Countdown (11 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Countdown
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MCGARVEY HAD ARRIVED at Tel Aviv's Lod Airport shortly before six in the evening. At seven sharp he paid off his cabbie and strode into the Uri Dan Hotel, his single leather overnight bag slung over his shoulder.
On the flight over from Paris he had asked himself a dozen times why he had agreed to Trotter's assignment. And each time he came up with the same answer: Baranov. It was an unfinished business for him. The Russian would not give up so easily. And since Kurshin had disappeared, it was a safe bet that he would be involved in whatever else happened.
“Baranov's handmaiden perhaps,” an extremely strung-out Trotter had said. “But Kurshin in his own right is a very accomplished man. A very dangerous man.”
“So I understand,” McGarvey said dryly.
They had met this time at a small anonymous sidewalk café on the left bank. It was noon and the place was crowded. No one paid any attention to them.
“They'll try again. I don't know where or how, but I do know the target.”
“Not Tripoli?”
Trotter glanced around at the other patrons in the café and at traffic along the busy Boulevard St. Germain. “En Gedi,” he said softly.
“In the Middle East somewhere?” McGarvey asked. He'd never heard of the place.
“Israel. South shore of the Dead Sea.”
“What's there?”
Again Trotter hesitated. “Ostensibly a research reactor.” “Ostensibly?”
Trotter leaned forward. “Kirk, this is top-secret information. If you open your mouth at the wrong time or place they'll have your ass.”
McGarvey said nothing.
“We think it's a weapons stockpile.”
“Nuclear?”
Trotter nodded.
“Then it's true after all.”
Again Trotter nodded.
McGarvey looked away, across the boulevard as a truck rumbled past. “It's something Baranov would go after.”
“We think so,” Trotter said. “We'd like you to stop him.”
McGarvey had managed a tight smile and looked back at his old friend. “And what else, John?”
“We're not sure about the stockpile theory. We want you to confirm it.”
“How?”
“You can start with Dr. Lorraine Abbott.”
The Uri Dan, right on the beach, was one of Tel Aviv's largest and best hotels. Crossing the big lobby McGarvey automatically
scanned the mostly casually dressed people coming and going, immediately picking out a small, dark-complected man in shirtsleeves obviously watching a tall, good-looking blond woman seated alone in the cocktail lounge.
He had only briefly glanced at the woman, but as he came up to the desk he looked back again.
“Sir?” the desk clerk asked politely.
“McGarvey. Reservations have been made.”
The clerk punched his name into the reservations computer, looking up a moment later. “Kirk McGarvey?”
“Right.”
“Yes, sir, we have your reservation. And a package has arrived for you from your embassy. If I may see your passport, sir?”
McGarvey handed it over. His gun and a few other things had been sent ahead in the diplomatic pouch. “Do you have a Dr. Abbott registered here?”
“Yes, sir.”
McGarvey motioned across the lobby to the open cocktail lounge. “I haven't seen her in years. Is that her over there? The blonde?”
The desk clerk gave him an odd look, but then nodded. “Yes, sir, that is Dr. Abbott. If you would just sign here, please.”
McGarvey had his bag sent up to his room, and with his package in hand angled across the lobby toward the cocktail lounge, passing the man in shirtsleeves, who looked idly up at him.
McGarvey stopped. “You know, pal, it's considered impolite to stare.”
The man just looked at him, and McGarvey turned and continued across to the lounge and around the railing to Lorraine Abbott's table.
She looked up at him, a questioning expression on her face.
“You don't look like a physicist,” he said.
Her eyes widened slightly, and her nostrils flared. “Neither do you.”
McGarvey laughed. “That's because I'm not. May I join you?”
“I think not,” she said, starting to gather her purse and rise.
“I bring you greetings from the general.”
She stopped. “The general?” she asked.
“Roland Murphy.”
It took her just a beat to catch her breath. “Then someone is listening,” she said, sitting back.
