The telephone rang for the tenth time as he drank the whiskey and poured another. He went into the living room.
It was probably Carley calling to apologize or, worse yet, to ask for help. If he didn't talk to her now, she would almost certainly come over here again.
He picked it up on the sixteenth ring, and he immediately knew it wasn't her. He could hear the hiss and hollow pops of a long-distance connection. "Hello?"
"Kirk? Phil Carrara. I'm calling from Washington."
McGarvey sat down and closed his eyes. It was starting again, he could feel it. He supposed he had some sixth sense, almost an ESP, for these things. Each time he began to get itchy feet, something came up. In Switzerland and here in Paris, it had been John Trotter who'd come over to ask for help. Now Trotter was dead, and apparently his heir, Phil Carrara, either didn't believe in travel or was in too much of a hurry to make the trip.
"Kirk?" Carrara asked after a beat.
"This is an open line," McGarvey warned.
"The director wants to speak to you. I've been trying to reach you for the past hour."
"What does he want?"
"I'll let him tell you."
"What does he want, Phil?" McGarvey said evenly. He would listen, but he wouldn't lose his temper.
"It's Arkady Kurshin. He wants to ask you about the Russians."
Something clutched at McGarvey's heart. "Have we picked up something out of Moscow?"
"Nothing concrete," Carrara said. "But Carley said you brought up his name."
"I was mistaken."
"She's worried about you, Kirk. For good reason."
"No."
"Whoever was responsible for blowing hell out of our embassy and killing all those people used your name and your passport number. That's significant. And it's Kurshin's style."
"He's dead, Phil. I killed him."
"I agree with you," Carrara said. "But his body has never been found."
"Stop chasing ghosts."
"The director disagrees. It's why he wants to talk to you."
"I don't think so. Not this time. Tell him—"
"Tell him yourself." Roland Murphy's gruff voice came over the line. "Or have you lost your backbone in the past year?"
"What do you want, General?"
'Tour cooperation. If Kurshin has come back to haunt us, you're the man to go after him for more than the obvious reason that he's got a grudge against you."
'Tes? Then why else?"
"Because you're cut out of the same material, McGarvey. I've said it before and I'll say it again: you're a killer, and you're very
good. Whatever my personal opinion of you might be, you are good."
"Kurshin is dead."
"Are you willing to bet your life on that?"
"How's Lorraine Abbott?" McGarvey asked. The question apparently caught Murphy off-guard, because he hesitated for a moment.
"She's retired," he said finally.
"If Kurshin is back, and he's coming after me as you're apparently suggesting, then he might decide to go after her as well. She was part of his downfall. His and Baranov's."
"She's being watched," Murphy said.
"Would you be willing to bet your life he couldn't get to her if he wanted to?"
"No, which is one of the reasons I called you. We need your help, and you'll do it if there's anything decent left in you. If for no other reason than for Lorraine's sake."
"He's dead, General. I killed him. I watched his body go over the rail into the sea. The people who attacked our embassy were French terrorists."
"He could have swum to shore."
"It was too far."
"My people say that with the currents he could have been swept to shore if he remained afloat for twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Not an impossible task."
"He was wounded. He'd lost too much blood."
"But it's not impossible he survived."
McGarvey said nothing.
"With Kurshin there'd be more than one objective. He'd be after something else besides you."
"There've been no indications that he was active."
"Tom Lord received a death threat twelve days ago."
"It happens all the time."
'Tes, but the letter writers don't usually follow through on their threats. This time they did. Our Paris operation is in shambles. We're going to have to start all over again."
"The Russians are no longer our enemies—isn't that the word these days?"
"Maybe not our enemies, McGarvey, but they're certainly not our friends. Not yet. Perhaps never."
He could feel himself inexorably being drawn into it, as if he
were a wood chip caught in a whirlpool. "He has no control officer. Baranov is dead. That we do know for certain."
"General Vasili Didenko," Murphy said. "Baranov's number two man."
Again McGarvey held his silence.
"He's still around. In fact he's been consolidating his power ever since Baranov's fall."
"Gorbachev won't allow it. Didenko is old guard."
"The man is too powerful to topple, from what I'm told. Gorbachev has taken an end run by cutting the KGB's above the line budget. Almost in half, down to a little more than three quarters of a billion dollars. And he's cut the Komitet's supply of foreign-currency operating funds. Didenko's been hamstrung, which suggests he might be trying to pull off something spectacular enough so that even under perestroika and glasnost he'll be given a free reign."
"The Russian threat is over."
"That's not true," Murphy said. "Nor do you believe it. The same thing was bandied about during the days of detente, remember? The threat has simply changed, that's all. The issues are still the same."
'Tes?"
"Survival, ours versus theirs."
"And mine," McGarvey said. "I'm out of the business. For good. Chase your own bogeymen, General. I'm retired."
"McGarvey—!" the DCI shouted.
McGarvey hung up, waited a couple of seconds for the connection to be broken, and then picked up the receiver and laid it on the table.
There were no bogeymen. All the monsters were dead. The only ones left were those of the imagination.
