Storm Crow

by Jeff Gulvin

  Thallium, Swann thought. They had not seen thallium since the late eighties, when a number of Iraqi dissidents in London and Baghdad found themselves drinking orange juice laced with it.

  ‘E-7 was a lot more virulent than thallium,’ Larry Thomas, the FBI man, said. ‘It crippled the nervous system.’

  Firman looked up at him. ‘You’re part of the liaison?’

  ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction Unit.’

  ‘Ah, this should be particularly interesting to you, then. When I’m done, you’re welcome at Porton Down.’ He looked back at the slide. ‘As I said, crystalline form. I won’t bore you with the technical jargon regarding evolution procedures, but, suffice to say, what we found in Northumberland is about as dangerous as it gets. Think of sarin or tabun—then think much worse—and you’ll be getting close.’ He paused and looked at them all, particularly the commander. ‘We haven’t faced this threat openly before and I have to tell you, we’re still a long way from finding an answer in terms of serum or antidote.’

  ‘What does it do?’ Webb asked.

  Firman flicked through the slides. ‘I’ll tell you. These crystals, when diluted in either nitric or hydrochloric acid and then heated to a temperature of 120 degrees, and kept at that level for four minutes, become this yellow liquid.’

  ‘Looks like piss,’ McCulloch said as the slide came into focus.

  ‘Tastes considerably worse and unlike your own urine it has no life-enhancing qualities.’

  Firman flicked to the next slide. ‘On exposure to the atmosphere, or pure oxygen, the liquid vaporizes. It does it whether it’s neat or diluted in water. We’re still testing the persistency of that vapour in the atmosphere. It’s been three days so far.’

  A chill went through the room. Larry Thomas scratched his head. ‘You’ve got airborne persistency for three days? No decomposition?’

  ‘Oh, it’s decomposing,’ Firman said. ‘But it’s still lethal.’

  ‘What about in the ground or the water system?’ Swann asked him.

  ‘We don’t know yet, but we’re talking a lot of years.’

  He flicked to the final slide: Bruno Kuhlmann’s corpse. ‘The subject was contaminated by respiratory ingestion of the gas,’ he said. ‘The solution we found had not been diluted at all, but, as I’ve just said, its dilution ratio is high. You don’t need very much of it to cause a massive problem.

  ‘Symptoms,’ he went on. ‘Initially, coughing, respiratory restriction and pains behind the eyes. Once absorbed—be it by the respiratory system, orally or through the skin—it swells your blood vessels, and increases your heart rate. Nausea, diarrhoea, muscular pain, paresthesia and delirium. The gas burns—note the marks around the subject’s nose and mouth. The expansion of the blood vessels comes round the heart and lungs, the spinal cord at the neck and the main arteries to the brain. There is a massive build-up of blood, causing pressure behind the eyes. In his case,’ he tapped the screen, ‘he’s bled from vessels actually in the eyes. Ultimately, the brain comes under massive pressure and the heart rate intensifies to a point where it just arrests.’

  ‘How long does that take?’ Colson asked him.

  ‘About five minutes.’

  When Firman had finished speaking, there was absolute silence in the room. ‘Have they made this themselves?’ Tania asked him.

  Firman shook his head. ‘I doubt it. Pirillium E-7 has been around for thirty years. Lots of people know about it. This derivative could have its origins in the States, or it could be anywhere, the Middle East, here even. It takes some manufacturing, mind you, so somewhere, somebody knows what they’re doing.’ He made an open-handed gesture. ‘Aum Shinrikyo got sarin, didn’t they.’ He looked at Garrod again. ‘I’m told you think this is Storm Crow-related. As far as I understand it, they can get anything they want.’

  When the men from Porton Down had gone, the tension in the conference room was tangible. Garrod stood talking to Colson. Swann sat back, rested an ankle on his knee and looked at the ceiling. Again he saw the photograph that Huella had sent in, his forehead with a hole in it. The Feds were talking together and then Colson called them all to attention.

  ‘OK everyone,’ he said. ‘Bad tidings, I know. But that’s what the crow brings.’ He looked at them. ‘Remember, we’ve been fighting a domestic terrorist threat in this country since 1973. We’ve got bloody good at it. With respect to our American guests, I think we’re as good as it gets. So far the Storm Crow has given us the runaround. He thinks he’s led us up the garden path and back again. But he hasn’t. We’re still ahead of the game.’

  ‘You think so, sir?’ McCulloch looked unconvinced.

  ‘Campbell, if you want off this investigation, that’s fine with me.’

  McCulloch flushed bright red and looked between his knees.

  ‘We’re going to get him,’ Colson went on. ‘We’ve got enough forensic evidence to put him away for thirty years. Think how you’re going to feel when he gets driven up that ramp at Paddington and the gates close behind him.’ He paused and looked at each one of them in turn. ‘You know what you’re working on and you also know what we might be up against. I think we all agree that the death of Bruno Kuhlmann was premeditated. The pipe bomb, dets, etc. were deliberately left for our benefit. He wanted us to know that he has what he has and exactly what it can do. We’ve had that confirmed now from Porton Down.’

  ‘Question is, Guv,’ Swann broke in, ‘what’s he going to do?’

