Blood Pact (McGarvey) Read online

“What about the rest of us?” she’d demanded. “What are we supposed to do? Me and Otto?”

  He’d had no answer for her.

  “You have a gift, Kirk. Rare and terrible as it is, we need you.”

  “All the killing.”

  “All the lives you’ve saved. What about them? Or don’t they count?”

  “My wife and daughter were murdered because of my gift, as you call it,” he shot back. “I’m done.”

  “What about your grandchild? Are you just going to walk away from whatever comes her way?”

  “That’s not fair, goddamnit.”

  “No it’s not,” Louise had told him. “But it was the hand you were dealt.”

  And here he was in the middle of something again, and he knew that he could not walk away from it; it wasn’t simply because of the two students who’d been killed, it was because of who he was, who he’d always been.

  Somewhere in the distance, down on the ICW, he thought he heard the sound of a boat motor starting up, but then it moved away, north perhaps, and was lost.

  A portable phone was lying on the table beside the intercept equipment. McGarvey laid his pistol down, got a dial tone, and called Rencke, who answered on the first ring.

  “The number is blocked, are you calling from the house next door?”

  “They set up a surveillance operation. Laser aimed at my house, cameras front, back, and side, infrared detectors, what looks like telephone intercept equipment.”

  “Have you neutralized the opposition?”

  “Two, but there are at least two others.”

  “How long before you have company?”

  “Good question,” McGarvey said. “Matter of minutes, unless I have to shoot someone else.”

  “Okay, all this gear has to run by something. Could be remote. Is there any sort of a computer nearby?”

  “A laptop. Right now it’s showing four angles on my house.”

  “Have you touched it, or anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t,” Rencke said. “And don’t let anyone else near it for five minutes.”

  “No guarantees,” McGarvey said, but Rencke was gone, and the split-screen images were replaced by a list of what appeared to be files, though they were in some script of squares, tiny circles, and other odd marks.

  McGarvey picked up his pistol and went to the door, but no one was in the corridor, though he was certain it wouldn’t take them long to figure out what was going on and come looking for him.

  A cursor moved quickly down the list, and back at the top the first file opened. A screen of a half-dozen photographs of McGarvey coming out of Café L’Europe on St. Armand’s Circle were quickly followed by many more screens of a dozen shots each showing McGarvey at New College, at Macy’s, swimming in the Gulf, working on his sailboat docked in the ICW behind his house. Then the images began to process so rapidly he could no longer make them out. It was clear that the CNI had not only closely monitored his movements, but they had been very professional about it. He’d never spotted them.

  The next file consisted of what appeared to be audio recordings that showed up only as spectrum readouts. Then a very large file of more than fifty gigabytes, possibly of videos, came up.

  “Still there, Mac?” Otto asked, his voice coming from the computer.

  McGarvey picked up the phone. “Yes.”

  “You don’t need the phone now. Are you still okay?”

  “So far. Did you break their encryption system?”

  “Piece of cake. It’s an old military one the Chinese developed about five years ago. But did you see the still shots in the first file?”

  “Yes. They were watching me pretty closely, but I never spotted them.”

  “They probably double- and triple-teamed you. But this doesn’t make any sense. Spain is not our enemy.”

  “They’re looking for the gold and they’re in a fight to find it before the Voltaire Society drains the piggy bank.”

  “The Vatican has to be right in the thick of it too,” Rencke said. “And everyone is after the diary, which is why the Voltaire Society came to you and the CNI mounted the surveillance operation, and why in all likelihood someone from the Vatican will be or already is on your trail.”

  “Señor McGarvey,” Heurtas called from the corridor.

  THIRTEEN

  Heurtas stood next to the open bedroom door where they’d set up their surveillance equipment. He’d listened to everything the bastard Rencke told McGarvey and it made him sick to think that Emilio and Donica had died for nothing.

  They knew about the Society, the Vatican, and even the diary, and on top of everything Rencke had apparently figured out how to hack their encryption algorithm and unless he was stopped the CIA would have everything.

  “Sounds like you have company,” Rencke said. “Hold them off for another fifteen minutes. I’ve run into a problem with their auto-erase function.”

  “Señor McGarvey, there is no way out for you. But if you come out with your hands above your head you have my word that you will not be harmed.”

  “I shot the man and woman downstairs in self-defense,” McGarvey said.

  “You were trespassing.”

  “You’ve been prying into my business for the last three weeks. Why?”

  “We do not want to kill you, but we will if we must.”

  “Unless I miss my guess the fourth operator took off in a boat a couple of minutes ago. North, I think.”

  Heurtas had heard the boat start up and leave, but it was exactly what Alberto needed to do. At all costs he had to get back to Madrid and make his report.

  “You miss your guess.”

  “What does the CNI want with me?”

  “We can work something out,” Heurtas said. “You can’t imagine the danger. For all of us.”

  “Tell me,” McGarvey said.

  The bastard was stalling for time.

  “I’m almost there,” Rencke said. “Ten minutes and I’ll have complete access to their files.”

  “I can’t allow that to happen,” Heurtas said. He saw no way out, and he was starting to feel a sense of fate: whatever was coming his way would come no matter what he did. For no reason he could think of he had another erotic thought about Donica.

  They were on a field exercise, in which the two of them plus one other officer were supposed to infiltrate an actual air force base and place mock explosives around the communications center. At one point he and Donica got separated from the third officer—who they learned later had been captured. A couple of hours before dawn they were holed up in a storage space at the rear of a hangar used for helicopter maintenance.

  A siren had sounded and from their hiding spot they could hear the sounds of a meter-by-meter search.

  “They’ll find us sooner or later,” he’d said.

  “At least they won’t shoot us for spies.”

  “Do you want to give up now, save us the wait?”

  She had smiled and he remembered the set of her pretty mouth, as she shook her head.

  They made love, as quietly as they could, though Doni had been a moaner, and it wasn’t until three hours later, when they were both too hungry to wait any longer, they came out with their hands up.

  It was the best sex he’d ever experienced, because of the danger, he supposed. Had they been caught in the act they would have both been fired. But they hadn’t been, and now it was a memory that he could never share with her.

  “Are you listening to me?” Heurtas asked.

  “Yes,” McGarvey said.

  Heurtas suddenly stuck his pistol around the corner and began firing, walking his aim left to right across the room.

  FOURTEEN

  McGarvey slid left and dropped to his knees as the barrel of the pistol came around the door frame and Heurtas opened fire. He’d heard the final desperation in the Spaniard’s voice, and as he moved he fired four shots at the wall eighteen inches to the left of the open door.

  He
urtas grunted something, and dropped the pistol as he fell backward with a tremendous crash.

  “Mac?” Rencke shouted.

  “I’m okay,” McGarvey said, straightening up.

  Heurtas was down on his back, a lot of blood welling up from a chest wound, and one in the side of his face just above his jawline. His arms were outstretched, the pistol he’d dropped just out of reach of his right hand. But he was alive, his eyes filled with pain and with hate.

  “Bastardo,” he wheezed, and he tried to reach for his pistol, but McGarvey kicked it away.

  “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 clo
sed 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.”