First Kill--A Kirk McGarvey Novel

by David Hagberg

  * * *

  Anatoli Kaplin, the KGB’s number one at the Santiago station, had called first thing in the morning and asked Baranov to come in, but he wouldn’t say why on an open line. As a station chief he outranked Baranov, but he was also a practical man who had respect for an up-and-coming officer.

  Baranov understood this, but as a realist he knew that something was up. He’d heard it in the slight catch in Kaplin’s voice. The man was either impressed or frightened or both.

  He’d gotten dressed in a suit but no tie and as he drove into the city, he went over the possibilities. He had stuck his neck out to make his CESTA del Sur network—the best ongoing KGB operation anywhere in the world—even better. But it was at the risk of destruction if the delegation from Moscow never came here, or it did and was snubbed by Pinochet.

  For the moment Chile belonged to Washington. If Pinochet switched his allegiance to Moscow, it would be a feather in Baranov’s cap. If not, it could be a disaster for him personally. CESTA del Sur would be taken away from him.

  He was admitted through the gate of the embassy, drove around back and parked his car. He had a fully loaded Makarov pistol with a suppressor in the glove compartment, and he debated for just a moment taking it inside, but then got out of the car and after passing through security went directly up to Kaplin’s office on the third floor. No one would have questioned a senior officer coming in armed, though it would have been noted. But he was being foolish thinking that if something was wrong he might have to shoot his way out and go to ground.

  Kaplin, his jacket off, his tie loose, got up from behind his desk when Baranov came in. “You took your time.” His voice was sharp, the brows of his broad Slavic face creased with worry.

  “You never mentioned an urgency. But here I am. What do you want?”

  “It’s not me, it’s General Leonov. He’s waiting for your call.”

  As director of the KGB, Maxim Leonov was an exceedingly tough-minded man who was well connected in the Kremlin. For the first time Baranov felt the beginning of real fear. “Did he say why he wants to talk to me?”

  “It has something to do with Beckett. Apparently the CIA has taken notice of you and sat up.”

  “Of course they know of our operations here, as we do theirs.”

  “The general is waiting for your call from the referentura.”

  “Are you coming up?”

  “No. My instructions were that the call was to be private.”

  * * *

  It was coming up on five-thirty in the afternoon in Moscow when the call went through. A communications technician had set up the encrypted connection and had left, closing the soundproof door and switching on the anti-surveillance measures.

  Normally the call would have been picked up by an aide, but Leonov himself answered. “I’m told that the CIA has taken a special interest in you.”

  “We’re making good progress here, General.”

  “I’m talking about you personally. The Santiago Station chief has made inquiries here in Moscow about your background, and especially about your network in Mexico—which I was led to believe was secure.”

  “There are not many secrets in Mexico City, sir. The place is an open book. CESTA del Sur has always been suspected, but its real objective is not Mexico; it’s Cuba, of course. It’s the same with the Americans’ network OXCART. We know about it, and they know we know.”

  “And what is their real objective?”

  “We think it’s Cuba.”

  “Then why aren’t you in Mexico City finding out? Because at this point Cuba is more important to us than Chile. Pinochet belongs to Washington, something you knew before you left your post.”

  “I’m hoping to change that, General.”

  Leonov was silent for a long moment or two, and Baranov thought that perhaps the connection had been broken. But it came to him that the director was getting his legendary temper in check, and Baranov now almost wished he had taken the gun. He could be placed under arrest here. It was something he would not let happen.

  “Our chief of Washington Station has reported that two attempts were made on the life of a young CIA officer named Kirk McGarvey. Do you have any involvement?”

  “In the first attempt, yes, sir. But it was never meant to succeed, only to prove to the DINA that I was trying to save the life of one of their generals the CIA officer is being sent here to assassinate.”

  “Continue.”

  “I want the CIA officer to come here, because we will have set a trap to capture or kill him. Either way it will be a great embarrassment to the White House.”

  “You are a field officer, Captain,” Leonov said. “And from all accounts a very capable one. But you are not a diplomat. Leave politics to the politicians. You are simply a tool. Do you understand this?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is McGarvey still alive?”

  “I’m told that he is.”

  “His mission to assassinate General Varga still on track?”

  “Yes, sir, I believe it is.”

  “When do you suspect he will come to Chile, and what of his plans?”

  “I’m not sure of either, though he may possibly be coming in by sea. But there is a complication. He suspects that there are two moles in the CIA—one at Langley and the other at their training base in Virginia.”

  “The one at headquarters is yours; is the one at the Farm also your man?”

  “No, sir, he works for the DINA.”

  “You are a devious man,” Leonov said.

  Baranov thought he heard a slight admiration in the general’s tone. “What are my orders, sir?”

  “Don’t try to hide from the CIA. In fact, make your movements completely open. Make them believe that you have become even closer friends with General Varga and especially his wife. In turn they’ll intensify their efforts to stop you, because they understand that your real reason for being there is to bring your network out of Mexico. But what you don’t understand is that CESTA’s success in Mexico has nothing to do with Mexico’s alignment with the U.S. There is no need to bring Chile into our sphere although we’ll continue to make Washington think so.”

