“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Evita. You always did have a wild imagination, but now I think it’s finally gotten the better of you. I honestly think that you need professional help now. If you come back here, I’ll arrange something for you. I promise …”
“You promise?” she cried, half laughing. “You’re a traitor. A goddamned spy. And you promise? You don’t know the meaning of the word.”
“Goodbye, Evita. I’m truly sorry for you now.”
“You’ll burn in hell, Darby. They’ll get you! I’ll see to it …”
The connection was broken. For a moment they could hear the continued hiss of the long-distance line, but then the tape machine stopped and the speaker fell silent.
It came to McGarvey that for all the evidence, for all the testimony against him, Yarnell might be innocent after all. Or, if he had worked with Baranov in the old days, maybe he had long since quit. Maybe he had retired from Baranov’s service on the same day he had retired from the CIA. Perhaps Baranov’s visit to Evita had been nothing more than a manipulative effort to get Yarnell back into the game. Force him to run when McGarvey closed in on him. Force him back into the Russian’s service by allowing him no other options. “Speculation will be the bane of your existence if you let it get ahold of you,” one of the old hands had told him. “There’s no end to it, boyo. Leads you down so many dark alleys that you might just as well give up ever seeing the light of day again.” Good advice, if overcautious. So now what? What he had set in motion had a life of its own. It would continue on its path with or without his continued participation.
“Now what?” Trotter echoed his own thoughts softly.
“He’s either a damned good actor, or he’s innocent,” McGarvey said.
“It would appear so.”
“Whatever he is, he’s got his choices now.”
“If he ignores her call, there wouldn’t be a thing we could do to him. No way of proving his innocence or guilt.” Trotter glanced at the tape machine.
“He’ll either call or he won’t call.”
“If he doesn’t, we’ll be right back where we started.”
“Worse,” McGarvey said glumly. “Now he knows my name, and knows what we know. If he holds tight, he’s won.”
At the window McGarvey once again looked down toward Yarnell’s house. He wondered what the man was doing at this moment, what he was thinking. He wondered if someone was there with him. Perhaps Kathleen had stayed over. He realized now, too late, that he should have called her at home so that he could make sure that at least for tonight she would be out of the fray, insulated in some small way from whatever might happen. Too late, too late, he thought. Often we made the right decisions, but we delayed our choices until they no longer mattered. By omission we were often as guilty as the hotheads. He wondered if Yarnell was sitting next to his telephone, his hand perhaps hesitating over the instrument as he tried to make his own decision, a decision that stretched back, in all reality, more than twenty-five years to an initial indiscretion in Mexico City. At the very least he suspected Yarnell was looking back at his life, wondering where his own mistakes had been made. Wondering how he had come to be here and now.
A vision began to develop in McGarvey’s breast of an older Yarnell looking back at himself as a young, arrogant, conceited man, filled with a desire to change the world singlehandedly. A lot of that had gone on in the late fifties and especially in the early sixties. Camelot, they’d called President Kennedy’s administration. And everyone had believed it and believed in it. Nothing was impossible for the honorable men. A bit of verse from the French poet Boileau-Despéraux came to him: “Honor is like an island, rugged and without a beach; once we have left it, we can never return.” It was a hearkening back to his own past, to a simpler time in college, when his own choices were unlimited. “They were men without honor,” someone else had written. Finally he understood the they.
Yarnell’s metallic gray Mercedes sedan appeared out of the mews onto Q Street and turned the corner onto 32nd, its taillights winking in the distance.
“Christ! He’s on the move,” McGarvey cried. He crossed the room in four steps, tore open the door, and was halfway down the corridor to the stairwell before Trotter emerged at a dead run from the apartment.
Yarnell had not made a telephone call. He had run instead. To whom? To where? McGarvey hadn’t counted on this.
The stairwell was well lit and smelled of concrete. McGarvey raced headlong down the staircase, his feet barely touching the steps. He could hear Trotter above him. If Yarnell had stayed put, he would have won. The man had finally made a mistake. At the bottom he slammed open the door, waited until Trotter caught up, and then rushed across the lobby and out onto the street to the car.
