Without Honor (12 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Without Honor
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“So what?” Evita asked defensively. “What does this have to do with me?” The ash from her cigarette dropped on the front of her robe. She didn't notice.
“Artimé has gotten himself in a bit of a jam with the DEA down in Florida. Something about running coke with the help of the Cuban government.”
“You said you were looking for him.”
“I am, in a way.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Evita said. “You are a cop. So what are you doing here? What do you want from me?”
“I wondered if you had ever heard of Artimé Basulto. He might lead me back to Harris.”
She shook her head, her eyes narrow. “And then what?”
This time McGarvey took his time answering. The delay made Evita nervous. The room was warm. McGarvey sipped his bourbon. He felt like a heel with her. She was obviously in a fragile state for all of her bravado and energy on stage. He decided that Yarnell had probably hurt her very badly at one time, and she still hadn't recovered.
“It has to do with a long time ago, actually,” he said. “Mexico City in the old days. The late fifties, early sixties.”
“I was just a little girl then,” she said wistfully. “What can any of this possibly have to do with me? Please, I am very busy tonight. I have another act to do in less than an hour, and afterward there will be a lot of people up here. Already I'm tired.”
“They were doing some very important work for the agency in Mexico City,” McGarvey said.
“I don't know …”
“Harris is dead. Someone killed him. I want to know who, and more important, why.”
Evita reached forward with a shaking hand and stubbed out her cigarette. She got to her feet, drained her wineglass, looked at McGarvey for a long second, then went to the buffet where she poured herself another glass. She stared out the window down at the street, her back to McGarvey.
“Why did you come here like this, Mr. Glynn?” she asked. “Why tonight?”
“You were born and raised in Mexico City.”
She laughed. “So were a lot of people.”
“You were there in those years.”
“It is a big place, I assure you.”
“Your husband worked for the Company. He was stationed there.”
McGarvey could see her reflection in the dark glass. She had closed her eyes.
“Was this Harris working out of the embassy?” she asked. “If he was I never knew it.”
“You remember some of the others, then?”
She turned around. She was frightened. “It was a long time ago. I was just a young girl, barely out of my teens. What did I know about anything? Ask yourself that, Mr. Glynn. What did I know? My eyes were filled with wedding veils.”
“I came to help,” McGarvey said softly.
At first it didn't seem as if she had heard him. She looked toward the fireplace, her shoulders sagging. Idly she reached up with one hand, undid the towel around her head, and let it drop to the floor. She shook out her long, glistening black hair, then focused on McGarvey.
“Help with what?” she asked, her voice husky.
“What are you doing here? Who was this Harris to you?”
“Harris was nothing to me. Just a name. But whoever killed him is now after Basulto and will be coming after anyone who knew what happened in those days.”
“Those days …” She shook her head. “What
are
you talking about?”
“The Ateneo Español. Does that mean anything to you?”
Her eyes widened just a bit. He could see her fighting for control. If she hadn't heard about Harris or Basulto, she certainly had heard of the Ateneo Español.
“You have been to this place?” she asked, holding herself together.
“No.”
“It is not there any longer, I don't think.”
“It was important when Harris and Basulto were there. I think you know it now, and I think you knew it at the time.”
Her lips parted. “And what do you expect me to tell you? I'm no spy, all right? It is dirty work. My hands are clean. I don't want anything to do with it. All of it, everything, is finished.”
McGarvey held his silence. What the hell was she telling him now?
Evita leaned back against the buffet and looked up toward the ceiling. “Virgin mother,” she whispered. “Someone is filling your head with stories. This Harris you say is dead. So who sent you to me? This drug runner friend of yours?”
“Just Company files.”
She looked at him. “What?”
“I went through the agency's files to see who was stationed in Mexico City during those years. I wanted to find out who was active.”
“Then why are you here? Why don't you talk to Darby?”
“He won't talk to me,” McGarvey said, holding his triumph in check. She had admitted she knew her ex-husband was active.
She laughed. “He's a real prima donna, that one.”
“A prima donna?”
“My ex-husband has always been an important man. Sometimes a little more important in his own eyes than for the rest of the world. But he has always done big things.”
“You were active in Mexico City?”
“That is a filthy lie,” she snapped. “Who told you such a thing?”
“How often does he come up here to see you?” McGarvey asked.
Her face turned pale. She dropped her wineglass on the fur carpet, then reached back to the buffet for support. “What are you talking about?”
“Your husband.” He wanted to keep her off balance. “Has he been up here to see you? Do you have any contact with each other?”
She was shaking her head as if she didn't understand a word he had said.
