Blood Pact (McGarvey) (8 page)

“What was the sense of it?” McGarvey asked. “The one who left in the boat will get back to Madrid, if he’s lucky, and tell them what? Mission accomplished? Petain is dead?”

A sudden look of intense terror came into the Spaniard’s eyes. “Petain?” he said, coughing, and he went slack, his eyes open.

McGarvey bent down and felt for a pulse at the man’s neck, but there was none.

Otto was calling his name, and he went back into the surveillance room. “It’s okay,” he said. “Are you finished with the download?”

“Yes, it only took a couple of minutes. I was stalling to give you some time to defuse the situation. What happened?”

McGarvey was tired. “Three people are dead up at the college, and three more are dead here. The cops are going to have a hell of a time figuring it out, and the trouble is I’m not going to be able to help them, because I don’t know what this is all about.”

“Hopefully there’ll be something on the computer that sheds some light. But what do you want to do next?”

“I’m not going to let it go, if that’s what you mean.”

“I didn’t think so. But sooner or later the cops down there are going to find the mess and make the connection between the car bombing and the bodies and surveillance equipment and come knocking on your door. So what do you want to do,
kemo sabe
?”

“I’ll fly up in the morning and we’ll go over whatever you decipher on the laptop.”

“I’ll send a plane; I don’t think it’d be such a good idea right now if you flew commercial, in case the locals are keeping an eye on you.”

“Make it seven at Dolphin Aviation,” McGarvey said. “There’s usually not too many people around at that hour.”

“Don’t push your luck, Mac. Get out of there.”

“Do you want me to take the laptop?”

“No need, I’m going to fry it,” Rencke said. “Watch yourself.”

Before McGarvey could turn away the computer screen went blank, and the power light went out on it and all the surveillance equipment.

Pistol in hand, in case the fourth CNI operator had not left on the boat and was still somewhere in the house or on the property, McGarvey made a quick search of the other bedrooms, finding passports in the names of Juan Fernandez, Diego Cubrero, Rufo Tadena, and the woman Sophia de Rosas—who the man he’d killed downstairs had called Donica or Doni. The passport pictures matched the woman and the two men, only the fourth for Rufo Tadena was of a man he’d not seen.

More significantly was the fact he found only four sets of documents, four overnight bags, sets of clothing and toiletries in four separate bedrooms.

Pocketing the passports, he went downstairs and methodically made a search of the entire house, before he switched off the pool lights and stepped inside where he stood in the shadows for a long moment listening to the near absence of any sounds except for the call of some night hunting bird in the far distance. No boats were passing on the ICW, nor any car on the island’s single road, and the only light was the glow in the sky to the north from Sarasota.

The real world seemed a long ways off just at that moment, the deaths at the university and the three here that he’d killed weighed heavily. Senseless, all of them, especially because he still had no certain idea of the why of it, except for a diary that was a century and a half old.

Taking care with his movements McGarvey went down to the dock where a twenty-three-foot center-console Boston Whaler with a big outboard motor had been kept on a lift. He’d spotted it a couple of times out of the water and covered when he’d been working on his own boat. But he’d never seen it in the water. It was gone.

The fourth operator had not bothered to grab his passport. It likely meant that they’d set up an escape hole somewhere not too far north where they’d left more documents and everything they would need to travel back to Spain without arousing the suspicions of any TSA agent. Covering their asses. Standard tradecraft.

McGarvey debated going after him, but it would only result in another shoot-out. To prove what?

He stuffed the pistol in the waistband of his slacks and headed back to his house, the expression in the woman’s eyes as she knew that she would die stuck in his head.

FIFTEEN

Cabello shut off the engine just at the ICW green marker 49A, and listened for the sounds of someone following him. In addition to the sailboat, McGarvey had a RIB dinghy with a big outboard that was perfectly capable of coming this far this soon. But nothing was behind him.

Less than three miles north of the surveillance house, he was just off Siesta Key where a series of red and white private markers showed the narrow channel to the docks behind six rental properties, all but two of them vacant because of the low season. One of them, a small bungalow, had been set up as their escape route.

