First Kill--A Kirk McGarvey Novel

by David Hagberg

  “Did he give any hints?”

  “No. And your name and your op were not mentioned. But if he’s bringing whatever it is up here in person, it has to be big. I know Dick personally, and he never goes off half cocked. Before he gets here he will have already worked out just about every possibility.”

  “What’s your take on the timing?” McGarvey asked. But he was already three steps ahead. “One day Baranov meets with our COS and the next he bugs out back to Mexico.”

  “I’m not sure. But it’s a real possibility that he’s set something up in Santiago, and he has to get out of the country before it goes down.”

  It was about what McGarvey figured. But something else that Trotter had said suddenly made sense, at least from an angle.

  “You said that the laser product from the Russian embassy has fallen off; what did you mean?”

  “They probably figured out that the referentura was no longer secure, so they stopped work until they got it figured out. SOP.”

  “But not before Baranov announced that he was returning to Mexico.”

  Trotter took a moment to respond, and when he did he seemed cautious. “Could be an innocent coincidence. Might not be such a good idea to jump to conclusions. The bastard could have set up any number of nasty little surprises. It’s his style.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Maybe you should sit tight for a bit until Dick gets up here with his report.”

  “I’ll stay the night here, talk to you tomorrow afternoon. Maybe by then you’ll know what Dick’s bringing.”

  “Where’re you bunking?”

  “Hold on,” McGarvey said. He motioned the bartender over and then covered the phone’s mouthpiece. “What’s a decent hotel here at the airport?”

  “The Windsor’s okay. The shuttle will get you there.”

  “Anywhere else?”

  “The Clarion.”

  “The Windsor,” McGarvey told Trotter.

  “Watch your back.”

  * * *

  McGarvey got his bag and took the escalator back up to the ticketing counters, where he found that American Airlines flew to Acapulco on Mexico’s Pacific coast, about 170 miles from Mexico City. It was an eighteen-hour trip leaving in just an hour, going to Dallas first, then ironically Mexico City for a nearly seven-hour layover before arriving at the resort town a little after eight in the morning.

  He booked a first-class round-trip under the name Kenneth Whiteside, paying with a Gold American Express and presenting his matching passport.

  After he surrendered his bag, he went to a pay phone and, using his Larson identification, booked rooms for two nights first at the Windsor and next at the Clarion. Then he went back to the international terminal, where he got another beer and waited for his flight.

  * * *

  The flight wasn’t long, and dinner wasn’t served until the Dallas-to–Mexico City leg, but McGarvey managed to snooze off and on, so by the time they touched down at Benito Juárez International Airport a little after midnight he was in reasonable shape.

  He went back up to the nearly deserted American Airlines ticketing counters, where after nearly one hour he managed to talk to a supervisor and explain that his company wanted him to stay here in Mexico City, and not continue on to Acapulco until the day after tomorrow.

  He was willing to pay the stiff rebooking fee, as well as any other handling charges, but he would need his bag before it was loaded aboard the AeroMéxico flight to Acapulco, which left at seven in the morning.

  And it was nearly an hour later before the bag showed up at customs, and he was passed through by a sleepy agent without questions. Afterward he took a taxi into the city to the Four Seasons in midtown, where he registered under his Whiteside work name.

  Baranov’s people would be expecting him to come here, not under his own name of course. So they would be looking for anyone coming in from the U.S. whose itinerary was out of the ordinary. Anomalous.

  He had just unzipped his fly and told the Russian he had come to town.

  FIFTY

  First thing in the morning Baranov was in his office at the Russian embassy in Mexico City watching the Chilean government news television state Canal 24 Horas. The newsreader was recapping the story of the murder-suicide of General Varga and his wife at their compound outside of San Antonio.

  A special unit of the Investigations Police refused to make any comment or even name the chief officer in the case, but questions were already being asked if something more ominous had occurred.

  A spokesman for President Pinochet had promised that every possible effort would be made to find out what really happened to the general and his wife, who were close personal friends of el Presidente.

  Baranov turned down the volume. In effect Pinochet had just admitted that the problem that bothered the White House no longer existed, while at the same time thumbing his nose at the Americans—especially the CIA.

  He went up to the referentura and made an encrypted call to Felipe Torres.

  “Switching over,” he said when Torres answered.

  “Si.”

  “I’ve just watched el Presidente stick it to the Americans on television. Has he gotten any reaction from Washington?”

  “None that’s been reported to me,” Torres said.

  “There’s been no mention of my name.”

  “And there won’t be. We thought it would be for the best to leave it as is for the time being, until the issue of Señor McGarvey is taken care of. The state funeral is in two days. Closed coffin.”

  “The fiction won’t last long, at least it won’t if your president wants Mati to continue his work at Valparaíso.”

  “We understand this, but it will be enough to delay or even recall McGarvey. Our ambassador in Washington has been called to the White House for lunch with the president and some of his advisors. President Pinochet has ordered him to place all of our cards on the table.”

  Baranov was intrigued, despite himself. The business had taken a turn for the surreal. “What cards would those be?”

