Undeceived (23 page)

“I can’t get a clear shot! Move, goddamn it, move!”

She heard the roar again, but never saw the knife complete its fatal mission. Darcy held it high, covered in blood. As the ocean water turned red around Collins’s twitching body, Darcy plunged Georgina’s kitchen knife into the ground beside him and slumped over.

She dropped the gun and raced toward him as he crawled away from Collins. They collided, searching each other’s bodies for wounds, then stumbled toward Georgina’s, still lying on the sand by the stairs.

“She’s breathing,” Elizabeth gasped, her throat still on fire.

Darcy sat on the sand. As he watched Elizabeth bring Georgina back to consciousness, the sky opened, and the tears he wept in relief were hidden by the rain.

Chapter 34

Langley, Virginia

The three of them, Darcy, Elizabeth, and Georgina, sat around the director’s mahogany conference table on the seventh floor.

“This is over. Collins is dead,” Elizabeth insisted.

“It’s not over, not by a long shot.”

“You don’t have any leads on who he worked for. There’s no other place for this investigation to go.”

“Ah, but there you’re wrong.” The director handed them a report. “From the FBI’s search of Collins’s apartment, based in part on your colleague Charlotte’s casework. How is she doing by the way?”

Elizabeth smiled in spite of the seriousness of the conversation. “On the mend. Her head injuries, thankfully, won’t have long-term effects. She lost a lot of blood, but they were able to bring her out of the coma after a couple of days.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

Darcy spoke up. “It says here Collins’s pocket litter indicated the KGB handler was his father’s colleague from Cuba. Are we looking for one of the former Cuban rebels?”

“We don’t know yet. But perhaps we can find this man.”

“How?”

“We have received preliminary information from the FBI. They have begun debriefing Ms. Lucas. Details are still forthcoming, but it appears she was attacked while following Collins to his drop location. Now that we know that location, we simply make a drop and see if we get a nibble. It’s a long shot but worth a try.”

“Director…” Darcy locked gazes with Elizabeth for courage. “I think perhaps I should be the person to do that.”

“Why?”

“Collins told Elizabeth his mission was to turn me.” Elizabeth squeezed his hand under the table. “I have a story to tell you.” Darcy took a breath and began his tale. “For a long time I didn’t think it mattered, but these things have a way of bubbling to the surface. I should know that, but if you coexist with secrecy long enough, it can start to seem like a normal way of life. Many times you don’t see the danger of it until it’s almost too late.”

“Okay, you’ve got my attention.”

“I was approached several years ago, indirectly, about providing classified CIA information to the other side. I have reason to suspect that Collins’s handler was the same man who was behind that overture.”

“Sounds like an interesting story.”

“It begins with a discussion I had when I first joined the agency.”

***

Darcy forced himself to remember that long-ago conversation with his father—one that forged an irreparable wedge between father and son and divided them forever.

“I need your help, son. I’ve left something…valuable behind in Czechoslovakia. Something I can’t retrieve without assistance.”

“I’m just starting at the agency. I don’t think I have the connections to help you.”

“Perhaps not on your own, but I know someone…an old colleague, a friend, from the Cuban invasion. He says he knows people who can help me retrieve my…valuables, but he needs information. Information you can provide.”

“Hold it, Dad. Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You have a friend, a colleague—”

“Former colleague.”

“Former colleague, who wants information only I can provide on…”

“Just information. On spies, traitors to their country. Whoever you run across in Britain, France, anyone anywhere that might be helping the US.”

Darcy stared at his father in shock. “You’ve got to be shitting me. What you’re asking…good God, Dad. It’s treason! What could possibly be so important that you’d be tempted to risk everything—your life—hell,
my
life for it?”

“It’s very valuable. I can’t explain right now. I’m working on legal channels to extract it, but as a backup, if you could just meet with him…talk to him. It might be enough to get what I need out of Prague. And then you’re free and clear. You don’t ever need to talk to him again, if you don’t want.”

