Act of Vengeance

by Michael Jecks

  *

  10.57 Seattle; 18.57 London

  ‘Sir!’ Roy Sandford cradled the phone in his shoulder as he spoke, the keys rattling quickly on his computer as he frantically read the screen. ‘Yeah, there’s another report. Sorry, sir!’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Sending the package now, sir.’

  ‘Very good.’

  Roy put the phone back on the cradle and peered at the screen. There was something really screwy about all this. Something was happening and he had no idea what the fuck it was. Jeez, he wished he was back with Very Nice. He’d been here in the FBI field office in Seattle all day, and the cramped offices reeked of old tobacco, sweat, and cheap disinfectant. He didn’t want to think what might have gone on here before the FBI took it over.

  He rose to fetch himself a coffee, but the machine reeked of sourness as soon as he went into the kitchen. Instead he took a paper cup and filled it from the water fountain, standing at the door to his office and sipping it.

  There was some kind of mission going on, he knew that much. So much SIGINT was flying around the systems, he was sure it was a big one. Like Amiss had said, some guy was dead. But not a US agent. This guy was foreign, that much he had gathered.

  Well, Roy was going to keep his ear to the ground. In a world where intelligence was all, where secrecy was prized over all else, there was never a man or woman who was so fascinated by gossip. And Roy liked to know what was actually going on.

  And then, naturally, he would have to pass on the information to Amiss. It was strange, though. Why was the deputy director of operations so interested in this one death in Alaska?

  *

  09.58 Whittier; 18.58 London

  And then Jack was aware of a whiteness, a ghostly vision. He was a mass of pain, and couldn’t speak or cry out. He saw two men in drab grey who wandered into the room, and stepped carefully and swiftly over the ruins of the office, pushing spars and timbers aside as they came, and quickly patted Jack down, before pulling the journal out of his coat. Jack was unable to keep his eyes open, and his head lolled from side to side, all control gone. He had to close his eyes, just to stop them falling out of his head, and the chief’s body was beside him, but he wasn’t moving, and Jack let his head slip to the side, and closed his eyes…

  … And there was a shout, and coughing, and three more men were with him, and they pulled Jack aside, from under a beam which would have cut him in half, if it hadn’t fallen on the chief’s metal desk, and he began to feel he was alive, and then he felt the roaring of exhaustion rushing up through his spine, his head fell back, and he was out again.

  *

  14.34 Whittier; 23.34 London

  ‘You’re doing pretty well, for a guy should be dead,’ a voice said, and Jack’s eyes snapped wide.

  He looked around the room, and saw only clear white walls, a blue rail, and a smiling woman’s face.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘Not the most original first words,’ she chuckled, moving around him and moving pillows to make him more comfortable. ‘You’re in the Begich Tower, in the medical centre, Mr Hansen. That was a bad knock you got on the head.’

  He closed his eyes, and in an instant he was back there, in the chief’s office once more, the room flying about him.

  ‘Shit, Chief Burns, is he…?’

  ‘He’ll be OK,’ the woman said. ‘His head’s hard as fossilised ironwood. But that’s nothing for you to worry about. You just have to get yourself better.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but I think the gas tanks behind the building blew. A freak, they’re all saying. I don’t know, but I do know it was real bad luck. You sit back and rest, now.’

  Jack allowed his head to fall back on the pillows, and tried to piece together the last moments. He knew that he had been in the chief’s office, and had been handling the gun, a Ruger GP100, then a roll of papers, when there had been a flash and he had been thrown through the air.

  ‘Where are my things?’

  ‘Your clothes and all are in the wardrobe there,’ the nurse said, pointing. ‘Don’t you get up until you’re feeling better, now. You’ve been out for a while.’

  ‘How long?’ he snapped.

  ‘A few hours,’ she said, checking his pulse and registering the result on a clipboard. ‘Now, you just rest there.’

  He felt his head for damage – there was a series of bumps at the back of his skull, but apart from that he felt only a horrible tiredness.

