Act of Vengeance

by Michael Jecks

  He shook his head to clear it of the suspicion. There was never anything straightforward about a death scene. He had witnessed enough killings in his time to know that. So he began to go through this room too, quickly and carefully so as not to disturb things so much that a new visitor would notice. He took photos to remind himself where everything had been, and then attacked drawers, cupboard and boxes. He knelt to feel under the bed, he lifted the mattress. Nothing. And then, as he pushed the rugs back to see that there was no safe beneath, he saw the hole in the wood.

  It was quite large, big enough for his forefinger to slip in, and it was at an extreme angle, about forty-five degrees from horizontal. The splinters at the edge were all stained dark, but that could have been the person who came in and washed the blood away. Any blood would have pooled here. Still…

  He stood, the vague suspicion growing more certain as he looked about him.

  The coroner, Jewson, had told him that the bullet had been a .357, and from the head of the body, the bullet must have deformed badly. That meant a soft-nosed bullet. It was perfectly consistent for a man to shoot himself in the head, and a .357 would expand and deform as it hit bone, if it was made of soft lead. Thus it would make a hole larger than .357 of an inch if it subsequently penetrated a plank of wood. But the angle seemed entirely wrong. A man shooting himself in the head would naturally angle the gun upwards. For Danny to have shot this bullet, he would have had to have been lying on the ground, or almost lying. It made no sense.

  ‘You didn’t top yourself, Danny, did you? Someone else saved you the bother, just as you’d said. You poor bastard.’

  *

  18.31 London

  Sara was exhausted. She had to stop and rub her back as she trudged up the road towards the house, and all the way, the resentment built in her.

  She was no shrew, but the sense of utter futility against so implacable a foe was enough to make anyone despair. When she had been a young girl, she had been made aware of the differences between her pale flesh and that of foreigners. Hers was white, her father told her, not like those with ‘a touch of the tar brush’. He had railed against the ‘Pakis’ and ‘blacks’, and refused to use Mr Singh’s shop up at the corner. When she was fifteen, he took her out of her old school, because there were too many of ‘that sort’ in it.

  It was no wonder she had rebelled.

  She met him when she was at university. The campus of The City University was multi-cultural, as a London college would have to be, and she found herself suddenly thrown in among Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and all kinds of faith that fell between them. And in the bar, and in the lectures, she had noticed the tall, lean, ascetic boy with the deep brown eyes and a confident, gentle nature. She had fallen head over heels in love.

  The day she brought him home, expecting her parents to welcome him, had been the worst day of her life. Her father, always a doting parent, must surely love Mohammed as much as she did. He had never refused her a thing before. When he saw how much she adored Mo, her father would naturally accept him. She knew it.

  But he didn’t. He wouldn’t let Mohammed into the house, and when she begged him, he turned his back on her.

  ‘If you don’t want to break your mother’s heart, you’ll drop him. Don’t ever bring his sort back here.’

  It was his decision, and it was final. She had felt her heart tear in her breast at his words, and she felt that it was the moment when she grew up. Although she hadn’t told her father, she was already pregnant with Mohammed’s first son. And when he was born, Sara swore to herself that her parents would never see him until her father had personally apologised to Mohammed.

  Mohammed was as good a man as any could be. He was calm and amiable, a slightly lapsed Muslim in that he smoked and drank a little – not much, but he had a passion for good malt whisky and enjoyed Guinness. As a father, he was devoted to the children and to her, and she could not imagine him ever trying to impose his will on their daughters, telling them who they were allowed to see or even marry. It was not in his nature. Urbane, civilised and cosmopolitan, he sought only to see his sons and daughters educated and happy. He had ambitions for them, but he would not impose them on his children. He hoped that his own example would show them the benefits of education.

  And his legal practise flourished until the disaster.

