Blood Pact (McGarvey) (30 page)

“Yes.”

“A French banker comes to McGarvey, the CNI kills him, McGarvey kills the CNI team—all but one—who is killed by a priest, who tries to kill Colonel León, and who dies in a shoot-out with McGarvey. Is that about right?”

“So far,” Page admitted.

“But you’re going to tell us how all of that connects with the deaths of the leading candidate for the French presidency, along with his mistress and a doorman who according to the papers tried to rape the woman.”

“We think there is someone else involved. The man who came to ask for McGarvey’s help gave a phone number that Rencke was able to trace to what probably was an accommodations address in Paris. A night watchman there was killed, and the next morning we believe the pistol registered to the night watchman was used to kill the vice mayor and his mistress. It’s one fact that the French authorities have not yet made public, for the simple reason they don’t know what to make of it.”

“But McGarvey does.”

“He thinks so.”

“He thinks so,” Shapiro said sharply.

“You’ve obviously debriefed Mr. McGarvey,” the AG said.

“This morning.”

“Where is he at this moment?”

“I’m not sure,” Page admitted.

“At the least he should be in custody until we can get this mess straightened out,” Shapiro said. “What about Mr. Rencke?”

“He’s gone as well.”

“Vanished without a trace?” the AG asked.

Page nodded.

“And let me guess, Colonel León is missing as well.”

“Yes.”

The president, who had remained silent through most of this, sat forward. “Any idea who this fourth—or would it be fifth—party in Paris might be? Or what his purpose is?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

“Well then, I would like to have a word with Mr. McGarvey. As you say he has done many great things for this country, and has suffered for it. I’d like to get his views on what’s going on. And have Mr. Rencke come along, and the Cuban colonel.”

“That might not be such a good idea,” Shapiro said. “We might have to put some distance between him and this office, in case there is a French connection after all.”

“I want them here as soon as possible,” the president said. “This afternoon at the latest.”

“But you don’t know where they are,” Shapiro said to Page.

“Rencke monitors any number of intelligence nets. I’ll get word to him as soon as I return to my office.”

“I hear a but in there, Walt,” the president said.

“I can get word to them, but if they’re in the middle of something they may ignore the summons.”

“Even from me?” Langdon demanded.

“Yes, sir, even from the president.”

FIFTY-FIVE

At the Renckes’ safe house just off Dupont Circle Otto and Louise were seated around the breakfast nook with McGarvey and the star of the evening, María León, who looked pale, but not like a woman who’d been shot in the chest forty-eight hours ago.

“So the priest is dead, if that’s what he was, where does that leave us?” Louise asked.

They were having drinks—beer for Otto and Louise, a Cognac for McGarvey, and a glass of rum neat for María.

“Still with the problem of the missing diary,” María said.

“Which you believe will lead us to the treasure. Same story as before and it didn’t work the first time. What makes you think it’ll work this time?”

McGarvey was content for the moment to let them hash it out as he tried to work out all the ramifications, because nothing seemed to fit; there was no pattern to the events here and in Europe that he could see. And yet what they were facing was anything but random.

“Because there’re a lot more people interested enough in it to commit murder.”

“Is that why you came here, Colonel?” Louise asked, her voice and manner suddenly sharp. “From where I sit I’m looking at some serious past history with you and your fellow countrymen.” She looked to McGarvey. “Call Bill and have the Bureau send someone over to take her into custody. Protective custody, whatever you want to call it. She can be deported later, or maybe set loose on the Calle Ocho. I know some people who would like that.”

“I came here because my government still has a stake in what Spain stole from us.”

“Save me. There’s more Spanish in you than native Carib. You’re no mestizo by a long shot.”

“More important why did you come here just now of all times?” Otto asked. “Why not last month, or next month? And what did you come hoping to find?”

“Raul sent me.”

“Who told you about the diary?” McGarvey asked, looking up. “Was it Dr. Vergilio? Are you and she bosom buddies? She calls or texts from time-to-time?”

