A car horn beeped outside and in the distance they could hear a siren. But it was much quieter than it had been last night. He reached over and kissed her breast. She lay back and held his head in her hands.
“I don’t know what you want me to do,” she said. “I don’t know what you expect of me with this Cubano coming, but I’ll do it. I think from the moment you showed up at the club I knew that I would do something for you.”
McGarvey looked into her eyes. “I’m returning to Washington this afternoon.”
“Leaving me here with Basulto?”
He nodded. Her eyes were very dark and very deep. He felt as if he might fall into them. If that happened he knew he would never get back out.
“You didn’t mean what you said before, about not caring any longer.”
He shrugged.
She smiled sadly. “I understand how it is with your kind. It’s the Holy Grail you’re all after. Only most of the time you never get it. You never even come close.”
“I have to see it to the end.”
“Naturally,” she said. “Who will I call for you?”
“Your husband.”
She closed her eyes and opened them. “And tell him what?”
“That you’re down here with a Cuban who knew him from the Bay of Pigs. That it was I who brought you both down here, and that I know everything about him and about Baranov and about the other one in the CIA.”
“He’ll run.”
“Tell him that I want to make a deal. It’s no longer safe for him up there and he’d better get out while he can still save himself. Tell him Baranov is here waiting for him, too. That you’ll all be together again like in the old days.”
“When? What time?”
“Eleven in the evening; nine local time. This evening.” Mexico City time was two hours behind U.S. eastern daylight time.
“And you’ll be there. Watching him. Waiting to see who he runs to.”
McGarvey touched her hip. She shivered.
“Maybe he won’t run after all,” she said, covering his hand with hers.
“He will.”
“And then you’ll know who else has been corrupted. And it’ll be finished for you.”
“Hopefully,” McGarvey said. He wondered though if he truly cared, or if he had just been going through the motions. Except for poor Janos Plónski and the old man, Owens, he might not have come this far. Might not have pushed as hard as he had. Might have backed down when Day ordered him to.
“Valentin will know that I am here,” she said softly.
“He doesn’t want you any longer. You’ve served his purpose.”
“He’ll warn Darby. Maybe he’s already warned him.”
“No,” McGarvey said. He reached over and lit a cigarette. “He wants Darby to fall.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She sat up, her eyes suddenly bright. “He knew you’d find out. He wanted you to find out. Which means there’s something else happening. He never does anything without a purpose.”
“It looks like it.”
“Is Basulto working for Valentin?”
McGarvey had thought about it, of course. Now he weighed the possibilities again. On the surface it seemed likely that the Cuban had been working for the Russians in the old days, and that he had set up his case officer, Roger Harris, to be killed at the Bay of Pigs. But it was just as possible that Basulto wanted out now. He had watched Harris fall, and he was at least in part the reason why Yarnell would fall. Maybe he saw his own future in the same terms. The game had gotten too rough for him, so he was trading Yarnell’s life for his own. The coincidental timing was hard to accept, unless of course Baranov’s sources had told him about Basulto’s defection and he had worked up his own program to take advantage of Yarnell’s fall.
“I don’t know that either,” he said quietly.
“I see.”
Where did it fit? he asked himself, watching how the light made Evita’s skin take on a golden glow. He had felt the Russian’s presence almost from the beginning, and he supposed he had behaved badly in not protecting the people who had helped him.
“You want me to stay here with him, is that it?”
“Not in the same room.”
She laughed.
“I’ll leave you my gun.”
“Maybe I’ll save us all a lot of trouble.”
“How?”
“By shooting him and then myself.”
The clerk was clearly hostile when McGarvey went down to the desk to arrange and pay for Basulto’s room. Evita had promised not to leave the hotel, but it was clear that she was barely hanging onto her nerves. He promised that it would be over by morning, but she didn’t believe it, and he wondered if he did.
“I’ll be leaving tomorrow,” McGarvey told the clerk. He would be out and back before anyone knew that he was gone.
“Perhaps it would be wiser, senor, if you left Mexico today.” He was young, with an olive complexion and a pencil-thin mustache. His manner was oily. “The hotel, of course, cannot guarantee your safety under the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?” McGarvey asked stepping a little closer.
“There is unrest here, senor.” The man’s eyes strayed to a pile of newspapers at the end of the counter. One of them, the Mexico City News, was in English. Its headlines blared: AMERICAN SPY PLANE SHOT DOWN OVER MEXICO.
McGarvey quickly scanned the article. An SR-71 spy plane had been shot down sometime yesterday thirty miles inside Mexican territory. The information was scant; the story obviously censored by the government. But the plane was definitely American. The pilot’s body had been recovered and identified.
McGarvey looked up. The clerk was staring at him.
“Have my bill prepared. I’ll be leaving before noon.”
“And Miss Perez?”
“Her brother-in-law is coming this morning. He will stay with her.”
“He is cubano.”
“Are you at war with Cuba as well?”
The clerk reared back. “Your bill will be waiting for you.”
“When Senor Basulto arrives, tell him to meet me at Roger Harris’s. He knows the place.”
“Yes, senor.”
The clerk went back into his office. McGarvey crossed the lobby and went outside, conscious of the pressure of the gun in his belt at the small of his back.
He found a public telephone three blocks away, across the street from the national lottery building. The international lines, especially to the States, were jammed, and it took more than ten minutes to get through to the number Trotter had given him.
It was answered, as before, on the first ring by the same man. “Yes?”
“Basulto is on his way to Mexico City. What time does he arrive?”
“Pan Am, 9:05 local.”
“Tell Trotter to meet me at the safe house tonight at ten-thirty.”
“He wants to talk to you …”
McGarvey hung up. It was already nine o’clock. If Basulto’s plane was on time and there were no delays with customs, he would be at the hotel sometime between 9:30 and 10:00. His own flight left at 1:25, getting him in at Washington’s National Airport at 9:40. The timing was tight, but it was coming to a head finally. By tonight it would be over, with only the repercussions to deal with. This time when he thought about Marta he could see her face. Switzerland was out, but perhaps she wouldn’t mind living in France or Greece. Or was it simply wishful thinking; another product of his exhausted state?
By ten McGarvey, waiting across from the hotel in the park, was becoming impatient. Something might have gone wrong in Miami. Baranov certainly knew by now that Basulto was there. Perhaps he had ordered the man assassinated. It wasn’t unthinkable considering everything else that had gone on. The Cuban had outlived his usefulness, hadn’t he? Or was there a flaw in that thinking? Baranov had been celebrating last night, or at least he had put up a damned good show of it. Which meant, as far as Baranov was concerned, this business was as good as done. As it had last night on the mountain road below the Russian’s villa, the thought raised the hair at the back of McGarvey’s neck. Circles within circles. Lies within lies. Plots within plots. Baranov was the master.