“Yes, they are. May I sit down?”
“Of course,” she said absently. “I don't think I caught your name.”
“McGarvey. My friends call me Kirk.” He reached across the table and they shook hands.
“Mine call me Dr. Abbott,” she said. “What can I do for you, and the general, Mr. McGarvey?”
“First of all, are you aware that you're being watched?”
She nodded over her shoulder. “I think his name is Larry. Mossad. They've been back there ever since …”
“En Gedi,” he finished the sentence for her.
“Yes,” she said, looking at him with renewed interest, her right eyebrow raising. “But if you know the significance of that, then you must have come here to tell me something.”
McGarvey decided that she was a lot like his ex-wife Kathleen; outwardly haughty and self-assured, beautifully coiffed, made up and dressed, which he thought might be nothing more than a cover-up for a slight inferiority complex. Women were not supposed to be physicists. At least not beautiful ones.
“Do you read the newspapers, Doctor? Watch television news?”
The questions startled her. She nodded.
“Then you are aware of what happened recently in West Germany. The business concerning a terrorist attack on a Pershing missile?”
“I think I may have seen something or other,” she said vaguely, still not catching his drift.
“The missile had been reprogrammed to strike En Gedi.”
She sucked in her breath, a little color coming to her lightly tanned high cheeks. “Why?”
“I was hoping you could tell me that,” McGarvey said. He leaned forward in his chair. “What do you think is going on out there?”
She glanced over his shoulder toward where the Mossad legman
had been seated, but he was gone. McGarvey had spotted him leaving a minute ago.
“He's run off to report that you're having a drink with a so far unidentified man,” McGarvey said. “But I asked you a question.”
“I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. McGarvey, or whoever the hell you are. But I think this conversation has gone as far as it's going to go.”
“The general is waiting for your call, Doctor. But please do it quickly. I think we're not going to have much time here.”
She hesitated, obviously torn between wanting to believe he was who he presented himself to be, and reluctance to discuss these highly secret matters so openly.
“Let me tell you first,” McGarvey said. “We think that the Israelis have hid in or very near their nuclear installation at En Gedi their entire stockpile of battle-ready nuclear weapons. And we think that the incident our satellite picked up last week may have involved a Soviet penetration of that secret.”
“Oh, Christ,” Lorraine Abbott said.
“Yes,” McGarvey replied. “Oh, Christ.”
DARKNESS HAD SETTLED OVER the eastern Mediterranean and with it came the lights of Tel Aviv, a city of 350,000 people, twenty percent of whom were Arabs who lived in an uneasy harmony with their Jewish masters.
In a third-floor office of a surprisingly small and unprepossessing building in a courtyard off Hamara Street, Lev Potok sat back from his desk and rubbed his burning eyes. He had been working steadily for the past three hours trying to put everything together in his report to Isser Shamir, director of the Mossad.
But the situation wasn't clear in his own mind, so how could he make anyone else understand?
The suicide of Viktor Voronsky in the interrogation cell weighed heavily on his mind. It had been a mistake on his part leaving the obviously distraught Russian alone, even for a few moments. But what in God's name had motivated the man to such a desperate act? There were forces here, he told himself, that were much greater than any of them had any reason to suspect.
Spying and espionage were one thing, but on arrest most spies were professional enough to understand that most likely they would only spend a few months or perhaps a few years behind bars before an exchange was made, and they were repatriated.
Voronsky, though, had apparently killed himself so that he would not be broken under interrogation. But who was the master, who had been pulling his strings to such an extent? The Russians he had known were dedicated, but unlike many Arabs they were not fanatics.
Lighting a cigarette, he looked at the half-finished page in his typewriter. They had come up with a date barely two weeks from now, but they had no concrete idea what it meant.
The Hungarian Embassy was involved, directly or indirectly, but the telephone messages had been cryptic and could have meant anything. Even an upcoming trade agreement.
