Assassin (23 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Assassin
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McGarvey had a sudden odd feeling, like butterflies fluttering inside his head.
“The code phrase,” Rencke prompted. “I'll use that one if everything is okay.”
McGarvey nodded. “That'll work. She'd be pleased if she knew.”
“She's a pretty girl.”
“When did you meet her?” McGarvey asked a little too sharply.
“It's okay, Mac. I've kept up with you and your family. I wanted to make sure everything was going okay. Your ex-wife is doing fine, but I'm glad she didn't marry that attorney puke. And Elizabeth's marks finally came up, and she was doing fine for the UN last time I checked.” Rencke smiled. “Think of me as an uncle. When this is all over with, maybe you can ask her to write me a letter now and then. Maybe invite me to the wedding when she gets married.” Rencke's face lit up. “I'd made a terrific godfather. I mean it'd be great, don't you think?”
McGarvey laughed and shook his head. “You are a flake, Otto, but you're my flake now.”
Rencke laughed out loud and hopped from one foot to another.
“But if you ever touch her, you'll die,” McGarvey said, trying to keep the grin off his face, but it only made Rencke laugh all the harder.
Gallows humor, McGarvey thought as he went inside and helped Rencke dismantle the equipment he needed, and destroy the rest.
E
lizabeth estimated that it was past one in the morning, and she was tired, hungry and just a little bit frightened. They'd taken her to what looked like an army post or police barracks somewhere on the outskirts of Paris, placed her in a small windowless room furnished with a steel table and three chairs, returned her cigarettes and matches, gave her a bottle of Evian and a plastic glass, and had left. But that had been hours ago, and now she was bored out of her skull and she had to pee.
She got up, smoothed her hair with her fingers, then lit another cigarette and perched on the edge of the table and stared pointedly at the small square of plastic imbedded in the wall. Behind it was either an observation port, or a closed circuit television camera. Either way, they were watching her, and they damned well knew that she knew it. It was irritating because they were treating her like a criminal, and when she finally showed up in Tom Lynch's
office she'd have some explaining to do. At the very least she figured Ryan would fire her, and she didn't have much of a leg to stand on. But she wasn't going to give the French the satisfaction of watching her fall apart.
She stubbed out her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray, raised her middle finger at the plastic square and threw herself down on the chair.
“
Les salopards,”
she swore softly.
The door opened and a kindly looking man with a wrinkled face and thinning white hair came in with a file folder, which he placed on the table. He pulled up a chair, and sat down across from Elizabeth.
“Good evening,
ma p'tite
. My name is Alexandre Levy, and I would like to ask you a few questions, after which you will be free to leave. Someone will take you back to your hotel. I'm sure that you would like to have a hot bath, perhaps have a bite to eat and then go to bed. You must be exhausted.”
“Why was I arrested?”
“Oh, good heavens, young lady, you're not under arrest. We merely wish to ask you a few questions, as I said. Showing up on your father's doorstep came as something of a surprise to us. We weren't expecting you.”
“Isn't it the custom in France for children to visit their parents?” Elizabeth shot back. She felt as if Levy was toying with her, and her eyes were drawn to the file folder.
“Indeed it is. Lamentably, however, my children don't visit me or their mother as often as we would like. I sincerely hope you treat your filial duties with more respect.” Levy tapped a blunt finger on the file folder. “As you may guess, we take a sincere interest in your father and his current activities. So long as he remains retired he is welcome to reside in France. However a question of the exact nature of his most recent activities has arisen for which we would sincerely like to talk to him.”
Elizabeth tried to interrupt, but Levy held up a hand.
“Please, Mademoiselle. Your father is in no trouble. His arrest has not been ordered, nor do we wish to interfere with his quiet enjoyment of Paris, or of all of France for that matter. So I am asking for your help. Either tell us where your father might have gone, or short of that, simply take a message to him that we'd like to speak with him. We would even agree to a telephone interview. Nothing more than that. Totally harmless. Can you find fault with us?”
“Look, I told Colonel Galan that I was just as surprised as you guys that my father is gone. I've got a few days off and I wanted to surprise him. I suppose I should have called first.” Elizabeth shrugged. “But now you're getting me worried. Maybe something has happened to him. Maybe I should file a missing persons report.”
A faint flicker of a smile crossed Levy's face. “Your mother is a rich woman?”
The question caught Elizabeth by surprise. “She does okay.”