  Sara could remember the day so clearly. A quiet morning, as the birds began to sing in the trees outside their bedroom near Crystal Palace. They lived in a pleasant street of Victorian terraces, and the morning’s chores began early for Sara. She was glad of the peace before the dawn. Always a poor sleeper, she rose and went to the small room next door to read a book, as she often did. The house was restful; the sound of her husband and children snoring was music to her ears. It was peaceful, the home of which she had so often dreamed when she was a child.

  She could remember even now that first jerk of utter terror as the house shook. A tremendous slamming concussion went off beneath her, making her chair quake, throwing her to her feet, to stand, staring about her wildly. It had felt as though it was inside her, in her heart. Then she thought it must be an earthquake, but even as the idea sprang into her mind, she heard another crash, then three quick crunches, bang, bang, bang, and there was a hideous clattering in the hallway.

  Rushing to the top of the stairs, she saw her front door shattered, and black-clad men with helmets and masks gripping enormous guns, running in, shouting, pointing their rifles at her, and pounding up the stairs. One man shoved the butt of his gun into her belly, taking her arm, twisting it behind her back, and forcing her face to the ground. Her nose bled, her hand crushed as though he had snapped all her bones, and a thin, agonising strap was secured about her wrists. Her arms were tightly gripped, and all she could hear was her daughters screaming with terror, her sons protesting vehemently, and the wet, horrible slapping sounds of men punching her darling Mohammed.

  They were soon gone. Sara had been released before long, and she sat rocking herself in the front room, cradling the youngest two children in her lap, while the two older boys stood nearby, watching her with their petrified eyes, none of them knowing what to do to soothe her as the tears ran down her cheeks. That afternoon, Mr Blenkinsop had come around from next door. He said nothing, but stood in the doorway and stared at the hall. Later he returned with his toolbox and quietly refitted her door, mending it as best he could where the sledgehammers and door breaking bars had struck, while his wife cooked for Sara and the children in the kitchen.

  That was the beginning.

  Mohammed was accused of crimes under the new anti-terrorism laws, Sara was told. The house was invaded by police officers who had removed flooring, dug holes in the walls, opened chimneys that had been blocked for decades, and confiscated their computers. That cost their oldest boy all his project work for school.

  The family papers, Mohammed’s mobile telephone, their answering machine, all disappeared. So did their bank account details. Suddenly Sara had no money, no means of contacting anyone – she was alone. Utterly alone. Unable to fend for herself, when the media arrived on her doorstep, she was keen to speak with them, and gave out all the information she could, in the hope that someone, somewhere, would correct the injustice. Clearly there was a mistake.

  But there was no mistake. Mohammed was the man they wanted. He had been born in Kenya to a Pakistani family, and when he became a lawyer and set up his own practise, he attracted one or two clients who were later found to have disreputable pasts.

  Not that Sara knew that. She was not allowed to know what her husband was accused of, nor who accused him, when they accused him, or when he was supposed to have committed the crime – nothing. All the evidence was presented to a judge, and on that basis, poor Mohammed was thrown into Belmarsh Prison. None of the media interviews Sara gave were broadcast. They were all stopped in the interests of ‘national security’.

  The children were bullied at school, and soon both boys were excluded. They had
been fighting with other children who called them names, and said that their father would be deported and then he’d be killed.

  Sara’s worst terror was that her Mo would be extradited. Everyone knew about ‘rendition’ by then, the process by which men were captured and flown sometimes thousands of miles, to a land where they could be tortured. It was hard to believe that it could happen today, in the twenty-first century, but it did. Where were the men and women who believed in civil rights, who wanted to uphold the Geneva Conventions? They were all silent. A few Muslims being hurt didn’t matter.

  When the law changed, because the Law Lords held that imprisoning men and women without fair trial was illegal, Sara had thought that the nightmare would, at last, come to an end. She watched the news, read the papers eagerly, in anticipation of the day when her husband would be free and could come home. The thought of the look on her children’s faces was wonderful. Perhaps they could take the boys to a new school and begin again.

  It was because of her growing expectation of his freedom that the news of the Control Orders had come as a body-blow.

