Act of Vengeance

by Michael Jecks

  Suzie’s was as busy as it had been the night before, and Jack stood in the doorway a moment, distracted by the noise and busyness all about him until Suzie saw him and walked over to him.

  ‘Hey,’ she said.

  ‘Hello,’ he said automatically.

  ‘You don’t mind me sayin’, you look like crap,’ she said. ‘Come over here. An old friend’ll wanna see you.’

  He followed her and she took him round the main bar area to the seating area where he had sat and read the journal on his first day. At a table he saw Burns.

  Suzie pushed him into a chair and poured a mug of coffee before striding off.

  Burns was wearing glasses again, but his face was a mass of small cuts and bruises still. He tried to grin, but the effort was too painful and made him wince.

  ‘Hi, Mr Hansen. Or Case, I hear! Shit, you look worse’n me.’

  ‘Actually, I doubt that,’ Jack said. ‘Call me Jack. Everyone else does.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  Jack told him about his capture, about the torture and what had been going on in the Buckner Building.

  ‘That’s sick,’ Chief Burns said quietly.

  ‘Can’t have been easy to get the place changed like that,’ Jack said.

  ‘It was dead easy,’ Burns said with cold certainty. ‘Kasey’s boyfriend was killed in there. They must have heard of that and sent their guys in to remodel the basements. They told us it was to make the building safe for other kids, so an accident like that wouldn’t happen again.’

  Jack thought of Kasey.

  ‘You reckon it happened by accident?’

  ‘No. I reckon they probably booby trapped it and killed the poor bastard so they had an excuse to keep folks away.’

  ‘That’s what I reckon,’ Jack said.

  ‘Christ! What sons of…’

  The door opened and voices were bellowing. Jack turned and frowned at the disturbance, and spotted Frank and Debbie. Debbie caught sight of his face and pushed her way through the crowds.

  ‘Jack, the helicopter found some guys up near the ice. They’re bringing them in now.’

  *

  11.04 Whittier; 20.04 London

  Down near the harbourside, an emergency helipad had been set up in the car park, and Jack stood with Debbie, Frank and Chief Burns as the helicopter chattered its way towards them from the Portage Glacier. It was a large machine, with the State Police signs on the sides, and on its skids were two black-wrapped parcels.

  It came in towards the tunnel, then turned out to the water and came in slowly from the sea, its motor working hard in the thick, cold air, as it edged in and hovered, before settling down gently on the tarmac. While the rotor still turned, and the turbos started to quieten, men darted forward under the blades, hands on their hats.

  Jack found himself led forward once the machine had stopped, and the two bodies were set down on the ground.

  A trooper from the helicopter was talking to Frank beside the body bags.

  ‘It was the bears we saw first. I didn’t realise there were bodies there – whoever did it knew what he was up to.’

  An orderly was already opening the bags, and Jack saw the pale features of Peachfield and, a moment later, the other man in that hideous room down in the Bucky’s basement.

  ‘Yeah, that’s them,’ he said.

  Frank looked at him.

  ‘Yesterday you said there was another there in the room with you and these two.’

  ‘Just the one. The guy Debbie and I saw at Roy Sandford’s place.’

  ‘Stilson,’ Debbie said.

  Frank nodded.

  ‘Well, he’s done our job for us here,’ he said. ‘These two left the Buckner Building with him when it was assaulted. There was an escape tunnel that took the three of them into the treeline, and from there they made their way up towards the Portage Glacier. The helicopter found them at the side of the ice, under a lip. It was a miracle they were found at all, really. Bears were there and the pilot was bright enough to realise bears like their meat fresh, so he went on down for a look and found these two.’

  ‘How’d they die?’

  ‘Small calibre gunshot to the back of the head.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘He must have hiking gear or something. We’ll warn Anchorage to watch for a man matching his description, check on outward-bound flights, and see where he could have got to. Jesus, if a guy wants to get himself lost here in Alaska, he’s got a lot of space to go do it.’

  Frank sighed. The frustration was getting to him. He looked up at the hills behind the town.