Levy flipped open the file folder, and extracted a single sheet of paper which he passed to her. “You only have a few days off in which to see your
father, so your mother generously allows you the use of her Visa card. The Concorde flight alone cost nearly six thousand dollars, not to mention the ATM cash withdrawal of two thousand francs at Charles de Gaulle.”
The paper with a Chase Manhattan Bank logo was a brief computer reply to a query from Air France verifying the validity of the charge.
“I assume you did not borrow the card without your mother's knowledge.”
“My mother is a generous woman.”
“Indeed. Would she know where your father is at the moment? Would she speak to us?”
“Probably not,” Elizabeth said disconsolately. If they knew that much, they probably knew the rest. “May I telephone my embassy?”
“They won't be awake over there at this hour,” Levy said. He withdrew a plain manila envelope from the file folder, opened it, and dumped the contents, which included a U.S. passport, a Maryland driver's license, insurance card, voter registration card, and two credit cards, on the table.
Elizabeth recognized them, and her spirits sank even lower.
Levy opened the passport, studied the photograph, then looked up at Elizabeth. “This says that your name is Elizabeth Swanson. The picture matches.” He laid the passport down. “We found these where you hid them in your hotel room. Good stuff, not amateur. I'd say that the CIA supplied you with these documents. Is that so?”
“If that were the case you would know that I couldn't talk about it.”
“On the other hand the papers could be first class forgeries, in which case you would be charged in France with conspiracy to conduct terrorism.”
“Don't be stupid,” Elizabeth flared.
Levy was unimpressed. “It is not I who am the fool, Mademoiselle. Nor is it I who am sitting without rights in an interrogation cell. So let me ask you one last time. Do you know your father's current whereabouts?”
“I wouldn't have gone to his apartment if I did,” Elizabeth said.
Levy stared thoughtfully at her for several moments, then gathered up the papers and documents and stuffed them back into the file folder. “It is a good thing that you came into France under your real name. If you had used these we would have arrested you and deported you immediately.” He got up.
“How did you know I arrived in France?” Elizabeth asked.
Levy smiled indulgently. “Your father is a famous man. The names of his family and friends are all flagged.”
“May I go now?”
“In a few minutes, Mademoiselle,” Levy said and he left.
Tom Lynch, the Chief of Paris station, came in a moment later, a sharp look of disapproval on his narrow, delicate face.
“What the hell are you doing here thirty-six hours ahead of time?” he demanded, his voice as sharply pitched as his manner.
“They're probably watching and listening to us—”
“I had them shut it off. I asked you a question. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Looking for my father. It's my job,” Elizabeth answered defiantly.
“How exactly did you intend accomplishing that? Did you think that he left you a note on his door? Didn't you think that since we and the French are looking for him that his apartment would be under surveillance?”
“I didn't see anybody.”
“You didn't look,” Lynch shouted. “We'll have to apologize to the French government, of course, then I'll talk to Mr. Ryan and arrange to send you back to Washington.”
“I don't think so,” Elizabeth said.
“We'll see,” Lynch shot back.
“Have you found my father yet?”
“As a matter of fact we have not,” Lynch said, eyeing her. “I don't know how extensive your briefing was, but your father's life may be in danger. We simply want to get word to him, nothing more. But your little trick hasn't helped one bit. The French are going to be convinced that he's working for us again, and they'll probably try to arrest him, unless we can find him first.” Lynch shook his head. “I don't even want to think what might happen.”
“Sending me back won't make it any better,” Elizabeth said. Her father didn't like Ryan, but he'd never mentioned Lynch.
“Do you have an idea where he is?”
“No, but I wanted to talk to two people who might know something.”
“Who are they?” Lynch asked with renewed interest.
“Jacqueline Belleau, the woman he was living with.”
“If she knew anything they'd have him by now.”
“Is she in love with him?”
“I wouldn't know.”
“Has anyone asked?”
“Ms. Belleau is a trained French intelligence officer. She wouldn't have fallen in love with your father. In any event she's not subject to an interview by us. Who's the second person?”
Elizabeth hesitated. Ryan was a jerk, but Lynch seemed to be genuinely concerned with helping her father. “I'll tell you, but I want you to keep it confidential. At least until we can talk to him. I'll need your help.”
“All right,” Lynch said. “That's why you were sent here. Who have we missed?”