  ‘Any fractures?’

  She watched him with a patient expression on her face and said, ‘You aren’t going to listen to a word I say, are you?’

  He grinned weakly.

  ‘How would you feel if a building had fallen on you?’

  ‘Pretty sore, I guess. Still, you take care you don’t make things worse, you hear? You don’t want to have any more injuries.’

  ‘No.’

  He waited until she had left the room, and then hobbled painfully to the cupboard she had indicated. His thick leather coat was there, but now it was shredded. His trousers had a tear in the rear of the right thigh. But then he started feeling his coat, and swore. The journal was gone. That part of his hazy memory of men in the smoke was no dream. There was nothing inside his coat.

  ‘Shit!’

  *

  14.06 Whittier; 23.06 London

  Jack went to his room, waving to Suzie as he went past the bar.

  ‘I heard,’ she said, giving him a quick look. ‘You need new clothes, you know that?’

  ‘I could tell from the breeze up my backside,’ Jack said ruefully.

  ‘You hear how Chief Burns is doing?’

  ‘They said he’ll be OK,’ Jack said. ‘Should be out before long, I hope.’

  In his room, he pulled on new trousers and a clean shirt, balling the old clothes into a bundle and throwing them into the bin. Packing quickly, he glanced around the room to make sure that he had left nothing behind and, as he did, he saw that the chest of drawers had been moved. There were dents in the carpet to show where the legs had stood, and they were a half inch or more out of true.

  Someone had been in here. Either to bug the place or to hunt for something – perhaps for the journal.

  He could remember those ghostly figures with ease. Two men, both moving quickly. They had the journal, and perhaps Lewin’s other possessions, too. He would have to go and check. And then, get out. It was clear that they were after something, and while they hadn’t killed him, he couldn’t know if he was safe or not. He spent more time staring about him, making sure he’d left nothing behind, before wandering downstairs.

  Settling the bill, he had a coffee, watching with apparent disinterest as people wandered about the streets. In reality he was scanning for anyone keeping Suzie’s place under surveillance. He was convinced that the same men he had seen had tried to blow him up and they could be watching for him. At last, seeing no one, he went to his car and threw his belongings in the back. Then he climbed inside and drove to the police station, watching all the while for any men trailing him.

  The building had been devastated. Where the entrance had been, now there was a mass of rubble and twisted metal. It reminded him of the 9/11 photos he’d seen, with bars and handrails, windows and pieces of furniture all broken and bent out of recognition. The roof mostly remained, a timber frame held it up, but much of the insulation had fallen through and lay in a thick carpet over the floor and wrecked furniture. It was enough to make Jack’s belly curl in on itself. He felt nausea and dizziness begin to overwhelm him as he realised how lucky he was to have survived the blast. This was a bomb intended to kill everyone in the building – he had no doubt of that.

  There was a young police officer standing where the door had been, a thick coat against the freezing air. ‘Can I help you, sir?’

  ‘I was here with Chief Burns,’ Jack said, staring at the wreckage. ‘I just wanted to see what fell on me.’

  ‘Pretty mu
ch all the building, I guess,’ the man said. He was younger, perhaps thirty, with a narrow face and thin black moustache. ‘Hey, I’m glad you’re OK. How’s the chief?’

  ‘I heard he’ll be out soon.’

  ‘That’s good. You were both lucky.’

  ‘Any idea what caused it?’

  ‘The fire chief reckons the gas cylinders round back blew up. Christ knows why – maybe the metal was just old, eh?’

  ‘Yes. Look, there were loads of my things in there. Is it all right to go in and look for them? They all fell out of my pockets, and I don’t want to leave them.’

  ‘If you don’t mind me coming too,’ the police officer said. ‘There’s nothing much more can fall on you now, anyhow.’

