Crossfire (Kirk McGarvey 3)

by Hagberg, David

  The bomb had not exploded; he knew that much. But what had happened to him? It was hard to make his brain work. First Sam Vaughan, and now this.

  It had to be the Russians. They were Sam's bad guys, after all.

  Someone came pounding down the corridor in a big hurry,

  and Berringer managed to turn his head to the doorway as Tom Lord appeared. There were others right behind him.

  "Son of a bitch," the chief of station swore, squatting down beside Berringer and yanking off his tie. He began wrapping it tightly around the young man's wrist.

  "I don't know what happened ... sir," Berringer said weakly. His voice sounded muffled and far away to him. The sound was more frightening than the pain in his arm.

  Graves was doing something to Sam Vaughan's body.

  "He's dead, Mr. Graves. Shot in the head."

  "Did you see it happen?" the assistant chief of station asked. He looked at Lord.

  "No, sir."

  "But you pulled the detonator, is that it, son?" Lord asked.

  "I didn't know what else to do, sir. Was it the right thing?"

  "You bet it was."

  "Radio controlled," Graves said over Lord's shoulder. His face loomed large and white in Berringer's eyes. "Blew his fingers and half his wrist off."

  "Get me a first-aid kit down here immediately," Lord ordered. "And call an ambulance. We've got to get him to the hospital before he goes into shock. Evacuate the building."

  "Right," the assistant chief of station said, and he turned away, issuing orders to the others who were gathered out in the corridor. Berringer thought they were making too big a fuss over him.

  The flow of blood from Berringer's hand wasn't stopping. And the throbbing pain was intensifying with each second. "Was it the Russians, sir?" he asked.

  "Don't worry about it, kid," Lord said, as the fire alarm began to sound.

  "There might be others," Graves shouted over the noise.

  Lord glanced up at the mass of plastique on the ceiling. "They were after the comms center, that's for damned sure. Maybe that's all. I want Technical Services over here on the double. Tell them what we're dealing with. And have security start a room-by-room search. I want this out to Langley as a flash, right now."

  'You got it," Graves said. "Hang in there, kid. The ambulance is on the way."

  'Tes, sir," Berringer replied weakly. He looked up into Lord's face. "Why would they do this, sir? I thought they were supposed to be our friends now."

  "I doubt it was the Russians."

  "But Sam told me—"

  "Don't worry about it. Probably terrorists. France is full of them."

  "But how'd they get in here?"

  "I don't know, but we're sure as hell going to find out."

  "Are they gone?"

  A startled expression crossed Lord's face. "Good Christ," he muttered. He turned away. "Bob!" he shouted. "Graves!"

  The assistant chief of station was there a second later. "First-aid kit is here."

  "Get security. I want this building sealed immediately. The kid just asked if our terrorist chums are gone."

  "Of course they are. They wouldn't have hung around to pop the detonator. We've alerted the French police. They're on their way."

  "Do it!" Lord barked.

  "Right," Graves said, and he hurried out.

  Susan Steiner shoved her way into the office, pulling up short with a little cry when she saw Sam Vaughan's body. She'd brought the big green first-aid kit from the communications center.

  "Smelling salts—he's starting to drift." Lord's voice floated somewhere out ahead of Berringer.

  Susan was there, over him, her mouth half open, her face contorted into a mask of fear and worry.

  "Come on, Allan," Lord said close to his ear. "It's only a little wound. Come back to us."

  Susan put something under his nose, and it was as if someone had shoved a needle into his head, instantly clearing away the fog, a big wave of nausea rising and then subsiding just as fast.

  "Are we all right, sir?" Berringer cried. Something clutched at his chest, and his heart began to flutter.

  "Where's that ambulance?" Lord yelled.

  "It's on the way," someone shouted from the corridor.

  A Marine appeared in the doorway, his weapon drawn, and said something that Berringer didn't hear. It was becoming dif-

  ficult for him to catch his breath, which he thought was ridiculous.

