Blood Pact (McGarvey) Read Online Free PDF Page B

bug McGarvey’s office so we have no idea what they talked about.”
    “What else?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe information about the Jornada del Muerto. But just because we thought Petain was coming to ask McGarvey for help finding the diary, doesn’t mean that’s what he did.”
    Now Donica was frustrated. “Then why did we kill the man? Why did we take the risk?”
    “Because those were our orders, my dear.”
    “The Society will send someone else.”
    “Perhaps,” Miranda said. “Or perhaps McGarvey will go in search of the diary, leaving us to follow him.”
    Donica went back to her salad making.
    “Where are the others?”
    “Alberto went down to check something on the boat, and Felix is wandering around outside. Or at least I think he is.” She looked up. “What about the two students who were killed?”
    “What about them?”
    “From Señor McGarvey’s profile he comes across as an honorable man.”
    “A contract killer.”
    “He is a teacher, Emilio. Maybe he cares more for his students than you think he does. Maybe collateral damage means something to him.”
    Miranda scowled. “Sentimentality has no place in this business.”
    “They were innocent kids. You said so yourself.”
    “I said they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He shrugged. “What’s done is done. From this point we concentrate on McGarvey to see what he does.”
    “What if he stays put?”
    “Then our job here is finished. We pack up and go home.”
    Donica stopped what she was doing and looked at him, an odd expression in her eyes. “But you don’t believe that.”
    “No,” Miranda said. “I too studied his profile. If Petain asked for help unraveling the mystery, it’s exactly what Señor McGarvey will do. It is in his nature.”
    “And the deaths of the students? Won’t that give him pause?”
    “On the contrary. Their deaths—senseless to his way of thinking—will spur him on.” Miranda shook his head. “Señor McGarvey will make his move, and it will be sooner than later, I suspect.”

 
    FIVE
     
    McGarvey dressed in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, went downstairs, and in the kitchen tried to figure out what he wanted for dinner—or even if he wanted anything to eat. He was unsettled not only because of the students’ deaths and how they had died, but about Petain’s story.
    He’d always tried to keep as low-key as possible, below as many radars as he could. But his name had been front and center in the public’s eye because of the business with the Spanish treasure just north of El Paso, and the huge crowd of Mexicans and Cubans that had crossed the border to claim it. But it hadn’t ended until the second confrontation, this one at the Fort Knox federal gold depository, with another crowd, mostly of Cubans—these people expats living in Miami. Both times there’d been no gold or silver. No treasure.
    Yet in the end Rencke had considered that there might be some truth to the legends. And so had María León, a colonel in the Cuban intelligence service.
    The computer in his study chimed. It was Otto.
    “You’ve got trouble coming your way,” he said, barely contained excitement in his voice.
    McGarvey switched off the light. “From the beginning,” he said.
    “The Voltaire Society exists and so does their bank in Paris. And oh, boy, what a fight those guys have been having with the Vatican and with the Spanish government.”
    “Is María León involved?”
    Otto was taken aback. “Has she contacted you again?”
    “No. I was just thinking about her.”
    “She’s not involved this time, at least her name hasn’t popped up. But the fight I’m talking about started in the early eighteen hundreds and has been going on ever since. And it’s intense, Mac. Honest injun’.”
    “The Spanish treasure?”
    “The one that everyone but you and I believe exists. Not only that, I found out that the Voltaire Society’s bank has actually been in existence since seventeen seventy-six