Crossfire

by David Hagberg

  It was Arkady Kurshin! Alive! Here!

  The telephone began to ring in Maria’s room down the hall.

  It was impossible. And yet there was no doubt in McGarvey’s mind that the man below was Kurshin. He’d known it from the moment the man got out of the car, from the way he walked, the way he held himself. He’d known it since Paris, when Carley had described the man who’d come to the embassy with the fake passport.

  It had been Kurshin behind him all this time. In Paris, in Freiburg, and again in Buenos Aires.

  The phone in Maria’s room rang again. “Come on,” McGarvey whispered urgently. He looked down again, but there was no one there now. Kurshin was inside the hotel.

  The man had come here for revenge. That part was clear. But what about Paris? Why had he gone through all of that? And what about Maria? Was there a connection between them after all?

  Her phone rang a third time.

  To each fieldman comes the moment when he must face himself through his past. The more extreme his dossier, the more violent his acts, the more terrible this showdown will likely be. For some it is a matter of honor, or dishonor. For others it is a life’s summation that adds up to less than zero. For still others it is a nemesis come back to be reckoned with.

  The son of a bitch had traced them to this hotel. How?

  Maria’s phone rang again, and she answered it. “What is it … ?” she mumbled sleepily.

  “Get the hell out of your room right now!”

  “What?” she demanded, coming fully awake. “Kirk?”

  “We’ve got trouble. Get out of your room. Go up to the third floor and wait in the maid’s closet. But do it now!”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Russian,” McGarvey said. He slammed the phone down, then grabbed his jacket and pistol, opened the door a crack, and looked out into the corridor. There were five other rooms on this floor. Nothing moved for the moment. But Kurshin was certainly on his way up.

  The man had somehow tracked them to Viedma, and he could have learned from someone at the marina where they’d gone. Figuring that they would not remain at sea in this storm, he’d come to the only other logical spot where they might put in, and he was checking all the hotels in town.

  Which meant he’d already been to the docks. To the Yankee Girl. Jones, by now, was almost certainly dead.

  McGarvey slipped out into the corridor and hurried to the stairs. It would take Kurshin only a minute or so to find out what rooms they were in.

  Maria came out of her room as someone started up from the lobby.

  “Kirk,” she called, and he turned and frantically motioned for her to be silent, but it was too late. Whoever was on the stairs below had stopped.

  Kurshin stood pressed against the wall between the first and second floors, fingering the safety catch of his gun. It had been a woman’s voice calling the name. Unmistakable. They knew he was coming and they were waiting for him. He had lost the element of surprise, but it was of no matter.

  Someone would die here tonight. It would be either McGarvey or him. Somehow, now that he was this near, he didn’t think he really cared which. The final confrontation was all that mattered.

  “McGarvey,” he called softly.

  Below in the lobby the night clerk lay dead behind the counter. There was no one to interfere this time.

  “I thought you were dead, Arkasha,” McGarvey’s voice drifted down to him. That the American had used the diminutive form of his first name did not bother him as he thought it should.

  “I very nearly was,” Kurshin answered. “But I’m back.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You.”

  “What about the woman?”

  “Send her away. This is between you and me.”

  There was silence from above. Kurshin moved away from the wall and leaned forward so that he could see farther up the stairs. McGarvey, he figured, was on the landing just above.

  McGarvey fired, the noise of the unsilenced pistol shockingly loud and intimate in the confines of the stairwell, the bullet smacking into the plaster wall well above Kurshin’s head.

  “You missed,” he said, ducking back.

  “It was you in Paris, wasn’t it,” McGarvey said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Kurshin chuckled. The question was satisfying. McGarvey hadn’t figured out what was happening. “If you survive this night you will see.”

  “A lot of innocent people died in your attack. It was a senseless gesture.”

  “There are no innocents, you know that.”

  Someone else on the second floor said something, and a woman stifled a scream. “Get back,” McGarvey called urgently.