He laid his head back, cradling the drink on his lap, and tried to shut down his brain as he waited for the dawn. It was time to leave, before his own monsters rose up and blotted out his sanity. But Kurshin had been good, the very best.
It had grown much colder in the early-morning hours. Paris lay under a thin blanket of snow when McGarvey emerged from his apartment. He decided against taking his car. Traffic the night before had been snarled because of the weather, and it would be even worse this morning with everyone trying to get to work.
Like New York, Paris was better suited for delivery drivers and cabbies than for amateur drivers.
He walked up to the rue La Fayette, where he hailed a cab and ordered the driver to take him to the Hotel Roblin on the rue Chauveau-Legarde.
They'd gone barely a half-dozen blocks when McGarvey noticed that the cabbie kept glancing in the rearview mirror.
"Is someone following us?" he asked.
"I want no trouble, monsieur," the cabbie said nervously. "Is it the police?"
"I am the police," McGarvey said. "What sort of car is it?"
"A brown Peugeot, with two men inside. They made a U-turn after I picked you up, and they have been behind us ever since. Look for yourself, monsieur, if you do not believe me."
"I believe you," McGarvey said, without turning around.
"Where is it you wish to go?"
"The Hotel Roblin, of course," McGarvey said. "And if you are asked later, you may say that I did not hesitate in my choice of destination."
The cabbie shrugged.
A couple of minutes later they pulled up in front of the small but fairly expensive hotel just behind the Place de la Madeleine. McGarvey paid the driver and, without looking back, walked to the rue Tronchet, turned left, and headed toward Au Printemps, the huge dep
artment store, a few blocks away.
The brown Peugeot passed him in the next block and pulled down a side street. The plates were diplomatic, of the series used by U.S. embassy personnel. Carley had set watchdogs to keep tabs on him, probably at Carrara's suggestion. They were afraid that Kurshin had come back from the grave.
As soon as the car was out of sight, McGarvey turned and hurried back the way he had come, reaching the corner of Chauveau-Legarde just as his watchdogs came down from the boulevard Haussmann. They did not spot him, and they slowed to a crawl as they searched the doorways on either side of the rue Tronchet.
He walked the last half block to the hotel and went inside to the desk. The clerk looked up.
"I'd like to leave a message for Maria Schimmer," McGarvey said. He jotted a brief note on hotel stationery, asking that she
telephone him as soon as possible, folded it, and handed it to the clerk. "See that she gets that."
"Bien stir, monsieur" the clerk said.
Hotels in Europe are reluctant to give information about their guests, especially their room numbers, preferring instead to pass along messages.
McGarvey hesitated a moment as the clerk turned and slipped the folded paper into the slot for room 315. Then he went into the tiny bar and grillroom across the lobby.
The bar wasn't open this early, though the grillroom was still serving breakfast. McGarvey lingered just within the doorway for a few minutes until the desk clerk went into his office. Then he stepped around the corner, hurried across the lobby, and took the stairs up.
Her room was at the end of the corridor, in the back. He listened at the door. The shower was running. It stopped a minute later, and he knocked.
After a few moments Maria Schimmer called "Oui?"
"It's Kirk McGarvey."
There was absolute silence from within the room.
"From the embassy," he said. "I'm the one who dug you out."
"What do you want?" Maria asked hesitantly.
"I came for that drink you promised me."
Again there was silence from within the room until the lock snapped and the door opened. Maria Schimmer, wearing a white terry-cloth robe, her hair wrapped in a bath towel, looked up at him, her eyes very large and very dark. He thought she was beautiful.
"You look a hell of a lot better than you did last night," McGarvey said, smiling. He looked at her bandaged hands. "How are they?"
"Sore," she replied. "Are you alone?"
'Tes, and no one sent me, if that's what you're worried about, although there are some people from the embassy who'd like to have a word with you."
"I told those people everything I know," she said, her eyes flashing.
"Reid is dead, you know."
She nodded. "I figured as much." She moved away from the door, and McGarvey stepped inside.
The room was small but well furnished. A window looked down into a courtyard. The bathroom light was on, and the television was playing, but the sound had been turned off. The woman's suitcase lay open on the bed. She was in the middle of packing.
"They want to know what connection you had with him," McGarvey said.
"There was no connection."
McGarvey's right eyebrow rose.
"He was with another man I'd come to see at the Inter-Continental."
"About what?"
"I'd rather not say."
"What were you doing at the embassy?"
"I was going to ask Mr. Reid for his help."
"With what?"
"Did you tell your friends the name of this hotel?" Maria asked.
"Not yet," McGarvey said. "But the Marine on the embassy stairs heard when you gave it to me."
Again her eyes flashed. "Thank you for saving my life, Mr. McGarvey, but I've done nothing wrong."
"Then you shouldn't mind talking with Carleton Reid's people."
"I'm leaving Paris."
McGarvey shook his head. "You don't seem to understand what's going on here, Sehorita Schimmer. Someone killed a lot of people, and our embassy is destroyed. At this point you may be a suspect. At the very least they want to know what you were doing there."
