Dance with the Dragon (39 page)

“Because Perry had a walk-in who told a wild story that Updegraf had been using her to get to General Liu.”

“I never heard anything about it.”

“Perry pulled the woman out of Mexico City in secret and brought her up to the States so that I could talk to her.”

“You’ve completely lost me,” Gloria said, and she seemed sincere.

“Her name is Shahrzad Shadmand,” McGarvey said. “She’s an Iranian belly dancer. Do you know her?”

Gloria nodded tentatively. “I think she may have been someone Louis knew. She might have danced at one of the clubs that he and some of the other staffers used to go to, but I don’t remember ever meeting her.”

“She was Louis’s mistress.”

“I don’t find that hard to believe.”

“She was also Liu’s mistress,” McGarvey said. “Louis sent her to spy on him.”

Gloria pulled up short, obviously trying to remember something. “Louis let it slip at one point that he was onto something important. I knew it didn’t have anything to do with some minor clerk.” She shook her head in wonderment. “I don’t blame him for not wanting to share it with Gil. But it got him killed in the end.”

“That’s the point,” McGarvey said. “I think he did share it with Perry. In fact I think that Perry probably pointed him toward Liu.”

Gloria was startled. “Is that what that girl told you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Anyway, why did Perry want you in on the operation? What in heaven’s name did she say to him?”

“She didn’t trust anyone. Louis evidently told her about me, and I was the one she insisted on talking to. The only one.”

Gloria nodded. “Louis was trying to cover his bases in case everything went south,” she said. “Which it did.” She thought of something else. “But if Louis told her about someone like you, it must have meant that he was afraid he’d be burned. By someone who was supposed to be covering his back. Gil?”

“It’s possible,” McGarvey admitted. He was watching her reactions very carefully. But he was unable to read anything from her facial expressions or her tone of voice, or by the questions she was asking and the conclusions she was drawing.

“But why? What was Gil trying to hide? I mean, if he’d sent poor Louis on a mission, why didn’t he admit it? Why’d he whip the whole staff into a frenzy to find out what the hell happened up there? He could have blamed Louis for the operation falling apart, or he could have kept his mouth shut and waited for McCann to send down help.”

“He had to deal with the woman.”

Gloria laughed harshly. “He could have tossed her out on her ear. She was a slut, who was going to believe her? Not you of all people.” She looked at McGarvey and her eyes narrowed. “But you do believe her.”

“I think that Perry somehow found out something about Liu and he was shaking down the general for a lot of money,” McGarvey said.

Gloria was startled again. “Found out something, like what?”

“That Liu likes to kill young women while they’re having sex with him,” McGarvey said. “It happened a couple of times up in New York and again in Washington.”

“Did Gil actually get money from Liu?”

“If I’m right about everything, then yes,” McGarvey said. “But Liu probably tried to put a stop to it somehow, so Perry sent Louis after him. But when that backfired he sent the entire station on a fishing expedition.”

“Wouldn’t he have worried about exposing himself?”

“He pointed his people, including you, in the directions he wanted them to go,” McGarvey said. “He had no other choice. One of his people had been assassinated, so his back was against the wall. He even started making noises about the Chinese up to no good down here in order to divert attention away from him.”

“Congressman Newell,” Gloria said softly. “Holy shit, Liu set him up with the Mexicans and with the Chinese, as a countermove against Perry. The oil thing is just a sham.”

“Again, I’m just guessing,” McGarvey admitted. “But it all seems to fit.”

They walked a little farther in silence. They could smell the acrid odor of car exhaust building now with the rush hour. It wasn’t pleasant.

“Shahrzad must have come as a shock.”

“He wants to use her to put more pressure on Liu.”

“He’s playing a dangerous game,” Gloria said.

“I think he’s desperate for enough money to get out in case things start to fall apart,” McGarvey said.

Gloria shrugged. “Okay, so what we’ve got is a blackmail scheme that got out of hand. Arrest Gil and lay it out for him. He’s the kind who’ll crack from the get-go. Why come down here to send me after Liu? It’d be dangerous and nothing more than a waste of effort.”

“Because there’s more,” McGarvey said.

“Like what?” Gloria asked.