  “Oh, no,” Kurshin said. “I’m coming for you, McGarvey.” Keeping his back against the wall he eased himself up a step, and then another.

  McGarvey fired a shot, the bullet splattering plaster dust. His fleeting shadow flashed against the wall, and Kurshin fired three shots in rapid succession.

  “It was an act of insanity, Arkasha,” McGarvey said after a few moments. His voice was distant and yet sensually close. “Baranov is dead, Arkasha. I killed him. Shot him in the back of the head. Tell me, who is your circus master these days?”

  Kurshin laughed again, but this time he felt the beginnings of a constriction in his throat, in his chest. “I’ve been to the boat. I know about the gold.”

  There was only silence from above. He could hear the wind-driven rain against the building. McGarvey was testing him. Waiting for him to make a mistake. His grip tightened on his pistol as he moved up another step.

  The situation was getting totally out of hand. There were too many people up and awake now. Three doors on this floor were open. Kurshin would not hesitate to kill anyone in his path, anyone who tried to interfere with him. A lot of people were going to get hurt, unless the fight could be led away from the hotel.

  McGarvey wanted to end it here and now. He had waited a very long time to be sure about the Russian. This time he wanted no uncertainties. He wanted to see Kurshin falling; he wanted to see the man’s blood. He wanted to feel for a dying pulse in his body, feel the flesh growing cold.

  Maria was watching him, wide-eyed. “Who is it?” she mouthed the words silently.

  McGarvey motioned for her to go upstairs, but she shook her head.

  “We’ll both go up to the roof,” McGarvey said just loudly enough so that he was certain Kurshin could hear him.

  “The notebook is in my room. I didn’t get a chance to bring it with me,” Maria protested.

  “Fuck the notebook,” McGarvey said. “Upstairs! Now!”

  He stuck his gun arm around the corner and fired two shots down into the stairwell, then lunged across the corridor, grabbed Maria by the arm, and roughly propelled her up the stairs.

  Kurshin came after them in a rush, firing as he came, one of the shots plucking at the back of McGarvey’s pants leg. McGarvey cried out in pain, and fired two more shots back.

  They rounded the corner halfway up to the third floor, and continued up, stopping at the top to listen for footsteps from below. Nothing.

  “Are you hurt?” Maria asked.

  McGarvey shook his head. A thin man in a bathrobe had come out of his room halfway down the corridor. McGarvey frantically waved him back, and the man ducked into his room and shut the door.

  “I want you to go up to the roof,” McGarvey whispered urgently. “Find a way down, or at least find a hiding place and stay there until I come for you.”

  “I’m not going to leave Roebling’s notebook downstairs,” she argued. “You heard him—he says he knows about the gold.”

  “He doesn’t care about that, goddamnit,” McGarvey whispered. He ejected the spent clip from his gun, pulled his only spare out of his pocket, and snapped it in place. He had no other ammunition.

  It was quiet in the stairwell. Too quiet. McGarvey reached around the corner and fired a shot down, Kurshin’s answ
ering fire coming so fast and accurately that McGarvey felt the bullet passing his head.

  “Time to die,” Kurshin called. “What do you say?”

  “What does he want?” Maria asked.

  “Me,” McGarvey said. “He wants me dead. But he’ll kill anyone with me. I want you up on the roof. Now, before it’s too late.”

  “And you’re going to stay here, waiting for him?” she asked incredulously.

  McGarvey nodded, his jaw tight. This time there would be no mistakes, no questions after the fact. This time he would know for sure.

  “You’re insane,” Maria said. “Who is this man?”

  “Russian.”

  “KGB?”

  McGarvey nodded. His head was light. Twice Kurshin had nearly succeeded in killing him. He’d lost a kidney to one of the man’s nine-millimeter bullets.

  “The war is over,” Maria said desperately. “At least what I’m doing means something—” She stopped herself in midsentence, realizing that she had gone too far.

