Dance with the Dragon Page 11

  “Did you tell your father?”

  Gloria laughed. “Oh, him. He was always too busy after that. For the first couple of years I was pretty much on my own, with just a housekeeper in the apartment in Washington. But then I was sent to live with an aunt and uncle in Miami. I don’t know which was worse. The moment I could get out and go to college on my own, I left.”

  “Were you ever resentful?” McGarvey asked.

  She looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Your childhood didn’t go the way you’d wanted it to go, your father uprooted you from your life and your friends in Havana, and because of it your mother was killed, and then when you got to the States you were all but left on your own. Maybe there were times when you just wanted to say fuck it.”

  She smiled wistfully. “You sound like the Company shrinks.” She nodded. “Damned right I wanted to say fuck it, but I was usually too busy doing something whenever the idea came up.”

  “Why law school?” McGarvey asked. Nothing he’d learned about her background so far pointed toward a law degree.

  “I never wanted to be a lawyer, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “But the French have a saying, Le droit mène à tout. The law leads to everything. Scratch a rich person in the States and you’ll probably find a law degree.”

  “Is that what you wanted to be?” McGarvey wanted to know. “Rich?”

  “We were rich in Cuba, relatively speaking. We lived in a big finca in the country, and I grew up having cooks and maids and gardeners and chauffeurs. And that was under Castro, so we did okay. Being poor, having to scramble for a living, never occurred to me until we came to Washington and I saw the black ghettos.” She shook her head, remembering. “They looked at my dark skin and they thought that I was one of them. But when I looked at them, I knew that I could never be like that. I wasn’t a black woman, I was cubana. There’s a world of difference.”

  “There’re plenty of poor people in Cuba.”

  “That’s because of the regime. Anyway, I never noticed until Washington.”

  They walked in silence for a while, arm in arm, McGavey hyperaware of the warmth radiating off her. Whatever else she was or wasn’t, she was definitely Latina. If she’d been a man she would have become a wheeler-dealer, probably a major player in the Cuban community in exile down in Miami.

  “After law school why’d you go to work for the Navy?” he asked. “Nobody gets rich that way.”

  She smiled. “No, but you make contacts. Defense is what: a three-hundred-billion-dollar-a-year industry? I figured there’d be a place somewhere in there for me.” She looked at McGarvey. “And before you ask me why I left the JAG’s office to join the CIA, I’ll tell you that I didn’t know at the time except that I wanted to get back at the bastards who had made my father’s life so impossible he had to defect.”

  “And kill your mother,” McGarvey said softly.

  “El hijo de puta,” the son of a bitch, she said with feeling. But the moment of anger passed as swiftly as it had come, and again she smiled wistfully. “That was a long time ago, Kirk. And whatever my initial reasons were for joining the Company, I’m in it now for the long haul.”

  “Why?”

  “Good question,” she said, shrugging. “For the thrill of the hunt, maybe? Knowing stuff that no one else knows? Women love secrets. That’s one of the things the Agency doesn’t have right. They don’t hire enough women spies. Why is that?”

  “They don’t show up at the door.”

  “Your daughter’s a spy. Ever ask her why? Or is it just like father, like daughter? Or maybe she was rebelling against her mother for you not being there when she was growing up?”

  McGarvey said nothing, wondering how she had gotten that kind of information. She must have talked to somebody or hacked the Company’s mainframe. The fact that he’d been divorced from his wife all during Elizabeth’s childhood was not something in his unclassified personnel file. There were damned few people still around who knew anything in depth about his background, but there were a couple.

  “Or, why did you become a spy? And why have you come out of retirement again?” She stopped and looked up into his eyes. “It’s really an unfair question. I am what I am for a billion separate reasons. It’s the same for everyone.”

  “Was it the same for Updegraf?”

  “Probably more him than anyone else. I don’t think he really knew why he worked for the Company. At least not the real reason.” She thought of something else. “Did they tell you how he was found in Chihuahua?”

  “His body was dumped at the hospital’s emergency-room door, an apparent suicide.”

  “That’s a laugh,” she shot back. “He had a bullet in his head all right, but that’s all he had.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “That’s all that was left in front of the emergency-room door. His head. His body wasn’t found until Chauncy got up there the next day. After they cut off his head, they wrapped his body in plastic and dumped it in a ditch outside of town.”

  “Drug dealers?”

  “That’s what it was made to look like.”

  “But you don’t believe it,” McGarvey said.

  She shrugged her shoulders again. “I don’t know what I believe.”

  “When we were leaving the club you said he was a bastard just like every other man. What’d you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, turning away for a moment. “But did you see the looks in those bastards’ eyes? If Louis hung out there he was one of them.” She turned back to McGarvey. “And what was all that about, taking me there tonight?”

  “I may have to ask you to go back, alone.”

  “And become a whore?” she demanded.

  “No. But I think we’ll find some of the answers there,” McGarvey said. “If you’re willing to help.”

  “If it means being near you, yes, I’ll help,” Gloria said.

  “Then go back to work in the morning, like usual, and don’t say anything to anybody.”

  “When are you coming back?”

  “I’m not sure. There’re a few other things I have to take care of first.”

  “Are you hungry? I could fix us something to eat.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “A rain check?” she asked hopefully.

  “Sure.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  HOTEL FOUR SEASONS

  It was nearly midnight by the time McGarvey got back to the hotel and took a shower while he waited for room service to send him up a sandwich and a couple bottles of beer.

  He had dried off and put on one of the terry cloth robes when the waiter came up with his late supper. He signed the check and added a tip, and when the waiter was gone, he stood with a beer at the window looking out over the city, trying to put everything into perspective.

  Shahrzad had been sucked into a trap of Updegraf’s devising, but she hadn’t gotten out until the last minute, when she realized that the man she loved had lied to her.

  On the other hand, he’d come down here to devise a trap into which he was going to send a woman who loved him. She was a trained CIA field officer, but she would be leading with her heart this time.

  The points of similarity between him and Updegraf made him uncomfortable, yet he could see no other practical way to get inside General Liu’s circle. It was just like the old days when Darby Yarnell had surrounded himself with a lot of heavy hitters here: military leaders, senators, high-ranking intelligence officers, and the connections with the drugs and the young women. They were called “Darby’s mob,” and although Yarnell and everyone else figured they were the in crowd, the entire operation had been choreographed from behind the curtains by a Russian KGB general with his own very special agenda.

  Maybe Updegraf had gathered his own mob, which was being directed behind the scenes by Liu. Or, possibly, it was the Chinese general who was being manipulated by someone else just offstage. Maybe the situation was like Russian nesting dolls: Ope
n one to reveal another. Open it to expose still another, seemingly without end, the next one always concealed, always a surprise.

  He had used a woman to get close to the mob that time too. In fact, it had been Yarnell’s ex-wife who had burned him.

  He focused on his own image in the window glass, remembering his last trip back to Soho to see how she was doing. But it had been too late by then. She had become so overwhelmed by all the horrible things that had happened to her that she had committed suicide.

  Someone knocked softly at the door.

  McGarvey put down his beer, got his pistol from the nightstand and, crossing the room, switched the safety catch off. Standing to one side, he looked through the security peephole. A man of average build, with thinning light brown hair, was standing back well away from the door. His jacket was open, his hands were in plain sight away from his sides, and he stood facing the peephole with a frank look. A large aluminum suitcase with wheels and a black handle was visible to his left.

  McGarvey lowered his pistol, released the safety bar, and opened the door.

  “Good evening, Mr. McGarvey,” the man said. “Sorry about the hour, but Mr. Rencke told us that you needed this asap.”

  “ID,” McGarvey demanded. The corridor was deserted for the moment.

  The courier very carefully reached inside his jacket, pulled out a leather wallet, opened it, and held up his Washington Federal Courier Services Ltd. identification card, in the name Albert Stein. The service was one of the cover companies the DO used for covert deliveries.

  McGarvey lowered his weapon and stepped aside to let Stein wheel the aluminum case in. “Anyone local know you’re here?”

  “No, sir,” Stein said. “I checked in this evening under a work name. You didn’t answer your door so I waited downstairs where I could watch the lobby entrance for you to come back.”

  “Good man,” McGarvey said. “Anything else for me?”

  “Mr. Rencke says, good hunting,” Stein said. “The combination is eight, seventeen, twenty-four, thirty-five.”

  “Watch your back getting out of here,” McGarvey warned. “There’s a good chance the opposition knows I’m here.”

  “Yes, sir,” the courier said, and McGarvey let him out, locking the door after him.

  A double blind on the courier was the combination, which McGarvey had gotten from Rencke. The numbers were in reverse with one subtracted from the first and last. No one but a legitimate courier could have come up with that combination.

  He put the case in the closet, then shut off the lights, put his pistol within reach on the nightstand, and stretched out on the bed. He had been hyper for the last week and hadn’t been getting much sleep. Rencke showing up when he did had almost been a relief. At least he’d been able to put a reason to his unease. But now he was tired. First listening to Shahrzad’s story and then being with Gloria had been draining. His thoughts were racing down a dozen dark alleys, none of which seemed to point toward any light.

  Something else was happening here. Something that involved more than a high-ranking Chinese intelligence officer setting up shop. He fell asleep on that note.

  TWENTY-TWO

  XOCHIMILCO

  In the morning after breakfast McGarvey left the hotel and walked a couple of blocks down toward the embassy, where he got a cab from the sitio in front of an office tower right on Paseo de la Reforma. He ordered the driver to take him to the American Airlines arrivals gate at the airport and sat back with his thoughts.

  The morning was cool, the air unusually crystal clear so that the snowcapped mountains ringing the city stood out in sharp contrast against the deep blue sky and, closer at hand, the palm trees lining the traffic-choked boulevard.

  He’d slept lightly, dreaming about sex all night. At first he and Katy were walking along a moonlit beach on one of the Greek isles, maybe Santorini. They were completely alone, the evening pleasantly warm. And then she was in his arms, and they were taking off their clothes, and lying down on the sand, her legs wrapped around his waist as he entered her. A cloud momentarily covered the moon, and when it had cleared McGarvey could see that it wasn’t Kathleen he was making love to. The beautiful dark-skinned woman in his arms was Gloria. He started to move away, but then she said something to him, which he couldn’t make out, and they began to make passionate love. Only now they weren’t alone. It was daytime and the beach was crowded with tourists, families and children all staring at the couple on the sand.

