Without Honor (28 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Without Honor
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“What about the American?” McGarvey asked. “Did he arrive afterward? Or had he been there all along? What? I don't understand, Evita.”
Their bedroom was on a balcony that was open to the large living room below. The bed, however, was set far enough back so that no one from below could see up, nor could she see down. But from the window she did see the flash of a car's headlights on the beach road that led down from the highway. When she tried to get up to see who was arriving, Darby pulled her back down onto the bed. By then it had quieted down quite a bit so she heard Baranov welcoming their new guest. But without names, Evita answered McGarvey's question before he could ask it. “We never used names in those days. Everyone thought it for the best.” But their voices were very plain, and Darby didn't seem to mind that she was listening, he just didn't want her to go down there. Baranov was respectful toward the American, that much she could tell from what he was saying, and how he was saying it. By then she'd known him well enough to pick that out. And the American sounded young and eager, but she had thought at the time that he was probably hiding something. He was being too polite, she figured. Here he was at one or
two o'clock in the morning, at a party with beautiful girls, booze, and music, and he was being terribly proper, formal. It didn't seem to fit.
The music started again after that, and she could hear the others talking softly as they danced, the tinkle of ice cubes in glasses, laughter. Still Darby kept her upstairs, and before long they were making love again. He had an amazing capacity in those days, she said, and so did she.
“We were all a lot younger, Mr. Glynn. And foolish and uncertain about what we were supposed to do with our lives. In a way life was a lot easier then; there didn't seem to be so much to worry about as now. It's this American who showed up at the party that you're after too, isn't it? I can tell. Valentin came up later and I heard him tell Darby that their friend had gone over to the cottage, and that everything was set. It didn't mean all that much to me at the time, though later I figured out that they were probably going to blackmail the poor bastard.”
“No idea who he was? Did he work at the embassy? Was he a visiting businessman, a doctor? What?”
“I only knew he was an American from his accent,” Evita said.
McGarvey held himself in check. “Accent?” he asked.
“He was a gringo.”
“From the South, this American? Maybe from Texas? Maybe from Georgia or Alabama? That South? Did it occur to you at the time?”
She shrugged. “Not the South, more to the Northeast, I think. Maybe Massachusetts. Maybe Connecticut or Maine. A funny accent, but not that strong. It was there, though.”
“Cultured?”
“You mean like Darby?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe,” Evita said. “I don't know. I didn't hear all that much, and I had my mind on other things at the time.”
“He was gone in the morning?”
“I didn't get up until noon, and by then he was gone. Darby or Valentin never mentioned him again. And the only reason I still remember it is that I'd never heard Valentin so respectful of another man as he was of that American that night. It struck me as odd, that's all. I figured the American had to have been someone important.”
Or someone who would someday become important, McGarvey thought.
“And that's all of it,” Evita said tiredly. She finished her champagne. “That's all I know. You'll never beat them. Like I said, the
y
've been at it far too long for you to do anything about it. Give it up. You'll lose. We all will.”
She laid her head back and closed her eyes. She had come a long way, and the journey had inflicted a terrible weariness on her.
 
The band had taken up a new tune. Watching her resting, McGarvey was struck by how Evita's life had been so irrevocably ruined by Darby Yarnell and Valentin Baranov. But there'd been a purpose, of course. And he suspected it had gone beyond a simple legitimization of Yarnell in Mexico City at the time. He had come to suspect that Baranov had been, and still was, a man gifted with a far-sighted vision of things to come. He was a planner and mover who apparently deeply understood basic human motivations. Whatever he had set in motion more than twenty years ago was now finally coming to fruition. He had laid his plans, had gathered and trained his troops, and now the real battle was just beginning. In spite of everything he had learned though, McGarvey felt as if he were operating
mostly in the dark. If Baranov's gift was clarity of vision, and Yarnell's was dedication to a purpose, McGarvey's failing would be a basic lack of understanding of the big picture. There was so much more going on that he felt as if he were a blind man preparing to cross a very dangerous mountain range.