  “That we are aware of Señor McGarvey and his mission to interfere in our affairs. And demand that he be ordered to stand down.”

  “There’d be no need for a recall unless your ambassador admits that the murder-suicide was faked.”

  “I’m told that he has been authorized to go in that direction, yes.”

  “In return for what?” Baranov asked. “Mati’s work at Valparaíso will still be on the table. The Americans will want President Pinochet to end the program.”

  “Which he will not do.”

  “Then what is he willing to offer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And if you did, you wouldn’t share it with me.”

  “That’s correct,” Torres said. “Now, if you have nothing further.”

  “We think that McGarvey, almost certainly traveling under false documents, was in Atlanta yesterday. It likely means that he is on his way to you.”

  “He’ll be recalled.”

  “Don’t be so sure you don’t have a leak somewhere. Possibly at the compound. Maybe the cook or maintenance man, or someone on the security detail.”

  “We’ve taken steps.”

  “As you wish,” Baranov said. “If my name is to stay out of it, I’ll be returning in a day or two.”

  “No.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “That’ll depend on what our ambassador brings back from the White House.”

  Shit, Baranov said under his breath.

  “We knew that you would make this call, and I was told to assure you that your delegation from Moscow will be welcomed.”

  “After the funeral.”

  “Si,” Torres said, and he hung up.

  Petr Yezhov, the chief of intelligence operations for Mexico, came in. He was an old hand in the game, coming up through the ranks in the KGB at the height of the Cold War with the West. He’d spent a fair amount of time in East German
y, and almost as much working out of the UN in New York. He was tall, slender and blond, with the looks and manner of a Western movie star. At each new posting he acquired a mistress, sometimes two, even before he brought his wife to join him.

  He was urbane and knew just about everyone in the Kremlin. It was expected that one day he would become director of the KGB. He thought the world of Baranov and was behind him 100 percent.

  They were in one of the small, windowless offices in the center of the third floor that were used for encrypted phone calls and top-level private meetings. Unlike the referentura at the embassy in Santiago and a few others around the world, this place was absolutely secure. Yezhov had the best technicians in the entire service completely sweep the place every thirty days.

  “So, Vasha, I suspect that you left Chile in better shape than you found it,” he said, perching on the edge of an adjacent desk.

  “I left it a different place. Our Moscow delegation will be welcome next week. And Pinochet seemed receptive.”

  “After the funeral.”

  “You heard.”

  “Was it your doing?”

  “It was my suggestion. In fact, I was going to be accused of murdering both of them. Not publicly, of course. But openly enough so that the CIA would learn of it and back off.”

  “And you would take the credit.”

  “We would.”

  “But Valparaíso wouldn’t come to an end for them.”

  “The general would be allowed to go back to work in due time. It would send a clear message to Washington.”

  “And what about your CESTA del Sur?”

  “That’s not so clear,” Baranov said. And he told the chief of intelligence operations about his suspicion that something else was going on in Washington, something just outside his ken. “My resource at Langley is just as puzzled as I am.”

  “Kaplin tells me that you met with Dick Beckett.”

  “Yes. I warned Beckett that we knew about the assassin, and I told him that I would kill General Varga myself.”

  Yezhov chuckled. “Do you think he believed you?”

  “The television has reported their deaths.” Baranov said. “But it doesn’t matter what Beckett believes; it only matters what the other party in D.C. believes.”

  “And if they do, what then?”

  “I don’t know, but they’ll have to react somehow. Throw a pebble into a pond and you’ll see the ripples.”

  Yezhov stood up, smiling. “Or, toss a stick into a pack of dogs and the one that yelps is the one that got hit.”

  “Something like that,” Baranov said.

  Yezhov patted him on the shoulder. “Keep me posted, Vasha.” At the door he turned back. “By the way, we think that your Kirk McGarvey is here. He was spotted at the airport last night, and he has a suite at the Four Seasons.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  Trotter always had the ability to compartmentalize his thinking. When he was a child, he could lie to his parents, who always believed him for the simple fact that he believed the lie himself.

  It wasn’t a skill he had to work on to perfect—it had always been there. When he got his first job in law enforcement with the FBI, he defeated every lie detector test ever given to him. And he proved it by answering some of the questions with such outrageous lies that even the examiner had to laugh.

  “You’d make the perfect criminal,” the FBI director had told him after the swearing-in ceremony for new agents.

  Or a spy with the CIA, he’d thought at the time. And three years later he’d applied to and was accepted by the Agency. That was more than ten years ago, and his rise through the ranks had been nothing short of stellar.

  Walking into the director’s suite on the seventh floor he put on his serious face. “Am I late?” he asked the DCI’s secretary.

  “No, but you may go right in; they’re waiting for you,” she said.

  Hollis Morton, director of the CIA, was seated on one of the brown leather Queen Anne couches, across from Lawrence Danielle, who was about to go back to run the Clandestine Services Directorate after having served for a year as the assistant deputy director of the CIA. Everyone at Langley was hoping that the president would appoint him as the new DCI. It would be refreshing to have a career intelligence officer once again at the helm.