McGarvey watched her for a reaction, and when she finally broke eye contact he got up and went to the counter where he poured another small Cognac. He stood drinking it, his back to the table, and when he was finished he turned back.

“The problem is the fifth man—and for the moment I’m assuming it’s a man. He’s probably the one who somehow got access to the safety deposit box in Bern—if we are to believe Monsieur Petain—and stole the diary.”

“Dr. Vergilio thought the same thing,” María said. “But if he has the diary then why did he take the risk of going to Paris to find someone from the Voltaire Society, which for some reason—according to you—led him to the vice mayor of Paris and his mistress? Doesn’t make any sense.”

“I didn’t think so until just a minute ago when I realized that the diary was no good to him because he couldn’t read it.”

“Probably church Latin,” Otto suggested.

“Translatable, unless it was in code.”

“For which he needed someone from the Society to provide him with the key.”

“But they wouldn’t or couldn’t so he killed them,” McGarvey said. “Which raises two questions. If the diary was so valuable wouldn’t they have made a copy? And if the people the guy confronted didn’t know the key why didn’t they tell him where it could be found? Shunt him away. Maybe misdirect him. Why give their lives? To save what?”

“To save it from the Vatican,” María suggested.

“According to Petain, the Society has already plundered three of the caches, which means they have the key, or at the very least had it at one time. And they certainly wouldn’t deal with the Vatican.”

“Seville?” Louise said.

María shook her head. “Adriana would have known if it was there.”

“Maybe,” McGarvey said. “But without the key the diary is worthless.”

“And without the diary, the key is worthless,” Otto said. “So what do you suggest?”

“The CNI won’t stop and neither will the Vatican nor the Voltaires. But we know something about them. We don’t know anything about the guy in Paris who was willing to kill the possible future president right under the noses of his bodyguard. And I’d like to know something about him—or her—before I show up in Seville.”

María’s eyes were suddenly very bright. “You’re going after it?”

McGarvey had thought long and hard about that over the past few days. He didn’t give a damn about some historical treasure whether it was in a Spanish galleon sunk in a hurricane off Florida’s coast, or buried somewhere in Arizona. Nor did he care about the deaths of the priest or of the CNI operatives—who were not much different than María in terms of their disregard for collateral damage.

It was the deaths of the two students in the parking lot at New College, the four wounded CIA officers lying helpless in their hospital beds, and the nurse. The Company security officers were a different story, however. They’d died in the line of duty, and they would get stars on the granite wall in the lobby of the OHB in Langley. He felt sorry for them and for their families, but they were soldiers who’d fallen in the field doing what they’d been trained to do.

It was the senseless murders of the innocents and the helpless that always got to him. Though a number of terrorists he had personally faced—including Osama bin Laden—had all argued that no one was innocent.

At length he nodded. “But not for the reasons you might want.”

“But you need my help,” María said, and it was perfectly clear that she had her own agenda, and she was willing to trade her aid for McGarvey’s. “You’ll have to figure out a way to get into Spain clean. The CNI catches one whiff of your presence and they’ll be all over you.”

“I think that we might need to go to Bern first. Assuming the killer in Paris is the same guy who managed to steal the diary from a bank vault, he’ll have left traces.”

“Lots of banks in Bern,” Otto said. “How’re going to find out which one?”

“I’m going to start knocking on doors and making noise. But quietly as if I’m trying not to be noticed.”

“But you will be,” Louise said, getting it. “By the killer himself, or the organization he works for. Or the CNI, or the Church, or the Voltaire Society who wanted to hired you in the first place.”

“What about me?” María asked.

“You’re going to stick it out here with Louise—if she’ll have you—until it’s time to go to Seville, if that’s where we need to be.”

“We’ll be just peachy here,” Louise said. “I need to catch up on my girl talk.”

“No,” María said.

“It’s either here, your word on it, or I’ll have the Bureau put you in a holding cell until I need you,” McGarvey told her, and he didn’t really give a damn what she chose.

