Without Honor Read online

  “Don’t you have a show tonight?” McGarvey asked.

  “More.”

  McGarvey poured her another glass of wine and brought it back to her. He lit her a cigarette. He was getting a little worried about her. Between the wine and the cocaine she was very strung out.

  “What happened, Evita?” he asked. “What did they do to you down there?”

  “I walked in on Valentin and Darby,” she said. “They were together in my bed making love to each other.”

  McGarvey had expected almost anything except that, but although he was startled he did not allow it to show on his face. Baranov was a powerful man. He’d heard it a dozen different ways now, and still he had not begun to suspect just how powerful and dedicated a man the Russian was until now. Baranov had got Yarnell to spy for him and had then cemented the relationship by seducing first his wife and then Yarnell himself. He had ruined them both as a couple and both, ultimately, as individuals. Yarnell the superstar had met his match, and Evita the naive little Mexican princess had succumbed simply as a matter of course. Her turning had to have been ridiculously easy. Hardly a challenge for the likes of Yarnell or Baranov. Yet they had taken the time and effort to do it. Why? Yarnell because he wanted an image during his tenure in Mexico. But why Baranov? What more could he have hoped to have gained by seducing first the wife and then the husband … unless Yarnell had made a desperate attempt to control the situation instead of himself being controlled? If that had been his battle, he had lost. Yet later, in Washington and then in Moscow, Yarnell had comported himself as the perfect spy. He hardly faltered. By then Baranov’s control had probably been so utterly complete that Yarnell was no longer even thinking for himself. And poor little Evita had been left behind in the dust. So why pick on her again? She’d said Baranov had been here less than a year ago.

  “He wanted Darby and me to get back together,” she said. “Because we both needed each other, we both were drifting and there was more to life than that. He came here in the middle of the night and let himself in. The first I knew he was here was when I woke up with him in bed beside me. And we made love. He still knows me. Knows my body, which buttons to push, which chains to rattle. And I enjoyed it, do you understand? It was wonderful. Had he asked me, I would have run off with him anywhere. Even to Moscow.”

  “But he didn’t ask.”

  “No.”

  “What then, Evita? Why did he come here? What did he want?”

  She looked away.

  “What did he say to you?”

  “He told me about you.”

  “By name?”

  “No. He said that someone who had once been in the Company would be coming around asking questions about him and about Darby. He was specific in that you no longer worked for the Company. You don’t, do you?”

  “No,” McGarvey said.

  “He told me that I should tell you everything. That I should be completely honest with you.”

  “Except about his visit.”

  She closed her eyes. “He never knew that I saw him and Darby together. He knows everything except for that. It’s been my own secret.”

  She was getting back at Baranov. Now, after all these years, she had finally struck a blow at the man who in her estimation had ruined her marriage. It was the real reason she had talked to McGarvey. Or at least one of the reasons. There was another. Fear.

  “Now he wants Juanita, doesn’t he?”

  Evita opened her eyes. “You bastard!” she said with a lot of feeling. “You sonofabitch! You’re all alike.”

  “Darby will give her up to save his own position and you know it.”

  “She’s all that’s left, don’t you see? Darby went up to school and charmed her. She fell under his spell, and she never comes here anymore, never calls, never writes.”

  “Then we’ll have to stop them both. You’ll help me.”

  “It’s impossible. They’re old pros, both of them. What chance would I have? What chance did I ever have?”

  “None, unless you try.”

  “Try,” she said disdainfully. Her lower lip was quivering again. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know them. Darby alone could have held the Alamo. With Valentin’s help they’re impossible to beat. They know everything. They’ve each got their armies. Impossible.”

