Without Honor (34 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Without Honor
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Some sort of demonstration was going on across the park along the Avenida Hidalgo. People were hurrying toward the noise from all over the park and the surrounding streets. McGarvey thought the crowd sounded angry, but Evita didn't seem to notice at first.
“You'll be safe once this is finished,” McGarvey said, trying to sound convincing. A bonfire was burning in the street. They could see the flames
through the trees. “You're her mother. Once her father and Baranov are exposed, she'll come back to you.”
“I don't think so.”
“Everything will be different …”
They suddenly came within sight of the large crowd choking the avenue. Evita pulled up short. Long banners had been hung in the trees and between the streetlights. A lot of people carried signs.
“I think we should go to the hotel,” she said.
“What do the banners say?”
“‘Glory to work,”' she read. “‘The party and the people are united. Long live the Soviet people, builders of Communism.”'
McGarvey took her by the arm and they headed back toward the protective darkness of the park. A huge roar went up from the crowd. McGarvey turned around in time to see a straw-filled figure dressed in tails, red-striped trousers and a top hat, a white goatee on its chin, burst into flames over the bonfire.
“
Libertad
!” the crowd screamed. “
Libertad
!”
At ten that evening McGarvey called Hialeah. “Morgan here, who's calling?”
“This is Kirk McGarvey. Let me talk to Artimé.”
“Oh, they said you'd be calling,” the FBI field man said. “When do we get rid of this scumbail?”
“In the morning. I want him on the first plane to Mexico City. But stay with him until the plane actually takes off.”
“We've babysat the bastard this long, another ten or twelve hours won't hurt much. How much money do you want us to give him?”
“Fifty bucks. I don't want him having enough to wander off on me.”
“Listen pal, once we get him aboard that plane in the morning and watch it take off, he's no longer our responsibility. I just want to get that straight with you. Once he leaves, he's your headache.”
“Has anyone else called or tried to come up there?”
“No one except Washington.”
“Trotter?”
“Yes.”
“Put Basulto on, would you?”
“Yeah,” the cop said. “It's for you,” McGarvey
heard the man say away from the phone.
“Yes?” Basulto answered the phone cautiously.
“It's me. You're coming to Mexico City. We've got some work to do.”
“Are we going to nail that bastard, Mr. McGarvey? Are we finally going to get him? Is he down there now? I thought he would be in Washington.”
“I'll tell you about it when you get there. They'll take you out to the airport in the morning. I want you in Mexico as soon as possible.”
“Sure thing. Will you be meeting me?”
“I want you to take a cab downtown. To the Hotel Del Prado just across from La Alameda.”
Basulto laughed. It was the same hotel at which he had met his case officer, Roger Harris, in the sixties. “Sure,” he said. “I think I can find the place. What room?”
“I haven't checked in yet. I'll leave word for you at the desk.”
“Are you in Washington?”
“That's right,” McGarvey lied. “We'll be flying down in the morning.”
“We?”
“An old friend. Anxious to meet you as a matter of fact.”
“Who is this …?”
“Tomorrow, Artime. We'll talk tomorrow.” McGarvey hung up.
Their room was on the small side, but clean and reasonably well furnished. A crucifix hung over the bed, and on the opposite wall, over the bureau, was a large print of the Last Supper. A braided rug covered most of the tiled floor, and the large windows opened inward from a tiny balcony. Evita stood at the balcony's ornamental grillwork and looked across the park at the demonstration still going on.
“They don't like Americans,” she said. “They've always blamed their poverty—and even their earthquakes—on the Americans.”
“Is there anything more I should know about Basulto before he gets here?”
“Kirk McGarvey is a good name,” she said seriously. “Better than Glynn, I think.”
“Evita?”
“I told you everything I know.” She turned around. “Nobody liked him. I don't think anybody trusted him. There was a rumor that he had worked for the Batista government. We were surprised that Castro's people didn't assassinate him.”