  ‘They went on up there, and he just killed them both as soon as they were out of sight, I’d guess. He must be a real calm bastard.’

  ‘He’s a psychopath,’ Debbie said.

  ‘What about his boss?’ Jack asked. ‘Amiss: where’s he?’

  ‘Being watched. He’s at his home. He’s been told not to go to work,’ Frank said. ‘He’s one prick who isn’t going to collect his pension. He’s not arrested yet, but the prosecutors are going to have a ball with him.’

  ‘So what now?’ Jack said.

  ‘Now, we get the helicopter refuelled and hitch a lift back to Ted Stevens International, where we take a Bureau jet back to DC,’ Frank said. ‘And you debrief us about the whole affair. Then, when we get back, I think I should be able to tell you more about the other guys in this business. And meet Amiss.’

  *

  15.25 Langley; 20.25 London

  When Amiss’s little jet landed at the Andrews Air Force Base, Stilson remained sitting in his seat, staring out of the window as the plane taxied across to the CIA section and halted outside one of the Lear hangars. Even when the door had opened and the steps had been extended, he remained there, his eyes fixed upon the middle distance unseeingly while the pilot went through his final shut down sequences.

  ‘Sir?’

  Stilson unbuckled his belt slowly and rose. The small bag he had beside him on the grey leather seat was all he had. It was what he had taken with him to Alaska, and now, he realised, it was perhaps all he had in the world.

  As he climbed into the rental car, one thought was uppermost: Amiss must protect him. That was the key thing. Amiss knew Stilson, knew how reliable he was. The idea that he could be betrayed was unthinkable. But if Amiss himself was blown, Stilson was too. Without the protection Amiss offered, Stilson had nothing. He was just an agent without a patron, and agents without masters didn’t last long. Especially if they could be connected to criminal acts.

  The pistol that had ended Peachfield’s and the guard’s lives was already gone. He had dropped it into a crevasse in the glacier just after killing the two. And then he had set off across the waste that was the Portage Pass to the other side, where he had found an old car parked at the railroad station and hot-wired it. It was one hour to Anchorage, and he drove it slowly and carefully, his mind whirling all the way.

  After all the effort and danger, the entire scheme was blown. Amiss had created the Buckner cells, he had arranged for the tripwire system that killed the kid there, so that there was a reason for the engineers to arrive and build the facility, and he had used his contacts within his Masonic group to provide the men who would be questioned. But it was Stilson who had been his enforcer, Stilson who had executed the men whom Amiss had decided must die. Stilson was the man in most danger.

  He had to speak to Amiss. Hopefully Amiss could provide him with an aeroplane away from the US, and money. He’d need a lot of money. Whatever he had at his home was lost. He had been marked when those assholes appeared at his house. If Case had survived the torture at the Bucky, and when Stilson left him he didn’t seem dead, then there was a witness to him being there. He was known. All his past life was lost.

  His home was too dangerous. He couldn’t go there, likewise, his office. He had some spare money and ID there, he reminded himself, and punched the steering wheel in bitter fury. He had to get to Amiss, get some money, and determine
an exit strategy for himself.

  *

  16.03 Langley; 21.03 London

  In his room, Peter Amiss chewed at his lower lip as he sat at his desk.

  He had prayed, begging for aid and for the mental calm that would help him to see a way through this mess, but so far nothing had occurred to him.

  Perhaps he ought to have bolted when he had heard from Stilson that they’d caught the Brit and taken him to Alaska, but at the time that had seemed an end to the matter. The last little item closed down. No more problems. The Brit was taken, and could be conveniently killed and ditched. That was the beauty of the Alaskan site.

  He’d remembered that place as soon as the idea for the operation had first come to him. Whittier had been a place he had visited only a couple of times when he was a kid, but the site was so desolate, so far from people. It was ideal. And the fact that it was deserted now made it even better.

