Crossfire

by David Hagberg

  “What about the keys?”

  “They’ll be in the car.”

  “How do you—?”

  “Trust me,” McGarvey said, and before she could argue, he stepped around the corner and started down the block.

  It was possible that Kurshin had made it as far as the lobby and ducked into the restaurant moments before Esformes showed up. His escape would be blocked until the Argentinian authorities moved out. That could take several hours.

  Two more police cars raced past on the street, their sirens blaring, their lights flashing. McGarvey caught just a glimpse of one of the cops looking his way, but then the patrol car was pulling up at the hotel.

  “He saw us,” Maria said urgently.

  “Don’t run,” McGarvey repeated.

  At the corner Maria went around the front of the Chevrolet and got in on the passenger side, tossing her bag in the back. Without looking around, McGarvey opened the door and slipped in behind the wheel. The keys dangled from the ignition, as he knew they would. Moments spent fumbling a key into the ignition could sometimes mean the difference between life and death.

  As he started the car, he looked in the rearview mirror. A knot of men had formed on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. Some of them were soldiers, with Uzi submachine guns slung over their shoulders.

  For a moment McGarvey toyed with the idea of turning himself in. He could explain to Esformes what Kurshin was, and together they could stop the man. But he didn’t think the Argentinians were in a mood to talk. They had a long-standing reputation of shooting first and asking no questions later.

  Kurshin would escape from Argentina. And whatever he’d been up to in Paris was not over. Langley would have to be warned. And so would Carley. She had seen Kurshin. She had talked with him. Sooner or later he would be coming after her.

  McGarvey put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb, not switching on his lights until he was around the corner.

  He kept watching in the rearview mirror, expecting at any moment to see the lights of a pursuing police car. But they made it out of town without seeing another moving vehicle, and they headed west into the black night toward the Andes and the Chilean border some four hundred miles away.

  “Oh, my God,” Maria cried minutes after they’d cleared the town. She’d been rummaging in her purse.

  McGarvey looked at her. She was shaking. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open.

  “Roebling’s notebook. It was in my purse. It’s gone. Someone took it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “It was him. The Russian. He knew about the gold. He must have gone to my room … just before us … . We have to go back!”

  McGarvey shook his head as he tried to think it out. What possible interest could Kurshin have in gold? Unless it was to finance some sort of operation. And what did this have to do with Paris?

  “We must go back!” Maria screeched.

  “And do what?” McGarvey asked sharply. “Get arrested by Esformes? Or get shot by his men? Or by Kurshin?”

  “We must …” she protested weakly.

  “Do you remember any of Roebling’s contacts in Lisbon?”

  “There were more than a dozen.”

  “Do you remember any of them?”

  “A couple. Maybe three.”

  “Then it’s a start,” McGarvey said, his own plan forming. “I’ll help you.”

  “In Lisbon?”

  “Yes,” McGarvey said. “But first Paris.”

  “Why?”

  McGarvey looked over at her. She was still deeply shaken. “If you want my help, it’ll be on my terms. No questions asked. This time we’ll do things my way.”

  After a silent few seconds she finally nodded. “As you wish,” she said. “But we have to find it. We have to!”

  BOOK THREE

  30

  MOSCOW

  GENERAL DIDENKO WAS REMINDED of an old Russian proverb he’d heard his grandmother use: In Moscow they ring the bells often, but not for dinner. It was a Stalinist-era catchall acknowledging the two salient facts of the time: a lot of people were getting killed, while for everyone else there was never enough to eat.

  Well, he thought, facing the twelve old men who comprised the Politburo of the Communist party, the Moscow bells were ringing again. This time they were tolling the end of socialism. In fact, they seemed to be signaling the end of the Union.

  “The party no longer enjoys the power it once had, Comrade General,” Yurii Pavlichenko said from the end of the massive, ornately carved table.

  “Nor do we have such influence, Vasili Semonovich, that we can interfere with KGB funding,” Missile Defense Forces General Feodor Obolentsev said. “The government has taken even that away from us and placed it in the hands of the Council of Ministers, and of course the Presidium.”

  “Our budget has been slashed nearly in half, and the cut in hard Western currencies effectively hamstrings our foreign operations,” Didenko replied, careful not to raise his voice. But he knew that this had been a wasted afternoon.

  “Do not overstep your bounds,” Obolentsev warned. He was a huge man, with massive fists that he had a habit of clenching when he was under stress. They were clenched in front of him now. “Take heed. You are only a department chief. There are many rungs remaining on your ladder. Down, as well as up.”

  “The winds of change are even sweeping through these old halls,” Pavlichenko said. His pale, wrinkled skin was parchment thin. The other men nodded sagely.

  “Good advice, comrades, and I thank you for it,” Didenko said.

  “And we thank you for coming here so frankly with your concerns,” another of the Politburo members said. “We will not forget.”

  No, Didenko thought, this would not be soon forgotten. He smiled and nodded, inwardly seething. He had come for help, but had received nothing but platitudes and worthless advice.

  He left the conference room, gathered his coat and hat in the anteroom, and hurried downstairs to his waiting car and driver. The soldiers at the door snapped to attention as he passed.

