hours per day, seven days per week across the world. Finding Rencke would be next to impossible, but they had nothing else to go on for the moment.
“Thomas LeBrun. A street number in the twentieth arrondissement,” Jacqueline said. “He’s legitima ted
Elizabeth ran a hand tiredly across her eyes. “Okay, Jacqueline, I’m going to a different newsgroup. I’ll try talk.politicstheory, maybe we’ll have better luck.”
“How about some lunch, cherie?”
“Let’s work till noon. That gives us another half hour. I just can’t stop.”
“I know,” Jacqueline said soothingly. “We’ll find him.”
“We have to.”
McGarvey got up around two in the afternoon after only a few hours of sleep. He showered, shaved, and got dressed then went downstairs and had a late lunch at the hotel’s coffee shop. He was still logy from lack of sleep, but by the time he’d walked two blocks from the hotel he was beginning to feel better. He caught a taxi at Krastmala Boulevard, and ordered the driver to take him out to the airport where he rented a Volkswagen Jetta for one month from Hertz. He explained that he wanted to explore the entire Baltic region, something he’d wanted to do for years. Now that they were independent from the Russians he was finally able to get his wish.
Even though only a small percentage of the population spoke Latvian, all the street signs were in that language, which sometimes caused confusion. In actuality the lingua franca was Russian, a fact that everyone despised, but that everyone lived with.
While at the airport he changed the remainder of his deutchmarks to Latvian la tis then headed back into the city. The weather continued to hold, but if anything traffic, was worse than it had been this morning. Riga and its companion city Jurmala, where the international ferries docked, were major Baltic seaports. It was one of the reasons the Soviet Union had fought so hard to keep Latvia. But the nation continued to struggle with its independence from communist rule. Still, nearly half the population was Russian, which created strong ethnic tensions. The new businessmen millionaires were Latvian Mafia, while the Russians, who were constantly being discriminated against, ran their own rackets. Just about anything went here, which was one of the reasons McGarvey had picked this place.
By four o’clock he was in the waterfront district of warehouses and dreary offices above chandeliers and other dingy shops. He found what he was looking for almost immediately, an import/export company under the obviously Latvian name of Karlis Zalite, situated above a small machine parts warehouse. Pallets marked in English, made in germany, were being unloaded from a big truck.
McGarvey parked across the street, and went upstairs to a cramped, grimy office in which stacks of files and paperwork were piled on the floor, on chairs, on two small tables, and atop several large filing cabinets. A young pimply-faced man with thick, greasy hair worked at a tiny desk next to the one window, while the proprietor worked in the back from a much larger, cluttered desk. The place smelled like a combination of stale sweat, cigarette smoke and grease from the warehouse below.
“I wish to hire your firm to import Mercedes automobiles from Leipzig. Can you handle this for me?” McGarvey asked.
“Da, of course,” Zalite, a skinny ferret-faced little man said, rising from his chair. He stuck out his dirty hand. “Mr…?”
“Pierre Allain. I am Belgian,” McGarvey said, shaking hands.
“Your Russian is very good.”
“My father worked in Moscow.”
“Is he still there?”
“He was sent to Siberia to count the birches, and never came back.” McGarvey lowered his eyes for a moment, his jaw tightening. “But that was many years ago. Now I wish to do some business with you.”
“Do you have buyers here in Riga for your cars? Because if we can come to reasonable terms, I would certainly take one of them off your hands.”
“These will be for sale in Moscow. Very cheap.”
“I see,” Zalite said, sitting back, and eyeing McGarvey with a sudden wariness. “Perhaps you have come to the wrong man.”
“I wouldn’t sell one of my cars to you, at any price,” McGarvey continued. “Nor would I sell them to anyone in Latvia, or anywhere else other than Moscow. People could… get hurt in my cars. They will get hurt.” Zalite’s eyes narrowed. “It’s a dangerous game you are playing, Mr. Allain.”
McGarvey sat forward so suddenly that Zalite reared back. He slammed his fist on the desk. “I’m going to stick it to the bastards for what they did to me, with or without your help!” McGarvey shook with rage. “Goddamn stinking sons of bitches!” He glanced at the young man, who watched with round eyes. “My father went there to help, and they killed him. They killed my mother too. I’m all that’s left.” “How many units are coming?” Zalite asked respectfully.
“One to begin with, by truck. But there’ll be many more later.”
“Do you have buyers for them in Moscow?”
“Mafia,” McGarvey said through clenched teeth.
“And how will you get these cars there?”
“I’ll drive them, one at a time. I want to see the looks on their faces.”
Zalite hesitated.
“I’ll pay you one thousand deutsch marks above your usual fees,” McGarvey said. “Your name will never be mentioned by me to the Russians. I’ll instruct the car dealer in Leipzig where he may ship the cars, which you’ll store in a secure place until I call for them one at a time.” McGarvey took a Creditbank draft in the amount of DM 1.000 out of his attache” case and laid it on the man’s desk. “This is for the first car, I’ll have another bank draft ready for your fees.”
Zalite eyed the bank draft. “You’ll get yourself killed.”
“That’s my prob leto In the meantime you’ll make a profit. Do we have a deal?”
“Where can I reach you if there’s a problem?”
“If there’s a problem, you handle it. The first car will be here in less than ten days. Will you do it?”
Zalite looked at the bank draft again, then picked it up and put it in his desk drawer. He stood up and extended his hand. “We have a deal, Mr. Allain, if for no other reason than I too would very much like to stick it to the bastards, as you say.”
McGarvey shook his hand. “I’ll call when I’m ready for the first car. In the meantime I’ll count on your discretion.”
“Oh, you have my word on that,” Zalite said earnestly.
From there McGarvey drove back to the Telephone and Telegraph office where he placed a call to Bernard Legler at Mercedes Rossplatz in Leipzig. He gave the German Zalite’s address, and then rang off before Legler could ask any questions.
It was late afternoon by the time he found a parking garage a few blocks from the hotel where he dropped off the Volkswagen and went the rest of the way on foot. He stopped at the bar for a martini, then went back up to his room where he intended changing clothes and coming back down for dinner around eight. He turned on the television to CNN, lay down on the bed and fell asleep in his clothes.
THIRTY-ONE
Chernov sat at his desk staring at the detailed maps of Moscow, feeling that he was missing something that was vitally important. Paporov was talking on the telephone to Captain Petrovsky at the Militia, and from the tone of his voice Chernov got the impression that there was no news. The FSK was coming up empty-handed as well. As Chernov suspected, the service did not have enough manpower to do its normal work, let alone mount a nationwide search for McGarvey. For instance McGarvey’s photograph hadn’t been distributed to all the border crossings yet, though Gresko promised the job would be completed within the next three or four days.
