Crossfire (Kirk McGarvey 3)

by Hagberg, David

  The Russian was shooting an automatic. Probably a Makarov or even a TK by the sound of it. Nine shots, if he had started with a full clip and one round in the firing chamber. And if he hadn't brought extra ammunition with him.

  "You won't get out of here alive, Arkasha," McGarvey called softly. He immediately dropped down on all fours and silently crawled out into the tunnel, flattening himself against the far wall.

  Kurshin fired twice more, both shots high and to the left.

  McGarvey jumped up, fired once to the left of where he'd seen the muzzle flashes, once to the right, and once directly at them, and then dropped back down.

  Kurshin cried out and fired three more times, wildly. An instant later there was a distinctive click as the hammer slapped home on an empty firing chamber.

  "Game over," McGarvey said, getting to his feet. He had three bullets left in his own gun. One would be enough.

  He started forward, almost immediately stumbling into something lying on the floor. Even before bending down to feel with his hands, he knew what it was; but he wanted to find out who it was. He felt for the face and neck, fearing that it would be Maria. But it was the caretaker. He could feel the rough skin, and the much larger features. The back of the skull was wet and mushy.

  "You son of a bitch," McGarvey muttered. He heard something metallic clatter to the floor a few feet ahead. For a split second he didn't know what it could be, but suddenly it came to him.

  The empty clip from Kurshin's gun. The man was reloading.

  McGarvey fired once from where he crouched, and a second time as he got to his feet. Then he charged blindly down the tunnel, slamming into the Russian within ten feet.

  Both of them went crashing backward off the rock wall to the wet floor, blood spurting all over McGarvey's face from a wound just beneath Kurshin's left collarbone.

  McGarvey's right shoulder smashed into the rock, his hand went numb for a moment, and his pistol slipped out of his grip. He held Kurshin's gun hand off with his left, and with his right he dug into the Russian's neck, trying with everything in his power to rip out the man's throat.

  The beam of a flashlight suddenly filled the tunnel with light.

  "Kirk!" Maria screamed from behind him.

  McGarvey lifted Kurshin's head from the stone floor and smashed it back down. He pulled it up again, and smashed it against the unyielding floor. And again, and again, all the while Maria screaming something behind him.

  As life faded from Kurshin's eyes the man's trigger finger jerked reflexively. His pistol fired, sending a long, jagged spark down the tunnel.

  McGarvey was just pulling back when, from the darkness a long way down the tunnel, the spark suddenly blossomed and built into a huge fireball that raced along the wall below the gas line toward them.

  Landau had pulled up behind a red Mercedes with diplomatic plates, and another car, one with a rental company sticker on the trunk lid, parked in front of the gatekeeper's house. A second Mercedes was parked just off the road in the woods, nose out, ready for a quick escape.

  No one was around, but a small access gate was open in the tall fence.

  "Inside," Potok said, leading the way.

  They raced across the broad courtyard to the base of the stairs up to the main entry.

  There they found the shotgun lying in the gravel.

  Landau started up the stairs, but Liebowitz headed around toward the back.

  "Here!" he called from a few yards away. He bent down and picked up two shotgun shells.

  The three of them hurried the rest of the way to the Moorish keep, spotting the open door as soon as they rounded the corner.

  There was a deep-throated rumble, and a sheet of flame roared out of the doorway.

  Meitner stood directly over the clay pipe, holding the stick of dynamite just above the black opening as he set the delay fuse.

  Jodl was directly behind him, looking over his shoulder.

  They both heard the ominous rumble from below, and Meitner started to say something. A ball of flame raced up from below, roaring out of the clay pipe, blinding him at the same instant it ignited the dynamite in his hand

  McGarvey had managed to scramble back to where Maria crouched by a gate to one of the crypts and cover her with his body as the tremendous ball of fire erupted through the tunnel.

  The heat was so intense for a moment that it began to melt the back of his jacket, and scorched most of the hair off the back of his head.

  An instant later there was a huge explosion from somewhere far above them, and the ceiling began to come down. Water was spraying everywhere.

