“I never knew what happened to you,” he said, lighting himself a cigarette. “After I left the Company, I was out of touch with the old crowd.”
“They were pretty worried about you there for a while. Thought you would go sour on them.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t come after me. I’ve been watching for it.”
Trotter laughed. “That was the Carter administration, remember, boy? You were bounced because you followed orders too well. They thought we were getting a bit too much like the Russkies. Mokrie dela … wet affairs … spilling of blood … Department Victor, and all that.”
McGarvey remembered how it had been after he had returned from Santiago. Operations was in a shambles, field agents were streaming in from all over the place, and every day it seemed there was something in the New York Times naming one deep-cover operative or another in Portugal, in Mexico, in East Germany or Czechoslovakia. The Company was being reduced to satellite surveillance of target countries, and on a much broader scale, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (which was administered directly by the deputy director of intelligence, to whose analysts the product was funneled) reigned supreme for a time. It was a huge, thankless task — listening to foreign broadcasts; reading foreign newspapers, magazines, and books; translating the material; and picking out the significant details. Every field station had its cadre of readers for translation, most of them locals, and in places such as Okinawa, Bangkok, the U.K., and Key West, receiving stations were manned around the clock to monitor broadcasts. It was a factory operation. The translated data was collated into a daily unanalyzed summary which was transmitted to Langley for the desk jocks to pick apart and put together in whatever the reigning pattern was.
“It’s different now, you know,” Trotter said.
“The press seems to be in love with the Company. Is Powers that good?”
“Absolute tops. I mean it. We worked together on the United Nations thing back in the mid-seventies. He was assistant DDO at the time, but he took the case under his wing. I tagged along as a legman. And I’m telling you, Kirk, the man is everything anyone has said about him and more. Absolutely brilliant. First class. A real force.”
McGarvey had been cold; he was warm now, and he opened his coat. He had never actually worked with Powers. But he’d never met a man in the Company who had disliked him. Unanimously, Powers was considered the man with the right stuff. His appointment to DCI had surprised no one and had pleased a great many people.
“So what’s the rub?”
“When you’re in, you’re solid. When you’re out, you’re cold. There’s no real cooperation anymore. The CIA runs its show and we run ours, with very little contact in between.”
“Sounds like sour grapes to me,” McGarvey said, getting a bad feeling that they might be trying to catch him up in some interservice struggle.
“It’s nothing like that, Kirk, believe me when I tell you this. We’ve done some work with the Company, of course. Passed a little information back and forth, but not much. Not enough and especially not lately. The lines of communication across the river are closing, and it’s become … ominous.”
“And now you’re here in Switzerland, outside your charter,” McGarvey said, not wanting to get involved but curious nevertheless.
This was the sort of thing Marta was watching out for. He had visions of Trotter and the one from Justice asking him to use his connections to ferret out the Swiss bank account number of some nefarious character they were after. Only he didn’t have any connections. Not here. They passed through the yachting town of Morges and the rain began to let up. Back toward Lausanne, the sun even tried to peek out from under the clouds.
“There’s probably nothing I can do for you,” McGarvey said.
“We just want you to listen, Kirk,” Trotter said softly. “Nothing more. Afterward we’ll talk. You’ll see.”
They passed through Saint Prex, Allaman, and Rolle, all little villages along the choppy, gray lake, finally turning inland up into the hills, the snow-covered slopes of Noirmont, ten miles away on the French border, wreathed in a halo of clouds. A large chalet rose at a sheer angle from the roadside; it had a short, narrow driveway to the garage on the ground floor. They turned in and stopped. The driver got out, opened the garage door, then came back and drove them inside.
Anonymous here in the hills above Lake Geneva, simply another lodge in a region of similar retreats; it was a safe house.
McGarvey followed Trotter up from the garage into a short corridor that opened into a large entryway. The house was gloomy, with polished dark woods and thick beams. The massive banisters in the stairhall were hand carved in ornate patterns, with intertwined stag horns and leaping fish in bas-relief. They passed through the hall into the living room, which was a long, narrow chamber that ran the length of the house and overlooked the road. Stained glass windows flanked a massive, natural stone fireplace in which three very large birch logs were burning. To the left, along the inner wall, were bookcases looking down on a grand piano, on the other side of which were a library table with a Tiffany lamp and several chairs. To the right were two huge, overstuffed sofas, several armchairs, and a square oak coffee table that looked as if it weighed a ton. The floors were highly polished wood covered in two places by large oriental rugs. Paintings adorned the walls. This was the chalet of a very wealthy Swiss. Probably a banker who came here on weekends.
“Mr. McGarvey, I’m so glad that you could come down here to talk with us,” Oliver Leonard Day, associate deputy attorney general for criminal justice, said, bounding in from the hallway.
McGarvey didn’t know Day, but he knew his kind: career bureaucrat who had married the right woman, ran in the right circles, and dined at the right places. He was probably in his mid-to-late fifties, but looked years younger. His eyes were baby blue, his complexion tan, and his thinning hair boyishly sun bleached. He was part of the California health-nut crowd that had invaded Washington on Reagan’s coattails. Marta would probably have a lot in common with him.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be of any help,” McGarvey said.
“John told you we only want you to listen,” Day boomed, eyeing McGarvey’s long hair and beard.
McGarvey nodded.
“We want you to meet someone, listen to his story.”
Day seemed to be in constant motion. His eyes darted back and forth; he spoke with his hands like an Italian, or like someone who was very nervous; and he had a habit of shifting his weight from one foot to the other as if he were a boxer ready to dodge any blow that might come his way.
“You don’t know this person, Kirk,” Trotter interjected. “It’s not someone out of your past.” He turned to Day. “I think Kirk may have gotten the impression that this was going to be some sort of an interagency squabble. Dredging up old issues from the past.”
“Heavens, no,” Day nearly exploded with sincerity. “Good grief, we can’t have you thinking that. You can’t possibly think we brought you here for that.”