Authors: David Hagberg
Countdown (45 page)
McGarvey let his eyes go down to the C4 taped obscenely to her thighs. Wires led from the plastique to a small package, which he figured contained the battery and firing mechanism. A second pair of wires ran beneath her left leg and disappeared.
“God in heaven,” McGarvey breathed, his body going rigid.
“Put your hands up ⦔ the Russian ordered.
“Listen to me,” McGarvey called out, his eyes locked into Lorraine's. “There are explosives taped to this woman's body. I think they're wired to some sort of a pressure switch.”
The Russian at the doorway said nothing.
“Do you understand me?” McGarvey called, not daring to raise his voice.
“Yes, I do. Now step away from the bed very carefully.”
McGarvey hesitated.
“Do as I say, Mr. McGarvey, I have a demolitions expert with me. Please step away from the bed.”
“It'll be all right,” McGarvey whispered to her. “Believe me.” Slowly he moved away from the side of the bed and turned to the men crowded in the doorway.
“Get out of here, we'll take care of it,” the Russian said. He looked very young. He held a big automatic in his right hand.
“I'll stay,” McGarvey said.
“Did you kill Baranov?”
“Get your demolitions man in here, goddamnit! Now!”
“Did you kill him?” the Russian asked implacably.
“Yes, you sonofabitch. Now get your man in here.”
“Good,” the Russian said. “You can stay.” He turned. “Get Valeri up here on the double.”
“HOW DID YOU KNOW my name?” McGarvey asked the Russian cop.
“I wasn't sure it was you. But we'd been told that you were on the move, and that you had an old vendetta with Chairman Baranov.”
It was just dawn. They sat in the back of a panel van, downtown near the Brandenburg Gate. The sodium vapor lights were pale against the gray morning sky.
“He was a very bad man, Mr. McGarvey,” Lieutenant Lukyanov
continued. “We had come to arrest him. My captain thought he would return with us, but I disagreed.”
continued. “We had come to arrest him. My captain thought he would return with us, but I disagreed.”
“Even if he had, he wouldn't have stood trial,” McGarvey said tiredly. He looked at Lorraine shivering in the corner. She was all right physically, but Baranov had done something to her. Something terrible. It was still in her eyes, and he supposed it would always be there.
“Perhaps you are right. In any event it is a moot point now.” Lieutenant Lukyanov glanced at Lorraine. “She will be okay?”
“I don't know.”
“What about you?” Lieutenant Lukyanov asked, turning back to McGarvey. “You are a spy. You do this sort of thing all the time. I sincerely hope that you do not show up on Soviet soil again.”
“This is Germany.”
Lieutenant Lukyanov smiled thinly. “I'm just a simple policeman, not Spycatcher.” Spycatcher was a KGB agent in popular Soviet fiction.
McGarvey returned the smile.
Lieutenant Lukyanov reached across him and opened the side door. “Go,” he said. “I cannot drive you across, but you and Dr. Abbott will not be hindered. And I believe someone is waiting for you.”
“You're a long way from Moscow.”
“And you from Washington, Mr. McGarvey. Go in peace.”
“We're in the wrong business for that,” McGarvey said.
They shook hands and he stepped down out of the van. Lieutenant Lukyanov helped Lorraine out, and McGarvey had to hold her to keep her from falling. She was shivering again.
The lieutenant slid the door closed, the van backed away from them, turned and drove off, leaving them standing there alone.
With the morning, traffic had begun to build up on both sides of the border. Still holding Lorraine tightly, McGarvey led her down the broad sidewalk past the remains of the East German sentry complex, none of the soldiers paying them the slightest attention, only an occasional face turning their way from one of the vehicles waiting to cross.
“It's all right now,” he said softly in her ear.
At first she didn't react. He didn't know if she had even heard him. But then, as they walked, she slowly turned her head and looked up at him.
“It's over,” he said. “We're almost there.”
“Don't leave me, Kirk,” she whispered.
“I won't.”
John Trotter got out of the back of a dark red Mercedes sedan. He looked thinner to McGarvey, his features more gaunt, the planes of his face more sharply defined.
“We need to get her to the hospital,” McGarvey said.
“Has she been injured? Is she hurt?” Trotter asked in alarm. He looked and sounded completely strung out.
“I don't know, but I want someone to look at her. We'll stay for a couple of days, if need be.”
Lorraine clutched tightly at his arm as he helped her into the back seat of the car.
“I'll be there,” McGarvey told her. “I'm not going anywhere. I promise.”
She looked into his eyes for a moment, until hers began to cloud over, and she finally allowed herself to sit back and release his arm.
McGarvey got in beside her, and Trotter climbed in the front seat. Their driver was a young man in a dark blue windbreaker.
“The military hospital at Tempelhof,” Trotter said. “And shake a leg.”
“Yes, sir,” the driver said, and they pulled away from the checkpoint and headed south through the city.
Trotter turned in his seat. His eyes seemed very large and damp behind his thick glasses. “I didn't know what to think when we got the call from the police barracks in the east zone.”
“What are you doing here, John?” McGarvey asked.
“Murphy ordered me up here to see if I could extract you somehow. We got word that a warrant for Baranov's arrest was
about to be served ⦔ Trotter's eyes got a little wider. “You ran into them?”
about to be served ⦔ Trotter's eyes got a little wider. “You ran into them?”
McGarvey nodded.
