Crossfire Read online

  “You’d better let them take him to the hospital,” McGarvey said. “His legs are badly broken. I think he’s lost a lot of blood.”

  Carley nodded and the stretcher bearers loaded the assistant chief of station into one of the waiting ambulances.

  “What was he talking about, Kirk? Caliber of what weapon?” Carley asked.

  “Later,” he said. “Has Langley been notified?”

  “Just hold on for a goddamned minute,” Horvak snapped. “What the hell were you doing inside?”

  McGarvey glanced at the Marine as if he were seeing him for the first time. “I tried to call Tom Lord to warn him about something Ms. Webb told me about this evening.” He turned back to her. “Did you?”

  Carley’s stomach flopped over. “Christ,” she said, half to herself, and she slowly shook her head. “No. I left a note … I didn’t think …”

  It was nearly ten o‘clock by the time Charge d’Affaires James Griffins and the embassy’s general legal counsel, William Lisch, showed up.

  Emergency embassy operations had been shifted to the American consulate on the rue St.-Florentin, and McGarvey had been detained to answer questions, among them questions about the Argentinian woman who had disappeared from the hospital thirty minutes after she’d been admitted.

  Carley had returned from talking with Bob Graves a half hour earlier, and had been on the phone to Langley for most of that time. Until a team could be flown out from the States, she was de facto chief of Paris station and therefore chief of European operations.

  They met in the consulate’s second-floor conference room, McGarvey seated alone at the opposite end of the table from Carley and the two men. A Marine guard was posted at the door.

  “How long had you known this Argentinian woman?” William Lisch asked. The lawyer glanced at his notes. “Maria Schimmer.”

  “The first time I ever laid eyes on her was this evening when I dug her out of the rubble on the second floor.”

  “So you admit you were up there?” Lisch asked.

  “Did she tell you what she was doing in the embassy, Kirk?” Carley asked.

  McGarvey was tired, and he wanted to be anywhere but there. “She told me that Reid had been helping another man and was buried. She asked me to help them. Has she been picked up yet?”

  “No,” Carley said. “Her passport was returned to her. We didn’t think she’d be going anywhere.”

  McGarvey felt a little sorry for Carley. She was a good agent handler, or at least he supposed she was, but she was no station administator. She was in way over her head here. “Has Technical Services secured the building?”

  She nodded. “Phil is sending over a team. Should be here in a few hours. We’ve just got to hold on until then.”

  Lisch had followed their exchange. Again he consulted his notes. “What about this man you identified as the possible terrorist? Arkady Kurshin—”

  Carley interrupted him crossly. “Mr. Lisch, that remains an Agency issue. One that I’m sure the director will address in the morning. Until we receive a clear indication from Langley and from the State Department, that subject is closed.”

  Lisch bridled, but the charge held him off. “Ms. Webb is correct, of course, Bill.” He turned back to McGarvey. “An investigatory commission will be assembled. May we expect your complete cooperation, Mr. McGarvey?”

  McGarvey nodded. “As long as the Agency is involved, yes. But I can tell you now that I was mistaken. Arkady Kurshin is dead.”

  “How do you know?” Lisch asked before Carley could stop him.

  “I killed him,” McGarvey said.

  11

  “HE SAID HE KILLED the Russian.”

  Philip Carrara, deputy director of Operations for the Central Intelligence Agency, felt he was treading on thin ice. It had been a judgment call on his part two weeks ago, withholding information from the seventh floor. The decision was coming back to haunt him now. It was possible, he thought glumly, that his career was over.

  He sat facing the director of the Agency, Roland Murphy, the assistant director, Lawrence Danielle, and the Agency’s general counsel, Howard Ryan, in the DCI’s spacious office.

  The late afternoon outside the big plate glass windows was overcast and gloomy. The sun had not broken through the clouds all day, and it had been snowing in earnest for the past two hours.