  He had awakened with a start, his body bathed in sweat, the morning sun streaming through the tall windows.

  The dream had been highly erotic, but he had been left with a sense that he was getting involved with an operation that was inherently wrong. His instincts after hearing Shahrzad’s story at the Longboat Key house had been to turn his back on the affair and go home. Stay retired.

  He’d had the same feeling last night walking with Gloria on the path below the road, and a third time this morning. He’d almost called Katy to let her know that he was on his way back to her. But something, some inner voice, had stayed his hand from picking up the phone.

  Rencke said that the situation down here was going lavender. A deeper shade than before 9/11. Enough to scare a lot of people in Washington, including Dick Adkins and his number two, Dave Whittaker.

  At the airport McGarvey got out of the cab at the American Airlines arrivals area, went inside, and walked over to the Hertz counter, where he rented a dark blue Saturn station wagon, and fifteen minutes later he was on his way back into the city. Gloria had spotted his Toyota yesterday, and if the opposition knew that someone had come down to poke around, they might also have noticed the SUV. It was just a simple bit of tradecraft that a man as busy as Liu might not even notice.

  Instead of driving into the city center, he headed south along the Boulevard Puerto and then Rio Churubusco, both main highways in and out of the city, both heavy with traffic at this hour, especially through the numerous industrial parks.

  From what he’d seen so far, the D.F. was a city at war with itself. Shiny new Mercedes and Jaguar sedans shared the roads with thirty-year-old junkers. Men in business suits, Louis Vuitton attaché cases in hand, sat at sidewalk cafés across from leftover American hippies with long hair and tie-dyed shirts playing music, their guitar cases open so that passersby could toss in a few coins. Gleaming glass-and-steel manufacturers headquarters blocked the sun from shantytowns that sprawled just across dusty fields. And everywhere, it seemed, were women on foot, infants in their arms, trailing two or three other children behind, trudging along the side of the road. Nobody seemed to notice or care, but there was an underlying tension like the hum of high-voltage electrical lines shooting through the city that seemed as if it were about to explode into something violent at any second.

  In those respects at least, Mexico City had not changed since he’d been here last. The only differences were all the new skyscrapers downtown, and the even heavier traffic.

  The industrialized areas started to give way to the desert until road signs directed McGarvey to the east toward the Jardines Flotantes of Xochimilco, which during the weekends was a busy tourist area, but on weekdays was very quiet. In pre-Columbian days the area was covered by a very large but shallow lake. The natives needed more land to grow crops, so they constructed barges that they filled with dirt in which they planted willows. The barges were taken out into the lake, where the willows took root, right through the bottoms of the barges, to the bed of the lake. The barges became islands, on which the natives could grow their crops.

  Liu’s compound was at the foot of some hills that had once been the southern extremity of the barge-covered lake. Rencke had downloaded a map onto McGarvey’s sat phone so the place was easy to find. The narrow highway that followed the lakeshore ended at Liu’s place, so McGarvey pulled over to the side of the road across a narrow bay and got out of the car. The compound was about three-quarters of a mile across the water, and was guarded by white stuccoed walls, w
ith a tall wooden gate in front, and a smaller gate at the rear, facing the lake.

  It was impossible to see anything but the upper floor and red tile roof of the main house, but it was enough to tell that the compound apparently had its own generator; there were no electrical lines running from the town, and Liu was a very well connected man, because six satellite dishes, all generally pointing toward the southwest, were lined up like sentinels on the roof.

  Since the road ended at the compound, any attempt to reach the front gate would be detected immediately. It might be possible to reach the place from the lake, but if he wanted to see what was going on inside he would have to either get through the rear gate or breach the wall. The best option, he figured, would be to climb up into the hills where, if he could get close enough to the walls, it would give him a vantage point to see down into the compound.

  He hadn’t brought binoculars with him, and it was too far to see if there were any closed-circuit television cameras or any other security measures trained on the walls or the gates, but he was certain they were there. A man in Liu’s position couldn’t afford to live unprotected. And there would be armed guards as well. Of that McGarvey had even less doubt.

  He would find out tonight.

  TWENTY-THREE

  THE COMPOUND

  It was a few minutes before eleven and the night was pitch black as McGarvey made a U-turn on the access road so that the Saturn was facing back toward town, the car partially concealed in some prickly brush. He was a quarter mile from the compound, which was lit up like a sports stadium. He could hear music and the sounds of people talking and laughing across the narrow bay. The general was apparently having one of the parties Shahrzad had described.

  He opened the Saturn’s tailgate and unlocked the aluminum trunk. He’d brought the car around to the back of the hotel, and had smuggled the suitcase down the service elevator just before ten. He’d been lucky; none of the hotel staff had spotted him. If they had, questions might have been asked. He wanted to keep his low profile as long as possible.