Countdown (27 page)

Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Countdown

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THEY LAY IN EACH OTHER'S ARMS watching the sun rise outside their hotel window. The last few days had been like a dream, unreal, events moving around them as if they did not exist in the world.

McGarvey turned to look at her. She had let her hair down and it spilled across her pillow, framing her delicate face and neck. Her breasts rose and fell with each breath, the nipples still hard from their lovemaking.

“It's almost time to get ready,” he said softly.

She looked at him, then reached out and touched his lips with her fingertips, a wan smile barely creasing her mouth. “I know.”

“They've set up a safehouse for you outside of San Francisco. I want you to go there.”

“There's someone I have to see in Washington first.”

“The general?”

She nodded.

“He won't tell you anything about me.”

“I don't expect he will, but that won't stop me from asking.” Her eyes opened a little wider and she propped herself up on her side. “It's the Russian. He got away and you're going after him. That's it, isn't it?”

“Don't do this â¦”

“Just tell me that much, Kirk, please. I deserve it.” She laid a hand on his chest. “I promise I won't make any trouble. I'll go out to California and wait. For however long it takes.”

He disengaged himself from her, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and got up. He padded over to the bureau where he lit a cigarette from his pack, and then went to the window. He could just make out the cathedral and old metropolis. So much old and consistent history here, he thought, whereas his own history was short and anything but coherent.

“Is he that important to you, Kirk?” she asked from the bed.

She was talking about Kurshin, who was after all nothing more than a handmaiden, nothing more than a tool, while McGarvey was thinking about Baranov. Was the man that important after allâto him or to the geopolitics that Trotter had been spouting?

Often he'd asked himself that question, but he'd never come up with a really satisfactory answer, no matter who the target was.

If Hitler had been assassinated long before he had come to power, would someone even more monstrous have risen in his stead? Perhaps a more intelligent man who would have recognized the contribution that German Jewsâespecially Jewish scientistsâcould have made to the war effort. Had Einstein been a loyal Third Reich subject (he did love his country) would Germany have developed the atomic bomb first?

We'd made plans to assassinate Fidel Castro using Mafia hit men. That had backfired, and Kennedy had been killed instead.

We all but gave our approval when the Shah of Iran was overthrown, but a monster had taken his place. Had Khomeini been killed in Paris, who would have taken over in his stead?

McGarvey would forever remember the men he had killed. Their faces were burned indelibly into his brain. Had their deaths made the slightest difference?

He hoped so, but he thought not.

“Kirk?” Lorraine said.

“Get dressed, I'll take you out to the airport.”

“Don't do this.”

“I don't have any choice,” he said softly. “None of us do.” Someone had said that to him. She was dead now. One of Baranov's legion of victims. He wanted to tell Lorraine about her. He had tried to warn her, but she wouldn't listen. None of them ever did.

“Get dressed,” he said again.

He heard her getting out of bed and coming across the room to him. He waited for her touch, but it never came. She turned and went into the bathroom, leaving him alone again, as he had been for most of his life.

Turning, he stared at the bathroom door as the water began to run in the shower. He didn't want it to be the same with her. Not this time. Not ever again.

Lloyd Yablonski was a big, red-faced Polack from Philadelphia who had followed John Trotter to the CIA from the Bureau. He met them in the TWA terminal at the East Hellinikon Airport a few minutes after eight.

He and Lorraine shook hands when McGarvey introduced them. “So, you're to be my baby-sitter?” she asked.

Yablonski grinned broadly. “The pleasure is all mine, Doctor, believe me.”

Lorraine smiled despite herself, instantly warming to the man. She sincerely hoped that he wouldn't get into too much trouble because of what she was planning on doing. But nothing was going to stop her. Nothing.

“Any troubles on the way over?” McGarvey asked him.

“No, sir. You?”

“We're clean. She wants to stop in Washington.”

“Yes, sir. She's to be the director's guest for a day or two before we head out to Frisco.”

“Watch yourself.”

Yablonski nodded. “You too, sir.”

“I don't know how long I'll be,” McGarvey said, turning back to Lorraine.

She could see the tension in his eyes. He was gone already. In the field, she thought the term was. “Don't do this, Kirk, please.”

“Take care of yourself,” he said abruptly and he walked off.

Lorraine watched him head toward the exit. It was now or never, but then she'd never had any trouble being decisive.

“Do you have any aspirins?” she asked Yablonski.

“No, I don't. What's the matter, Doctor, do you have a headache?”

“Splitting. Would you get me some? I'll check my bag through and meet you at the ticket counter.”

Yablonski hesitated.

“I would appreciate it. Really.”

“Sure,” he said, and he headed toward the shops on the mezzanine.

Lorraine waited until he was lost in the crowd, and then sprinted across the ticket hall in the same direction McGarvey had gone.

Outside, she was just in time to see him pulling away in a taxi, and she shoved her way past a couple starting to get into the next cab, and scrambled into the backseat, slamming the door.

“I want you to follow that taxi,” she told the driver. “The one that just pulled out.”