"I had nothing to do with it," Maria flared. "I was at the Inter-Continental when it happened, and I have witnesses who can verify it."
"Then you should have no problem," McGarvey said. He went to the phone and picked it up. "This is Three-fifteen. Give me an outside line, please. I wish to make a local call."
"Wait," Maria said.
McGarvey just looked at her. When he had the dial tone he dialed his own number.
"I cannot be delayed here," she said. "I'll answer your questions."
The connection was made and the telephone in his apartment
began to ring. "Hello," he said. "This is McGarvey. Let me talk to the chief of security."
"I went to the hotel to see Horst Hoehner. I followed him from Vienna."
"I'll hold," McGarvey said into the telephone. "Simon Wie-senthal's assistant?"
'Tes," Maria said.
"About what?"
"I'm trying to find a ... World War Two Nazi submarine."
McGarvey hung up the telephone, intrigued now. "You asked Hoehner to help? It would seem that he would be the last person who'd know anything, or be willing to help."
"He has access to the records in Freiburg. No one else would listen to me."
"What did he say?"
"He also refused."
"So you went to Reid."
She nodded.
"What's your interest in this submarine?"
"My grandfather was the skipper."
"And?"
"They were on a secret mission to ... Argentina when he and his crew and the boat disappeared. I want to find the boat and ... his body."
"What was the mission?"
"I don't know."
She was lying. McGarvey could see it in her eyes. "Do you think they made it into Argentinian waters?"
"It's possible. I want to know for sure."
"What will you do now?" McGarvey asked. He watched her eyes, but there was no reaction.
"I'll go back to Freiburg and try again."
"Alone?"
She nodded.
Coincidence or plan? McGarvey tried to separate his unsettled feelings from what he was hearing now and from what had happened in the past hours. If Kurshin were indeed alive and active, would he have used this one? It was possible.
You cannot begin to understand the depths of another man's hate. It can be used like a tool. Like a finely honed surgeon's scalpel.
"Maybe that won't be necessary," he said.
"I'm not staying ..."
"Maybe I can help. If you want it, that is. I have a friend in Freiburg who would have access to the material you want."
For a moment her eyes lit up, but then the light faded and she became wary. "What do you want, Sehor McGarvey?"
"Answers," he said.
"I don't have them."
McGarvey smiled. "You don't have any other options. Besides, you owe me."
BOOK TWO
WASHINGTON, DC.
snow blanketed the nation's capital and the surrounding countryside, making driving extremely difficult. Katherine Ray was late arriving at CIA headquarters, but she had spent longer at the FBI's Fingerprint Division and then the Walter Reed Army Medical Center than she thought she would. It was three o'clock by the time she had logged in at the front desk, had her briefcase checked, and had gone down to Records Section in the basement.
"Ray, Technical Services," she said. "My boss called." A clerk checked her credentials and signed her name in the visitors' log. "You've been here before?" he asked pleasantly. "Once or twice."
"Then you won't need a baby-sitter."
Katherine shook her head.
"Too bad," the clerk said. He checked a register. "Terminal eighteen. Down the hall to the left. If you need a file runner, hit F-twelve and ENTER. Have you got the proper access codes?"
'Tes, thank
s." Katherine went back to her assigned cubicle, took off her coat, opened her briefcase, and entered the system with the primary access word: THUNDER.
The terminal screen bloomed. "Welcome to Records Section of the Central Intelligence Agency. Do you wish to see a menu?"
Katherine, who worked for the agency's Technical Services Division downtown, had been assigned the physical evidence of the Paris embassy bombing case. The team they'd sent to Paris within hours of the blast had begun sending back evidence almost immediately, including samples of human tissue and blood and other body fluids, as well as fingerprints lifted from the debris in and around the office in which the bomb had exploded.
The FBI had identified many of the fingerprints from its government services files, although several sets were flagged as being of special interest to the Agency, and therefore in a closed file.
At Walter Reed, the laboratory technicians had reduced the tissue and fluid samples to their DNA signatures. Three separate individuals had been in the room. Tom Lord and the Marine guard who'd gone in with him were known. But the third was an unknown. A sample of his blood and two clear fingerprints had been found on the doorknob leading from the inner office.
There was no third body, so it was possible, Katherine had reasoned on her way over, that the mystery man was the killer.
The bothersome part was that the FBI had identified the blood and fingerprints as belonging to someone of interest to the Agency. Very possibly they weren't the killer's after all. Possibly Graves had been in the office for some reason, or perhaps one of the communications people who'd come down to the second floor when they'd heard something had happened to Berringer and Vaughan had gone inside for some reason.
Entering the ten-point identification profile for the unknown prints, she started the computer searching through the huge amount of data stored in personnel records for a match.
Next, she entered the DNA standard profile from the blood sample and began searching medical records.
Within ninety seconds the first match had been made between the fingerprints found on Kevin Hewlett's doorknob and personnel files. A name and a date of birth along with a photograph came up on the screen. Katherine's mouth dropped open.
Crossfire (Kirk McGarvey 3) Page 9
