Crossfire

by David Hagberg

  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?”

  “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.

  “Yes,” Sergeant Turik said. “So where is he now?”

  38

  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 four 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 w ould 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. “You 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 Tehrn 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 Tehrn 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 Tehrn. 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.

  “Yes. 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.

  “I’ll come back,” he said.

  39

  “WHEN DOES THE CITY OF TALLAHASSEE dock in Bushehr?” the President asked. “Do we still have time to divert her?”

  The events of the past twelve hours were stunning enough, CIA Director Roland Murphy thought, but with the addition of Arkady Kurshin the situation was developing into a full-scale disaster.

  Murphy was meeting with the President, his National Security Adviser Thomas Emerson Haines, and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Maurice Stans in the Oval Office.

  “She arrives in port within the next two hours,” Murphy said. “But since she entered the Persian Gulf she’s been under the protection of the Iranian navy. I don’t think we’d do anything but exacerbate the situation by trying to divert her.”

  “Besides, Mr. President, we don’t have the resources in the area,” Admiral Stans said. He was a heavy-jowled man with a bulldog face and ramrod-straight appearance. “The nearest ship that could do the job is twelve hours to the south.”

  “How about a naval air strike? We could put a couple of jet fighters over the ship within two hours, and order her to stand off, couldn’t we?” the President asked.

  “Yes, we could do that, sir. But think of the consequences,” Haines said.

  The President turned to him coolly. “Yes, I’ve thought about the consequences, Tom. But have you thought about what will happen if that gold shipment is hijacked? The entire region will swing violently anti-West. We can’t afford that now.”

  “I don’t believe it will happen at sea,” the admiral said. “Our sources show no hostile vessels within striking distance. The gold will reach Bushehr, all right.”

  “And once on Iranian soil it’s their problem,” Haines said. “We will have held up our end of the bargain by delivering it to the port of their choice via the mode of transportation of their choice. What more can we be expected to do?”

  The President turned back to Murphy. “General?”

  “I’m afraid it’s not going to be that simple, Mr. President,” the DCI said heavily.

  “Give me the bottom line.”

  “Arkady Kurshin. We have reason to believe that he is in Iran.”

  “Do I know the name?”

  “You may recall, Mr. President, that Kurshin was the Russian who hijacked one of our nuclear submarines and nearly succeeded in firing a missile on that target in Israel.”

  “Two years ago,” the President said, recalling the incident. “He was killed.”

  “We never found his body. It’s possible he’s back in action, this time working for General Vasili Didenko, the head of the KGB’s Department Eight. The dirty tricks people.”

  “Baranov’s old gang.”

  “Some of them, yes, sir.”

  “Go on,” the President said grimly.

  “Our chief of station in Tehrn is missing. He was supposed to bird-dog the shipment overland from Bushehr to Tehrn. There have been rumors that an army faction might try to snatch it. Dick was to have blown the whistle.”

  “Still don’t se
e that it’s our problem—” Haines began, but Murphy interrupted him.

  “Our number two man in Tehrn was found shot to death in Dick Abbas’s apartment. On his body was found a pistol and a handie-talkie set to one of our satellite frequencies.”

  Haines groaned out loud. “Christ. SAVAK has got hold of this? They know that we’re active out there with such communications equipment?”

  “Let the general finish with what he was saying, Tom,” the President said.

  “To answer your question, Tom, yes, they do know. Which is the crux of the matter. If something were to happen to the gold between Bushehr and Tehrn, the United States could be blamed. We’d be in a tough spot.”

  “They’d be easily convinced,” the President said thoughtfully.

  “You say this Russian may be behind it?” Haines asked.

  “We think it’s possible,” Murphy replied.

  “We’re talking more than a hundred tons of gold, General. That’s a big load for one man to cart off.” Haines turned to the President. “We know for a fact that the Soviet’s Air Force-South Commander Yevgenni Zirkovsky is a moderate. One of Gorbachev’s handpicked people. He’d have to be in on such an operation.”

  “Assuming such a strike would involve airborne units,” the President said.

  “There’d be no time to haul it overland across the Soviet border,” Murphy pointed out. “Not without giving themselves away. No, they’ll come by air, in aircraft with U.S. markings.”

  “Zirkovsky would never go along with such a risky scheme,” Haines argued.

  “Didenko has his own air force. Did you know that?” Murphy asked.

  There was a stunned silence.

  “KGB border guard units for the most part. He’s been skimming the force for the past year or so. He could pull it off.”

  “Has there been any evidence that this ‘air force’ of his has been moved into place?” Haines asked skeptically. “He can’t launch such an operation from Moscow.”

  “Azerbaidzhan,” Murphy said quietly.

  “Gorbachev’s got his hands full there,” the President said, understanding exactly what Murphy was getting at. “This time he sent in the KGB to quiet things along the border. Including what are supposed to be surveillance aircraft.”