help you’ll have to level with me. Because if you’re going to do it I’ll have to backstop you, which’ll put my ass on the line. I’ve got a right to know.”
“Just research for now, Otto. Because I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do. I want to stay retired.”
Rencke shook his head, the sad expression back on his face. “We both wish that were true, my friend. But the fact is you’re getting bored again. I saw it the last time you came out here. And listen — to me, without you there would have been a lot more bad guys killing a lot of really good people. You have made a difference, Mac. In a lot of people’s lives. Don’t ever doubt it.”
“I do every day,” McGarvey said.
“Comes with the territory,” Rencke said. He turned abruptly and went into the house.
McGarvey waited outside for ten minutes, smoking a cigarette, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon. His ex wife Kathleen had once called him the “last boy scout.” Now Rencke had called him the same thing.
One thing was certain, he thought as he rose and went into the house, whoever agreed to kill Tarankov would have less than a one-in-a-thousand chance of pulling it off and escaping. It was an interesting problem.
The windows in the main room were boarded up and the fireplace blocked. Fluorescent lights had been installed in the ceiling, and air-conditioning kept the house cool, almost cold. Computer equipment was scattered everywhere. A dozen monitors, one of them a forty-inch screen, were set up next to printers and CPUs around the room. In a corner what looked like a smaller version of a Cray supercomputer was processing something. The lights on its front panel flashed at a bewildering speed.
“I built that one myself,” Rencke called from where he was seated at the big monitor, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “The lights are useless, but they impress the hell out of people.”
“Who’s seen it?” McGarvey asked, walking over.
“Nobody,” Rencke said. “Take a look at this.”
A map of Russia came up on the screen with all the major cities pinpointed in yellow. Starting with Yakutsk in Siberia and working its way west toward Moscow, the cities flashed red, and a number between ten and a hundred appeared beside each one.
“I won’t bore you with details, but those are the cities Tarankov’s commandoes have hit in the past couple of years. The figures are the number of people he’s killed in each place.”
Rencke erased the screen, and this time brought up a map of the entire old Soviet Union. “I designed a probability program from the basic premise that Tarankov succeeds in taking the Kremlin by force or by the ballot box. Either scenario made no difference.” He looked up. “Ready for this, Mac?”
“Go ahead,” McGarvey said.
Rencke hit a key. For a few moments nothing seemed to happen, until one after another, spreading outward from Moscow like some malignant growth, cities large and small began to glow red, numbers, some in the thousands, began to appear beside them. The figures next to Moscow and St. Petersburg showed the most growth, rising into the tens of thousands, but then Kiev and Nizhny Novgorod and Volgograd blossomed. The cancer spread next to Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius in the Baltics. Finally into Romania, and Bulgaria and Poland. The numbers were staggering, in the millions.
“The people will have jobs, they’ll eat regularly, they’ll have free medical care and free education all the way up to the doctorate level,” Rencke said.
“How accurate is this?” McGarvey asked.
“Based on my primary premise, very,” Rencke said. “How about nuclear accident projections, because they’ll be reactivating their nuclear missile force, including their subs? Or, if you want to see something pitiful, how about projected NATO responses? Almost nil. How about the biggest one of all, Mac?” Rencke looked up, a maniacal glint in his eyes. “Thermonuclear war. Because if Tarankov takes power the nuclear countdown clock will start ticking again, a few seconds before midnight.”
Images and numbers and bright white lights blossomed over a map of the entire world, faster and faster, until it was impossible to follow.
Suddenly the screen went blank, and turned a rich hue of lavender.
Rencke sat back in his chair. “My telephone here is secure. I’ve set up a backscatter encryption device that’ll work both ways. Whatever telephone you use will be encrypted as well.”
It was starting again as McGarvey knew it would. There were always alternatives to war, to acts of terrorism, to assassinations. Problem was nobody thought of them until afterwards.
“I haven’t played fair with you, Mac,” Rencke said. “I knew that you’d met with, and I knew that you would be coming out here to see me.”
“How?” McGarvey asked.
Rencke brought up another program. “You’re my friend, so I keep track of you. When your name pops up somewhere, my snoopy systems take note.”
The CIA’s logo appeared on the screen, followed by the Directorate of Operations designator, and then Paris Station.
The text of a message sent to Langley from Tom Lynch came up.
“They know that you met with Yemlin,” Rencke said, as McGarvey stared with disbelief at the name of the addressee. “The SDECE managed to pick up a portion of your conversation, and they handed it over to Lynch. They knew that you were asked to assassinate someone for the Russians. They don’t know who. Their only concern is that it doesn’t happen on French soil.” “Is this a fucking joke?” McGarvey demanded.
“What?” Rencke asked confused.
McGarvey stabbed a blunt finger at the screen. “Howard Ryan is the deputy director of operations?”
“I thought you knew.”
McGarvey stepped back a pace. It was like the old Santiago days all over again. Everything changed, yet nothing changed.
“I’ll keep in touch,” he said at last.
“I’ll be here, Mac,” Rencke said. “Just watch yourself, will ya. But it’s really good news about your parents.”
TEN
McGarvey returned his rental car to the agency downtown, and walked a few blocks over to the Gare St- Lazare where he got a cab. The early evening was still pleasantly warm and the parks and sidewalk cafes were jammed with people. Under normal circumstances he and Jacqueline would have gone out to dinner this evening. Thinking about it deepened his already dark mood.
Howard Ryan was a pompous ass, who nevertheless had done a good job for the CIA as its general counsel. He knew his way around political Washington, and during his tenure the Agency maintained the best relationship it’d ever had with the Congress.
But as a spy he was a meddling fool who didn’t know what he was doing. Eighteen months ago he’d nearly gotten himself killed by an East German gunman because he’d barged into a situation he knew nothing about. McGarvey had even saved his life after Ryan had shot him in the side.
Afterward Roland Murphy had actually apologized for the man, but McGarvey never dreamed that Ryan would be promoted to deputy director of operations. It was insanity, and he felt sorry for the poor bastards who had to work for him.” Their lives were in danger. He wondered how many of them would have to be killed before someone finally saw the light and sent the lawyer back to New York. It was a chilling thought.
Another part of McGarvey was already beginning to work out the logistics of assassinating Tarankov, however. The odds “against success were not very good. Maybe even worse than a thousand-to-one.
Killing someone was very easy, even someone as heavily guarded as a political figure. Rabin’s assassin had simply walked up to the Israeli leader and pumped three bullets into his back, and one of the best security services in the world had been unable to prevent it.
The hard part was getting away afterward.
