of dark corridors he wanted to avoid.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Elizabeth’s eyes widened, and she shook her head. “No,” she blurted. “That’s wrong.
Mother’s wrong. You’re not responsible for the bad people in the world. It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“If I hadn’t been involved none of this would have happened to you and your mother.”
“Don’t say that,” she cried, tears suddenly filling her eyes. “Don’t ever say that.”
“It’s okay, Liz,” McGarvey said, reaching for her.
Elizabeth stared at him for a long time, as if she’d never seen him before. “If not you, who can I believe in?” she asked finally.
A battered Volkswagen van with Italian plates pulled up at the Villa Ambrosia overlooking Monaco around five in the afternoon. So far as Liese could determine the compound was just as they had left it. She’d half-expected to see yellow Do Not Pass tapes across the doors, or an Interpol surveillance unit parked nearby. But she’d made three different approaches to the house, and had spotted nothing.
“How does it look?” Spranger asked from the back of the van. His voice was muffled but recognizable, which was, as far as Liese was concerned, enough for the moment.
“Clear,” she answered. “I’m going to release the alarms and open the gate.”
“Watch out for a trap.”
They’d been over this same ground for two and a half days all the way from Athens, across Italy and along the Riviera. Spranger’s intense hatred and desperate need for revenge had distorted his perception of everything. He had ranted and raved about striking back, getting even, killing,
More than once Liese had been brought to the brink of putting a gun to the back of his head and pulling the trigger. But each time she’d backed off at the last moment because she needed him. Needed his voice for what remained to be done. Their field officers were in place and ready to go to phase two, but they would only move on Spranger’s direct orders. Without him the entire operation would fizzle and die.
Checking the rearview mirror again to make certain no one was coming up the road, Liese got out of the van and cautiously approached the tall wooden gate in the thick concrete wall that surrounded the compound.
None of the three hidden switches that activated the villa’s extensive alarm system had been tampered with, and she released each of them, the gate’s electric lock cycling open, and the gate swinging inward.
Back in the van she drove into the compound, and parked at the rear of the house.
Before she helped Spranger out, she closed and locked the gate, and reset the alarm system.
Spranger was a mess. The Greek doctor on Santorini had been an incompetent fool, his methods and most of his equipment 1940s-vintage war surplus. He’d dug McGarvey’s bullet out of Spranger’s shoulder successfully, but he’d done too much cutting and when the wound healed, scar tissue would be bunched up as big as a clenched fist.
He’d set Spranger’s broken arm and collarbone poorly, and whatever salve he’d used on the extensive burns had a terrible odor. Within twenty-four hours noisome fluids were freely suppurating from it, horribly staining his clothing and bandages.
His broken nose and cheeks had swollen up and discolored black and blue and yellow.
But he was alive, and coherent, and therefore still useful.
Inside the house, Liese poured him a brandy, then made the first of four telephone calls, this one to a number down in Monaco. It was answered on the first ring by a man speaking French with a Japanese accent.
“Out”
“Mr. Spranger calling for Mr. Endo, please,” Liese said. Spranger was watching her closely.
A second later their Japanese contact came on. “Yes, you have something to report, Ernst?”
“This is me,” Liese said, and she caught the slight calculating hesitation in Endo’s voice.
“Yes, I understand, please proceed.”
“Mr. McGarvey has been eliminated as a problem.
“I see. And will you now be able to make your deliveries as contracted.”
“Within seventy-two hours,” Liese said, and Spranger nodded, his hand gripping the brandy glass so tightly she thought it would shatter at any moment.
“Very well. We look forward to concluding our business then.”
Liese hung up, got the dial tone again and called the first of their three teams standing by in the field; This one outside of Lausanne, Switzerland, and Spranger put down his drink, ready to do his part.
Chapter 64
Elizabeth was back a few minutes before one in the afternoon with a change of clothes for her father. This time she was dressed in a sheer blouse and skimpy knit miniskirt.
She looked like a healthy, extremely sexual young animal, and the sight of her like that took McGarvey’s breath away.
“Mother is waiting downstairs,” she said, laying the straw bag in which she’d brought the clothes on the end of the bed. “We’re leaving this afternoon from the Baltimore airport.”
“Did you have any trouble getting back in?” McGarvey asked, getting out of bed, and pulling the clothes out of the bag. “Turn around.”
She turned away as her father got dressed. “No. I think they like my smile out there.”
McGarvey chuckled to himself. She was a little girl playing with fire, he thought.
But then something else struck him and he looked up at her. She was only a girl in his mind. In reality she was a vital, intelligent young woman.
“Is the guard still out there?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Can you get him away from the door for a minute so that I can get out of here?”
“Where are you going?” she asked in a small voice after a moment.
“To finish what I started,” he answered her. There was no use lying now. Not after what she’d been through.
“If something happens… I may never see you again.”
“You will,” McGarvey said, his throat suddenly thick. “Count on it.”
When he was finished dressing, he took his daughter into his arms and held her closely for a long time. “It’ll be okay, Liz.”
She looked up into his eyes. “You’ll make it, won’t you, Daddy?”
“Sure.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Now, go wiggle your tush at the guard and get him to show you the way to the cafeteria.”
She smiled demurely, and left.
McGarvey waited for a half minute then carefully opened the door a crack. Elizabeth and the guard were gone, and for the moment no one else was in sight. He slipped out into the corridor and headed toward the stairwell door in the opposite direction from the nurses’ station.
At any moment he expected someone to shout for him to stop, and then come running.
But no one did, and a few minutes later he had made his way painfully down three flights of stairs to the ground floor, then along the main corridor to the entry lobby and information desk.
Otto Rencke, his long hair flying, his sleeveless sweatshirt dirty, and his sneakers untied, came through the front doors and started toward the information desk when he spotted McGarvey. He came over, his expression falling as he got closer.
“Holy cow, Mac. Do you know that you really look like shit?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you, but wow, I didn’t think you’d be ambulatory, you know. The hotshots across the river have got you half dead.”
“Did you bring your car?”
