The Controller

by Matt Brolly

  Check Shirt’s face reddened, deepening into a dangerous looking shade of purple as he lunged for Razinski again. Two of his colleagues had reached the scene and were trying to tear Razinski from the SWAT team.

  Rose withdrew her firearm. ‘What the hell is going on?’ she shouted.

  The police officers stopped their attack. Check Shirt glared at her as if she was somehow to blame. ‘You know what he did,’ he said.

  ‘Let us handle it now. He’ll get what’s coming to him.’ Rose softened her voice but left an edge to it so the officers were under no illusion about who was in charge. Captain Haig left the van. One look and his team dispersed.

  Razinski smirked as the officers retreated.

  Rose didn’t speak as Razinski was cuffed and bundled into the back of the secure van, accompanied by one of her team. She turned to see the ashen face of Phelan staring at her from the front door of the house. She walked over, and nodded to him to check he was ok. ‘Seal this entrance,’ she instructed one of Haig’s deputies. ‘No one is to enter until they have my clearance.’

  ‘Prepare yourself,’ warned Phelan, accompanying her into the house.

  She sensed it immediately. She’d visited hundreds of crime scenes in her time, and it was always the same. Stillness seeped through the house, a sense that something had changed irrevocably. Her stomach muscles clenched, a tight feeling spreading across her chest.

  ‘The master bedroom,’ said Phelan.

  She tried to ignore the photographs adorning the walls next to the staircase. She caught glimpses of stylized photos, individual portraits of each family member, and one larger picture of the family together. Her eyes betrayed her and she lingered on the picture of the young daughter, smiling at the camera as if nothing could ever hurt her.

  The smell guided her to the bedroom. One of the SWAT team guarded the door. He stood aside, failing to look her in the eye. Rose held her breath and entered the crime scene.

  She’d already known by Phelan’s reaction that the whole family had been slaughtered but she wasn’t prepared for what she saw.

  She took in the whole scene in one glance. The mother and children were tied to chairs in a line. Each was gagged, a tear across their necks. They faced a fourth chair where the decapitated body of their father sat, his head stuck between his legs like a sick Halloween doll.

  Rose didn’t need ERTU, the Bureau’s evidence response team, to check the bodies. She knew the family had witnessed the decapitation before being killed. ‘Ok, get ERTU in,’ she told the guard.

  She followed Phelan downstairs trying not to rush. The fresh air hit her like a slap. She took a couple of seconds to compose herself and continued working.

  ‘All of them?’ asked Haig, resigned to the fact.

  Rose nodded. ‘I think he killed them before he tried to leave last time.’ She’d requested that Razinski allow the mother to speak to them but he’d refused. Rose couldn’t suppress a shudder as she thought about the family being forced to witness the decapitation of the father. What it must have done to them, how long they must have sat in terror with that image ingrained in their visions, waiting for their fate.

  ERTU had arrived and were being briefed by Phelan. ‘I want to be present for all questioning with Razinski,’ demanded Haig. He had a towering presence, and Rose sensed the man’s natural authority. He’d been nothing but reasonable considering the events and she understood how his team would follow him unwaveringly.

  ‘You can accompany me to the offices. I’ll do as much as I can.’

  One of the SWAT team, Trevor Khatri, joined them. ‘Excuse me, Ma’am, we’ve discovered something you might want to see.

  Haig accompanied her to the van. Khatri opened the back doors. Razinski sat on the right hand side. His arms and legs were chained to a steel bar running the length of the van. A second SWAT member sat opposite him. ‘Lean forward,’ ordered Khatri.

  Razinski smirked but didn’t move. Khatri looked at Rose and she nodded. Khatri placed his forearm on the back of Razinski’s neck and shoved him forward. Razinski didn’t fight, his smirk a constant on his face.

  Khatri pulled the man’s shirt up revealing a crude marking on Razinski’s back. It was half tattoo, half scar tissue. The image looked like a ladder or a train track. Two parallel vertical lines had been carved on Razinski’s back from his neck to his waist. Rose counted the horizontal lines joining the two lines. The lines were welt-like, colored blue. Rose numbered them as eighteen.

  ‘What am I looking at?’ asked Haig.

