Blood Pact (McGarvey) (17 page)

“Take anything you want, please.”

“Just here,” Dorestos said, and they parked in the relative darkness next to a Dumpster. “Get out of the car, and start walking away, around to the other side of the building. But whatever happens do not look over your shoulder.”

“I promise.”

The cabbie got out and started away. But Dorestos also got out and shot the man once in the back of the head from a distance of less than ten feet and the man went down hard.

“May God go with you, my son,” Dorestos said, and he glanced up at the office windows, but so far as he could tell there were no witnesses.

He jammed the pistol back in his belt and, careful to keep the man’s blood off his clothes, picked up the body as if it were nothing much heavier than a pocket edition of the Ordinations, carried it over to the Dumpster, opened the lid partway with one hand, and rolled the body inside.

He transferred the MAC 10 from the backseat, screwed the silencer on the barrel, and stuffed the weapon between the driver’s seat and the transmission hump. He drove off toward the road that led to the park at the edge of the woods.

In his estimation his assignment thus far had made little or no sense. Of course he would never voice such an opinion to Msgr. Franelli; though he was still a little naive despite his experiences, he wasn’t stupid.

McGarvey was the key, always had been according to the monsignore. The Society had sent a man seeking his help, and the CNI operatives had killed him. Otherwise it would have been Dorestos’s job of work.

McGarvey himself had taken out three of the Spaniards leaving only the fourth.

Now the Cuban had come seeking help, and she was to be assassinated. From that point—should he be successful tonight—it would be a matter of following McGarvey and his friends the Renckes. But if that didn’t work, if for whatever reason McGarvey decided not to pursue the search, there was always his granddaughter as a force multiplier.

The deeper he got into this assignment the more he’d come to realize that everything he’d been tasked to do had almost certainly been ordered under desperation. Which was the part that made no sense to him. A few billions in gold and silver and other artifacts were but a drop in the bucket to the Mother Church. And considering the risks, it could turn out to be a public relations disaster much worse than had arisen over shielding pedophile priests.

But he was a son of the Holy Church that had given him a meaningful life.

At the park he slowed down as he approached the short turnoff. The gray Taurus was there, as he thought it would be, but neither McGarvey nor the woman were in sight. Expecting an attack from this direction they had left the car, announcing they were here, and had gone into the woods to wait. It was bait, and it rankled Dorestos just a little that McGarvey had assumed it would work.

They would be hiding just within sight of anyone coming from the parking area. The woman was the bait and McGarvey would be somewhere very close to her. But he figured that if they were smart they would have gone deeply enough into the woods to a spot where they could also watch the back of the house.

He parked just behind the Taurus, and stood for a long moment listening to the sounds of the deepening evening. A car passed on the road, and then a pickup truck. When they were gone he raised his head and drew a deep breath through his nose. Perfume. The same as he had detected at McGarvey’s apartment in Georgetown.

Taking the MAC 10, he walked away from the cab to the eastern end of the narrow parking lot and angled away from the road. Twenty meters in, he stopped again to listen for the sounds of movement somewhere ahead, but hearing nothing. He stashed the submachine gun in some brush and started back to where he figured they would be waiting for him. Only he was going to give them what would be a nasty surprise.

THIRTY-TWO

McGarvey stepped out from behind the bole of a tree at the edge of the Renckes’ backyard and waved at Louise, who appeared in an upstairs window. He stepped back to where María was waiting and they put their heads together.

“If he comes this way, which I think he might, he’ll want you, not me.”

“You’ve already said that, but why? Does he think I’m a distraction?”

“Probably exactly that,” McGarvey said, and he held up a hand. He’d thought he’d heard something to the left, in the direction of the park. But the slight noise, whatever it was, did not come again.

“Him?” she whispered.

“I’m going out about ten meters to the right, and you’re going to stay here in plain sight.”

She laughed. “I’m not going to let myself be a sitting duck. If I get the chance I’ll shoot the bastard.”

“I want him alive. He won’t take the shot until he knows where I am.”

“Then what?”

