“Goddamnit Trotter started, but Murphy held him off. “He’s armed, I assume” Ryan said. “We sent it over in the diplomatic bag. But remember what he did for us, and the Israelis, in Germany. Let’s just not forget that now. And we did send him on th’ after all. We owe him, sir” is assignment, “What do you suggest” the general asked coolly.
“You’re personal friends with Isser Shamir. Call him” And tell him what”
“That a mistake has been made and we’d like our man back, in one piece”
“He’ll naturally ask what McGarvey was doing at En Gedi”
“Lie to him” Trotter said with a straight face. The DCI and Ryan exchanged glances. “Short of that, John. Let’s say that there was some compelling reason that made such a call impossible. Then what” Trotter almost asked what could be so compelling, but he held the question in check. “Short of that, I would suggest that we take this over to the President. Immediately this evening. He can call the PM. They owe us.
They started spying on us first” The general had been hunched forward over his desk, his shirtsleeves rolled up, exposing his thick forearms.
He leaned back now, settling his bulk into the big leather chair. He nodded. “Let’s say we get him out of there, John. What’s next”
“Knowing McGarvey, if he actually got into the facility, he will have found out what we asked him to find for us. If it’s positive, if he can confirm the existence of their weapons stockpile, then we go ahead with our original plan. It’s a safe bet that Baranov won’t back off” Again the general and Ryan exchanged glances. “You’re talking about bait here, aren’t you” Ryan said softly. It was the same thing McGarvey had said.
And it was true, of course. But it was the business. “I’m talking about using a resource to its best advantage” he said without blinking. The DCI nodded again. “If he was identified in Germany, they’ll pull out all the stops to get him”
“Yes, sir” Again the DCI glanced at Ryan. “I’ll see what can be done.
But maybe we’ve made a mistake. Maybe we should have told the Israelis that the Pershing had been targeted on En Ciedi”
“It would have tipped our hand” Ryan said. “Springing McGarvey isn’t going to do us, or him, much good either”
Lorraine Abbott sat in her darkened hotel room chain-smoking cigarettes and looking out across the dark Mediterranean. Although it was a clear night the horizon was an indistinct blackness. Way out at sea she thought she could see the lights of some slow-moving ship, but then it disappeared, her night vision destroyed as she lit another cigarette. For the tenth time she told herself that she had done the right thing by telephoning Murphy on the special number he had given her more than three years ago. He had sounded noncommittal-of course, it was an open line-but he had told her to return immediately to her hotel and sit tight. He would look into things and get back to her. California just now seemed like a long way off. Her first mistake had been sticking it out here in Tel Aviv. She had won points with Mark O’Sheay, the NPT Inspection Service operations director, but she hadn’t accomplished a thing by remaining. Her second mistake had been listening to McGarvey.
He was an arrogant, conceited, macho sonofabitch. That had been her first impression, and nothing that had happened since had changed her mind. And he was a spy. Not her variety, not simply an eavesdropper or an observer, but a legitimate gun-carrying spy. A James Bond in Rambo warpaint. It made her sick to think that she had gone along with him.
Not only had he seriously jeopardized her position here in Isra el, it was possible that she would be asked to resign from her NPT position, which, though it wasn’t crucial to her career, provided her with … what? She turned that thought over in her mind. Burnout, her department head called it. “You can jaunt off all over the world from time to time.
It’s better than reading science fiction. Recharges your batteries”
What if they had shot him, the same thought that had driven her to call the general invaded her consciousness again, and her hand shook as she stubbed out the cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. Someone was at the door. She thought she heard a key grating in the lock. She turned around at the same moment the door burst open, snapping the chain, and an instant later the room lights came on. Two men, guns drawn, were standing there. Lorraine had raised a hand to her mouth in shock, but she found that she couldn’t do anything else, not even cry for help.
Two other men crowded into the room, one of them checking the bathroom, and the other looking in the closet, the chest of drawers, and even under the bed. “Dr. Lorraine Abbott” one of the gunmen asked in English.
She nodded, finally finding her voice. “Who are you”
“Military Intelligence, Doctor” the gunman said. “You are under arrest.
” Arrest? My God, on what charge”
“Espionage.
A pale blue Volkswagen camper van was parked at the edge of the beach across the street from the Uri Dan Hotel. Two young clerks from the Hungarian Embassy were in the front, making out, his hand beneath her sweater, cupping a breast. In the back, Arkady Kurshin was watching the hotel’s front entrance through binoculars. McGarvey was currently away from the hotel. He’d been seen leaving earlier in the company of a so far unidentified blond woman. The woman had returned soon afterward, had left once, and had come back again. “Who is she” he’d asked the man seated next to him. “I don’t know yet” Aleksei Piotrovsky, KGB’s number-two man in Israel, said. “But I do know those pricks who came up in that gray Mercedes”
“Mossad”
“No, AMAN. The question is, what the hell are they doing here at this hour of the morning” It could be because of McGarvey, Kurshin thought.
The moment they’d been informed that he was here in Tel Aviv, he had flown directly from his hotel in Rome where he’d been waiting for further word from Baranov. “There can only be one reason for him to be in Israel at this point” Baranov had explained. “It’s because of the Pershing. They know we were going after En Gedi. He’s come to find out for himself”
“Either that or tell the Israelis”
“I don’t think so” Baranov had replied. “But it gives you the easy opportunity to take him out. Don’t miss”
“Here they come” Piotrovsky said. Kurshin raised his binoculars in time to see the four AMAN plainclothes officers emerge from the hotel. They had brought the blond woman with them, her hands held curiously stiff behind her back. It took him several seconds to realize that she was handcuffed. They had arrested her. He lowered the binoculars again. What had they stumbled across here? And where was McGarvey? “I want to know who that woman is, within the hour” he said. Piotrovsky glanced over at him and swallowed.
This was one man, he thought, who was to be placated at all costs. “Yes, Comrade” he said.
Roland Murphy had been in plenty of tough spots in his life, but he’d never been known to walk away from a fight, or hang his head in submission no matter how he had conducted the battle. This was the day, however, when the shit was very likely to hit the fan. He had taken a calculated risk, and it was about to come back and bite him. It was just seven-thirty. The president had agreed to see him in his study.
He rose from behind his desk when Murphy came in. He was a large man, who like the general preferred rolled-up shirtsleeves and loosened ties and had some years ago served a brief term as director of the CIA. He was a no-nonsense man. “Harry S told his people that the buck stopped at his desk. I tell mine that this is where the bullshit stops”
“We have a developing problem on our hands, Mr. President, that could turn into something very political”
“You wouldn’t be here at this hour of the evening if it wasn’t serious, General” the president said wryly. “Coffee”
“I’d prefer something a little stronger this time” The president’s thick eyebrows rose. “This is serious” he said. He poured them both a good measure of Jack Daniel’s. Murphy knocked his back, set the glass down, and then extracted a group of satellite reconnaissance photographs from his briefcase and laid them out on the desk. The president set his whiskey aside, picked up a large magnifying glass, and hunched over the photographs, studying
