them. He figured it was probably a house along the lakeshore. Baranov’s retreat was directly across the lake, perhaps a mile and a half or two, yet already McGarvey was getting the old feeling of the man’s presence. Baranov was a force, there was no denying that.
Near the water’s edge the paved road ended in a gravel lane that ran completely around the lake. McGarvey stopped his car, switched off the headlights, and got out. There was absolutely no sound here, except for the Fiat’s idling engine, and his own footfalls on the gravel. He walked a few yards away from the car to a spot where he could see the lake through a break in the woods.
Across the water he could see the lights of a few houses on the north shore, but nothing moved on the lake. Thursday night he would take the boat halfway across, don the oxygen rebreathing equipment that was waiting for him, and swim the rest of the way underwater to the shore below Baranov’s house.
He turned after a minute or two and looked back the way he had come. He was not being followed. Lorraine was safely back in West Berlin … or she was as safe as she could be anywhere. She would not have come across. She had not followed him this time. She had given him her word.
He believed her … or he hoped he did.
Back in his car he drove without lights another half mile, finding the driveway back down to the small cabin and boathouse on the lake that Trotter had described for him. He turned the car around in the narrow driveway, so that it was pointed back up toward the lake road, then got out and hurried down to the boathouse, where he held up in the darkness for a moment.
There was no one here. The night was still. Not even a wind rustled in the trees or rippled the surface of the lake. Using the key Trotter had supplied him, he unlocked the boathouse and slipped inside. Immediately he could smell gasoline, rotting wood, and something else. Something old and musty.
He switched on his penlight. A small motorboat floated in its slip, tied to the narrow walkway. A wooden garage door covered the opening to the lake. There was virtually no possibility that his light would be seen by anyone on the north shore; nevertheless he moved quickly. Stepping down into the boat he found the two weapons wrapped in plastic and stuffed in the bilge, along with another package that contained the Russian-made rebreathing equipment. Plulling out the Graz Buyra, he loaded it, screwed the Kevlar silencer tube on the end of the stubby barrel, and cycled a round into the firing chamber. No matter what happened now, he told himself as he relocked the boathouse and hurried back up to his car, he would not be caught here in the eastern zone with his back against the wall.
Lorraine Abbott had gone to the telephone three times with the intention of calling Roland Murphy in Washington and demanding that McGarvey be pulled off this ridiculous assignment. Each time, however, something stayed her hand. it was late. Well after midnight. She sat smoking a cigarette by the window, looking down at the traffic on the Ku’damm. Berlin, like any large city, never slept. The Ku’damm was the busiest of all streets in the western zone. Here were the cabarets and nightclubs, the shops and boutiques, and the sex stores and theaters.
Absolutely anything could be had on the Ku’damm. Except, she thought bitterly, salvation. But the fact of the matter was she had somehow fallen in love with a murderer. All of her rationalizations that he was no different from a soldier killing on orders in time of war had completely broken down for her. She was left, then, with the crazy idea that somehow she could change him. If she could stop him this time, there might not be another. His past, she figured, she could live with.
it was his future … their future that she could not imagine.
She had been a pragmatist all of her life. Except for her science, most of her creativity seemed to have been stifled, especially in her relationships with people … with men. She had always been the odd lot out in school. She was goodlooking, she understood this with no vanity, and yet she’d been told on more than one occasion that she was unapproachable. “You’re an intellectual snob” Lawrence Givens, her former fiance, had said to her a year ago. “Does it bother you’” she’d shot back. “Not particularly. Because you and I are cut out of the same cloth. You’re a good physicist and you know it. Just as I know that I’m a damned good surgeon”
“But” Weren’t there almost always buts?
“But I’m also a man. You might try being a woman. At least once in a while”
“Go to hell” she’d replied good-naturedly, but the comment had stung, all the more so for its truth. Larry was a snob, and she didn’t like that aspect of his personality. For an instant she had looked into a mirror and had seen that she was a snob as well. With McGarvey she felt like a woman all of a sudden. The story she had told him about the palm reader when she was a little girl was mostly a lie, but it had seemed right at the moment she’d told him. In a way it was a justification to herself for being with him. Now she was frightened. Not only for him, but of him, and most of all she was frightened for herself, because she had no idea where she was going. He was a murderer. But if she forced her way into helping him she could very well be the cause of his death.
She was a scientist, trained in analytical thinking. But this time she had no way out, so in the end she had been incapable of doing anything.
Someone knocked at her door, and she looked up, her cigarette hand stopped in midair. “Who is it” she called out, getting up and stubbing out the cigarette.
“We’re from the consulate, Doctor Abbott” a man said. “There is a message for you from Mr. McGarvey. It’s most urgent. “Oh, God” she cried, and she rushed to the door where she hurriedly undid the security chain and twisted the deadbolt. The door was suddenly pushed open, shoving her backward nearly off her feet. She got the impression of two very large men barging into the room, their guns drawn, and then something was pressed against her face, the smell cloying in its sweetness, and she was drifting.
Director of Central Intelligence Roland Murphy was on his way home when the telephone in his limousine burred softly. He reached forward tiredly and picked it up. “Yes”
“Eagle one calls. Authentication is alpha-alpha-seven-zero-niner.
Murphy’s gut tightened. Eagle one was the president. The use of an authentication code meant a situation of extreme importance was in progress. “Hold” Murphy said, fumbling with the leather bound code book.
He found the proper date and cycle. The code matched”
Zebra-two-seven, he gave the counter code, and the connection was broken.
He powered down the Lexan dividing window. His bodyguard, Preston Luney, riding shotgun, turned around. “Sir”
“Get me over to the White House, Preston. On the double. West gate”
They were just crossing the river on the Key Bridge. His driver jammed his foot to the floor and the big Cadillac shot forward past the slower moving traffic, squealing tires as he turned sharply onto the Whitehurst Freeway. The president had so far withheld his authorization for McGarvey to hit Baranov. By now everything would be in place in East Berlin. Had something gone wrong? It was possible that McGarvey had been discovered in the eastern zone. The Russians, of course, would make a big stink of it. Big enough, he wondered, for the president to go to such extraordinary measures of using a coding system that had been designed to alert key people in time of war? He didn’t think so. Not that. Not yet. But what then? He had a bad feeling that the coming hours were going to be anything but pleasant. They were admitted without delay through the west gate a few minutes later. It was just 8,00 Pm.
Murphy’s bodyguard went with him up the stairs and into the West Hall where they were met by one of the president’s Secret Service people who took them without a word to the elevator just off Center Hall, and punched the down button. “Is he in the situation room” Murphy asked.
“Yes, sir” the Secret Service agent said, his jaw set. In the sub-basement they were met by two more Secret Service people, who escorted Murphy across to the bombproof door, which opened immediately for him, and he stepped inside, the door closing with a heavy thump of finality. Luney waited in the anteroom. The president was seated at the end of the long conference table, in shirtsleeves, his tie loose. To his left were Secretary of State James Baldwin, his dapper vest and suitcoat properly buttoned; and Director of the National Security Agency Sterling Miller, his leonine head bent over a thick report he was studying intently. Across from the president were Joint Chief Admiral Stewart O’Malley, in uniform, and his JC. Vice Admiral, Taylor Barnes. At the far end of the room two Air Force officers manned the communications and display consoles.
Murphy got the definite impression that they were in crisis here. It only bothered him that he’d heard nothing all day. We’ve got ourselves a hell of a problem this time, Roand” the president said, looking up.
