First Kill--A Kirk McGarvey Novel

by David Hagberg

  “Obviously there is a quid pro quo that you’re seeking,” Varga said. “And despite what you told my wife there are methods to protect our lives short of staying here and short of surrounding myself with troops. So, the question hangs: What do you want in return for your little favor?”

  “You were already warned about the assassin.”

  Varga nodded.

  “Who warned you?”

  Varga shrugged.

  “Your boss? Someone in the DINA?”

  “Why do you need this information?”

  Elementary, my dear Watson, Baranov wanted to say. Because whoever warned the DINA about McGarvey’s coming could possibly be the same source in Washington that Baranov had relied on for several years now. And if that were the case, it would mean that his contact had his own agenda.

  “I’m playing a dangerous game, General. It’s not only your life that’s at stake. Let’s just say that I have a vested interest in keeping you alive, keeping you doing what you do best for Chile.”

  “And for that you drugged us for your little game?”

  “I needed to get your attention.”

  “You have it.”

  “I need an introduction to whoever warned you.”

  “Why?”

  “I would like to pool my resources.”

  “For the good of Moscow.”

  “Yes, and for the good of Santiago.”

  Varga exchanged a glance with his wife. “Torres.”

  Baranov was startled. It wasn’t a name he’d expected. “Felipe Torres? The deputy director of the DINA?”

  “Yes. And I should have warned you to take care with what you wished for. General Torres is a dangerous man. Maybe the most dangerous friend you might have here.”

  SIXTEEN

  The morning shift began arriving around eight. Plonski got up from his desk and went down the hall to the coffeemaker, where Patsy was making a fresh pot before leaving.

  “Finally finished?” she asked.

  “For all the good it’s done me,” he said, keeping a straight face. But he’d stumbled on something—at least in the negative sense—a couple of hours ago and he’d kept coming up against dead ends. The anomalies Mac worried about and that Trotter had asked after.

  “It’s common knowledge that Beckett is a prima donna; what’d you expect, for him to beg for alms?” Pasty said.

  The chief of Santiago Station loudly protested that the post was a dead end for his career. After Vietnam the next big trouble spots would be in the Near East, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia—all of those places were set to explode and careers were to be made there. Dick Beckett’s downfall was his connections on the Hill, especially in the Senate, where his sister was serving her third term for Massachusetts, and his wife, who had been born in Puerto Rico and understood Hispanic machismo. He’d been put in Chile because it was believed he would do a good job there, well away from Washington, where his sister had sometimes been a vocal critic of the entire U.S. intelligence community, especially the CIA and the National Security Agency.

  When he’d been assigned to Santiago, he’d been briefed that Chile was poised to be the bellwether for just about everything happening in the southern hemisphere, especially where it concerned the Russians.

  But Beckett never bought it. And in his two years in country his monthlies bore out his opinion that nothing was doing, except for the mass murders that were coming to light in Valparaíso.

  His request for the expensive laser equipment had come out of the blue. And he hadn’t offered any proposal for an operation where it would be needed.

  His station was going after something or someone, but he’d not said what or who it might be. And the most damning bit in Plonski’s estimation was that no one in the DO had pressed him.

  “It’s already there,” he said. “But there’ve been no vouchers.”

  “If you’re done, I’ll refile the lot before I leave. And if you ask me, I think that you should go home and get some sleep,” Patsy offered.

  “I probably will.”

  Trotter, freshly shaved, his tie knotted correctly, was just coming off the elevator when Plonski headed back to his office with his coffee. He was not surprised to see the man, though he was concerned.

  Mac had wanted to know about anomalies, and here was Trotter—a very large anomaly.

  “Good morning, Janos. Still have the bit in your teeth?”

  “I’m a detail man, sir. Can’t help it.”

  Patsy came out of Plonski’s office with the wheeled cart. Trotter stepped in her way and cocked his head to read the legend on the spine of the front file. He smiled and stepped aside to let her pass.

  “Coffee?” Plonski asked when Patsy was gone.

  “No, I just popped down for a little chin,” Trotter said.

  Plonski had always thought that Trotter’s bon mots were forced. But he’d never tried to figure out why. He motioned Trotter into his office and both men took seats at Plonski’s desk. “Santiago’s becoming an interesting place.”

  “Every station has its time,” Trotter said. “Good heavens, you’re still not concerned with Dick’s shopping list, are you? It’ll have no effect whatsoever on Mac’s mission. Trust me.”

  Plonski trusted damned few people, and Trotter wasn’t one of them. “It’s just the coincidence of it.”

  “Has Mac shared his op with you?”

  “No, he wouldn’t do that. He just asked me to take a quick run past Santiago’s housekeeping budget. The loose items, you know.”

  “Like the laser?”

  “Beckett suddenly mounts a surveillance operation on someone sophisticated enough to realize that he was being watched. I was just wondering a couple of things.”

  Trotter nodded.

  “Who is being watched, and does it have anything at all to do with Mac?”

  “A Russian KGB officer—one of the powers in CESTA del Sur.”

  “Mexico City?”

