“It’s bigger than families, can’t you understand that?” Trotter’s eyes were wide behind his glasses. He looked like a fanatical revolutionary. “The man is friends with the director of Central Intelligence, for God’s sake. He is on a first-name basis with the president of the United States. Let’s put it in perspective!”
Trotter’s team showed up later in the afternoon, all bright and full of cautious enthusiasm. Among them were Lewis Sheets, the tan mack from Lausanne, and Lorraine Hawkins, the girl with the sommersprossen. Bill Porter, the bureau’s resident electronics expert, and a Mexican second-story man, Emiliano Gonzales, rounded out the little group. McGarvey behaved himself, but he would forever remember having the feeling that they all were playacting and everyone knew it. The deception was part of the new regime. They’d watch Yarnell on his home turf. Meanwhile, the ball of string saved up all these years had to be unwound, and McGarvey thought he knew where the starting bit might be.
16
He watched from the window of the Long Island Airways Piper Navajo as they came up from the southeast, parallel to the beaches of Long Island. It was nearly noon, and after the strain of Washington and the hustle-bustle of LaGuardia Airport, the barrier islands, broad beaches, and tree-studded communities below seemed peaceful, idyllic. Ahead just off Highway 27 lay the airport in East Hampton, the hills and sand dunes flattened at this altitude, the big Atlantic combers breaking all the way from Ireland, tame. Even the vast ocean distances were softened by the haze that obscured the horizon. He’d not been around these parts in years, not since Elizabeth was a little girl. The Hamptons in those days had been Kathleen’s idea of “arrived.” She met a lot of people, made a lot of friends up here. For a time she even attempted to affect a Hampton accent. Their house back in Alexandria in those days was filled with Long Island bric-a-brac, as if they were tourists back from Mexico or Morocco, somewhere where the vendors were as thick as flies and one had to buy souvenirs. But then, he was using his memories as a shield against his bleak thoughts about John Trotter, Oliver Leonard Day, and all that they hadn’t told him — which was a legion.
He’d driven up to the Baltimore-Washington International Airport to pick up his flight to New York, watching behind him for anyone from the bureau’s team on his tail. But he’d come away clean as far as he had been able to determine. Of course, again at LaGuardia he had gone through the switchbacks, the feints, the over-the-shoulder routines, and in the end, climbing aboard the tiny prop-driven executive aircraft out to Long Island, he’d even looked to the observation platform, half expecting someone to be up there even then, watching him, reporting back. By then Trotter would have been able to put two and two together and would have figured out who he was coming to see. But there’d been no one.
The cab, which was an old Chevrolet station wagon, took him to the house, which was located on the beach three-quarters of a mile north of town. The road wound down through dunes and tall grasses that were permanently bent toward the land because of the nearly constant sea wind. They drove past an old storm fence that was half-buried in the sand, a No Soliciting sign knocked down. It hadn’t taken much to find the place from the files Day had sent over. A couple of telephone calls to a folksy local tax assessor and he’d had his directions. The house was a lot larger-than he had expected it would be. Tall dormers, a widow’s walk, weather-beaten shingles, a broad screened porch that looked out to sea, a large stone chimney — which was smoking a little now because it was chilly and old men were almost always cold, especially in the spring — were all punctuated by dark, unblinking windows. On a sand hummock below the front steps a picnic table with one leg broken leaned forlornly into the salt breeze. Big rolls of brownish foam scudded along the beach beneath an overcast sky. Way out to sea a large container ship headed south.
He’d brought a leather shoulder bag packed with a few last-minute things. After the cabbie left, he shouldered the bag, walked up the sand path, mounted the steps, and let himself onto the screened porch. The place smelled musty and dead and very old. He knocked on the door with the heel of his right hand, the entire front wall of the house shivering under the blows. The house would be considered a disgrace in the Hamptons, he mused. Raze the place and don’t look back, Kathleen would have said. But then there never had been too many rich spies and almost never any old rich spies.
The door opened and a very old man with watery, pale green eyes, wispy white hair, and a few days’ growth of white whiskers on his chin stood looking out. He was dressed in a thick wool sweater with the tall collar turned up, steel gray wool slacks, and thick carpet slippers. His skin seemed parchment thin, and his lips, his bony cheeks, and the arches above his eyes were blue-white and veined. His right hand, raised as if in greeting, shook slightly from a palsy.
“Mr. Owens?” McGarvey asked. He didn’t know if he should shout. “Darrel Owens?”
“Who the hell are you?” the old man asked, looking beyond McGarvey down toward the driveway. His voice was soft, precise, and cultured. McGarvey felt just a little like an idiot. He smiled.
“Kirk McGarvey, sir,” He held out his hand.
“Is something funny, for Christ’s sake?” the old man demanded looking McGarvey in the eye.
“No, sir.”
“What do you want?”
“I’d like to ask you some questions.”
“About what?”
According to his jacket Owens had had a reputation for being a tough bastard. McGarvey had little doubt this old man was him. He’d cut his teeth during the Second World War in the OSS, and had been one of the shakers and movers when the agency was established in 1947. His name, along with Donovan’s, Bill Casey’s, and a very few others were a legend. He was seventy.
“Darby Yarnell,” McGarvey said with just a little trepidation. After all, Owens had been Yarnell’s boss for much of the man’s career in the CIA. “Just a few questions. I won’t take up much of your time.”
“You don’t look Russian. And your name does seem to ring a bell in the distance.”
“Russian?” McGarvey asked.
This time Owens chuckled. “We’ve all got our enemies, what? Russians. You’ve heard of them? They’re supposed to be the bad guys.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” McGarvey said, softening his tone even further.
The old man lowered his head and looked up at McGarvey as if through the tops of bifocals. “I’m not senile, you sonofabitch. Old, but I’ve still got most of my marbles. You came to ask about Darby Yarnell. We called him a prick, do you know why?”
McGarvey shook his head, not knowing what to expect.
Owens laughed. “Because he had such a perfect head.”
“I don’t know …”
“You have questions, son? I’ve at least got the time, if not all the answers.” Owens stepped back into the house. He beckoned. “I always figured Yarnell was too big for his britches. What’s the sonofabitch supposed to have done?”
“I don’t know if he’s done anything. But that’s just it.” McGarvey came into the house and closed the door. He dropped his bag in the vestibule and followed the old man back into the hall, which smelled of must and age, of medicine and faintly of backed-up toilets, over all of which was the odor of wood burning in a fireplace. Masculine odors. Together, not so terribly unpleasant.
A very large, very old dog raised its head from where it lay in front of the fireplace and looked up at McGarvey. It wagged just the tip of its tail, yawned deeply, and then laid its head back down. The remnants of lunch — soup, some bread, and a bottle of beer — remained on a broad oak coffee table. Photographs of dozens of foreign places, each with Owens and sometimes others in them, adorned the walls. The room was dimly lit and very warm from the fire. McGarvey suspected that Owens lived alone here.