Blood Pact (McGarvey) (23 page)

At the stairwell door again, McGarvey listened for several seconds before he slipped through and started down, checking each course over the railing before he proceeded.

Just below the third floor landing he spotted Kutschinski, obviously dead, crumpled in a heap, a great deal of blood pooling under his body, and spreading several steps down. His pistol was still in his right hand.

He’d come charging blindly up the stairs and the priest had been waiting in ambush for him.

McGarvey eased open the third-floor door. Nurse Randall lay on her side outside one of the rooms. She too had been armed. A 9 mm standard U.S. military issue Beretta pistol lay on the floor a couple of feet from her outstretched right hand.

What had happened here was already done with.

The four CIA officers were dead, shot while they lay in their beds, two of them with IV drips and monitor wires still attached to their bodies. Those two at least had probably been unconscious when the priest had assassinated them.

María was not in any of the rooms. Nor was there any obvious signs that she’d been here.

For a long moment McGarvey stood rooted to a spot just outside one of the rooms in which a helpless man had been murdered and he was nearly overwhelmed with an intense anger. For money? For gold, silver, for treasure? Some act like this could not be sanctioned by the Catholic Church. Nothing like this had happened, so far as he understood history, for several centuries. It was as if he were caught in the middle of some surreal dream that had begun with María León’s insane plot to kidnap Louise to force Otto to come to Cuba.

For some reason he focused on the white blanket that covered the dead officer, and he spotted what were flecks of something white, something granular. It made no sense at first, until a drop of blood fell from above and he looked up as a section of ceiling tile, a small splotch of fresh blood along the seam, suddenly collapsed and María León, the chest of her hospital gown red, came crashing down on top of the dead man.

FORTY-TWO

Dorestos was beside himself with rage. He had failed after all. He’d heard at least one other person scuttling around on the second floor like a mouse behind the wallboard, and yet he’d not been able to find out who it was, though he suspected it was one of the nurses.

He went to the main security console with its six monitors and pressed the button to open the gate when the woman he’d come to assassinate fell through the ceiling onto the body of one of the CIA officers. A second later McGarvey came into the frame, and helped her to sit on the edge of the bed. The front of her hospital gown was soaked with blood, but she was still awake.

McGarvey got a towel from the bathroom and placed it over the wound in her chest.

Dorestos flipped a switch for the sound.

“This’ll have to do until I can get the doctor back here.”

María was looking up at McGarvey. “If you had let me keep my gun I might have had the chance to end it.”

“You did the right thing. But how the hell did you get up into the ceiling?”

“It was Charlie’s idea,” she said, glancing at the officer’s body. “He even helped me climb up. He’d just got the tile back in place and had lain down when the bastard came to the room and shot him. There wasn’t a thing I could do about it.”

“If you had tried you’d be dead by now.”

María looked up at the camera. “Is he gone?”

“I don’t know, but for now you’re staying put.”

“Well, has someone at least called for help?”

“They’re on their way,” McGarvey said, and he leaned over to whisper something in the woman’s ear.

Dorestos cranked up the volume, but he couldn’t make out the words.

McGarvey straightened up. “He might still be in the building somewhere. I’m going to try to find him.”

“Are you nuts?”

“No. I’m pissed.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to start on the fourth floor again and work my way back down.”

Dorestos switched the view on the in-house monitor to the third-floor corridor as McGarvey walked past the nurse’s body and headed directly for the rear stairs, as he unscrewed the suppressor from a Walther PPK and pocketed it. He was on the hunt and he didn’t care how much noise he made.

The decision came down to flight or fight. It was possible that McGarvey would get the drop on him, and cut off any chance of escape. He didn’t think that after Casey Key the man would listen to reason, and his orders not to kill the former DCI were very specific.

But he had been ordered to eliminate the woman, along with anyone else who might get in the way. Job one. His immortal soul wasn’t at stake, but in the way the monsignor had put it, damnation for failure was possible.