  “I don’t care about your gold either,” McGarvey said. “This man has killed a lot of people. It was Kurshin who attacked our embassy in Paris.”

  “And you have killed, too,” Maria said.

  “Go up to the roof, dear,” Kurshin said, his voice just around the corner, not more than five feet away. He had snuck up on them. McGarvey hadn’t heard a thing; he hadn’t been listening carefully enough. It had been a terribly foolish mistake.

  He pulled Maria around behind him, and shoved her down the corridor.

  “All right, Arkasha,” he said in a reasonable tone as he backed off a couple of paces and raised his pistol. “I wonder if one of us is out of ammunition. Let’s see, shall we?”

  Kurshin started to laugh, but he cut himself off abruptly. For just a moment McGarvey thought it was another of the Russian’s tricks, but then he heard the sirens in the distance. A lot of sirens, sometimes loud on the wind, then fading, but definitely getting closer.

  Someone from the hotel must have called the police to report the shooting. But a town this size would not have so many police. There were a dozen sirens out there, maybe more.

  But if Kurshin had traced them this far, perhaps Captain Esformes had done the same.

  “Goddamnit, what are you waiting for?” McGarvey suddenly shouted. He was not going to be cheated! Not this time!

  There was no answer from the stairwell, and the sirens were definitely coming closer.

  “Kurshin!” McGarvey shouted.

  “What is it?” Maria asked, frightened.

  “It’s your friend Esformes, I think. Maybe the army as well.”

  “After us?”

  “I think so,” McGarvey said through a red haze. Girding himself, he rushed the stairwell, extending his arm around the corner and firing two shots, then rolling into the open, firing a third shot.

  But there was no one there. Kurshin was gone.

  “Arkady!” McGarvey shouted. “You bastard! Come back!”

  29

  KURSHIN COULD BARELY CONTROL his rage enough to think straight. He wanted to turn back and rush up the stairs firing as he went, until McGarvey lay in a bloody heap at his feet.

  But once again the American had been saved by luck. Kurshin did not want to commit suicide, after all. In the end his own life was more precious to him. There were other things in the world he wanted to see, and do. If nothing else, he wanted to be alive to savor McGarvey’s death.

  For just a moment he was torn with indecision. Go or stay. McGarvey above and the approaching police below. He did not want to be caught in a cross fire.

  But the woman had been concerned about a notebook. It was apparently very important to her. A key of some kind?

  Before he’d killed the desk clerk he’d gotten McGarvey’s and the woman’s room numbers. There was time, he told himself.

  He rushed down the corridor and burst into Maria’s room. Her overnight bag lay open on a chair in front of the window. Her purse was on the dresser.

  Glancing over his shoulder to make sure that no one was behind him, Kurshin quickly went through her things. The leather-bound notebook was in her purse. A gold swastika was stamped on its cover beneath the letters R.S.H.A., for the German Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the Nazi secret service.

  He pocketed the notebook and slipped back out into the corridor, his mind racing ahead to a dozen different possibilities. Less than thirty seconds had elapsed since McGarvey had fired his last shots, but already the sirens were nearly out front.

  A door across the corridor opened and a portly bald man looked out at him.

  For an instant Kurshin froze, but then he heard someone on the stairs. McGarvey! The bile was bitter in his throat. The bastard!

  But there would be another time and place. There would have to be.

  Before the confused hotel guest could react, Kurshin leaped across the corridor and burst into his room, shoving him off balance as he shut the door. The man had stumbled backward against the bed. Kurshin shot him in the head with his last bullet, then turned to face the door.

  Nothing moved in the second-floor corridor. McGarvey crouched in a shooter’s stance, his pistol in both hands, his heart hammering, the muscles of his legs twitching.

  “Is he there?” Maria asked softly behind him.

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  The sirens were on top of them now. Someone downstairs in the lobby was shouting something, and elsewhere, perhaps outside, a woman was screaming.