  ‘A myth,’ said Rose.

  3

  Lynch was used to false starts, and empty leads. It had plagued his time as an agent, and had only become worse since. He’d never completely given up hope that his son was alive, would never do so until the day he died or the day he saw his son again. But he could treat it only as that. Hope. Nothing Lennox told him changed the fact that it was the loosest of leads. The hostage taker, Razinski, had mentioned both his name and his son’s. He’d told the agent in charge that Daniel Lynch was alive.

  Hope.

  Lennox left him alone to call the agents at the scene. The two SWAT agents looked away. Once his breathing returned to something close to normal, Lynch retrieved his laptop. Uploading a piece of software, he entered Razinski’s details. The search results were empty.

  ‘Razinski surrendered. They have him in custody,’ said Lennox, hanging up his phone.

  Lynch shut the laptop. ‘The family?’

  Lennox shook his head.

  ‘I’ll get changed.’

  After showering, Lynch retrieved a packed suitcase from the bottom of his wardrobe. He removed the three forged passports, five stacks of dollars, and two handguns, and placed them in his safe. He stared at his phone, trying his best not to think about his son.

  Daniel had gone missing six years ago, aged seven. Lynch left the FBI a few months later.

  He picked up the phone and called his ex-wife, Sally. ‘Hello, stranger,’ she said.

  ‘Hi.’ He couldn’t face small talk at the moment. ‘Listen, I’m going away for a few days.’

  ‘Okay, thanks for the update.’ She sounded bemused, but her tone remained soft.

  ‘What?’ said Lynch.

  ‘Well, I haven’t seen you for four months, Sam. I’m a bit surprised you’re updating me about your movements.’

  Lynch gripped the receiver. Everything he wanted to tell her became lost in the rage rising within him.

  ‘What is it, Sam?’

  He couldn’t tell her about Daniel. It was almost definitely a hoax, the Razinski character having read up on the case and using him as a bargaining chip. Not that Sally would have listened anyway. She hadn’t exactly given up on Daniel but had come, in her own words, to an acceptance.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Lynch, realizing he’d been holding his breath. ‘I might be out of contact for a time that’s all.

  ‘Sam, you can come see me at any time. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I know,’ said Lynch, hanging up.

  Lynch opened up a second laptop from the sideboard in his bedroom and downloaded some documents onto a flash drive. He hesitated, staring at a chest of drawers in the far corner of the room. He didn’t know how long he’d be away, when he’d next return to his apartment. His hands shook as opened the top drawer and pulled out a woolen garment.

  It was little more than a rag now, a piece of lifeless material. Daniel had been wearing it the day before he’d disappeared, an innocent seven year old unaware of how his life was about to be changed forever. In the last six years not a day went by where Lynch hadn’t gazed at the pullover. He placed the material to his face, inhaling the fabric, before placing it in a holdall.

  Lennox and his team were waiting downstairs. They’d made themselves comfortable, sitting around the kitchen table as if waiting for a meal. Lennox held a touch screen tablet in front of him and was studying the screen with intense purpose.

  ‘Angry birds
?’ said Lynch.

  ‘Completed that years ago. Come have a look. Some images of this Razinski guy you might find interesting.’

  Lennox handed him the tablet, his eyes wide in anticipation. ‘Any luck tracing who he actually is?’ asked Lynch, trying not to respond to what he saw on the screen.

  Lynch squeezed the image on the tablet and scrutinized the image. It was a Railroad tattoo. Carved by machete onto the man’s back, colored by blue tattoo ink. Two long parallel lines stretched the length of Razinski’s back interspersed with a number of horizontal lines joining the two lines together.

  ‘There are eighteen sleepers if you’re interested,’ said Lennox, pointing to the thin horizontal lines.

  Lynch glanced at the FBI agent. In the past six years, he’d tracked down three other people with similar tattoos. The sleepers, the ties connecting the tracks, were meant, as far as Lynch had been able to ascertain, to symbolize a kill. Of the three men with the matching tattoos Lynch uncovered, one had seven sleepers, one seventeen, and the other twenty-one. All proved to be false starts - copycats of a rumor, an urban legend. Under severe duress, the three men confessed the tattoos were elaborate fakes, created by the same tattoo artist.

