Crossfire Page 36

  Still there were no sounds, no movement either from outside the house or from inside.

  With care he eased around the corner so that he could see outside. The other bodyguard lay on his side in the driveway. He’d been shot twice, once in the neck and a second time in the head. Like the first guard, he had not drawn his gun.

  “Kirk?” Maria called from behind him.

  “It’s the other guard. He’s dead too.”

  “Dios …”

  He stepped outside onto the porch, and at the railing cocked an ear to listen. But there were no sounds. Absolutely none, until after a few seconds the night insects began to shrill and click.

  Somewhere down toward the main road he thought he saw a brief flash of light, but then it was gone. Whoever had killed Rheinfälls and his staff had left.

  He and Maria had obviously not been the killer’s targets, which somehow gave him absolutely no comfort.

  He went back into the house and closed the door as Maria came out of the conservatory.

  “Are they gone?” she asked.

  McGarvey nodded. “I think so. You take the upstairs. I’ll look around down here.”

  “They weren’t after us,” she said. “Only Rheinfälls.”

  “And his house staff.”

  She looked closely at him. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll live,” he said. “Now, hurry!”

  “What are we looking for?” she asked.

  “Telephone directories, files, notebooks, anything that will tell us if any of the other men on your short list are still alive.”

  “The tax records. I have their addresses …”

  “It’ll be too dangerous to go directly to them. We’ll have to talk them out, and meet them somewhere … else.”

  “Where?” she asked.

  “Ponte do Sor.”

  “What is this place?” she asked breathlessly.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Nearby, I think.”

  “Is that what he told you?” she asked, glancing back toward the conservatory.

  McGarvey nodded.

  “The gold is there?”

  “Maybe,” McGarvey said. “But we won’t find it without more information.”

  “All right,” Maria said, and she started for the stairs.

  “There’s a curse on it,” McGarvey said, feeling somewhat foolish.

  She spun around, startled.“What did you say?”

  “He told me that there was a curse on the gold.”

  “He said that?” Maria demanded, her eyes bright. “He used that exact word?”

  “Yes, he did. What is it?”

  “My father,” she replied distantly. “He said the same thing. I heard him tell someone that there was a five-thousand-year-old curse on the gold. He tried to make a joke out of it, but I could tell that he was frightened out of his mind.”

  58

  THE TAP FLIGHT FROM Crete arrived at Lisbon’s Aeroporto da Portela on time at 9:45 P.M. The tall, well-built man who walked with the aid of an aluminum cane was the last off the airliner. His only bag was an expensive leather carryon that he slung over his right shoulder, the same side as his bad leg. He seemed to favor his left shoulder. Wearing a bush jacket, khaki trousers, and soft boots, he looked military.

  In the customs hall his passport raised a few eyebrows, but he was admitted with no questions. His single bag was given only a perfunctory check.

  “Welcome to Portugal, Colonel Berezin,” the customs agent said. “I hope you have a pleasant holiday.”

  “I will, thank you,” Arkady Kurshin said, grinning through his pain, and he went past the gates into the main terminal.

  The evening was mild, the air thick and silky with humidity. It was pleasant compared to what he had endured for two days through the mountains of Iran until he was able to steal an old truck for the remainder of his trip to the border, and then to Baghdad.

  Kurshin paused just within the main doors and studied the four-lane road that led away from the airport. There were a half-dozen taxis lined up to the right. Directly across from the doors were three shuttle buses, transport to the various hotels in the city. Cars came and went as people streamed out of the terminal.

  He could see nothing threatening here. But his tradecraft was slipping, and he knew it. Several times he’d almost blown it with the Iraqis: once at the hospital when in a delirium he called for General Didenko; again with the authorities who demanded to know how he came to be in Iraq with such wounds.

  His story to them was a mixture of half truths and lies. He was a Russian on a spying mission against Iran. Agents of SAVAK had caught him and nearly killed him.