  “Kirk, I must have my passport. I can’t get out of the country without it. And we need the notebook.”

  If it was Esformes outside and he caught up with them, it would be a long time before they went anywhere. But it was hard for McGarvey to keep his thoughts in order.

  Kurshin had survived. He had tracked them all the way here for revenge … and what else? Paris meant something. It had to mean something, but to McGarvey it made no sense.

  “Come,” he said, straightening up and pounding down the corridor to her room.

  She came right behind him, and slipped inside while he waited. Now all the doors were closed. No one wanted to risk trying to see what was going on.

  Maria collected her purse and bag. “What about your things?” she asked, but the sirens were out front now, and there was a huge commotion in the lobby.

  It would take the police, or whoever they were, a minute or two to get organized and seal off the entire hotel, front and back. It would take them even longer to seal off the small town. Precious minutes that they would have to use to their best advantage.

  McGarvey grabbed her arm and propelled her down the corridor to the stairwell. Downstairs a man was shouting orders in Spanish.

  “It’s him,” Maria whispered. “Esformes. I know the voice. He knows we’re here.”

  Someone started up from the lobby.

  McGarvey shoved Maria up the stairs, and they barely made it around the corner before the police were on the second floor.

  At the head of the stairs Maria pulled McGarvey forcibly into the third-floor corridor. “There,” she said, pointing to the window at the opposite end. The glass was painted red. “Escalera de incendios,” she said. “The fire escape.”

  “Go!” he said.

  They raced to the end of the hall, where Maria yanked open the window. This side of the building was in the lee of the storm, so the wind and rain weren’t as bad, and the sounds of the still arriving sirens were suddenly very loud.

  Slinging her bags over her shoulder, Maria climbed out onto the metal-runged ladder and immediately started down. McGarvey followed her, closing the window behind him.

  The ladder led down into the dark alley behind the hotel. The ground-floor windows and doors of all the buildings were tightly shuttered against the night and the storm.

  At the bottom Maria crouched in the darkness as the lights of an army Jeep flashed past on the street at the end of the alley. McGarvey joined her a second later.

  It wo
uld take Esformes another minute or so to realize that they had gotten out of the hotel, but then he would be expanding the search.

  “We’re not going to make it very far on foot,” Maria said. “We’ll have to steal a car to get to the plane.”

  “That’s where Esformes and his men just came from,” McGarvey said, starting down the alley. He had holstered his gun. No matter what happened, he didn’t want to get into a shoot-out with the Argentinian authorities. Yet if Kurshin had gotten out of the hotel and was waiting in the darkness for them, they would be caught in a no-win situation: a cross fire between the Argentinians and the Russian.

  “What are you talking about?” Maria demanded, catching up with him.

  McGarvey pulled up short of the corner and flattened himself against the building. There was a lot of activity on the street in front of the hotel. More sirens were approaching from the south. The navy had probably been asked to lend a hand.

  “What are you talking about?” Maria repeated. “We have to get to the plane. It’s our only way out.”

  “Esformes knows about your airplane. That’s the only way he could have tracked us to Viedma. From there he probably talked to someone at the marina.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  McGarvey looked around the corner. To the left was the front entrance to the hotel, a dozen police cars and army Jeeps parked in the street. To the right, at the end of a dark block, Kurshin’s dark blue Chevrolet was parked. A police car, its lights flashing, raced past. Kurshin had not gotten out of the hotel after all. He’d hidden, knowing that Esformes was not looking for him. He was safe inside.

  The wind blew the rain in long sheets down the street toward the hotel. It was to their advantage. Anyone standing outside in the storm would have his back to the wind.

  McGarvey turned back. “Will your Argentinian passport give us a problem getting across the border into Chile?” His passport was in his jacket pocket.

  Her nostrils flared. “No,” she said. “But we’ll need a car.”

  “The American car at the end of the block. We’re going to walk directly to it and get in. Don’t look around, and no matter what happens, don’t run.”