“Valentin's in Mexico City again,” McGarvey said softly.
Evita dragged her eyes open. “You've already said that.”
“Something is going to happen very soon. Something he has been planning since the late fifties. It's why he came back here to you. He wants to use Juanita merely as a motivator. He wants you to do something for him. You and Darby. Just like the old times.”
“What do you want me to do?” she asked, her voice slurred.
“I need your help.”
“To do what?.”
“To prove that Darby was and still is a spy. To expose whoever is working with him in Washington these days—the man from that night in your beach house. To defeat Baranov. And to protect your daughter.”
“Impossible—”
“Not if you help me, Evita. I promise you.”
Evita looked at him for a very long time, and when she finally nodded her assent, the motion was barely perceptible. She got unsteadily to her feet, looked again at him, and then turned and left the room. He heard the bathwater running a minute later, and he let himself out.
At LaGuardia he had to wait until five for a flight, and while he waited he worried about her, worried that she would end up like Owens and Janos Plónksi, whom he now suspected had only been the tip of an iceberg that threatened to sink them all.
McGarvey arrived in Miami a few minutes after eight, retrieved his single bag from the carousel, and rented a car, which he drove into the sprawling city. The night felt warm and humid after New York. He passed some sort of Cuban demonstration in which an effigy of Castro was being burned at the stake. City police were directing traffic around the disturbance, which had spilled out from a rat warren of streets and up onto the expressway. He found a place to park the car then checked into a small hotel just off Biscayne Boulevard, directly across the bay from the towers of Miami Beach. He walked to a pay phone five blocks away where he telephoned the number Trotter had given him. He was taking no chances that something would go wrong. If Trotter's contact man was the conduit back to the agency, he'd know that McGarvey was in Miami, of course, but they would not be able to find him so fast. It would take time. He did not intend remaining here that long. The city was just coming alive with the night. Traffic was endless and the lights from the big hotels shimmered across the black water. Somewhere a big boat horn tooted mournfully, and down the street he could hear the raucous sounds of steel drums. Always there were sirens in the distance.
He'd heard that Miami today was like Havana of the fifties; a big, wide open melting pot of Caribbean humanity in which the rich lived in garish contrast to the miserable poor; where every human depravity imaginable went on day and night at breakneck speed. He'd never known either city, not really. He'd been too young for Havana, and his assignments had never taken him here. But he could well imagine what Havana must have been like. And he figured this was Basulto's kind of city. It must have been like coming home for him to be here.
The same voice as before answered on the first ring. “Yes?”
“I want to see Basulto,” McGarvey said. “I'm going in, sixty minutes from now. Tell them to expect me.”
“We'll need more time.”
“Sixty minutes. Talk to Trotter.”
“He's not here.”
“Call him.”
“That will take time.”
“Where is he being kept?”
“Can you hold?”
“I'm at a pay phone,” McGarvey said. The line went immediately dead. He held the telephone between his shoulder and cheek as he lit a cigarette. He looked at his watch. It was a couple minutes past nine-thirty. He thought about Evita alone and frightened for all of these years. And he could practically feel Baranov's presence, watching him, knowing his every move. It had become clear to him that all of this had been carefully engineered by the Russian as early as ten months ago when he had gone to Evita in New York to tell her that an ex-CIA agent would be coming to her for information. The implications were staggering. And for the first time since Trotter had come to him in Switzerland, McGarvey was beginning to have some doubts in his own abilities.
“He's at a residential motel in Hialeah, near the race track,” the Washington man said. He gave McGarvey the address. “Make certain that you are not followed.”
McGarvey hung up. He went to his car and drove immediately over to the address although they weren't expecting him for an hour. He wanted to see who else might show up. The only way to survive, he figured, was to understand the possibility that Baranov had ears everywhere.
