Dance with the Dragon Read online

  He paused for a moment as if he was expecting someone to challenge him, but the crowd was silent. The announcement had apparently come as a complete surprise to everybody.

  McGarvey watched Newell for a reaction, but the congressman’s expression was set in stone. It was rumored that he wanted the White House in three years, and if he had been looking to throw his hat into the ring with a splash, this morning was going to do it for him. Getting something like this through Congress, however, would probably be all but impossible. Right now most Americans didn’t trust the Chinese.

  “Many hurdles must be overcome before such a joint project can begin,” Lee continued. “But of paramount importance is China’s desire to share equally with its partners in the quest for oil. China cannot be viewed as seeking a world monopoly.”

  The young woman quickly translated Lee’s comments into Spanish.

  Fuentes came to the microphone, all smiles. He had come from one of the southeastern states, and was only one or two generations away from his mestizo heritage. It showed on his broad, weathered face. “I too will be brief, amigos,” he said in English. “This is a great day for Mexico. In terms of economic development it will be a very good project for my country. In terms of cementing the bonds of friendship between the two great superpowers—China and our neighbor the United States—Mexico is proud to be the ambassador. And in terms of helping to alleviate the growing worldwide oil crises we stand ready to do our part.”

  His smile widened and he clasped his hands over his head. “Gracias,” he cried. “Muchas gracias, amigos.”

  He moved away from the podium, and the big, rawboned Arizona congressman stepped up to the microphones. He wore a western-cut suit, and his signature string tie and Stetson hat, which made him look like a young Lyndon Johnson.

  “This morning’s announcement is only the first step in what I believe will prove to be one of the most significant, far-reaching projects on the North American continent—good not only for our partners China and Mexico, but good for the world economy.” He flashed his famous grin directly at the television cameras. “Forty-dollar-a-barrel oil,” he shouted. “How does that strike you?”

  McGarvey listened to the translation, and when the first of the questions was shouted from the media, he started back through the crowd toward his car in the next block in the parking lot of a small shopping mall. Almost immediately he knew that he was being followed.

  Two of them had broken away from the media people and were jostling their way across the crowded street. They were Mexicans, and the first time he’d spotted them they’d had cameras slung around their necks, but they were not taking pictures. Now they had ditched the cameras, and seemed intent on keeping up.

  McGarvey took his time so that they would not lose him. At the corner he glanced over his shoulder and made sure that they understood he’d spotted them, then hurried the rest of the way to the busy shopping center. Traffic here was normal, ordinary people going about their business on a pleasant weekday morning.

  He crossed the parking lot, bought Mexico News, an English-language newspaper, from a kiosk, and sat down at a sidewalk café. The waiter came for his order at the same time the two men showed up around the corner.

  They stopped to look around, spotted him almost immediately at the table, and headed directly across toward him.

  “A coffee, please,” McGarvey told the waiter.

  “Sí,” the waiter said, and left.

  The two men, both of them short and husky, with broad faces and narrow eyes, walked over to where McGarvey was seated. They were dressed in jeans and short-sleeved white shirts, untucked. He figured they were probably carrying.

  “Okay, get on your feet,” the taller of the two said, his English fairly good. “Someone wants to talk to you.”

  McGarvey smiled pleasantly. “I’d be happy to speak with the general, but first I’m going to have a coffee.”

  The waiter came back and glanced nervously at the two men.

  “Would you gentlemen care for something?” McGarvey asked.

  The waiter set McGarvey’s coffee down and hurried back inside as a black Mercedes SUV pulled up at the curb a few feet away.

  “Now,” the taller one said, and he reached for something under his shirt at the waistband of his jeans.

  “If you pull out a gun, I’ll break your wrist,” McGarvey said politely. “Then someone will probably call the cops, and you’ll have to answer some questions. I don’t think your boss will be very pleased.”

  “Bastardo!” the man said, and he started to pull something from under his shirt.

