First Kill--A Kirk McGarvey Novel

by David Hagberg

  “Meet me just inside Turkey Run Park in ten minutes. I have something for you,” McGarvey said and he hung up.

  He drove to the park, turning in at the first entrance just down from the highway, got out of the car and walked over with the tapes from the travel agency as Trotter pulled up in a blue BMW.

  “Have a look at these, see if there’s anyone we know. And show them to Campos and Munoz. I want to know how they react.”

  “Surveillance tapes from Georgetown?”

  “Yes, and I’m on one of them.”

  “Okay, then what?”

  “Send your guys over to me at the Marriott. Three-oh-three.”

  “Alone?”

  “Have one of their minders drop them off out front, then back off.”

  “Until what happens, Kirk? What are you playing at?”

  McGarvey told him about the encounter with the woman from the travel agency, and her admission that she knew Dobbs and Williams. “She said that she’d be sending her best next time.”

  “I’ll have the Bureau arrest her and everyone else over there.”

  “Not yet. She gave me a name, but he’ll just be a front. We still don’t know who she’s really working for. Maybe we’ll find out tonight.”

  Trotter shook his head as if he were at a loss for words. “You’re going to get yourself killed, you know.”

  “Nature of the game, isn’t it, John?”

  * * *

  He parked his car in plain sight of the Marriott’s lobby entrance and went inside, where he checked at the desk for messages. But there were none.

  It was six-thirty, still early for anyone to show up. He went into the bar, where he ordered a Jack Daniel’s up, but the young bartender made a mistake and poured him a Korbel Brandy instead.

  “Sorry, sir,” he said, realizing his error.

  McGarvey held his hand over the glass. “This’ll be fine, thanks.”

  He’d seen the mistake. Details, he thought. He had become hyperaware of his surroundings without even trying to force it. Something his instructors at the Farm said would either come or not come to the field officer. The best—meaning the ones who survived the longest—developed the talent early, because without it you were practically blind.

  Finishing his drink, he signed for it and went into the dining room, where he ordered a rib eye and fries, and a bottle of Heineken. The place was more than half filled, at least forty people, most of them businessmen. Without making a show of it, he noticed and remembered each of them: the one with the blue tie, the two talking as if they were hatching a plot, the woman with large breasts, the man with the thin mustache, the four men just as obviously drunk as they were obviously ex-military. Ordinary. No one suspicious. Background noise through which he could pick out someone who did not fit. The one here to kill him.

  He took his time with his dinner, cataloging those who came and those who left. Still no one suspicious. Yet.

  Except for the drunks. Something about them tickled at the edge of his consciousness for just a brief moment and then was gone.

  Signing for his check he asked at the desk again for any messages. There was one from Trotter.

  They’ll be there at ten. Nothing interesting on the surveillance tapes.

  Three-oh-three was across the corridor from the stairs, and had a tiny balcony that looked across the water to the city, coming aglow with the darkness.

  Without turning on the lights, he pulled the sheer drapes and opaque liners aside and opened the sliders. The sound of traffic was steady, and just to the south a jet took off from National Airport, turning west and then south almost immediately. He could almost smell the burned Kerojet. Somewhere in the distance a siren raced off to some emergency.

  He took the lamp off a small table, then pulled the table and the easy chair over to a spot beside the slider, from where he couldn’t be seen from the outside but had a clear sight line on the door.

  Taking off his jacket and laying it on the bed, he checked the load on his Walther and set the pistol along with a spare magazine of ammunition on the table.

  For a half minute or so he stood in the shadows next to the open slider and looked at the city in the distance and then the parking lot directly below.

  Waiting, a CIA field operations instructor had told the class, was often the most difficult part of any op: “Wait patiently and you survive; wait badly and you have a chance of dying for your country.”

  McGarvey unlocked the door, then sat down next to the slider to wait.

  FORTY-THREE

  Baranov showed up unannounced just before 9:00 P.M. at the main entrance of La Moneda Palace. He powered down his car’s window as two armed guards came out. One of them stood back and to the side as Baranov handed out his passport and KGB identity wallet.

  The Plaza de la Constitución to the north and Plaza Libertad to the south were already crowded with traffic and pedestrians. Santiago and other major cities in South America generally came alive in the evening, dinner sometimes not happening until ten, eleven or even twelve o’clock.

  Many offices and commercial establishments stayed open late. And work in the Presidential Palace often went on late as well.

  “What is your business here, sir?” the guard examining his papers asked politely. His name tag read RUIZ.

  “I would like a brief meeting with el Presidente.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, but it’s important that he’s told I’m here,” Baranov said. He was already on shaky ground with Pinochet, but he needed the president’s understanding and approval of what was coming next.

  Ruiz handed Baranov’s papers to the other guard, then stepped back. “I’ll require that you step out of your automobile, señor, while keeping your hands in plain sight at all times.”

  “Pizdec,” Baranov swore.

  Ruiz raised his weapon, an American M16, while the second guard spoke into a lapel mic.

  Baranov eased the door open and, keeping his hands away from his body, got out of the car.

  “Turn around, spread your legs and place your hands on the roof of your car, please,” Ruiz said.

  Baranov did as he was told.

  Ruiz slung his weapon over his shoulder and quickly frisked Baranov, who was glad that he’d left his pistol in the glove compartment.

  “As you can see I’m not armed. If you want to verify my identity, call Señor Felipe Torres at the DINA. I’m working with him. But it is essential that I speak with the president this evening.”

  The second guard was finished on the radio. “Is this an official visit, sir?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “May we know the nature of your business with el Presidente?”

  “It’s classified.”

  The guard spoke on the radio again, and at length he nodded. “An escort is on her way,” he told Baranov. “But the president’s chief of staff requests that you be very brief.”

  “Of course,” Baranov said. He turned to get back into his car but Ruiz stopped him. “You will be going the rest of the way on foot. Your car will be waiting for you when you come out.”

  * * *

  An attractive woman with long, sleek black hair, wearing a long-sleeved gray dress cut to her knees with a modest bodice, came out of the palace and walked directly across to where Baranov stood with the guards.

  “The president has been expecting you. He’ll meet with you in his private conference room if you’ll follow me.”

  There was nothing pleasant about her demeanor or attitude. She had been ordered to fetch someone to a meeting inside the palace, and following her Baranov got the impression that her attitude would have been no different if she were fetching him to a firing squad.

  “The willingness to make bold moves is the mark of a man who will either rise greatly or fall greatly,” his father, the general, told him more than once. “No worthwhile reward is without risk. Never.”

  His father had eventually been sent to Siberia to cou
nt the birches. He had dared greatly enough to work in a senior Kremlin position, and his fall had been just as great.

  With care and imagination, he’d wanted to tell the old man, but he’d never got the chance.

  Inside they took an elevator up to the third floor, still busy with people coming and going from various rooms, where the woman led him to a suite of offices at the northeast corner of the building, looking toward the Church of the Agustinas.

  A door off the anteroom opened to a small, artfully decorated conference room with a hand-carved mahogany table and chairs for ten. No one was there yet.

  “The president will be with you momentarily,” the guide said and she left.

  The tall windows were heavily curtained, the drapes pulled back and tied in the middle. Baranov went over and looked outside at the people and traffic on the street.

  A door on the opposite side of the room opened and Pinochet, along with Torres, came in. The DINA deputy chief closed the door.

  “I’m not surprised that you’re here, just a little curious so soon after your meeting with the CIA’s chief of station,” Torres said.

  “You’ve had me followed,” Baranov said.

  “Of course.”

  “Shall we sit down?”

  “No,” Pinochet said. “You’ve met with Mr. Beckett without informing us. Tell me why I should not order your arrest and return to Moscow for trial.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. President, charged with what?”

  “The CIA is no friend of yours, especially considering what you came to warn us about,” Torres said.

  “Nor ultimately a friend of Chile’s,” Baranov said. He almost felt as if he were already standing in front of that firing squad.

  “Don’t toy with us, Captain,” Pinochet said, his anger obviously in check for the moment. “Why did you meet with Beckett?”

  “To tell him that I was going to assassinate General Varga.”

  Even Torres was taken by surprise. “Did you tell him that you suspected the CIA was sending someone to do it?”

  “Yes, and he denied it, of course. In effect I told him that I was willing to save them the trouble, because General Varga was as much a disappointment and potential embarrassment to Moscow as he was to Washington.”

  “Is that why you’re fucking his wife, just to get close to them?” Pinochet demanded.

  “Yes, and him too,” Baranov said.

  His admission that he was having sex with both wife and husband hung in the air for several long beats.

  A look passed between the DINA director and el Presidente. Torres went to a phone on a side table and called someone. “Hold the president’s meeting, please,” he said.

  “Why?” Pinochet asked Baranov.

  “The reasons are complicated.”

  “Don’t try our patience,” Torres said angrily.

  “I have a source within the CIA’s headquarters, and Señor Torres has his inside the CIA’s training facility.” Baranov spoke directly to Pinochet. “We have spent the last several days comparing notes about the assassin they are sending here. We’ve each tried to engineer this man’s elimination without success. He is resourceful, and lucky. But we’ve discovered the possibility that someone else is also trying to stop him. At first I thought that Felipe was lying to me, and I expect that he thought the same of me. But now I’m sure it’s a third party, though I have no idea of their agenda.”

  “I agree,” Torres said.

  “If I assassinate Varga and his wife, and if Felipe and I tell our sources, all that will be left is the third party. Their next action will not only reveal who they are but what their purpose is.”

  Torres understood but Pinochet was puzzled. “You won’t actually kill them,” he said. “I don’t care about Karina, but I do need his services.”

  “No, Señor Presidente, but it will have to be convincing.”

  “A state funeral could be arranged,” Torres said. “After all, Mati was a hero of the nation.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  The telephone on the nightstand in McGarvey’s room rang shortly after ten. He picked up his pistol, and checking out the slider to the parking lot below for anything or anyone out of the ordinary, he got to it on the second ring. It was Trotter.