 
The Surfside Motel was a full five miles from any of the beaches and looked as if it had been neglected for a lot of years. It was located six blocks from the racetrack on a broad street that specialized in car dealerships and fast food restaurants, but was tucked behind a low cement block fence that was further screened by a mostly unkempt line of bamboo. There was a sad, dirty, little outdoor pool between the fence and the driveway that McGarvey could just see through the brush. A few plastic chaise lounges and two rusting patio tables flanked the pool. McGarvey pulled into a MacDonald's just across the street and went inside where he got a cup of coffee and took a seat by the window. He could see the motel office beneath the canopy down the short driveway, as well as the line of second floor units, barely a third of which seemed to be occupied. There was no movement. McGarvey checked his watch. It hadn't yet been fifteen minutes since he'd telephoned Washington. They were not expecting him for another three quarters of an hour. It would have taken more than fifteen minutes for even Baranov to arrange something. He was fairly confident that if anyone was going to show up here tonight, he'd beat them. But then we were never certain, were we? It was part and parcel of the business. It had been a long time for him, this over the shoulder feeling, this
sustained watchfulness, the edge that made the difference between survival and failure. Christ, it galled him to think that he'd been so easily sucked back into the morass. “Once it's in your blood there's no going back,” he'd been told once, but for the life of him he could not think who'd said it. His trouble now was that he had begun to have difficulty distinguishing between what was good and real and what was not, between what was truth and what were lies. Who to trust, who to love, where to run, where to hide. He thought again about Evita and about Darby Yarnell. They both were under Baranov's spell. They were the man's strength, but they also were his weakness.
 
Traffic was light. No one had entered or left the motel. McGarvey went out to his car and drove at a normal speed twice around the block, watching his rearview mirror, watching the other cars, watching the few pedestrians. But there was no one there. No one watching. No one had come.
He pulled into the motel's driveway, passed the office, and parked at the far end of the building. He switched off the headlights and the engine and sat in the darkness for a few moments, watching, listening, waiting for someone to come, for a curtain to part. But the motel could have been a haven for the dead or the deaf. He took out his gun, checked to make sure it was ready to fire, then got out of his car and climbed the stairs to the second-floor balcony, where he stopped in the shadows. The light in the exit sign was burned out. The place smelled of garbage and of sulphur water and urine and something else, something spicy and exotic. He slipped the Walther's safety catch off and moved quietly along the balcony on the balls of his feet. Now he could hear music from one of the rooms, and conversation, perhaps
from a television, from another. Basulto was being kept in 224, which was four rooms from the end. When McGarvey reached the door he paused before knocking. No light came from behind the curtains, nor could he hear any sounds from within.
He knocked. Softly.
“It's open,” someone inside said.
McGarvey flattened himself against the cement block wall, brought his gun up, and with his left hand eased the door open a couple of inches.
The room stank of stale beer and cigarettes. It was dark.
“It's me, Artime. From the house in Switzerland. Do you recognize my voice?”
“It's him,” Basulto said cautiously after a second or two.
“Are you sure?” someone else asked.
“Yeah,” Basulto said. “It's okay, Mr. McGarvey. Just a minute, we'll have a light.”
McGarvey remained against the wall as the light came on. He could see into the room. The double beds were unmade. Dirty laundry lay everywhere, along with empty beer cans and liquor bottles. Ashtrays were overflowing, the bureau and a small table were piled with MacDonald's bags and wrappers, the remnants of a large pizza still in its flat cardboard box, and several potato chip bags. Basulto, wearing nothing more than baggy trousers and a dirty tank T-shirt, stood by the bathroom door. A husky man with thick dark hair stood next to him. His weapon was drawn.
“I'm alone,” McGarvey said, making a show of lowering his gun as he stepped around the corner into the room.
“You'd better be,” the agent across the room said.
The second man stood in the corner at the
window, his gun out, his eyes wide. He wore a jacket. McGarvey got the impression he might have just come in.
“I'm here to talk. Nothing more.”
The two agents looked at each other, and then they lowered their weapons, uncocking the hammers. “You're five minutes late,” the one by the window snapped. He was nervous.
McGarvey closed the door, then pushed the window curtain aside so that he could look out. Nothing moved below. No one had come. No one was out there, and yet he could not shake the feeling that someone was looking over his shoulder. That Baranov, or whoever, knew that he was here and was watching him.
