“Ja, geht mit Gott, Kirk,” Füelm replied gently.
Somehow the simple act of walking out of the shop became difficult. But McGarvey forced himself not to look back. He crossed the square at the news kiosk, then hurried up the hill, his hands stuffed deeply in his pockets, his thoughts black…
Fuelm was bad enough. But Marta was going to be many times more difficult.
On the way up the hill McGarvey avoided the issue of good-byes by working out his first steps once he got clear of Switzerland. Trotter and Day had both assured him that his track would be clean. Entering the States would create no notice — not by the Company and certainly not by Yarnell. Trotter did suggest, however, that McGarvey limit his visibility as much as possible when he got to D.C. There were still a lot of people around who remembered him. And Washington was not such a large metropolis that a chance meeting of some old crony was out of the question. Nothing would probably come of such a meeting, but why tempt fate? Why spit in the face of the gods? Trotter had muttered.
Evita Perez, Yarnell’s ex-wife who lived in New York City, would be his first, most obvious target. But there were other issues he wanted to address; issues that were none of Trotter’s or Day’s business … at least not for the moment.
One of the old hands in the Company in the early days when there seemed to be genuine purpose to most things (or was McGarvey just younger then?) had talked earnestly about excess baggage. Not the kind carried through airports, but the kind all of us carried in the form of relationships — wives, friends, associates. The man who comes up clean of baggage, is the man you’ll most likely see alive at the end. Entanglements can be fatal. Travel light.
Sound advice, wasn’t it? Hurtful at times, but then so was the amputation of a gangrenous leg in order to save the body.
They’re all enemies, don’t kid yourself. Just as if they held a gun to your head … wives, lovers.
But he had already seen it was time to leave, hadn’t he? He’d already made that decision, even before he had seen and spoken with Trotter.
He went to the end of the terraced street and turned the corner, climbing up to the next row of houses perched on the side of the hill so that he could avoid the stairs to his place. From the top he could look down at his building, as well as at the road, the stairs, and even a portion of the street below.
Nothing moved. No cars were staked out. No one waited around the corners, under the eaves, in doorways. He considered turning away and simply leaving. He would buy a few things in Geneva before his plane left. Get away clean. Paris first. Then New York. Paris would be his buffer zone. By the time they realized he had skipped, it would be too late for them to do anything about it. But Marta was one of them. It made him angry, this vacillation. A lack of commitment, his sister would say. She was right. Bucking up his shoulders, he tossed away the cigarette he’d been smoking and trudged back down the hill and around the corner to his place. On the stairs he suddenly could hear the radio playing above, and he could smell Marta’s perfume, a clean, lilac odor. His stomach felt hollow. The door opened. She stood there in a pretty skirt and blouse. She had been crying.
“You didn’t think to pick up some bread, did you?” she asked. “We’re almost out.”
“No. Sorry,” McGarvey said. At the head of the stairs, she stepped aside for him. He hesitated for just a moment but then went in, taking off his coat and laying it on the side of the couch. Now he felt like a stranger here with her.
“Are you hungry? Did you have lunch?” she asked, coming in and closing the door.
“I’m going away, Marta,” he said. “I came back to get some things.”
“Away? A long time? A long distance?”
“Out of Switzerland.”
Marta sagged a little with relief. “Back to the United States? Has something happened? Can I help? Kirk?”
McGarvey had gone to the bedroom door. He felt terrible. He turned back. “Listen, Marta, I know.”
She nodded.
“I know that you and Liese work for the federal police.”
“How long?” she asked.
McGarvey shrugged. “I guess I always suspected. I always knew that you were here with me because you were ordered to be here. Because I was a CIA … operative.” He’d almost said killer.
“At first, Kirk,” she said queerly. “I swear it was only at first. Not later.” Her eyes begin to fill again.
“Don’t …”
“I love you, Kirk. I have for a long time now. Don’t you know that, too?”
“Don’t do this to yourself.”
“I’ll come with you.”
McGarvey shook his head. “It’s not possible.”
She took a step closer. “You were followed, you know, from the square to the store, where you picked up your gun, and then to the safe house above the lake.”
McGarvey wasn’t really surprised about that. “Have you been ordered now to stop me, Marta?”
“No one cares, darling, so long as whatever it is you’ve been given to do does not occur on Swiss soil.”
“I’m leaving the country. Tonight.”
“Take me with you.”
“No.”
“Then I will wait for you. When this thing you are going to do is finished, I will come to you. Wherever you are.”
“But not back here.”
She shook her head. “They won’t let you return.”
McGarvey looked at her. It had been a mistake coming back. He hadn’t counted on it being this hard. He wanted now to take her into his arms and hold her close. Make love. The hell with Trotter and Day and their problems. The hell with Yarnell and the Cuban slimeball. The hell with it all. But he simply could not do it. Something deep inside of him, in some little dark corner, anchored his soul as if by a chain wrapped around a bloody great rock. If it ever broke loose, he suspected he would founder and drown.
He turned and went into the bathroom where he got a pair of scissors and his disused shaving things. The photograph in his passport showed a clean-shaven man.
“It must mean something to you, these five years,” Marta said at the doorway. “Us.”
“I can’t change,” McGarvey said looking at her reflection in the mirror over the sink. “You can’t. None of us can.”
“I know what you do … what you did. I don’t care.”
“It’s over, Marta. You know it.”
She sighed. “Ah … Kirk. It hurts, damnit. It bloody well hurts. Do you know that?”
McGarvey nodded, but Marta turned and left. He could hear her in the kitchen putting on the tea water. He paused with the scissors before he began to cut his beard. It wasn’t too late, he told himself. Or was it?
Marta stayed in the kitchen while he finished shaving and trimming his hair. In the bedroom he changed into a pair of slacks, a clean shirt, and a sport coat, then packed a single suitcase and a leather overnight bag. When he was ready he telephoned a taxi service to bring him to the bus station. A direct service was operated between Lausanne and the Geneva airport. He brought his bags downstairs to the outside door, then went back up to the apartment. Marta sat at the kitchen table, a cup of tea cradled between her hands, a bottle of cognac open in front of her. A snub-nosed .38 revolver lay on the table. He’d never seen the gun before. He looked at her eyes. She had stopped crying. She seemed distant. For a moment or two, McGarvey stood in the doorway watching her; he thought just at that moment that she looked very brave and strong and wonderful. He waited until she looked up at him, but her eyes were the eyes of a stranger, so he turned and left the apartment.
At Cointrin Airport, he bought a one-way ticket to Paris on the early evening flight, then sat at the bar in the Plein Ciel drinking a whiskey, smoking a cigarette, and trying to fix in his mind exactly how Marta had looked. The restaurant was very busy, and more than once he imagined that the Swiss police had stationed someone here to make sure he actually left. He had disassembled his gun and packed it with his toilet kit in his checked-through luggage so that there would be no problem with airport security. Customs could be a problem, but if he ran into trouble he could call the Washington number Trotter had given him.