The stakeout officer at the wheel of the gray Morris shook his head. "An old woman came out just after he went in. And now many of the foreigners are returning from work."
It was a few minutes after six in the evening. A very cool wind blew from the mountains.
"Richard Abbas has not left his apartment since yesterday?" Peshadi asked, hardly believing what this idiot was telling him.
As a young man, Peshadi had trained for nine months at London's Scotland Yard. He'd learned not only police procedures, but also a streetwise cynicism that every cop develops. Nothing since had done much to soften his views.
"That is correct, Captain."
"And then Naisir showed up this morning, and he, too, is still inside?"
'Tes, sir," the driver said complacently. "As you can see, his automobile remains where he parked it."
"The shits that you relieved told you that Abbas had not left his apartment, and that no one else left? They saw nothing either? They were as blind as you?"
The surveillance officer blanched. His partner on the passenger side started to speak, but Peshadi cut him off viciously.
"Didn't you think something was odd? Didn't it ever occur to you to go into the building and check with your own eyes that Abbas and Naisir were still there?"
"No, sir," the driver said fearfully.
"By Allah, I will have your balls if they have walked off," Peshadi said through clenched teeth, climbing out of his car and pulling out his pistol. "Cover the back of this building," he told the two men. "If anything moves, shoot it." He turned back to his own driver, Sergeant Mohammed Turik. "Watch the front entrance. If I'm not out of there in five minutes, call for backup units."
Peshadi was a slightly built man with a wiry frame and muscles like steel cords. He'd played rugby for a short time in England, and many an opponent, badly underestimating his strength, had found himself flat on his back. After he'd sent the third man to the hospital, he was barred from the team for unnecessary roughness, but by then he was already developing his seeds of hatred for things Western.
The elevator was out of order, so he had to take the stairs up to the fifth floor. The building was permeated with the odors of frying meat, and on the third floor he was certain he could smell the raw odor of alcohol.
Intellectually, he understood that life without international commerce was impossible. But still his stomach turned when he thought of what Western influence had done and was doing to his country.
He himself had been badly tainted by association. It was something he fought against every single day of his life.
He hesitated at the fifth-floor landing, remaining around the corner, out of sight, as he studied the corridor. Nothing moved,
but he could hear the sounds of music, and laughter. Ordinary sounds ... Western sounds.
Tightening the grip on his pistol, he rolled out into the corridor and went directly to Abbas's door. He put his ear to the wood.
There were no sounds from within. He stepped back and pounded on the door with the butt of his pistol.
Almost immediately the music from one of the apartments down the hall stopped. A door opened and a man stuck his head out.
"Go back!" Peshadi barked in English, and the man disappeared. The door slammed.
Peshadi banged the butt of his pistol on the door again. The fifth floor had suddenly become very still.
Cocking the pistol, he fired three shots into the door lock, destroying the wood around it, and the door opened a few inches, caught only on a splinter.
Peshadi kicked it open and stepped out of the possible line of fire as he extended his gun hand into the apartment.
Naisir lay on his back just within the living room. Although he was recognizable, he'd obviously been shot in the face at close range. The bullet had entered his head just below his left eye. Long strips of cut-up bed sheet lay crumpled in front of a chair situated about six inches from the wall. An electrical cord, its wires stripped at one end, snaked across the floor to an extension cord that was plugged into a wall socket behind the chair. There was an odor of human waste, and something else. Something very odd. Yet an odor that Peshadi remembered from a very long time ago. A pungent smell. Cloying, almost.
Glue. Rubber cement.
Within the hour the Criminal Investigation Division of SAVAK had arrived at the apartment, and its team members—most of whom had trained in the West—had begun taking the place apart under Sergeant Turik's precise direction. Other investigators were questioning everyone in the building, and a team had been dispatched to the offices of the Compagnie General de Picarde to watch for any activity out of the ordinary.
Peshadi was down at his car, talking to his office via radiotelephone.
His immediate superior, Colonel Seyyed Bakhtir, snarled, "Listen to me, Captain, I want that man found within the next twelve hours. Do whatever it takes to get the job done. I'll give you anything you need. But under no circumstances—absolutely none, do you hear me?—is that man to be allowed to leave Iran. Am I clear?"
"Yes, sir. But may I ask why this particular one is so important?"
"You may not," the colonel said. "But he is important. Very important to Iran. To our national interests."
"Yes, sir."
"Find him, Peshadi," the colonel ordered. "You of all people understand the price of failure. Find him."
Peshadi replaced the handset in its bracket and went back inside. It was late, well after ten. The technicians had gotten the elevator running again, and the lights in the stairwell were back on. They had simply been switched off, as had the corridor lights. Sabotaged for some reason.
A lot had happened here that he did not understand. Abbas was missing, but his car was still parked in the rear. His number two, Shahpur Naisir, was dead. Shot in the head with a medium-caliber pistol. He'd had his own gun out, evidently believing that he was walking into a deadly situation.