  “That was two years ago, Phil,” Danielle said, his voice soft, almost effeminately gentle. Shortly after the previous DCI, Donald Suthland Powers, had died, he’d briefly taken over as DCI, until Murphy’s appointment. He’d been with the Company for a lot of years and was nobody’s fool, yet he remained something of an enigma. “And still no body.”

  “No,” Carrara said. “Which is not conclusive.”

  “Of course by now, if the body were still in the sea, it would have completely disintegrated, isn’t that correct?” Ryan asked. He was a methodically precise man.

  “My experts say that’s so, which is why even in the beginning we concentrated most of our efforts landward.”

  “Nothing from our Syrian resources after all this time?” Danielle asked.

  “Nothing,” Carrara said. “Though there have been a few rumors that Kurshin may have been seen alive in the region.”

  “In the Middle East?” Danielle asked.

  “He’s apparently been seen there, but the rumors came out of Moscow. Impossible to trace. Our best estimate was that they were just that: rumors.”

  The DCI interrupted. “What’s your latest best estimate? Is it possible that Arkady Kurshin may still be alive and behind the bombing as McGarvey thought?” Murphy was a bull of a man, ramrod straight, with thick, beefy arms and a massive neck. His face was square, his eyes dark and extremely intense beneath bushy eyebrows.

  “It’s possible, General, but not likely,” Carrara said. “McGarvey himself backed away from that possibility. There would have been stronger indications, in any event, had he survived. Something either in Syria or in Moscow. With Baranov dead—and remember that Valentin Baranov was his only control—Kurshin would have had to surface somewhere. He’d need operational funds at the very least. New identities. Even a new charter to operate.”

  “Didenko could have done it,” Murphy said. “The son of a bitch has been consolidating his power since the KGB shakeup after Baranov’s death.”

  “He’s been watched, General.”

  “And?” Murphy asked impatiently. Baranov, the former director of the KGB, had almost single-handedly brought Powers down, nearly emasculating the CIA for a time, and had almost caused a major shooting war in the Middle East that could have gone nuclear.

  “He’s not been an easy man to follow. There have been and continue to be very large gaps in our daily summaries of his movements. Nothing we can do about it.” Carrara shrugged. “What I’m trying to say is that if a resource such as Kurshin is still operative, he would have been put to use by now.”

  “Perhaps this was his coming out,” Danielle suggested softly.

  “It would have happened before this,” Carrara said. “God only knows there have been plenty of opportunities … and, from their standpoint, needs.”

  “Which brings us back to McGarvey,” Ryan said. He and McGarvey had had a difference of opinion several years earlier that had ended in Ryan looking like a fool. The general counsel was not a man to forget a grudge.

  “An imposter,” Carrara said.

  “I agree,” Danielle supported him. “This sort of thing is just not McGarvey’s style. Bombing, killing indiscriminately.”

  “Nor would he have returned to rescue people had he planted the bomb. He pulled Graves out of there at considerable risk to his own life.”

  “Ah, now that, however, is the man’s style,” Danielle said. “Take from him what you will, gentlemen, he’s done a good job for us twice before. Yet each time he’s gotten nothing for his efforts except our enmity, and on both occasions he’s nearly lost his life.”

  “All the more rea
son for him to strike back at what he perceives is his enemy,” Ryan argued. “The Marines say he signed in. They recorded his passport number.”

  “Carley Webb says she was with him at his apartment when the detonator blew. It couldn’t have been him,” Carrara said.

  Ryan curled his lip. “You said yourself that Tom Lord suspected she was in love with the man. She worked as his watchdog as long as he was in Paris. They spent a lot of time together. Slept together, I’m sure.”

  “She wouldn’t lie for him. Not against an overt action of that magnitude. Twelve people are dead, and five others are still missing.”

  Murphy, who had retired from the army as a major general to take over the Agency, narrowed his eyes. He was an intellectual, but a man of action. He’d been called the “thinking man’s soldier.”

  “What are we doing about interim operations?” he asked.

  “Mike Wood is on his way over with the team. They should be arriving at de Gaulle in a couple of hours.”

  “Chief of station Bonn?” Danielle asked.

