Dance with the Dragon (45 page)

Gloria’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t understand. You want us to tell him that you sent us to get to him?”

McGarvey nodded. “He won’t believe anything else. But I’m betting that his ego will convince him that he’s outthought me. That’s the easy part.” McGarvey took out the compact that Toni Dronchi had brought down with her from Langley and handed it to Gloria. “You have to get him to take a hit from this.”

Gloria opened the compact, which was nearly a twin of hers, except it was silver and hers was gold. It contained a mirror, a single-edged razor blade, a small straw, and a compartment filled with a white powder. Gloria dipped a fingertip into it and started to bring it to her mouth, but McGarvey stopped her.

“It’s coke, but it’s laced with something you don’t want to take right now.”

Gloria’s eyes were wide. “What is it?”

“An LSD derivative. Soon as it hits his bloodstream he’s going to be pretty well out of it for thirty minutes, maybe a little longer.”

“So?”

“He’ll be highly susceptible to suggestion,” McGarvey said.

“A truth serum,” Shahrzad said softly.

“Something like that,” McGarvey said. “He won’t take a hit unless he’s seen both of you doing it, so he’ll think it’s safe.” He took an aspirin bottle out of his pocket and handed it to Gloria. “Both of you will have raging headaches, because you’ve mixed champagne with this shit. So you’ll take these all night.”

“What is it?”

“Ordinary aspirin, so far as I’ve been told. It’s supposed to make you immune.”

Gloria nodded. “I’m still with you, Kirk. But how do we get him to take a hit? He’s straight.”

“That’ll be up to you two,” McGarvey said.

Shahrzad started to object, but Gloria held her off.

“We’ll figure out something,” she said. “Then what?”

“Where will his bodyguards be?” McGarvey asked Shahrzad.

“He usually dismisses them when he takes one of the girls to bed. Except for the guy in the surveillance room everyone will be asleep.”

“Gloria will take care of him, and you’ll let me in through the back gate,” McGarvey said.

“Why don’t I just kill Liu and be done with it?” Gloria asked.

“Because I want to talk to him first,” McGarvey said.

“What if he takes us up to Chihuahua?”

“I’ll be there,” McGarvey said.

“How do I signal you to come in?” Gloria asked.

“As soon as you’ve taken out the guy on surveillance, switch off the lights on the wall and open the main gate,” McGarvey instructed.

Shahrzad was looking at them. She shook her head in wonderment. “Both of you are crazy. Do you know that?”

EIGHTY

THE DOLL HOUSE

If the receptionist at the front desk thought it was unusual to see Shahrzad back, and with the American from last night, she didn’t give the slightest sign of it. She smiled at them both.

“Good evening, Mr. McGarvey,” she said. “Would you like the same table?”

“Yes, please.” He slurred his words as if he were slightly drunk.

The hostess, a young Japanese girl, gave Shahrzad a double take but said nothing as she led them into the club, which was packed this evening, threading her way to the table at the edge of the crowded dance floor.

McGarvey spotted Liu and his party at the big table, and as he held Shahrzad’s chair their eyes met. The general nodded, but McGarvey just smiled and sat down.

“Bring us a bottle of Krug,” McGarvey told the hostess. “Make it a good year, and make sure it’s very cold.”

“I’ll send a sommelier over immediately,” the girl said, and she left.

“Do you know her?” McGarvey asked.

“Her name is Kiko,” Shahrzad said. “She used to be one of Liu’s regulars. She’s only fifteen.”

A five-piece band was playing easy dance music, and the lights on the main floor were low. From time to time, however, a baby spot in the ceiling picked out one of the couples and followed them around the floor.

“They sell the videos,” Shahrzad explained. “Something for the old bastards to show their friends.”

“Do they do the same in the back rooms?”

“Yeah. For souveniers.”

“Any of Liu?”

Shahrzad laughed. “Back at his house, but never here.”

Roaz came over with the sommelier. “Welcome back, Mr. McGarvey.” He gave Shahrzad a warm smile. “Nice to see you again, Ms. Shadmand. We wondered where you’d gotten yourself to. You’re well?”

“Never better,” Shahrzad said.

“You might want to go over to say hello to the general. He was worried about you.”

