“How about a beer, Kirk?” Voronin said.
“Sure. Then I have to ask you for a favor,” McGarvey said.
Voronin gave him an amused glance. “You have the look on you. You’re back in the field. Are you going to tell me about it?”
“Nyet.”
“Good, because I no longer want the burden—” Vo ronin stopped short, an odd expression on his face as if something disturbing had just occurred to him. “There’s a picnic table in back. I’ll get the beers.”
McGarvey had been here once after Voronin and his wife were settled in. Nothing seemed to have changed, it was still a pleasant spot. He sat down and lit a cigarette. His connection with General Voronin was unknown to all but a handful of people in Langley. It had somehow slipped past the traitor Rick Ames. So far as they knew no one in Russia was aware that the CIA had helped Voronin out of the country, although they might have guessed. The manhunt for him and his wife had been brief, because the Komityet was in disarray, and its officers had other, bigger problems facing them than a defecting general. So McGarvey felt reasonably safe coming here.
Voronin brought the beers out, took a cigarette from McGarvey and they sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the light breeze in the trees, the singing birds, and the distant hum of tires on the highway half a kilometer away.
“Five years ago we were about the same size, Dmitri,” McGarvey said.
Voronin chuckled. “Old age is the ultimate diet.”
“I’d like to borrow one of your dress uniforms.”
Voronin cradled his beer bottle in both hands, and stared out toward the woods. “There’s a lot of trouble brewing in the Rodina. I understand this, Kirk. But you must understand that she is still Mother Russia to me. I’ll do nothing to harm my country.”
“Neither will I,” McGarvey said. “In fact I’m trying to help save it.”
“Are you working for the CIA again?”
“No.”
“Assassination has almost never had the expected results,” Voronin said quietly. “The situation almost always got worse.”
“It might this time, too, but I don’t think so.”
Voronin looked at him. “There is only one man in Russia whose death would benefit the people. If he were to be killed, I might be able to return.”
“If I succeed, Dmitri, there’s a very good chance that you’ll be able to go home finally,” McGarvey said.
“What if you fail?”
“Then the situation will probably get worse,” McGarvey answered without hesitation. That thought had occupied his mind since Yemlin had come to see him in Paris.
Voronin thought for a minute. “I must do this for you.” “I’m not calling in any old debts, because there aren’t—”
Voronin interrupted. “I must help you help the Rodina, even if there’s a chance things will become worse. I’m getting old, and in the end maybe you’re my only real hope for going home.” Voronin got heavily to his feet. “I’ll get it now.”
“Do you have a couple of large plastic garbage bags?”
“Yes.”
When Voronin went inside, McGarvey drove the Mercedes around back. He took the extra spare tire out of the cargo area, deflated it, and by the time Voronin returned he had pried one side of the tire away from the rim.
“Ingenious,” Voronin said. McGarvey wrapped the KGB uniform blouse, trousers, shirt and tie in the plastic, forming the bundle into a long narrow tube which he stuffed inside the spare tire. He reinflated the tire with the electric pump, and put it back in the cargo area.
Next he removed the cover from the spare tire attached to a bracket on the cargo door, and took the tire down. Voronin’s officer’s cap went into the hub of the wheel, which he reattached to the cargo lid bracket, and replaced the cover. The entire operation took about forty minutes, and when he was done, McGarvey was sweating lightly. Vo ronin brought another couple of beers, and they sat. again at the picnic table.
“When do you leave?”
“In the morning,” McGarvey said.
“And when will you do … this thing?”
“Sometime between now and the general elections.”
“Less than ten weeks.”
“Maybe sooner.”
Voronin looked away, his eyes filling. “Do you ever miss your country, Kirk?”
“Almost all the time, Dmitri.”
“When this is done, maybe we can both go home,” Voronin said. He got up and without a backward glance went into the house. McGarvey finished his beer, backed the Mercedes out of the driveway and left.
TWENTY-NINE
Elizabeth McGarvey awoke at her usual hour of 6:00 a.m.” got dressed in a bright pink jogging outfit and headed along the Avenue Jean Jaures, taking the same route her father did every morning. It was only a slight hope, but she thought by being so obviously open about her moves that if her father were to be anywhere in the vicinity of his apartment he would certainly spot her.
As she ran she kept her eyes open for anything out of the ordinary. Cars, windowless vans, delivery trucks with too many antennae. A face in a window, a reflection off binocular lenses on a rooftop. But after nearly a week of the same routine, she’d come up with nothing. At times her hopes began to fade.
She and Jacqueline had taken up residence in her father’s apartment, and she’d gotten to know the French woman who in some respects was like her mother. Mysterious and reserved sometimes, while at other times open and vivacious. She was very bright, very sympathetic to Elizabeth’s despair, and completely in love with Kirk’.
On their first full day together at the apartment, after Tom Lynch reported that he and the SDECE had apparently just missed Rencke and McGarvey at the house outside Bonnieres, she and Jacqueline went through the apartment with a fine-toothed comb. The Service had already taken the place apart, finding nothing. But Elizabeth felt that the instincts of two women might turn up something the Service might have missed.
But they’d found nothing. That evening they went to an art film, had a light supper and a couple of glasses of wine afterwards and then had returned to the apartment where they’d talked until nearly dawn.
Elizabeth doubled back through the park a half-block from her father’s apartment, and pulled up short in a line of trees across the street from the sidewalk cafe. A few people were seated outside, drinking coffee and reading newspapers. One man in particular looked familiar and her heart began to pound. It was her father, she was certain of it, because she wanted to be certain of it.
She moved silently from tree to tree in order to get a better look, but the man’s face was blocked by the newspaper he was reading.
So far as she could determine no one was watching him. But she knew enough not to rush across the street, because if the French were following her she would tip her hand. But she had to warn him.
Moving to a position directly across the street she tried to figure out the best way of approaching the cafe. The man put his newspaper down and reached for his coffee. She got a good look at his face, and her heart sank. It wasn’t her father after all. The man was far too young, his hair black, his eyebrows too thick. She leaned against the tree and lowered her head, tears coming to her eyes.
She and Jacqueline had tried everything, even placing a want ad in the personals section of Le Figaro: Liz loves you, daddy. I’m waiting at the apartment. So far there’d been no response.
They’d gone to a number of his old haunts, sidewalk cafes, parks, bistros, the Eiffel Tower, that he’d mentioned.:
