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, they’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.
24
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.