“That’s the part I don’t know yet,” McGarvey admitted. “Louis was partially right. The Chinese are up to something down here, and were setting it up maybe as early as ten years ago. Or at least Liu is up to something. Perry was just an irritant, but Updegraf probably got too close and had to be eliminated, his death made to look like a drug cartel hit.”

“Newell was a countermove on Liu’s part, but what do you think Perry will do next?”

“He’s done it by getting me involved. Liu thinks that I’m here under Perry’s direction, which is exactly how I want to keep it.”

Gloria’s brow knitted. “I don’t understand.”

“I want Liu to think that I’m part of the scheme to shake him down,” McGarvey said.

“In the meantime you’re going to get close enough to find out what he’s really up to,” Gloria said. “And that’s where I come in. I’m to be a part of the diversion.”

“You and Shahrzad.”

Gloria was visibly shaken. “What?”

McGarvey let the question hang as they started back to Gloria’s apartment. He had come to her hoping that he would be able to tell something from her reactions. But if he’d expected to get a read on her, he was disappointed. It was possible that she was nothing more than a pain in the ass, as Perry had called her. Or it was possible that she was an expert actress who might have worked with Updegraf on the shakedown. Or it was possible that she had her own agenda, something that none of them could guess yet. But in a day or two, when all the players were in place, the next move would be Liu’s, and it would be large.

SIXTY-EIGHT

THE APARTMENT

McGarvey didn’t go in with her. She stood in the doorway looking at him, an odd, troubled expression on her pretty oval face.

“I don’t work very well with anyone unless they’re professional, and even then I don’t like it much,” she said.

“You won’t be working with her,” McGarvey said. “I want you to get into his inner circle. Shahrzad will be nothing more than a distraction for him.”

“When she shows up he’ll know something is coming his way.”

“I hope so.”

“He might even guess what I’m really up to.”

“Possibly not,” McGarvey said. “It’ll depend on what Perry’s next move is.”

She started to say something, but then held it off for a beat. “Don’t you want to come in?”

“No.”

She shook her head. “You’re a devious bastard, do you know that?”

He had nothing to say in reply.

Again she hesitated for a beat. “All right, I’ll do it. When and where do I start?”

“I’ll pick you up tonight around ten. Get some sleep.”

“Then what?”

“We’ll go hunting,” McGarvey said. He brushed a kiss on her cheek and turned and walked back to his car, even less sure of her than when he’d first got here before dawn.

SIXTY-NINE

HOTEL CATEDRAL

McGarvey found a parking place with a taximan a couple blocks from the hotel, and walked back. It was a workday and the streets were crammed. Whatever problems Mexico had, its capital city was bursting at the seams with prosperity. In the distance all around the city, where there should have been mountains, was only a thick brown haze, the result of too much prosperity.

The lobby was busy but no one paid him any attention as he crossed to the elevators and rode up to his room on the fifth floor. So far as he could tell no one had tampered with his door; nevertheless, he drew his pistol before he went inside. Moving fast he slid to the left, covering the room and the open door to the bathroom, then the closet and the ledge outside his window, keeping well out of the line of sight of a sniper on an adjacent roof.

If the opposition knew that he was in town, either they’d not found this hotel, or they were keeping it low-key, waiting to see what his opening moves would be. He suspected the latter.

He ordered an American coffee, a brandy, and the local English-language newspaper from room service, then took a quick shower. He was gummy from the flight down, and felt faintly dirty after his morning with Gloria.

He put on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, and turned the television to the English-language CNN. A minute later the room service waiter arrived. McGarvey signed the check and gave the man a decent tip.

When he was alone, he downed the brandy and telephoned Rencke at Langley. For better or worse he knew what he was going to try. He suspected that some people were going to get banged up before he was done, but he had not invented this game, and the bastards who thought that they could get away with assassinating an American intelligence officer were in for a rude awakening.

Rencke answered on the first ring, as usual, all out of breath. “Oh, wow, Mac, I was just going to call you.”

“Let me guess: someone in Washinton has gotten cold feet,” McGarvey said. He’d seen this coming a mile away.

“Yeah, the prez. He’s going to Beijing the week after next, and he wants you to cool it until he’s back.”