  In turn, Lynch tracked down the tattoo artist, an elderly man by the name of Cooper. Cooper explained to Lynch how he’d created the effect on the three men; the techniques he’d used to desecrate their bodies with his barbaric practice. Also under duress, Cooper denied any link to the Railroad. That it was a joke, a request by the three men he’d obliged for money. Lynch informed the tattoo artist that he would no longer be involved in such obligations, and helped him to agree by shattering both his hands.

  Lynch was used to false starts, but the image on the screen was different to those three tattoos. The ragged lines of the Railroad tracks and sleepers were visceral. Each sleeper uneven, the resulting welts different sizes. It looked disjointed, as if the work was completed over a number of years. As if someone had taken the occasional knife to the man’s back.

  ‘You think it’s the real thing?’ asked Lennox.

  ‘Depends what the real thing is, I guess,’ said Lynch.

  Lynch scrolled through the images on the tablet until he came to Razinski’s face.

  ‘Recognize him?’ asked Lennox.

  Lynch shook his head, not taking his eyes off the image of Razinski. The man had a slim, gaunt face. His cheeks were well defined, his blue eyes bulging from their sockets. The man’s hands were cuffed but he smiled for the camera as if on a photo-shoot. ‘I’ve never seen him before,’ said Lynch, unable to hide the disappointment in his voice.

  ‘Well, he’s receiving some serious attention. They’re moving him to a secure unit. He still insists on speaking to you.’

  ‘What are we waiting for, then?’ said Lynch.

  ‘It’s very secure, if you get my drift,’ said Lennox, producing a blindfold from his back pocket.

  They waited until he was in the back of the van to blindfold him. The windows were blanked out. ‘Is this necessary? I can’t see a thing, anyway.’

  ‘Procedure,’ said Lennox.

  ‘Ah, yes, I’d forgotten about procedure. Any beer for the journey?’

  ‘I wish.’

  Lynch spent the first ten minutes tracing the route the van took in his head. Unfortunately the driver was wise to the technique. He drove in concurrent circles and soon managed to disorientate him enough that Lynch gave in. The secure unit could have been anywhere. They could drive for hours, only for the unit to be a mile from his house.

  He tried to sleep but had only been awake a few hours. He pictured Razinski, his gaunt smiling face, and thought about why he had asked for him. Even if what he said was true, that his son was alive, there was nothing for Razinski to gain by speaking to him.

  Three hours later, the van stopped. ‘Wait here,’ said Lennox, pulling open the side door.

  Lynch held his breath and listened. The lack of traffic noise suggested they were somewhere remote. The fresh air was a welcome relief from the cloying air-conditioned interior of the van. He heard muffled words between Lennox and another man, someone different from his two SWAT companions. Lennox raised his voice and returned to the van.

  ‘I’m afraid I must bid you adieu,’ said Lennox. ‘Somehow we don’t have clearance to go any further.’

  ‘Must be serious. Shall I keep the headgear on?’

  ‘Just awhile longer.’ Lennox took his hand and shook it. ‘Best of luck going forward,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Lennox slid the door shut and the van sped off. Ten minutes later, Lynch experienced a change of pressure and a dimming of light. They were underground. Lynch pulled off the blindfold as the van continued downwards. The blacked out windows prevented any view of the outside. ‘Much further?’ he asked the replacement driver.

  ‘Nope.’

  The van entered a spiral continuing for another five minutes before pulling to a stop.

  4

  The replacement driver pulled up and opened the door of the van. ‘Please wait here, sir,’ he said, leaving Lynch alone in the relative darkness. Lynch had been in similar places before. The FBI black sites were not supposed to exist but he knew of at least five locations nationwide. It took the highest security level and such a clearance came at a price. It was one of the reasons he was still monitored by his former employers, and explained how they’d located him so quickly.

  He couldn’t tell if he’d been here before, having no idea where he was currently located. The black site shared a uniformity of design. They were effectively underground prisons, with one way in and one way out. The CIA used such places for suspected terrorists and other threats to security. The FBI used them for interrogation purposes, reserving them for persons of particular risk to the public.

