“I’ll come back for you. In a few days.”
“We’re going to burn Yarnell?”
McGarvey nodded. “Him and the other one.” At the door he hesitated a moment. “At the Ateneo, did Baranov see you? Does he know your face?”
“Yes,” Basulto said. “God help me, yes.”
“Well, we’re going to burn him, too, Artimé.”
25
The lake near Leonard Day’s house was calm, not the slightest breeze rippled the water. There were no fishermen this morning, nor was there any traffic on the road that led back through Indian Creek Park to Kenilworth Avenue. It was Tuesday; everyone was at work in the city by now. McGarvey had caught Day and Trotter before they’d left for work, and they’d agreed to meet with him. At McGarvey’s suggestion they talked outside as they walked around the lake. Trotter was highly charged, he half walked and half ran along the footpath. Day, on the other hand, seemed contemplative, as if he were deeply troubled but by something else. He seemed distracted. They made an odd trio, McGarvey thought; the bureaucrat, the cop, and the spy.
“When John first came to me with this problem, and mentioned your name in conjunction with it, I was frankly skeptical,” Day said. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his maroon jogging suit. He wore a sweatband around his head, making him look boyish. “I’m still skeptical.”
“Good heavens, Kirk, even you have to see that what you’re saying is hard to swallow,” Trotter piped up, looking back. He was nervous around Day after what McGarvey had told him two days ago.
“But we’re stuck with it,” McGarvey said. He’d expected the objections, but he wanted to see how Day would react.
“We can hardly turn from it. Not at this stage of the game, especially not now.”
“Yarnell is almost certainly still actively working for the Russians, and he almost certainly has a contact man in the CIA.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. But it’s someone at high levels.”
“What makes you believe that?”
“The quality of his information.”
“Such as?”
“He knew that I would see Darrel Owens, his old boss. He also knew that I’d sent Janos Plónski searching after Basulto’s files.”
“Which means, of course, that he knows you’re coming after him,” Trotter said.
“Then why hasn’t he had you eliminated?” Day asked sharply. “I’d do it.”
It was the one question for which McGarvey had found no satisfactory answer, but he gave voice to the only possibility that even seemed plausible. “Because something else is happening, or is about to happen, and I’m an important source for him.”
Day pulled up short, a dangerous glint in his eyes. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s a two-way street. I check on him, and in the process he finds out about me.”
Trotter had stopped a few feet farther along the path, and he was looking back now, his eyes wide behind his thick glasses.
“What else?” Day demanded.
McGarvey took out a cigarette and lit it. He gazed across the lake. “John knows why I was called back to the States, and so do you. Who else?”
“Basulto,” Trotter said.
“He’s isolated,” McGarvey replied, his eyes never leaving Day’s. “Who else?”
“No one,” Day said evenly. The morning air seemed to have gotten thin.
“There’s my team,” Trotter chirped.
“Do they have contact with the agency?”
“No.”
“I do,” Day said. “But I have discussed this situation with no one.”
“Have you made notes? Left them on your desk?”
“Nothing has been committed to paper. Not by me.”
“Mentioned it to Powers, or the president?”
“No.”
“Discussed it on the telephone with John?”
“My telephone, along with John’s, is swept.”
“That’s right, Kirk,” Trotter said. “Absolutely. There simply are no leaks.”
“Yes there are,” McGarvey said softly. “We just haven’t found them yet.”
“Perhaps it’s you,” Day suggested. “His people could have spotted you from day one.”
“He would have to have been tipped off as to why I came back.” McGarvey was thinking about his ex-wife and her lawyer boyfriend. It was not coincidence that they were friends of Yarnell’s. But that had been going on for more than a year now. Where was the logic?
“Could be Yarnell’s ex-wife,” Trotter said. “You went to see her. What’d you two talk about?”
McGarvey turned to him. “About the fact that Yarnell was working for the Russians as early as the late fifties in Mexico City. It’s one of the reasons he married her. For cover.”
“Mexico City?” Day asked.
“He was stationed out of our embassy until after the Bay of Pigs thing. Then he moved to Washington and finally out to Moscow. Each time his control officer went with him.”
“You know this man?”
“Valentin Illen Baranov,” McGarvey said. “Now he’s back in Mexico City, running what’s called the CESTA network.”
“Good Lord,” Trotter said. He and Day exchanged glances.
“What is it?” McGarvey asked.
“How certain are you of Yarnell’s connection with this Baranov and CESTA?”
“Very.”
Trotter had been holding his breath. He blew it out all at once as if he were a racer trying to clear his lungs of carbon dioxide. He needed oxygen and he wasn’t getting it.
“That’s it, then,” Day said. “I’ll have to go to Powers and the president with this now. I’m putting you on hold.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” McGarvey asked, trying to keep his temper in check.
“It’s CESTA, Kirk,” Trotter stepped into the breach.
Day shot him a warning glance.
“It’s gone too far, Leonard. We never suspected this connection. Not really. And it’s simply gone too far now. His life is on the line.”
McGarvey waited. He understood at that moment that he had been lied to all along; not lies of commission, rather lies of omission. He had a feeling that what he had not been told was legion compared to what he had.
Day looked away momentarily in disgust, as if he were being forced into a decision he had wanted to avoid at all costs. When he turned back he nodded.
“Seven months ago an Aeromexico flight out of Miami was hijacked and diverted to Havana,” Trotter said. Day was watching him, his eyes big and bright. “The two hijackers got off the plane with two hostages. Before they got ten yards from the plane, all four of them were shot and killed by the Cuban militia.”
“Who were they, John?”
“The hostages had been on their way to Mexico City. Agency for International Development.”
“CIA?”
“Right.”
“Why were they grabbed?”
“We didn’t know at the time. Except that Lawrence Danielle worked with us on the preliminary investigation. He told me that the weapons the hijackers had used had been supplied to them by CESTA.”
“CESTA presumably knew who they were, arranged for the hijacking, and further arranged for their assassination,” Day said.
“Why?” McGarvey asked. He thought about Baranov coming to see Evita ten months ago. It had been barely weeks before the incident.
“I didn’t know about this until two days ago,” Trotter said. “I promise you, Kirk.”
“John came to me with Baranov’s name. Said you thought he was connected with the Yarnell thing.”
“I didn’t believe it at the time. It was impossible—”