  McGarvey could hear again Darrel Owens’s words about his young protégé, bitter words that had still, after all that had gone on, after all the years, been tinged with open admiration. It was the same now with Evita. After everything that had been done to her, she’d still made love quite willingly with Baranov, and she still had a great deal of awe, fear, and respect for her ex-husband. Darby Yarnell was simply the very best there ever was, Owens had said. No one could resist his charm. What a powerful weapon he’d been and continued to be in Baranov’s arsenal. And now Yarnell had the ear of the director of Central Intelligence and the president of the United States. It was frightening. Such men did not fall easily.

  “There can’t be a trial, Kirk,” Trotter had said in Switzerland. “It would be ten thousand times worse than Watergate. It would tear the country apart. The CIA would go down the tubes, and even the president would suffer. We’d be years recuperating. Perhaps we’d never fully recover.”

  “We’re talking about murder, here, John, aren’t we?” McGarvey had said. “About the assassination of a former U.S. senator. One of the most influential men in Washington.” It had only been a notion then, now it was becoming a dreadful reality.

  The band was still practicing downstairs, and Evita got unsteadily to her feet and went to the sideboard as she sang a few off-key words to the song. She poured herself another glass of champagne and then stood looking out the window at the street below.

  “I think it is enough now,” she said without turning. “I’d like you to go. There’s nothing to be done. Nothing I can help you with.”

  But there was one last thing McGarvey had to know. Baranov was Yarnell’s Soviet control officer, but Yarnell had someone here in Washington. He’d had someone in Washington all along. Someone within the CIA. At the upper echelons. Someone like Lawrence Danielle, who would have access to Operations, and who would also have a direct pipeline down to Archives. Someone who had been betraying his country all these years just as Yarnell had, or had perhaps unwittingly been a betrayer if he had simply been outmaneuvered as Darrel Owens had been. “There was someone else in Mexico City, Evita. Another American. Someone Baranov had cultivated just as he had cultivated Darby.”

  “There were many of them,” she said softly.

  “This one in particular would have been young. Another whiz kid like Darby, perhaps. Someone for whom Valentin might have had a great deal of respect.”

  She turned around. Her tears had stopped, but her eyes were red and her complexion wan.

  “Maybe he was in Mexico City for a short time. Darby would have known him, or known of him. He would have respected the man. And Baranov would have treated him as a special case. Does that ring a bell, Evita? Was there anyone like that in those days that you can remember? Someone you met, perhaps, at a party or a reception? Someone Baranov may have mentioned, just in passing?”

  She was remembering. He could see it in her eyes, in the set of her shoulders. It was coming back to her. She was returning to those days and nights in Mexico, when her life at the start, to hear her tell it, had been a long fairy-tale dream that in the end turned into a nightmare. But for a while all of Mexico was at her and Darby’s feet.

  “There was someone else,” she said. “Just once. It was very early on. Darby and I had just gotten married, and we’d just opened our beach house north of Acapulco. There was a party.”

  Her voice was soft. He had to strain to hear her. She came back to the couch and sat down. He lit her a cigarette, and she pulled the smoke deeply into her lungs, exhaling slowly. Her cocaine high had completely left her, and her eyes had grown dull.

  “There were a lot of people at
this party?” he prompted.

  “A lot of Valentin’s friends. Most of them I’d never seen. And there were girls, too. Always girls.”

  “Girls?” McGarvey asked. “What girls?”

  “Whores from Mexico City. High-priced call girls. Prime beef. The very best. Nothing was too good for Valentin’s friends. Nothing. The best of everything.”

  “Did this always happen? The girls at the parties?”

  “Not always. But sometimes Valentin or Darby wanted to impress someone so they’d bring the women. At the time I was very naive about it. I thought they were models or movie actresses or something like that. I didn’t know they’d been paid to go to bed with Valentin’s friends.”

  It had been the proverbial honey trap. In those days the Russians used it all the time. If they wanted to turn a man they’d arrange for him to be seduced (Americans seemed the easiest to burn), during which time they’d take photographs and make audio tapes of course. Outwardly, morality ran high in the States in those days, so that trap worked very well.

