Face Off--A Kirk McGarvey Novel Read online

  “Monsieur Lacoste has a very long memory,” Alarie said. “He won’t forget you.”

  “I expect he won’t. He’s just like every other guy in a high position who’s been promoted because of political connections, beyond their level of competency.”

  “I can understand why you’re bitter, my old friend, but you must understand where France finds itself. We’re a nation at war, almost the same as in the forties. Only this time the occupying army has infiltrated our entire society, and it’s hitting us from inside.”

  “It’s happening in Germany too.”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “And you poor bastards are at a loss trying to figure it out, when it’s been there all along, staring at you.”

  “If you mean terrorists embedded with refugees from Syria and Afghanistan and even Iraq, you’re correct. But you have the same problem in the US with the Mexican drug cartels.”

  “Not in the same numbers,” McGarvey said. “Between you and the Germans you’ve allowed more than a million people across the border. So what do you expect?”

  “Germany has admitted the bulk of them.”

  “Because your Front National party is holding the government’s feet to the fire. But they’re still here in Paris, in Nice, everywhere.”

  “What would you have us do, turn the salopards back so that they can continue to be slaughtered?”

  “Yes, until complete background checks can be made of everyone you accept.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “And once they’ve been admitted, allow them to stay as citizens on the condition they become French in their dress, habits, and outlook. You’re losing your country, Milun. Wake up. If they don’t want to lose their Syrian identities, then let them stay in Syria.”

  Alarie’s manner was steady. He had not risen to the bait. “You sound like your new president.”

  They had crossed the Périphérique, Le Bourget off to their left.

  “In any event, the attack was probably organized and directed by someone outside of France,” Alarie said.

  “The kids with the vests and in the church were Eastern. But they were directed by operators either from Saudi Arabia or Russia or both.”

  “But there would be no reason for them to back such an attack. It would be lunacy. Tell me why.”

  “It’s what I intend to find out once I get to Ms. Boylan. And then I’ll kill the bastards just like the ones at the tower, and the ones in the church. And that’s a promise you can take to the Banque de France.”

  Alarie held his silence until they took the exit for Aéroport Charles de Gaulle. “Whatever you must think of how you are being treated, France wishes to thank you from the bottom of its soul for what you did. You are a true hero of the Republic. We are in your debt.”

  “If that’s how you treat your heroes and repay your debts, keep the medals,” McGarvey said. He could not get the picture of Pete hanging from the wall in the basement of the église out of his head. It was a fearful image that he knew would stay with him for the rest of his life, just like the image of the car that his wife, Katy, and their daughter, Liz, were riding in when it exploded. Both were permanently seared in his head as if he had been branded by a very hot iron.

  “My hands are tied,” Alarie said.

  “Mine too,” McGarvey replied.

  * * *

  Inside the airport, Alarie flashed his credentials and they were passed directly through security into the international terminal 2E. The place was busy with passengers and crew arriving for flights, along with Police Nationale in helmets and flak jackets, armed with pistols in chest holsters and submachine guns at the ready. Some of the ones patrolling had bomb-sniffing dogs with them. After what had happened at the Eiffel Tower, every LE officer in the country was on high alert.

  “You have an hour and a half before your flight; do you want to have something to eat?” Alarie asked.

  “We didn’t have much lunch at the tower. How about Illy?”

  “It’s on the lower level and it’s self-service.”

  “I don’t care,” McGarvey said.

  Alarie gave him an odd look but nodded. “As you wish,” he said.

  They took the escalator down and went directly to the very busy café.

  Alarie found them a table. “You may go first. I think I’ll merely have a coffee.”

  “I’d like to have my passport and my phone,” McGarvey said. He held out his hand.

  “It’s impossible.”

  “Just take them out of your pocket and put them on the table, along with my boarding pass.”

  “And then what?”

  “I’ll need to use the bathroom. Something has upset my stomach.”

  Alarie was very still. “How long will you need?”

