“Yarnell’s ex-wife is down there, too. They’re going to telephone Yarnell tonight at eleven our time. Less than an hour from now.”
Trotter glanced over. “You’ll just have to stop her. Tell her the deal is off.”
“I’m not going to quit.”
“It’s because of Janos, isn’t it,” Trotter said gently. “We can’t even prove that Yarnell or his people did it. Someone else could have been responsible. Use your head, Kirk.”
“He’s working with someone in the CIA, John. Someone we don’t know about. Someone who Baranov turned in the late fifties. Now he’s active.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“You’d better. It’s not going to stop just because we stop. Mexico is just the tip of the iceberg. Baranov has been planning this entire business for a lot of years, and he’ll keep going until someone stops him. Everything he’s worked for is finally coming to a head. If he wins he’ll make even more points at home. The Kremlin is already in love with him. Think what his position will be if he hands them Mexico on a silver platter. Is that the sort of man you want running the Soviet Union? And he’ll get it if he wins here.”
They were approaching the Arlington Bridge, which would take them across the river. Trotter started to pull toward the off ramp. “What hotel are you staying at?”
“The safe house, John.”
“No.”
“I want to listen to that telephone conversation.”
Trotter shook his head, but he didn’t take the ramp.
“It’s all I’m asking.”
“And then what?” Trotter asked.
“See what he does. See how he reacts.”
“What do you think he’ll do? What do you want him to do, Kirk? Go to the president? Is he your inside man?”
“I’m hoping he’ll call his contact. Warn him.”
“And what if it was the president?” Trotter suggested wildly.
“It’s not,” McGarvey said. “He’s from California, not the East Coast.”
“Christ, what’s that supposed to mean?”
He kept going back to Lausanne in his thoughts, and yet at the end there he hadn’t been happy or satisfied. He’d been looking for change, for just this or something like this. The old magic. Now that he was here he wanted out. Be careful what you wish for, he’d heard, you just might get it.
“His contact within the agency has an East Coast accent,” he said, watching Trotter for any sign of recognition.
“How do you know this?”
“Basulto told me. I finally got more of the truth from him. He was lying to you about almost everything.”
“About the East Coast accent, I mean. How did he know?” There was something there, something in Trotter’s myopic eyes. Some hint of a dawning recognition.
“Roger Harris told him. It wasn’t Yarnell, though. It was someone else. Someone who showed up at the party Yarnell and Baranov threw outside of Mexico City. Evita Perez heard his voice that night.”
“Did she say who it was? Did she know?”
“No. She only heard his voice, she was never allowed to see his face.”
Trotter thought about it. “We can come up with the embassy staff directories for those years. Shouldn’t be too hard to put together who was around then and now, and who has an East Coast accent.”
“He might not have been stationed in Mexico City. He might have been visiting. Or he might have been down there on special assignment.”
“He could have erased the records by now in any event,” Trotter said. He was getting caught up in it. “All these years,” he mused.
“How has Leonard Day been taking it?”
“I don’t know,” Trotter said. “I haven’t seen him all day. He won’t return my calls.” He glanced again at McGarvey. “It’s the missile thing, isn’t it? That was Baranov’s plan from the start.”
“That’s part of it, but there’s more.”
“They won’t get away with it,” Trotter continued. “They didn’t get away with it in Cuba, and they certainly won’t succeed this time either. The situation must be very bad in Mexico City. Did you run into any trouble?”
“Jules and Asher, the CIA field officers killed in Havana last fall. Why were they going to Mexico City?”
Trotter blinked. “Replacements. Reinforcements. I don’t know.”
“One of our spy planes was shot down yesterday.”
“Yes …”
“What else have we done to confirm those missile installations? Have we sent anyone down there?”
“How in God’s name would I know, Kirk? I don’t have any contacts over at the agency except for Larry Danielle, and he certainly wouldn’t say anything. What is it?”
McGarvey looked at his watch. They had barely twenty minutes before Evita was due to place her call. But there was something else, always something else. He could feel it. He could practically taste it. Baranov never did anything by halves. At least McGarvey had got that impression listening to Evita. It was the timing that had bothered him all along. The murders of Jules and Asher, Basulto’s coming out, and Baranov’s visit to Evita in New York (the trip itself very risky for the Russian); all had occurred in too narrow a time span for McGarvey’s liking. Too coincidental not to be carefully orchestrated.
They merged with the traffic crossing the Key Bridge. Washington was a city bright and alive and vibrant. But beneath the surface it was a metropolis, like Mexico City, under siege, holding its collective breath, waiting for the outcome.
“I just want you to listen to the telephone call, John. After that it’ll be up to you.”
They crossed the canal and turned right on M Street past the City Tavern, and then the Rive Gauche Restaurant. People lined up around the block to get in.
“How sure are you about this, Kirk?” Trotter asked. He was looking for guarantees. He was a drowning man and he needed a lifeline. But there wasn’t one within reach.
“I’m just guessing.”
The Boynton Towers apartment was in darkness when Trotter let them in. McGarvey wouldn’t allow him to switch on the lights. All the equipment had been turned off, but it was still in place, ready for the cleanup crew to come along in the morning and remove it. Trotter stood in the middle of the living room, while McGarvey went to the window and looked down across 31st Street toward Yarnell’s fortress. Only a few of the windows were lit. No party tonight.
“If he calls his contact,” Trotter asked softly, “then what, Kirk? I mean, how are we going to handle it? The same as before?”
McGarvey was thinking about his ex-wife over there in Yarnell’s arms. It was going to come as a very large shock for her. He didn’t know how well she would handle it, but he sincerely wished her well.
“Are you going to kill him? Nothing has changed, you know. He is still friends with the president and with Powers. The scandal would wreck our government. Christ, we can’t let that happen, especially not now. We need our strength. Solidarity. This could ruin everything.”
Trotter was truly frightened. “There’s no proof of any of this. You were correct. Good Lord, it never was anything more than circumstantial. There could be a dozen different explanations, some of which might possibly be quite innocent.”
No, McGarvey thought. Evita had been correct. No one was truly innocent.
“Once we step over that line, there’ll be no going back, Kirk. Not for any of us. Not ever.”
McGarvey turned away from the window. “It’s time, John. Turn on the tape machine, would you?”
31
In the mews behind Scott Place, the streetlights cast a violet glow on the brick walls and buildings, and from where McGarvey stood in the safe house he imagined he could see eyes watching him from the attic windows of Yarnell’s citadel. It was well after eleven, the recorder on the telephone tap was on and ready. Trotter stood poised, though the equipment was automatic. He hadn’t said a thing in the last fifteen minutes. McGarvey could feel his fear and his impatience. Evita hadn’t called. She couldn’t go through with it; she was in trouble; Basulto had stopped her; she was lying dead in a pool of blood. All of it ran through McGarvey’s mind as he brooded like an anxious father waiting for his daughter to come in out of the night after her first date. He’d erred in thinking she could actually betray Baranov and her ex-husband. He’d erred in trusting Basulto, he’d erred in listening to Trotter and Day in the first place. He’d erred all of his life because he had never found a place in which he felt that he belonged. Not Kansas, not Washington, not South America nor Europe; not the service, nor the agency, nor the bookstore. He supposed he might be considered a loner, and yet he could not stand being alone.