Crossfire Read online

  There was no light showing beneath Vaughan’s door, but it was unlocked, so Berringer went in and flipped on the light.

  “Sam … ?” he started to say, but the name died in his throat.

  Vaughan lay on his back just within the doorway, a puddle of blood and cranial fluid under his left ear.

  “Oh, Christ, oh, Christ Almighty,” Berringer whispered, suddenly too much spit in his mouth and throat.

  It was hard to think straight. He wasn’t a field officer. Those Joes called his type the “eggheads.” Well, eggheads bleed just like everybody else, he wanted to scream, but he was having a rough time talking or moving or doing anything else. It was impossible to believe. Yet this was one of the realities that Sam had always talked about.

  “Don’t just stand there, kid,” he would have said. “Get the lead out of your ass.”

  Gingerly, Berringer leaned over Vaughan’s body and felt for a pulse at the side of his neck, knowing full well he wouldn’t find one. He didn’t.

  Careful not to step in the blood, he picked up the telephone, realizing that he might be destroying evidence by touching anything, but it was already too late. And the desk seemed to be out of place.

  He got through to the chief of station upstairs in the briefing room at the same moment he saw the plastique high in the corner.

  “Christ,” he breathed. “Sir, I’m downstairs in Sam’s office. Sam is dead, and there’s a bomb stuck to the ceiling. At least I think it’s plastique …”

  Before he could hear what Lord was shouting to him, he dropped the phone and climbed up on the desk.

  Up close he could see the detonating device jutting out of the amorphous mass of plastique.

  He reached up for it, his hands shaking, and he hesitated a moment longer. The thing could be on a timer, or it could be on a contact switch.

  “Christ,” he swore again, and he yanked the detonator free, bringing with it an ounce of the explosive.

  Kurshin stood in the darkness just off the rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré less than a block from the embassy, understanding full well the significance of what he was seeing.

  He could just make out the side and back corner of the embassy. The office window just below the communications center was lit. Someone had already discovered the body, and no doubt the explosive.

  The rain had changed to snow, and although the winters here were much milder than in his native Yakutsk, his cheeks still stung with the cold. Traffic had not slowed down, despite the weather. And even more people were out on foot.

  It was all meaningless to him now. He had miscalculated. His timing had been off, and he was seething inside. He set the tiny transmitter in his pocket to the number one position and switched on the arming circuit.

  An instant later he pressed the fire button, but nothing happened. His eyes narrowed. He pushed the fire button again. But there was no explosion, no thunderclap and rush of flames and debris from the rear of the building. Only the traffic sounds, muffled by the falling snow, penetrated the fog that seemed to be enveloping him. He could feel his rage and frustration mounting.

  “Push the button and let’s get the hell out of here, Colonel,” Stepan Bokarev said, coming up from behind him. He was the KGB’s number four man out of the Russian embassy, and Kurshin’s contact. He’d been handpicked by General Didenko. He was not as bad as some KGB officers Kurshin had worked with in the past, but he still lacked imagination.

  Kurshin held his rage in check by sheer force of will. “I have already fired the first one.”

  “What … ? But there was no explosion,” Bokarev said in disbelief.

  “Somebody has evidently discovered my handiwork in the first office. Look for yourself—the light is on.”

  Bokarev peered through the blowing snow at the back of the embassy. “Shit,” he muttered once he had picked it out. “Blow the other one. Look, that light isn’t on.”

  “Not yet,” Kurshin said softly, another idea forming in his head. By now the CIA chief of station and his assistant would have been told and they would no longer be in their offices. The communications center would be deserted as well, although he didn’t think they would evacuate the entire building. They had already found and disarmed the bomb.

  The question would be whether someone would suspect that there might be other bombs planted in the building. If so, they might look for them. They might go office to office. But quietly.

  “What are you waiting for, Colonel?” Bokarev asked. “If they have indeed disarmed your bomb, they must know that the detonator is radio controlled. They will come looking for us.”

  “They are too busy right now getting their people away from the communications center to come looking for me. That will come later. We still have plenty of time.”

  “Fuck your mother, for what?” the KGB officer demanded, his voice rising.

  Kurshin turned to him, and the man visibly blanched. “We will wait, Stepan Ivanovich. And I will not fail, do you understand this?”

  “I’m just … suggesting, comrade, that we retreat for the moment in order to survive so that we can fight another day.”

  “I’ll pass along your sentiments to the general.”

  “I … I’m sorry, Colonel. I guess I’m just not used to these kinds of assignments.”

  “Go back to the car, start it, and prepare to get us out of here. But do not turn on the headlights.”

  Bokarev glanced toward the embassy again, then nodded. “Whatever you say, Colonel,” he said, and he turned and started toward their car, which was parked fifty yards away.

  Now we wait until they turn on the light in the chief of the Commercial Section’s office and discover the bomb there, Kurshin told himself. The waiting here in the snow was like the waiting at home when, as a young man, he had hunted sable and arctic fox for their pelts. The quarry knew the hunter was there, waiting for the kill. But in the end it made no difference. Kurshin felt the same bloodlust now.

