line, but the place was still quiet.
He got back in time to have a couple of glasses of wine with a few of the guests in the lobby. The desk clerk, whose name was Martine, served them.
“Did you mail your package?” she asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Have you made dinner plans for this evening?” She smiled. There are several good restaurants nearby that I could recommend.”
“Unfortunately I have to meet with some editors this evening, and then make an early evening of it.”
“Too bad,” she said, flashing him another seductive smile.
“Yes,” he said. “Too bad.”
McGarvey got his laptop computer from his room, and walked a few blocks to a pay phone near a metro station where he telephoned Otto Rencke.
“Hi ya, Mac,” Rencke said.
“How’d you know it was me?” McGarvey said. His voice was scrambled in the handset. Rencke was using his back scatter encryption device.
“Somebody calls me from a pay phone in the middle of the Left Bank on this number it’s gotta be you. Did you move out?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re taking the job, then?”
“I’m thinking about it,” McGarvey said. “Has Langley responded to the SDECE’s query on me?”
“Not yet, but I’m sure Ryan is working on it. You got your laptop with you? I’ve got everything you’re going to need ready to download to you.”
“How long will it take?”
“Ninety seconds.”
“Okay, let me set it up.”
“Mac?” Rencke said. “Remember what I said. Watch your ass, ‘cause I think this is going to be a humdinger.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll be here when you need me.”
McGarvey opened the computer and laid the telephone’s handset beside it. A moment later, the computer screen lit up, and data began to flow from Rencke’s computer into his.
ELEVEN
In his hotel room McGarvey spent the next two days studying the material that Rencke had downloaded from his computer files. Besides the probability program which he’d developed to predict the outcome of a coup by Tarankov, Rencke had sent a complete dossier on the Tarantula, the people he surrounded himself with, and the armored train he used to make his strikes.
A number of things became very clear almost from the start of his studies, the first of which was Tarankov’s intelligence. Although he had the brute strength and the unshakable determination of a Stalin or a Hitler, he was not a stupid man. In fact he was brilliant, something even his enemies begrudgingly admitted. Which meant he wasn’t running around the countryside hoping that by some miracle the people would rise up and put him in power. He had a plan. A definite timetable.
If he wasn’t stopped he would manage to take over the entire country with two hundred commandoes, his East German wife and Leonid Chernov, a former KGB Department Viktor assassin whose name McGarvey had never heard.
On Thursday night he called Rencke from a pay phone several blocks from the hotel,
“Have you tried calling your answering machine in the past thirty-six hours?” Rencke asked as soon as he picked up the phone.
“No.” ‘ “Don’t. Langley sent the SDECE the information on you they wanted, and it’s got them shook up. In their view you’re a very dangerous man whom they would like very much to talk to right now. They put an automatic trace on your phone line. At this point they don’t know if you’re in Paris or not, but if you call from the Left Bank they’ll be down there in minutes.”
“Are they watching the airports?”
“Yup. And the train stations. But the border crossings haven’t been alerted yet. You could get out that way. Either that or use a disguise.”
“Have they issued a warrant for my arrest?”
“The street cops haven’t got a warrant, I don’t know about the Service,” Rencke said. “You gotta understand, Mac, that to this point all my knowledge about the French is second hand. I can tap into the CIA’s computers, and I can play with the French phone system, but I can’t do much about the SDECE. They’ve got computers, don’t get me wrong. But they’re smart enough to know that they have to treat the really important stuff manually. The old fashioned way. If you want to know what they’re doing you have to break into one of their offices and steal their paper files. It’s almost un American.”
“Is anybody making any guesses who Yemlin wants me to kill?”
“Not yet. Leastways they’ve put nothing in their computers that I can find. But this morning Lynch sent a second query about you to Ryan. The French can’t find you and they’d like the CIA to help.”
“Have they ordered my expulsion from France?”
“It doesn’t sound like it. They just want to talk to you, that’s all.”
“How about you? Has your name come up?” “Knock on^ wood but not yet,” Rencke said laughing. “I still have my super virus in pi ace and the silly bastards don’t suspect a thing. But if they push me the CIA’s entire computer system will crash, and crash good. Maybe for good.”
“You’d do it, too.”
“Why not? I’ve had to start over. It’s good for the soul. Maybe they wouldn’t be so arrogant, because good old Rick Ames didn’t teach them a damn thing.”
“I need some more information,” McGarvey said. “Leonid Chernov,” Rencke said matter-of-factly. It was as if he could read minds. “You’ve got the whole enchilada, which worries me too. You’re going to have to go head-to- head with him, but nobody knows anything about him. Not the CIA, nobody.”
“How about the old KGB computer files?”
“Ha,” Rencke said. “You ever try running through maple syrup on a cold day, Mac? It’d be easier than trying to wade through the mess they’ve created for themselves.”
“It’s a big organization, Otto. Some of their systems must be up and running.”
“Without a central director, or a specific CPU for me to start from, I’d have to initiate a program search for every possible telephone number combination in Moscow. I could do it, but it might take a while. Maybe fifty years, give or take a decade.”
“What if I get you a number?”
“Then we’re in. Leastways through the first portal. Do you think Yemlin will hand over the keys to the castle just like that?”
“Won’t hurt to ask,” McGarvey said. “Keep your ears open, Otto, I’m going to be out of town for a couple of days.”
“Will do, Mac. Good luck.”
The desk clerk Martine was waiting for him in his room when he got back. She’d brought a bottle of wine and two glasses, and was propped up in bed, her shoes off, her silk blouse unbuttoned.
“You come as something of a surprise,” McGarvey said, masking his irritation.
“You’ve been working entirely too hard, Monsieur,” she said, and she giggled. She was tipsy.
McGarvey put his laptop on the writing table and glanced at his overnight bag. It had been tampered with,