“What in heaven's name happened over there, Kirk? What about Baranov ⦠did you ⦔
Lorraine let out a little cry, and she tried to burrow her way into the corner.
“Later,” McGarvey said.
“Kirk?”
“Later.”
Â
If it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it was for a rich man to enter the gates of heaven, McGarvey wondered what it would be like for an assassin. Or a traitor.
Trotter had taken over one of the offices in the hospital while McGarvey had taken care of Lorraine. The doctor had given her a sedative and she was finally resting.
“She'll sleep for twenty-four hours at least.”
“What about afterward?”
“I don't know, Mr. McGarvey. It will depend in a great measure on her capacity for shock. It's different for everyone.”
“She's a strong woman.”
“Then I suspect she'll recover just fine. But it's going to take time. Do you know what happened to her?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, whatever it was, it overloaded her brain. It tore her down to a point where she was nothing. She may need help to bring her back.”
McGarvey had nodded. “She'll have it,” he said, but riding upstairs in the elevator he wondered if he would be capable of helping himself, let alone her. What was his own capacity for shock? He had never known. Perhaps he would find out at last.
Trotter was just putting down the phone when McGarvey entered the office.
“That was Murphy. He wants us on the first plane back to Washington. Kirk, I couldn't tell him what happened over there because I don't know myself. He's hopping mad. He wants some answers.”
“Baranov is dead,” McGarvey said, watching his old friend's face. They had been through a lot together. All the way back to the early days, even before Santiago, and before the Carter administration had practically emasculated the Agency.
Trotter flinched. He licked his lips. “Did you kill him?”
“Yes.”
“From a distance, Kirk? With the rifle? With your pistol from the beach? How ⦔
“I shot him in the back. After I had given him my word that I wouldn't do it. He believed me.”
Trotter's mouth was open, but no sounds were coming out.
“It was a trade, John.”
“For what?”
“For my life, for Lorraine's, for a ⦠name. But I cheated him. I lied.”
“What name?”
“Our penetration agent. WHITE KNIGHT.”
“Ah,” Trotter said after a beat, but the sound was less of a word than it was merely the release of the deep breath he was holding. He half turned away and looked out the window.
“He was willing to throw the man's life away without compunction. It meant nothing to him,” McGarvey said.
Again there was a silence between them.
“How long had you known?” Trotter asked at length.
“Known what, John?”
“That it was ⦠me.”
McGarvey's heart sank. “I hadn't. Not until this moment.”
Trotter turned back to him, his face suddenly twisted in a grimace. “But you said he named me!”
“I lied,” McGarvey said softly. “To him, to you.”
“Then you have no proof!” Trotter cried. He fumbled in his jacket for his gun, his movements frantic and unprofessional.
But then he'd never been an assassin, McGarvey thought, watching his old friend. Trotter had been a good cop and a tough, extremely capable administrator. But he'd not been a killer in the sense of one who pulls a trigger.
Trotter pointed the pistol at him with a shaking hand. It was a .32 automatic, deadly enough at this range.
“Why, John? Can you tell me that?”
“You wouldn't understand.”
“I'd like to try.”
“You don't know anything. You're nothing more than a paid killer. An assassin. A tool to be used for those disgusting but sometimes necessary jobs. Like a shovel to pick up dog shit. Nothing more.”
“Was it for power? You're an ambitious man. Was that it?”
Trotter's lip had curled into a feral snarl. “You killed the man. You've been up against him. You tell me! He could not be resisted. Not that one. When he wanted you, you came. When he held a dance, you did the jig.”
“He was just a man.”
“You had to shoot him in the back. You couldn't face him.”
“What did he promise you? The directorship of the CIA? Did he have that power?”
“His power was unlimited. Even when we were young ⦔
A revelation slipped into place in McGarvey's mind. “You knew him from the beginning? Is that it, John? Maybe in college? Maybe he got to you in the service? Where, John? When? How?”
“In Germany in the fifties. Before the Wall. He was there. We all were there. And he promised me heaven and earth. He was capable of it, Kirk. God, he was capable of anything.”
“But it went bad somehow?”
“He wouldn't keep his word. So I sent you after him. He knew I would. I mean, he knew I'd send someone after him, but he didn't know how good you were. And all the time we were still communicating with each other. He was telling me his plans and I was telling him about you. Goading him. Daring him.”
“But he nearly had you killed at the safehouse in Falmouth.”
“But I had you, Kirk. I've always had you, while he only had Kurshin. And Kurshin was no match for you, was he?”
McGarvey lowered his head. “But you were my friend, John.” He turned toward the door. “I trusted you. As a matter of fact you were the only one I ever trusted.” He didn't think Trotter would shoot him in the back.
“You were a fool,” Trotter spat. “Turn around.”
McGarvey shook his head and swayed forward on the balls
of his feet as if he were about to collapse. He had to reach out with his left hand to steady himself against the door frame. The movement masked his right hand going to his left sleeve.
of his feet as if he were about to collapse. He had to reach out with his left hand to steady himself against the door frame. The movement masked his right hand going to his left sleeve.
“Turn around.”
“John,” McGarvey cried in real anguish. He spun around and in one swift movement threw the razor-sharp stiletto sidehanded with every last bit of his strength, the blade burying itself in Trotter's chest at the same moment he fired.
The shot caught McGarvey high in the chest, slamming him back against the door, and he was falling, it seemed, forever into a deep, bottomless pit.
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