  He was flat on his back, and Lord was on top of him now, pushing at his chest. He wanted to tell him to stop, but he couldn't breathe, and the lights began to fade.

  "a Russian, this kurshin of yours?" Carley asked after a moment. "KGB?"

  "Old Department Viktor, but better than the rest," McGarvey said, the bad memories tumbling one after another in his head. "He was one of Baranov's people."

  "And Baranov is dead. You killed him. That report I did see."

  McGarvey smiled inwardly. At least one pretense between them had been dropped. She had seen the report: ergo, she was admitting she was CIA.

  "And Kurshin," he said.

  "Then what are you talking about?" she asked in exasperation. She pulled up her coat collar.

  "The man you described could have been him. Same eyes,

  same build, same accent. The same cojones. He had those all right."

  "But he's dead."

  McGarvey nodded.

  "Then it's someone else who has a grudge against you." Carley shook her head. "And from where I sit, I suspect that on a clear day I might be able to see a crowd of them. A few women among them, I'd bet."

  "Weren't you warned before you started?"

  "Repeatedly," she said. "But for what it's worth, Kirk, I swear to you that you were never an assignment. I was just told that you were very smart, very good at what you did—when you did it—but that you had a bad track record with women, and a very big chip on your shoulder for some reason."

  "And dangerous?"

  "Murphy doesn't like you, from what I'm told."

  Roland Murphy, the general, was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He was a friend of Lorraine Abbott. He thought that McGarvey had put her to hard use. And he despised assassins. He was from the old, "honorable school," as he called it.

  "I've never entered a popularity contest."

  "No," Carley said, and she started for the door.

  "Let me get my coat and I'll drive you. My car is in back."

  "Don't bother," she said. "I'm not going home yet. Besides, you've made it perfectly clear what's become of us. I heard your great lecture about excess baggage, so I guess I've half expected this day for a long time."

  "I'm sorry, Carley. It was my fault."

  "Yes, you bastard, it was," she said. "You want to know the funny part?"

  He said nothing.

  "I could have fallen in love with you." She looked at him one last time, then turned and left the apartment.

  McGarvey could not stop himself from thinking that all of his women had made their grand exits in the same way. Each of them had blamed him not only for their leave-taking, but for their falling in love with him in the first place.

  At the window, he watched as she appeared below in the street and hurried toward the intersection to catch a cab. She was young and bright, and she had gotten out soon enough to

  avoid permanent damage. With luck she would find someone soon who would make her happy and give her babies before the job killed her femininity, her humanity. The business did it.

  When she was gone, he turned his thoughts back to whoever was trying to impersonate him, and why. He'd gotten an ominous feeling about it, whereas although Carley had thought the incident odd, she seemed more curious than perturbed. It would be reported to security, of course, but unless the man actually came back tomorrow, nothing much would probably come of it.

  In the kitchen, he dumped both glasses of wine into the sink, then poured a large Jack Daniel's on the rocks.

  Kurshin's
body had never been found. He had been seriously wounded, and he had fallen off the ship into the sea fifty miles off the Syrian coast. It was assumed that his body had eventually washed ashore and had simply not been reported by the Arabs. A man in his condition could not have survived.

  An ordinary man could not have survived. But by all standards Kurshin had been anything but ordinary.

  McGarvey set his drink down, walked back into the living room, and telephoned the embassy. Carley had not mentioned telling Lord about her encounter with the imposter, though she might have done so. The least he could do, he figured, would be to make certain they were warned of the possibility, however remote, that something was about to happen.

  The operator answered on the second ring, and her voice sounded strained. There was an odd noise in the background. "Good evening, you have reached the embassy of the United States of America."

  "Fait me through to Tom Lord, please."

  "I'm sorry, sir, all those lines are busy."

