Without Honor

by David Hagberg

  “What is so fascinating out there?” Trotter complained.

  . McGarvey let the drapes fall back into place, then turned and accepted the drink from Trotter. They sat down in leather chairs across a massive mahogany coffee table from each other. Trotter had lost some weight even since Lausanne. His nose seemed more prominent, hawkish. His complexion seemed pale. It was obvious he was under a great strain.

  “You owe us an explanation, you know,” Trotter said, breaking the uneasy silence between them.

  “And you owe me the truth, John. At least that.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  McGarvey looked at the door. It opened a moment later and Leonard Day appeared, out of breath, but fresh looking in a sport coat, open-collared shirt, and tan slacks that just touched his boating shoes. He looked as if he had just stepped off the set of a commercial for after-shave.

  “Kirk’s just arrived,” Trotter said unnecessarily.

  “Yes, I can see that. And I think we have a lot to get straightened out between us,” Day said, fairly bounding across the room to the buffet. He poured himself a drink. “Anyone for bumps?”

  “I’m sorry that Lawrence couldn’t stay,” McGarvey said softly.

  “Lawrence?” Day piped without turning around.

  “Danielle. I just saw him leaving. Anything to do with our little plot?”

  “Whatever gave you such an idea?” Day asked, turning at last. “We’re old friends. He came for a visit.”

  Day’s voice had changed. The difference was subtle, but it was there. He was disturbed. “You have some explaining to do, mister. You are in town barely a day and the killing begins. A little extreme I’d say.”

  “Do you think I killed him?”

  “Heavens no!” Trotter blurted.

  “It isn’t a coincidence, despite what John has to say about it.” Day came across the room and flopped down on the edge of the couch. His movements were studied, McGarvey thought.

  “Yarnell was at the White House this afternoon,” Trotter volunteered.

  “The president is having an impromptu meeting with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Powers will be there, I suspect. I’m not surprised our little spy wrangled an invitation as well, the bastard!”

  “He’s not working alone,” McGarvey said. He thought he was at a sideshow here.

  “Of course not. He has his control officer. Baranov, perhaps. Who knows? They’re like a cancer. Cut them out, ruthlessly. It’s the only answer.”

  “I meant here in the States. Most likely in the Company. Maybe in the bureau. Maybe even in Justice.”

  At this last suggestion, Day flinched, but he didn’t move from his perch on the arm of the couch, nor did his outward manner or expression change. But the barb had hit home; McGarvey could see it in the way Day held himself.

  “Because of this Polish DP who ran the agency’s archives?”

  “The Polish activists didn’t kill him.”

  “Oh?” Day said, his right eyebrow rising. “I see. Who did then, Yarnell himself?”

  “I think there is a lot here you haven’t told me. I’m out in the cold.” McGarvey decided in midstride that he did not like nor trust Day. The man wanted to be president. It was written all over him. Next there’d be Secret Service bodyguards crawling all over the place. He expected Day to put out his hand at any moment for him to shake.

  “I think you’re forgetting your place, Mr. McGarvey.”

  “This isn’t helping anything,” Trotter tried to interject.

  “We found you rotting away in some Swiss bookstore. Remember? We should have left you there.”

  “Yes, you should have. But now that I’m here, how about cutting the bullshit and telling me what’s really going on.”

  “We’re not getting anywhere this way, Kirk,” Trotter said a little more forcefully. “Please. This is counterproductive.”

  McGarvey’s eyes had not left Day’s. “Just what is it you want from me, Mr. Day?”

  Day slowly stood. He looked across at McGarvey for a long time, then he threw back his drink. Not a sideshow, McGarvey thought, more like a bloody circus or a B movie.

  “You are an assassin, Mr. McGarvey. We have hired you to assassinate Darby Yarnell.”

  McGarvey grinned and sat back with his drink. He hadn’t thought Day would actually commit himself like that. “You don’t want an investigation, then?”

  Trotter jumped up too. “Good God, what are you trying to imply, Kirk? What do you take us for?”

