“Bonjour, madame. Ca va, et vousY’ Nikolayev responded with a genuine smile. “Je vais bien” she said brightly, inclining her head coquettishly. It took him a second to realize that the old woman was flirting with him. He paid her, accepted his change, got his newspapers and fled the dark shop into the bright morning sun. He thought he could hear her laughing as he hurried down the street. He folded the newspapers under his arm, refusing the temptation to look at the headlines, and after twenty minutes he was back at the small farmhouse he’d rented at the agency in Paris. It had become a familiar haven for him. He put on the water for his tea, put the baguette away and brought the newspapers and buns to the table at the edge of his small vegetable garden in back. From here he could look across the wheat field stubble now, to the intersection of the farm road and the main highway D917 across the narrow Loir River. It was the only way here from the outside. The tiny window in his bedroom under the eaves also faced the river and the highway. Basic tradecraft. Habit is Heaven’s own redress, Alexander Pushkin had written in Eugene Onegin.
It takes the place of happiness. There was the occasional car and a few trucks on the highway. The bus from Le Mans passed a few minutes after nine in the morning, and returned from Orleans in the afternoon around two. Six weeks ago a police car passed by, its blue lights flashing, its siren shrieking. Nikolayev had leaped up from the table and had nearly headed off across the fields in a dead run until he realized that they were not coming for him. If Moscow was searching for him, they were not looking here. When his tea was ready he took the pot and a cup out to the table, put on his reading glasses and settled down with the newspapers. He started with Le Monde to see if the French were reporting anything new and because it was today’s newspaper. The Times and the Post were Monday’s and probably contained only rewritten versions of Sunday’s accounts. McGarvey’s Senate committee hearings were scheduled to begin today. The Paris newspaper wondered if the senators would consider the French government’s position that McGarvey was no longer welcome here. A highly placed source inside the DGSE (the French secret intelligence service) had agreed to answer questions provided his anonymity could be protected.
On the surface of it, Nikolayev thought that the request was stupid.
By definition spies were supposed to be anonymous figures; once they opened their mouths they forfeited that right. It was a plant. But he read the article anyway.
“Despite M. McGarvey’s background in the CIA, he was generously given a resident alien visa as early as 1992. Of course he had to agree never to conduct an operation on French soil or against a citizen of France. We sent people to watch him, to make certain that he complied with those conditions. This of course cost the French people a certain amount of money. But in the past M. McGarvey had provided us with a valuable service, so we were willing, even happy, to allow him a pleasant retirement, providing he remained retired.”
Q: “Did he stay retired?”
R: “Non.”
Q: “What happened?”
R: “We are getting into an area now in which I cannot delve too deeply.
Let’s just say that there were some unpleasant circumstances which ultimately resulted in a death.”
Q: “Of a French citizen?”
R: “Oui.”
Q: “Are you able to give us a name?”
R: “Now.”
Her name was Jaqueline Belleau. Nikolayev had gleaned most of the details from his computer searches here. What the gentleman from the DGSE did not tell the journalist was that Mademoiselle Belleau was a French spy sent to McGarvey’s bed in order to keep a close eye on him. When he returned to the States she followed him, instead of remaining in Paris where she belonged. The mistake had killed her, though it was not McGarvey’s fault. She had been caught in the middle of a terrorist bombing of a Georgetown restaurant. Unlike the American newspapers, Le Monde drew no conclusions, leaving the story with vague references to perhaps as many as a half-dozen illegal operations that McGarvey had been involved with on French soil. Neither the anonymous man from the DGSE nor the journalist from the newspaper raised any questions about why McGarvey was not currently serving hard time in a French penitentiary, or, if he were to be appointed DCI, would the French secret service be willing to work with him. McGarvey’s wasn’t the only name in the Network Martyrs file. Just the first to come into the media spotlight. Baranov had known what was going to happen. He’d tried several times to destroy McGarvey’s career, even planting false evidence in CIA archives that his parents had been spies for the Soviet Union. Mightn’t it pass down to the son? He’d tried to have McGarvey killed without success. Tried to drive him to ground. If Baranov couldn’t kill him, perhaps he could render the man ineffectual. None of that had happened. Now it had come to Baranov’s end game Martyrs. Nikolayev drank his tea and ate his raisin buns, appreciating what he had here, all the more so because he knew that he would be leaving France soon. If Kirk McGarvey were confirmed as Director of Central Intelligence, he would be assassinated. In fact the assassin was almost certainly already making his opening moves; preparing for the strike. The Martyrs file had listed the targets, among them President Jimmy Carter, several admirals and army generals, a half-dozen U.S. senators and congressmen, none of whose names Nikolayev recognized. And McGarvey. But the names of the assassins had been left out, either because they had not been selected when the original documents had been drafted, or because Baranov wanted the extra layer of security.
When he was finished with his breakfast, he took his things back into the kitchen and went upstairs to pack a bag for Paris. He needed more information than he could get here, and he needed a safe city from which to mail his letter. The assassin would be making the opening moves now. It was time for Nikolayev to make his next move. The jackals were snapping at his heels. He had only three choices. Go back and be shot to death for what he had uncovered. Try to disappear and hide for the remainder of his life. Or go forward and try to put a stop to Martyrs. Some old men got religion, while others filled the end game by trying to make amends for a lifetime of sin. Martyrs had been his sin just as much as it had been BaranoVs. No choice, really, he told himself. No choice at all.
TEN
THE IMAGE THAT REMAINED… WAS OF A HELL IN WHICH DOZENS OF PEOPLE WERE FALLING BACK IN SLOW MOTION; BLOOD SPLASHING IN EVERY DIRECTION…
McGarvey slept very hard and dreamless; nevertheless, when the telephone rang at 4:00 A.M. he answered it on the first ring as if he had been lying there waiting for the call. “Yes.” He glanced at the clock. “Mr. McGarvey, this is Ken Marks on the night desk. One of our personnel has been involved in an automobile accident that could have compromised security.” “Hang on a minute,” McGarvey said.