  Her husband was free. But he must wear an electronic tag at all times. He was free, but he was to remain in the house for sixteen hours every day. He was not permitted to leave at night. While he was allowed to share his house with his wife and children, no other members of his family were permitted to visit without explicit Home Office approval. Nor could any friends, outside a small proscribed list, visit them. Neither his friends, nor his children’s. The telephone was taken away, as was Sara’s mobile and the children’s. Now, if their children were late or held up, they could not even call their parents to let them know. But at least he was home, she had thought.

  She was wrong. It was the beginning of a new hell.

  Mohammed sat in their front room and watched the window with fear in his eyes. He was a non-person. His family were marked with the tag of terrorism, and had lost all contact with their friends.

  Sara had tried to maintain a placid exterior, but the experience was draining. They still had no idea what Mohammed was accused of – there had been no trial. And yet he was here, held still, on the order of the Home Secretary. Mohammed could not explain why. He denied having done anything to merit this treatment. He had no business, no money, no hope.

  Last week Sara had finally lost it. A policeman arrived and walked in without asking permission. He didn’t need to. As Sara had learned early on, the police could enter without warrant or permission whenever they wanted. This one barged past her when she opened the door, and then walked upstairs while a colleague remained down with Mohammed, as though he was likely to leap to his feet to attack someone. Ludicrous! He was so drawn now that it was a wonder he could still sit upright. Haggard, pale, anxious, he was gradually withdrawing into himself like a mussel hiding in its shell.

  It was the scream that made Sara run. She hurtled up the stairs, and found her daughter in the bedroom, the policeman standing in the doorway. He turned to her guiltily, but Sara was like a tiger protecting her cub. She grabbed his anti-stab vest and swung him around, shoving him hard. He didn’t fall, but she didn’t care. She was about to run at him and slap his face, claw at him, in God’s name, to protect her girl, when she saw he had already unholstered his extending baton, the steel ball shining wickedly.

  ‘Try that again, bitch, and I’ll hit the girl first, then you,’ he spat. ‘Out of the fucking way.’

  Sara was tempted to spring at him, but her daughter’s hand on her forearm stopped her. Sara bit her lip, and then drew Aaeesha to her. Aaeesha meant ‘life’, ‘vivaciousness’. Now, the little six-year-old was mute, terrified. There was no safety for her, not even in her own bedroom.

  The memory was acid in Sara’s mind. That night she had wept as she had never wept before. The tears wouldn’t stop, no matter what. Mohammed had come to her, but her anger at him was unlimited: it may not be his fault, but this misery was his responsibility.

  ‘I hate you!’ she had burst out, pushing him away. ‘All this, it’s all you! If you weren’t here, at least we’d have a life! Look at us! Look at what you’re doing to us! I hate you, hate you, hate you!’

  It had been unreasonable. She knew that – but who else could she have lashed out at? Not the police. Any attack on them would lead to her being arrested too, and then? Then they’d put the children up for adoption, perhaps extradite Mohammed, and imprison Sara herself. There was no good that way. It was all so appalling that she even considered suicide. But she wasn’t brave enough to kill herself, nor coward enough to leave her children behind.

  She sighed, picked up the shopping again, and walked up the road once more. The house was here, a left turn at the top, past the little Chinese take-out, past the closed windows of the shop which had sold second hand children’s clothes before it went bust, and into her own road.

  There she stopped and dropped the shopping, hearing a bottle smash. She ran, uncaring, towards the blue flashing lights, the chattering radios, and to where Aaeesha was shrieking with terror.

  *

  13.39 Langley, Virginia; 18.39 London

  It had been another slow day for Roy Sandford. Since the rush yesterday when he’d picked up the call about Lewin and forwarded the package, he had been pretty much left alone, just as he liked it. He was planning a long weekend with Very Nice, and the memories of her long, warm thighs and mane of chestnut hair were occupying more of his thoughts than his line manager would have liked, when his phone rang.

  ‘5219, yeah?’

