wants is the proper code.”

  “Comes to that, I’ll make sure we’re very close,” Pete said. She put on the blouse and buttoned it up.

  Najjir moved aside and pocketed the phone. “Get back to London now. I’ll contact you when the next phase is to begin.”

  “There are bound to be witnesses, who might remember our faces,” Miriam said.

  “Do something with your hair, and maybe your complexion, I’ll leave that up to you,” Najjir said.

  “Plastic surgery?”

  “I suspect there won’t be enough time.”

  “How will you get out of here?”

  “A car is coming to take us to Le Bourget. We’ll be across the border before you are.”

  “It’ll be an interesting trip home.”

  “Just keep a low profile. No shopping sprees for the time being. You know the drill. Anyway, you’ll be rich enough to go home again, if that’s what you want.”

  Miriam laughed and took one last look at Pete before she got her bag from the living room and left the apartment.

  * * *

  The bodies were being removed from inside the church when McGarvey arrived with Dominique Carrel. Plainclothes police were canvasing the neighborhood for witnesses. Two forensic teams were in the church gathering evidence—one team of four in the nave and the second team of three downstairs in the room where he and Pete had been held.

  “You are being expelled from France later this afternoon,” Alarie had told McGarvey. “A special flight leaves at five from Orly. You will be on it. But first I’ll need your word that you will not harm Mademoiselle Carrel. Unless you give it to me you will be kept in a holding cell until it’s time for your flight.”

  “I won’t harm her,” McGarvey had promised.

  Alarie nodded. “She’s waiting outside with a car.”

  On the way over, the woman had been nervous sitting beside him.

  “Don’t worry, I don’t plan on taking your pistol and shooting you with it,” he said.

  She looked at him skeptically. “What do you hope to accomplish that our investigators can’t?”

  “Maybe nothing, but I need to take a look.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Ms. Boylan and I were engaged to be married. Getting her back is very important to me.”

  “I understand,” Dominique said, her tone softening. “And I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

  * * *

  McGarvey and the DGSE officer stood just within the doors of the nave as the last of the bodies from downstairs was trundled out on a gurney. Photographers were putting away their equipment, and even the fingerprint and DNA techs were finished gathering evidence.

  “Efficient,” McGarvey said.

  “They know their jobs,” Dominique said. “There’s nothing for you to find here that they haven’t already recovered.

  “You’re probably right,” McGarvey said. He went down the aisle and stopped at the open door behind the altar. He had no real idea what he was looking for, but he caught a hint of Pete’s scent in the still air.

  She was gone now, taken away, but she had been here. He’d seen her hung by the wrists, tied to an overhead pipe. She had been practically naked, but there’d been no real fear in her eyes. Just anger that she had been caught.

  “There’s nothing here, monsieur,” Dominique said.

  McGarvey held up a hand and then went down the stairs.

  At the bottom, a pool of blood was on the floor off to the right and a long streak of blood was on the stone walls to the left.

  Again he stopped to listen, to test the air for any other smells, to try to feel what else had happened here. The man had taken Pete somewhere. The smug bastard had been sure of himself. He’d think by now that McGarvey was dead and it was just him and Pete.

  But for the life of him McGarvey couldn’t understand why the man had taken th
e risk of trying to transport her somewhere. He should have killed both of them right here and made his break with the woman. It had been the only logical move.

  But he hadn’t.

  McGarvey moved down the stone corridor to the room where he and Pete had been trussed up. Vulnerable. There hadn’t been a damned thing either of them could have done to prevent the man and woman from the restaurant from killing them.

  Inside the small, bare basement room, McGarvey stopped again. Pete’s scent was still here, just on top of the odors of blood and death.

  The web belt that had been used to tie her to the electric conduit, along with the panty hose McGarvey had been trussed with, were gone. Removed by the forensics people for evidence.

  He stepped closer to the spot where Pete had been tied up, and he reached up and touched the stone block, damp with water seepage.

  For a longish moment he missed the faint scratchings on the wall at what would have been at the level of Pete’s hips.

  He made out a portion of an S and then possibly part of an L or a T. Then something else.

  On the floor below where her feet had been was a portion of a fingernail, the color of Pete’s polish.

  And then he had it.

  “Saint-Ouen,” he told Dominique. “That’s where they took her.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Najjir’s cell phone chimed and he answered it. “Oui.”

  Miriam had left nearly a half hour ago, and during that time Pete had sat across from Najjir, who watched out the window.

  He had punched a seven-digit code into the phone he kept in his jacket pocket and then gave her a smile. “As I said, all it wants is for the pound key and you will no longer have a beating heart.”

  “Charming,” Pete had said, deeply frightened now for the first time. She had hastily scratched a few letters of the name of the Paris district on the stone wall before she was trussed up to the ceiling pipe. Najjir and Bernard had mentioned it only very briefly, but she’d caught its significance without changing the expression on her face.

  If Mac had gotten free, and had spotted the markings, and then had somehow traced her here, it would have been like looking for the right needle in a stack of needles. But if he did somehow get here, she’d left him another message.