Authors: David Hagberg
“We’ve finally got a confirmation that what our KH-14 picked up on the coast just east of Havana about an hour and a half ago was a firefight at the DI’s ops director’s house, just like you thought it might be,” Battaglia said.
“How’s our confidence?”
“High.”
Bambridge glanced up at the clock mounted from the ceiling halfway down the room. “Anything from our other assets?”
“We’re sifting.”
A sour burn rose from Bambridge’s gut. “We should have heard by now if they got out. Christ.”
Battaglia’s phone buzzed, and he walked over to his desk and picked it up. After a brief conversation, he held out the phone. “I think you’ll want to take this. Line one.”
Bambridge answered. “Yes.”
“Marty, it’s Louise.”
Bambridge’s head instantly cleared. “Where are you?”
“Lincoln Memorial. A Metro D.C. cop found me about ten minutes ago, where I was dumped on the north side of the building, my hands and ankles and mouth taped.” Her words sounded slurred to Bambridge.
“Are you okay?”
“They didn’t beat me, but I’ve been drugged, and I’m still groggy. What about Otto, is he out?”
“We don’t know yet,” Bambridge said. “Are the cops still there?”
“Yeah, they want to take me to the hospital, but I have to come out to the Campus. Convince them.”
A moment later, a MPDC officer came on, and Bambridge identified himself. “I’ll have to confirm that, sir.”
“Of course. But in the meantime, how does Mrs. Rencke appear to you?”
“A little messed up, but actually not bad.”
“Has the FBI been notified?”
“Yes, sir. They’re sending someone to debrief her.”
“Fine. I want her taken to All Saints Hospital, no matter what she says. It’s in Georgetown.” The private hospital was used exclusively by U.S. intelligence officers—mostly CIA—hurt in the line of duty. The small staff was among the best anywhere in the world, as was the equipment.
The cop was impressed. “Yes, sir.”
“Let me talk to her again,” Bambridge said, and when she came back, he explained what would have to happen next. “For now, this has to be the Bureau’s case. You don’t know why you were kidnapped, except that you and your husband work for us, and you’re pretty sure that they were Hispanic. Nothing more than that.”
“I want to come in, goddamnit. It’s my husband we’re talking about.”
“Kirk is with him, he’ll be okay. But first I want the docs to check you out and as soon as you’re cleared, I’ll send a car for you. I need you to do this for me.”
Louise was silent for a moment. “Okay, I’ll do it. Here come the federales.”
“This’ll all work out,” Bambridge said. “All the shooting is over with for now.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?” Louise demanded. “What’s going on?”
“Anything comes up, I’ll let you know. Promise. But for now, you have to keep it together. This is important. Do you understand?”
“Let me know,” Louise said.
Bambridge hung up the phone and fished for a cigarette, when Battaglia motioned for him to pick up on two. It was McGarvey.
“Figured you’d be there,” McGarvey said, a lot of noise in the background. “But I’m using a nonsecure phone.”
“Where are you?”
“Just touching down in the Keys.”
Bambridge was relieved but irritated that Rencke, but especially McGarvey, had played it so loose. “I need both of you up here pronto for debriefing.”
“As soon as possible,” McGarvey said. “Any word about Louise?”
Bambridge wanted to insist, but he knew better. McGarvey was living up to his reputation as a loner, an independent operator, and Rencke would be even more impossible when he got back. “I just talked to her, she’s fine. They tied her up and dropped her off at the Lincoln Memorial a couple of hours ago. MPDC found her, and she called me. The Bureau’s with her now. When they’re done, we’re sending her to All Saints.”
“Soon as possible, let her know we’re back,” McGarvey said.
“Will do,” Bambridge said. “When can we expect you?”
But McGarvey broke the connection.
Bambridge held the phone in his tight fist for several beats.
You gotta go with the flow, ya know,
Rencke had told him a few months ago. Bambridge had come over from operations at the National Security Agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Page’s hire, and it was obvious to everybody from the get-go that he had the NSA mentality—a little aloofness, a sense of superiority.
