“Seen him since?”
“Not in person,” Owens said, regretfully. “On the television, in the newspapers. But do you think you can prove he killed this Roger Harris in Cuba? Prove it so that it’ll stick?”
McGarvey shrugged.
“Are you going to kill him, McGarvey? Is that why you came to me? For ammunition?”
The cab came down the road and beeped its horn twice. It was the same one as before. McGarvey could see the old driver waiting impatiently.
He smiled, and offered his hand. Owens took it. “Thank you for your help.”
“Just be careful, McGarvey. I’m telling you. Yarnell was a sharp operator. I don’t think anything has happened to change anything. On the contrary, he’s probably a lot wiser and sharper, and from what I hear out here he still surrounds himself with a mob wherever he goes.”
“Thanks for the tip. I’ll keep it in mind,” McGarvey said. He stepped down off the porch into the wind, bent low, and hurried up to the waiting cab. Before he got in he looked back, but Owens was gone. A moment later sparks came out of the stone chimney.
Because it was the off-season, the nearest comfortable motel was a Best Western at Riverhead, nearly twenty-five miles down the island. The evening flights had been canceled and in the end McGarvey hadn’t felt much like renting a car and driving all the way down to LaGuardia just to catch a late plane back to Washington. Morning would be soon enough. He took a shower and changed clothes, then had an early dinner in the motel’s adequate dining room. Afterward he went back up to his room where he ordered a bottle of brandy from room service. When it came he poured himself a stiff drink and sat by the window, the room lights out, watching the wind and the rain kicking up whitecaps on an inlet of Great Peconic Bay.
There was very little doubt left in his mind that Yarnell had been a traitor to his country, and probably still was one. Nor was there much doubt that the Russian called Baranov was his control officer. McGarvey’s only concern now was the possibility that Yarnell had not worked alone — was still not working alone — that he had had, either then or now, one or more Americans on his payroll. His specialty in Mexico had been turning Mexicans, there was no reason to suspect he hadn’t done the same thing with his own countrymen.
He thought back to his own years in the Company, to the things he had done in the name of loyalty, to the projects he’d seen other case officers do, and he remembered that almost any single act in the business could be construed seventeen different ways. It was such an inherently clandestine business that no one could have all the answers all of the time, not even the DCI himself.
Sipping his drink, he found himself thinking about the earliest days he had spent at the Farm outside Williamsburg. Where had the idealism gone, he wondered. It had been bled away by a dozen assignments in which the entire truth would never be known; it had been sapped by thousands of lies told by hundreds of liars; it had been drained by the uncounted double crosses by the legion of men without honor; and in the end, for him, it had been destroyed by assassination. With the first man he had murdered had gone something indefinable within him. It was something, some force, some emotion, he supposed, that became invisible if he tried to examine it too closely, but became a bright, even hurtful beacon when he caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye.
He had been different after that. Changed. Frightened. It had marked the beginning of the end of his marriage, and, he supposed, the long slide down the far side of his career. When assassination becomes a necessary expedient, it was wise to put the very best man into it. But afterward the taint on him would be terrible: oh, the stain makes it impossible to get very near such a man. Use him, then, for as long as he can be stomached and then get rid of him. It’s the only way. At times like this, McGarvey was truly surprised that they hadn’t simply put a bullet through the back of his head. It would have been so much easier for them in the long run — though the problem would have been technical; reduced to the question of who kills the killer? He’d given a lot for his country, he thought morosely; his livelihood, his self-respect, his marriage, and in the end his honor. All the while he had never questioned if it was worth it. He’d always thought so, of course. But now he wasn’t so sure. He could not change, could he? None of us could in the end.
Yarnell would feel nothing, he suspected, turning his thoughts to the other concern. Men such as him never did. They accomplished their given tasks, lived their lives, married their women, had their children, even endured their divorces, all barely ruffling a feather. The Yarnells of the world were the self-assured ones. You could pick them out of a crowd, standing head and shoulders above the competition. (Actually there was little competition for men such as Yarnell, except for the projects they were involved with, and the manner in which they worked their particular magic.) The Einsteins ran the sciences, the Barrymores the stage and screen, and the Yarnells the world of the spy.
At ten he got up from his chair, stiff from sitting so long, his throat raw from too many cigarettes, but his mind clear despite his lack of rest and the brandy he had drunk. He’d been missing something all along. It had bothered him during the afternoon he had spent with Owens, and it had nagged at him tonight. It was something he had meant to ask out there but had not. Owens would know. He had been there at the end, back to the States after Moscow. McGarvey wanted to know why Yarnell had quit the CIA. What excuse had he given? What projects had he left behind? And even more importantly, who had he left behind to fill his spot? In a broader sense, McGarvey wanted to know who Yarnell had worked with and for in Mexico and back in the States besides Owens himself. Who was their boss? Who had been next up the chain of command? Especially at the end. He knew that he could have it looked up for him, but Owens had been there. He wanted to hear it from the man’s lips.
Owens had made no attempt to hide his presence on Long Island from anyone. His name was listed in the telephone book. McGarvey got an outside line and dialed the number. It was likely that Owens would be in bed asleep by now and would resent being awakened to answer even more questions. Couldn’t it have waited until morning, Owens would ask.
The connection was made, and the telephone in Owens’s ramshackle beach house began to ring. McGarvey leaned back against the nightstand as he listened to the burr of the distant instrument. He counted the rings as he stared out the window at the still rising wind and rain, an uneasiness mounting. After ten rings he broke the connection and tried again with the same results. He dialed for the operator and had her try. Still there was no answer.
“I’m sorry, sir, the line does seem to be in order, but there is no answer.”
The town’s three off-season cabs had quit running for the night. It took McGarvey less than fifteen minutes to get dressed and then convince a startled night clerk to rent out his car for a couple of hours. Driving as fast as he possibly dared on unfamiliar roads, wind and rain blowing in long, spiteful gusts, McGarvey kept telling himself that Owens was hard of hearing, he was asleep in his bed and he had simply not heard the telephone. Or at night he shut off his telephone so that he would not be disturbed by damn fool callers and wrong numbers.
It was this last that bothered him the most on the drive out. Wrong numbers. Who was it who had telephoned as he was leaving? A legitimate wrong number, or someone calling to check that Owens was there? Alone.
At another time he might have missed the turnoff in the darkness and rain, but not this night. Despite the storm he could see the flames rising from Owens’s house more than a mile away. Whipped by the wind into long, ragged plumes, sparks shot a hundred feet or more into the sky. Closer he could see flashing red lights of the emergency vehicles along the unpaved track in the sand. There was little left of Owens’s house. Nor, McGarvey suspected, driving past without stopping, would there be anything left of Owens.