Critical Mass (34 page)

Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Critical Mass

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SPRANGER'S HORRIBLY BURNED LEFT ARM AND COLLARBONE broke in the fall down the stairs, and at the bottom his face smashed into the stone floor, crushing his nose and both cheekbones with a grinding agony.

For a seeming eternity he just lay there, sounds echoing interminably in his head.

But he was alive and conscious, though just barely, his world spinning, a deep nausea rising up making him gag and almost vomit.

“Christus, Christus,”
he muttered wetly, spraying the floor with blood as he tried to push himself upright with his wounded right arm.

The instant shot of sharply localized pain was like a burst of adrenalin to his system, momentarily clearing his head and his vision.

The detonator, its plastic case cracked, lay on the stone floor about two yards away. Spranger started to pull himself toward it, everything within his being concentrating on the one thing: On the electronic device, on revenge.

McGarvey had brought him to this. The one man. And he would suffer the consequences of his actions. If he was still alive. If Magda hadn't killed him: She'd managed to shoot.

He cocked an ear, but there was no gunfire for the moment. If McGarvey were dead, killing his wife and daughter wouldn't matter. But he would do it anyway, and in the doing he would be striking a double blowâat McGarvey, and at that bitch Liese. If she'd simply kept her mouth shut about the women being gone â¦

Spranger stopped for just a moment and turned that stray thought over in his head. Liese had said something about the women being gone. But that was impossible. They could not have escaped from their cell. And even if they had, they couldn't have gone anywhere.

She was mistaken. It couldn't be.

Suddenly Liese was there, above him, concern written all over her face. “We must get out of here now, Ernst,” she told him. “There are others coming.”

“Get the detonator,” Spranger croaked, blood slobbering down his chin and the front of his tattered jumpsuit.

“What are you talking about?” she cried, glancing nervously up the stairs.

“I want to blow the tower.”

“They're gone, you fool!”

“No,” Spranger growled, the single word torn in anguish from the back of his throat. “I won't allow it.” He looked up into her eyes. “Liese, please. It's all I ask. We'll push the button and then we'll get out of here. Together. We'll regroup and finish the Japanese project. It's all still possible, but you must help me.”

“I'll help you,” Liese said, resignedly. She got the detonator and then helped him to his feet. “We'll go overland, and hide in the mountains until it's safe.”

“Do it, Liese. Do it!”

McGarvey huddled behind the overturned pews, the breath knocked out of him. He had taken two hits from behind, one in the left shoulder, the bullet exiting cleanly just below his collarbone, and the other, much more painful wound, in the meat of his right thigh.

Once again he understood that Spranger had outthought him, although he was certain that he'd hit the East German general at least once.

The ringing was back in his ears, and between that and his ragged breath whistling in his throat, it was becoming increasingly difficult to concentrate on anything. He wanted
simply to close his eyes and sleep. He wanted peace, something he'd not had for a very long time.

As he went down he'd managed to get off a second burst before his weapon either jammed or ran out of ammunition. He was too tired to find out which. But he'd got the impression of Spranger falling back. At least that's what he thought it had been, but lying here in the darkness he wasn't sure of what he'd seen; or, in fact, if he'd seen anything.

He'd heard a woman's voice. But just now it was difficult to recall exactly what she'd said.

“McGarvey,” someone shouted from below, on the floor of the nave. Spranger? It was a man's voice.

McGarvey struggled to sit up. He pulled the Kalashnikov over to him. The ejector slide was locked in the open position, the breech empty.

“Mr. McGarvey?” someone else called from below. This time it was a woman. Her English had British intonations, but the accent was definitely German.

“Bastards,” McGarvey shouted, the effort causing a shooting pain in his side.

“Listen,” the man called.
“Sagen Sie, aufwiedersehen.”

“Bastards,” McGarvey shouted again, when a huge explosion a long way off shook the very foundation of the church. Kathleen and Elizabeth. McGarvey was galvanized.

Dropping the Kalashnikov, he clawed the Walther from his holster, switched the safety off, cocked the hammer and clambered to his feet.

“Come back,” he shouted, lurching toward the balustrade.

Something crashed into one of the pews behind him, and he swung around, getting off a snap shot with his last round at a black figure rising up, as it fired its assault rifle on full automatic.

A THIRTY-FOOT SECTION OF THE RESIDENCE BUILDING'S OUTER wall was simply gone, the upper floors of the tower, including the area in which the women had been held, gone also.

Lipton and Tyrell huddled behind a pile of smoking debris just off the great hall waiting for Wasley to report back. He'd gone down to the dock to make sure that no one had been hurt in the blast, and see if that avenue of escape was still open to them.