“I imagine he was.” Shahrzad shrugged indifferently. “I’m sure he’ll want to have a word, but later.”

The sommelier had the champagne opened and he poured for them.

“Compliments of the house,” Roaz said. “Have a pleasant evening.” He and the wine steward left.

Shahrzad gazed at his back and shook her head. “It’s like I was just away on vacation,” she said. “Evidently they haven’t made the connection between me and Louis.”

“Maybe they don’t think you’re a threat,” McGarvey said.

She looked back at him. “They know that you’re CIA, or at least ex-CIA, and they’ll have to wonder what the hell I’ve told you and what I’m doing here with you.”

“That’s your safety net,” McGarvey told her. “Until Liu finds out just that, he can’t afford to hurt you. He’ll play nice, at least at first.”

“It’s the later I’m worried about. The man is insane.”

An attractive blonde came out onstage and, accompanied by the band, began to sing “La Paloma,” her voice pure, the melody haunting.

“Showtime,” McGarvey said, and he led Shahrzad out onto the dance floor.

At first he thought that she wasn’t going to play the charade, but then she got into the music and molded her body to his, her legs straddling one of his, rubbing herself against his thigh.

Gloria had been good on the dance floor, sexy, seductive, with all the right moves, but this girl was a pro. She had worked as a high-class whore, after all, and McGarvey found that he had to fake a response to make it look good for Liu.

Almost immediately the ceiling spot was on them, and somebody at one of the tables let out a cheer. Shahrzad’s face was flushed, and she was panting, her lips parted, her eyes half shut.

The singer came onto the dance floor to them, her voice low and throaty, no lights other than the spot, no sounds other than the band and her voice.

Just as the song was ending, Shahrzad brought herself to orgasm, rubbing against McGarvey’s leg. She threw her head back and let out a deep moan of pleasure, then looked up into his eyes and smiled.

The house erupted with cheers and applause as McGarvey and Shahrzad went back to the table.

“Do you think I convinced him?” Shahrzad asked as they sat down.

“You sure as hell convinced me,” McGarvey said. “You were faking?”

She nodded. “All women know how it’s done, and there isn’t a man alive who can tell the difference. Not even the former director of the CIA.”

“I guess I’ve led a sheltered life.”

“I guess you have,” Shahrzad said, and she suddenly looked up. “Here comes Gloria.”

The music had started again, an American big-band piece, when Gloria arrived at the table, her face screwed up in a mask of anger.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing to me?” she demanded at the top of her lungs. Her complexion was splotchy, as if she had run all the way over.

McGarvey looked up indifferently. “I didn’t expect to see you here tonight.”

“I guess not!” Gloria screeched. “You motherfucker!”

“Take it easy,” McGarvey told her. Whatever else Gloria was or wasn’t, she was a damned fine actor.

“Fuck you!” she shouted, and she hit him in the face with a closed fist, holding nothing back.

He saw stars for just a moment, but then he jumped up. Roaz was coming across the floor with a couple of bouncers dressed in dark turtlenecks and loose-fitting blue blazers. They were carrying.

“Bitch!” McGarvey shouted. He backhanded her and she went down hard, her lip split where she’d bit it.

“Okay, folks, everybody settle down,” Roaz said. He motioned for the band to resume playing, then helped Gloria to her feet.

“The son of a bitch,” she muttered.

One of the bouncers came around behind McGarvey while the other planted himself next to Roaz, his eyes never leaving McGarvey’s.

“If you don’t mind, sir, we’d like you to settle your argument outside,” Roaz said. He shrugged. “We don’t want to upset the other patrons.”

Shahrzad had gone around to Gloria and was dabbing a napkin on her cut lip. She glared at McGarvey. “Bastard,” she said.

“Fuck you both,” McGarvey said to them. He turned back to Roaz and spread his hands. “Look, I don’t want any trouble here. They can stay, for all I give a shit. I’m out of here.”

“Would you like to close out your account for this evening, sir?”

“No,” McGarvey slurred. “Let ’em have a ball. My nickel.”

McGarvey lurched away from the table. One of the bouncers held out a hand to help him, but McGarvey batted it aside and charged across the club and out to the curb, the sounds of cheering and applause following him.

The line of people waiting to get in was still long. One of the valets came over. “Would you like your car, Mr. McGarvey?”