Someone had been tied to that chair, and had been tortured with electricity. They'd found some blood and a small amount of fecal matter on the chair seat, indicating that the victim had not only been in a lot of pain, but that he or she had probably been nude.
A strange business, he thought, riding up in the elevator. Made even stranger by Colonel Bakhtir's instructions.
Sergeant Turik met him on the fifth floor. He was a large man by Iranian standards, with a barrel chest and thick neck. "I was just coming down to fetch you," he said.
"Something new?"
"We've definitely uncovered a nest of spies. There can no longer be any doubt of it. All of them downtown must be arrested before they're allowed to get into more mischief."
The sergeant's large gray eyes gleamed. He loved his work, and admired Peshadi, although he didn't particularly hate Westerners.
"What is it?"
CROSSFIRE 251
"First of all, the walkie-talkie that we found on Naisir's body is not an ordinary machine. It's set to communicate with a satellite. An American spy satellite. He could have talked to Washington with it."
Peshadi's suspicions were confirmed. Abbas, and in all likelihood the others in the computer firm, were CIA.
"What else?"
"The answering machine. It's been set up to make anyone monitoring his calls believe that he is sick at home. He recorded a one-sided conversation, with pauses at all the right spots. His accomplice could call the apartment and have a little chat with him. We'd think he was here all the time, when in reality he was gone."
"He's a clever bastard," Peshadi said.
'Tes," Sergeant Turik said. "So where is he now?"
mcgarvey stood across the street from the U.S. embassy, watching the front and side entrances. It was early evening, and since six o'clock activity had all but ceased.
He'd hoped by coming here like this to see someone he recognized. One of the old hands from the Company. Someone with whom he could make contact. He and Maria were going to need some local help if they were to have any real chance of finding the fo
ur Germans whose names Maria said were written in Roebling's notebook.
Forty-six years was a very long time, and so much had changed since the end of the war that hardly anything in Europe was recognizable for what it had been. In all likelihood the old men were dead by now and the gold either long gone or its hiding place lost.
In addition, McGarvey had the feeling that when Kurshin showed up in Lisbon—and he had no doubt that the man would come here sooner or later—it would be to make an attack on the embassy. Perhaps it was a lure to bring McGarvey out of hiding. To isolate him from his own people so that their fight would be an even one.
McGarvey wanted the fight once and for all. But he wanted no one else hurt. Not this time.
But he'd seen no one he recognized. Nor did the embassy seem any busier than normal, as it would if it had been placed on an emergency footing. There were no indications that the front entrance and back gates were guarded. Either they were being extremely low-key about their expectations of trouble, or Carrara had disregarded his warning and nothing was being done here.
It was depressing.
A cool wind was coming off the water. McGarvey stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked back to the hotel.
By registering so openly in Lisbon's largest hotel, and so near the embassy, he was making it easier for anyone to find him. In the morning, he decided, he and Maria would begin looking for her gold, and whatever secret that surrounded it. Kurshin would come to Lisbon. He had to.
When he got back to their room Maria was sitting in the middle of the bed watching television. She'd switched off the lights and her complexion in the pale glow from the screen seemed chalky. "Where did you go?" she asked.
"To the embassy." He went to the window and looked down the way he had come. There was nothing but ordinary traffic. He couldn't see the front of the embassy from this angle.
"Did you tell them that we're here?"
"No."
"But they will find out sooner or later. So will Interpol, as soon as the police pick up the hotel registration cards and match them against their wanted lists."
She'd changed into a pair of jeans and a loose pink shirt. After the story about her past, she'd withdrawn. When he'd left she'd been lying in bed, facing the wall. Now she seemed to have come back a little. Again he wondered how much of what she
had told him was the truth. And he wondered how she knew so much police procedure and tradecraft.
"Do you mean to let the authorities take us?" she asked. "Or do you think your Russian will show up first?"
He'd placed her in danger by so openly coming here. But she seemed inured to risk. Was it her past? Or something else?
"I suppose I can't say anything. You saved my life in Paris and again in Argentina. So I owe you my support. But you can't imagine how important this is to me. I've worked for this all my life. A lot of blood has been shed. I want it to end, finally. It's too much."
He watched her lips as she talked. They were full and sensuously moist, both sides of her face framed by wisps of her long dark hair that had escaped the pins.
"It has become such a part of my life, I can't imagine another way to live. It's as if I've been in jail for all those years." She shook her head. "I don't remember a time when I was ever really happy, though I suppose when I was very young and didn't understand what was happening around me I must have been at peace."
"Maybe you have no future. Maybe you have only a past."
She looked away. "What a cruel thing to say to me."
"Maybe you should think about turning your back on the entire thing. Say the hell with it. Get on with your own life. A husband. Children."
"I told you that I cannot bear children."
"Adopt a child. Give instead of take."
She shook her head again. "I don't think so," she said. "I told you, it's more than my body that's dead."
"I don't believe it," McGarvey said gently.
Someone knocked at the door. Maria reared back, but McGarvey motioned for her to be quiet. He pulled out his gun and moved out of the firing line.