She'd been a naive little girl, intimidated by events around her, yet she remembered Basulto from twenty-five years ago even though she'd said she only saw him a few times. Who could he trust? Who could he believe? He didn't know any longer. Perhaps he'd never really known.
“Let's take a drive.” McGarvey removed his pistol from the false bottom of his toiletries kit. “We've talked enough about Baranov; I want to see him.”
 
Despite the lateness of the hour, McGarvey was able to arrange for a rental car through the hotel. The desk clerk asked him twice how long he would be staying in Mexico City and seemed pleased when McGarvey replied that unfortunately business would probably be taking him back to Washington in a day, two at the most.
The clerk looked at Evita as if he knew her, or wanted to. She said something to him in Spanish and he reared back as if he had been slapped. Leaving the hotel she refused to talk about it. McGarvey thought she looked ashamed.
Their car was a gray Volkswagen beetle with a
very loud muffler and a radio that did not work. McGarvey found a street map in the glove compartment.
“It's in the south,” Evita said. Her face was pale in the light from the hotel entrance. The doorman was watching them.
“What?” McGarvey asked, looking up.
“Valentin's house. Our old house. San Juan Ixtayopan. In the mountains.”
“We'll get out there. First I want to swing past the Soviet embassy.”
“It's just around the corner,” she said automatically.
McGarvey put down the map. “You have been there?”
“Yes. With Valentin,” she said defensively. “He sometimes took me there at night. To the
referentura
. He was showing me off.”
The
referentura
in all Soviet embassies was the equivalent of a safe room or screened room. Physically and electronically secure from the rest of the facility, it was the room in which KGB plans were formulated and carried out. It was the heart of KGB operations in any country. Even Baranov had to have taken chances bringing her there. But then the Russian was young in those days. And brash?
“Did you ever go over there with your husband?”
Evita shook her head.
“Did he ever go there alone to meet with Baranov?”
“I don't know. He never said and I never asked.”
Traffic along the Avenida Juárez was heavy. Even over the blare of their muffler, they could hear the crowd noises from across the park. McGarvey waited for a break and then pulled out.
“What are we going to do at the embassy?” Evita asked.
“Maybe they'll offer us a nightcap if they recognize you,” McGarvey said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in his voice. Still she was lying to him. Even now she was holding back, telling him only what she thought he wanted to hear at the moment. It was habit from a lifetime of lying. A lifetime of deceit for fear that she would be found out for what she really was; a poor silly girl without a mind of her own. He wanted to despise her, yet he found he couldn't. If anything he felt sorry for her.
He turned left on Lopez which ran along the east end of the park, then right onto the broad Calzada de Tacubaya after the traffic light changed. Behind them they could see the huge mass of the crowd completely filling the Avenida Hidalgo, several bonfires now lighting up the night sky, armed policemen behind barricades at all the corners leading toward the disturbance.
The Russians would be pleased with this latest round of unrest. In 1971 they nearly succeeded in maneuvering Mexico into a civil war. This time it seemed possible they might succeed. Certainly the mood of the Mexican government was different now than it had been in 1971; more hostile toward the U.S., under seige this time because of falling oil prices, massive unemployment, and several devastating earthquakes over the past few years, not to mention the continuing strife over the drug issue.
They passed behind the Palace of Fine Arts and across San Juan Letran, the main post office. A statue of Charles IV stood in front of the College of Mines. Traffic was moving at a breakneck pace. McGarvey wanted to slow down, but the drivers behind him honked their horns impatiently.
“It's number 204, behind the tall iron fence on
the next block,” Evita said. “Valentin's office will be on the second floor.”
McGarvey pulled over out of traffic and parked across the street. The Soviet embassy was housed in an old Victorian villa complete with shuttered windows, ornate cupolas, tall brick chimneys, the roof bristling with antennae and aerials. Two light globes were perched above the entry gate, and inside the grounds were ablaze with light. Something big was happening at the embassy, something very big. McGarvey thought about the crises he had weathered at other embassies around the world. It was the same as this. Every window in the building was lit. The cipher machines would be running full tilt. Messages would be streaming back and forth between Moscow. The Mexican unrest, the missile crisis.