  “What are my orders, sir?” Baranov repeated.

  “Carry on, but with care. If you make a mistake, it could cost you more than your life.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  McGarvey took his time driving over to a breakfast bar in Georgetown, not far from the Key Bridge, doubling back, running red lights, slowing down, making U-turns, until he felt that he was reasonably safe. He called Trotter on a secure line in the OHB. The number rang five times and he was about to hang up when Trotter finally answered.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s me. Who was the shooter at Union Station? There’s been nothing about it in the newspapers or on television.”

  “And there won’t be. His name is Jim Dobbs. He was a contractor for us until two years ago, when we had to dump him. He and a friend gunned down eight Iraqi civilians, all of them heavily armed. Thing is the eight of them worked for us, so it was nothing more than a case of mistaken identity. But our hands were absolutely tied—we had to get rid of both of them.”

  “So who the hell sent him to take me out?” McGarvey asked.

  “I don’t know. I swear to God. We lost track of him; no one bothered to see what he did next. We didn’t care. It was just good riddance.”

  “A mistake. But thanks for saving my life.”

  “As it turns out a big mistake. But we’re working to find out whose payroll he was on. We’ll find out—I can promise you at least that much.”

  McGarvey was at a pay phone at the back of the restaurant. The pretty waitress came and refilled his coffee.

  “In the meantime you might want to rethink your op—although I sincerely hope you don’t back out,” Trotter said. He sounded out of breath, harried. “Something else has come up.”

  “What?”

  “There was another accident at the Farm. In the a
rmory. Your friend Tom Carol was killed.”

  McGarvey’s hand shook, but he forced himself to steady, thinking about Katy and Liz and about Janos and Pat. It was starting to look like anyone close to him was in danger. “Was it another sabotaged fuse?”

  “It looks like it. Apparently he was standing in front of the fuse cabinet when there was an explosion.”

  “Anyone else get hurt?”

  “It was in the middle of the night. No one else was there.”

  “Goddamnit, explosives are never kept in the same place as fuses. Somebody set him up.”

  “There’s another possibility that’s being tossed around. Just speculation for now, but worth looking into. There was no reason for Carol to be there at that hour. Not unless he was booby-trapping another explosive and he did something wrong so that it blew up in his face.”

  “I can’t believe it,” McGarvey said, at the same time wondering if he didn’t want to believe it.

  “Neither do I, but it’s on the table now and we can’t let it go,” Trotter said. “The question is, are you going ahead with the op? Or maybe it should be: Is it such a hot idea after all? The world won’t end if Varga is not taken out. And even if he does go down, someone else would take his place.”

  “I thought we were making a statement.”

  “That was the idea.”

  “But someone wants to stop me,” MacGarvey replied.

  “We don’t know who yet.”

  “Let’s find the why first, and the who should become evident. But I’m going to need your help.”

  “Good heavens, Kirk, of course I’ll do everything I can for you. I want to be your friend. Just name it. Anything. Anything at all.”

  From the start Trotter had struck McGarvey as a man with way too much nervous energy. It came across loud and clear now. “Three things. I want you to keep a watch on my wife and daughter, and on Janos and his family. But they can’t know about it.”

  “Can do,” Trotter said. “And the third?”

  “You said Jim Dobbs had a partner in the Iraqi shooting. Who was he?”

  “Russell Williams. And before you ask, after we cut him loose we never kept tabs on him either.”

  “Were they from the same part of the country?”

  “Massachusetts; they met at Berkshire Community College and joined the Army Rangers after two years. And yes, they both had New England accents, but if you’re suggesting that one of them was in Chile ordering the foreign minister around for the benefit of Munoz, you’re way off base. They were worker bees, nothing more than hired guns. Neither of them had the stature to get that close to any government official.”

  “No, but maybe someone at Berkshire recruited them even before the Rangers. Someone who became their control officer. Perhaps he was the man Campos and Munoz were supposed to overhear.”

  “It’s a community college. He’d also be nothing more than a hired gun.”

  “Like me?”

  Trotter hesitated. “Like you,” he admitted. “And by that token you wouldn’t be giving orders to a foreign minister.”

  “Who would be, and why?”

  “We don’t know who yet, nor the why.”

  “Maybe it was to counter the Russian advances. There’s the CESTA captain running around down there.”

  “Just a captain, nothing more.”

  “The two Chilean DINA officers were ordered to go after Baranov, and the conversation in the minister’s office was for their benefit.”

  “Yes, Kirk, but we’ve been driving ourselves nuts trying to figure out why.”

  “We?” McGarvey said.

  “The mission team,” Trotter said. “There’re eight of us. You didn’t think I was handling this on my own, did you? Good heavens, that’s not how this business works. You always minimize the risk by spreading out the analysis. More eyes on the subject, more brains working the issues, means more of the unk-unks will get predicted. If we can figure out what could go wrong, we might be able to head off the inevitable glitches that can sink a mission in a New York minute.”