  “And there was one American in particular that night?” McGarvey asked. “You met him? You were introduced? Perhaps you can remember a name, even a first name, or his face? Anything?”

  But she had not actually seen the man, though she had heard his voice. It was late, probably after one in the morning when Darby, who had been talking with Valentin in the corner for nearly an hour, broke away and came over to her. The lights were low, the music soft and already a lot of the men had paired off with the whores, some of whom had gone out to the changing house by the pool, while others had simply wandered off into the gardens or down to the beach. The guest house in back was reserved always for special guests. The entire cottage was set up with the photographic and recording equipment, all of it evidently state of the art at the time. Anything that went on inside the cottage, even in the bathrooms, no matter the light conditions, would be picked up. It was the perfect setup. “I saw some of the photographs that came out of that place, and let me tell you they left nothing for the imagination, nothing at all.” They’d burned a lot of people there, and they were proud of their accomplishment. “But I wasn’t. I thought what they were doing was despicable. Of course, that was later, you understand. At the time we’re talking about I had no idea what was going on. Darby just broke away from Valentin, came over to me, and we started dancing. He was holding me close, whispering in my ear, kissing my neck. It didn’t take very long and we were upstairs on the balcony making love.”

  “What about the American?” McGarvey asked. “Did he arrive afterward? Or had he been there all along? What? I don’t understand, Evita.”

  Their bedroom was on a balcony that was open to the large living room below. The bed, however, was set far enough back so that no one from below could see up, nor could she see down. But from the window she did see the flash of a car’s headlights on the beach road that led down from the highway. When she tried to get up to see who was arriving, Darby pulled her back down onto the bed. By then it had quieted down quite a bit so she heard Baranov welcoming their new guest. But without names, Evita answered McGarvey’s question before he could ask it. “We never used names in those days. Everyone thought it for the best.” But their voices were very plain, and Darby didn’t seem to mind that she was listening, he just didn’t want her to go down there. Baranov was respectful toward the American, that much she could tell from what he was saying, and how he was saying it. By then she’d known him well enough to pick that out. And the American sounded young and eager, but she had thought at the time that he was probably hiding something. He was being too polite, she figured. Here he was at one or two o’clock in the morning, at a party with beautiful girls, booze, and music, and he was being terribly proper, formal. It didn’t seem to fit.

  The music started again after that, and she could hear the others talking softly as they danced, the tinkle of ice cubes in glasses, laughter. Still Darby kept her upstairs, and before long they were making love again. He had an amazing capacity in those days, she said, and so did she.

  “We were all a lot younger, Mr. Glynn. And foolish and uncertain about what we were supposed to do with our lives. In a way life was a lot easier then; there didn’t seem to be so much to worry about as now. It’s this American who showed up at the party that you’re after too, isn’t it? I can tell. Valentin came up later and I heard him tell Darby that their friend had gone over to the cottage, and that everything was set. It didn’t mean all that much to me at the time, though later I figured out that they were probably going to blackmail the poor bastard.”

  “No idea who he was? Did he work at the embassy? Was he a visiting businessman, a doctor? What?”

  “I only knew he was an American from his accent,” Evita said.

  McGarvey held himself in check. “Accent?” he asked.

  “He was a gringo.”

  “From the South, this American? Maybe from Texas? Maybe from Georgia or Alabama? That South? Did it occur to you at the time?”

  She shrugged. “Not the South, more to the Northeast, I think. Maybe Massachusetts. Maybe Connecticut or Maine. A funny accent, but not that strong. It was there, though.”

  “Cultured?”

  “You mean like Darby?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe,” Evita said. “I don’t know. I didn’t hear all that much, and I had my mind on other things at the time.”

  “He was gone in the morning?”

  “I didn’t get up until noon, and by then he was gone. Darby or Valentin never mentioned him again. And the only reason I still remember it is that I’d never heard Valentin so respectful of another man as he was of that American that night. It struck me as odd, that’s all. I figured the American had to have been someone important.”