McGarvey shook his head, stuck his hands in his pockets, and headed down the street on foot in the opposite direction from the queue. He crossed the street and headed in the general direction of the park and the Paseo de la Reforma.

He would have bet almost any money that Liu would have him followed and either roughed up or killed. Within a block he’d picked up a tail, two of them, large men, possibly the bouncers from the club. He suspected that Liu didn’t use his own Guoanbu personnel down here; instead he relied on ex-GAFE muscle. He figured that Roaz was supplying him with the warm bodies, financed by Alvarez with drug money.

It was something he intended to find out tonight.

He came around a corner a couple blocks from the club and ducked into a cobblestoned alley down which was a small mall of fashionable shops, pulling up short just inside the doorway of a women’s resort-wear boutique.

Sixty seconds later the two bouncers from the club hurried past the entrance to the mall, and McGarvey stepped out of the doorway and walked back up to the street. He pulled out his pistol, thumbed the safety catch off, and held it partially concealed at the side of his leg.

The men realized they’d lost their quarry, and they turned to come back just as McGarvey stepped out of the shadows.

“Looking for someone?” he asked.

“You should have minded your own business,” the one on the left said, and he reached inside his jacket as the other one stepped to the right.

McGarvey raised his pistol. “I wouldn’t advise it,” he said.

“Puta,”
the one on the right said, starting to draw his weapon.

McGarvey switched aim, fired one round into the man’s knee, and as he cried out in pain and crumpled to the sidewalk switched aim back to the first man.

“As I say, I wouldn’t advise it. I might aim high and shoot off your balls.”

The first man moved his hands away from his jacket. “We just want to talk,” he said, but his eyes flicked for just an instant to his partner on the ground, who despite his wound had pulled out his pistol and was bringing it up.

McGarvey turned and put one round into the man’s forehead, killing him instantly, and again turned back to the first man.

“You want to talk, so do I,” McGarvey said. “Who sent you to come after me?”

The man was impressed. “The police will be here soon. I have a permit to carry a weapon, but I doubt that you do. And now my friend is dead. You are in some serious shit,
señor
.”

“They can’t hang me twice if I kill a second man,” McGarvey said. “Who sent you?”

“Miguel.”

“Roaz?” McGarvey asked. “What’s he got against me?”

“I don’t know. He just sent us to rough you up and warn you to mind your own business.”

In the distance they could hear a police siren. Someone must have reported the sounds of gunfire.

“Are you talking about Alvarez?” McGarvey took a stab in the dark. “I’m not interested in his drug money.”

“Alvarez is dead. He’s got nothing to do with us. Like I said, you’re in deep shit here,
señor
. You fucked up.”

Updegraf had been eliminated and now Alvarez. Where were the connections other than Liu, and the fact they’d both been at Roaz’s compound in Chihuahua?

The siren was getting closer.

“I suggest you take your friend’s ID and get out of here,” McGarvey said. “I don’t think you want to answer questions by the police any more than I do.”

“How do I know you won’t shoot me?”

“I won’t, unless you follow me again,” McGarvey said.

He turned and headed down the street, toward the park. The bouncers who’d followed him were Roaz’s muscle, there was little doubt about that. Nor was there much doubt about who was actually pulling the strings. But Liu had apparently been working with Alvarez to raise money. Eliminating Alvarez made no sense.

The connection that worried him the most was the Iranian figure in the shadows. Too many strings led back to Tehran, and nothing was making any sense, especially now that Alvarez was dead.

One thing he knew for certain was that the two men tonight had been sent not to talk, but to kill him. He was starting to worry Liu. The fallout from assassinating a former DCI would be immense. It wasn’t something the Chinese government would be interested in. It meant that Liu was definitely working on his own.

EIGHTY-ONE

OUTSIDE THE DOLL HOUSE

The same crowd was still lined up outside the club when McGarvey made his way back. He stood in the shadows across the street for several minutes to make sure that the bouncer who’d come after him wasn’t hanging around out front.

He waited for a truck to lumber by, then stuck his hands in his pockets and staggered across the street. The two valet parkers looked up, their jaws dropping open for just an instant when they recognized who it was. He was supposed to be dead by now, and evidently everyone on the staff knew it.