  Unk-unks was a term borrowed from the engineers at Boeing. In any complex project, like designing and building a new airplane, problems that no one ever saw coming always showed up. They were called unknown unknowns, unk-unks for short. And it was the same for CIA mission planning.

  “They know my name. Read my file. Know my timetable.”

  “Yes on the first two, but no on the last. I don’t know your timetable, and I don’t think you do either.”

  McGarvey turned away from the phone for a moment. It was past the breakfast hour and the restaurant was mostly empty. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary; nevertheless, he lowered his voice.

  “Goddamnit, my ass is hanging out here. Someone has tried to kill me two times, and I haven’t even left the country yet. And now all I can think about is Katy and Liz and Janos.”

  “Surveillance units will be in place within the hour. I’ll have a satellite retasked to monitor their movements and their houses—your house—twenty-four/seven. And for now you’re going in by sea. That’s according to the mock-up you had constructed on the river at the Farm.”

  “But first I need to find the mole.”

  “Which one?”

  “Not at the Farm—I’m not going back there anytime soon.”

  “What’s your plan, if you can share it with me?”

  “I want you to tell your mission team that I’m mole hunting. In the meantime I want to talk to Campos and Munoz.”

  “About what?”

  “Arrange it, John. For some time tonight. Midnight.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  It was just past eleven when McGarvey doused his headlights and pulled up at the end of the short block. The windows in some of the houses showed lights, but many were dark, including his. It was odd. Liz was with his sister, but Katy usually stayed up reading until well after midnight, and the upstairs hall light was always on.

  Worse yet, no car was parked on the street or in the driveway. But Trotter had promised there would be a surveillance team here by now.

  Making a tight U-turn Mac flipped on his headlights and raced to the other end of the block, turning left toward the long curving drive, lined with trees, that led to the country club. It was a weekday night and the clubhouse closed at ten unless there was a special party. But except for the maintenance lights, and the lights illuminating the trees, the place was in darkness.

  Struggling to control himself, he drove around to the pro shop, past at least one hundred golf carts lined up in rows, then down the narrow cart path past the driving range and out to the first tee. Dousing his headlights again he turned left through yet another line of trees, some low hedges and flowerbeds, to the gravel road leading from the groundskeeper’s building. There he cut directly across the fifth fairway through the rough and onto the thirteenth fairway, just missing a pair of very large, very steep sand traps.

  The back of his house was on the left, halfway down the fairway, just before a creek guarding the green.

  He angled toward the line of trees just off the fairway, shut off the engine and got out of the car. Drawing his pistol he started on foot toward his house but stopped short. Two sets of footprints in the dew tracked directly across the fairway from the stone bridge toward his house.

  He headed in a run through the trees and held up just at the clearing that opened onto his large backyard. None of the rear windows were lit, and he had a very bad feeling. Trotter had promised to have Katy covered. If anything had happened to her, the son of a bitch was a dead man.

  Keeping low he ran in a zigzag path across the lawn and held up at the sliding door from the kitchen onto the patio. It was half open, but it wasn’t damaged. They had not forced an entry; they had picked the lock. And they must have deactivated the alarm system.

  He listened for a sound, any sound, but the house was quiet.

  Slipping inside he swung his pistol left to right, sweeping the room, the open door to the walk
-in pantry, and the corridor that led past the dining room to the front stair hall.

  He tried the telephone on the wall next to the counter with the coffeemaker and blender. There was a dial tone, so the line had not been cut.

  Keeping close to the wall, he moved down the corridor, pausing long enough to sweep the dining room, before continuing to the stair hall, stopping in the shadows just out of sight from anyone on the upstairs landing.

  In the light filtering in from the lamppost at the end of the driveway, he spotted two sets of still-wet footprints, one set at the open alarm pad. As far as he could tell it was undamaged. The intruders knew the security code.

  The footprints crossed the stair hall and went up.

  Everything within him wanted to race upstairs and kill the bastards, but he dreaded what he was going to find.

  A man upstairs said something that McGarvey couldn’t quite make out, but then another at the head of the stairs answered, “They’re not here.”

  “Are you sure?” the first one demanded.

  “Goddamnit, clothes in the kid’s closet and drawers were missing, just like in the broad’s. They’re gone, so let’s get the fuck outta here.”

  McGarvey eased back down the corridor and slipped just inside the dining room. His relief was sweet, only tempered by an almost blinding anger that someone had come gunning for his wife and child. Had actually entered his home.

  The two men came down the corridor. The first one passed the dining room door, and McGarvey grabbed him by the jacket and yanked him inside at the same moment he reached around the doorframe with his pistol and fired two shots center mass at the other man, who went down hard.

  McGarvey swung back as the first man was reaching inside his jacket. He stopped when the muzzle of McGarvey’s gun steadied on his face.

  “You broke into my house to kill my wife and daughter. Who sent you?”