“We’d better go upstairs,” she said at length.
McGarvey picked up his overnight bag, followed her across the cabaret floor, and went up the stairs to her apartment-salon. At the top she closed and locked the door.
“Fix yourself a drink,” she said. “I’ll take champagne.” She turned and disappeared into the back.
McGarvey dropped his bag at the end of one of the couches, took off his overcoat, laying it aside, and went to the bar. He mixed himself a bourbon and water, and found a split of Mumms for her, which he uncorked and poured. When she came back she had changed into a thin yellow cotton dress, let her hair down, and put on a little makeup. The change was startling. She looked almost beautiful and certainly very seductive. He could clearly see the shape of her nipples through the material of the dress. She sat down on the couch in front of the fireplace, tucked her legs up beneath her, and accepted the glass of champagne. There was some expectation in her eyes, but he could see that she had girded herself for a difficult time ahead. Difficult but necessary.
“You’re out to get Hizzoner, Darby,” Evita said.
“I think your husband was and is a spy,” McGarvey said.
“Ex-husband, let’s keep that part straight right from the beginning, shall we?”
“His Soviet control officer has been and still is Valentin Baranov.”
Evita laughed disparagingly. “You think you know so fucking much. You don’t know a thing. Nothing.”
“I’ve come to you for help,” McGarvey said, quite calmly. “I’d hate like hell, you know, to see you deported back to Mexico. Baranov is there. He’d take over.”
“Who are you trying to kid?”
McGarvey measured his next words. He watched her carefully, especially her eyes and her hands as they gripped the champagne glass. He was looking for her vulnerable spot.
“You’d probably never see your daughter again if you were sent away,” he said. “I saw her in Washington a few days ago. She’s living with her father. Quite a beautiful young woman. A lot like you.”
“You sonofabitch,” Evita swore. “You bastard.”
She wanted to speak Spanish. McGarvey could hear it in the way she chopped her words. English was far too slow for her, yet she must have figured Spanish would be lost on him.
“I came here trying to avoid all of this,” McGarvey said sitting forward. “Believe me. I think Darby has used every person he’s ever come in contact with. Including you. Including your daughter.”
It was a heavy thought for her. The weight of it seemed to press down upon her, causing her shoulders to sag, her back to bend a little; even the weight of the champagne glass became too much for her and she rested it on her lap.
“Is she a pretty girl, do you think? I haven’t seen her in so long. She doesn’t know me any longer. Whatever Darby tells her is true. She has stars in her eyes.” Evita shook her head, looking inward. “Who wouldn’t? I don’t know anyone who could resist him. His charm. He’s so damned self-assured, no matter what he says you have to believe him. You know?”
“Is he still working for the Russians?” McGarvey asked gently. “For Baranov?”
Evita looked up. “Have you met my … have you met Darby? Have you come face-to-face with him? Have you spent a few minutes listening to him?”
“No.”
“I thought not. You don’t talk as if you were one of his initiates.” She drank her champagne nervously. “I don’t know what you’re doing here.”
“When is the last time you saw him?”
“A long time ago. Not long enough …”
“You mentioned that Baranov had come here. You saw him? You met with him?”
“How can you think you know Darby without meeting him?” Evita asked. “I want to know that. I don’t think you know a goddamned thing about him, see. I think you’re guessing.”
“I’m guessing, you’re right about that much. But I think he killed a very good friend of mine. Or at least I think he had my friend killed. I don’t suspect there is a lot more that I want to know about him, except for his relationship with Baranov.”
“You really think Darby is a spy?”
“Yes.”
“You think he is a murderer? You think he was working for Valentin?”
“Yes. I think he’s still working for him.”
She laughed again. “Listen to me. Darby doesn’t have, nor has he ever had, enough dedication to anything or anyone other than himself to become a spy,” she explained. “You say he worked for Valentin? It’s true, you know, in the old days. But it was also true that he turned in absolutely top-rate intelligence to his own people. To your people, you know. The agency. The Company. Our Father who art in Langley …”
“But he worked for Baranov.”
“He was in love with Valentin. We all were.”
“Still?”
“What do you want?”
“You told me downstairs that Baranov had come here nine or ten months ago. What did he want?”
“Old times …”
“What’d he want?” McGarvey insisted. “You were in love with him, too. Did he come here to …”
“Yes!” she asked defiantly, her head up.
“Did you and he make love? For old times’ sake?”
“What kind of a fucked up question is that?” Evita jumped up, flinging her champagne glass toward the fireplace. “What did you come here for? What do you want? I don’t care what you think, you know. Darby gave himself and then he gave me. But that’s all there is to it. There’s where you don’t understand anything. He never gave a damn about anything or anyone. Not about me, not really about Baranov, not about his bosses in Langley. None of it. It was nothing more than a big game to him. He was playing chess, only it was with real people. But he didn’t care.” …
McGarvey understood what frightened her now, and the sudden understanding did nothing for his dour mood, nor for his satisfaction.
“Get out of here,” she said, turning away from him. She went to the window, where the bar was set up on a sideboard. She looked outside, but he didn’t think she was really seeing anything. She was looking inward again. “Just … just go away,” she said.
“Baranov came here ten months ago looking for something, Ms. Perez,” McGarvey said softly. “Now you think it’s a real possibility that Darby is going to give him your daughter.”
Evita said something very fast in Spanish, but the only word McGarvey caught was amor, which means love, and she hung her head and began to weep, her back bent, her head bowed, big racking sobs shaking her narrow shoulders. There was nothing he could do for her; he supposed she was crying not only for her daughter but for her own lost youth, and for the golden days, as Owens had described them, when she and Darby Yarnell were the hottest item in Mexico City. But that was ten thousand years ago, and now she probably thought of herself as an old lady. Her daughter was apparently next on the sacrificial altar Darby had built with the blood and tears of those nearest to him. McGarvey could not leave now, though. He’d come this far, and so had Evita. They would have to share the entire story, for better or for worse.
Evita had come back to the couch. She sat erect, her knees primly together as if she were a schoolgirl prepared to recite her lessons. The room was quiet and McGarvey could hear the vagrant noises of the building: an elevator rising, someone laughing in the distance, a door slamming. Ordinary sounds that punctuated an extraordinary situation. As she talked, she watched the flames in the fireplace.
“I was just twenty, and he was the finest man I had ever seen or even imagined could exist,” she said. “My parents loved him, my friends were jealous of me — they secretly adored him — and we had dinner at the President’s Palace at least once a month. It was a dream.”