  ‘Is that Roy Sandford?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘This is Ed Stilson, assistant to Peter Amiss. He would like you to come up to his room now.’

  The line clicked and went dead.

  Roy stared at his screen as though it might provide an explanation. Peter Amiss was a legend. He had been a rookie during Vietnam, but before the Tet Offensive he was one of the few who warned that it could be a serious assault. Many thought that it was impossible after the huge casualties the North Vietnamese had suffered in 1967 – almost 90,000 dead – that they could mount any kind of large operation. That was the view of General Westmoreland. He told President Johnson that the end of the war was in sight.

  Then, in January 1968, the North Vietnamese began their offensive. More than 70,000 men and women attacked over a hundred towns and cities and the American forces reeled under their onslaught. It was a military failure. The US troops lost less than a tenth of the casualties of the Vietnamese, but that wasn’t the point. The American public had been assured that the fight was almost over, that the will of the enemy was broken. To suddenly have a major escalation of the war like this was a disaster.

  For Peter Amiss it was a significant success. The religious Texan from Austin had established himself as a ruthless strategic thinker, and his methods had been proven to bring results. Within ten years he was one of the senior officers in intelligence. Now he was Deputy Director of the Agency.

  Sandford knocked at the glass door. Inside the bright room, he could see a hard figure at the desk. Amiss was in his shirt sleeves, his jacket thrown over the back of his chair, and talking on the phone. A pugnacious man, he was short and wiry with stubby fingers and thick arms. While talking, he jabbed a finger across the room as if the guy on the other end of the phone could see him. Greying hair was cut slightly longer than was fashionable in the Agency, but his fitness was not in question. He had no paunch, and the flesh under his square jaw was still taut. The sun bronzed his face during weekends on his yacht, and the only apparent concession to his age lay in the washed-out colour of his once-blue eyes. They were grey now, as if all the pigment had seeped away and left behind only the base coat beneath.

  Amiss carefully placed the handset on the cradle, then looked up.

  ‘Sandford?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Come in. Shut the door. Good.’ He had an entirely blank expression on his face as he studied Sandford. At last he said, ‘I’ve heard good
reports about you. They say you did well in Afghanistan.’

  Sandford nodded, feeling a mixture of pride and anxiety.

  ‘Sir?’

  Amiss stared up at him. Sandford was standing warily, almost, but not quite at attention, and the grey eyes studied him thoughtfully for a moment or two. ‘I have a need for a liaison specialist in Seattle. You go there, set up the systems with the local comms specialist, and wait for incoming traffic. Your task will be to work with the local FBI and help them any way they need. You’ll monitor the Echelon net from there for them. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir. What is the operation about?’

  ‘You don’t need to know. You’ll receive all the briefing you need while there,’ Amiss said.

  He looked away from Sandford and down to the papers on his leather desk, which, Sandford knew, was glass-topped so that no one could read what he had written on the soft leather. There could be no impression left on the glass. Sandford had heard about that just like he’d heard that the deputy director prayed each and every morning and was a committed Catholic who would bring out a crucifix and pray over it in times of extreme stress.

  ‘Your operational leader will be Frank Rand of the FBI,’ Amiss frowned, still staring at the table top before him. Then he set his hands down on the glass and spread his fingers. ‘I am concerned, Mister Sandford. I believe that there is something going on in Alaska that we should be aware of.’

  Sandford could think of nothing to say. He nodded.

  ‘There has been a suspicious death. It may be nothing, of course. But we are investigating. You will keep abreast of matters and let me or my assistant know.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You know who that is?’

  ‘Sir, Mister Stilson, sir.’

  It made no sense. Sandford was a communications specialist, not a crime scene investigator, but no one argued with the deputy director.

  ‘The Russians are a matter of miles away from Alaska. It used to be theirs. And the Bear is growling again,’ Amiss said. He looked up at Sandford with his watery eyes. ‘If you see or hear anything that disturbs you, anything at all, I want to hear all about it. You understand me?’