“You’re insane. I’m not risking my life for some property you left behind on a business trip. I ought to turn you in right now.”

“For what? I hadn’t seen this man for years until I contacted him a few months ago. I’m not any part of what he’s doing. I’m just telling you the cost of his assistance. So, you should think carefully before you say anything to your agency. That would kill your career before it’s even begun.

“William, it’s not just ‘some property.’ I know what I’m asking. It’s not as if I’m proud of it. You don’t need to tell this man anything substantial right now. Just talk to him. He’ll pay handsomely just for a meeting with you.”

“You think I’d do this—for money? It’s treason, and you can go straight to Hell!”

There was a long silence as the two men stared at each other, one with fury in his eyes, the other with desperation. Finally, George Darcy looked away.

“You’re right. I shouldn’t have asked you. Forget I mentioned it. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Darcy finished his story, taking in the director’s wide-eyed incredulity. “But I couldn’t really forget, and he knew it. It was the last time we ever spoke.”

“Why is this the first time we’ve heard about this situation, Darcy?”

“I don’t know. Mostly because, within four months of that conversation, the old man was dead of a heart attack, and it no longer seemed to matter. To my knowledge, he never pursued the contact, and I certainly didn’t participate. I was off in Europe on assignment.”

“If it didn’t matter, why not report it?”

“My own pride, I suppose. Embarrassment. Fear. And I didn’t understand his desperation then. Once I found out what the ‘thing of great value’ was”—Darcy glanced at his sister—“my anger toward the old man softened. I could empathize more with a frantic man who had a child trapped behind an iron curtain.

“However, it was a mistake on my part not to report it. The fact remains that I knew there was a man somewhere who was in a position to recruit a CIA officer. I knew because he tried for me that one time through my father and, according to Collins, one time through Anneliese Vandenburg. Now that we know Collins’s history, I assume this man succeeded in turning him.”

“As far as you knew at the time, that discussion with your father was the end of it?”

“It was. I knew nothing about this recruiter, nothing—no name, no location, nothing, except that he was male and about my father’s age. Look, everyone knows these recruiters are out there, that they exist. And I think we all know that, regardless of my innocence, with my history of being investigated by counterintelligence, this situation is a career-killer for me. If I stay with the agency, I’ll never be free of the stigma.”

“It would be troubling to any department, I have to admit.”

“I want to stress that I’ve done nothing wrong. Except be born to a philandering, mercenary shipping magnate. Sins of the fathers, indeed.” He covered Georgina’s hand with his own. “There was good that came from it—good that’s sitting here with us today. But I think Ina could also say she suffered for our father’s mistakes—much more than I.”

Two weeks later, after cutting his own deal with the CIA brass, Darcy loaded the drop described by Charlotte Lucas.

***

Darcy waited at the Chinese Pavilion inside the National Arboretum, perched on a park bench. Precisely at 3:12 p.m., a man in a tam, checked shirt, and khaki trousers sat beside him and opened a paper. He wore sunglasses and a mustache.

“Good afternoon, William. I have to say, you’re the spitting image of your father.”

“You knew my father?”

“Quite well actually. Back in the old days before the Bay of Pigs. And some after. He patched me up, sent me home.”

“Are you the man he wanted me to talk to when I first joined the agency?”

“Let’s just say I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you, William. A very long time.”

“You handled Collins.”

“While he could be handled, I did. Then he derailed, and I couldn’t control him anymore. He was the spitting image of his father too. Self-destructive.”

“You knew John Collins from his work with Operation Zapata?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“I have to know, what made you do this? You’re an American. What made you turn on your country?”

“See now, you’re talking like a damn patriot. A Company Man. I’ll have to bleed that out of you somehow.”

“It’s a reasonable question.”

The man chuckled. “I suppose it is. What made me turn on my country? The short answer is: the same thing that will make you turn on yours. In essence, my country turned on me. Left me there to die with the others betrayed on Playa Giron. Second and third degree burns on my back and legs. Once I finally made it back home, it made me sick to hear the whole country idolize Kennedy. He let his intelligence officers and the Cuban rebels dive into a secret war. Then he washed his hands of them all. Pulled back all the air support. We called and called until we could call no more, and no help came.

