“He was suspected of working for the Russians. How is Powers?”
, “Damn,” the guard said glancing down at Yarnell. He shook his head. “Not good, I’d say. This bastard shot him in the head from close range. We didn’t know what the hell was going on. Christ, they’re old friends. Have been for years. How the hell were we supposed to know?”
“How about your gate guard?” McGarvey asked.
“Charlie is dead. There’ll be hell to pay for this all. A lot of hell for a long time.”
“Shit runs downhill,” McGarvey said.
“Yeah, ain’t that just the truth now,” the man said, walking off.
Trotter came across the street as the ambulance arrived and was directed up to the house. One of the guards went with it while the others kept a watchful eye. Other sirens could be heard in the distance.
“In a very few minutes this place is going to be crawling with some angry people who are going to have a lot of questions,” McGarvey told him.
“And I don’t know what the hell to tell them,” Trotter said. He was staring down at Yarnell’s body. He sighed. “What an incredible mess.”
“We can try the truth, John, or at least some of it. But they’re going to want to know who the hell I am.”
Trotter looked up. “Powers probably won’t make it from the way his bodyguards were talking. No need to prove anything now.”
McGarvey thought about the tape recorder in his pocket. He took out the gun and handed it to Trotter. “For the record you shot him.”
“There is enough circumstantial evidence, I suppose,” Trotter said.
“Keep my ex-wife out of it,”
“I’ll try, Kirk, that’s all I can promise.”
The first of the police cars showed up just ahead of Leonard Day in a stretch limousine. Powers was taken away in the ambulance, its lights flashing, its siren screaming. Two other ambulances showed up moments later. Trotter walked over to where Day was talking with a District of Columbia police lieutenant, a secret service agent, and a couple of Powers’s bodyguards. For the moment they were ignoring McGarvey. Even more sirens were converging from around the city. The first of the television vans arrived, but the police had already blocked off the narrow street and wouldn’t allow the reporters to cross the barriers.
McGarvey got his bag out of Trotter’s car as the coroner came over and checked Yarnell’s body. Police photographers took a series of pictures, the flash units blinding in the darkness. And then one of the ambulance crews respectfully lifted Yarnell’s body onto a stretcher, strapped it in, and took it away.
A crowd had finally gathered. There were uniformed police officers and plainclothesmen everywhere, but everyone made a point of avoiding McGarvey. Confusion will come to the very end of every operation. Confusion and disdain. It was nearly axiomatic. The dustbin crew they were called. The investigating officers, the forensics specialists, the accountants of the business at hand, there to pick up the pieces and put them back together in neat, platable ledger books.
His part in it was done, or very nearly done. Yet he was less certain now of what had really happened than he had been at the very beginning. As he waited he tried to examine his feelings as an accident victim in shock might try to determine the extent of his injuries. But nothing came to mind, and he understood that he was numb, and whatever he was thinking now would all be changed by morning, or by next week, or next month.
It was nearly two in the morning. McGarvey sat in the back of the stretch limousine with a shaken Trotter and a pensive Leonard Day. They’d crossed Constitution Avenue on Third Street below the Capitol and headed toward the river. He was out. Day had taken care of everything so that he had become the invisible man as far as concerned the investigating officers. An extraneous object hardly worthy of a second glance. The man had the power, which was just as well because for all practical purposes the business was finished. And still he had no real idea what Baranov had hoped to accomplish. Yarnell might not have been able to provide the Russian with much in the way of hard intelligence these days, but my God, the director of Central Intelligence had to be the ultimate of gold seams.
“I want you to leave the country,” Day said. “Back to Europe where we dug you up from under a rock.”
A week ago he would have resented such a remark. It didn’t matter any longer. “What’s our story?”
Day looked at him, his lips compressed. “You, mister, have no story. Plain and simple, you keep your mouth shut. You were never here, you know nothing about it.”
“Keep my ex-wife out of it,” McGarvey said tiredly. “Other than that you’re welcome to it.”
“We’ll just see now, won’t we,” Day said, puffed up with self-importance. “From what I can see she was very deeply—”
McGarvey reached over in the darkness and clamped his fingers around Day’s throat, cutting off the man’s wind. “If need be, I’ll come back and kill you. It’s easier than you think.”
Day’s eyes were bulging nearly out of their sockets, and his face was beginning to turn red. He tried to struggle, but McGarvey’s grip was iron tight. Trotter had reared back, he didn’t know what to do.
“Make certain my ex-wife isn’t involved in any way, and I’ll keep my end of the bargain. Do you understand me, Mr. Deputy Attorney General?”
Day nodded frantically and McGarvey let go. He lit a cigarette and for the remainder of the trip over to the Marriott he sat back in his seat and stared out the window, ignoring the other two. In the morning he would leave. He found that he was actually anxious to see Marta again, hold her in his arms, if she would come away with him. Not Switzerland, of course, but they would find solace somewhere together. He resolved to be a better person. He’d stepped back into the fray and found that the rules of the game, if not the class of participants, had drastically changed. It wasn’t for him. He might be dissatisfied in the future, there never could be a guarantee against that. But he didn’t think he’d ever again pine away for the agency.
He reached in his pocket and felt for the miniature tape recorder he’d taken from Yarnell’s body. He thought about turning it over to them, but had decided against it. At least for the moment. They had their story in any event. Yarnell had been a traitor. Donald Powers had somehow discovered his friend’s duplicity and when he had confronted him with it, Yarnell shot him. Yarnell was killed during his attempt to escape. Spectacular headlines, but it was a story they all could live with. There’d be no one to dispute it, whether or not Powers died of his wound. He thought again that he didn’t know a thing about honor.
“Good-bye, Kirk,” Trotter said outside the hotel. They shook hands. Day remained in the car.
“Take care of yourself,” McGarvey said, and he meant it.
“You too.”
33
For the rest of the morning, McGarvey lived in a state that could only be called disbelief and horror. He had not gone to bed after Trotter and Day had dropped him off; instead, he had listened to the recording that Yarnell had made of his conversation with Powers. And then he had listened to it again. He had telephoned Evita’s club twice, but there was no answer. He called the Del Prado in Mexico City, but the clerk knew nothing about Ms. Perez. She had not checked out, but she hadn’t returned to her room either. No one had seen her leave the hotel. He ordered from room service with the gray, overcast dawn, but when his breakfast came he found he didn’t have the stomach for it and drank barely a half a cup of coffee. He telephoned Trotter a few minutes before eight.
“I don’t think there’s anything left to be said, Kirk,” Trotter growled.