“Evita?” he said softly. Something was drastically wrong, but he did not want to break her delicate mood. She wanted to tell him something.
“You don't know …”
“I don't know what?” he prompted softly.
She shook her head. She seemed puzzled. “Get away from here,” she said. “Please, just get away from here. I don't want to think about …”
“About what?”
“Go!” she screeched. “Mother of Christ, go! Get out of here you sonofabitch!”
“I have to know, Evita …”
Suddenly she snapped. She reached behind her, grabbed a half-full wine bottle from the buffet, and threw it toward McGarvey. Her aim was very bad and the bottle crashed against the side of the fireplace. Her robe came open, exposing her large, perfectly formed breasts, her slightly rounded stomach, and the narrow swatch of dark hair at her pubis.
McGarvey got to his feet as she snatched up another bottle. He reached her before she could throw it, and he took it out of her hand. She came after him then like an insane woman, biting and scratching and kicking, all the while screaming obscenities. For a few intense moments McGarvey had all he could do to keep from getting injured. She was very quick and strong despite her slight frame.
He got her away from the buffet and up against the wall where he pressed his body against her, immobilizing her as he held both her wrists over her head.
Her face was screwed up in rage, her eyes narrow with hate, her nostrils flared, bright red blotches on her cheeks and forehead.
“You bastard! You bastard,” she cried.
“I didn't come here to hurt you. Evita, listen to me! I came here to help.” McGarvey was conscious of the press of her breasts against his chest. It was oddly disturbing.
Very slowly the fight began to drain out of her. She began to loosen up beneath him. He relaxed his grip and stepped back.
For a long time she remained against the wall, her robe open, her legs slightly spread, her eyes locked into McGarvey's. Finally she looked down at herself. She pulled her robe tightly closed and shivered.
“Just go away now, Mr. Glynn. Please.”
“Harris was a good man.”
She looked up. She was on the verge of tears. “They were all good men. Young. Not so smart as now. Pretty boys.”
“Who?”
“All of them.”
“At the embassy?”
“Them, too,” Evita said. “The ones who came and went.”
They could hear music from downstairs now as the mariachi band started up again. Evita cocked her head as if to listen to it.
“Can't we sit down and talk? I need your help,” McGarvey said gently.
She looked at him again. “It's been a terribly long road. I'm finished with all of that now.”
“You could be arrested.”
She smiled wanly. “That would never happen, Mr. Glynn. Don't you know that?”
“You won't help?”
“I don't think so,” she said. She stepped around the buffet, crossed the room and, without looking back, disappeared through the rear door.
McGarvey stared at the door for a very long time. In a way he was sorry he had come here. She was a sad lady. Nothing good was going to come from this business, he decided. Nothing good at all.
 
He walked over to Lafayette Street and headed north, catching a cab around Astor Place. It was a long time before he got to sleep. When he woke in the morning, the television set was still on and he felt a ravenous hunger not only for food, but for the real world. On the way out to the airport, though, he began to get the terrible feeling that he would never know such a world. His sister had warned him when he sold the ranch that he was forfeiting his heritage. Maybe she'd been right.
Georgetown is a lovely section of pretty streets, beautiful old wood-beam and brick homes, the university, and numerous parks. Dumbarton Oaks and Montrose Park that morning were deserted of all but a few tourists and the occasional nanny pushing a baby carriage. Lovers Lane, a pleasantly broad walkway, separated the two, opening at its south end onto R Street.
McGarvey had come directly from the Holiday Inn accross from the Naval Observatory, sure that no one had noticed his arrival in town. It had felt strange to be back in New York, but Washington seemed somehow even more distant for him. He felt as if he were looking through the wrong end of a telescope; it was all so familiar to him, yet everything was out of kilter. He could have been looking at a model of the city, instead of the real thing.
This was Yarnell's city, McGarvey thought, looking out from the park exit up toward 31 st and 32nd streets with their fancy houses, many of which had limousines parked in front of them. The man had worked as deputy director of operations out of headquarters at Langley. He had served as a U.S. senator from New York, working out of the Capitol. Now he directed Yarnell, Pearson & Darien, one of
the largest, most prestigious lobbying firms in the city. Among his friends he counted the president, congressmen, the heads of the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA, the Joint Chiefs, journalists … the power base of the entire country. It was frightening to think not only of the power he had, but of the inroads to sensitive information he possessed.