Trotter climbed in behind the wheel, his hand fumbling with the keys until he got the engine started and they accelerated down 31st Street, slowing at the intersection of Q Street. A taxi was just turning the corner from Dumbarton Oaks, but there was no other traffic. Ignoring the stop sign Trotter gunned the engine, slamming on his brakes as they came to P Street. The big Mercedes was just passing beneath a streetlight two blocks east.
“There he is. We’ve got him,” McGarvey said. “Don’t lose him.”
“Where the hell is he going?” Trotter asked, turning the corner. “What is he doing?”
McGarvey was thinking about Evita, so he didn’t bother to answer. He pulled out the card on which he had written the number for the Del Prado Hotel and picked up the cellular telephone receiver from its cradle. Trotter kept glancing over at him as he dialed.
They crossed Rock Creek and a few blocks later turned southeast onto Massachusetts Avenue. Traffic was heavier now. Trotter knew what he was doing. He kept two cars behind Yarnell, switching lanes from time to time so that he would present much less of a constant image in the Mercedes’s rearview mirror.
The international circuits were busy. McGarvey had to dial the number four times before he finally got through. They’d passed Mt. Vernon Square, turning northeast onto New York Avenue, the Mercedes still half a block ahead of them. Yarnell wasn’t going out to either National or Dulles airports. McGarvey realized that he was probably going to his CIA contact.
“Del Prado,” the hotel operator answered.
McGarvey gave Evita’s room number. After a slight hesitation, he supposed because he was an American, the connection was made and the phone was ringing.
“Where in God’s name is he going?” Trotter mumbled again.
Evita answered on the first ring. She sounded all out of breath. “Yes?”
“It’s me,” McGarvey said. “Are you all right?”
“Cristo! Basulto is gone. The floor maid said he checked out about six o’clock. What’s going on?”
“Listen to me carefully, Evita. I want you to get out of there right now.” McGarvey was cold. “If there’s no late-night flight out, check into another hotel and take the first flight out in the morning.”
“I called him, just like you asked. But he didn’t believe me.”
“I know,” McGarvey said. “I heard. Just get out of there now, Evita. Leave the gun and go.”
They weren’t too far from Union Station. McGarvey wondered if Yarnell was going to double back and take a train out of Washington. It didn’t make sense.
“I’m scared. What’s going on up there?”
“Get out right now. Hang up and leave. Don’t even bother checking out. Just get away from the hotel.”
“Where am I supposed to go?” she cried.
“New York,” McGarvey said. The Mercedes had turned onto Florida Avenue, and he suddenly realized with a terrible clarity where Yarnell was headed and why he was headed there, who his contact was within the CIA and what it all meant. A deep, final pain pulled at his gut. God help us all, he thought in horror.
“Will you be there?” Evita was demanding.
“I’ll be there,” McGarvey said. “Go. Run!” He slowly hung up the tel
ephone and looked at Trotter, whose complexion had turned ghostly pale in the darkness.
The Mercedes turned onto the grounds of Gallaudet College. Trotter followed at a respectful distance. “It’s Powers,” he said unnecessarily.
McGarvey wanted to say that he had known it all along. That he had suspected the director’s complicity from the beginning. But he had not. This now came as a complete surprise. Powers was the very best. The brightest. The most trustworthy. He was the man with the right stuff. Handpicked by the president, with the trust not only of the government and of the general public, but of the case-hardened professionals who worked for him. It was as if the news had suddenly broke that Kennedy himself had been a Russian spy. The realization that Powers was a traitor was no less stunning.
Just for a moment McGarvey wanted to turn around, get his things, and go back to Europe. To the south of France, or Greece or even the Costa del Sol. Anywhere so that he could forget. I shouldn’t have been involved with this in the first place, he thought. He had believed that he was inured to dishonor. Now he understood that he’d never known the first thing about it. Philby had been nothing by comparison.
Powers had betrayed not only his country, he had betrayed the very notion of the loyal American. The last bastion of truth and justice, it seemed, remaining in an age of betrayal. Powers had been, since the early sixties—perhaps even earlier—a traitor. And yet he had done fine things in defense of his country. The Russians had indeed suffered reverses at his hands. All a sham, McGarvey wondered, or had he traded one victory against several larger victories for Baranov? Like Kim Philby, Powers had been raised amongst the elite of his homeland; the finest upbringing, the most prestigious schools, the brightest future. And like Philby, his perfidy had come as the least suspected, most shocking of all surprises.