  “Yes. He happened to be here in the city on stateside leave. I’ve put him in charge for now. Lou Anders, his assistant COS, will take over for us in Bonn.”

  “What about the long run?” Danielle asked.

  “That’ll depend in a large measure, I suppose, on the French. Depends on what sort of embassy building we’ll end up with.”

  “What about McGarvey?” Ryan asked the DCI. “We’re not simply going to take him at his word and let him wander off, are we?”

  “We have no evidence on which to hold him,” Carrara replied impatiently, holding his temper in check.

  “We’re taking the word of a young woman? His lover?”

  Murphy sat back in his seat. “If it were Kurshin, McGarvey would be the man to go after him.”

  “He wouldn’t take the job, General,” Danielle said.

  “I think I could persuade him.”

  Ryan got up and poured himself a cup of coffee from the silver urn on the sideboard. “You say that the man who signed in as McGarvey was an imposter?”

  “That’s right,” Carrara answered.

  Ryan turned back, a slight smile on his lips. “Then two questions come immediately to mind. First, why pose as McGarvey, of all people? Why not someone off the street? An American with a passport problem. From what you’ve said, he only needed to get past lobby security so that he could reach the stairs to the third floor. Almost any identity would have done.”

  “Unknown,” Carrara had to admit. “But in this business the reason could be almost anything. Something as prosaic as a happenstance meeting between the terrorist and McGarvey.”

  Ryan was grinning broadly now. “Come on, Phil, you can’t tell us you actually believe that. The coincidence is staggering.”

  “On the surface it seems farfetched, I’ll admit, but …”

  “And then there’s this mysterious Argentinian woman. Young, beautiful from all accounts, and in the building just after the explosion.”

  “She apparently had something to do with Carleton Reid. We’re working on it.”

  “She’s still missing?”

  Carrara nodded, knowing full well where Ryan was taking it.

  “Reid is among those dead, isn’t he?”

  Again Carrara nodded.

  “The first person McGarvey rescued, at great risk to his life, was this woman. Curious, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “It doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “For chrissake, she’s got accomplice written all over her,” Ryan snapped. “She and McGarvey were coconspirators, with Ms. Webb as their unwitting foil.”

  “What Howard says makes sense,” Murphy rumbled.

  “McGarvey sets the explosives and then goes home to wait for Carley Webb to show up, thus providing him with an alibi. Next, his Argentinian assistant pushes the button, and bang, all hell breaks loose.”

  “Then why did she go into the embassy afterward? It was a very dangerous thing for her to do,” Danielle said.

  “I don’t know, Larry. Maybe Carleton Reid knew something and she had to follow him. Maybe she killed him. In the end McGarvey returned to the embassy not only to make himself out to be the hero, but also to rescue his accomplice lest she be arrested and made to talk.”

  There was silence.

  “Phil?” Murphy asked at last.

  “I don’t believe McGarvey had anything to do with it, though it’s possible that the Argentinian woman did. But there’s more.”

  “Something that would prove McGarvey is innocent?” Ryan asked.

  “No,” Carrara admitted.

  “What then?” asked Murphy, his eyes narrowed again.

  Carrara extracted a photocopy of a typewritten letter and envelope that he handed across to the DCI. The envelope was addressed to Thomas Lord, Special Assistant to the Ambassador, at the U.S. embassy on the avenue Gabriel, and postmarked in Paris on January 2.

  The general quickly read the single-page letter, his lips pursing. When he looked up there was a half angry, half mystified expression on his face. “This is a death threat,” he said. “Aimed at Tom Lord, for”—he glanced again at the letter with obvious distaste—“for crimes against humanity as the Agency’s Paris chief of station.”

  Murphy handed the letter to Danielle who quickly read it, and studied the French stamp and Paris postmark.

  “Why wasn’t this brought to my attention?” the DCI demanded.

  Before Carrara could answer, Danielle looked up. “Roland, we get half a dozen of these a day worldwide. They’ve almost become routine.” He turned back to Carrara. “Was this followed up?”