The gunfire they'd heard just after the explosion had stopped, and the only sounds now were the wind howling through the jagged opening and the sea crashing against the rocks five hundred feet below.

“I don't like it,” Tyrell said. “McGarvey has to understand the significance of the explosion, if he heard it. But there's been no response.”

“Don't write him off yet, Frank,” Lipton replied. “You didn't see his file. I did, and it's damned impressive. Bob is no slouch either.”

“They're only two.”

Wasley came through the corridor door and hurried across the great hall, crouching down beside them. He was winded from the climb. “A section of the dock was buried, but they're okay,” he said. “Joslow said he's going to hold up there, unless you tell him differently. He's called Ops for help.”

“Good,” Lipton said. They'd decided against using walkie-talkies because they'd not counted on being separated, and they'd wanted to keep unsecured communications
to an absolute minimum. He could see that it had been a mistake. “How are the women holding up?”

“Joslow and Reid have got their hands full, sir. The younger one says she's not leaving the island until she finds out about her father.”

“What's Ops' ETA over the dock?”

“Unknown. Joslow thinks they're waiting for authorization. Word from Athens is that the Greek authorities are beginning to stir.”

“Then we'd better get the hell out of here on the double,” Lipton said.

They crawled over the pile of debris, their weapons at the ready, and ducked into the corridor that ran the length of the monastery complex toward the courtyard and the desconsecrated church at the front.

Leapfrogging, Lipton first, Wasley second and Tyrell taking up the rear, they hurriedly worked their way forward. Every doorway, every corner, every set of stairs were places of possible ambush and had to be approached with extreme caution.

But nothing moved. There was no gunfire, no signs, except for the lingering stench of the burning chopper, that the monastery was anything but a abandoned center of study and worship.

Lipton held up at the final junction, the corridor ending in a
T
, the intersecting hallway much narrower. Directly across from where they crouched, a window looking onto the courtyard had blown out. The last of the flames were dying down, nothing identifiable left of the helicopter except for a section of the tail and tail rotor.

The heat had been so intense that lead holding the window panes in place had melted and formed small gray pools on the floor. Even the stone walls inside the corridor had been blackened, and the thick framing timbers in the walls and ceilings had caught fire and were still smoldering in places.

To the right the narrower hallway ended at a door that opened into the nave of the main church.

Lipton pointed that way, then keeping low, darted across
the corridor, to a spot just beneath the window, and motioned for Wasley to follow.

Tyrell was the first at the doorway, and he held up until Lipton joined him, this time with Wasley acting as backup.

On signal the two of them rolled into the nave, left and right, Wasley immediately taking up a position to cover them from the corridor.

But nothing moved here either, except for the wind and rain that came through an open door at the front of the church.

Crouching in the darkness Lipton stared at the open door for a moment or two. Someone had left the church? In a hurry?

Turning back, he spotted the three bodies just beneath the balcony; one in the middle and one at the foot of the stairs on either side. It was obvious even from a distance of twenty-five or thirty feet that they were dead.

Lipton zigzagged to the east stairway. When he was in place he motioned for Tyrell to take the west stairway, and for Wasley to remain where he was.

Whatever had happened here was bloody and final. Lipton wasn't at all sure he wanted to know what was upstairs on the balcony, but he figured that McGarvey had probably made his stand here â¦ and lost?

He pointed up, and he and Tyrell started up the stairs at the same time; silently, their weapons at the ready.

The balcony was mostly in darkness now that the flames from the courtyard had died down, so it took Lipton several moments to regain his night vision. When he did he nearly staggered backward off-balance.

McGarvey, blood streaming from several wounds in his neck, face and body, stood in the shadows, the heavy Kalashnikov assault rifle held over his head like a club, ready to smash Lipton's head.

Slowly, he lowered the rifle, and managed a slight smile. “Kathleen and Elizabeth?” he asked, his voice barely audible.

“Safe,” Lipton said.

“Then let's get out of here. I could use a drink.”

BOOK FOUR

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
JULY 16, 1992

ROLAND MURPHY WATCHED FROM HIS SEVENTH-FLOOR OFFICE at CIA Headquarters as the sun came up on what promised to be a beautiful day. His mood, he decided, should be expansive, instead it was dark with worry.

Unable to sleep, he'd had his driver bring him back at four this morning, and he'd had the overnight supervisor bring him up to speed. The world situation was reasonably calm; no major wars or conflicts involving American interests, no serious threats to any of their in-place networks, no crises needing immediate attention.

Nothing doing, in fact, except for the situation they'd hired McGarvey to investigate. It had not changed. The threat still existed, but no one had so much as a clue what to do about it.