The college grounds were dark and mysterious at this time of the night; a fine mist lay in the trees and swirled across the road. They said nothing to each other as they followed Yarnell past the school buildings and then up the private road, where they doused their headlights and hung back as the Mercedes stopped at the gate house. The guard came out, said something to Yarnell (whose figure they could clearly see in the lights now), and then the gate opened and the Mercedes disappeared up toward the house, the lights of which were just visible through the trees.
For a long time they sat in their car not knowing what to say or really what to do now that they had come to this point. No way back, McGarvey thought. No way to erase what had gone on before. No way to expunge Yarnell’s sins, or Powers’s sins, or his own, for that matter. He glanced at Trotter.
“You’d better telephone Day,” he said. “Tell him that we’re going to need some help over here.”
“Sure,” Trotter said. “Sure.” But he made no immediate move to reach for the telephone.
Evita Perez lost her virginity to Darby Yarnell when she was barely twenty years old. She lost another sort of virginity when she had been drawn into Baranov’s circle. And once again she had sinned by betraying her past. She didn’t know which had been worse; they had all hurt her deeply. Nor, she decided, had anything she’d done provided her with the satisfaction she’d gone looking for. “Just let go,” Baranov’s words from years earlier came back to her. “I will always be there for you. No matter where. No matter why.”
She sat now staring at the telephone as she had for the past half hour, trying to let go, but knowing that she couldn’t. Trying to believe that Valentin would be there for her, but knowing that, of course, he would not be. He had never been. Trying to force herself into an overt action that she’d known all along was the only path to her survival, yet realizing she hadn’t the strength or resolve for it so she was trying to psychologically pump herself up for at least an attempt.
“Get out,” McGarvey had told her. “Run!” She forced a smile. He didn’t understand. Even now he had no real comprehension of what they were up against. We can’t run, she’d wanted to tell him. None of us are innocents. None of us are free of sin. We’re all of us by a certain age locked into a future whose parameters are fairly sharply defined. Plumbers might climb mountains but they seldom become artists. Artists make lousy accountants. And foolish little girls who sell their souls for imagined royalty end up bitter, indecisive old hags on some trash heap somewhere.
It was just midnight by the time she finally roused herself enough to change her clothes and put on a little makeup. McGarvey had left her his pistol. He’d shown her how to use it, but she still wasn’t quite certain about the safety catch. She took the gun out of the night table drawer and hefted it. The metal was slightly cool, with an oily odor. It felt foreign to her and ridiculously heavy in her hands. Melodramatic. Yet deadly. She raised the gun and sighted along the receiver as he had shown her. “Pull the trigger and keep pulling the trigger,” he said. “If nothing else, the noise will scare him to death.” He’d meant Basulto, of course. She didn’t think Valentin would frighten so easily. With him she would have to fire at point-blank range. To the head. Over and over again.
She lowered the pistol with shaking hands and then stuffed it in her purse. Before she left the room, she looked out the window. There were more demonstrations tonight in the park. She’d have to be careful crossing the city, but then this had been her town, her country once upon a time, and she knew it well. This time, she thought, she wasn’t some naive little kid incapable of caring for herself.
At the door she stopped for a moment and looked back at the few things she was leaving behind. She wanted a drink and she wanted, even more than that, a couple of lines of coke. She knew where to get those things here, but she’d fought the urge. Now her nerves were raw, her mouth was dry, and her stomach was fluttering. An hour ago her heart had begun to palpitate, but she had steeled herself against the outward symptoms. The pleasure principle, it was called. She’d forgo the immediate pleasure of relief for a much greater pleasure later.