  “Thirty minutes. Tell them that you think I was trying to reach my embassy. I have friends there.”

  For a long time Alarie didn’t say or do a thing, until he got Mac’s passport, phone, and the Air France boarding pass out of his pocket and laid them down.

  “Thank you, my old friend. Your debt for the tower has been paid in full.”

  Alarie nodded. “Bonne chance,” he said. “Tell them at customs and immigration that your luggage did not arrive and unfortunately you need to return to the city.” He took out his DGSE business card. “If there is a question, show them this. They can call on my mobile.”

  * * *

  The customs people checked his passport, and on the strength of Alarie’s card passed him directly through. On the street level, just away from the taxi queue, he phoned Otto.

  “I’m at de Gaulle, at the departure doors.”

  “Milun cooperated, or are you on the run?”

  “Both. He’s giving me a half hour. Has the Gulfstream’s flight plan been changed or canceled?”

  “It’s Istanbul for sure, kemo sabe.”

  “I need to get there as quickly as possible, What are my options?”

  “I’m working it,” Otto said. “I can’t get anything of ours to you from Ramstein. Are you secure for the moment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hold on a mo.”

  At least one flight had apparently just arrived, because people were streaming out of customs. Two taxi expediters were moving into position at the head of the line of cabs.

  “Le Bourget,” Otto said.

  “They know who I am.”

  “Not at Dassault. A separate FBO, not even close to Signature. Take a cab there now.”

  McGarvey was the third in line for a taxi, and he told the expediter he wanted to be taken to Dassault at Le Bourget.

  Even before they got back on the A1, Otto was on the line again.

  “The crew is preflighting a Falcon 50 for you. Not the fastest bird in the sky, but there’s no real rush to get you to Istanbul.”

  “There is if that’s where they’re taking Pete.”

  “It is,” Otto said. “And they’re expecting you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because Giles Worley, in the company of two women, called ahead and booked a suite at the Ritz.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Najjir had spent the last forty minutes forward, talking on his sat phone, and although Pete tried to overhear what he was saying he spoke mostly in hushed tones that, combined with the jet noise, made it impossible to make out more than one word in twenty. But at one point he had seemed angry.

  He had glared at her, but then turned away and lowered his voice.

  “Sounds like your boss is in trouble,” she said.

  Miriam, seated across from her, was drinking champagne and working on a crossword puzzle in Russian, no longer bothering to conceal her nationality, though she appeared to be having some trouble. It seemed to Pete that Russian might not be her mother tongue.

  The woman looked up. “As you keep saying, we failed to bring down the tower. But we have you, and we’ll soon have Mr. McGarvey, whose actual value is far greater than any stupid mon
ument.”

  The Gulfstream began to slow down and lose altitude. Pete could hear the changed pitch of the engines and feel the descent in her ears.

  Najjir got off the phone, nodded to Miriam, and went forward. He came back a minute later and sat down. “We’ll be touching down in fifteen minutes.”

  “Have you arranged for the boat?” Miriam asked.

  Najjir gave her a dark look.

  “A boat ride, that’d be peachy,” Pete said. “Except I suspect you’d rather get across to Russia, maybe Sochi, by air. But you’re afraid that I might make too much noise.”

  “You’re right about that part, though I’m more concerned about handling Mr. McGarvey without killing him. No one wants to buy damaged goods from me. And of course there are too many foreign tourists in Sochi, so we’ll head to Novorossiysk.”

  “Clever,” Pete said. She remembered a briefing a couple of years ago about a new Spetsnaz base abuilding there. It was near Crimea, which Russia had annexed a while back. It’s where they had garrisoned the highly trained special ops forces who were just about as good as US SEAL Team 6 operators. They were in place, waiting for trouble.

  “In the meantime, what to do about you?” Najjir said.

  He and Miriam were staring at her as if she were some sort of exotic creature on display.

  “Might be for the best if you just let me go.”