Liebowitz's speculation that the so-called
German failure
mentioned on the telephone had something to do with the aborted hijacking of the Pershing missile several days ago was just that—speculation.
The pieces of the puzzle seemed to want to come together, almost of their own volition. But it was like building a complicated piece of machinery without blueprints, without even a firm idea what the machine was supposed to do.
Someone knocked on his door, and he looked up in irritation as Liebowitz stuck his head inside.
“Larry just came up. I think you'd better listen to what he has to say.”
“What's she done this time?” Potok asked. Larry Saulberg was one of the team assigned to keep a watch on Lorraine Abbott's
movements. So far she hadn't done much except remain in her hotel, reading the steady stream of NPT documents and reports that had been coming to her out of Washington twice daily. They had not been able to tamper with the letters for fear they would tip their hand even more than they already had. It was a delicate balance.
“She's got a gentleman caller.”
“Is it that prick Hayes back again?”
“No,” Liebowitz said. The man had a flair for the dramatic.
Potok pulled the paper out of his typewriter, placed it in a file folder with the rest of his report, and put the entire thing in his desk drawer. He nodded when he was ready, and Liebowitz stood aside.
Larry Saulberg was a small, dark, intense man who'd immigrated with his parents from Kenya about fifteen years ago. He had absolutely no sense of humor, but he was like a hound dog with his steadfast devotion to his job. He'd even changed his name to one that sounded more Jewish.
“Who is watching her at this moment?” Potok asked.
“Chaim,” the little African said, his obsidian eyes bright.
“What have you got for me?”
“At seven this evening a man showed up at the hotel where he registered and had his bags sent up to his room. He received a package from the desk, and then went directly to Dr. Abbott who was seated in the lobby cocktail lounge where he introduced himself and sat down.”
“Yes, and who is this man?” Potok demanded. He glanced at the wall clock. It was well past eight-thirty. “And why didn't you report this sooner?”
“He is registered under the name of Kirk McGarvey on an American passport; he has a long-term French visa along with a lot of others,” Saulberg reported. “The reason for the delay is I wanted to make sure who he was before I came up here to you. The package he received at the desk was sealed with a diplomatic stamp.”
“Why didn't you just stick with him?” Potok asked. There was something else. There was always something else.
“Because he had me made from the moment he entered the
hotel,” Saulberg said. “He even came over to me and told me that it wasn't polite to stare.”
Potok suppressed a grin. Saulberg was deadly serious, as was this entire business. McGarvey was most likely just another NPT courier. “Go on.”
“I ran him through our files,” the legman said.
“Yes?”
Liebowitz, who had stepped in behind Saulberg and had closed the door, handed over the file folder he'd brought with him. “He came up with this, Lev.”
“Well, who is he?” Potok asked, opening the file.
“A former CIA case officer,” Saulberg said softly. “Who is almost for certain an assassin.”
Potok's eyes shot up from McGarvey's photograph, something clutching at his gut. “What?”
“Not only that, Lev,” Liebowitz interjected. “We have it on good authority that he has been in Germany.”
“Recently?”
“Yes.”
 
Isser Shamir, known as Isser the Little, was a tiny barrel-chested man who stood barely five feet, and whose head seemed almost ludicrously too large for his body. His longish white hair was always in disarray, his wide dreamy eyes seemed always to be half-closed as if he were drifting, but his mind was absolutely sharp. First class. Like a computer, his friends said; like a steel trap, his enemies countered.
He looked up from reading Potok's hastily finished report. “There is confirmation that McGarvey was in Kaiserslautern during the incident with the missile?”
“Not one hundred percent,” Potok admitted. “Liebowitz telephoned a friend on the police force, who said that a man matching McGarvey's description was there. In fact, it was he who may have disarmed the missile.”
“And now he has come here,” Shamir said gently.
“Yes, sir. Meeting with Dr. Abbott.”
“It makes one wonder who he has come here to assassinate.”
“That part has not been confirmed,” Potok said. He sat forward.