She took the elevator down to the second floor and crossed the empty ballroom to the rear stairs. Once in the service corridor on the ground floor, she hurried to the loading docks behind the kitchens and outside into the still, muggy night. The sounds of the demonstration in the park were loud, ominous. Moving fast she walked around to the parking ramp where McGarvey had left the rental Volkswagen. He hadn’t turned in the keys in case she needed a quick way out. She found the car on the second level. Again, as she had in the room, she hesitated. McGarvey had told her to run. Meaning to “run away from trouble, not toward it.” But she was repaying a long-standing debt wasn’t she? It was up to her now to make sure Valentin did not ultimately win. Someone was going to have to stop him, and it wasn’t going to be McGarvey because he simply did not understand what he was up against; what they had all been up against from the beginning.
Traffic was light around Independencia, a block south of the hotel, and along the broad Lázaro Cardenas, but a car was on fire at the Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, so Evita had to make a broad detour east before she could turn south again, picking up San Antonio Abad, the main highway south out of the city. She was able to speed up, a cloud of blue smoke trailing the car, as she rattled into the quiet night. Behind her when she bothered to look into the rearview mirror, she could see Mexico City ablaze with lights and fires and even fireworks rising on long, ragged plumes into the sky. She had to admire, despite herself, Baranov’s handiwork. He had wanted Mexico from the very beginning. It was one of the reasons, she supposed, that he had targeted Darby, who had practically owned Mexico City from day one. And now at long last it seemed as if he was going to get his wish.
It got dark south of Tezonco. It was a Thursday night, everyone had gone up to the city for some action. New York would be the same tonight, she thought. The Thursday parties getting ready for the weekend. No one gave a damn if they stumbled around in a daze on Friday, because the week was over and they had Saturday and Sunday to sleep in. But it depressed the hell out of her, the meaningless rat race. Monday came along and
she hardly wanted to open the club. Sometimes just for the hell of it she didn’t because on most Mondays there weren’t enough customers to pay for the staff let alone the building mortgage or any kind of a profit. They all lived for the weekends, Evita most of all. Or maybe an occasional couple of days down in Atlantic City. Once, she’d even thought about going down to Florida in mid-February. But something had come up. Something always comes up, doesn’t it, she thought. And it was a sweltering July before she realized that she had missed her chance. She was babbling to herself now, but she couldn’t help it. She always got this way when she was frightened. The mountains shimmered in the distance. Along some stretches of highway they seemed so close she felt she could reach out of the car window and touch them. As she drove she was alternately freezing cold and boiling hot. Partly from fear, partly preliminary withdrawal symptoms from her cocaine habit. Just a little longer she told herself between bouts. She could hold on because she knew that she must.
Ixtayopan was all but deserted when she drove down the main street and then turned southwest up into the mountains, the air decidedly chillier here than it had been down in the valleys. The car’s exhaust rumbled and crackled off the mountainsides as the narrow macadam road switched back and forth, rising higher and higher toward the peak of Cerro Tuehtli. She crossed the bridge and suddenly she could see the house above. There were not so many lights as before when she was here with McGarvey and a party had been in progress, but someone was in residence up there. She had been up this road hundreds of times. Yet she didn’t feel as if she were coming home, or even returning to a place that once had been her home. This time she felt like a complete stranger. An intruder, in fact, come with intent to do harm. The law was on his side.
She had trouble downshifting and ground the gears badly coming through the trees. She headed up the steep driveway to the plateau on which the house and grounds had been constructed. All of a sudden, coming over the crest of the driveway into the front courtyard, it struck her what she had done and why she had come here tonight. The car bucked and stalled out, rolling to a stop in the middle of the parking area twenty yards from the house, the headlights shining on the front veranda. Very little had changed in twenty-five years. The rambling one-story ranch-style house still seemed new and modern and prosperous. The living room windows were dark, but the east wing where Darby’s study had been located and where the master suite looked back toward Mexico City, was lit up. There were no cars parked in the driveway. The garages were around back. He was probably in the city at the embassy. Tonight had been a fool’s errand. Her hands shook very badly as she opened her purse and pulled out the automatic. She toyed with the safety catch, switching it down and then up and then down again. She couldn’t remember about it and she could feel panic rising in her chest. He would have a staff out here. Perhaps even bodyguards. He was an important man. They would probably shoot first and ask questions later. Maybe she didn’t care. She opened the door and got out of the car, standing for a moment on wobbly legs before she started up to the house, the pistol in her right hand hanging at her side.
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