  “Paul just radioed. He’s turning into the hotel’s driveway right now. Where do you want him to park?”

  “In front but away from the lights.”

  “Stand by,” Totter said. He was gone briefly. “He’s parking. What next?”

  “Have him wait five minutes. If anything looks bad, tell him to get the hell out of here.”

  “Do you think someone from the travel agency is going to show up?”

  “I have a feeling they’re already here,” McGarvey said, thinking about the four ex-military drunks in the dining room. “They’ll probably be expecting me to call for help so they’ll be on the lookout. Have Paul keep a sharp eye.”

  “Do you want me to send some backup?”

  “No. I don’t want to scare these guys off. With any luck I’m going to take one of them alive and ask him a few questions.”

  “What do you want Paul to do with our guests if no one shows up?”

  “Bring them up to me.”

  “Why, in heaven’s name?”

  “I want to see how they react when they come face to face with me.”

  “What the hell would that tell you?” Trotter blurted.

  “Who they were working for. Or at least a hint.”

  “Paul’s in place,” Trotter said.

  “Five minutes,” McGarvey told him and he hung up.

  He went to the door and listened but the corridor was quiet, though he thought he could hear music in the distance. Probably from the bar downstairs.

  Back at the slider he cautiously looked down at the parking lot. From his vantage point he spotted a windowless gray Chevy van of the type the Agency used for any number of jobs—including surveillance. Its lights were out, and he could just make out the figure of someone behind the wheel. Paul Reubens, the minder.

  A Mustang came into the entrance but turned left toward the other end of the parking lot. He watched it until the driver pulled into a spot and doused the lights.

  The music was clearer here at the open slider, and for a moment or two it held his attention.

  A couple got out of the Mustang and walked to the front entrance.

  A flash of light off to the left, so dim against the parking lot lights that it nearly escaped McGarvey’s notice, was followed by five other flashes in rapid succession.

  He turned in time to see what looked at this distance to be a woman dressed in dark clothes—possibly the large-breasted woman from the dining room—walk away from the Company van.

  The flashes had been pistol shots.

  McGarvey raced to the door, opening it just far enough so that he could make sure that the corridor was clear.

  He stepped across to the stairwell door, checked through its window to make sure the stairs were clear as well, then headed down in a dead run, but on the balls of his feet so he made as little noise as possible.

  On the ground floor the door to the outside was fifteen feet to the right. He burst out into the corridor and started to turn right, when a big man in a dark sport coat came out of the men’s room, his right hand inside his jacket.

  McGarvey swiveled left, keeping his profile as narrow as possible, and brought up his pistol in both hands, aiming at center mass.

  For a long moment the man was stunned, rooted to the spot. But then his mouth opened, he staggered back a step and his hand came out of his jacket, a pocket comb dropping to the floor.

  McGarvey almost shot him on instinct, but then he backed off and lowered his pistol. “Get out of here,” he said.

  The man didn’t move until McGarvey flicked his pistol at him, and then he turned and hurried toward the lobby.

  Before the guy was out of sight McGarvey was outside, in a crouch, sweeping the parking lot left to right. N
othing moved.

  Keeping to the shadows as much as possible he hurried to the west end of the building and took a quick look around the corner. Whoever had been at the van, a woman or one of the drunks—though he thought it was the woman from the dining room—was nowhere in sight.

  A car started up, backed out of its parking spot and headed his way.

  He ducked back out of sight, holding the pistol just behind his right leg, the muzzle pointing outward, until the car came around the corner. As it passed him, he got the impression of a young woman with long blond hair driving, and then it was gone, exiting toward the parkway.

  Stepping away from the building he checked the open slider at his room for any sign that someone was up there waiting for him to take the bait and show himself. But if anyone was there, they were hidden just inside the room, like he’d done.

  He sprinted directly across the parking lot to an old Ford Fairlane, and keeping low, using it for cover, he made his way the last fifteen yards to where the van was parked.

  All the lights were out, but its engine was running. He worked his way up to the driver’s side and rose up to take a quick look inside.

  Paul Reubens, blood pooled on the center console from a wound in the side of his head, lay slumped over, his eyes open. He was obviously dead.

  Making sure again that no one was at the window to his room, he worked his way around to the open sliding door on the opposite side of the van. Campos and Munoz had both been shot in the face at close range. Both of them were dead.

  Reubens and the two Chilean DINA offices had been lured into a trap. But by whom—someone from the travel agency or the mole at Langley?

  The latter pointed toward Trotter—so obviously toward Trotter that he couldn’t accept it. The obvious wasn’t always a lie, neither were coincidences. But in this case he’d bet just about everything that Trotter was not the mole.

  McGarvey walked back to the main entrance, sticking mostly to the shadows, and holstered his pistol under his shirt at the small of his back before he went inside.

  Checking at the desk for messages—there were none—he walked into the bar. A woman had just finished a set at the piano. The four drunks had moved there from the dining room, but the woman and many of the others who’d been having dinner earlier had not. If anything the four guys were drunker than before, and loud, but maybe it was an act.