  “Take me home,” he said, climbing into the back seat.

  He opened the compartment in the back of the front seat, poured himself a stiff measure of French cognac, drank it, and then poured himself another. He sat back as they headed out of the Kremlin, a light snow falling, muffling all the sounds and perhaps the sins of the city.

  He had pinned too many of his hopes on one man—Arkady Kurshin. But there was no one else he could trust now. Baranov had used him to great success. But as the assassin had put it, Didenko was no Baranov. Nor was the Union the same. Nor was the world. Everything was different now.

  For the very first time Didenko could see the end of Russia as a major world power. The rodina had lost her European buffer zone, and now she was losing her republics one at a time.

  The weapons were still in place, but the will was gone from the party as well as the government.

  Where were the men of vision and of action? he asked himself. The question had been plaguing him for months. A question to which he had no answer.

  With gold, which could be converted into Western currencies, the Komitet’s foreign operations could be adequately funded and the changes could be reversed.

  Could have been, he thought bitterly. But Kurshin was gone. Disappeared off the map. And there was no one he could trust. No one left who could carry out his plan to save what was left of the KGB. The day of the Komitet assassin was gone.

  Short of turning his field officers into ordinary bank robbers, there seemed to be no solution. One thing was sure, however. Kurshin should die. He could not be allowed to continue as he was, out of control. Besides, he knew too much. But who was there to do the job? Who under Didenko’s command was good enough?

  He shook his head. Killing Kurshin would be impossible unless he showed up here in Moscow. And maybe it would be impossible even then.

  The limousine turned onto Kutuzovsky Prospekt
, and five minutes later Didenko rode up in the elevator to his eighteenth-floor apartment. His building was not too far from Gorbachev’s. It had always been a point of pride with him. Until this afternoon, that is. Now he felt that he had lost. Once and for all, he had lost.

  Everything had been in place for his salvation. Everything, that is, except for one element: Kurshin in Tehrn. One man. How could he have been so stupid as to pin all of his hopes on one man?

  His housekeeper was gone for the evening, and he had dismissed his secretary before he’d left the office. His apartment seemed very large and very empty.

  Tossing his overcoat and uniform tunic over the back of the couch, he went into his study, closing and locking the door. He loosened his tie, undoing the top button of his shirt, and poured himself another stiff measure of cognac from a sideboard. Behind his desk he took a key out of his pocket, unlocked the top drawer, and looked at the loaded German Luger. It was a spoil of war. His brother’s son had taken it from the body of a Nazi general in Berlin.

  His brother was dead. The boy was dead. Everyone was dead.

  Paris would be blamed on him.

  As Didenko reached for the pistol the telephone on his desk rang. For a moment he debated not answering it, but on the second ring he picked it up.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “It’s me, you cunt,” Kurshin said. “I’m in Rome and I need your help. I’ll do anything you want to get it.”

  Didenko closed his eyes and sat back, a great sigh escaping his lips. There was hope after all.

  “Are you there, you bastard?” Kurshin shouted.

  “I’m here, Arkasha. Believe me, we are going to help each other.”

  31

  PAN AM FLIGHT 214 TOUCHED down at Charles de Gaulle Airport a few minutes after seven-thirty in the evening, nearly on time, and taxied to the terminal building.

  It took the passengers less than fifteen minutes to clear passport control, retrieve their bags, and get through customs.

  Carley Webb was waiting just within the main doors, her cheeks flushed and her hair glistening from the thickly falling snow, when Phil Carrara came across to her.

  “You’re a pleasant surprise,” he said.

  “Mike is tied up with the SDECE. He asked me to come fetch you,” Carley said. She looked exhausted, as if she hadn’t slept in days.

  “Besides, you wanted to spend a few minutes alone with me on the way into town,” Carrara said, not unkindly. He thought he knew how she felt. He was glad for both of them that Ryan wasn’t here.

  “Something like that,” she said. “My car is outside.” She managed a smile. “By the way, welcome to Paris. How was your flight?”

  “Thanks,” Carrara said. “Long. How are you holding up?”

  She looked at him. “Okay. But it’s a big mess here. Mike is doing a wonderful job, though. He’s got a lot of enthusiasm.”

  Carley’s car was a dark brown Peugeot. She drove fast with the traffic, and very competently.

  “He’s on his way back to Europe,” Carrara said when they’d cleared the airport. “At least we think he is.”

  “I saw the weekends. It couldn’t have been him, Phil.”

  “I want to agree with you. But the fact remains that Ken Bellows is dead. They found his body in one of the slums. The dogs had been at it.”

  “Not Kirk.”

  “The Argentinian federal police have issued arrest warrants for him and the woman he’s been traveling with. There were other killings, too. Another man, an Argentinian in Buenos Aires. A ship captain and his mate in a small coastal town south of Buenos Aires. A clerk and an Italian tourist in a Puerto Lobos hotel.” Carrara looked out the window. They were passing a big roadside ad for Perrier water. It was a huge bottle.

  “How do you know they’re coming here?”