  Or someone who would someday become important, McGarvey thought.

  “And that’s all of it,” Evita said tiredly. She finished her champagne. “That’s all I know. You’ll never beat them. Like I said, they’ve been at it far too long for you to do anything about it. Give it up. You’ll lose. We all will.”

  She laid her head back and closed her eyes. She had come a long way, and the journey had inflicted a terrible weariness on her.

  The band had taken up a new tune. Watching her resting, McGarvey was struck by how Evita’s life had been so irrevocably ruined by Darby Yarnell and Valentin Baranov. But there’d been a purpose, of course. And he suspected it had gone beyond a simple legitimization of Yarnell in Mexico City at the time. He had come to suspect that Baranov had been, and still was, a man gifted with a far-sighted vision of things to come. He was a planner and mover who apparently deeply understood basic human motivations. Whatever he had set in motion more than twenty years ago was now finally coming to fruition. He had laid his plans, had gathered and trained his troops, and now the real battle was just beginning. In spite of everything he had learned though, McGarvey felt as if he were operating mostly in the dark. If Baranov’s gift was clarity of vision, and Yarnell’s was dedication to a purpose, McGarvey’s failing would be a basic lack of understanding of the big picture. There was so much more going on that he felt as if he were a blind man preparing to cross a very dangerous mountain range.

  “Valentin’s in Mexico City again,” McGarvey said softly.

  Evita dragged her eyes open. “You’ve already said that.”

  “Something is going to happen very soon. Something he has been planning since the late fifties. It’s why he came back here to you. He wants to use Juanita merely as a motivator. He wants you to do something for him. You and Darby. Just like the old times.”

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked, her voice slurred.

  “I need your help.”

  “To do what?.”

  “To prove that Darby was and still is a spy. To expose whoever is working with him in Washington these days—the man from that night in your beach house. To defeat Baranov. And to protect your daughter.”

  “Impossible—”<
br />
  “Not if you help me, Evita. I promise you.”

  Evita looked at him for a very long time, and when she finally nodded her assent, the motion was barely perceptible. She got unsteadily to her feet, looked again at him, and then turned and left the room. He heard the bathwater running a minute later, and he let himself out.

  At LaGuardia he had to wait until five for a flight, and while he waited he worried about her, worried that she would end up like Owens and Janos Plónksi, whom he now suspected had only been the tip of an iceberg that threatened to sink them all.

  24

  McGarvey arrived in Miami a few minutes after eight, retrieved his single bag from the carousel, and rented a car, which he drove into the sprawling city. The night felt warm and humid after New York. He passed some sort of Cuban demonstration in which an effigy of Castro was being burned at the stake. City police were directing traffic around the disturbance, which had spilled out from a rat warren of streets and up onto the expressway. He found a place to park the car then checked into a small hotel just off Biscayne Boulevard, directly across the bay from the towers of Miami Beach. He walked to a pay phone five blocks away where he telephoned the number Trotter had given him. He was taking no chances that something would go wrong. If Trotter’s contact man was the conduit back to the agency, he’d know that McGarvey was in Miami, of course, but they would not be able to find him so fast. It would take time. He did not intend remaining here that long. The city was just coming alive with the night. Traffic was endless and the lights from the big hotels shimmered across the black water. Somewhere a big boat horn tooted mournfully, and down the street he could hear the raucous sounds of steel drums. Always there were sirens in the distance. He’d heard that Miami today was like Havana of the fifties; a big, wide open melting pot of Caribbean humanity in which the rich lived in garish contrast to the miserable poor; where every human depravity imaginable went on day and night at breakneck speed. He’d never known either city, not really. He’d been too young for Havana, and his assignments had never taken him here. But he could well imagine what Havana must have been like. And he figured this was Basulto’s kind of city. It must have been like coming home for him to be here.