Murphy's secretary wasn't here yet, so he got an outside line himself and called the fifth-floor isolation ward at Bethesda National Naval Medical Center.

“This is Roland Murphy. If you need to confirm that, I'm at my office. I'll instruct the Agency operator to put your call through.”

“I'm Dr. Singh, and that won't be necessary, Mr. Director, I recognize your voice.”

“How is your patient?”

“We've had him here for less than twelve hours,” the doctor said cautiously. “But he is by all appearances a singularly remarkable man. He is already on the mend.”

“How long?”

“For what, General?”

“Until he will be fit to resume his â¦ duties.”

“Under normal circumstances, three months, perhaps four,” Dr. Singh said. “But if his presence is of vital importance, all other considerations secondary, I would say six weeks at the minimum.”

“Is he conscious?” Murphy asked, masking his bitter disappointment. McGarvey was a man after all, not a superman.

“Oh, yes, he is very much conscious. He refuses all pain medications and sedatives.”

“Someone will be along this morning to interview him,” Murphy said.

“Seven days.”

“This morning.”

“General, I could refuse you.”

“I think not,” Murphy said. “But we'll wait until this afternoon. We'll give you that much time.”

“Him, General, not me. You need to give him time to heal.”

Murphy called a meeting for his top three at 8:30 A.M. in the small dining room adjacent to his office. Besides the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Lawrence Danielle, the Deputy Director of Intelligence Tommy Doyle and of course the Deputy Director of Operations Phil Carrara, CIA General Consul Howard Ryan was at the breakfast gathering.

Murphy dropped the bombshell.

“I was told earlier this morning that McGarvey will recover from his wounds, but he'll be out of commission for at least six weeks, perhaps longer.”

“Shit,” Carrara swore crudely, but he noticed out of the corner of his eye that Ryan had a smug look. “Then whatever did or did not happen on Santorini, K-1 was successful. They wanted him off the case, and that's what they got.”

“It would seem so,” Murphy answered heavily. “He's awake and apparently coherent. Phil, I want you to go over
there this afternoon and talk to him. He must have seen or heard something that'll be of use to us.”

“Yes, sir,” Carrara said. “In the meantime we've come up with a tentative identification on the woman that Elizabeth described for us.” He took several black and white glossy photos from a file folder and passed them across the table to Murphy. “Her name is Liese Egk.”

“Former STASI?” Murphy asked, studying the photos, then passing them over to Danielle.

“Yes. Her speciality is assassination.”

Danielle's eyebrows rose, and Ryan took the photos with interest.

“Still no trace of her or Ernst Spranger?”

“None,” Carrara said. “The Greeks are, needless to say, oversensitive just now. Apparently there were two local businessmen who somehow got involved, and got themselves killed, in addition to the two fishermen whose boat was found abandoned in the port of Thira.”

“The Navy wants to be keyed in to what we're doing,” Danielle said softly. “Admiral Douglas telephoned yesterday afternoon after you'd already gone for the day. One of their boys was killed on the island.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That we'd get back to him, but that the young man definitely did not give his life on some fool's errand.”

“That'll have to do for now,” Murphy said. “If he presses, invite him over for lunch. I'll talk to him then.”

There was a momentary silence that Tommy Doyle finally broke.

“Which brings us back to Tokyo. We're getting a lot of mixed signals from the Japanese on the official as well as the unofficial level.”

“What about the news media?”

“So far they've been relatively silent about the killings, which in itself is spooky.”

They were all looking at Doyle.

“What are you trying to say, Tommy?” Murphy asked.

“It's my guess that whatever is going on has at least the tacit approval of someone at ministry level or higher.”

“Tough charge,” Ryan suggested, but Murphy ignored the comment.

“It's time we pulled Kelley Fuller out of there,” the DCI said. “With McGarvey out of commission she's on her own.”

“You don't mean to write off our Tokyo station,” Carrara said. “Not now, General.”

“We'll have to restaff. There's not much else for it. In the meantime it's possible that McGarvey's action on Santorini scared them off, or at least delayed their plans.”

“Six weeks is a long time,” Doyle said.

“Send someone else,” Ryan suggested.

“Who?” Murphy asked bluntly.

“I don't know. We must have a Japanese expert on staff somewhere who could make some quiet inquiries for us.”

No one said a thing.

“We don't have to send a maniac whose solution to every problem seems to be shooting up the local citizenry.”

“Right,” Murphy said. He turned back to Carrara. “As soon as you talk to McGarvey get back to me, would you, Phil?”

“Yes, sir,” Carrara said. “Maybe we'll have something by then.”