  McGarvey tossed the hot coffee at the man’s face, jumped up, slammed the knuckles of his right fist into the second man’s Adam’s apple, then shouldered the first man back against the Mercedes’ passenger door.

  “Your friends will need a doctor,” McGarvey told the gape-mouthed driver through the open window.

  He slammed the gunman’s arm against the car’s window frame, the wrist breaking with an audible pop. The pistol, which McGarvey identified as a Glock, fell inside the car, and the man uttered a sharp scream of pain.

  McGarvey pulled him close. “The next time I’ll kill whoever he sends against me.”

  “You won’t live through the day,” the man said through clenched teeth.

  McGarvey stepped away. “All I want is my girlfriend back, and then I’ll leave Mexico. Tell that to the general.”

  He glanced at the driver, who was looking at him with a touch of fear, then at the second man, who had fallen to one knee and was trying to catch his breath through his badly bruised windpipe. He tossed a few pesos on the table, and walked away. Before he reached his car the two battered Mexicans had climbed into the Mercedes, and the driver peeled rubber getting out of the parking lot. They were pissed off, but he hadn’t thought they would try to run him down or shoot him in the back. Liu would be getting nervous about who he was and what he was really doing in Mexico City. The general wanted to talk first.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Dick Adkins lived in a pleasant three-story brick house that had been built on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory shortly after the Civil War. It was in the woods not too far from the vice president’s residence, and the only access was by a narrow blacktopped lane that was monitored 24/7.

  Driving up from the main entrance off Wisconsin Avenue, McGarvey was reminded of other times he’d made this same sort of trip; in secret, with a sense of urgency, to tell a director of the CIA that bad things were coming our way, and that some tough choices would have to be made.

  Not all DCIs had used this CIA-owned house back here, but several had during McGarvey’s more than a quarter of a century with the Company, and he knew the way from long habit.

  It was a Saturday morning and he passed two busloads of children on a field trip to the observatory before the driveway branched left into the woods. A man in a blue windbreaker and baseball cap marked SECURITY in gold letters stepped out of the guard box and motioned for McGarvey to pull up. He was armed with a Heckler & Koch M8 carbine.

  McGarvey powered down the Ford 500’s driver window and handed out his ID. He spotted a second security officer a few feet off the road in the woods.

  “Good morning, Mr. Director,” the security officer said. He handed McGarvey’s ID back. “If you’ll just head up to the house and park in front, they’re expecting you. Are you carrying?”

  “Yes, I am,” McGarvey said.

  “Thank you, sir,” the security officer said, and as he stepped away he said something into his lapel mike.

  Fifty yards farther the driveway opened to a broad lawn at the center of which was the house. The roof bristled with six redbrick chimneys, several radio masts, and three satellite dishes. A gunmetal gray Hummer was parked ahead of Rencke’s battered old Mercedes diesel sedan in the driveway. As McGarvey pulled up behind Rencke’s car an armed security officer came around the corner of the house and said somethi
ng into his lapel mike. Another security officer, this one in a white shirt and tie but no jacket, was at the front door when McGarvey came up the walk. He wore a 9 mm SIG-Sauer P226 pistol high on his right hip.

  “Good morning, sir,” he said. “They’re waiting for you in the study. If you’ll just surrender your piece first.”

  “Fair enough,” McGarvey said. He pulled his Walther PPK out, removed the magazine, cycled the live round out of the chamber, and handed everything over to the officer.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Are we facing a security issue here?” McGarvey asked.

  “No, sir. And we’d like to keep it that way.”

  “Good,” McGarvey said. He crossed the stair hall to the left, knocked once on the double doors, and let himself into the study of the director of Central Intelligence.

  The room was large, with high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a massive leather-topped desk in front of bowed windows, and a grouping of couch, chairs, and a low table facing a big fireplace in the corner.