"Kirk, are you in there?" a woman called from the corridor. McGarvey recognized her voice. It was Carley.
Maria's eyes were fixed on the door.
"Are you alone?" McGarvey said.
"Yes. I have to talk to you. Please let me in."
"It's all right," he told Maria. He holstered his gun, unlocked the door, and opened it.
Carley, dressed in boots and a red coat, smiled uncertainly. "Hello," she said.
"Did you get here clean?" McGarvey asked, looking past her down the corridor.
She nodded. "Who are you expecting?"
McGarvey looked at her. "You know."
"Not here, Kirk. He's in Iran. It's why I came. Phil wants your help, and the general has authorized it."
McGarvey stepped back so she could come in. She stopped short when she saw Maria on the bed.
McGarvey closed the door. "You know each other, I believe."
"Maria Schimmer," Carley said.
Maria was confused for a moment, but then she remembered. 'Tou were at the embassy in Paris, after the explosion."
"There are quite a few people who would like to have some words with you," Carley said.
"Is that why you are here?" Maria asked defiantly.
Carley stared at her for a second longer, then turned to McGarvey. "Send her away. We have to talk."
"How do you know he's in Iran?" McGarvey asked. "And what is he doing there?"
"I can't talk about this with her in the room, Kirk. I don't care if you and she are.... I have my orders."
Maria got up from the bed and languidly went into the bathroom. Before she closed the door she looked a last time at Carley.
"She's very pretty," Carley said.
McGarvey didn't reply.
"I've come with a message from Phil. It's very important."
"How'd you find me?"
Carley smiled wryly. "Didn't you want someone to find you?"
McGarvey nodded. "What makes Phil think Kurshin is in Iran? The man knows I'm here. He'll come after me."
"Our chief of Tehran station, Dick Abbas, and his number two have disappeared. Abbas was on a very delicate assignment for us. It was about a shipment of gold—a lot of gold—from New York to Tehran through the port of Bushehr."
"How much gold?" McGarvey asked.
"In excess of one billion dollars, U.S. More than would be
aboard a World War Two submarine, if that's what you and she are after."
"Phil thinks that General Didenko pulled Kurshin from Argentina to go after the Iranian shipment?"
"It makes sense, Kirk. The Soviet Union is right there. Abbas was supposed to keep tabs on the shipment overland to Tehran. There've been rumors about an army plot to take it. He was going to watch for it."
"With Abbas gone, Kurshin could pull off the snatch, blaming it on us. The Iranians would love to believe it."
"Exactly," Carley said. "Will you do it?"
McGarvey glanced at the bathroom door. "What about her?"
"You have our word that she'll be left alone."
"Interpol is after her."
"It'll be taken care of. She could come into the embassy."
"No."
"Will you do it?"
"What about backup in Iran? I don't know my way around the country."
"The number three, Bijan Ghfari."
"What about SAVAK?"
"They're watching our people like hawks. It's why Phil wants to send you. You're an unknown to them."
"Besides, I've got a thing for Kurshin."
"You know his methods better than anyone else," Carley said. "Will you help us?"
McGarvey didn't have to think about it. "Wait for me at the embassy," he said.
"Now," Carley insisted, but McGarvey shook his head.
"I'll come as soon as I can. But you're going to have to give me a little time. Get us transportation."
"I have a
jet waiting for us at the airport."
"I'll be there in a little while, Carley."
"When?"
"Soon."
She looked at the bathroom door, her jaw tight. Then she turned on her heel and left. McGarvey watched from the door as she got on the elevator. She never looked back.
Maria stood at the open bathroom door when he came back into the room. "So. You're going just like that," she said. "Then go now."
"You listened at the door."
"Of course."
"When I'm finished in Iran I'll be back."
She was shaking her head.
'Tes. I promise you, I will return."
"If your Russian doesn't kill you. If the Iranians don't capture you. If your own people don't betray you in the end. I have seen this thing before. The Americans have invented their share of dirty tricks."
Her past had flawed her beauty, McGarvey decided. Just as ambition had flawed Carley. In many respects they were the same woman, except that Maria for all her outward toughness was vulnerable. Her need was so palpable it had been obvious to him from the moment he'd dug her out of the Paris embassy.
"I'll be back," he said softly.
She came into the room and pulled off her shirt, then peeled off her jeans. She was naked beneath.
"I told you before you don't have to do this," McGarvey said. He could not take his eyes off her. She was beautiful. If she was scarred internally from her terrible past, none of it showed on the outside.
"I'm doing this for me," she said. "This time I'm being selfish."
In the light from the television her body glowed like polished marble, yet McGarvey could practically feel the heat coming from her. Even at this distance, standing in front of her was like being in front of an open hearth. And when he finally went to her, and took her into his arms so that he could feel her heartbeat against his chest, she wasn't at all like marble. And her warmth was comforting.
In bed he entered her without preliminaries, and she drew up her legs, pulling him deeply inside of her, clinging so tightly to him that he could feel her desperate need in every cell of his body.
Crossfire (Kirk McGarvey 3) Page 24