He studied the console for a moment, and then with a few keystrokes erased the current video memory, and shut the recording system down. He stepped back, put a couple of silenced rounds into the main console, then took the batteries out of the keyboard. Turning on his heel he hurried down the hall to the emergency room and the rear stairs, where he stopped a moment to listen in case McGarvey had doubled back for some reason. But there were no sounds, so he started up, silently, taking the stairs three at a time.

Passing the second and third floors, he emerged on the fourth and retrieved the magazines of ammunition for the dead babysitter’s SIG and the MP7 from under the couch, and loaded the submachine gun, pulling the slide back to charge it. But the weapon had been tampered with. The slide would not snap back into place. The spring was missing.

He looked down the corridor, the flickering light from the television still coming from the woman’s room.

McGarvey had been here, and had sabotaged the weapon. Dorestos realized that he had underestimated the former CIA officer.

Laying the weapon aside he also realized that the pistol was gone as well, which left him only with his handgun and two magazines and a partial. And he understood that he might have made a mistake leaving his own MP7 behind; the extra firepower might be needed after all.

He headed down the corridor to the front stairwell, keeping low and close to the wall and moving fast, pausing only long enough to put a round into the television set.

He cracked the door open and stopped again to listen.

Colonel León was badly wounded and still on the third floor. But McGarvey presented several possibilities. He could have been aware that he was being watched. It would explain why he had whispered something to the woman. It could be that he was staying on the ground floor, waiting in ambush, or he had told the woman the truth and was already on his way up here.

Dorestos slipped into the stair hall and gently eased the door closed.

He waited for a full minute, watching the rear stairwell door through the small square window, but when McGarvey didn’t appear, he started down the stairs, taking extreme caution not to make the slightest noise.

He stopped at the third floor door and looked out the window. Nothing moved, and the corridor was mostly in shadows, the only light coming from outside, through the windows in the rooms and the open doors.

“Protect me, Virgin Mary,” he mumbled. He slipped out of the stairwell and raced to the room where McGarvey had left the woman, but the door was closed and wouldn’t budge even though the handle moved when he tried it.

The woman had barricaded herself inside, knowing that he was coming for her. It was a trap but he still had time because he had a feeling that McGarvey had been lying when he’d told the woman that help was on the way.

The man had an ego, he would want to do this himself. It’s why he hadn’t called for help at the Renckes’ house.

Dorestos put his shoulder to the door and it gave a couple of inches.

“Stand down,” McGarvey said from the end of the corridor.

Dorestos looked up, keeping only his profile as a target. “I mean you no harm, signore,” he said.

“We’re past that. You killed some good people here. Innocent people.”

“They were America’s soldiers, and it is war.”

“Between us and the Vatican?”

Dorestos was distressed. All of this misunderstanding was his fault, and he didn’t know how he was going to face the monsignor. “No, of course not. We are not your enemy. Only Colonel León is.”

“Why did you kill the nurse?”

“It was a mistake,” Dorestos said. As was staying here any longer.

He fired two shots down the corridor, above where he thought McGarvey was standing in the darkness, and then sprinted toward the other end of the corridor, firing continuously over his shoulder.

McGarvey got off three shots, one of them plucking at his sleeve, but then he was through the door and racing downstairs, sick at heart at the disaster he’d created here, and almost believing that it might be best if he lost his life this night. Jesus would accept him, sins and all. He could feel the Lord’s love washing over him. But the Order wouldn’t be so forgiving.

On the ground floor he darted past the security console, out the front door and down the three steps to the driveway, moving faster now than he’d ever moved in his life.

He reached the open gate and flitted around the corner as McGarvey fired two shots, both of them hitting the tall brick wall.

In the next block he crossed over a narrow canal and threw the pistol away. The Tahoe he intended to leave behind, along with his bag at the hotel.

He used his cell phone to call his aircrew. “We leave within the hour. File a flight plan for San Juan. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” the pilot said.

Three blocks later on R Street he found a VW Jetta that had been left unlocked. He forced the ignition switch and drove off, wondering what would happen to him next. He’d never failed before, so he could only guess at the consequences.