A dark Ford van came down the avenue and turned in at the embassy gate. The driver flashed his headlights and moments later the gates swung open and the van drove through, the gates closing behind it.
“He's probably inside now,” Evita said in a small voice.
McGarvey glanced at her. Her eyes were wide, her lips pursed. She was shivering. “There's trouble. He'll be preoccupied. Time now for him to make a mistake.”
She shook her head. “He never makes mistakes.”
“We'll see,” McGarvey said.
A man inside the compound came to the gate and looked across the street at them. He didn't move. A second man joined him, they said something to each other, and he turned and went away.
“They've seen us,” Evita said.
“But they can't know who we are. Not yet.”
“What are you waiting for? For Valentin to show up? Let's get out of here. We can't do anything.”
McGarvey stared across at the other man for a long time. He wanted the Russians to see them. He wanted them to know they'd come. He wanted them to know that everything wasn't going to go their way this time. At least in this one thing, Baranov was going to lose.
“Please, Kirk,” Evita said. “I am becoming frightened.”
“Where is the American embassy?” McGarvey asked. “Is it far from here?”
“Not far,” she said. “On the Paseo de la Reforma. Back the way we came.”
McGarvey put the car in gear, waited for a gap in the traffic, and made a U-turn so that they passed directly in front of the Soviet embassy gate. Evita turned her head so that she would not be seen, but McGarvey looked directly at the Russian guard. Tell Baranov I've come for him. Tell him it won't be long now. And then they were past and turning again at the barricades blocking Hidalgo, the demonstration still building. Even more police had arrived, and they were anxiously directing traffic away from the park.
The crowd had spilled clear across the park onto the Avenida Juárez. They had to drive two blocks farther south before they could turn back to the west past the Hotel Metropol.
“What can you hope to accomplish here like this?” Evita asked. “Just driving around the city at night. Sooner or later someone will spot us. Valentin has his spies everywhere.”
“I want him to know that we're here.”
“This is insanity!”
“The insanity, Evita, has been going on for twenty-five years. I'm going to end it.”
“It'll end when you're dead,” she cried. “He'll kill us all, and in the end he'll get his way.”
She was beginning to come apart. It was too soon. He needed her for a little while longer. “Listen to me, Evita. You're going to have to be strong, but just for a couple of days.”
“I can't,” she cried.
“You won't have to do a thing except make a phone call. One call tomorrow night. After that you can come back to New York. I promise you.”
“Then what are we doing out here like this tonight?” she screeched. She held out her hand. “No, you don't have to tell me, you bastard! You're provoking him! You're parading around his city with me. You're showing him that you aren't afraid of him. Well I am!”
She was right. But he needed her. “I'll put you on a plane first thing in the morning, if that's what you want.”
“You're goddamned right that's what I want!”
“He and your husband will have won.”
“I don't care!”
“And Juanita will be theirs. Body and soul. She'll have about as much chance as you had.” He was thinking about his ex-wife, Kathleen, and his, daughter. They didn't have much of a chance either. Maybe it was too late for them after all. Maybe he was charging at windmills. Maybe he should have remained with Marta in Switzerland. Lausanne seemed so terribly far away just now. Unattainable. Unreal. As if that part of his life had never occurred.
“Oh, you bastard,” she said.
“Forty-eight hours, maybe less,” he told her, turning the corner onto the Paseo de la Reforma. She buried her face in her hands and began to sob.
A double row of tall trees lined the main boulevard, Mexico City's most magnificent. Stone and
bronze statues of national heroes seemed to be everywhere. It reminded McGarvey of Rome's Via Vento or Paris's Champs Elysées. He expected to see legions marching in broad phalanxes to the roar of cheering crowds.

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