  "This is a lamplighter call," McGarvey said, using the field-man's emergency assistance code word. Help me, I am in serious, life threatening trouble. Connect me immediately with an agent handler. Any agent handler. But do it now!

  The embassy operator hesitated for only a moment. "I'm sorry, sir, but your call does not have priority. Please try at a later time." She hung up.

  McGarvey's stomach rebounded. Impossible. He stood flat-footed, holding the phone to his ear, listening to the dial tone. Agents in distress were never, but never ignored.

  But the operator had said his call did not have "priority." And there was the noise. An alarm?

  He slammed down the receiver, grabbed his jacket and pistol from the desk, and raced out the door.

  Lord sat back on his haunches, a huge weariness mingled with a deep smoldering anger coming over him. He could hear people behind him in the corridor rushing to carry out his orders. Telephones were jangling, doors were slamming, and someone was issuing instructions about the elevator, over which the fire alarm clamored.

  "Sir ... is Allan dead?" Susan Steiner asked.

  He looked up at her and nodded, seeing in her eyes more than just simple horror at the sight of death. She had cared for the young man.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "Truly sorry, but under the circumstances he did the correct thing. Without him everyone up in comms would probably have been killed."

  "But why?" she said softly. She looked down at Vaughan's body on the floor. "Who did this, Mr. Lord?"

  "I don't know, but we're sure as hell going to find out," Lord said, getting to his feet. He took her by the shoulder and led her out, handing her to one of the other women from upstairs.

  Bob Graves was just rushing up the corridor toward them.

  "Will one of you see to it that she gets home, please?" Lord asked.

  "Yes, sir," one of the women said.

  "Carrara is on the hot line from Langley," Graves told him.

  Phil Carrara was the deputy director of Operations, a man who held a fair, if tight leash on his chiefs of station. "I had Smitty send out the two-line flash, and he was notified."

  "He's dead," Lord said softly.

  "What?" Graves asked. He looked beyond Lord into the small office. "Berringer is dead?"

  "My oldest son is practically his age."

  "It was just a detonator, for chrissake, Tom."

  Lord looked at him. "We're going to get the bastard."

  "You're goddamned right we are."

  "All right, listen up, folks," a marine guard at the east end of the corridor shouted. "I want everyone off this floor right now."

  A second Marine emerged from the dark office of the chief

  of the Commercial Section. He held a flashlight in his left hand, the beam bouncing wildly around the corridor. "You heard the man. Get out of here now!"

  Lord and Graves sprinted down the corridor as the others started for the stairs.

  "What is it?" Lord demanded.

  "Another plastique device, sir," the first Marine said. He was highly agitated, and he kept flipping the safety catch on his .45 pistol.

  "Take it easy, son," Lord said.

  "Sir, there's no telling when this one will go off, or how many others there are in the building. We have to get everyone out of here right now!"

  "You're right. There's no time," Lord said. He turned back to Graves. "Get on the line to Carrara and tell him what our situation is here. I want everyone out of the building as soon as possible, and that includes you."

  "What the hell are you going to do?" Graves snapped. "Let Technical Services handle it. They'll be here any moment. This was meant for you."

  "And that thing could blow at any moment, Bob. Now move it."

  "I'm afraid we can't let you go in there, sir," one of the Marines

  said.

  Lord turned to him. "Nonsense," he said. "You boys get out of here and help with the evacuation."

  "Sir?"

  "It's all right," Lord said, and he brushed past them and entered Kevin Hewlett's office. Hewlett was chief of the embassy's Commercial Section.

  "It's up against the ceiling in the inner office, sir," one of the Marines said behind him.

  "Get out of here," Lord said.

  "No, sir," the Marine replied.

  There was no time to argue. Lord stepped past the secretary's desk and went into Hewlett's office. The Marine shined the beam of his flashlight on the plastique in the corner. The desk had been shoved over beneath it.

  "Has to be five or six pounds at least," Lord said.

  "Yes, sir."