“What, madame,” the driver sputtered. “That is impossible â¦”

Lorraine had pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of her purse. “Twice this if you don't lose him. This is not illegal, I promise you, but it is very important to me.”

The driver hesitated only a moment longer, then snatched the bill from her hand and pulled out into traffic.

Trotter's safehouse was a whitewashed three-story building with a roof garden just off Askilipiou Street northwest of the city center and not far from the thickly wooded Lykabettos. The entrance was at the head of the stairs off a small, pleasantly sunny courtyard.

“Did she get off all right, Kirk?” Trotter asked, letting him in. Trotter still walked with a cane.

“She wasn't happy, but Yablonski seemed competent.”

“He is.”

“I'm counting on you, John. No screwups with her safety this time.”

They had moved into the living room at the rear of the house. Trotter's attachÃ© case lay open on a large coffee table. He'd brought a pistol; it lay as a paperweight on a sheaf of file folders. A street map of East Berlin and its environs was spread out over half the table.

“Have you had your breakfast yet, Kirk? Do you want some coffee?”

“When do I go over, John?”

Trotter looked at him for a long moment. It had always been like this between them at the beginning of an assignment. In the old days McGarvey had thought his friend was afraid of him. He had come to learn, however, that Trotter was afraid
for
him.

“Tonight.”

“That's a long time for me to hang out over there. The conference doesn't start until Friday.”

“Baranov flies in from Moscow on Thursday night. Eight o'clock. There's to be a reception for him and the police chiefs at the Horst Wessel Barracks. Should break up sometime after midnight when Baranov will be taken by chauffeur-driven limousine to his own little retreat outside of Friedrichshagen on the Grosser MÃ¼ggelsee. We just found out about that spot. Himmler used it during the war.”

“It will be guarded, I assume.”

“Heavily,” Trotter agreed. “But the place is very isolated. It's possible for you to come up from the lake. A small boat will be
provided on the south shore, along with the equipment you'll be needing.”

“The shoreline will be watched.”

“Oxygen rebreathing gear.”

“What about the weapon?”

“Two actually,” Trotter said, and he hesitated again. “An AK74 assault rifle with an image-intensifying scope, and a suppressed Graz Buyra.”

“The boat is Russian made?” McGarvey asked.

Trotter nodded.

“And the underwater gear?”

Again Trotter nodded.

“Russian weapons.” McGarvey shook his head. “What about my papers?”

Trotter took a thick manila envelope out of his attachÃ© case, opened it, and withdrew a well-used passport. Even before he handed it over, McGarvey could see that it was a Soviet diplomatic passport.

He opened it. His photograph stared up at him. His hair was cropped short, and was slightly graying, and his eyes were a deep green. His appearance had been altered only slightly, but the effect was as startling as the name. Arkady Aleksandrovich Kurshin.

McGarvey looked up. Trotter handed him some letters, a few family photographs, an envelope with a few hundred rubles, a Russian-made comb, a handkerchief, and Kurshin's red-covered KGB identification booklet.

“You are putting me out on a limb.”

“It's the only way, Kirk,” Trotter said. “Or at least it's
a
way. No questions will be asked.”

“What if I'm picked up?”

“Your passport is diplomatic.”

“But they will believe I am a Russian.”

“Naturally. It would be too risky for you otherwise. Kirk, I want you to know that the need-to-know list on this operation is very small. Only half a dozen people.”

McGarvey laid the documents on the coffee table and went to the sideboard, on which he had spotted a bottle of cognac
along with the coffee service. He poured himself a stiff measure of the liquor, drank it down, and poured himself another.

“But you want me in place forty-eight hours before the hit, John,” he said.

“We have an apartment and even a car for you.”

“Why such a long time? A lot can go wrong.”

“We're going to disavow you should anything go wrong. That comes from the top.”

“We've already gone through that. Kurshin's identification will prove to them, if I'm caught, that I was working alone. He's beat me twice, this is a vendetta. But why do you want me in place so early?”

“We don't have approval for the operation yet, Kirk. It's as simple and as complicated as that.”

McGarvey turned around. “Murphy hasn't gone to the president yet? Or are we going to isolate the White House?”

“He's gone to the president, but he hasn't given us the green light.”

“Then we wait until then â¦”

“You're to be in place â¦ fully in place first. He wants your situation to be completely stabilized before he gives his go-ahead.”

“Why?”

“I don't know.”

“Yes you do. John, talk to me.”

Trotter shook his head.

“I can think of only one reason for doing it this way. You suspect a traitor in the CIA. Christ, it can't be happening again. Not after all that we've gone through.”

“He may have been there all along. We don't know.”

“At this point only the president, Murphy, and you know why I'm going in so early. But everyone else knows that I'm going in.”

“You don't have to do this â¦”

“No safety valves for getting me back across if everything blows up. I understand this. But what about afterward?”

“If you get out clean, you'll be taken care of. It's all I can promise you.”

“How will the green light be transmitted to me?”

“Radio Berlin One. The special request show. We've prepared a key phrase.”

“Baranov will be expecting me.”

“Probably. But he won't know where or when the attack will come.”