“You tried but you couldn’t make contact with me,” McGarvey said.

“He’s worried about the trade issues with China, and especially about the Taiwan missile sale.”

“This has nothing to do with the Chinese,” McGarvey said. “Just Liu. Perry was blackmailing him over the issue of the murdered women in New York and Washington, and he’d sent Updegraf to put on some pressure.”

“It’s gotta be more than that,” Rencke said. “My program has slid solid violet. That’s not blackmail.”

“I know. Liu is into something else. I don’t know what it is yet, but it has something to do with the drug cartels and money laundering, and possibly with the Iranian intel guy you picked up in the shadows.”

“There’s a lot of shit going on.”

“It’s mostly white noise, I think.”

“Well, Newell is no longer our problem,” Rencke said. “He met with Haynes this morning, and about an hour ago he anounced his resignation because of ill health.” Rencke chuckled. “I would like to have been a little bird in the corner.”

“It probably wasn’t pretty.”

Rencke laughed harder. “Nope.” He loved sticking it to pompous people.

“Have you come up with anything else?”

“Louise is lending a hand. She managed to redirect a couple of birds to focus on northern Mexico, where the Chinese and Pemex are supposedly drilling exploratory wells. It looks like that’s exactly what they’re doing.”

“No possibility of a cover-up for missile silos?”

“None. It’s not going to be like the nineties with the Russians. Whatever the Chinese and Mexicans are up to, it’s not about nuclear missiles. And that’s the sixty-four-dollar question.”

“Could the oil deal be real?” McGarvey asked.

“Could be,” Rencke said. “I hacked into Exxon’s top secret oil-exploration site, where they’ve pretty well mapped out every likely reserve anywhere on the planet. Where the Mexicans and Chinese are drilling is not on Exxon’s map.”

“Could mean that Mexico is in on whatever Liu is doing.”

“Either that or they’re just grateful for the money the Chinese are spending,” Rencke said. “And who knows, maybe the Chinese oil geologists know something that the Exxon guys don’t. Wouldn’t be the first time a big oil pool that no one knew anything about was discovered. And the Chinese do want to gain a foothold in this hemisphere.”

“Has the president been told about the drilling?” McGarvey asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Pass it upstairs to Dick, and make sure that he informs the president,” McGarvey said. “It’ll give him something else to think about other than me before he heads to Beijing.”

Rencke chuckled. “Devious, Mac. I like it.”

That was the second time this morning that someone had called him devious, and he didn’t know if he liked it. “I need you to do two things for me.”

“Shoot.”

“I want Shahrzad here first thing tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll have Toni and Karen bring her down,” Rencke said. “Where do you want her?”

“I’ll pick her up at the airport,” McGarvey said. “But listen, Otto, no one is to know about it. Not Dick, not Dave Whittaker, and especially not McCann or Gil Perry or anyone in the station down here. I want the babysitters to keep their mouths shut, no leaks.”

“Are you going to need them to help babysit her down there?”

“No, just get her here and I’ll do the rest.”

“Okay, a cover story’ll be easy,” Rencke said. “Are you getting set to make your move?”

“Tonight.”

“What else?”

“I want you to talk to Jared, see if he can come up with something for me.” Jared Kraus was the sometimes eccentric genius who headed the Company’s Directorate of Science & Technology. His was the shop that came up with the James Bond gadgets.

It took only a minute for McGarvey to explain what he wanted and what he planned to do with it.

“I’m pretty sure that we’ve already got something like that,” Rencke said. “But if not, I think Jared will come up with something. I’ll send it down with Toni, unless you need it for tonight.”

“Tomorrow morning will be fine,” McGarvey said. And when he hung up he called room service and ordered another brandy.

SEVENTY

THE ROAD FROM XOCHIMILCO

From the Fuentes Botanical Park outside Tlalpán it was almost exactly ten miles to the center of Mexico City. McGarvey had driven up from a spot a couple of miles away from Liu’s compound in Xochimilco to get the timing right.

He sat at the entry road to the park, the Jetta’s engine turning over, the dome light on as he studied an English-language map of the downtown area. It was a few minutes before eight, and the night had cooled down. Traffic on the highway was only moderate, which was a plus for tonight to work.