“I have a couple of questions for him,” McGarvey said, and he cocked an ear to listen again, but there was nothing except street sounds. He started away, but María touched his arm.

“I’m putting my life in your hands,” she said. “Again.”

“You should have stayed in Havana.”

“Not possible for me.”

McGarvey’s first instinct when she’d showed up had been to telephone Callahan and have the FBI arrest her. But he hadn’t done that because it was likely that any search for the diary would lead back to the archives in Seville, and María was the key to open that door for him. And it also occurred to him that the Knights had sent someone from Malta to keep him away from Spain—who had a claim on the treasure. And had ordered their man to keep Cuba out of it. Which left only the members of the Voltaire Society, if they could be found.

A bullet smacked into the tree just inches to their right, and McGarvey shoved María to the ground with one hand as he pulled off two shots in the direction he’d thought he’d heard the rustle of bushes a few minutes earlier.

“I’m not your enemy, Signore McGarvey,” Dorestos called softly. He was very close.

“Why did you come here?” McGarvey asked. The man was off to the left.

“To protect you.”

“From a woman?”

“From the Cuban intelligence apparatus in Washington that she controls. Move away from her and I will solve that problem for you.”

“Then what?” McGarvey asked. He motioned for María to keep her head down and he started away on hands and knees at right angles to where he thought the shooter stood.

“I will walk away and leave you in peace.”

McGarvey rose up a few inches and tried to pick out a darker shadow against the darkness. The only lights were of the houses behind him, and of the streetlights along the road, but none of that penetrated very deeply into the woods. Nothing moved.

“But not me,” María said.

“No,” Dorestos said.

María fired three shots, the small caliber unsilenced rounds making small pops.

Dorestos immediately fired two rounds, silenced, but close enough so that McGarvey could make out the right direction, and he headed off to the left, not caring how much noise he was making.

María fired two more shots, and Dorestos fired again. This time María cried out in pain. She’d been hit.

The dark figure of a very large man darted impossibly fast from right to left about ten meters from McGarvey’s position, and disappeared.

“María?” McGarvey called, but she didn’t answer.

“She is dead,” Dorestos said, this time very close.

McGarvey feinted left, and moving on the balls of his feet brought his pistol up, as the very large man—nearly seven feet tall, and built like an Olympic pentathlon athlete in his prime—stepped from behind a tree. He held a pistol pointed at the ground.

“I mean you no harm,” he said, his voice high-pitched. But he wasn’t out of breath despite the speed with which he’d moved.

“What do you want of me?” McGarvey asked, keeping his pistol trained center mass.

“Only to provide you the opportunity to do your job.”

“Which is?”

“You know,” Dorestos said.

“I’m retired.”

Dorestos shook his head. “Not since those two children were murdered in the parking lot of your school.”

“Were you there?”

“No. But I saw the images. I was given the report, and I know how you must feel.”

McGarvey glanced over his shoulder, his aim never varying. When he turned back the man was gone.

“You owe that woman no allegiance.” The man’s voice came from the darkness to the left.

McGarvey remained where he was, the bole of a reasonably sized tree a few feet on his left. “The monks in Mexico City stole the gold from Spain, who stole it from the natives, including Cubans. Your church has no claim.”

“It is viewed differently in certain circles.”

“Leave me alone,” McGarvey said. “Or the next time I see you I’ll kill you.”

“Find the diary,” Dorestos said. “I’ll be close.” He was farther away, back toward the road and moving now.

McGarvey started after him, but after a few steps he stopped, and held his breath to listen. The night was silent until a car started up and drove off. The man’s speed was incredible, almost supernatural.

Holstering his pistol, he turned and hurried back to María who lay on her back, gasping for air. Blood oozed from a chest wound. She was conscious and she looked up at him, her eyes fluttering.

“He’s gone,” McGarvey said. He placed her hands, one atop the other, over the wound. “Press down, it’ll help.”

She did it, and immediately her breathing came a little easier. “Why are you doing this for me?” she wheezed.

“Beats the hell out of me,” he said. “I’m going to have Louise call for an ambulance. I’ll be right back.”