  “Yes. And as far as it concerns Mac, these are two totally separate activities,” Trotter said. He hesitated for a beat. “But I thought I may have heard a third question.”

  The construction crew had come on duty outside, and earthmovers and a crane were powering up, but none of those sounds penetrated. The windows here as elsewhere throughout the campus were double glazed, the spaces between the panes filled with nitrogen gas and continuously bombarded with white noise. Laser surveillance devices wouldn’t have a chance.

  “I was just wondering who ordered the surveillance of the Russian, and exactly what the Russian is doing in what I assumed has been pretty much our exclusive territory.”

  “Trying to make inroads, of course. It’s how the game has always been played. But as for whose particular project this is, I suppose I’d have to go over to the Russian desk and see what’s up.”

  “Then it’s possible Mac could be affected.”

  “No,” Trotter said, a little too sharply, and he immediately smiled. “You and he are friends—I know this. And I hope that you know he and I are close. I want you to believe when I tell you that Mac’s operation has been authorized at the very highest of levels, and will rise or fall on its own merits.”

  “And Mac’s abilities with no outside interference.”

  Trotter got up, closed the door and came back. But he did not sit down.

  “I’ve been told that we need accountability,” Plonski said before Trotter could speak. “Nothing more, Mr. Trotter. Who authorized the purchase and against what operation shall I list it as? Simple bookkeeping.”

  “The operation is classified beyond your level of need-to-know.”

  It was an extraordinary thing for Trotter to say, because down here in the basement were essentially the keys to the kingdom. “I can accept that. But I need a name—an operational name, or short of that the authorizing signature.”

  “No operational designator.”

  “Then just let me jot your name down in the margins so that when the dust settles, we have
a source.”

  “Good heavens, no, Janos,” Trotter said as if he were genuinely pained. “What do you think this business is all about?”

  Which business? Plonski wanted to ask, but he didn’t. He’d struck a nerve, which for now was enough. Something was going on that someone was ashamed of. Or least it was something that wasn’t supposed to see the light of day. Not now, perhaps not ever.

  “I’ll mark the file as open,” he said.

  “Fine,” Trotter said. He went to the door but turned back. “We need more discussions like this, Janos. Believe me, transparency is the only way any of us—this agency—will possibly survive.”

  Plonski almost laughed out loud, but he just nodded, and Trotter left.

  Patsy came in a minute later. “What was that all about?”

  “Accountability,” Plonski said. “Go home.”

  When she was gone, he closed the door again, and telephoned Major Leonard Treitman, an old friend of his who was at Ft. McGillis Army Depot outside Lynchburg. Treitman was in charge of the Special Records Section, where just about every scrap of paper the U.S. intelligence community generated finally ended up.

  “Good morning, Leonard.”

  “Janos, good morning. How’re Pat and the kids?”

  “Just great, thanks for asking. But listen, I’m following up on a request by Santiago Station and I’m coming up empty-handed. I thought I’d drive down this morning and borrow one of your clerks for an hour or so.”

  “Absolutely. Can you share on this line?”

  “Nothing important, believe me. It’s just a handful of vouchers in the last thirty days that the operational officer, whoever he is, forgot to sign. And no one upstairs wants to deal with it. Frankly I think someone screwed up and doesn’t want to admit it.”

  “Might be better to let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “I intend to do just that, which is why I called you personally. All I want is an operational name to tidy the record.”

  “I’ll have Mrs. Goldberg pull the files for you.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Plonski signed out, telling the chief clerk that he was going home for some sleep and wouldn’t be back till tomorrow, and was on the road a few minutes before nine. He stopped at a Shell station, where he filled up his green Chevy Impala and phoned Pat.

  “I’m home sleeping. If anyone calls, tell them I’m not to be bothered until dinnertime.”

  She was angry. “Are you with Mac?”

  “Honest to God, no.”

  “But you’re doing something for him that no one at work is supposed to know about. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll explain when I get home.”

  “Goddamnit, Janos, I’m afraid.”

  “Don’t be,” he said.

  Mac hadn’t warned him specifically to be careful who he told, but the implication had been there. And Trotter had been lying through his teeth this morning. The problem was that already too many people apparently knew what Mac had been ordered to do. It was sloppy; more than that, it was incredibly dangerous.

  But the thought had struck him even before Trotter had left his office that whoever the East Coast American was who’d been sent down to Santiago was the key to the operation. Perhaps even its architect, and that the laser surveillance equipment had not come out of the blue after all.

  “It’s the little bits and apparently disconnected threads that make the whole,” Howard Vitense, his old mentor in archives, had told him at the beginning a few years ago.

  They’d been standing on the balcony in the main warehouse at Ft. McGillis, looking down at the rows of double-sided shelves, twenty feet tall, that seemed to stretch to the horizon. File clerks driving electric golf carts scurried like mice through a maze looking to retrieve those bits and pieces.

  “Everything is there for the asking. Get the right pieces and you’ll solve the puzzle.”

  “The problem is finding out what the right pieces are,” Plonski had said.