  Adkins was standing in front of his desk, and Rencke and Gil Perry, who’d been seated on the couch, got to their feet. They’d evidently been alerted to McGarvey’s arrival. Adkins and Perry looked concerned, even a little frightened, but Rencke was fairly vibrating with excitement, stepping from foot to foot, a big grin on his face, his long red hair even wilder than usual. He had the bone in his teeth.

  “Did you notice if anyone was interested in you at Dulles?” Adkins asked, almost breathlessly.

  “No,” McGarvey said. “And I assume that we’re clean here.”

  “We are,” Adkins said. “Did you see the news conference?”

  “I was there. What’s the president saying?”

  “Nothing yet,” Adkins said. “He wanted to see me first thing this morning. I stalled him until two. Promised that I’d have something for him.”

  “Well I certainly hope that Mr. McGarvey has brought something back with him after rambling around my station,” Perry said. “But Newell came as a complete surprise to me, I can tell you that much.”

  “What have you come up with?” McGarvey asked mildly. There was no point leaning on the man yet, but he was the COS down there. He had to have found out something.

  “Nothing of any substance, I’m afraid. But I don’t have much to go on.”

  “One of your senior officers was shot to death and beheaded, and you have his Iranian girlfriend on ice. If you don’t have any of the answers, you sure as hell ought to have come up with a few questions by now.”

  “We’ve pulled out all the stops, believe me.”

  “Updegraf was working the Chinese connection. According to Shahrzad he was trying to burn General Liu. Now, out of the clear blue sky the Chinese announce an oil deal with us and the Mexicans. Maybe that’s what your man had turned over.”

  “Wouldn’t have got him killed.” Perry said indignantly. “They made it public themselves.”

  “Are you thinking another nuclear deal like the Russians tried to pull off a few years ago?” Adkins asked.

  McGarvey shook his head. “I don’t think so. The Chinese would have too much to lose and nothing to gain. Without us as a trading partner they’d have a tough time keeping up with their own growth.”

  “What Russian nuclear deal?” Perry demanded.

  “It’s nothing that has any bearing on what’s going on right now,” McGarvey assured him. But he hated coincidences. Shahrzad was Iranian. Her father had been an Iranian intelligence office who knew General Baranov. The shadowy figure Rencke had picked out at Liu’s compound was possibly a Middle Easterner, maybe an Iranian. And in some ways even odder was Gloria’s apartment, located in the hills almost directly above the Iranian embassy.

  Rencke shot him an odd look. He was having the same thoughts.

  “Heavens, you’re not suggesting that the Chinese government is planning on putting nuclear missiles in Mexico?” Perry asked.

  “No,” McGarvey said. He wondered exactly what Perry was so afraid of that he was going to these lengths to cover his ass. As chief of station he had to have known at least something of what Updegraf was doing.

  “Well, we’re still faced with the nuclear issue in Iran and North Korea,” Perry reminded them. “Thank goodness not in my bailiwick.”

  Nothing had changed since McGarvey had started with the Company. It seemed that a handful of good people did most of the real work, while a lot of the others didn’t have enough imagination or daring to do much of anything other than cover their own asses. The problem was that there never seemed to be enough of the good ones to go around.

  And the even bigger problem for McGarvey was that he needed Perry to backstop him, or at least make enough noise in the bush so that Liu and company might be distracted for a bit.

  “What about you, Mac?” Adkins asked. Just then his eyes were wide as if he was expecting a nasty surprise. “You wanted us here in secret, so it’s your call, but at this point it looks as if we’re facing nothing more than a political problem. The Chinese want Mexican oil and we can’t allow it. Something for the president and the diplomats.”

  That would have been the extent of it as far as McGarvey was concerned, except for the drug cartel banker and the third man at Liu’s party. They didn’t fit.

  It always seemed to come down to whom to trust. It was why for most of his career McGarvey had worked alone. But on rare occasions it became necessary to use people, like now with Shahrzad and Gloria. He had to question if the ends really did justify the means, and wonder whether, if he were just a little brighter, a little more mentally agile, he could think of another way to get to the general.