“Make no mistake about it, Señor McGarvey is an exceedingly dangerous man,” Major Pedrosa Prieto, their handler at Torrejón Air Force Battle Air Command outside Madrid, had warned them. “Tread with very great care, for he is a man supremely capable of killing you given the proper circumstances.”

But they had not tread with care. Accidentally killing the two students had been a serious mistake on Emilio’s part. Doni had been right; McGarvey had cared very much about the kids, so much so that he had refused to listen to reason about the danger he was in.

Because of it she and Emilio were dead, and most likely Felix too. Now it was up to him to get back to Madrid, though how he was going to explain losing their computer and surveillance equipment was beyond him at the moment.

He restarted the very quiet four-stroke Honda and slowly picked his way down the channel to
libertad,
freedom, what they called their escape route, stopping every fifteen or twenty meters to listen.

“Is he some kind of a hero, then?” Emilio had asked.

“More like an avenging angel,” Major Prieto said. “I don’t know all of the details, but apparently one of his first assignments for the CIA—a kill outside of Santiago, Chile—went bad through no fault of his, and his government left him hanging in the wind. When he got back home, his wife divorced him and he went to ground somewhere in Switzerland. From that point, for whatever arcane reason, Señor McGarvey became a champion of what were, in his mind, just causes.”

“Don Quixote,” Donica had offered, and everyone but the major had laughed.

“With respect, Lieutenant,” he’d said.

All six houses were dark when Cabello tied up at the dock, bow and stern, not bothering with spring lines because if all went well he would be on his way to Miami within less than a half hour.

He took a rag out of the port coaming box right at his elbow and wiped down everything he’d touched—steering wheel, shift lever, throttle, key and key float—and headed across the sloping lawn to the house. Clean khakis, white shirt, dark blazer, and loafers were waiting for him in one of the closets, along with an overnight bag of toiletries and changes of clothing, plus a passport under the name of Castaneda Trujillo, a wallet with matching documents—driver’s license, national health card, photographs of a nonexistent family, even a love letter from an old flame—and a Nokia cell phone with two dozen telephone numbers, all of them connecting to various CNI blind numbers that were answered by various recorded voices.

Up at the house he found the key under a potted plant and let himself in. Once he had the door closed and relocked he leaned back against it and closed his eyes. What an absolute cock-up. He knew that he was lucky to be alive, but he also understood that he was going to have to do a lot of explaining why the mission had failed so spectacularly.

They’d been trained as a team, but they’d also been through intensive drills in which one or even all of the other team members were down, in which case they would have to continue alone.

“Where are the others?” a man, or possibly a woman, with a high, soft voice asked in Spanish.

Cabello opened his eyes and reached for his gun.

“If you draw your weapon I will kill you,” the person said in a reasonable tone.

Cabello could only make out the figure of someone very large on the other side of the small kitchen. The room was nearly pitch-black and he couldn’t make out any details, except that he was sure now that it was a man and that his life was in immediate danger.

“Who are you?”

“My identity is of no concern. You have come here because there has been trouble. Where are the others? Dead?”

“Sí.”

“Tell me the manner in which they died, and do not lie to me, Señor Cabello, I will know.”

“Do you know about McGarvey?”

“Yes.”

“He shot the others.”

“Has he followed you?”

Cabello shook his head. “I don’t think so. I was ordered to get back to Interpol to file my report.”

“I said do not lie to me, Señor,” the man said, and he fired one shot from a silenced pistol.

The bullet slammed into Cabello’s left arm with an incredible bolt of pain. He cried out, clapping his left hand on the wound.

“I warned you, no lies.”

“What do you want with me?”

“The truth. The Voltaire Society in the person of Giscarde Petain came to talk to Señor McGarvey, and your team killed him. Why?”

“He was our enemy.”

“In what way?”

Cabello hesitated.

“Be quick.”

“You have come this far, you know about our operation, I suspect you know everything else.”