  “I think that she’ll cooperate with no problem whatsoever,” Miriam said.

  “In a pig’s rump.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Najjir asked.

  “It’s her American sense of justice. For the downtrodden and all that shit. Someone gets screwed over, or hurt, or needs a kidney transplant or something, half the population comes out of the woodwork as bleeding volunteers.”

  “Not for someone like you,” Pete said.

  “I expect not. But we have plenty of places in Istanbul to hide out, and we have plenty of gun hands who will to do a job of work for pay. Fanatics, actually, but fairly good marksmen with absolutely no moral compunctions about anything.”

  Najjir hadn’t gotten it yet, but Pete had, and the woman was right.

  “Your point?” he asked.

  “We rent a car at the airport instead of taking a cab to the hotel. When we get there we ask the valet to hold it until we call down. If the bitch cries for help in the driveway, we’ll shoot the valet, the doormen, and anyone else within earshot and make our way to point alpha. Same thing if she waits until we’re in the lobby—only by then I think the collateral damage would be quite a lot greater.”

  “I’ll keep my mouth shut,” Pete said. “Honest Injun.”

  “Of course you will. Wouldn’t do for your self-image to have the blood of innocent people on your hands. It’s why you and your Sir Galahad interfered at the tower. Sweet.”

  * * *

  The rental car was a Mercedes C-Class. Miriam sat in back with Pete while Najjir drove into the city from the airport. The day was warm and very sticky, and the traffic was horrendous. None of the drivers seemed to pay attention to any of the rules of the road, even driving on the wrong side of one-way streets. And inside the city it was even worse.

  The Ritz was housed in a glass and steel tower that was sided by Maçka Park and overlooked the city, the Bosphorus, and the new bridge, the spires of which were bathed in blue at night.

  They pulled under the canopy and uniformed doormen were right there, helping Najjir and the women out.

  “Giles Worley,” Najjir told them. “We have reservations.”

  A bellman took the two bags from the trunk. “Shall I unpack for you, sir?” he asked.

  “It’s not necessary, thank you.”

  Miriam had a subcompact Glock pistol in the waistband of her cream designer slacks, and she carried her bag over her left shoulder to keep her gun hand free.

  A valet came over. “Shall I park your car for you, sir?”

  “Leave it here for the moment, if possible. We may need to meet a friend.”

  “May I suggest that a cab might be the better option, sir?”

  “You may not,” Najjir said.

  He was slightly ahead of where Pete stood next to Miriam. Pete considered shouldering the woman aside and bolting down the driveway and out into traffic on the busy Askerocagi Street. But Miriam, sensing something, stepped closer.

  “Trust me, sweetie, I won’t hesitate to put a couple of ten-millimeter rounds into your back if you try to run,” she said, her voice low. “And I’m a very good shot.”

  “You’d lose your chance at Mac.”

  “He wouldn’t know that you were dead until it was too late. Trust me, if you want to get along, just go along. Okay?”

  Pete nodded. There would be other chances; she would make damned sure of it.

  * * *

  The suite was magnificent, with two bedrooms, separate palatial master bathrooms, and very tall windows overlooking the waterway in one direction, with balconies on the other side that faced the greenery of the park. Between the sleeping accommodations was a very well-furnished, upscale sitting room with a large flat-screen television, fabulous upholstered chairs, and two couches. Large, ornately woven Turkish rugs were scattered as if randomly on the wooden floors, and several pieces of fine art, along with gilded mirrors, decorated the walls beneath crown-molded pan ceilings, from which hung chandeliers.

  Pete and McGarvey had stayed in some very upscale properties during deep cover assignments over the past couple of years, but she was impressed with this place. One more rug, one more bit of artwork, one more amenity, and the hotel would have come across as gaudy.

  Najjir gave the bellman two hundred euros.

  When he was gone Miriam went to the phone. “I’ll order us some champagne.”