  “You’ve already asked that question once, John. But Mr. Day hasn’t answered mine.”

  Day stared through hooded eyes. He must have to jog at least five miles a day to look so fit at his age. Probably around the lake every morning before a breakfast of whole-wheat toast, guava juice, and wheat germ on everything.

  “Yes, an investigation, but not at the expense of innocent people.” Day could have been lecturing. “It is the innocent who must be protected. That’s why we are in business. Too often the little man gets in the way and instead of our kind making the proper considerations, he gets steamrollered.”

  From his chair Trotter voiced his agreement. “Poor Janos Plónski, case in point.”

  “Then you are convinced he is guilty. No trial. The man is a spy. I’m simply to walk up to him some dark evening and put a bullet into his brain. That it?”

  “Don’t be tiresome, McGarvey. I don’t care about the details. It must be done. He’s murdered one of your own, by your own account. What more do you want?”

  “The truth.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Day asked indignantly. He played the role well. “Exactly.”

  “Who else is Yarnell working with, besides the Russians? You?”

  A dangerous silence came over the study. Even Trotter was moved to keep his peace, apparently because of the monstrousness of the question. Chile had taught McGarvey a painful lesson: Nothing is ever the way it seems, especially not in this business. Connections within connections, plots within plots, there never were any simple or rational answers. Janos’s world as a field man had been relatively simple by comparison. Kill or be killed. The real perfidy was at the upper echelons of the business. That treachery had gotten Janos killed in the end; McGarvey’s sloppiness after five years of inactivity was a contributing factor. Knowing this didn’t make him feel particularly secure.

  “Perhaps you don’t fully appreciate the measure of Darby Yarnell,” Day said at last. He was wounded. He was letting them all know now that he was too big a man to let such a snipe stop him cold, but that he was sensitive enough to be hurt. He went back to the buffet, where he poured himself a second drink. “Besides friends,” he said over his shoulder, “he has quite an extensive organization of his own.”

  “His firm?”

  “More than that. You’ve seen his house; it’s Fortress Yarnell. He has similar bastions elsewhere: Paris, Monaco, Austria, I’m told, though I don’t actually know for a fact about that last. He has cooks and house staff at each place, of course. He has his drivers, his bodyguards. He has his secretaries, even a Learjet for God’s sake, complete with a full-time crew, though I’m told he’s a pretty fair pilot in his own right.”

  “An accomplished man.”

  Day turned back, his right eyebrow arching. “Indeed.” He came back with his drink. “He does have his friends, as you say, within the bureau, certainly within the Company, Powers included, and no doubt he has his crowd even within my bailiwick. Unwitting helpers, I’d say. Pass the innocent bit of information back and forth. Good heavens, the man is a friend of the president himself. Doesn’t make him an accomplice, now does it?”

  Day looked to Trotter for confirmation. “Of course not.”

  “Enough friends for him to know by now that I am here?” McGarvey asked softly. “Why I am here?”

  “That’s the point, isn’t it?” Day replied. “If it wasn’t the Polacks who did in your friend, and it was Darby Yarnell’s gang, th
e implications are somewhat sticky.”

  “If Darby Yarnell were to meet with an accident, what would become of his organization?” McGarvey said, trying a new tack.

  “I don’t catch your drift,” Day said. His expressions were sophomoric.

  “Pearson and Darien, his partners in the firm. Mightn’t they take over the spy business if their boss departs?”

  Day turned again to Trotter. “That’s your turf, John. Anything on them?”

  “They’re clean as far as we can tell.”

  “Doesn’t that strike you as odd,” McGarvey said.

  Trotter shrugged. “If he has help, they’ll dry up once he’s gone.”

  “All on the say-so of a Cuban drug dealer,” McGarvey said, half to himself. “That’s what I meant, you know.”

  Day wanted to pace. A muscle twitched beneath his left eye. “We’ve gone over all of that. Don’t be tedious.”

