Read Blood Pact (McGarvey) Online

Authors: David Hagberg

Blood Pact (McGarvey) (4 page)

“Anything on Petain? He gave me a business card that lists him as a vice president of special accounts with the International Bank of Paris.”

Rencke chuckled a half minute later. “Your reach is getting wider. I have more than forty-four million hits, but nothing that specific. There’s the ABC International Bank of Paris, and the International Bank of Paris and Shanghai. Is there an address?”

“Just a phone number that I haven’t tried yet.”

“Checking,” Rencke said, and he was back almost immediately. “The phone is an accommodations number, with an automatic message to leave a name and contact information. No e-mail address?”

“Just the number.”

“Give me a minute,” Rencke said, and this time his fingers flew over the keyboard and when he looked up he shook his head. “Lots of Giscarde Petains in Paris, but none associated with any bank whose name is even close to the International Bank of Paris. Nor am I coming up with that name in connection with any of the thirteen million Voltaire Societies.”

“How about the Company’s database?”

“I checked that first, along with the FBI, NSA, Homeland Security—everyone in town, plus Interpol. Not a thing, Mac. This guy under that name does not exist.”

“Let’s try Jacob Ambli, or Father Jacob Ambli.”

Again Rencke shook his head. “Nada.”

“Try him in the time frame of eighteen thirty to eighteen forty something. Mexico City.”

Rencke suddenly laughed. “As in
Jornada del Muerto
?”

“Ambli was supposedly a spy sent by the Vatican to hook up with the second Spanish military expedition to search for the treasure.”

“We came across some of that in the archives in Seville, but only two soldiers made it back to Mexico City, and I don’t remember the name Ambli. And both of those guys had been found robbed, and killed. No maps or journals.”

“According to Petain, Ambli was the expedition’s surveyor and mapmaker. It was the Voltaire Society who killed the soldiers and took their diaries—which were false. Ambli, who’d kept the real diary, made his way to Boston where he was met by another man from the Vatican. But both of them were killed by the Society and the real diary was stolen. Jacob’s diary.”

“I’ll check, but a lot of this stuff—if it exists—will probably be pigeonholed in some dusty library somewhere. Probably in Seville, or more likely in the Vatican Secret Archives. A lot of luck getting to either of them for any information. I’ll try, but why, Mac? It’s just a fairy tale.”

“A fairy tale that got Petain murdered,” McGarvey said. “He came to me because a friend at the DGSE recommended me, and because he knew that I’d been involved with the search a few months ago.”

“What’d he want, specifically?”

“Jacob Ambli’s diary, which the Society had hidden in a bank vault in Bern. Someone stole it. He wants me to get it back.”

“The diary with the location of the treasure caches?”

“Seven of them, of which, according to Petain, only four are left.”

“What happened to the other three?”

“I didn’t ask, and he didn’t say. I told him I wasn’t interested.”

“And he told you that the diary was of extreme importance and that your life was in danger,” Rencke said.

“Something like that,” McGarvey said. “He left my office, got into his car, and before it got ten feet it disintegrated.”

Rencke was suddenly serious. “Like Katy and Liz.”

“Yeah. And two kids who happened to be nearby were killed. I don’t give a damn about finding some diary or going on another treasure hunt. I want the bastards who assassinated Petain without caring about any collateral damage.”

“I understand,” Rencke said. “Anything else?”

“Might be a long shot, but a black Mercedes S550 was stopped at the parking lot exit, and it took off just a second or two before Petain’s car blew up. Florida plate, but all I got was E or F and seventy-six or maybe seventy-eight for the first three. But it got out of there in a big hurry.”

“Any idea who was inside? One or two people? Men, women?”

“Windows were too deeply tinted to see anything.”

“Bumper stickers, dents, dings?”

“None that I saw.”

“I’ll check into it. But get some rest,
kemo sabe
.”

McGarvey nodded. “How’s Audie?”

“Missing her grandfather.”

“The semester is just about over with. Soon I can get free I’ll come up for a visit.”

“Promise? She’s been asking about you.”

“Honest injun’,” McGarvey said. It was one of Rencke’s bon mots.

