Act of Vengeance

by Michael Jecks

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I am not going to arrest you for that. From all I’ve heard, and I’ve spoken to the cars behind you in the tunnel, it’s clear enough that you were attacked, not the attacker. But I do want to find the guys tried this. Who was it, Mr Hansen?’

  ‘I don’t know. They just came out of nowhere. Two men in the car behind me,’ Jack said helplessly. ‘I’m a lawyer – I’m not used to this sort of thing.’

  ‘Not many folks are,’ Rand said drily. ‘You know why this place was built?’

  The change in topic made Jack blink.

  ‘What, this building?’

  ‘Yes. It’s twenty-five years old now. They put it up to give people a view of the glacier. Back in the day, this was the main portage way for the trappers and all to get to the sea. They’d make their way up here then carry all their gear over the glacier, down to the sea beyond. So they built this place to celebrate the old ways. But it’s gone. The glacier’s retreated all the way round there,’ he said, pointing, ‘because of the new way of life. Global warming melted the ice.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Just thinking. They were too late with the visitor centre here, just as I seem to be too late to help you.’

  ‘Well I’m leaving the state,’ Jack said reasonably.

  ‘Oh, I think I could still help you a little,’ Rand said. His eyes were fixed on Jack again. ‘Tell you what. Your car is in no state to be driven now. The rear end’s all dented and hanging off. How about I give you lift back to Anchorage?’

  ‘That’s kind, but…’

  ‘Good,’ Rand said.

  *

  18.37 Anchorage; 03.37 London

  Jack was glad to leave Rand in the lobby, and went up to his room. It looked the same as before, but he didn’t trust to appearances. The phone could be tapped from Langley, and he wouldn’t know. Modern telephones could electronically be set to work as microphones, feeding a recording system even when the receiver was on the rest. Lasers could be set to a hotel window to sense the microscopic trembles in the glass and decipher a conversation. Bugs were old technology, but now were so tiny that Jack would never be able to find one if he searched this room for a week.

  He needed to send a message back to the Firm, but for now that could wait. His body was complaining everywhere. His back hurt from the explosion, and his head was still sore. Now he could add the bruise to his hand where he’d rolled over the car to the concrete in the tunnel, and the headache from the gunshots in the enclosed chamber in the rock. He was tired, aching, and aware of a rising anger.

  Someone had made two determined efforts to kill him, presumably after murdering Danny Lewin and burning his cabin, and the only reason Jack could see for the attacks was Lewin’s book: his life story. And Jack had no idea why.

  Jack walked into the bathroom and ran the taps for a hot bath. The sink had a mirror over it, and he leaned on the sink and stared at himself. His eyes were raw, his face still marked by the tiny fragments of flying glass, and he closed his eyes for a moment, bone-weary.

  When he opened them again, he studied his face bleakly.

  It was a face that had experience. He had known joy, he’d known disaster and catastrophe, but his was not a face to love. No one could love him. His nature was against love. He was outside the usual realms of life: where others fell headlong in their passion, he would watch, analyse, reflect, and say the right things, but without the same fervent conviction. When others said that if they were left on a desert island, they would fade for the lack of a lover, a friend, a companion, he knew he would survive. He needed no one. There was no one person who ranked highly enough in his estimation to cause him misery at their loss. The only one who came close was Claire.

  Claire. He was fooling himself. He did need her. She was his rock, his anchor to the world and real life.

  He took his shirt off, then the rest of his clothes, and studied his body in the mirror. There was a bruise on his left, and a tingling all over his back and scalp. Both his hands were scratched and his right knee was swollen from when he had been flung aside by the explosion. Standing here, it was as though he was surveying the injuries on another man. This was not really him. It must be shock, he guessed, but it didn’t feel like shock. More, it was like a kind of rage that seethed deep within him.