“But it has made me ask if there is any connection between the hijacked missile and En Gedi.”
Shamir nodded. “That too makes for interesting speculation, Lev. What is your assessment in light of what you learned from the telephone intercept and your interrogation of this Russian?” He tapped a finger on Potok's report. “You don't say here.”
With Isser the Little you never speculated. You either had the facts, and all of them, or you admitted up front that you didn't know. Now he was asking for a guess. Potok, for all his years in the service, felt just a little uncomfortable. But then the stakes were so high that they couldn't afford not to consider any and every possibility, no matter how farfetched.
“I have a feeling that Rothstein and perhaps Simon Asher were working for the Russians. Their contact was Viktor Voronsky. I think that the Russians know about En Gedi, I think that the hijacked missile was somehow reprogrammed to strike there, and I think that they are planning to try again on June thirtieth.”
Shamir was nodding sadly. “What about Dr. Abbott and the NPT?”
“I think she suspects but doesn't know.”
“And Mr. McGarvey?”
Potok nodded. “He knows. He would have gotten it from the reprogrammed rocket's guidance system.”
“That makes him a very dangerous man as concerns Israel's safety.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What's he doing here?”
Potok shook his head. “I don't know.”
“Nor do you wish to hazard a guess?”
“Not this time.”
“I see,” Shamir said. “Well, then, find out.”
“How far may I take it?” Potok asked, keeping even the slightest inflection out of his voice.
Shamir didn't seem surprised by the direct question, but then Potok had never known the man to show surprise. “If he knows, as you say, from the reprogrammed missile, then the Americans know.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But they have said nothing. Perhaps he has been sent as an emissary.”
“Would they have sent such a man as him on such a mission?”
Shamir shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“Then he has come as a friend.”
Again Shamir shrugged. “Which places you in an extremely delicate situation. Fully as delicate as Israel finds itself in. Friend or foe, I suspect that soon enough the entire world will be privy to our little secret. It is up to us to keep it a secret for as long as possible, and then to safeguard what we have from attack. Whatever it takes.”
 
After Potok left, Shamir sat for a long time staring out of his fifth-floor window toward the lights of the Shalom Meir Tower a few blocks away. It was the tallest building in Israel. A beacon, he thought, not only for hope as it had been designed, but now for guided missiles as well.
Years ago, or was it centuries, he sometimes wondered, he had come to this city when it was mostly a collection of whitewashed homes, churches, mosques, and a few synagogues, all lorded over by the British. The future then had been very uncertain, as it had again seemed so in 1948 when their fight for independence had come.
So many lives lost, so much blood spilled on both sides, so much senseless destruction, and now it threatened to happen again.
Shamir was an ardent student of history. It seemed at times like these that we were indeed doomed to repeat our mistakes. If the Russians took over the Middle East, this part of the world would surely sink into the dark ages. Sanity and reason would be lost for a very long time to come.
Harry Truman, or had it been one of his successors, had been correct when he'd prophesied that the advent of nuclear weapons meant the abolition of all-out war. No one in their right mind would begin a war that could go nuclear.
But if those weapons, as terrible as they were, no longer existed, what would hold back the horde?
He turned after a long time, picked up the telephone, and
started to dial a Washington number, but before the connection was made he hung up. He and the general went back a long ways together. But he decided that he didn't want to hear a lie from a friend. He would rather find out the truth himself.
The skies were overcast across much of central Europe. When Arkady Kurshin stepped from his plane and crossed the tarmac into East Berlin's Schönefeld's Airport it was very dark and raining, a chill wind blowing from the northwest. The weather matched his mood. He'd come so close in Kaiserslautern that he'd almost been able to taste his success.
With a growing disbelief he had watched McGarvey simply pulling the plugs on the missile. Even now it was difficult to believe.
Again in Paris he had come close. It would have been so easy to wait until dark, then sneak into McGarvey's apartment and kill him.
This far away the hate still burned strong within him.