  He set the transmitter to the number two position, his fingertips brushing the firing button but not pressing it.

  Someone would die tonight; he was going to make sure of it. The general wanted a distraction. He would get one.

  5

  THREE TRAINS HAD ARRIVED within a few minutes of each other, and the Gare du Nord was a madhouse. Kirk Cullough McGarvey pushed his way through the crowds in the main hall and made his way to the rue du Maubeuge exits, where he pulled up short beneath the broad overhang.

  It looked as if it were snowing much harder in Paris than it had been out in the countryside. And every Parisian, it seemed, had lined up for the three or four available taxis, the line snaking back and forth through the barriers, policemen directing the human tide.

  He swore under his breath as he put down his overnight bag and briefcase and pulled on his brown overcoat.

  His apartment was just off the rue La Fayette, barely a half-dozen blocks away, and normally he would have enjoyed the walk. But not tonight. Tonight he was tired and irascible. He wanted nothing more than to get home, take a very long, very hot shower, and relax with a violin concerto on the stereo and a drink or two. Above all he wanted no hassles.

  Hunching up his coat collar against the biting wind, and hefting his bags, he started resolutely away from the station, his thoughts naturally going back again to the business he had conducted in Brussels over the past two days.

  “You have two choices, monsieur,” the investments adviser at the Banque de Bruxelles had told him. “Because of the sharp decrease in the prime rates on the international market, your investments are no longer earning so much. You must either modify your standard of living, or you must begin delving into your capital … a course of action the bank would strongly advise against, of course.”

  “Of course,” McGarvey had replied. He was not a wealthy man by any standards, but the money he’d invested provided him with a decent income.

  There was a third option, but it was one McGarvey had not discussed with the man. He co
uld move his account elsewhere. Perhaps back to Switzerland where he’d once lived, what seemed like a century ago. Perhaps back to the States, or even to the island of Jersey, whose banking laws favored the investor at the expense of the British government.

  The broad rue La Fayette was snarled with traffic, but he managed to get across with the lights in a surge of pedestrians, all of them apparently in the same black mood as he.

  He was a businessman only by necessity, he kept telling himself. He had to oversee his investments personally because he had never met a banker or investment counselor yet who knew his ass from a hole in the ground. Why else, he asked himself, did a serious discussion with six of them, on six different occasions, produce six completely and wildly differing answers?

  But his mood this evening was dark from something more complex than simple money worries. Even if he halved his expenses, he would still live well. It wasn’t that. It was the other thing Hoden had said to him at the bank.

  “You must understand, monsieur, that you are no longer a young man. In a few short years you will turn fifty.” He shrugged, the Gallic gesture galling just then.

  “Still a few years to go,” McGarvey had replied, smiling. “I don’t think there’s any need to worry on that score just yet.”

  But the fact of the matter was that he was no longer the wunderkind he’d been in the old Agency days. As someone had once said at Langley about the old sage Wallace Mahoney who’d just passed sixty-five: “A good man, but he’s already living in his future.”

  It was a cold wind that blew without the promise of summer to come.

  Premature, perhaps, and yet the role he’d been playing as expatriate American first in Switzerland, then in Greece, and finally here in Paris, was wearing thin. He’d been at it for a long time, more years than he cared to remember; ever since the Carter days, when he’d been dumped from the CIA for not following orders.

  They were bad times then, with more bad times to come. He’d been sent to Santiago to assassinate an army general who’d been responsible for thousands of deaths, and who would, if left to his own devices, kill thousands more.

  Someone in the Carter administration had intervened and a recall order had been issued. But it had been too late. Hardly a night went by that McGarvey didn’t remember the face of the general, the look of surprise and hurt as he stumbled and fell to his knees and then onto his side in a growing pool of blood. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” he seemed to be saying in McGarvey’s dreams.

  Overexuberance, they said. Taking matters into his own hands. Operating outside his sanctions. Failure to keep a grasp on the world political climate.

  Then why had they come back to him in Switzerland with their problems? And again here in Paris two years ago? Why hadn’t they left him alone?

  A dozen places, a hundred faces flickered through his mind at the speed of light as they often did. He never forgot a face. Never. Not one of the madmen who had worked for him, not one of the men, and in two instances women, he had killed … especially not them. Not one of the friends who had betrayed him in the end.

  Christ, it all still hurt, even now so long after the fact. Sometimes he could hardly stand it. It hurt even worse, he supposed, because of his maudlin worries of late.

  He had become lonely again, bored, anxious. Another stage of his life was about to end and he wanted to hang on to the old and familiar even though he knew that was impossible.

  Whenever change came for him, it always seemed to involve the woman in his life at that moment. And each time it went just as badly, perhaps even worse, for her as it did for him … in the States a million years ago with his wife Kathleen; in Switzerland with Marta Fredricks; and finally with Lorraine Abbott fifteen months ago. He’d driven her back to California to save her sanity as well as his, but it still hurt.

  Just as his next move would hurt.