  “Good morning, John. We assume that you’ve already heard the news out of Chile,” Danielle said.

  “Yes, nothing short of stunning.”

  Morton, a short, rotund little man whose career as a neurosurgeon had made him a multimillionaire, motioned for Trotter to take a seat. “You’re McGarvey’s control officer; what’s your take on this?”

  “There’s no confirmation that it’s real,” Trotter said.

  “Dick Beckett is on his way in,” Danielle said. “Should be here later this afternoon. I talked to him by phone before he left, and he told me that he and Valentin Baranov had met. You’re familiar with this name?”

  “CESTA del Sur, Mexico City,” Trotter said.

  “He spent a couple of weeks in Santiago stirring the pot,” Danielle said. Physically he was a study in contrasts: small hands, long legs, hooded eyes, but almost always with a ready smile. He looked ordinary, but mentally he was sharp, even brilliant.

  “Unusual that they would meet.”

  “The Russians know McGarvey’s name and his assignment.”

  “We’ve got a goddamned mole,” Morton said.

  “Baranov told Dick that he was going to assassinate General Varga and his wife, save us the trouble.”

  “Good heavens, that’s wrong on just about every level,” Trotter blurted. “The Russians want to engage Pinochet, get a foot in the door; killing the general would be the last thing they’d want.”

  “You think it’s a lie?” Danielle asked.

  “It has to be.”

  “Why?”

  “At the very least they’d want McGarvey to get there and ambush him. Either kill him and ship his body back here, or better yet capture him and put him on trial. It’d be simply terrible for us.”

  A look passed between Morton and Danielle.

  “The president is meeting with Aguilera right now,” Morton said. Tomas Aguilera was the Chilean ambassador to the U.S. “It was the president’s call, but I wasn’t told what the substance of their meeting would be. Almost certainly it’ll have to do with General Varga and the genocide in Valparaíso.”

  “With Varga supposedly dead, it becomes a moot point,” Danielle said. “Which was why we wanted to talk to you. Is he dead or is this a sham?”

  “I suspect the latter.”

  “Why the hoax?”

  “I want to say in the hope that we would swallow it and McGarvey would be called off.”

  “But?”

  “There’d be no need for the president to meet with Aguilera, except to demand that Valparaíso come to an end. Something I don’t think Pinochet would want to do. Maybe the president will offer them something.”

  “Such as?” the DCI asked.

  Trotter’s thoughts were racing in a dozen different directions. “I don’t know. Maybe we’d agree to take their dissidents, like we’ve been doing with the Cubans.”

  “None of us think that’ll happen.”

  “Economic sanctions, then.”

  “The Russians would love that. They’d be down there in a flash with open checkbooks.”

  “Maybe go public with what’s happening in Valparaíso.”

  “It’d be another cause for strained relations between us,” Morton said.

  “Baranov wants to expand his CESTA del Sur network beyond Mexico all the way down to Chile,” Danielle said. “What do you think about that possibility?”

  “It’d give them a back door to Cuba,” Trotter said.

  “We’d leave and the Russians would take over?”

  “No more than they seriously expect us to leave Mexico. They’d want us to stay there so that they could spy on our people as well as the DINA. At least initially
.” Trotter spread his hands. “They have missiles along their western borders to cover Europe, in Siberia to cover us, and we’ve built defenses to counter those threats. But how about putting nuclear-tipped missiles in Chile? Attack us from the south where we’re least protected.”

  “Hell, why bother with Chile?” Morton asked. “Why not Mexico, or even Cuba?”

  “Because we’d go to war if they moved that close to home,” Trotter said.

  “But?”

  “What about Chile?” Trotter asked, and the question hung in the air for a moment. “If there’s nothing else, sir.”

  “I’ve read your DKDISTANTMOONLIGHT summaries,” Danielle said. “Starting with the accident at the Farm, or incident, if you prefer. All the way through the body outside Union Station, to the bodies at McGarvey’s house, the disappearance of Janos Plonski and his family, and the mess at the Marriott. Where has he got himself to this time?”

  “He called me yesterday from Atlanta. I told him that there were some developments up here, and he promised to stay the night there and call me this afternoon for an update.”

  “But he didn’t call?” Danielle said.

  “No.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Not at the hotel where he said he’d be staying, nor do we think he continued to Miami, where we think he’d fly to Bolivia or someplace close and cross into Chile by rental car or bus.”

  “Then you don’t know where he is,” Morton asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Give us your best guess, John,” Danielle prompted.

  “Mexico City or en route.”

  “Why?”

  “By now he knows about General Varga, and he knows about Baranov, and he might make the leap that the Russian was somehow involved in the deaths and would return to running his network, at least until after the funeral.”

  “How did he know about Baranov?” Danielle asked.

  “I told him, of course. He’d have to know everything happening in or around the capital, as operational-necessary considerations.”

  “You believe it’s possible that he’s going after Baranov?”