  “You are a lucky man, Colonel Berezin,” the Iraqi officer had told him, and he’d drawn a blank for just a moment. His name was Kurshin, not Berezin. The official gave him an odd, searching look, but then the moment had passed.

  McGarvey would not be so forgiving, if he were here and if they came face-to-face. With McGarvey it was going to be a matter of life or death.

  My life in your service, he had promised Baranov … Didenko. Just lately he was getting the two mixed up in his head. It was bothersome.

  All the way out from the Middle East, he had pondered what would happen after he was finished here. He had finally come to accept the decision that there would be nothing after Lisbon. Or at least nothing that mattered. It was a decision that took a big weight off his shoulders. He felt lighter, able to move fast, ready for whatever would happen here between him and McGarvey.

  He had come with no excess baggage. With no preconceived ideas. With only one purpose.

  He stepped out of the terminal and started toward the taxi rank. Two men dressed in gray business suits jumped out of a red Mercedes sedan and hurried across to him.

  They were KGB. It was stamped all over them. Kurshin stepped back, but this time his reactions were too slow. Before he could turn they were on him, one man at each elbow.

  “Arkady Aleksandrovich Kurshin, you are under arrest,” the big one on his left said close to his ear. The man’s breath smelled of cloves.

  “What are you talking about?” Kurshin replied in English. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “Don’t give us any trouble, you bastard,” the big one snarled. “Check him, Aleksandr.”

  The second, much smaller agent hurriedly patted Kurshin down as if he were merely happily greeting an old friend. Two of his front teeth were capped with gold, and his left eye was bloodshot. He kept grinning up at Kurshin. “He’s clean, Mischa.” His smile deepend. “Fuck your mother I’m happy you’re here.”

  “A nice little promotion for you, comrade,” Kurshin replied indifferently.

  They hustled him across the sidewalk to the Mercedes, Aleksandr relieving him of his cane and bag. Mischa yanked open the rear door, shoved Kurshin inside, and climbed in with him. Aleksandr got in front beside the driver.

  As soon as the doors were closed they took off, the driver hunched over the wheel.

  “How did you know I would be on that airplane?” Kurshin asked, once they had cleared the airport.

  The big man beside him said nothing, and Aleksandr, who had turned around and was watching him, just smiled.

  “If I am under arrest, what are the charges?” Kurshin asked reasonably.

  Still there was no response from either agent, or from the driver.

  “Fucking farmers,” Kurshin said in Russian. It was anything but a compliment to a Muscovite.

  Aleksandr started to say something as his right hand came up over the back of the seat.

  Kurshin suddenly grabbed the man’s face in both hands, gouging out his eyes with his thumbs. Blood spurted out of the sockets as Aleksandr screamed and tried to pull away, but Kurshin hauled him bodily over the back of the front seat. Mischa had reared back and was reaching for his gun when Kurshin shoved Aleksandr in his lap.

  The driver jabbed at the brakes. “Mischa!” he shouted in pa
nic.

  Kurshin snatched the big pistol out of Mischa’s hand and fired a single shot at point-blank range into the man’s forehead between his eyes.

  With his weak left arm he shoved Aleksandr away and shot him in the head just behind his left ear.

  The man’s sphincter relaxed as he died, the stench suddenly overpowering.

  Kurshin brought the pistol over the back of the front seat and laid the barrel against the back of the driver’s head. They’d pulled over to the side of the road and were just about stopped.

  “Find me a dark road so that we can get rid of these bodies, comrade, and you just might live,” Kurshin ordered in Russian.

  Kurshin was seeing spots and bright flashes in front of his eyes. He had hurt himself; he could feel blood leaking from his shoulder. His head swam. He wanted to be sick.

  “Fuck your mother, but you are a dead man unless you do as I say!” Kurshin shouted.

  The driver floored the accelerator and they shot back onto the road, horns blaring as passing traffic swerved to avoid them.