  “I haven’t begun to get tedious, believe me. We have a long ways to go.”

  “What exactly is it you want?” Day snapped irritably.

  “Your signatures on a piece of paper.”

  Day laughed out loud. Trotter reared back until he, too, realized it had only been a joke. He didn’t seem amused by it.

  “Access to bureau and Justice files,” McGarvey said. “For a start.”

  “Only on matters pertaining to this business,” Day said. He glanced at Trotter. “John?” Trotter nodded.

  “Now that I no longer have Janos Plónski, I’ll need someone with the Company. Lawrence Danielle, for instance.”

  Day laughed again. “I’ll work on it.”

  “I don’t want a direct link with him; in fact, it would be better if I dealt exclusively through you.”

  “Whatever.” Day shrugged.

  “What was he doing here today?”

  “I’ve already told you—”

  “The truth this time.”

  A strand of hair had boyishly fallen down on Day’s forehead. He brushed it aside. “If I were to promise you that Lawrence’s visit here had absolutely nothing to do with why you are here, would that be enough?”

  McGarvey was thinking ahead. He nodded and then sat forward. “If at some later date I discover you have lied to me on this point, Mr. Day, held back on me, thus making my position over the coming days more dangerous or difficult, you’ll regret it.”

  “I don’t take kindly to threats,” Day said evenly.

  “Not a threat. I am merely telling you that if I find I’ve been lied to, all bets are off. I’ll go to the Post as well as the New York Times with the entire story. Names, dates, and exactly what I was hired to do.”

  Trotter started to protest, but Day held him off with a gesture. “Fair enough. What else?”

  “I’ll need a safe house somewhere in the city. Close to Yarnell without being obvious.”

  “I can arrange that,” Trotter volunteered.

  “I’ll need four or five of your top legmen assigned to me, John. Someone who knows electronics and will bring along the entire kit. Computers. Cameras. Second-story people. No one squeamish.”

  “What are you planning?” Day demanded.

  “Getting away with my own skin intact.”

  “They cannot be involved in the … actual operation,” Trotter said. “Even so it will be difficult breaking them loose from the bureau. Questions will be asked.”

  “Have you someone in mind?”

  Trotter nodded.

  “They’ll have to be told the truth. All of it. And they’ll be working directly for me. No middleman, not even yourself. If I find monitoring devices or tapes or any kind of bugs of our surveillance, the deal is off.”

  “When would you need them?” Trotter asked.

  “Immediately.”

  Again Trotter looked to Day, who nodded his sage approval. “All right, Kirk, we’ll do as you say.”

  Day leaned forward. “Now, we would like something from you in return. Only fair, wouldn’t you say?”

  McGarvey inclined his head. Trotter had come a long way down since they’d last known and worked with each other, he thought. Now he took orders not only from the director of the bureau, but apparently he took orders from a tinhorn bureaucrat as well.

  “I would like you to check in with us through the telephone number John provided you. Every six hours, I think.”

  McGarvey had to smile. Day was a wheeler-dealer. “Forty-eight.”

  “Twelve,” Day said.

  “Thirty-six.”

  “Eighteen.”

  “That’s reasonable, Kirk,” Trotter interjected. He was worried.

  “Twenty-four,” McGarvey said. He got to his feet. “With a twenty-four hour fallback.”

  “Fallback? What’s this? I’m not familiar with the term.”

  “I’ll check in every twenty-four hours unless I’m tied up, in which case I don’t want you doing a thing—nothing—for another twenty-four hours.”

  Day laughed. “You got your forty-eight hours in any event. Agreed.”

  Yes he had, McGarvey thought. But he wondered if in the end it would be enough for him, or for anyone else for that matter.

  Donald Suthland Powers’s Cadillac limousine was passed immediately through the east gate of the White House grounds, where it was met by a uniformed guard. Only a handful of men within the government had instant access, day or night, to the president; among them was the DCI. It was a privilege Powers had never abused.