  Not like this, the single thought crystallized in McGarvey's

  head. After everything in his life, all the close calls, all the near misses, he was not going to die like this, buried in a tunnel.

  There was one thing left for him to do. Something he'd been deciding now for several years. Something inevitable.

  He rolled away from Maria and looked down the tunnel as he got up. Water was flowing in from a dozen different breaches along the walls and ceiling, but there was still light from as many gas flames.

  "We've got to get out of here," he shouted, reaching back and dragging Maria to her feet.

  She collapsed against him. "I can't," she cried breathlessly. "My leg."

  Without hesitation McGarvey slung her over his shoulder, the effort nearly causing him to black out.

  Water was rising steadily in the tunnel, up over his knees by the time he had slogged his way past where the gatekeeper's body was floating. The gas flames were dying out now, and within seconds the tunnel would be in absolute darkness again.

  McGarvey didn't know if he could take much more of it. He could feel panic building up, ready to explode inside him, destroying his will to live.

  Maria was crying something in his ear, but he couldn't make it out. There was nothing left for him but to continue. If he was going to die here, he would die. But he would be moving when the end came.

  The last of the lights faded as the water came up to his chest. The tunnel ceiling was higher here, so he could stand up taller.

  But it was too late. He could not go much farther.

  He stumbled on something, falling forward into the water. For a moment he thought he might be seeing lights now. But that was impossible.

  Maria was gone, suddenly, and there were hands on his arms. He was being dragged upward, his feet and legs bumping up the stairs.

  "McGarvey! McGarvey!" Potok was shouting at him.

  Then nothing.

  the sun was shining brightly through the windows of McGarvey's Lisbon hospital room ten days later when Lev Potok walked in, an oddly wistful smile on his craggy features. He closed the door before he came over to the bed.

  "How are you doing, Kirk?" He was dressed in khakis and soft-soled desert boots. He looked very military, very competent.

  "Better," McGarvey said. "I'll be out of here in a few days." The burns on his neck and scalp had been second and third degree, but the pain had finally begun to fade. He no longer had to take morphine.

  "That's what I was told," Potok said. "Then what?"

  "Back to the States, I think. For a while at least."

  "Have you briefed your government yet?"

  "About what?"

  "What you found in the crypt."

  "No," McGarvey said after a moment. "I don't know what I found, actually. Some gold the Nazis hid." He smiled wanly. "Besides, I wasn't on assignment."

  "You found a part of the ledger," Potok said evenly.

  McGarvey looked at him. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "The list you took from one of the coffins. I found it on you after I dragged you out of the tunnel."

  McGarvey remembered it now. "I never got a chance to look at it."

  "And Maria never explained it to ..." Potok shook his head. "But then, she never knew."

  "Explain what, Lev?" McGarvey asked. "What the hell was it all about? It was more than ju
st Nazi treasure."

  Potok nodded. "The Germans, in their fanatical need to keep meticulous records, went one step too far," he said. "There's gold there, a lot of it, that came from the property of Jews. From their bodies."

  "I guessed that much."

  "Each bar of gold is stamped with a serial number."

  "Yes ..." McGarvey said, and then he had it. The curse, Rhein-falls had called it. And so had Maria's father.

  Potok could see that he had figured it out, but he went on. "The sources of the gold that went to make up each bar were written down on a list. The ledger. Names and items. Isser Havrel: three gold teeth; one gold necklace, thirty centimeters; one gold fountain pen nib. And so on. The serial number on each gold bar corresponds to a list of victims and what was taken from them."

  It was monstrous beyond anything McGarvey could have imagined. "The Portuguese will cooperate with Israel."

  "No," Potok said sharply. "It's one of the reasons I've come here to talk to you. Kirk, we want to leave the gold buried here. Right where it is. We want to leave those memories untapped."

  "But—?"

  "Reliving that horror will do no one any good. Those people are dead, and so are most of their kin. Trying to distribute the gold fairly would be impossible. And the Germans themselves would not want to get involved."

  "The generals?"