  Claire was still the only woman he had felt close to. She was his single point of attachment. Without her, he thought he would have to give up on life. When she left him, he had understood. There was an irony: most cops’ wives despaired, constantly fearful, wondering, as they kissed their men goodbye in the morning, whether he would come home or be killed; for Claire it was the fear not that Jack wouldn’t come back, but that someone else would not and that he would return with another man’s blood on his hands.

  Yes, he understood her reasons for leaving him. He didn’t forgive her, but he did at least possess an empathy for her feelings. She was miserable when she learned that his entire life, so far as she understood it, had been a series of elaborate lies. Yes, he had appreciated how fierce her wretchedness was. So she left him and went back to Devon without him. And there she embarked, he learned, on an affair with Jimmy McNeill, another guy from Vauxhall Cross, the bastard.

  Jack could not function without her. When she went, he grew to realise how much he depended upon her. Not her as a person, not her as a lover, but her as a rock that gave the scenery of his life a colour and vividness. Without her, he became less than a two-dimensional character. He became nothing.

  That was the real cause of his rage at being sent over here. He must get back. She wouldn’t have an affair again, but that wasn’t the point. He had to return to her so that he could become whole again, because out here he was beginning to feel that the fragile ropes that held his sanity firmly to his soul were fraying.

  Sliding down to sit in the bath, he tried to rest, but the hot water stung the cuts and scrapes all over his shoulders and neck. While his leather jacket had saved him from much of the slashing of the glass particles, there were plenty of needle-points of pain, he felt like a man who had slept on a bed of nails. Less anguish than a series of pin-points that gave the impression of a sore rash. He waited until the warm water eased the worst and shut his eyes.

  He had to get back to the UK before his cover was blown. If it became known that he was working for the Firm, he’d find himself in even more trouble. As it was, he wanted to escape back to the real America – back down to Seattle. There was a British office in the city, and he could meet Orme, the resident spook, to make use of his communications gear. The Ice Maiden would be keen to hear from him, and he could not call her from an unsecure line. That would be to make a gift of the truth to the Americans. Their technology for listening to all calls was unbeaten, and he had no desire to be arrested. He only hoped that the roll of cuttings would be some compensation for his losing the journal.

  Yes. He’d get out to Seattle and contact the Firm from there, and hopefully be on a plane home within a day. He closed his eyes and settled down in the warm water, and then, for some reason, his mind brought up a memory of Lewin. Danny looking so haunted and petrified in the interview room, and then the picture he’d drawn of himself, the Munch-like screaming face.

  But then in his mind’s eye he saw the girl again, Kasey from Whittier, the vacant-eyed, scared and sad teenager who spoke of ghosts in the empty building, and he shivered.

  *

  20.14 Anchorage; 05.14 London

  It was the phone’s ring that woke him.

  The water was cooler now, and he was aware of the change in temperature as he rose, dripping, and winced. Since settling, several muscles in his back had decided to remind him they had been torn in the bomb blast, and there was one at the right of his neck that felt like it had been slashed by a blunt carving knife. Any movement of his head was accompanied by a sharp stabbing just over his back, between his shoulder blades.

  He pulled the bathrobe on and limped to the phone by the bed. On
the way he checked the door to make sure that the locks were secured, and then chose to stand by the bed. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Frank Rand, Mr Hansen. I wondered if you’d eaten yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I’m going down to eat in ten. There are a few points I’d like to discuss with you.’

  ‘Give me thirty minutes. I’ll see you in the bar.’

  Jack put the phone down and dressed in sober dark olive moleskin trousers and a plain cream linen shirt. He felt better for the wash, but there was still the list of names he’d found in the journal that needed looking into. He would try to check them now. He still had the roll of cuttings which told of each man.

  The hotel relied on visitors who wanted to use their own computers, but Jack only had his mobile phone, and he wasn’t going to use that to surf the web. Its screen would give him a headache. And then he remembered it didn’t work over here anyway.