“Is this it?” Basulto asked. “Are we ready to get that bastard, Mr. McGarvey? You and me?”
He turned back.
“I hope to Christ you came in clean,” the one by Basulto said, gruffly. “It's one thing being cooped up in this pigsty, but it would be another defending this little prick.”
“See?” Basulto cried. “See what I have to put up with here.”
“Why don't you two take a walk. Give yourself a break.” McGarvey looked at Basulto. “I'd like half an hour with my friend here.”
Again the agents exchanged glances. “What the hell.” The bigger one shrugged. “They said cooperate, so we'll cooperate.”
“I'll take full responsibility,” McGarvey said.
“You're goddamned right you will,” the big one said. He grabbed a jacket and he and his partner left without bothering to look back.
 
McGarvey locked and chained the door. Alone, Basulto seemed a little more sure of himself than
with Trotter's two men. He didn't seem so tense, though there still was a wariness about him. His life, at least, according to what he had told them in Switzerland, was on the line. Which meant he would cooperate so long as it would benefit him, but only as far as he felt was necessary and no farther. McGarvey swept the debris off the table with a clatter, sat down, put his feet up, and lit a cigarette. Basulto wasn't impressed, but McGarvey knew he had his attention.
“There've been some killings,” McGarvey said.
“What killings? Where? Nobody's told me a thing down here. I just sit and wait and sweat in this stink hole. What are you talking about?”
McGarvey loosened his tie. “He was a friend of mine, Artime. A very good friend. I had him make a few inquiries for me, and he was shot to death for his trouble. Left a wife and children.”
“I told you, goddamnit. I sat there and told you over and over again. But nobody would believe me. Called me a slimeball. Well, maybe now you believe me.”
“He'll probably be coming after you next.”
A momentary look of alarm crossed Basulto's face. McGarvey got the impression that it might have been a put on. But then Basulto was an unusual man and hard to read.
“Then we'd better get the bastard.”
“That's what I'm here for.”
“Have you got a plan?” Basulto asked eagerly.
“I'm going to need your help, Artime,” McGarvey said, patiently. He took a drag on his cigarette. He wanted to be almost anyplace except here.
Beside the dresser was a large paper bag. Basulto pulled a couple of beers out of the bag, opened them, and brought them over to the table. A peace offering.
He hadn't shaved in a couple of days, and his complexion was red and splotchy. He'd probably been boozing it pretty hard, cooped up here like this. He smelled ripe.
“Anything,” he said eagerly. “I'm a pretty good trigger man. Christ, Mr. McGarvey, I don't give a shit, see. As long as you guys hold up your end of the bargain, I'll do my part. Anything.”
“We appreciate it, believe me,” McGarvey said, accepting a beer. He motioned for the Cuban to sit down.
“Anything, Mr. McGarvey,” Basulto said sitting across the table. “I mean anything. Goddamnit, I love this country. You could be Roger Harris's twin, you know.”
“He was quite a guy.”
“Yes, he was …”
“Ambitious, from what I gather,” McGarvey said. He took a deep drink of the warm beer, then raised the can to Basulto; two conspirators gathered to share a little secret.
“You talked to someone else about him,” Basulto said. “You looked up his record. Found out about him. All right, so what are you doing here? What do you want from me? I told you I'd give you anything.”
“The truth, Artime,” McGarvey said.
Basulto drank his beer with a nervous energy, as if he were a man just off the desert who'd suddenly found himself in the midst of a grand party; he didn't know which way to look or how to behave.
“Okay. What do you want? Just ask me,” he said defiantly. “I've gone over this so many times, not only with them, but in my own mind, that I'm not sure of anything. Do you know what I'm saying? You
capice
?”
He'd internationalized his act, but it was no
more convincing than it had been in Switzerland.
“Just a couple of minor points, nothing terribly important. Just something I have to get straight in my mind before we fly off the handle. Lives are at stake here, you know.”

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