  “Careful,” Kurshin warned, jamming the pistol harder into the man’s head.

  A few miles further they came to a dirt track that led off to the left, toward the river, through a stand of woods. The driver slowed down and pulled off.

  “I was just following my orders, comrade,” the man said.

  “I know,” Kurshin reassured him. “All that will happen to you tonight, if you continue to cooperate with me, will be a long walk back to the embassy.”

  “We can work this out.”

  Kurshin’s stomach was heaving, and the stench of excrement and blood was thick in his nostrils and at the back of his throat.

  “Pay attention and you will live.”

  “I don’t want to die. Oh, please …”

  “Tell Baranov what happened here, comrade—” Kurshin said, cutting himself off. Was it General Baranov still? Like the old days? “Tell him. Only him, and you will be rewarded. I promise you.”

  The driver was sobbing.

  “Pull over here,” Kurshin said. They were in the woods, at least a half mile, maybe farther, from the airport highway.

  The Mercedes came to a jerky halt.

  “Comrade—” the driver began, and Kurshin shot him in the back of the head. The man was a fly on a kitchen table. Less.

  The car bumped off the narrow track and stopped against a short concrete post.

  Kurshin reached over the driver, shut off the lights, and then switched off the ignition. The silence was suddenly stifling, and he vomited over everything.

  59

  MCGARVEY LET MARIA DRIVE the six miles or so down the coast to Estoril. The effort he had expended at Rheinfälls’s had pushed him to the verge of collapse. It felt as if he had torn something inside his gut, and he figured he was probably bleeding internally.

  Maria kept glancing over at him as she drove, studying his face in the sudden glare of oncoming headlights. It was clear that she was worried.

  “You don’t look so good,” she said.

  “Someone is very interested in your gold,” he said, ignoring the comment. He was in considerable pain. He didn’t need to be reminded of it. “Enough to kill Rheinfälls to stop him from dealing with us.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “But not kill us,” she added. “The generals—who do you suppose they are? What did he mean?”

  “I don’t know yet,” McGarvey said. “But from what I can gather, as long as Rheinfälls and the others stayed away from the gold, they were okay. The moment we came snooping around, however, these generals made their move.”

  “They’re protecting the gold,” Maria said. “At least that much is obvious. But why don’t they take it for themselves?”

  “Maybe someone is watching them in turn,” McGarvey said. “Someone they’re afraid of.”

  She looked at him. “That’s why you didn’t call Feldmann from the house, isn’t it?”

  Maria had found the name in an upstairs bedroom, probably Rheinfälls’s. It was jotted down on a piece of paper along with a half-dozen others. The paper had been stuffed as a place marker into an old book of German poetry, lying on a nightstand beside the bed. It was the only name they’d found that matched any of the three remaining names Maria had remembered from Major Roebling’s forty-six-year-old notebook.

  “If they were watching Rheinfälls that closely, it’s likely that his line was tapped,” McGarvey said. “We’ll call him from town.”

  “So will Feldmann’s.”

  “Yes, but if he gets out immediately he’ll beat them.”

  “You hope,” Maria said.

  Estoril was a resort town, and traffic was fairly heavy as they drove up to the casino, the one place they were certain to find a telephone at this hour.

  “Why don’t we just go out to Ponte do Sor tonight?” Maria asked.

  They had found it on a map. It was a town about ninety miles inland from Lisbon.

  “And do what? Make a house-to-house search? Dig up the fields? The gold could be anywhere. We need more information.”

  “Feldmann won’t cooperate with us.”

  “Once he finds out that Rheinfälls is dead, and why, I think he will.”

  “But what if he won’t?” Maria insisted. “What if he’s gone? Or what if he’s already dead?”

  McGarvey turned on her. “What do you suggest?” he asked angrily. “Maybe you want to call your friends to come rescue you! I’ve taken you far enough—maybe it’s time you go it alone! Or have you already contacted them? Are they on their way here now? Am I going to have to watch my back? Are you going to kill me if I get in the way?”