  “Later,” Najjir said.

  “I could use a drink,” Pete said.

  Najjir came toward her and she stepped back.

  “Get the scarf from your bag, please,” he told Miriam. “We’re leaving.”

  She went into the bedroom.

  “Take off your panties,” Najjir said.

  “You want to rape me, you’ll have to rape a dead body,” Pete said, moving back another step.

  “That’s a scenario some of my people might find interesting. Now do as I ask, please, and no real harm will come to you for the moment.”

  “No.”

  Najjir stepped toward her so quickly that she didn’t have enough time to react before he smashed his fist into her face, knocking her backwards onto the floor. She hit her head hard and fuzzed out for a moment. Her jaw felt as if it had been dislocated and one or more of her teeth had been broken. She was extremely nauseous, so she rolled over onto her right side in case she vomited. She didn’t want to choke to death. But that move was all she was capable of for the immediate moment.

  “That must have hurt,” Miriam said, her voice a long way off.

  “Take off her panties, we’ll leave them as a calling card for Mr. McGarvey. And soon as she comes around put the scarf on her head, to cover her hair and her face. We’re going to do a little sightseeing now”

  “We just got here.”

  “The man at the desk welcomed us,” Najjir said. “By name. Mine, yours, and Ms. Boylan’s.”

  “Shit.”

  He went to the phone. “I’d like to leave a message for Mr. Kirk McGarvey, who is coming to see us. Tell him that we’ll make the exchange this evening.” He gave an address.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  It was getting dark when the Falcon 50 started its descent into Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport. McGarvey was tired but he’d been unable to sleep. Twice he’d nearly phoned Otto to find out what was going on, but each time he held back. When Otto had news he would make contact.

  But it was difficult. He still couldn’t get the image out of his head of Pete hanging on the wall in the basement of the church. And he’d had even more trouble tamping down his almost insane rage. He wanted to lash out right now.

 
The copilot called back. “You have an incoming telephone call, sir. But we’ll be on final approach in five minutes. I’d like you to be off by then.”

  “You got it,” McGarvey said. It was Otto.

  “They’re in Istanbul all right. Booked into the Ritz, but they went out and left a message for you. Said they’d make the exchange this evening.”

  “At the hotel?”

  “No, they left an address. It’s in a neighborhood called Tarlabasi. The north part of the city, around a place called Taksim Square in the Beyoğlu district. Lots of African immigrants, Kurds. Families mostly. It has a dangerous rep unless you belong there, then it’s supposedly friendly.”

  “But?”

  “The government is restoring the area lot by lot, but it’s still mostly a dirty, run-down, ramshackle place of narrow streets and dark alleys. Not a lot of nightlife, though there are some places you might call outdoor cafés—two or three old tables on the narrow sidewalk in front of a tiny storefront where you can buy a coffee. Maybe a dilapidated couch and a couple of old chairs outside an apartment building, where people gather to smoke and talk.”

  “Cops?”

  “Almost never, but because of the Kurds the military sometimes sends in a patrol or two, especially on weekends. And if there’s trouble downtown, the patrols are stepped up, in case there’s a backlash in the neighborhood.”

  “What’s at the address?”

  “That’s the rub, Mac. The place is nothing more than the gutted-out remains of what once was a three-story apartment building, maybe a factory before that. Evidently had a serious fire in the past year or so. The next-door buildings show a lot of damage, but people still live there. My guess would be that the guy who took Pete has got muscle for hire right there, definitely in shooting range.”

  “What’s my approach?”

  “From a street called Tatli Badem, Sweet Almond, you should be able to make your way down a back alley and come in from the rear. I’ll send a map to your phone.”

  “Shut it down, please, sir,” the copilot called back.

  “We’re coming in for a landing. I have to go,” McGarvey said.

  “Mark Rowe, a Company rep from our consulate, will meet you at the airport with some equipment and papers. But he won’t be along for the ride. You’ll be on your own.”