The lights of Manhattan suddenly came into sight across the East River. McGarvey had always liked this view of the city; it was power, to him, and success and excitement. “The American dream,” his father once told him, “is to light up the universe.” We’d gotten a pretty good start in New York City. It made him sad to think how much he would miss it.
“ … knew he’d be coming for you,” Yarnell’s words stood out in McGarvey’s head. “I simply never imagined the lengths to which the man is willing to go. It staggers the imagination.”
“Even yours?” Powers had replied, and McGarvey had plainly heard the slight note of derision in the DCI’s voice.
There was another longish pause on the tape until Yarnell said that Baranov had sent for them.
Powers laughed.
“Evita telephoned from Mexico City, Donald. She says she knows everything. Basulto is with her. And someone else, McGarvey something or other.”
“Of course she could not know everything,” Powers said.
“Not without Valentin’s help and advice. Which brings us to an interesting juncture, you and I.”
“Yes. I thought you’d be coming someday.”
“Me, or someone like me.”
“You,” Powers had said. He sounded final, and so very sure of himself.
They passed through the Midtown tunnel and into Manhattan, and merged with traffic heading south on Second Avenue toward SoHo. It was a Friday night. The daytime city of offices and businesses had fallen silent, while the nighttime city of restaurants and bars and clubs had come alive. A dangerous, wonderful place, he thought. Alive.
“Why me?” Yarnell had asked.
“You’ve been his lapdog all these years.”
“What?”
“I never had the proof until tonight, until just now. Valentin called and you jumped. It’s gotten too difficult for him in Mexico I suspect, so he sent you here.”
“He’s blackmailing you …”
“And you’ve come with the ransom demand.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Yarnell had said, the words echoing again and again in McGarvey’s head. “Don’t be a fool … A mole in the agency … at the highest levels. You, Donald. It has been you all these years …”
“We were friends … Baranov has wanted me for a long time … you were the traitor, not me ….”
A single gunshot, the sound distorted in the tiny machine, cut Powers off in midsentence. For a moment there was silence on the tape, and then rushing sounds, like water over a cliff, the definite sound of a car door closing and the engine coming to life.
An East Coast accent, Evita had said, as had Basulto. Powers’s accent was East Coast, but he’d been Baranov’s mark from the first day. The Russian had bided his time, had saved the single indiscretion like money in the bank until it earned enough interest to make the withdrawal significant. He had wanted to destroy Powers, and he had.
The cabbie dropped McGarvey off in front of St. Christopher’s on Broome Street. The club was dark, not a single window was lit. A couple of passersby glanced up at him as he mounted the single step and rang the bell. He could hear it inside. He glanced down the street as the taxi turned the corner and was gone. He had thought about calling ahead in Washington and again at LaGuardia, but had decided against it, wanting to come here in person to face her, though he had no real idea what he wanted to say to her.
He rang the bell again and then tried the door. It was open. Just inside the vestibule he closed and locked the door and, leaving his bag, passed through to the club where the only illumination came from the exit signs. He took the stairs up to Evita’s apartment and let himself in. She was curled up on the couch, her hands clutched at her bosom. Her feet were bare and her silk nightgown was hiked up nearly to her hips. She was sleeping, McGarvey thought at first as he came across the living room. Her cocaine paraphernalia was laid out on the big coffee table in front of her. But there was an unnatural stillness about her. He stopped a few feet away and watched for her chest to rise and fall; for a movement, any movement, a little twitch, a flexed muscle in sleep. But she was absolutely motionless, and he knew that she was dead.
With Baranov out of reach and Darby Yarnell dead, there had been no reason for her to continue living. She had had her fantasies, as we all do, about somehow regaining her youth or whatever it was she perceived she had lost by growing older, until Baranov had set out on his mad plot to bring Powers down. She’d heard the news this morning, of course, and she had killed herself.
He gently touched her cheek. Her flesh was already stiff and cool. She had been dead for half a day at least. Probably since noon.
Baranov had let her leave Mexico City knowing how she would end up. She had been the last link to the old days. The very last one who could do him any harm. But he’d known her better than anyone else.
It had been her hands that had tapped out the coke on the tiny mirror, her hands that had cut it into lines and her hands that had held the tiny straw to her nostrils. But Baranov had killed her as surely as if he had held a gun to her head and pulled the trigger himself.
Darby Yarnell had killed her, too, with his arrogance, with his mad energy, as if she had been a delicate moth attracted to a raging inferno.
The system had killed her. The bureaucracy of government, by its insensitivity to the people it was supposed to serve, had destroyed her. The aristocracy of lies and dishonor had proven to be a fatal attraction.
He thought about Baranov, who was surely celebrating by now. The magician, Evita had called him. He cannot lose. He cannot be beaten. Perhaps she had been right.
McGarvey turned and left the apartment. Downstairs he collected his bag, let himself out, and headed up toward Houston, where there would be more of a chance to catch a cab at this hour of the night. It was over, he thought. Time now to try to find the peace he had been searching for all of his life.