  His presence there suggested they were taking the Razinski character seriously. Unofficially, Lynch was the ultimate expert on the organization called the Railroad; mainly because the FBI had denied all knowledge of their existence. Shortly after Daniel’s disappearance, Lynch’s research into the group was disbanded. An outside agent, Lawrence Balfour, was recruited to lead Lynch’s department so Lynch resigned to conduct his own investigation.

  The replacement driver returned. ‘With me please, sir,’ he said, moving towards a small tunnel entrance lit by a line of faded neon lights.

  A hint of ammonia hit him as he followed the silhouetted figure down the narrowing corridor. The driver walked with military precision, and Lynch found himself matching the man’s stride until eventually he stopped at the entrance to a second section of the black site, a cavernous area lit by powerful beams of light. At the center of the space was a glass dome. At the center of the dome, his arms and legs cuffed, sat the man Lynch presumed was Gregor Razinski.

  A pair of officials walked towards him, the suited figures dwarfed by the backdrop of the glass prison. ‘Mr Lynch,’ said one of the pair, a bespectacled man in his early fifties.

  ‘Special Agent Balfour,’ said Lynch, recognizing the man who’d replaced him in his role at the FBI. Since Lynch’s departure, Balfour had been promoted. He was now an ASAC, Assistant Agent in Charge, at the San Antonio field office.

  Balfour smiled at Lynch and offered his hand. ‘Thank you for agreeing to assist us. It can’t have been easy for you.’

  ‘Nor for you,’ said Lynch, alluding to the fact that they were acknowledging the possible existence of the Railroad. He shook hands with the man, holding eye contact.

  ‘This is Special Agent Sandra Rose,’ said Balfour, glancing at the woman to his left whilst maintaining his practiced smile.

  ‘Samuel Lynch.’

  Rose nodded. She had a slim, athletic build, a couple of inches shorter than Lynch. Her red hair was tied in a bunch. Her face was unreadable. No smile but no sign of hostility. ‘I headed up the operation resulting in Razinski’s capture,’ she said.

  ‘Where he mentioned my name?’

  ‘Yes.’


  ‘What can you tell me?’ said Lynch.

  Rose replayed the scene at the Gunn household: the death of the local deputy, the supposed hostage situation resulting in the massacre of the entire Gunn family.

  Lynch pictured the scene, detaching himself from its brutal reality by viewing it in the abstract, as if it were a training exercise rather than the brutal slaying it was. ‘Were the family already dead when Razinski mentioned my name?’

  Rose hesitated, displaying a hint of emotion for the first time. ‘The initial examinations would suggest they were.’ She sighed. ‘He enjoyed the game, toying with us. Obviously, we had no reason to believe he’d already executed everyone so we bided our time.’

  Lynch caught a sense of defensiveness in Rose’s words which had been picked up by Balfour who shifted balance from left to right foot. ‘Why do you think he mentioned me?’ said Lynch.

  ‘I was hoping you could provide that information,’ said Rose, regaining her initial composure.

  ‘I don’t know him,’ said Lynch, not elaborating further.

  ‘He knew about you and your son,’ said Balfour, still smiling.

  ‘That’s public record,’ said Lynch, picturing the newspaper headlines ingrained in his mind. FBI Agent’s Child Goes Missing. Daniel’s face smiling out from the front page.

  Balfour nodded, exchanging looks with Special Agent Rose. Lynch knew they were thinking about his reaction to his son’s disappearance. His obsession with the organization dubbed the Railroad, and their leader, a figure known only as the Controller. How that obsession had soon rolled out of control, until Lynch had mapped out a century of crimes and attributed them to this mysterious and, as far as the FBI were concerned, fictitious group. How Lynch’s work began to suffer until his superiors had no option to let him go and replace him with the man standing in front of him.

  ‘He was adamant that he wanted to speak to you. As you know, he claimed to have details of your son’s location,’ said Rose.

  Lynch’s heart fluttered at the mention of his son. He wouldn’t let hope dictate to him now. He considered the prisoner in the glass dome, only meters from him, as an imposter and would treat him as such until proven otherwise. ‘Did you consider he was just playing with you. That he was using his supposed knowledge to negotiate his escape from the site with his life?’