  There was an internet lounge, and he was soon sitting at the computer, his backpack beside him. The first was the man called Abu Fazul Abdullah, he recalled, and he typed in the name. And sat back as if punched as the name came up.

  ‘Shit!’

  Now he remembered vaguely hearing of the gas explosion in Croydon. It was the day he left the UK, wasn’t it? Yes, and two cops had been killed, too. The man had been a suspected terrorist, and no one was going to mourn him too much.

  What of the others? Jack began to type the names in, and gradually his frown deepened. Each of them had died: Faisal, al Malik, Abdul-Gaffar, Rasmi, and Labeeb were all men who had been accused of terrorism. Two had been at Guantanamo Bay, but neither had been considered too much of a threat. Well, that was no surprise to Jack. He had heard that the serious, dangerous suspects were all kept elsewhere. Guantanamo was deliberately kept in the public eye, like a magician who keeps one hand in plain view, while he performs his tricks with the other. The serious suspects were held in Diego Garcia, or in unknown prisons in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan or Pakistan. Lewin’s main job, he recalled, was to interrogate and then propose who should be sent where.

  A thought struck him. He took up the roll of cuttings again, glancing about him as he unrolled them, studied the names, and began to whistle. All had been listed as terrorists; all had been arrested and held by the Americans, and all had died.

  Some of them had been blown apart by Hellfire missiles, one was killed in a suspected attack from a suicide bomber from a sect opposing his own, one had been shot by tribal enemies, a third was run down in the street by a hit and run, three were killed in a car crash, and two in a fire. As he pored over the cuttings and checked with the computer, he saw that all the names, both those in the cuttings and those he recalled himself, had been killed. All suspects, and all dead.

  Jack was about to shut down the computer, when he frowned again. He typed in the name of Sumner, the officer he had known in Belfast. Too many hits for comfort. He typed in ‘British Army Captain Sumner’ and the screen refreshed. There were still 30,000 hits, from Napoleonic War heroes to the Korean War, but it was only when he had scrolled through five pages that he saw a piece from the British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, dated June 21, 2008:

  Captain Roger Sumner said, “The Aid to Afghan Veterans Trust is enormously grateful to the people who’ve lent us their money for this trip. For all of us it’ll be an adventure as well as a way to help with the strain of the last months.” He created his charity to help those, like himself, who lost limbs in the Afghan War or Iraq, and he hopes that this journey to Machu Picchu will be only the first of many adventures. For a man who has done so much, it is a testament to his spirit and enthusiasm.

  Jack ignored the rest and scrolled down the search engine. It told how Sumner had decided to form a fundraising charity to make money for the rehabilitation unit at Headley Court, which had done so much for him. Then as part of the charity, he developed a separate wing that would help those coming out of Headley to acclimatise to life outside, and a third arm that would provide exciting opportunities for those who had come back severely mentally or physically injured. But then there was an item that spoke of a man dying on a journey across Central America, and how it had impacted the charity. Funds dried, and creditors were left impoverished. The charity was shut down in 2009.

  It left Jack feeling doubtful about the man’s business skills. Sure enough, there was another piece from the autumn of 2009 bemoaning the collapse of his charity. ‘Captain Sumner was not available for comment.’ A piece responding to critics in 2010 said that the police had not found evidence of fraud, and underneath that, a short piece from the Guardian in 2011 stated that the charity had suffered from maladministration and had lost a lot of money, but also noted that the Captain had left England and was now living in Las Vegas. It was as though the reporter was trying hard not to say that the Captain was an inveterate gambler who had squandered the charities funds on fast living, but there was more than a vague hint of censure in his writing.

  ‘Prick,’ Jack said to himself.

  Journalists could afford to be judgemental. They never put themselves into danger.

  Sumner was worth noting, Jack reckoned. He glanced at his watch and stood, quickly erasing all history from the computer before turning it off and walking out to the bar.