“Otto Rencke. He's supposed to be living somewhere near Paris.”
A look of amazement crossed Lynch's features. “Jesus. We never thought of him.”
“He might not talk to you, but if you can find him I'll go out there.”
“Damn right you will,” Lynch said. “He's in Bonnieres, about thirty or forty miles away.”
“Can we go there now?”
“It's not going to be that easy. First of all I don't know exactly where he's living. But I can find that out. In the meantime it's going to take a couple of hours to get you out of here. The French are almost as bad as the Germans when it comes to paperwork.”
“I'm warning you, Mr. Lynch, if you bring Rencke in he'll clam up. He won't talk to anybody.”
Lynch's eyes narrowed. “Don't worry about it. I have my homework to do. When you get out of here, someone will drive you back to your hotel. Get a couple hours of sleep, and then come over to the embassy, and we'll do this together.”
Elizabeth hoped she hadn't made a mistake by trusting Lynch, but it was too late now to do anything but go along with him. “Okay. But try to get me out of here as soon as possible.”
“Hang in there, kid,” Lynch said. “You did the right thing after all.”
Three hours later Lynch stood in the doorway of the farmhouse surveying the damage that had been done to the interior. The battered remains of what had been several pieces of computer equipment lay scattered around the floor. Lynch was a computer expert himself. It was obvious to him that the room had once held a great deal of equipment. Power cables snaked throughout the house and he could see a half-dozen spots on the floor and along the walls where desks or computer consoles had stood.
“He had a visitor,” Colonel Galan said, coming from the courtyard in back. He had picked up the butts of two Marlboro cigarettes. “There is no evidence that Rencke smokes, and according to McGarvey's file, this is his brand.”
“The cigarette papers were crushed but not weathered. We must have just missed them.”
“His daughter didn't warn them from anywhere in France,” Galan said. “Which might mean that he's getting inside information from somewhere.”
“We didn't know that we were coming out here until this morning. It would have taken them much longer to do this much,” Lynch said.
“How do you see it?”
“McGarvey is definitely taking Yemlin's assignment, I don't think there's any doubt about it now. But he needs help, so he hired Rencke and got him out of here. By now they could be anywhere. Even out of France.”
Colonel Galan laughed humorlessly. “Don't try to make me feel good, Tom. Once he leaves France he's no longer my problem.”
“Might be a moot point in any case. France is where he wants to live out his retirement, if what he told Jacqueline is true. I don't think he'd do anything to make that impossible. He'd know that the CIA would help you hunt for him if he screwed up here.”
“Finding this computer expert will be just as difficult as finding McGarvey, now that they're together,” Galan said glumly. “What about your station in Moscow? Is there any possibility of getting to Viktor Yemlin?”
“At this point I don't think it's been passed along to Moscow. So far as Langley is concerned, we're merely helping you find McGarvey for questioning. Unless you want to take it a step farther.”
“Frankly I don't know what to do,” Galan said. “I'll have to take it up with my boss. But I have a gut feeling that this is not going to turn out so good for anybody. Why the
mec
didn't remain in the States, or return to Switzerland is beyond me.”
Lynch had flown from Paris with Galan and a half-dozen Action Service troops aboard a Dessault helicopter. He could hear the men searching the grounds, calling to each other and joking now that they understood their quarry was long gone. The French were efficient in some matters, Lynch thought, but they tended to operate with blinders on. If France or French citizens were involved they would go to great lengths. But they tended to turn a blind eye toward anything or anyone outside of their borders.
Another thought occurred to Lynch. “Maybe we should change our tactics, Guy.”
Galan looked up, interested. “
Oui
?”
“Instead of us trying to find McGarvey, why don't we arrange for him to come to us, voluntarily.”
“Are you planning on using his daughter?”
Lynch nodded. “I'm thinking about letting her stay in her father's apartment. He might be keeping a watch on the place.”
Galan smiled. “Jacqueline can move in with her.
Hein,
two women might be more irresistible than one.”
“You told me that Jacqueline was in love with McGarvey. Isn't there a danger that she might end up helping him?”
“Jacqueline is a Frenchwoman. I will control her, and you can control his daughter.”
“That might be a handful.”
Again Galan laughed. “We're not schoolboys,” he said. “In any event we have no other choice. But let's first give them a few days to get to know each other.”
“Agreed,” Lynch said. He didn't know who he disliked the most, the French collectively, or McGarvey.

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