“I’ll tell her,” Rencke said

McGarvey was seeing Petain’s car going up in flames; he could feel the heat on his face and arms, see the piece of metal falling on the kids. He broke the connection and sat back with his Cognac, his vivid memories of Katy and Liz dying in the explosion at Arlington playing in his head, over and over.

 

FOUR

 

The Casey Key rental was a luxurious two story, with a formal dining room, library, snooker table, huge gourmet kitchen, sitting room, solarium, living room done up in bright nautical prints, and a formal staircase leading up to six palatial bedrooms, three of which looked over the Gulf and the others over the ICW.

Captain Emilio Miranda, thirty-six, whose work name was Juan Fernandez, came to the head of the stairs, and held up for just a moment to listen to the near absence of sound, before going down.

He was a slightly built man, more wiry than thin, with wide-set very black eyes, a dusky Spanish complexion, thin lips over which was a pencil-thin mustache. This evening he was dressed in jeans, sneakers, and dark T-shirt. He was a dangerous-looking man, which in fact he was. In his eighteen-year career as a field agent with the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, the CNI, which was Spain’s central intelligence service, he had run successful operations, some of which included deaths, in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. His parents had both been English-language professors at the Carlos III University in Madrid, and subsequently his command of the language was nearly as good as that of his native tongue.

He crossed the main entry hall and went back to the small service kitchen that opened on the multitiered patio and pool. Donica Fonesca, dressed in a black bikini, was tossing a salad to go with some baguettes and a large plate of cheese. She’d already laid out a couple of bottles of Mourvedre, a nice Alicante red.

She was tall for a Spanish woman, with short black hair that revealed a long slender neck, pretty shoulders, and a more rounded than usual figure for a Flamenco dancer, which had been one of her covers. At twenty-six she’d never married, nor had any ambition for a family, though she’d never been shy about taking lovers—not since an affair with her college math teacher. She was a lieutenant in the CNI who along with lieutenants Felix Huertas and their second-story man, Alberto Cabello, made up the mission team. She was almost certainly having an affair with Huertas, but as long as it didn’t interfere with their orders, Miranda didn’t care.

She turned and smiled. “I hope you’re hungry, I’ve made plenty. Some wine?”

“Okay,” Miranda said, and he sat down at the counter. “Why the swimsuit?”

“I’m going in the pool after we eat, I expect that we’ll have some company.” She poured them both a glass. “I’m glad I wasn’t there today,” she said.

“It wasn’t pleasant, but you’re right, we may have the other problem coming our way. Señor McGarvey was right in the middle of it, as we suspected he might be.”

“Was he injured?”

“Alberto said he thought the man was on the ground, but we were moving too fast for him to be sure. In any event McGarvey is home. He just finished calling a number in Berwyn Heights. Encrypted Skype but the angles were wrong this time, so we didn’t get much.”

“Our Washington Bureau thinks that his friend Otto Rencke lives there.”

“That’s my assumption, but except for the town the number was blocked.”

Donica thought it over. “We suspected that Petain would come to see him sooner or later. It was only a matter of time before he left Paris, and no one was surprised that he came here, given McGarvey’s recent history—and the little theft from Bern.”

“We still don’t know who pulled it off, or even what was in the vault.”

“Jacob’s diary?”

“We can’t be certain,” Miranda said.

“The analysts in Madrid are being overcautious, don’t you think? The diary is the only logical possibility. Now we simply wait for Señor McGarvey to make his move and follow him.”

“If Petain came to ask him for help.”

“He did.”

“That’s another supposition,” Miranda said. “Wishful thinking.”

Donica was vexed. “I don’t understand.”

“We thought that Petain would come here to talk to McGarvey, to ask him for help. All we can say with certainty is that the Frenchman did come here, but we didn’t have the chance to bug McGarvey’s office so we have no idea what they talked about.”

“What else?”

“I don’t know. Maybe information about the
Jornada del Muerto.
But just because we thought Petain was coming to ask McGarvey for help finding the diary, doesn’t mean that’s what he did.”