But if he were given another chance he would move heaven and earth to see that McGarvey succeeded, and that the Cubans were kept out of his way.

FORTY-THREE

Mme. Laurent was not as tall as she appeared in the photographs al-Rashid had seen, but she was every bit as elegant as he pictured she would be. She came out of her apartment building at ten minutes before eight, saying something to the old doorman who smiled and saluted her. She’d made his day. There wasn’t a straight Frenchman who didn’t appreciate the attention of a pretty woman.

She’d gotten a half block down the street when al-Rashid got up and followed her.

Dressed in a lightweight trench coat, belted at the waist, she wore a brightly patterned Hermes head scarf, and carried a Louis Vuitton bag over her shoulder.

She walked slowly, her hips swaying. Traffic had picked up and she was a woman who knew the attention she was creating, and she didn’t want to rush it. Al-Rashid almost felt sorry for monsieur the vice mayor, who undoubtedly gave up a great deal every day to have her as his mistress. And this day the man would have to give up even more.

For a block or so al-Rashid had no idea where she was headed, unless it was to find a taxi on the much busier Boulevard Malesherbes, but the doorman would have gladly called for one. On the other hand if she was to use the Metro, a station was in the park practically across the street from her apartment.

Before he approached her he wanted to make certain that she wasn’t on her way to some rendezvous—either with Chatelet, or perhaps with someone else. Another secret lover?

She crossed the very busy Boulevard de Courcelles and made directly for the Metro entrance near the end of the Avenue de Villiers, which he realized would take her on a more direct route to her office.

He caught up with her just before she was about to descend in to the station. “Mademoiselle Laurent,
si’l vous plait?
”

The woman stopped and turned, curiosity, but no alarm on her oval face. Her chin was agreeably narrow, her cheekbones delicate and high, and her dark eyes very large. Her looks, figure, and bearing were movie-star quality.
“Oui?”

“Permit me. I am Pierre Gaulette. You do not know my name, but I have some information for you that may be distressing.”

She smiled. “You are perhaps a paparazzo with information to sell to me about my employer?” She looked around. “Where is your cameraman?”

“Actually I’m a private detective, who was hired not by your boss Monsieur Chatelet, but by Madame Chatelet.”

Her lips tightened. “I am sorry, but I have no idea what you are talking about,” she said disdainfully, and she turned to go.

“We have information about an organization that the mayor may somehow be involved with.”

She turned back.

“It may be a subversive organization that has no friends in the Élysée Palace. The fallout could spread.”

“What has this to do with me, or with Madame Chatelet?”

“You are the vice mayor’s mistress. Madame Chatelet knows this, of course, and she has asked me to approach you as a friend not as an enemy. I am here to help.”

“You’re making no sense,” Mme. Laurent said, and again she turned to go.

“This has to do with a great deal of money controlled by a secret society from which an extremely important document was stolen recently. The vice mayor can save himself. But naturally it would be impossible for me to approach him personally, and his wife wants to avoid a scandal and to keep her husband out of prison.”

Mme. Laurent had gone two steps down, but she looked up, morning commuters brushing past her. She didn’t look as certain as she had at first. “What document?”

Al-Rashid shook his head. “I’ve already said too much in public. We need to go somewhere so that we can talk. I’ll tell you everything I know, including who stole the document and its current location.”

Something else came into the woman’s eyes but just for a moment, and then she nodded. “My apartment isn’t far.”

“We may have to call the vice mayor.”

“You may be right, Monsieur—?”

“Gaulette.”

“From which agency?”

“That will have to wait, for the moment,” al-Rashid said, stepping aside for her.

When she came up he took her arm and they headed across the avenue, workday morning traffic now in full swing. She said nothing, nor did he wish to prompt her, though they could have discussed in details the plans for building a nuclear weapon and no one on the street would have paid them the slightest attention. And he had a feeling that she understood this as well as he did. Which was somewhat bothersome. Yet in his mind only another professional would not try to at least get a hint about what was happening.