  “They crossed the border into Chile Friday afternoon, and then disappeared. I’m guessing they’re on their way back here. Paris is where it all began.”

  Carley drove for several minutes in silence, concentrating on what she was doing. She was a very good-looking young woman, but essentially naive. It was wrong to have hired her, he decided. She was perfect for certain aspects of the job, aspects he’d never discussed with Dominique, but her career was killing her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She glanced at him. “Is he coming here to see me?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Again Carley fell silent. Then she said, “If he’s guilty, Phil, why come to see me? I mean the only reason he’d come back here would be to clear himself. To make sure that his name was cleared in connection with the attack on our embassy.”

  Carrara nodded. “That’s what I figured, kid,” he said. “But out of sixteen thousand employees in the Company, you and I may be the only ones to think so.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “There isn’t much you can do until he shows up.”

  “If he does.”

  “Right,” Carrara said. “In the meantime, we have a lot of work to do here. It’s the main reason I’ve come over.”

  “It’s the scheduling and communications that are killing us. We’ve lost direct contact with half of our networks.”

  “We’ll have to send out runners. Go back to the old field procedures.”

  “That’s what Mike thought, but he’s got his hands full with everything else at the moment,” Carley said.

  Traffic was heavy, which was normal for this time of the evening, but despite the snow no one had slowed down.

  “The general is after his scalp, isn’t he?” she asked after a time.

  “He wants him brought in at all costs. But at this point he only wants to have a parley. It’s Ryan who’s after his ass.”

  “Howard Ryan?” Carley asked, glancing over.

  Carrara nodded. “He’s after you, too. He thinks you may have helped McGarvey … wittingly or unwittingly. He thinks you were sleeping with him, and he thinks you’re in love with him.”

  “I see,” Carley said. “What do you believe?”

  “Whatever you tell me.”

  “And then?”

  “I’ll hold Ryan off from my end and let you and Mike get on with the business of rebuilding Paris.”

  “Fair enough,” Carley said. “Yes, I was sleeping with him, and yes, it’s true I’m in love with him. But that’s as far as it goes, Phil. I swear it.”

  “It’s good enough for me,” Carrara said gently.

  It was snowing heavily when McGarvey and Maria emerged from the Gare du Nord after their six-hour train—hovercraft—train trip from London. It seemed as if they had been traveling for months rather than a few days, partly because they were on the run, and partly because they had crossed from the Southern Hemisphere into the Northern, from summer into winter.

  After crossing the border into Chile, they had gone to the small airport at Osorno, where they’d caught a flight up to Santiago.

  They had spent the remainder of Saturday and all of Sunday in the capital city, purchasing new clothes, a couple of pieces of luggage, and—through McGarvey’s old contacts—new identification papers. To McGarvey it had seemed strange and even claustrophobic to be there. This had been where his fall from grace had begun. He’d been sent here to kill a man.

  But Santiago had not changed in those interim years. Coming into the city had been like entering the land of his own dreams, at once unreal and frightening. Leaving it had been a relief, even though by doing so he was returning to the real, much more dangerous world.

  Maria shivered and hunched up her coat collar as they got in line at the taxi rank.

  “Is anyone following us?” she asked, looking up at him.

  “I don’t think so.” McGarvey glanced over his shoulder at the people still coming out of the station. “Not yet, anyway, but he’ll be there. I can guarantee it.”

  “What does the bastard want? And just who are you?”

  “An interesting question,” he sa
id. “Do you want the truth?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “All right. I’ll tell you who I am, and then you’ll tell me who you really are, and who you work for.”

  “We’ve already gone over—”

  “Who owns International Traders, for starters?” McGarvey interrupted. “My guess would be the Mossad.”

  “No.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Some people in Argentina who want to see …”

  “What?”

  “Justice done.”

  “By finding this hoard of gold, and doing what with it?”

  “Returning it to its rightful owners,” Maria said defensively. “What are you after?”

  Life, he wanted to say, but he didn’t. “The truth,” he said instead.

  32

  IT WAS SNOWING VERY HARD. All of western Europe was gripped in the storm. The Channel ferries and hovercraft were being closed down. Charles de Gaulle and Orly had also been closed. Even the trains were being delayed. All travel was being discouraged for the next twenty-four hours.

  As McGarvey had learned from Dr. Hesse, Interpol wanted them for questioning in connection with the embassy bombing. For the CIA to have turned over their names to the civilian authorities was a drastic step.

  Alone, on the way over to Carley’s apartment in the First Arrondissement, McGarvey carefully watched his back to make certain he wasn’t being followed. But this time no one was behind him. The feeling wasn’t there. Kurshin was not here. Not yet.

  “It’s him,” Carley said softly from the window. “He’s in the doorway just across the street.”

  “Son of a bitch, he made it,” Carrara said admiringly from the bedroom door. “Is he alone?”

  “I think so,” Carley said. McGarvey stepped out of the shadows and started across the street. “Wait. He’s coming. He’s alone.” She turned away from the window.

  “Don’t clutch up now. You know what has to be done.”

  Carley shook her head. “I don’t know if I can do this, Phil. If he asks me something, I’ll have to tell the truth.”