McGarvey crossed R Street and started up toward 32nd. Yarnell's house was at the end of a narrow lane that led back into a mew. Trotter had described the place as a fortress; impossible to approach without being seen. The man could stop you in your tracks before you got within a hundred feet of his front door. He has to feel safe back there, McGarvey thought. Protected in his little cocoon. Perhaps safe enough to be lulled into a false sense of security? Perhaps safe enough to get careless?
In the park he had strolled at a leisurely pace. Here he walked faster so as not to attract attention. It was midmorning on a weekday. People were supposed to be in a hurry. Busy. A delivery van rumbled by, followed closely by a Mercedes limo driven by a clearly impatient uniformed chauffeur. The car's windows were dark so it was impossible for McGarvey to see if anyone was in the backseat. But the limo had to belong to someone important. The car passed through the intersection at 31 st Street and kept going. Perhaps to the White House. Maybe the Pentagon.
McGarvey had to think back to why he ever left. Why he had run to the imagined safety of Switzerland. It was because of the Yarnells of the world, wasn't it? At least he used to tell himself that. Now he was back again, and the same old gut-wrenching fear was beginning to climb up from his bowels; the same old quickness of breath, the supersensitivity to anything and everything around him.
If you're not careful, you'll think that you can
see and understand everything. Every car, every truck or bus, every person standing on a street corner, every window up or down, every bit of trash lying in an alley, every chalk mark on every fence post. You can't, of course, know everything. Drive yourself crazy trying to. So you damned well better learn to be selective if you want to survive.
He crossed with the light at 31st Street and continued up to 32nd, where he turned away from the park and started past Scott Place, on which Yarnell's citadel was situated. There was a smell of flowers and cut grass and trees from the park, made more noticeable now that he was away from it. This was definitely not the lower end of Georgetown's socioeconomic scale. Even the street was swept and washed, the cars parked along it all polished, chrome gleaming.
A second, narrower lane led left off Scott Place. McGarvey stopped a moment with his foot up on a fire hydrant to tie his shoelaces. Yarnell's home was behind a tall brick wall, so that the first floor windows couldn't be seen. It was a large, three-story European-looking house with several chimneys, dormers across the front, and a steeply pitched roof. It sat at an angle to 32nd Street. A window in what would probably be the attic was open. It caught McGarvey's eye. The room behind it was dark, but he got the curious impression that someone was there, watching. As he straightened up, he glanced over his shoulder, back the way he had come, following a line from the window back out to R Street. He looked up again. From that window an observer could see the entire neighborhood, north-to-south, along 32nd Street as well as both parks. It would be difficult if not nearly impossible to mount any sort of a serious surveillance operation, at least from this side. Assuming Yarnell had the usual
equipment up there—microwave, audio dishes, infrared, electronic monitoring—this side would not provide a safe vantage point.
A small Toyota Celica came out of the lane as McGarvey reached Q Street. He had to wait for it to pass before he could cross. He got a momentary glimpse of a good-looking young woman, with dark hair and an olive complexion, well dressed, alone. She had seemed very intent, as if she were in a big hurry to get someplace important. Again out of old habit he looked at the license plate. It was a D.C. tag. He memorized the number, murmuring a mnemonic as he crossed.
Just around the corner, another narrow lane led back at an oblique angle toward the park. McGarvey stepped down the cobblestoned path, and within fifty feet he could see the back of Yarnell's house, protected as in front by a tall brick wall. The twin of the front attic window was open, affording a view of Wisconsin Avenue and the other east-to-west approaches.
Yarnell was paranoid, McGarvey told himself backing off. Paranoid men were wont to make mistakes. But more importantly, paranoid men in this business usually had something very concrete about which to feel paranoid. An Achilles' heel, as Trotter had described Evita Perez. Yarnell had made a dreadful mistake marrying her. What other mistakes had he made? What mistakes might he be making right at this moment? The thought was intriguing.
Once again on the corner, McGarvey could look down the narrow lane as well as down 32nd Street as they diverged. This one spot, and fifty feet or so up either leg of the angle, constituted a blind spot in Yarnell's surveillance. It was not much, he decided, but it was something.
He walked up to Wisconsin Avenue, which was
busy with traffic, and got a taxi within a few minutes, telling the driver the Holiday Inn, which was less than ten blocks away.
It was time for him to get to work now. If he was going to do this thing for Trotter and Day, he would need more information and he would have to start taking some precautions.
