He moved to the left at the same moment the gun went off, and he staggered backward against the edge of the doorway, a big splotch of blood suddenly appearing on his left arm, just above the elbow.
She took another step closer and fired a second shot, this one catching Baranov high in the left shoulder just below the collarbone. He cried out in pain and slumped to the floor, half in and half out of the house.
She came up on the veranda as Baranov was trying to crawl into the house. He stopped and looked up as she reached him.
“You sonofabitch,” she cried. She raised the pistol to his head, the barrel inches away from his temple.
His eyes softened. “You will not kill me. Not after what we have been through together, you and I.”
Her hands were shaking so badly that she could barely keep the gun pointed at him. There was no fear in his eyes, however, and it infuriated her. But it frightened her, too.
“I will require some medical assistance, so it will be best that you not stay here this evening after all.”
“Fuck you,” she said and she pulled the trigger. The hammer slapped on an empty chamber.
Baranov managed a slight, depreciating smile. “Mr. McGarvey has always had the habit of loading only eight bullets into his Walther. Fortunate for me, his predictability.”
Evita pulled the trigger again, but nothing happened. She could not believe that she had come this far, had come this close, and still had lost. “No,” she cried.
“Go,” he said. “Killing me wouldn’t have done much in any event, except land you in jail. The die is cast, my dear. You must see that now.”
She looked down at him in sudden horror, thinking that she had ever believed in him, that she had slept with him and done his bidding. Perhaps it was the blood on his arm and shoulder, and the pain which she could clearly read in his eyes, that made him somehow more human for her than before. He wasn’t a god, at all. Nor was he an infallible giant. He was only an ordinary man. An extraordinarily evil man. But simply a man for all of it. She stepped back and let the gun fall to the floor.
“No one will be coming after you,” he said. “You are safe. Trust me.”
She turned, crossed the veranda, and started for her car. He said something to her from the house, but she couldn’t quite make out the words. She looked back but she couldn’t see anything in the darkness, and now the house was a stranger’s house to her. She had never been here, not to this place. Nor would she ever have a desire to return. That much she knew for certain. Everything else was a mystery to her.
Francisco Artime Basulto stepped from the airplane at Havana’s José Marti International Airport and breathed deeply of the warm, moist night air. He was home at last and he felt ten feet tall. At the very least he would get a medal along with his promotion. And he damned well deserved it and more, by his reckoning. The past few months had been bad for him, much worse than he had suspected, especially with McGarvey. He’d get that man’s ass sooner or later. Baranov had promised him. “You will get everything coming to you, Artime,” the Russian had said at their first meeting nearly a year ago. “Believe me when I tell you that everyone will be satisfied.” What’s not to believe, he’d wondered. With Baranov anything was possible. The sky was the limit.
Twenty or thirty people had come on the late-night flight from Mexico City, and Basulto went with them across the parking ramp and into the customs hall of the big terminal. They’d been held on the plane for nearly a half hour while their luggage had been off-loaded and brought in. He would stay downtown for the weekend and have a little fun. He deserved it. Monday would be soon enough for him to check in. Baranov would be coming over and they would go through the debriefing together. Even the colonel would be impressed.
He stood in line at the check-in counter and when his turn came he surrendered his passport and baggage claim ticket. He was tired and wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. He was out of cigarettes, he was hungry, and he needed a drink. A big drink.
The clerk, an older, horse-faced woman in a militia uniform was staring at him. There was something about the expression in her eyes that was bothersome.
“Is there something wrong?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Comrade. Is there?” she asked.
A bulky man in civilian clothes came across the hall. He was smiling. “Ah, Comrade Basulto, welcome home, welcome home,” he said effusively, and the knot that had suddenly tightened in Basulto’s gut immediately began to loosen.
“Thank you,” he said. “It’s good to be back among friends.”
“Colonel Alvarez would like a word with you before you go into town,” the civilian said. He took Basulto’s passport and baggage claim ticket from the woman and motioned for Basulto to come with him.
“I hope this won’t take long. I’m tired and I—”
“Yes, we understand,” the civilian said pleasantly. “It will take just a moment, believe me.”
They went past the customs inspection counters to the back of the hall where a door to an office stood open. Several soldiers were gathered around a table on which Basulto’s suitcase lay open. Ten feet away he could see that there was something packed in his suitcase that he hadn’t put there. For just an instant he was confused. But then he recognized what he was seeing and he stopped short. Inside his suitcase there had to be at least twenty kilos of cocaine wrapped in one-kilo plastic packages. He’d handled the stuff enough to recognize it when he saw it. He had been set up.
“Comrade?” the civilian asked, turning around.
“No,” Basulto said, taking a step backward. “That’s not mine.”
“Just come in and we’ll straighten it out,” the civilian said reasonably.
They didn’t give a shit about him. He had served his purpose, and now.they were throwing him on the trash heap. Cristo! He wasn’t going to spend his life in Uncle Fidel’s jail.
The civilian was reaching in his suit coat as Basulto turned and bolted for the main doors. Not like this, goddamnit! It wasn’t going to end like this! Someone shouted to him, but he didn’t understand. Not like this!
Something very hot and hard slammed into his back and he could feel himself being propelled forward, off his feet, the sound of a gunshot booming in his ears. Before he hit the floor a million stars burst in his head and he was dead.
32
McGarvey and Trotter sat in the darkened car watching the gate house and the driveway up to Powers’s residence. Occasionally they would say something to each other, but for the most part they had kept their silence, each absorbed in his own glum thoughts. Powers the traitor. Still McGarvey found it difficult to fathom. Trotter had called a disbelieving Leonard Day, who nonetheless agreed to come over as soon as he possibly could, though it might take him an hour or more because he had guests who wouldn’t be all that simple to shoo away. That had been nearly an hour ago. It had come to McGarvey, in the meantime, that at the very least Trotter and Day were treating this as nothing more than some sort of an unfortunate mistake. Powers simply could not be their traitor. Not Powers. There would be another explanation. There had to be. It also came to him that he had become a worrier. At times like this he thought about the people he knew and how they were making mistakes with their lives. He could see the way clear for each of them, the way out of their troubles. He thought about his sister for whom land, duty, and responsibility were more important than people, and he thought about Kathleen, who was cut of much the same cloth and would never be completely happy until she learned to love herself a little less and a man — any man — a little more completely. Marta and Evita, on the other hand, were the direct opposites of his sister and ex-wife. They were women who loved too completely, at the nearly absolute exclusion of everything else, including their own previous loyalties and common sense. He thought also about Powers and Yarnell, men so far out of what might be considered a “normal” category that they lived their lives unaware of the realities of the majority of the people they had set themselves up to serve. It was not arrogance, he thought, so much as insularity. They were islands unto themselves, for the most part ignorant of the natives on the beaches but forever watching the distant horizons for threats from afar. These sorts, when they fell, were always surprised.