Fight the battles you can win, and save everything else until later when you’ve gathered enough ammunition. Otherwise this place will eat you alive.
Capisce?
But Bambridge didn’t think he’d understood until just this instant. McGarvey and Otto were who they were, odd ducks, dangerous, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it, except follow the one other piece of advice he’d been given at the start, this from Page.
They’re valuable assets, Marty, but handle them with kid gloves and don’t be surprised what they bring back to you. Or how they deliver it.
Bambridge telephoned All Saints to give them the heads-up that Louise Horn was coming in, and asked them to tell her that her husband and Mr. McGarvey were out safely. “She’ll understand.”
Next he telephoned Walter Page on the DCI’s secure line at his home in McLean. “They’re back, and Louise has been released apparently unharmed.”
“Did Mac tell you what it was all about?”
“No, sir. Said they were just landing in the Keys, but he was calling from a nonsecure phone.”
“Did he agree to be debriefed?”
“Soon as possible, his words,” Bambridge said. “But it sounded like he was on a mission. Hung up on me.”
“Well, we’ll find out when the bodies start to pile up,” Page said.
“Already started. We tasked one of our birds to take a couple of passes over the island and picked up a firefight at the colonel’s compound. No doubt, it was McGarvey’s doing.”
“No doubt,” Page said. “Keep me posted, will you, Marty? No matter the time.”
“Yes, sir,” Bambridge said, and hung up, and he had to wonder what the hell was coming their way this time.
PART
THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
Martínez went to get something from his car, leaving McGarvey and Otto alone on the ramp with Ruiz for the moment. “There was a gunfight back there,” the bandy-legged pilot said. He looked serious, even angry, as if he wanted to break something.
“It was a rescue party Raúl arranged for us,” McGarvey said, and he knew what was coming next.
“They’re probably all dead by now. Or being interrogated, which amounts to about the same thing. Was it worth it?”
“To get my friend back, yes. Beyond that, I don’t know yet, but we’re going to work on it.”
Ruiz looked at Otto. “You have a good friend, but what the hell were you doing in Cuba?”
“The DI kidnapped my wife in Washington and said they would kill her unless I cooperated. The agency’s director of operations wanted to talk to me.”
“About what?”
“That part we have to leave out for now,” McGarvey said.
Martínez came back with a thick envelope and held it out to the pilot.
“Are you going to hurt the bastards?” Ruiz asked, eyeing the envelope but not taking it.
“We probably won’t hurt the government, but if it works out, we just might be able to help the people,” Otto said.
“What are your chances?”
Otto shrugged. “Slim at best. But we’re gonna try, ya know.”
“Fair enough,” Ruiz said, and looked at Martínez and shook his head. “If you’re wanting to pay me, give it to someone who can use it. I have all I need. And maybe the trip was worth it. I hope so.”
“The fight’s not over with yet,” Martínez said, and the pilot nodded, and some secret knowledge passed between them.
* * *
They headed back up the island to the Key Largo Sheraton, where McGarvey had left his bag and his sat phone, traffic nonexistent at this hour of the morning. Martínez took his time driving; he was troubled.
“There’ll be reprisals,” he said to McGarvey. “What was it all about? What the hell did the DI want with you? And why didn’t the air force come after us? We must have shown up on their radar.”
“Someone knew your people were going to hit the colonel’s compound.”
“No shit, Mac. It was Colonel León.”
“I don’t think so,” McGarvey said. “I have a feeling she might have been on her way back, and might have stumbled into the mess. It had to have been her who ordered Louise to be released and let us make our escape.”
“Speculation,” Martínez said. “Because the timing makes you wonder. But back from where?”
“I don’t know,” McGarvey admitted.
“From her father’s compound,” Otto said. “I think she went out there to see if she could find some private files or maybe even a journal or daybook or something before someone else from the government beat her to it.”
Otto was sitting in the backseat, and Martínez looked at him in the rearview mirror. “What was she looking for?”
“You’re better off staying out of this,” McGarvey said. “Because at this point, you’re right: All we have is mostly speculation.”
“Definitely fringe,” Otto agreed.