  It was hard going in his weakened condition, with every footstep a danger to the ankles, broken glass lying all about, and the smell of singed fur and burned plastic everywhere. Jack found himself having to concentrate harder than usual just to stop himself from toppling. It was a very curious feeling, especially since he had a strange sweatiness, as though there was a fever building in him to join with the awareness of the vertigo, but he swallowed the dizziness and continued.

  ‘Where were you: in the chief’s office?’ the policeman asked from a few feet further on.

  Jack nodded, made a guess and said, ‘Over there?’

  ‘Yeah, that’d be about it,’ the younger man said.

  Soon they were sifting through the rubbish together. All around was thick insulation material, wisps of fibres floating off on the air. Jack felt the chill wind on his leg as he bent and tried to make sense of the mess about him. Roofing, cedar beams, metal supports, all lay about over the area where Jack had been sitting with the chief. Two spars rested on top the desk where Burns had sat, and Jack felt a sickness in his belly to think that it was this metal desk that had saved his life and the chief’s. The solid metal legs took the weight of the roof.

  It was twenty minutes before he saw a glint in among the rubble, and pulled out the Ruger. It was unharmed, so far as he could tell. The ammunition was here, too, and he picked up both boxes. There was a sheet of paper nearby, and he saw it was the receipt for the items, which he showed to the police officer. He seemed uninterested. There was no shoebox, and, when he hunted all about, there was no sign of the journal.

  But then he had some luck. He saw the red label of the Ruger’s box, and when he pulled it free, the roll of cuttings was still inside.

  He stuffed it into his pocket quickly before making his way from the room.

  Tuesday 20th September

  01.12 London

  Karen Skoyles was asleep in bed when the news came through.

  She always woke quickly. The phone had only rung once before her eyes opened. As it rang a second time, her hand was already on the handset.

  ‘Skoyles,’ she said softly.

  Glancing at her watch, she noted the time with a wince. She’d never get back to sleep again after this.

  ‘Hargreaves, Miss. There’s a report coming in from Alaska, and you asked to be warned…’

  ‘I know. What is it?’

  ‘Our man has been taken to hospital, apparently. There has already been a telephoned claim for medical insurance, which is how we heard. Apparently our man Hansen was involved in an explosion at a local police station in Whittier, and he and the police chief were both injured, Hansen less seriously. He is out now.’

  Karen lay still as she mused the problem.

  ‘Very good. Thank you for letting me know,’ she said.

  She pressed the button on the handset, replaced it in the cradle by her bed again, and then lay back, staring at the ceiling, before rising, pulling on a dressing gown, and walking through the apartment to the kitchen. There she went through the routine of filling the kettle and boiling water. She spooned coffee into her cafetière and waited for the water to boil. Soon, a mug of black, sweet coffee cupped in both hands, inhaling, she could consider the news.

  The loss of Lewin was bad enough. He had the potential of creating enormous embarrassment with his journal. But if Jack was clumping all over the place with the subtlety of a rhinoceros on steroids, things could get much worse. For a moment she felt a flare of sympathy for him. There was little chance of garlands for him with this job. At best he could return to obscurity and take his redundancy cheque, but at worst he could become a greater embarrassment to the Service than even Lewin. The last thing the Service needed was to see an agent causing problems with the Americans. The Brothers could be very tetchy about British agents on their territory, and the Service had to maintain good relations with them.

  She considered that. In her mind she had a picture of Jack as he had been that last time she saw him: cold, stony-faced, like a prisoner before his parole board. With good reason, she knew. This was his last chance, and she had told him so.

  Poor bastard.

  *

  16.38 Whittier; 01.38 London

  Jack was in two minds as he walked away from the ruined police station. He stopped at the roadside, and looked about him at the wreckage, feeling utterly disorientated at the sight. He knew that this mild confusion was the after-effect of the blast, the result of the blow on his head and the explosion that had thrown him forward. It was a miracle he was still alive.

  That was the thought that was uppermost in his head: how lucky he had been. That and a certain guilt at surviving mostly unscathed while Chief Burns was in a hospital bed still. He shook that off with a shudder. Better that the cop was there than Jack. He had work to do. Since the journal was gone, Jack had to collect his thoughts and figure out what to do to recover the situation. Karen would not be happy, nor the DG.