The figure moved closer so that Cabello could make out his features. He looked like a very large teenager, but with the calmness of a monk. He was dressed in black jeans and a black polo shirt.

“How close have you come? How close has McGarvey come?”

“We killed the Frenchman to keep the Society from learning the truth.”

“Yes, the diary of Jacob Ambli. But your people do not have it and now it appears that Mr. McGarvey has declined to help in your quest. But he knows about it?”

“Yes, at least I think so. He made a phone call to a friend at the CIA and discussed the incident at the college.”

“But your team has no idea where the diary is, or who may have stolen it?”

“No.”

“Nor does Mr. McGarvey?”

“No,” Cabello said.

The dark figure raised his pistol and a thunderclap burst inside of Cabello’s head.

SIXTEEN

It was after ten, and though McGarvey was tired he couldn’t shut down. Drink in hand he stood at the open sliders looking across his pool and down the sloping lawn to the gazebo that Katy had loved so much. But he had to keep reminding himself that even if she were here he wouldn’t have been able to explain to her what had happened today. In fact he would have probably moved her into a hotel in town before the flight up to D.C. tomorrow morning.

He had taken another shower and slipped on a T-shirt and shorts. At this moment Otto would be sifting through the computer’s memory that he’d downloaded, and possibly even hacking into the CNI’s database in Madrid. Tomorrow they would have some of the answers—hopefully enough to begin with or to step away and let the police and the FBI handle the mess.

His phone rang, startling him out of his thoughts. It was Otto.

“Do you know a Sarasota PD Lieutenant Jim Forest?”

“I talked to him at the college after the car bomb. He was sniffing around, pretty sure that I was somehow involved. Why?”

“He’s been parked down the road from your house for the past five minutes and he just now is pulling into your driveway.”

“How do you know?”

“I haven’t fried the CNI’s surveillance gear yet, just in case the fourth operator decides to come back. Anyway I spotted the Chevy Suburban from the camera in front of your house, and ran the tag. Thing is, it’s not a department car, it’s his own.”

McGarvey immediately thought of the Mercedes parked next door. “Could Sarasota PD have gotten the tag number and ran it the way you did?”

“First thing I checked, but there was nothing in their logs—leastwise not in their mainframe. Anyway, if they had anything they would have checked next door and found the mess. I can have a cleanup crew there first thing in the morning.”

“Someone on the seventh floor might take notice,” McGarvey said. The office of the CIA’s director Walter Page was on the seventh floor in the Original Headquarters Building. The man ran a tight ship unlike a lot of previous directors who were only political appointees and not professional intelligence officers like he was.

“We’ll see,” Rencke said. He ran the Company’s computers and he had more or less carte blanche, unless he did something totally outrageous.

“Keep tabs on the cops—the county guys too. If it looks like they’re getting involved, I want you to back off.”

“The Bureau has this. Sooner or later they’re going to put two and two together and come knocking at your door. How do you want to play it?”

“Depends on who asks and what they ask.”

“Watch your back tonight.”

“Will do.”

McGarvey hung up just as the doorbell chimed, and he went to answer it. He put the pistol in the drawer in the front hall table, flipped on the outside lights, and waited a few moments before he opened the door.

“A little out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you?” he said. “Or is this a social call?”

“Let’s say I’m here as a professional courtesy. Nothing official. May I come in?”

“Why not?” McGarvey said, and he led the lieutenant through the house to the pool patio. “Drink?”

“A beer would be okay.”

McGarvey got a couple of bottles of Dos Equis with pieces of lime. They sat at a small table from where they could look past the gazebo to the dock and out to the ICW.

“Nice place you have here,” Forest said. He was dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved pullover, a puzzled look on his face. “Thing is we don’t generally get the kind of trouble we had today around here. It’s out of our league, if you want to know the truth.”

“Has the FBI sent someone from Tampa?”

“A couple of forensics people are going through what’s left of the Lexus. And someone will be coming down tomorrow to talk to you. Thought you might like a heads-up.”