“I won’t move,” she said, blood seeping from the corners of her mouth. “You’ll have to put up with me for the duration.”

THIRTY-THREE

At Le Bourget airport outside of Paris, al-Rashid told his pilot, second officer, and a young, pretty attendant Alicia, to stand down, but to be ready at a moment’s notice should he need them again. It was nine in the morning, the day a little cloudy, and compared to Saudi Arabia, very cool.

“As always, sir,” Muhammad Saeed, his pilot, said at the open cockpit door. Saeed had been his squadron vice commander in the Saudi Air Force. They’d been together with handpicked crews ever since.

It was about money, of course, and prestige: working for al-Rashid was by extension working for Prince Saleh. Plus the freedom. Wherever they stopped, they were free to come and go and do as they chose, the only condition was that they were on call 24/7.

Al-Rashid, wearing a double-breasted blue blazer, white linen slacks, and an open-collar off-white shirt, took a cab into town, and checked in at the Inter-Continental, the understated hotel near the Tuileries Gardens where he always stayed when in transit through France.

Alain Baptiste, the day manager, came out of his office and shook hands. “It has been several months since we’ve last seen you, Monsieur Montessier. Welcome back.”

“Thank you, Paris continues to be my favorite city.”

“Will you be staying long?”

“One or two days, perhaps a little longer. It depends on business.”

“The suite is yours for as long as you need it. Will you require the aid of Mademoiselle Frery?” The woman was the hotel’s main concierge.

“Not today,” al-Rashid said, and he shook hands again, a custom he’d always detested.

Upstairs he gave the bellman who’d carried up his two bags a generous tip, and when he was alone he ordered up a pot of tea with lemon, and a bottle of chilled mineral water. He took a shower as he waited, and when his order arrived, he took a file from his carry-on bag and opened it on the coffee table.

The man who’d gone to the United States to ask for McGarvey’s help finding the diary was Giscarde Petain, who had been one of the senior officers of the small and highly secretive banking group known for the last century and a half as the Voltaire Society. To this point al-Rashid had been unable to find exactly what this group’s avowed purpose was, except that it apparently had the means in place to find and plunder several caches of Spanish treasure buried in the desert of the American southwest. This apparently under the noses of the local authorities.

Saudi intelligence had come up with the proper banking codes for the safety deposit box in Bern, at a branch of the Berner Kantonal Bank on Schwanengasse, apparently from a contact inside the bank’s main offices with strong financial ties to the Saudi Royal family through Prince Saleh.

Getting his hands on the book had been as easy as strolling into the bank and presenting his credentials and the proper passwords. The surprise had come when he’d gotten back to his hotel and tried to read the thing. It was in Latin, a dead language he was reasonably proficient in as were almost all Oxford graduates, but it was in a code that someone within the Voltaire Society would know how to crack.

The only lead to the Society was Petain himself, whose photograph had been identified by the banker in Bern as the man who’d come six months earlier with the proper passwords. He’d stayed one hour, during which time he’d required the use of a copy machine. When he was gone it was discovered that the copy machine’s internal mechanism had been tampered with in such a fashion that no record existed of what had been copied.

Their contact did supply them with an address for Petain in Paris’s upscale, though mostly commercial, Second Arrondissement, just a few blocks north of the Louvre, and only a short taxi ride from the Inter-Continental.

The banker’s written testimony was included in the dossier.
“We are told that he has a wife, Sophie, and one boy, Edouard, who is thirteen.”

The only photographs had been taken from two surveillance cameras at the bank on the day Petain had shown up and spent the hour.

Al-Rashid sat back with his tea as he stared at the photos. Petain had appeared to be a tall man, slender, with a Gallic nose and angular cheek bones. In one he’d looked up at the camera, an almost arrogant sneer on his lips, as if to say that he knew something secret, that he was on a mission of importance.

Now the man was dead, killed by Spanish intelligence agents who had set up shop in the United States for the sole purpose of stopping the Frenchman from bringing a message to Kirk McGarvey, the former director of the CIA.