  It was enough plastique, he figured, to blow out the entire

  wing of the embassy, collapsing half the building into the rear courtyard.

  The detonator jutted out from the center of the dull gray

  mass.

  Lord reached over and flipped on the light switch, then gingerly climbed up onto the desk, and reached out

  maria schimmer heard the explosion as she was coming out of the Hotel Inter-Continental.

  The two uniformed doormen standing beneath the overhang ducked down instinctively. Maria reared back, but then turned toward the sound in time to see an incredibly large fireball rise up over the rooftops from somewhere toward the Champs-Elysees. A second later broken glass began to fall into the street from windows facing the blast. It sounded like musical rain. The obelisk in the Place Vendome was lit orange and red, and a dreadful hush seemed to come over Paris.

  "Mon Dieu" one of the doormen said, picking himself up. "Was it an oil truck?"

  "Did you see the flames?" the other asked, stunned.

  "That was no fuel truck," Maria said, more to herself than to

  them, recognizing the blast for exactly what it was. She'd spent enough time under fire to know the difference between a fuel explosion and the blast of high explosives.

  Other guests were streaming out of the hotel now. "What the hell was that?" someone demanded.

  "It was a bomb, I think," a woman cried.

  "A big one."

  Carleton Reid, the American she'd met at Hoehner's table, emerged from the hotel at a dead run, skidding to a stop on the sidewalk, the distant flames reflecting vividly in his eyes. A taxi was just passing, and he rushed out into the street and hailed it, yanking open the rear door before it came to a complete stop.

  Maria roused herself and sprinted after him, grabbing the door before he could close it and forcing her way into the back seat with him.

  "Get the hell out of here!" he shouted.

  "I can help," she said.

  Reid didn't wait to consider his choices. "The American embassy, on the double," he ordered the cabbie.

  Maria glanced over her shoulder as they sped away. The French cop, Gavalet, came out of the hotel, and she allowed herself a brief, little smile. She figured she would have a much better chance one-on-one with the American. She didn't know what his relationship with Hoehner was, but he might have some influence with the man. It was e
ven possible he would have some indirect influence in Freiburg. There might be a lot of possibilities with the Americans, in view of the relationship they had with the Germans.

  The driver hauled the taxi around the corner onto the broad rue de Rivoli, almost losing the rear end in the slush. Some windows there had been shattered by the explosion, and a few cars and trucks had slid sideways to a halt.

  "Is it your embassy?" Maria asked. The flames shooting a hundred feet into the air seemed to be coming from somewhere beyond the Automobile Club.

  Reid, perched on the edge of his seat, intently stared through the windshield. "Probably," he mumbled offhandedly. Then he turned and looked at her. "What the hell do you want?"

  "How do you know it's your embassy, Serior Reid?" she asked.

  "I asked you a question, Ms. Schimmer," Reid said sharply, his attention now completely fixed on her. "Who are you? Exactly what is it you want?"

  'Tour help."

  "I don't get involved in treasure hunts."

  "Just a word to Hoehner, or even to the Germans at the records archives in Freiburg. It's all I'm asking."

  Reid glanced out the windshield again as they approached the Place de la Concorde. A large crowd was gathering and in the distance they could hear sirens, a lot of them. "In exchange for what?" he asked coldly. "What can you do for me?"

  "I'm an archaeologist. I know how to dig. And I'm a pretty fair nurse."

  "No, thanks," Reid said.

  They came out into the broad plaza and from there they could suddenly see the embassy. The entire rear section of the building had collapsed, filling the courtyard with hundreds of tons of debris. The front of the building leaned dangerously inward, apparently on the verge of falling. A huge tower of flame shot straight up into the air from the northeast corner of the massive pile of rubble. No one in that part of the building could have survived.

  "Sacre ..." the driver said in awe, pulling around a big block of concrete lying in the middle of the street. He brought the cab to a halt at the police barricades that were hastily going up.