  Trouble was, he told himself as he turned onto the rue d’Hauteville, he had no idea where he would go. He only knew that his leave-taking was imminent.

  Out of habit he slowed his pace slightly so that he could scan the street: the pedestrians, the traffic, the windows and doorways facing his apartment, the two narrow alleys that led back into courtyards. But nothing seemed out of place this evening.

  There was no one coming for him, friend or foe. Trotter was dead, and so was Baranov. None of the rest really mattered.

  Halfway down the block he mounted the three steps to his apartment building, let himself in with his key, and switched on the timed hall light. It was too late to get his mail from the concierge, and he didn’t want to bother with it anyway, so he started up the stairs to his third-floor apartment, more tired and weary and, he supposed, frightened than he had been in a very long time.

  At the top he put his overnight bag down, unlocked the door, and pushed it open with his toe. As he bent down to pick up his bag he smelled the perfume, and he closed his eyes for just a moment. He didn’t need this now, especially not now.

  “What are you doing here, Carley?” he asked, straightening up and entering his apartment.

  “Waiting for you.”

  McGarvey closed the door and flipped on the light. Carley Webb sat in the armchair by the window, her coat lying over the edge of the couch, her legs crossed. By the way she squinted her eyes at the light, he figured she had been there in the dark for some time.

  “I thought you were busy all this week,” he said.

  “And I thought you’d gone to Brussels.”

  He held up his overnight bag and briefcase, then put them down by the couch. He took off his coat and gloves and went into the bedroom where he tossed them on the bed. When he came back out into the living room Carley had gotten to her feet and was gazing out the window down at the street.

  “Anybody?” he asked.

  She turned back. “Were you expecting someone?”

  McGarvey managed a tight little smile. “Once a spook always a spook, is that the game? Still want to move in with me?”

  Her nostrils flared as they always did when she wanted to make a retort but was holding herself back. It was one of her little habits that he’d always found particularly annoying.

  Why me, he’d wanted to ask her on more than one occasion. Why did you single me out of the crowd to get involved with?

  But he was afraid he knew the answer. He was afraid she would tell him that, like Marta Fredricks, who’d been his lover in Switzerland, Carley had been sent to his side to watch him. Marta was a cop with the Swiss federal police, and Carley worked for the Company. He was a former assassin. One of the unmentionables who lurked in every secret service but whose existence the Western services steadfastly denied. He had to be watched. He made people nervous.

  With Marta, the relationship had lasted for five years, until Trotter had come over from Washington to bring him back into the fold. With Carley, the relationship had begun to pale almost from the moment it had begun.

  She was too young, too demanding, too self-assured, too self-centered, and egocentric in some ways. She was a woman, he supposed, of the nineties, whereas he still belonged to another age.

  “Do you want a drink?” he asked, loosening his tie. He took off his jacket, draped it over the back of the desk chair by the door, then took his holstered pistol from the small of his back and laid it down.

  “Just wine,” she said, watching him.

  He went into the kitchen, opened a bottle of Chardonnay, and poured a couple of glasses. When he went back into the living room, Carley was at his jacket. She’d taken out his passport and was looking at it.

  “Lousy picture,” he said, handing her the glass of wine.

  “It’s expired,” she said.

  “I’ll come in one of these days and have it taken care of,” he said. He took it from her and tossed it on the desk. There was something wrong. He could see it now in her face. It was as if she were frightened of something. “What is it, Carley? What demon is after you this time?”

 
“Your eyes are green,” she said softly.

  “You’ve just noticed?” he said with a laugh. “But then there’d be a contrast. His eyes would be brown.”

  “What?”

  “Your madman,” McGarvey said crossly. “Your Joe. Your agent.”

  She was shaking her head.

  “Come on, Carley, let’s cut the bullshit. You work for the Company. I know it, and now you know that I know it. You’re young, beautiful, obviously very talented. Tom Lord would use you as a handler. He’d be a fool not to.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, turning away.

  He took her arm and pulled her back. “Christ, are you here to tell me that the son of a bitch is putting a move on you and you don’t know whether or not to go to bed with him?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “What’s the matter, kid, a case of the moral jitters?” He was being unnecessarily cruel, but he couldn’t help himself. It was over, couldn’t she see it? Hadn’t she seen the signs? Couldn’t she guess that he couldn’t stand to be watched, his every move cataloged and then hashed out at the Monday briefings? “Lord, how the man snores.” “His bathroom habits are absolutely abominable.” “His lovemaking is adequate, providing he keeps his mind on what he’s doing.”

  She tried to struggle away from him, but he held her arm tightly, knowing that he must be hurting her.

  “You want to sleep with him? With your Russian madman? Go ahead, don’t let me stop you. Hell, it’ll do wonders for your career. Look what sleeping with me has done for it.”

  She stopped struggling, her eyes beginning to fill. He let go of her arm.

  It was always the same. His watchdogs never fought back. It wasn’t in their contract. “Treat the man nicely, Carley.” “Do what the man says, Carley.” “Don’t upset the man, Carley, no telling what the son of a bitch might do.”

  “I never slept with you or any other man out of necessity,” she said.