  Amiss leaned his hands on his glass-covered desk and tried to work out a plan of action. He ought to run. That was the thing. Leave America – take a plane to a country with no extradition agreement with the US, or a place where they’d appreciate his knowledge. The problem was that he didn’t want to go to a country that was America’s enemy. Even if he could earn a small fortune in a place like Russia, the idea of collaborating with America’s foe made his stomach turn over. No, he couldn’t do that.

  But there was always South America. There were plenty of places there where a man with money could hide for a long time. The Nazis proved that after the Second World War. From his previous life, he knew of a number of places to which he could run from Laos to Korea. But he was too old for that.

  He studied his face in the window. It was a gloomy day and, with the trees all about his house, the windows reflected his face perfectly. And he could see the resignation in his own eyes. He wasn’t going to run. This was his country. He had tried to do what he could to protect it, and his attempt had failed. Now there was a reckoning.

  Tugging open the right hand drawer of his desk, he looked down into it. There was his old service Colt automatic, right where it always sat. And when he pulled harder, the drawer opened wider to display the battered, leather cover of the journal.

  With that and the names of the others in the Deputies, he should be safe.

  But it made him feel dirty, even as he picked up his telephone and asked for a call to be put through to Frank Rand of the FBI.

  *

  22.03 Langley; 03.03 London

  Frank Rand drove up the driveway to Amiss’s house with a feeling of grim satisfaction. There was a feeling that the last hectic days were culminating in this meeting, and that he and Debbie would soon have only the paperwork to contend with. Paper, Frank felt, was safer than bullets.

  ‘Some house,’ Debbie commented.

  ‘Yeah,’ Frank said.

  He glanced in the rear-view, at the slumped figure of Jack Case in the back seat. Jack had slept almost all the way from Anchorage and, as soon as they installed him in the car, he had yawned, placed his head back on the rest, and begun to snore again.

  They drew up at the colonnaded front to the house.

  Debbie grunted and said ‘He think he’s a movie star or somethin’?’

  Frank didn’t respond, but turned in his seat.

  ‘Hey, Jack? We’re here.’

  ‘OK.’

  Jack was awake in an instant, and stared about him quickly. Wide driveway, house to the side here, while in front was a small circular box hedge only a foot or so high, with a pool of water enclosed within, a statue of a nymph holding a fountain aloft. But there was no spurting water today.

  He climbed out of the car and walked with the other two to the front door. A moment after Frank knocked, it opened to reveal a blue-suited man with very short haircut who almost filled the width of the door with his shoulders. He glanced at Frank and Debbie’s badges, stared meaningfully at Jack for a long moment, and only stood aside when Frank and Debbie squared up to him.

  Frank strode over the floor and opened a door at the left.

  Jack found himself inside Amiss’s library. It was huge, and extravagantly decorated with memorabilia from wars all over the world. He recognised a Viet Cong flag, and beside it was a little khaki hat with a peak and a red star in the forehead; underneath there was a shirt with a ragged hole in the breast, and blackened mess all about it.

  ‘You like my mementoes?’ Amiss asked.

  He had walked in from a door behind his imposing desk.

  ‘No,’ Jack said.

  ‘Please, sit, all of you,’ Amiss said. He took his own chair, fingering the crucifix at his open neck. ‘You have questions for me, I assume.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Frank said.

  Jack interrupted.

  ‘Why?’

  Amiss looked at him like he was dog mess staining his carpet.

  ‘You’re Case, of course.’

  ‘Yes. I’m the man you ordered to be killed, and then ordered to have tortured before killing me. That’s me,’ Jack said.

  ‘Yes, well, I am sorry about that. It was necessary to protect us.’

  ‘Us?’ Frank asked.

  ‘That’s why you are here. You see, I was invited to join a Masonic lodge some years ago. It was a good group of decent men. And it gave me the idea. The idea for a new lodge, which would be dedicated to America and protecting her.’

  ‘You don’t think the army is big enough?’ Jack asked sarcastically.

  ‘Come on, Jack,’ Debbie murmured.

  Jack sat back, looking away. It was hard to control his anger at this prick, sitting there so smugly.