“Then, after it all blew to hell, the CIA shoved aside the officers involved, tossed them out like bad apples. Bill Collins knew all about that. His father lost his career, lost everything, tried to drown his misery in a bottle—but the bottle drowned him instead. Well, I wasn’t going down that road. My career at the CIA was over.” He beamed a smile over his newspaper. “So I re-invented myself. Made a new career, a new life—one where I was well-paid for a change.”

“I understand, I guess. A little bit. The CIA shunned me after Prague, and my career was dead in the water after that. Just took me a while to see it. I don’t want to end up like Collins, either one of them.”

“John Collins had an unstable streak. Unfortunately, he passed that instability down to his son. Young Bill could have just taken the KGB’s money and run, but the money wasn’t enough after a while. He wanted
respect
or some such nonsense. Then he developed that obsession with the East German girl. A man who can’t be controlled by money—well, he can’t be controlled at all. He drives his own boat, so to speak, for good or for ill.”

“My father didn’t fit that mold.”

“No. George Darcy was a man of substance. He didn’t let the Bay of Pigs ruin him or his shipping business. He had the financial means and the psychological fortitude to weather the storm. He even helped a few of us out along the way. Helped me ‘re-enter civilian life’ better than any VA man because he helped me set up my own business.”

“Did he know what your ‘business’ was?”

“I think he was smart enough to figure out what was under the surface. And then he was smart enough to turn a blind eye. We avoided each other for the most part.”

“Until I joined the agency.”

“The man was tough until he found that by-blow daughter of his. Then he crumbled like a stale cookie. He came blubbering to me—after years without a word from him—to ask me for my help.”

“You owed him. He brought you home.”

“No.” The old man’s voice sharpened. “He owed me. I almost died getting his cargo to Cuba. It’s not my fault it never reached its destination.”

“You used my father—or tried to.”

“I did. But no more than I’ve used many others over the years. You’ve done the same. We use people all the time. Use them up and spit them out.”

They were silent for a minute. Finally, the older man went on.

“Just so we’re clear, you and I. I know that Collins is gone. Most likely he’s dead. I’ve been in this business long enough to know that chances are better than even that this overture of yours is a trap. That you are less than sincere, shall we say, in your offer.”

“I told you: Collins gave you up. I thought you might be my father’s former contact, so I searched Collins’s place first before the FBI got there. That’s how I found the drop location.”

“How did you know about the search?”

“I have…a contact. She said…”

“She?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Interesting.”

“If you think this is a trap, why are you here talking to me?”

The older man shrugged. “It’s worth the risk. You’re the coup de grace, young man. The finishing touch on an almost twenty-year run. I’m an old man. I’ve served my handlers and my own interests well. And I’m willing to take the chance that you are a bona fide asset. I know I haven’t been successful so far, but who knows? Perhaps the third time’s the charm. What you could do for the KGB is astounding. So, are you interested at all in what they can offer you?”

“I suppose that depends on what they can offer me.”

“Money?”

“I don’t need money, but I would take money—as a symbol of their respect. How much
respect
could I command?”

“You cough up the names of CIA assets overseas? You could command a lot.”

“In cash, correct? I don’t want to leave a paper trail.”

“Definitely. We’ll set up some procedures and a new drop location at our next meeting. I’m too old to sit on these infernal park benches for long.”

“Suit yourself. You’re the boss.”

“I like you, William. I always have.”

“Since all of ten minutes ago?”

The man chuckled. “We’ve met before perhaps. You’re not the only one who’s a master of disguise.”

“What should I call you?”

“How about—Pops?” He stood and stretched, his hands on his lower back. “Check our current drop in a month for instructions.”

He ambled slowly up the path, a slight limp in his step.

Darcy sat for several minutes, staring without seeing at the trees and flowers, certain that this would be his last CIA mission.

He was going to despise it.