The COS flinched, but the reaction was too slight to draw any conclusions from. McGarvey suspected, however, that the general would know he was on his way to Switzerland probably before his flight cleared the Paris Terminal Control Area.
Had Mati not been aboard flight 145, McGarvey knew he could have turned his back on the situation. But Marquand, the man’s cynicism notwithstanding, had read him correctly: McGarvey’s actions had betrayed him.
McGarvey’s flight touched down just before 10:00 a.m. at Geneva’s busy Cointrin Airport, and he was among the first passengers to deplane and pass through customs. No one bothered to check his bag, in which he had hidden his disassembled pistol in his toiletries kit. Passengers traveling under U.S. documents were almost never checked.
It was a long-standing tradition in Switzerland, probably because of the billions of American dollars on deposit in Swiss banks.
It would not take very long, however, before his name on the passenger manifest rang some alarm bells and the Federal Police would begin looking for him. Before that he definitely wanted to show his face. And Lausanne was as good as any city to show it in.
He rented a Ford Taurus from the Hertz counter and within the hour he had cleared Geneva and was heading the thirty-five miles on N1 along the north shore of Lake Geneva, the morning bright and warm.
It had been a long time since he’d last been here, and coming back like this was dredging up a lot of memories, some pleasant, and others not quite so pleasant. And now his daughter Elizabeth was in country, attending school outside of Bern. He wanted to see her, or at least telephone, but if he was being watched she would be endangered.
“The business has ruined our lives,” Kathleen had told him at the divorce hearing eight years ago. “I’ve got to get out, Kirk, before it completely swallows Elizabeth and me.”
By that time the CIA had already fired him, and he’d had every intention of getting out. But he’d not protested the divorce, and it hadn’t been too long afterward that Trotter had come to Lausanne looking for him, asking him for help. “We can’t do it without you, Kirk,” he’d said. “Believe me, if there’d been another way, we would have taken it.”
And so it had began, again, for him. And, he supposed, it would never stop until he got a bullet in his head.
He pulled into a wayside park along the lake shore between Nyon and Rolle, about halfway to Lausanne, shortly before noon and reassembled his Walther PPK. Apparently no one had followed him from Paris, though he suspected Marquand’s people would be somewhere nearby. Nor were the Swiss on his tail yet. At least not outwardly.
But, if the French intelligence officer had been correct in his assessment of the ex-STASI organization, they might have already spotted him. He did not want to become a sitting duck for some fanatic still fighting the Cold War.
If someone shot at him, he was definitely going to shoot back. If, on the other hand, the Swiss Police caught up with him first, they would deport him immediately whether or not he was armed.
Lausanne was a city of some quarter-million people, and the traffic was horrendous, partly because of the narrowness of the streets, and partly because at all times it seemed that the city was being torn down and rebuilt.
McGarvey locked his bag in the trunk and had the Lausanne-Prince Hotel valet downtown park his car, before heading the two blocks over to the Place Saint-Francois on foot.
He stopped at the news kiosk and bought a newspaper and the latest copy of Stern, the German newsmagazine. A photograph of the downed Airbus was on the cover.
Across the square his old bookstore, International Booksellers, still occupied the same two-story yellow brick building. Marta had told him that his former Swiss partner, Dortmund Fuelm, to whom he’d sold the store, still ran the place. Fuelm had been one of the Federal Police watchdogs assigned to him, but when McGarvey had left, Fuelm had retired, and stayed on at the store.
No one had followed him from Geneva, and no one in the busy square seemed to be paying him or the bookstore any special attention, so, folding the newspaper and magazine and stuffing them under his arm, McGarvey crossed with traffic and went inside.
Fuelm, an old man, stooped and white-haired, was at the back of the small shop, speaking with two men about an expensive ^rt book. He looked up, spotted McGarvey and did a double take, his eyes growing wide.
He hurried over. “Gott in Himmel, I can scarcely believe my senses,” he cried, and he and McGarvey embraced.
“You look fit, my old friend,” McGarvey said.
“And you do as well,” the old man replied, the smile fading from his face. “I just learned last night about our little Mati.” He shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Kirk.
We all are. She was so full of life.”
“It’s why I came back. I thought perhaps I might speak with her parents, maybe her friends. She was in Paris to see me, you know.”
Fuelm nodded. “Yes, I know, Kirk. And believe me, I wish that you could stay in Switzerland, but it’s just not possible.”
McGarvey stepped back, careful to keep his hands away from his jacket.
“He’s armed,” Fuelm told the two men who’d put down the art book.
“We wish for no trouble, Herr McGarvey,” one of the men said. They both looked like professional boxers.
“I didn’t come expecting trouble,” McGarvey said.
One of the Federal cops took the pistol from McGarvey’s belt at the small of his back. Fuelm had felt it during their embrace.
“Then why are you armed, Kirk?” Fuelm asked.
“Old habits.”
Fuelm nodded sadly. “You must leave Switzerland immediately. These gentlemen will escort you back to Cointrin. Where do you wish to go? Back to Paris?”
“Washington.”
“Very well.”
“I left a rental car at the Lausanne-Prince. My bag is in the trunk.”
“The car has already been taken care of, Kirk. And your bag is on its way to the airport.”
McGarvey smiled. “You Swiss can’t be faulted for lack of efficiency.
“No,” Fuelm said. “And I’ll pass along your condolences to Mati’s people. She often spoke of you to them, and they always wanted to meet you. Her father especially.”
“I’m sure they’re good people.” “Yes, they are,” Fiielm said.
He and McGarvey shook hands. “Take care, Dortmund.” Fiielm leaned in close and lowered his voice. “Find the monsters who did this to our little Mati, Kirk. Find them, and kill them!”
Chapter 17
McGarvey thought about Otto Rencke all the way across the Atlantic from London, and by the time his Northwest flight touched down a few minutes before eight at Washington’s Dulles International Airport, he’d decided to use the man.
No one was waiting for him at customs or in the Arrivals Hall, which was surprising.
He thought that the Swiss would have sent word that he was coming in, just as an interagency courtesy.
There was little doubt in his mind that Murphy wanted him involved in the Swissair business, just as the French did. But before he made any decision he needed more information than he expected the DCI would be willing to give him.
He’d thought a lot about that between Geneva and London, and then on the long flight across the Atlantic, and he had come to the conclusion that if he could find Rencke and convince the man to help, he would go through the back door. With any luck he would learn what he had to know for his own safety before anyone out at Langley knew what was happening.
Although he was getting no sense that anyone was behind him, or that anyone was watching, he thought it would happen sooner or later. “Trouble has a way of finding you,” he’d been told more than once. And it was true.