Now Donica was frustrated. “Then why did we kill the man? Why did we take the risk?”

“Because those were our orders, my dear.”

“The Society will send someone else.”

“Perhaps,” Miranda said. “Or perhaps McGarvey will go in search of the diary, leaving us to follow him.”

Donica went back to her salad making.

“Where are the others?”

“Alberto went down to check something on the boat, and Felix is wandering around outside. Or at least I think he is.” She looked up. “What about the two students who were killed?”

“What about them?”

“From Señor McGarvey’s profile he comes across as an honorable man.”

“A contract killer.”

“He is a teacher, Emilio. Maybe he cares more for his students than you think he does. Maybe collateral damage means something to him.”

Miranda scowled. “Sentimentality has no place in this business.”

“They were innocent kids. You said so yourself.”

“I said they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He shrugged. “What’s done is done. From this point we concentrate on McGarvey to see what he does.”

“What if he stays put?”

“Then our job here is finished. We pack up and go home.”

Donica stopped what she was doing and looked at him, an odd expression in her eyes. “But you don’t believe that.”

“No,” Miranda said. “I too studied his profile. If Petain asked for help unraveling the mystery, it’s exactly what Señor McGarvey will do. It is in his nature.”

“And the deaths of the students? Won’t that give him pause?”

“On the contrary. Their deaths—senseless to his way of thinking—will spur him on.” Miranda shook his head. “Señor McGarvey will make his move, and it will be sooner than later, I suspect.”

 

FIVE

 

McGarvey dressed in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, went downstairs, and in the kitchen tried to figure out what he wanted for dinner—or even if he wanted anything to eat. He was unsettled not only because of the students’ deaths and how they had died, but about Petain’s story.

He’d always tried to keep as low-key as possible, below as many radars as he could. But his name had been front and center in the public’s eye because of the business with the Spanish treasure just north of El Paso, and the huge crowd of Mexicans and Cubans that had crossed the border to claim it. But it hadn’t ended until the second confrontation, this one at the Fort Knox federal gold depository, with another crowd, mostly of Cubans—these people expats living in Miami. Both times there’d been no gold or silver. No treasure.

Yet in the end Rencke had considered that there might be some truth to the legends. And so had María León, a colonel in the Cuban intelligence service.

The computer in his study chimed. It was Otto.

“You’ve got trouble coming your way,” he said, barely contained excitement in his voice.

McGarvey switched off the light. “From the beginning,” he said.

“The Voltaire Society exists and so does their bank in Paris. And oh, boy, what a fight those guys have been having with the Vatican and with the Spanish government.”

“Is María León involved?”

Otto was taken aback. “Has she contacted you again?”

“No. I was just thinking about her.”

“She’s not involved this time, at least her name hasn’t popped up. But the fight I’m talking about started in the early eighteen hundreds and has been going on ever since. And it’s intense, Mac. Honest injun’.”

“The Spanish treasure?”

“The one that everyone but you and I believe exists. Not only that, I found out that the Voltaire Society’s bank has actually been in existence since seventeen seventy-six when it was chartered by six businessmen who each put up the equivalent of one million dollars.”

“How did you find that out?”

“Through its transactions. At first they were on paper, of course, and only two actual documents exist in our Library of Congress from records of a Richmond, Virginia, bank that went under in eighteen sixty-five. Two money transfers that took place before the Civil War. In each case for the same amount: five million dollars, from the International Bank of Paris.”

“For what reason? Who was the payee?”

“The treasury of the United States of America. But that’s not all. The transfers came two years apart—one in eighteen forty-four, three years after Jacob Ambli and his diary disappeared, and in eighteen forty-eight. Time, if we’re to believe Petain, for the Society to reach New Mexico and retrieve some of the silver and gold.”

The story was far-fetched and coincidental, and McGarvey told Otto just that.

“I don’t believe in coincidences any more than you do,” Rencke said, and he sounded excited as he did whenever he had the bit in his mouth. “But Petain told you that besides propping up banks in Europe, the Society used the money to help fledgling democracies. Maybe they foresaw our Civil War and sent money to help.”

“To a bank in Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy?”

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