  Vitense was a white-haired, stooped old man who looked at the world through thick glasses. He was on the verge of retiring. “Ideally you need the picture on the box of the jigsaw puzzle first,” he said, chuckling.

  Plonski had caught the joke. “How often does that happen?”

  “Almost never.”

  “So you start with a few odd pieces and go from there.”

  * * *

  He showed his security pass at the gate through the tall razor-wire-topped chain link fence and was admitted to the small post nestled in the hills just east of the city a bit past one-thirty. Almost all of the buildings were constructed of red brick with white wood trim, the millions of feet of records housed in long warehouses.

  Driving over to Admin, he was struck as always by the base’s air of desertion. A few cars were parked here and there, but no one was out or about.

  He’d been told that eventually everything would be computerized, but that these paper records would be transferred to a climate-controlled underground facility at Ft. A.P. Hill, a lot closer to Washington. That was a couple of years off and until then records thirty days old and older were sent here.

  Treitman was in the middle of a staff meeting but he’d alerted the front desk that Plonski would be arriving from Langley and that Mrs. Goldberg was to be assigned to give him a hand. The young lieutenant gave him a pass and directed him to 101 Baker.

  “It’s the incoming-document processing facility,” she told him. “Would you like an escort?”

  “I know the way.”

  “I’ll let Major Treitman know you’re here.”

  “Sure,” Plonski said.

  * * *

  Ruth Goldberg turned out to be a plump young woman with a vivacious smile and long, delicate piano player’s fingers. The processing facility was busy. A dozen clerks were hard at work cataloging and organizing files, scraps of paper, handwritten notes, photographs, maps, and stacks of newspaper and magazine articles in more than a dozen different languages.

  The material was delivered by truck at the loading docks in the rear, and carted to the vast sorting area, where it would eventually be transported out to the warehouses.

  “No one is brief,” Ruth said.

  “Mea culpa,” Plonski said. “Some of those documents came through me.”

  “Yes, sir, I know your name. But not to worry—it’s job security. So exactly what name are we looking for?”

  “That’s it—I don’t have a name; it’s why I’m here. I’m looking at operational expenditures for the past thirty days at our embassy in Santiago, Chile.”

  “Money spent or requested?”

  “Both. Let’s start with requests from Dick Beckett. He received the laser surveillance equipment. I want to see who signed off.”

  Ruth set him up in a small office behind glass windows that looked out at the sorting area. The room was not assigned and was equipped only with a desk and chair, a phone and a four-drawer file cabinet that was empty.

  The woman was back in under five minutes with a thick file folder, a half-dozen pencils and a stack of ruled legal pads. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Not yet. For now I’d like to see the visitors’ log. Who came and went from the station, what they were doing and under whose signature.”

  “I see what you’re doing,” Ruth said. “Somebody paid for the equipment and the travel. Are you trying to connect the laser and the visits?”

  That was exactly what he was looking for, but he just smiled. “Just fishing for now, Mrs. Goldberg.”

  “Ruth,” she said.

  * * *

  The laser file consisted of three parts. The first were the technical specs on the gear, the second was its intended use and the third was the operational funds request, signed by Beckett, but not yet signed by anyone in Langley. The order was pending. But what was most interesting to Plonski was that the request had simply been routed to the Science and Technical Directorate. Not to the deputy director, and not to the Directorate of Operation
s.

  Beckett wanted to mount a surveillance operation on a Russian KGB officer by the name of Valentin Baranov, who lived part-time out of the Russian embassy, but who had also set up camp at the compound of a former air force officer in San Antonio.

  Trotter had not been lying about the Russian, and Plonski knew enough to understand why the suits on the seventh floor had sat up and taken notice. Chile was America’s, had been ever since the U.S. had bankrolled Pinochet’s rise to power. No one was letting it go without a fight. Especially not to the Russians.

  But nowhere was it mentioned if the laser unit was to be aimed at the windows of the Russian embassy. If that were the plan, it would be a very large deal if it was detected—the largest and most politically dangerous operation against the Russians in years.

  Ruth came back with a half-dozen files, these of visitors to the CIA station in the embassy. “The station’s operational logs are classified need-to-know. I’ll have to get someone to countersign under an operational heading before I can show them to you.”

  “How about budget requests and funds actually expended for the entire embassy?”

  “The station’s budget is black.”

  “But it’s included in the embassy’s bottom line. Mr. Beckett’s expenditures would leave holes.”

  “Devious,” Ruth said, grinning. “Be back in a jiff.”

  Plonski flipped through the visitors’ list, but none of the names stuck out in his mind, until he compared the date of the laser request with dates of visitors from Washington. Four days after Beckett’s paperwork went through, someone showed up from Washington. The name had been redacted from the log.

  The telephone rang at the same moment Ruth appeared at the door. She wasn’t carrying any files.

  “I believe the call is for you,” she said.

  It was Trotter. “They said you’d signed out but no one knew where you’d gotten yourself. I was just wondering if I couldn’t lure you back. Perhaps we could go to dinner somewhere, maybe have a drink or two.”

  He had struck a nerve. “I’ll give Pat a call, tell her I’ll be late.”