  ‘Shit!’ he muttered viciously. Starck’s words came back to him. The threat of failure: he could lose everything he had saved up for. Two mistakes he had made in his life. One had cost him his career, and now this one was likely to cost him his future and his wife if Starck was vindictive, and Jack knew he was. He swore again. There was no safe bolt-hole, not for him. Someone had taken the journal.

  The building had not been detonated accidentally. Someone must have planned to blow it up. Then they had come in for the book – either because they thought Chief Burns had it, or because they thought Jack had, in which case they could come back to kill him, or the chief.

  In his pocket the Ruger was a comforting weight, dragging his coat down, the ammo boxes balancing it on the other side, but he would have to find a better way to store it if he was going to keep it for defence. The sights would catch if he had to draw it fast, and just now he was sure that he would have to use it. Those two shadowy figures in the murk after the explosion would come back for him.

  Why? Who were they?

  He should get back to the car. Get out of here. Whittier was too dangerous for him.

  But first he had to know whether Chief Burns had anything else on Danny. Perhaps there was something else he could tell Jack, something that could help Jack understand who he was up against.

  He turned and made his way to the hospital section of the Begich Building again, pushing through the broad doors and into the reception.

  This place was only small, but when he walked out earlier it had seemed busy. Now, for some reason, the place was deserted. The reception desk was empty. Jack assumed the woman had gone to the washrooms, and he glanced along the corridor quickly before peering down at her desk, to find the room where Chief Burns was recuperating. The hospital ward only had a few rooms. He found Burns’ name and walked along the clean passageway.

  His own room was on the left, one of the nearest to the nurses’ room, and he glanced inside as he passed by. His bed was still unmade, but with so few staff here, he wasn’t surprised. They’d be busy for a while. Further up he passed two empty patient rooms, and then, on the right, he found a room with the blind down at the door’s window. He knocked gently and walked in.

  Chief Burns was lying in his bed with a large plaster over his brow on the right, covering
his temple. His face was raw-looking where the heat from the blast had caught him, and there were innumerable tiny scratches and puncture marks from the fine shards of glass that had lanced into his face. His eyes had been protected by his thick plastic glasses fortunately, but Jack saw a mess of pin-pricks covering the rest of his features.

  ‘You’re not looking too bad,’ the chief said ruefully.

  ‘My back’s sore,’ Jack said. ‘How are you, apart from the cuts?’

  ‘Not too bad. A beam hit my head, they tell me, but it rested on the desk. Otherwise it’d have cut me in half.’ Burns looked him over. ‘Your hands OK?’

  ‘Yeah. Nothing much,’ Jack said, flexing them. ‘My leather jacket’s wrecked, though.’

  ‘So ‘re my glasses,’ Burns said ruefully. ‘I’ll have to get to Anchorage to buy some more.’

  Jack nodded him. Then added, ‘They’re saying the tanks behind the station exploded.’

  Burns looked at him, eyes narrowed as he struggled to focus without his spectacles. Even without them there was a shrewd assessment in his eyes as he said, ‘You know, I’ve been a cop for a while now. I’ve seen cars in crashes; I’ve seen pools of gas with morons dropping matches into them to see how long it’d take before they blew – all that kind of shit. Never seen them go up like that before.’

  ‘Sort of what I thought, too,’ Jack said. ‘You take care of yourself, Chief.’

  ‘Oh, I think I’ll be all right,’ Burns said. ‘Once you’re gone, anyway.’

  ‘Hope so,’ Jack said.

  ‘You look after yourself, Mister Hansen.’

  Jack was about to shake hands, but just then there was a knock on the door, and he turned to see Suzie with a small bunch of flowers. She walked in, smiling at Burns, but giving Jack a frosty look, as though she felt this was all his fault, which it probably was, he thought.