  She’d pulled up and parked just down the driveway from the casino entrance. There were a lot of people everywhere. This place was more than a gambling hall. Inside were many restaurants, a movie theater, shops, courtyards, a nightclub, and an art gallery and museum. It drew a crowd from three in the afternoon, when it opened, until three in the morning, when it closed.

  For a minute or so she stared straight through the windshield, her hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

  “If need be,” she said at last, her voice soft, almost gentle.

  McGarvey wasn’t terribly surprised by her answer. “It means that much to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you won’t explain to me why.”

  “Not yet,” she said, turning to him. “I can’t, Kirk. Believe me.” She was earnest. “But you can get out now. We’ve come close enough …”

  “No,” McGarvey said.

  “Why? Can you be honest with me?”

  “I don’t like being shot at,” he said tersely, and he got out of the car and started up the walk to the casino entrance.

  Maria caught up with him before he went inside, and together they found a bank of telephones in a broad corridor near one of the restaurants. Neither of them had eaten all day, and the smells of food made his stomach rumble.

  He dialed Feldmann’s number in the nearby town of Cascais. It was answered on the second ring by a man who gave only the telephone number.

  “I wish to speak with Herr Dieter Feldmann,” McGarvey said in German.

  “Yes? Who is calling, please?”

  “There’s no time, don’t you understand? I am calling from Alois Rheinfälls’s home. We must speak with Herr Feldmann. At once. It is urgent.”

  “He is not here this evening.”

  “Where is he, idiot?” McGarvey said, cupping his hand over the telephone and raising his voice.

  “I’m afraid that I cannot say, sir.”

  “Don’t you understand that there’s no time?” McGarvey shouted into the phone. “They know, for God’s sake! They’re already on their way out to Ponte do Sor!”

  The man was suddenly flustered. “At the casino …”

  “Which casino?”

  “Why, Estoril, of course …”

  McGarvey hung up the telephone.

/>   Maria was furious. “If his phone is tapped, everyone will know.”

  “They already do,” McGarvey said, and he went back out into the main hall, to the desk of the maitre de casino just to the left of the front entrance, leaving Maria standing in the corridor.

  The manager of the casino was in livery, distinctive red piping on the broad lapels of his formal coat. “May I be of some assistance?” he asked imperiously.

  “We have been told that Herr Feldmann is here this evening,” McGarvey said, palming a thousand-escudo note and laying his hand on the counter.

  The maître de casino took it. “Yes, I believe I saw him.”

  “We must speak with him. It is a matter of some urgency.”

  The man picked up the house phone. “Who may I say wishes to speak with him?”

  “We have come from Herr Rheinfälls.”

  “Yes, I see,” the manager said. He spoke softly into the telephone, passing the instructions to someone, and then he hung up. “Herr Feldmann will be given the message.”

  “Thank you,” McGarvey said, and he stepped aside to wait.

  Maria came across the entry hall. “Is he here?” she asked.

  McGarvey looked back the way she had come, then nodded. “He is being given a message. What kept you?”

  “The loo,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  A few minutes later a very old man with white hair and blue-veined skin, his back bent in a permanent stoop, came shuffling across the entry hall. He was in evening dress.

  McGarvey and Maria intercepted him before he reached the manager’s desk. “Herr Feldmann?” McGarvey asked.

  The old man looked up at him, his shrewd eyes narrowing. “Do I know you? Was it you who called me from my dinner?”

  “Alois Rhienfalls is dead,” McGarvey said. “And now it’s extremely urgent that we talk.”

  Feldmann was rocked by the news. His thin, bloodless lips moved but he said nothing.

  “We believe it’s the generals,” McGarvey continued. “They’ve finally decided to move.”

  “Move?” Feldmann asked. He looked at Maria.

  “I believe they’re on their way out to Ponte do Sor this minute.”