“Cristo!”

“Maybe the holding cell would be better,” Otto said, concerned.

Louise grinned. She was enjoying herself. “She can’t defeat the alarm. And if she tried something she wouldn’t get to the end of the block before she was nailed. Anyway, she wants what she figures is Cuba’s part of the treasure, because whether she gets it or not, she’ll go home a hero for trying. And there are big things on the horizon in Havana for heroes of the people.”

“Nobody knows where we are for the moment,” Otto said. “The first problem is getting out of the country without the Bureau or the Company finding out until it’s too late.”

“You’re staying behind to work the Internet.”

“Not a chance in hell, Mac. Where you go, I go, because I have a stake in this too. Louise and I do. Audie. Anyway, I can work the Internet from anywhere.”

McGarvey turned to Louise. “Convince him.”

“Nope. He’s right. But how are you going to get out?”

“The Church is going to help.”

FIFTY-SIX

The Archivo General de Indias was housed in a magnificent building begun in 1584 to hold the merchant’s exchange, because of complaints from the Mother Church. Directly across the street was the Cathedral where businessmen would retreat from the heat of the Andalusian day. Catholic officials were not pleased and pressure was brought to bear on King Philip II to create a home for the tradesmen who were so vital to the prosperity of Seville.

The ornately decorated two-story building enclosed a central patio where oftentimes archives staff personal would go to eat their lunches and mingle with the few tourists who bothered to visit such a musty place that contained nothing more than five and a half miles of shelving that held forty thousand plus books of eighty million pages.

Here were all the records of the Spanish conquest and administration of the New World, including the journal of Christopher Columbus (it was from Seville he sailed down the Guadalquivir River on his voyage across the Atlantic), the records and dispatches from the first conquistadors all the way to the end of the nineteenth century, including military expeditions, numbers of indigents captured and converted or killed, detailed maps of the countryside showing all the major trails and pathways that had been used by the natives for a thousand years, sailing routes and directions not only across the Atlantic but across the Pacific to Manila. Also on the shelves was a record of every single ounce of gold or silver that had ever been mined or appropriated from the natives, and the disposition of the wealth including losses from storms as well as from piracy, theft, and graft.

Occasionally a guide would bring a small group of tourists, many of them Europeans visiting Spain via bus or boat up the river, for a tour that seldom lasted for more than an hour. The stacks themselves were open for viewing, as were the few artifacts on display, but nothing could be handled except by staff or the ocassional scholar. The offices and preliminary restoration and preservation labs were at one end of the building on the second floor and off-limits to the public.

Al-Rashid, dressed in a lightweight linen suit, was in a group of a dozen tourists, many of them Germans, but some Italians, and a couple of Americans. They’d stopped at a glass case in which was displayed a handwritten log.

“These are the logs of Cristoforo Colombo, as he was known in his native Genoa,” the pretty tour guide told them. “But we know him as Cristóbal Colón, because it was the Spanish crown that financed his four expeditions to the new world.” She spoke English, as a lingua franca.

An American woman was in front. “To us he is Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of our country. We even have a national holiday in his name.”

“Actually he never reached the North American continent, the nearest he reached was the Bahama Islands.”

Someone in the group chuckled.

“Are these the actual logs?” al-Rashid asked. He was traveling as a writer under the name Paul Harris, with a British passport, one of his several work names. His name, a brief biography, and a list of historical books he’d never written were listed in Google.

The young woman smiled faintly. “Heavens no,” she said. “The actual logs are in hermetic storage as are many of the original documents from that early era.”

“Will we be able to see them?”

“No, nothing from that period is available to the public, though scholars with accredited projects are given certain limited access.”

“Is anything here real?” one of the Germans asked.

“Oh, yes, nearly everything from the sixteen hundreds and forward are genuine—that’s to say the items that are on display. No one but staff, however, are allowed to actually remove items from the shelves.”

“No exceptions?” al-Rashid asked.

The guide gave him a sharp look. “That would be up to Dr. Vergilio.”