  But Liu’s weakness was the women he surrounded himself with. They were his Achilles’ heel. And McGarvey meant to find a way to use that flaw.

  “You might be right, Dick, except that Walt Newell was at a party down at Liu’s house in Xochimilco. Lots of drugs and young girls. Could be used against him.”

  “Do you know that for a fact?” Perry protested, which McGarvey found slightly odd.

  “I was there. I have the pictures of Newell and of a guy by the name of Thomas Alvarez. Otto pulled up his file. The FBI thinks he’s one of the major money launderers for most of the South American drug cartels.”

  “Good heavens,” Adkins said. “Have you passed this over to the Bureau?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Okay, you tell us, what does it mean?” Perry asked.

  “You knew nothing about any of this?” McGarvey demanded. “No hints, nothing Updegraf or any of your other people might have mentioned? Any odd little bits that didn’t seem to fit.”

  “No.”

  “Your office wasn’t informed that Congressman Newell was in Mexico?”

  Perry shook his head. He was clearly on edge.

  “You don’t have a watch on the Chinese embassy?”

  “Not as a matter of routine,” Perry said, his back up finally. “We simply don’t have the budget for that kind of operation. Goodness, we would have to watch every embassy of interest. Certainly the Russians and the North Koreans.”

  “Or the Iranian embassy?”

  “Yes, of course, them too. But unless there’s a clear reason for such a surveillance operation we don’t do it.” He glanced at Adkins. “If I had been informed earlier of General Liu’s presence in Mexico I would naturally have taken a look.”

  “Naturally,” McGarvey said. “But Updegraf was watching the Chinese code clerk, and he was seen with Liu at the compound up in Chihuahua.”

  “He never told me any of that,” Perry protested. “I trust my officers, but I’m not a mind reader.”

  “No one expects you to be, Gil,” McGarvey said.

  Perry was surprised by the sudden conciliatory tack. “We do our best. But sometimes even that’s not good enough, and something like this slips past us.” He looked to Adkins for support. “We’re working the problem, Mr. Director. Believe me, we’ll find out who killed Louis
and why.”

  “General Liu had him killed,” Rencke broke in. “That’s fairly obvious.”

  “We have no proof,” Perry shot back. “I’m not one to go off half-cocked, damn it! We have standard procedures.”

  Rencke started to say something else, but McGarvey held him off with a gesture.

  “Louis was up to something that involved the Chinese, there’s no doubt of that,” Perry went on. “But exactly what it was, and if it had any bearing on the recent issue with Congressman Newell, is still to be determined. I will not run my station in a panic mode.” He looked again at Adkins. “Until I’m relieved of duty, I will do my job as I see fit,” he said, stiff-necked.

  “No one is talking about relieving you,” Adkins said. “We have a problem on our hands, and we need to keep our heads.”

  No one offered an objection.

  “Newell’s presence at Liu’s house, along with the moneyman for the drug cartels, is nothing short of disturbing,” Adkins said. “But I still don’t understand what it has to do with us. We’re talking about an issue for the FBI, not one of national security. At the very worst the oil business between the Chinese and Mexico does rise to that level, of course. But it’s something that has to be handled in the political arena.”

  “Except for Liu’s reputation as a maverick, and Updegraf’s assassination,” McGarvey said.

  “He was beheaded,” Perry said.

  “You’re suggesting that he was involved in the drug trade?” Rencke asked.

  “That’s how they deal with people who get in their way. Or people who double-cross them.” Perry turned to McGarvey. “You mentioned spotting Thomas Alvarez at one of Liu’s parties. There’s your connection. Could be if we look closely enough at the good congressman’s finances, we might find a skeleton or two in his closet.”

  “That’s something for the Bureau,” Adkins said. “Could be the president will suggest just that. In the meantime what else do I tell him? He’s going to want some answers; what’s going on down there and what are we doing about it?”