  Amiss continued, his voice soft and calm.

  ‘No, Mr Case. I don’t think her armies are strong enough, nor the air corps, nor the navy. Because they are only good for conventional warfare. Sure, we can pulverise a country, we can nuke ’em till they’re scorched to cinders, we can blow their planes out of the sky, and we can destroy their ships. But when “they” are just a few half-starved individuals who hate us, our culture, our God, our films, our women – Christ save us – they even hate us giving them our money! That kind of brute individual, who is prepared to hijack a plane and fly it into a building, hoping to kill thousands by his act of terror, that guy cannot be stopped by a million troops on the ground. That kind of asshole cannot be stopped by our grunts. He needs a new form of defence. Intelligence.’

  ‘So you decided to form a club to promote torture,’ Jack said.

  ‘We had all the systems in place, and we were getting good intel from them. Gitmo was one place, but there were others. And then Bush left office, and we got the most un-American leader this country’s ever had,’ Amiss said. ‘We saw that the only way to keep our land safe for our children and grandchildren was to stop that fool’s crusade against us all. So, as he planned to remove our sources, we worked hard to replace them with others. Then we launched our mission. We would interrogate those who our sources had told us were involved; we would find the men who had committed the crimes against us; find the men behind them, who had conceived attacks, plotted with their friends, and launched them. Our first missions were against those from al-Qaeda who had been released from custody although they were a threat. There were men all over the world who had tried to destroy us. Now it was our turn.’

  Jack remembered the news of the explosion on the day he left.

  ‘Croydon?’

  ‘He was one of them. Your guys were keeping him under surveillance, but he was a threat. He had to be removed.’

  ‘And cops, neighbours, all the others injured? That was OK, I suppose. Collateral?’

  ‘If you want to put it like that, yes. This fight is bigger than one or two casualties, no matter how unfortunate. In war, you expect collateral damage.’

  ‘What was next?’ Frank said.

  ‘The next stage was to isolate where the second tier of informants lay. So once we had wiped out the first line, we went after them. They were the ones you found at
the Buckner Building. We got some good information from them, too.’

  ‘In such a short time.’

  At Jack’s sneering tone, Amiss looked up and met his stare without flinching.

  ‘Yes, Mr Case. In a very short time. Because we were prepared to be entirely ruthless. Like I said, this is a war to the death, between cultures and religions. If you don’t realise that, you’re a fool.’

  ‘What of your Masonic friends?’

  ‘They are senior officers who were prepared to put their lives and careers on the line for their country.’

  ‘Who were they?’ Frank said.

  Amiss looked at him.

  ‘Mr Rand, you are a good, God-fearing man. I’ve looked up your records. You had a bum as a brother, and your early years were… adventurous – but you still know what is right, what is wrong. You know what I did made sense.’

  ‘Sir, you may be right,’ Frank said, and Jack and Debbie exchanged a glance.

  ‘Some people were harmed. I don’t deny that. But only so that we could save lives. American lives. You see that, don’t you, Rand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So can we keep this private? I can have the—’

  ‘But whether it was or not, you were breaking the law in doing it. I can’t count all the laws you’ve broken just on a Federal basis, but I do know you’ll be going down for them. I’ll see you incarcerated for the rest of your life. That I do promise you.’

  Amiss smiled thinly.

  ‘You think so? I think I need to speak with my lawyers before I continue, then.’

  ‘What of the Masonic lodge?’ Jack interjected as Amiss stood.

  ‘It’s a private, secret matter,’ Amiss said.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Jack said. ‘It stopped being private when you arranged to have men kidnapped and brought here.’

  ‘You may think so,’ Amiss said. ‘Good night.’

  Frank stood.

  ‘Sorry, sir. You aren’t staying here. I am arresting you for…’

  Amiss’s face registered blank shock at first as Frank read out the list of offences and then read him his rights, but then, as Frank reached the end, his face changed. His cheeks flushed, and his mouth moved into a snarl of defiance, and he reached for the top drawer on the right.