  'Tes," Potok said. "Ex-Third Reich officers who were soldiers first, and Nazis only by force of circumstance. Men who were against the death camps, against the wholesale slaughter of an entire people. They managed all of these years to keep this business quiet. We agree."

  It was an odd thing for an Israeli to say, but McGarvey nodded.

  "We ask that you say nothing. Tell your people, if they ask, that you found nothing down there except for Arkady Kurshin, whom you killed."

  McGarvey stiffened at the name. He half rose out of the bed.

  "He's dead. His body floated up out of the tunnel. He's definitely dead this time."

  "But I left him a thousand feet back ... I killed him."

  "No, he drowned, Kirk. Trying to get out."

  McGarvey lay back and closed his eyes, imagining Kurshin's last minutes. It was horrible, yet fitting. He opened his eyes again and Potok was gone. Maria was standing there. He had no idea how much time had passed.

  "I didn't know when you would wake up," she said.

  So, he'd drifted off. "How are you?"

  "Fine," she said. "I came to ... thank you," she said.

  "Do you know the entire story now?"

  "Yes. Lev told me."

  "Where will you go?"

  "Back to Tel Aviv. That's where I got my training, and Buenos Aires is out now. Everyone else is gone, and Esformes is still looking."

  McGarvey said nothing.

  "We're leaving within the hour. I wanted to say good-bye. I'm sorry that we're not—"

  "Don't," McGarvey said, reaching out and touching her hand.

  She looked at him for a long time, tears filling her eyes. Finally she bent down, brushed a kiss on his lips, then turned and hurried out of the room.

  He wished her well. If only half the things she'd told him had actually happened to her, she needed a life for herself now. Everyone did.

  Washington was cold after Lisbon, but the sky was perfectly clear and the sun sparkled on a fresh coating of snow.

  The house was an expensive two-story colonial in Chevy Chase, across from the country club. It sat back on what in summer was a half acre of perfectly manicured lawn.

  He paid the cabbie who'd brought him out, and stood looking up at the house for a long time. It had been a few years since he'd been here last, and much longer than that since Kathleen had divorced him. That had happened on the same day he'd been fired from the CIA.

  The memories, which had always been so painful for him, had finally faded into a dull regret at the back of his head. He'd always loved his wife, and by her own admission she'd always loved him. They had simply not been able to live with each other.

  "It's no life for our daughter," Kathleen had cried. "Waiting, wondering if you would come home in one piece. Wondering what dirty little spying mission you were on. What political leader you were assassinating."

  He'd wanted to explain about being a soldier, about defending what he believed in, but the words had never come. It had always been impossible for him with Kathleen. She had intimidated him.

  And now their daughter was, how old? He had to count back. The last time they'd been together was for her eleventh birthday. Seven years ago. She was eighteen now, he realized with a start. No longer a little girl.

  He went up the walk and rang the bell. Kathleen was expecting him. He had called from his hotel that morning. She had sounded cool but reasonably receptive when he asked whether he could come out to see her.

  The door opened, and a beautiful woman was standing there, her eyes startlingly green, her complexion creamy, unmarked with even the slightest blemish.

  She was Kathleen. But Kathleen of twenty-five years ago. Suddenly McGarvey realized that this woman was not his ex-wife. She was his daughter.

  "Elizabeth?" McGarvey asked, his throat thick.

  "Oh, God, Daddy, is it really you?" Elizabeth cried, and she came into his arms. "Are you back? Have you come back?"

  Beyond her, in the hall, Kathleen had come out of the living room, and she stood there, tears coming to her eyes. She said

  nothing. She only looked at him, the expression on her face unfathomable.

  But it wasn't a look of scorn, or of disapproval. Not that. Not like the old days.

  Rather, it was a look of ... expectation.

  mm

  mOBERO

  David Hagberg's novels of suspense have sold over three million copies.

  David Hagberg hails from Duluth, Minnesota but spends most of his time in Europe, Asia and South America.

  Jacket Art by Joe DeVito

  Jacket Design by Joe Curcio

  A TOR HARDOVER

  Distributed by St. Martin's Press

  in the United States

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