“When word about the ambush gets back to Miami, which it probably already has, two things are going to happen. First of all, I’m going to get nailed. People are going to want to know what the hell I was doing down there, because from their perspective, it was me who was responsible for the mess. And you know what, I am responsible. And the second is the DI pricks are going to be all over us to find out who was behind it. Me again, which is something I can handle. But people will want to know why. Was it worth it? The same things I want to know.”
“Better start from the beginning,” Otto told McGarvey. “Okay?”
And he was right. “Colonel León was called to Castro’s deathbed because she’s one of his illegitimate daughters, and he had a dying wish for her to find me and ask for my help.”
“Dios mío!”
Martínez said softly. “Help with what?”
“She didn’t know, and as a matter of fact, it was Otto who made the suggestion about the gold.”
“You’re not making much sense, Mr. M.”
McGarvey had not wanted to head in this direction, because in fact, they actually had very little to go on, but if the word got out, and it would, that there was the possibility of some fabulous treasure, there would be a stampede worse than any gold rush in history. A lot of people would get hurt. And yet Martínez had always been a steady hand, and because of his part last night, a lot of Cuban exiles in Miami would want answers that they deserved.
Starting with what Colonel León told them about her father’s dying words to bring McGarvey to Cuba for retribution and salvation, which was a complete mystery to her, to Otto’s suggestion about the gold possibly hidden somewhere in Mexico or perhaps the southern United States, McGarvey told Martínez essentially everything they’d learned.
“Apparently, it was an obsession of his,” Otto said. “He mentioned it both times he came to the UN.”
“If that’s what he meant on his deathbed,” Martínez said. “It’s thin.”
“But it fits with why she pulled this stunt,” McGarvey said. “And if Otto’s right about Fidel’s obsession, he might have kept files, or maybe even a diary, which is what I think the colonel was looking for last night. And I think she probably found something; otherwise, we would have been shot down before we’d left Cuban airspace.”
“What about the ambush? What makes you think she didn’t order it?”
“Her bodyguards who picked me up at the airport said they weren’t taking me downtown to DI headquarters, because they were in the middle of some kind of a faction fight,” Otto said. “But in order to pull off kidnapping Louise to lure me down to Havana, she must have confided in someone. Maybe her chief of staff. It could have been him who set up the ambush.”
“But why?” Martínez asked.
“A simple power play,” McGarvey said. “She’s a woman in a male chauvinist society, and she no longer has her father’s protection. If we’d been killed, she would have taken the fall. Probably the firing squad.”
“But they let us fly out of there.”
“She has her enemies, but she’s a bright, well-connected woman. And right now, we may just be her best hope for survival.”
Martínez was silent for the rest of the way until he pulled into the Sheraton’s driveway and parked away from the lights. “So let’s say, for the sake of argument, that there is this pile of gold buried somewhere. Maybe even somewhere in the Southwest—New Mexico or someplace. How do we find it, and what happens next? Because it sure as hell wouldn’t be turned over to Raúl Castro and his cronies, even if they could prove a legitimate claim against a third of it.”
“That’s what Colonel León wants to happen,” Otto said. “Be a feather in her cap. She’d be a star, untouchable, ya know.”
“If she lives that long,” McGarvey said. “Once it gets out what she did to get us down there, and then let us fly away, her own people will arrest her, and then it’ll just be a matter of time—maybe only a few hours—before they get the entire story.”
“That could be easily arranged,” Martínez said darkly. “So are you going to try to find the gold, or do you think it’s a fantasy?”
“I don’t think it’s a fantasy,” McGarvey said. On the flight across, he’d done a lot of thinking about it, and he’d come to a couple of conclusions, both of which addressed Martínez’s, “What next?” Because the treasure would certainly never be shipped to Havana. Not even a tiny portion of it. Washington would be perceived as supporting the regime. The Cuban exiles in Miami and across the rest of the country would in all likelihood rise up en masse, maybe riot like the blacks did in Detroit and L.A. in the seventies. Or at the very least rebel as a voting bloc.
Which had given him an idea. One that would be next to impossible to pull off, but one that had a certain symmetry because of something that Otto had told Colonel León.