  Powers felt no sense of victory knowing he had predicted this day nearly six months ago. He had been watching the happenings to the south, had personally studied the KH-10 satellite photos, and had felt a mounting sense of frustation and finally fear with what he understood was probably happening at half a dozen places along our southern border.

  The Mexican ambassador had been making his president’s warning clear over the past months, not only here in Washington but through their delegation to the United Nations. A new relationship had to be negotiated between the United States and Mexico. Now. Falling oil prices, unjust drug accusations against Mexican government officials, immigration disputes, another Mexico City earthquake, and a failing economy were contributing to a general malaise among his people. Hunger had finally become a major political issue; with it, socialism of the Soviet Russian variety was rearing its ugly head.

  For the first time in a very long time, Powers was frightened; not merely concerned, but deeply and utterly convinced that unless something was done—immediately and decisively—a shooting war was about to begin.

  He took the stairs up to the office in the West Wing. The president was meeting with some members of the Senate and a few other people in his study down the hall. He promised to return in five minutes.

  Powers opened his briefcase and began spreading computer-enhanced satellite photographs on the desk. The president came in. He was alone, though Powers caught a glimpse of his press secretary outside.

  “What’s got you so het up, Donald?” the president said, his voice betraying a deep weariness.

  “These, Mr. President. Something has to be done.”

  The president looked at Powers, then bent over the photos laid out on his desk. He studied them, one at a time, for a long time before he finally straightened up. He leaned back, his hands at the small of his back.

  “Well, are you going to tell me what I’m looking at, or am I going to have to guess.”

  “Those are photographs of six regions of Mexico, some of them within twenty-five miles of our border …”

  “Yes?”

  “I think the Mexican government, with the help of the Soviet Union, is constructing bases for the launching of nuclear missiles.”

  “Christ,” the president swore. “Oh Christ.”

  PART TWO

  15

  For forty-eight hours, while Trotter assembled the team and found a suitable safe house, McGarvey would have languished at the Sheraton-Carlton within sight of the White House and Yarnell’s office building but
for a single occupation. Before their meeting had broken up he had requested from Day excerpts from the staff directories for each of the years Yarnell had been active in the Company. It was a tall order, but one with which Day nevertheless said he would be happy to comply, and did within the first eighteen hours, having the bundle delivered to the hotel by courier.

  As he waited for the assembly of his army and a fortress from which he would wage his battle, McGarvey began the first steps of his oblique look down Yarnell’s path.

  As he explained much later to a mystified Trotter, it wasn’t as if he were having doubts about Yarnell. On the contrary, by then he was fairly well convinced the man was a spy … or had at least been a spy. But he wanted two things: the first was proof that Yarnell had spied; and the second was the name or names of his contacts here in Washington—his non-Russian contacts, that is.

  Also, during these hours when McGarvey did not leave his room, he let a certain amount of guilt wash over him. First about Janos’s death; next about his daughter and ex-wife, who were within a stone’s throw of him; and finally about Marta, whom he missed. Twice he had picked up his telephone and nearly called her in Lausanne. Each time, however, he thought better of it and hung up before he had finished dialing.

  He watched television sporadically, especially the news broadcasts and news-magazine shows. In his Swiss life he had kept himself relatively isolated from world events. The country was geared to this state of isolation; in Switzerland if you didn’t want to hear what the superpowers were up to, you merely ignored Swiss Television One and any foreign newspaper. You weren’t considered odd, at least no odder than the average Swiss, for whom neutrality was not only a badge of long-standing honor but one of smug indifference to the other four billion inhabitants of the planet. (The only oddity in Switzerland was the man who didn’t read the financial section!) The isolation had spawned in him a hunger for hard news of the American television variety, even if the networks’ editorial positions were blatantly espoused. U.S.–Mexican relations were troubled again. Coincidence, he wondered as he watched the news, or was this part of some larger picture that somehow included Yarnell, the man’s ex-wife, and Baranov, the Russian everyone seemed so respectful of?