On the basis of his Soviet Russian diplomatic passport, one of several he carried, he was passed through customs with no delay. Outside a car and driver were waiting for him. He tossed his single bag in the back and climbed in the front.
The driver, dressed in civilian clothes, said nothing as he pulled out into traffic, nor did he seem inclined to speak, so Kurshin sat back in his seat with his own morose thoughts for the twenty-minute drive out to Friedrichshagen on the Grosser Müggelsee.
Their intelligence about En Gedi was ironclad, Baranov had assured him, as was their information from the Pentagon. Had McGarvey not interfered, the rocket would have launched, and by now he would be on his way back to Moscow a hero, instead of here with his tail between his legs.
“You understand,” Baranov had said before Kurshin had crossed the border into Western Europe, “that the price of our
failure will be steep. They will know that I have a penetration agent working in their midst.”
“I will not fail, Comrade General,” Kurshin had promised.
But he had failed. And perhaps this very night he would get his nine ounces—a Russian euphemism for a nine-millimeter bullet in the back of the head.
They skirted the small residential town and on the northwest side of the lake took a narrow dirt track down toward the water's edge, the hills steep here, the pine trees very thick. They were stopped three kilometers off the main road by a pair of KGB guards armed with the new AK74 assault rifles equipped with night vision scopes.
Kurshin had to present his papers. As one of the guards held a flashlight on his face, the other one got in back, opened his suitcase, and took his gun.
“You're late,” one of them said.
“His plane was delayed,” the driver explained.
The flashlight was withdrawn and the rear door was slammed. One of the guards was speaking into a walkie-talkie as they continued up the road toward dim lights just now visible through the trees and rain.
Kurshin shifted in his seat so that he could feel his left leg just above the ankle with the toe of his right shoe. The small .32 caliber automatic was still secure in its holster.
Fuck your mother, he thought, using the national expression of disgust, but he wasn't going to let himself be gunned down so easily. If need be, he would kill Baranov and make his escape.
The narrow road opened onto a broad gravel driveway that led up to a large house, almost a mansion, rising out of the side of the hill. They parked in front. Kurshin got out of the car and started to reach in for his bag.
“I'll get that for you,” the driver said.
Kurshin shrugged and went up to the house, the front door opening for him. Inside the main stairhall he gave his coat to another burly man in civilian clothes, who laid it over the back of a chair and started to pat him down, but Baranov appeared at the head of the broad stairs.
“That will do, Gregori,” he said.
The guard stepped back.
“Come, Arkasha,” Baranov called down, his voice soft and congenial.
Kurshin went up the stairs and at the top Baranov embraced him, holding him tightly for a long moment or two before kissing him. Then arm in arm they went down the corridor and into a study, a big fire burning in the fireplace across from a comfortable grouping of heavy chairs and couches. The room was book-lined and pleasantly warm.
“Cognac or vodka?” Baranov asked.
“Vodka,” Kurshin replied.
Baranov waved him to a seat while he poured their drinks. “It is too bad about Germany, but we are not finished yet.” He turned, smiling. “Unless of course you mean to give up and return to Moscow, or perhaps shoot me to death with that little ankle gun of yours.”
Kurshin was startled, but he didn't allow it to show.
Baranov laughed as he came across the room and handed him his drink. “Didn't I tell you once, Arkasha, to trust in me? I have friends everywhere. How else do you think I could get out of Moscow unobserved? You simply cannot believe the pressures and restrictions placed on the shoulders of the director of KGB.” He laughed again. “But the job has its compensations, and so will you, as you shall soon see.”
“Comrade?” Kurshin asked, confused. He felt as if he were sitting next to a high-tension wire. The slightest wrong move on his part and he would be dead.
“You are going to kill McGarvey for me—and for yourself as well, I suspect—and afterward you are going to strike En Gedi, only this time your method will be so spectacular, so completely unexpected, that they will be talking about you for many years to come. With respect, Arkasha. And fear.”

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