  “Of course. The embassy received the letter on the third, and that evening Tom included it in his overnight summaries. He suggested no action other than a routine investigation by Technical Services. I agreed.”

  “Did they come up with anything?” Danielle asked.

  “The envelope and letter were written with a Smith-Corona portable manual typewriter of the kind manufactured twenty-five years ago. The ‘e’ and ‘s’ keys were slightly worn. The typist was right-handed, a man, but with a moderately light touch. The paper was ordinary cheap Xerographic bond found anywhere in the world, and it was mailed from the Central Post Office in downtown Paris.”

  “It’s in English,” Danielle prompted.

  “A native speaker, and well educated,” Carrara said. “It was the only unusual aspect of the letter. Most of the threats we receive are from obviously poorly educated people. Nearly illiterate, most of them.”

  “McGarvey’s educated,” Ryan said. “He’s tall and strong, but I’d hazard a guess that his touch is moderately light. And he’s right-handed.”

  “That’s correct, Howard.” Danielle said. “But so are you.”

  “I’m sorry, General,” Carrara said to Murphy. “Under the circumstances I should have brought this to your attention.”

  Murphy was thinking. He waved Carrara off. “Larry is right. There was no way for you to have known this letter was anything other than routine.” He shook his head. “But it leaves us nowhere.”

  “I still say McGarvey and the Argentinian woman are the keys,” Ryan insisted.

  “I agree,” Murphy said, looking up. “Get McGarvey on the phone. I want to talk to him.”

  “Sir?” Carrara asked.

  “His first impression was that Arkady Kurshin was alive and behind this,” the DCI said. “Maybe he was right after all.”

  12

  THE THIRD-FLOOR CORRIDOR was in darkness. It was a few minutes before midnight. Someone in one of the apartments below was playing the radio or television. Kurshin could make out the laughter from time to time. No sounds, however, came from McGarvey’s apartment, or from any of the others on the floor.

  He’d watched the building for a full half hour before letting himself in and climbing the stairs. As he had figured, McGarvey would be downtown answering questions. The fact that his name and passport number were on th
e embassy’s visitors’ register could not have gone unnoticed. And McGarvey’s expected absence gave Kurshin the time he needed to finish what he’d begun.

  Two years ago he’d stood outside on the street watching this apartment. He’d spotted McGarvey in the window. The man had made a perfect target. But Baranov had ordered Kurshin to run for his life. He had taken that advice, and still he had nearly lost his life at McGarvey’s hands.

  Standing in the darkness, he could almost feel and taste the salt water closing over his head. He swayed on his feet, the muscles of his body remembering the twenty-seven hours he’d spent in the sea before he’d been washed ashore half-conscious, delirious with pain and loss of blood. Only by pure blind luck had he been picked up by a three-man Syrian patrol. And it was only luck that by the time they’d been ready to report their find, he had recovered sufficiently to kill them all and make good his escape.

  Memories, he told himself, his eyes blinking, his gloved hands flexing into fists. He had plenty of memories.

  He set down the small leather case he’d been carrying, took a penlight from his pocket, and under its narrow beam made a quick but thorough study of the area around the door and the doorframe. He was looking for any sign that the door was alarmed, or that McGarvey had installed telltales to warn that intruders had visited while he was gone: a strand of hair, a tiny splinter of wood, a bit of dust. But there was none of that. McGarvey had become sloppy.

  Turning his attention to the lock, he took out a slender, case-hardened steel pick and had the door opened in under twenty seconds.

  He hesitated before stepping inside. Putting away the pick and penlight, he pulled out his gun. The only light inside the apartment came from the window overlooking the street. A cigarette odor was clear, as well as something else. Kurshin sampled the air with his nose. Perfume, perhaps. A woman’s perfume. Expensive. Perhaps familiar from somewhere.

  Inside, he closed and relocked the door, throwing the deadbolt so that if McGarvey returned, his entry would be delayed long enough for Kurshin to get out. He did not want a confrontation with the man. Not yet. It would ruin his position with General Didenko.