  *

  20.45 Anchorage; 05.45 London

  The bar was entered by a set of stairs leading down to the circular tables with a bar at the far end. On the left as Jack descended was a plasma screen set into a large wooden surround like a fireplace standing up from the floor. Ahead, behind the bar, were three more TVs, all showing sports and news channels. There were two tables occupied, one had a heavy-set man in his thirties: square jaw, strong shoulders, buzz-cut hair, and encroaching stubble. He sat staring at the plasma over left, his jaws moving rhythmically, a beer before him. He wore a plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up, and old jeans. His back was to Jack. The others were more suspicious. A young, attractive strawberry blonde woman in her twenties, and man looked like he was nearer Jack’s age. They were close, leaning together over the table, but not quite touching. Both glanced at him, then away at each other again. A suspicion of guilt was in their eyes and movements, and he fleetingly wondered if they were there to watch him. If they were, they were too obvious out there in the open. More likely they were trying to enjoy an illicit affair, he guessed, but neither dared make the first move.

  He strode to the left, and sat on a bench at the wall, watching, putting his backpack beside him. He was to the side of the plasma, and commanded the whole of the bar area as well as the stairs leading to it, which gave him a feeling of security. It put him in view of the couple and he could tell if the chewing buzz-cut’s attention moved to him.

  The brunette bar girl came and he asked for a beer. As she left, he saw Frank Rand at the top of the stairs. For an instant, he wished he’d still got the Ruger. He’d already had to give it to Rand. After the shooting in the tunnel, the FBI wanted the gun to check the ammunition and the rifling in the barrel in case they could match it with a bullet. They still hoped they would find a man with a bullet in his shoulder. Anyway, without a holster it was an unwieldy weapon – too heavy to carry tucked into the waistband of his trousers, or in a pocket. And Jack had the feeling airport security would look askance at him if he tried to board a plane with it on him.

  Frank Rand glanced at him oddly as he walked to the table. He was wearing a pale suede jacket, an open-necked oxford shirt with a small silver crucifix glinting brightly against his dark skin, and jeans. He stood looking at the screens, and then pulled a chair out and instead of sitting opposite Jack, he drew it across to the side. Sitting, he looked over at the other people in the room. When the barmaid appeared with her tray, he ordered himself a club soda.

  ‘You still on duty?’

  ‘In the Bureau it’s best not to get a reputation as a drinker,’ Frank Rand said easily as he sat back, his eyes flitting quickly over the other people in the bar. ‘And I don’t like to think
of alcohol mixing with a handgun.’

  ‘Very true.’

  ‘Good. Generally lawyers have it easy, from what I’ve seen. Rarely have to play with guns in England. I used to watch Rumpole of the Bailey on pay TV. I liked that guy.’

  ‘The hero for every downtrodden victim,’ Jack said.

  ‘How long you been a lawyer?’

  ‘I qualified in eighty four.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling I’m being interrogated?’

  Frank Rand smiled disarmingly, but said nothing.

  Jack sighed.

  ‘I studied at uni, and then went to qualify at Braboeuff Manor, in Surrey, near Guildford. It’s called the College of Law because lawyers go there to learn the job. OK? Since then I’ve been in private practise.’

  ‘Uh-uh. How’d you meet with this guy Lewin?’

  ‘He came to us in Manchester. That’s where my firm is based. Beyond that, Mister Rand, I don’t think I need go.’

  ‘You knew about his background, eh?’

  Jack shrugged.

  ‘He was in the army, I know.’

  ‘Better than that. I told you I had a report on him. I ran his name through a couple of our other systems. He was liked by the CIA – helped with training a few of our guys, apparently, as well as interrogating prisoners. He was intelligence, you see.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘There are many things I am careful not to remember. Especially things that involve the security services,’ Jack said.

  ‘That’s very sensible,’ Frank chuckled. He sipped some of his soda, glancing at the plasma. ‘Crappy game, that. You happy to eat something here?’