 
McGarvey had lunch in his hotel, then went into town to do the sights. With the weather warming and the cherry blossoms starting to bloom, Washington was filling with tourists. Traffic was terrible, though it still wasn't quite as bad as Lausanne in the summer. The cabbie left him off at the end of Bacon Drive between the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the Lincoln Memorial. He dawdled for more than an hour looking at the long, polished black stone tablets on which were engraved the names of those who died in the Vietnam War, stopping and starting, hanging his head as if he were in deep sorrow … which in a way he was. It was impossible not to feel something standing in front of such an overwhelmingly tragic reminder of a world somehow gone wrong. As his heart overflowed, his motions naturally became erratic. Twice he thought he might have picked out someone. A pink sweater in the crowd. A torn field jacket across the walkway. But then they were gone, in opposite directions, one by bus, the other on foot. He strolled up to the Lincoln Memorial, where he circled the building with its thirty-six columns, then headed on foot at a brisk pace back up to Constitution Avenue.
He was wearing his tweed sport coat, and a shirt and tie; Washington was warm after Switzerland, and he was sweating. He took a bus to Union Station, where he mingled with the crowds inside for a while; buying a newspaper at a stand, making a
phone call to his room at the hotel, getting a cup of coffee in a styrofoam cup and drinking it while he read the newspaper as he had his shoes shined.
It was nearly four in the afternoon by the time McGarvey emerged from the station. He was moving fast now. If anyone had tailed him to this point, he decided they were damned good. He hadn't spotted a thing. But he had to give it one last chance. He took a cab out to National Airport on the river south of the Pentagon, rented a plain Chevrolet Caprice, and headed north along the parkway, sometimes going ten miles per hour faster than the flow of traffic, sometimes ten miles per hour slower.
By five-thirty he was a long way up into the Maryland countryside, but he was finally satisfied that no one could possibly be behind him. Extraordinary lengths, they might say at the Farm in Williamsburg. But when your life depended on it, you'd go to any lengths … to the moon if need be.
He turned and headed south again, back across the river into Virginia; Annendale Acres with its Pine Crest Golf Club, A&P Supermarkets, Ace Hardware, green rolling hills and curving streets with cute names along which were mile after mile of contemporary houses, some in brick, some with shake roofs, some with split-rail fences, but all of them depressingly neat and similar. The neighborhood was twenty years old, and showed it.
It was dark by the time McGarvey finally parked across the street from a split-level ranch with attached garage and a lot of new trees and bushes. It had been a long time for him. Nothing much had changed. The garage door was up. Two cars were parked inside; one older and a little beat up, the other a new Ford station wagon. A basketball hoop and backboard were centered over the open door. The house was lit up. He went up the walk, hesitated
a moment, then rang the doorbell. He could hear it chime inside. A dog barked. Someone shouted … one of the kids? And the porch light came on. A woman wearing blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows, opened the door. Behind her, carpeted stairs led up to the living room and down to the finished basement.
“Pat? It's me. Kirk,” he said.
She looked at him for a very long time, a range of emotions playing across her broad, pleasant features; surprise, disbelief, uncertainty and sadness, and then just a little fear.
“Good Lord, where did you come from?” she asked softly.
“Is Janos here?”
She hesitated for a fraction of a second, then shook her head. “He's out. They sent him up to New York … .”
“Like the old days?”
“Yeah, like the old days … .”
A big shaggy dog appeared on the stairs from the basement, its tail wagging, Janos right behind it.
“Pat? Who's at the door?”
“No one,” she said wryly, looking into McGarvey's eyes.
The dog sniffed at McGarvey's shoes. He reached down and scratched behind the animal's ears. Janos had stopped halfway up the stairs.
“Hello, Janos,” McGarvey said. “Long time no see.”
 
Janos Plónski, majordomo of all things recorded in the archives at the CIA's Langley headquarters, was a big, barrel-chested bear of a man with a face so ugly that even a mother would have a hard time warming up to him. When he was little he lost his hair to scarlet fever and one year later had a
severe case of chicken pox that left permanent scars. He didn't care, and his wife and two children, Barney and Elizabeth, all adored him. He was born in O
wi
cim, forty miles west of Kraków, Poland, in 1935, and lived there through the war and concentration-camp days (Auschwitz was just outside of town), while his father collaborated with the Nazis. Just before the war's end, his mother shot his father to death and managed to make her way completely across Europe, all the way to England, with her ten-year-old son in tow. She joined a Polish émigré group that during the war had fought Nazis and afterward fought Communists. By the time he was twenty, Janos had completed his college studies at Oxford (he was something of a hero because of his mother), immigrated to the United States, and joined the army as a translator and intelligence analyst. His career afterward was spectacular. He was dropped into Poland on at least half a dozen occasions; he did work in East Germany, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Rumania, and then he gave it all up when his young wife became pregnant with their first child.

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