  ‘Do? He’s not going to do anything, Jack, because we are going to nick the bastard.’ He looked directly at Swann then. ‘In many ways this is your deal. I’m looking forward to watching you interview him.’

  Harrison sat on the Sun Valley Stages bus as it turned off Highway 20 and on to 75. As it trundled on towards Passover, he sank lower in the seat. Fortunately, the windows were tinted and he knew nobody could see in. It had been a long trip, almost three hours so far. At the front, the driver yawned. ‘I think we’re finally gaining on it,’ he said.

  Harrison stared out of the window: Little Mammoth Gulch, to his left, where the old mine workings guarded Salvesen’s land; the long grove of cottonwoods, where he hid his mountain bike before trekking to the top of the ridge and crisscrossing the saddles to Dugger’s Canyon.

  He was going there now, but not by the normal route. He would take the winter trail where he snowmobiled as far as the canyon and the deep hide in the cottonwoods. He could not risk the bus driver setting him down in Westlake, so he went north about a mile and then asked him to stop. It was five-thirty now and there was a lot of traffic. He jumped off the bus, ducked across the cycle path and down to the banks of the Big Wood, where he waited till it got dark.

  From here, he had to cross the road and pick an unseen path between the properties before climbing into the hills and eventually accessing Dugger’s Canyon from the East Road. It was a mile or so walk up the winding track that was favoured by mountain bikers. He thought about Danny Dugger’s father and Danny himself, having worked that canyon for years and years and years only to have the lease sold from under them. When Danny came to renew it with the BLM after his father moved to Carey, the bureau said he didn’t have enough money. They let it to Jake Salvesen two years before Harrison drifted into town.

  He crossed the highway and recognized a solitary figure in jeans and a black hat trying to hitch a ride to the valley: Charlie Love, still flush with his winnings from the NBA finals back in June. Harrison avoided him, cut a path into the foothills and disappeared into a clump of Douglas fir. Then he began to pick his way up the hillside, being mindful to walk just below the ridge. The sky was greyer than the mountain and he knew how conspicuous movement on a hilltop could be, even at this time of night. He thought about Charlie Love as he walked and the friends he had made, not just in Chief and Danny, but Guffy, Chris Shea, Mike Burrell and little Billy Ellinger. He thought about Tracey Farrow and Cody, Monty with his Jack Russell called Missy. Everyone called her Miss-er because Monty�
��d be lost without her. Then there was Randy Miller, Sandy and Smitty, Junior, and Brian, the tattoo artist from Denver he’d met up at the Sun Run.

  When he’d been this deep before, it had been at infiltration level in Chicago, and before that, Key West. Infiltration so deep that his buddies were the enemy. That, he had always been able to justify in his mind. This time, however, it was different—this time he was on the outside. People like Salvesen operated among a close-knit group to stop such infiltration. This time, his friends were on the outside. He wondered how betrayed they’d feel, when he finally came out in public. He wondered how Guffy would feel having slept with a man called Harrison who did not really exist. How the rest would feel, having being lied to for two solid years, the worst of which would be Chief, his best friend, who’d faced down the FBI with a gun in his hand at the second Wounded Knee.

  It took him an hour and a half to get to Dugger’s Canyon and the keep hide in the cottonwoods. It was much colder now and pretty soon the first snows of the season would hit the valley. He’d thought about using the mine to bury his Coleman cooler, but Danny sometimes used it even now, on the quiet. He knew the Magdalena tunnels like the back of his hand and any disturbance would be noticed. Sometimes Danny would drive up and just sit in the dirt when he got fucked up on booze, and start thinking about the old days. At least he didn’t do that any more, with a DUI hanging over him.

  Harrison opened his hide and listened to the rustle of the wind through the cottonwoods. There was bear up here and bobcat, as well as mountain lion. He had never actually bumped into a bear, but had seen a nine-foot lion one day when he was hiding in the lay-up point under the rock overlooking Salvesen’s compound. He’d figured it was in the area when he was hiking in at first light, and came across scratch marks in the dirt which were fresh. The lion was ahead and travelling away from him. Mountain lions generally scratched facing the way they were headed and you could tell that from how the marks lay in the ground. Fresh scat was another indicator; sometimes it was a little, sometimes a lot, depending on how long it had been since the lion killed. Up here, a problem with one was rare, but he had heard of a few joggers being taken down in Nevada, when game was scarce in the drought years at the turn of the decade.

  The only bear round here was black, though they were cinnamon-coloured to look at. Harrison had seen a few of them on his sojourns, but they had never bothered him—they spent most of their time hunting through garbage. There were no grizzlies, although a bunch had been transported to northern Idaho from Yellowstone one time, when there was a problem with hikers up there. They had all migrated though, back through Montana, and were shot when they got to Yellowstone.

  When the briefing was over, the US team separated. Byrne and Logan attached themselves to the investigation squads, Thomas went to Porton Down, and the CIA and State Department men were introduced to Special Branch and MI5. Swann stood in the conference room with his hands on his hips, scanning the Annacappa chart on the wall. He scrutinized the early events: driver of the Vauxhall Vectra unidentified, origin of the ringed Ford Cortina, as yet unknown; the emergence of James Morton, the first alias used by Target One; Joanne Taylor, the phantom woman who rented property; McIlroy, the blond-haired man with the South London accent. He felt somebody at his shoulder and looked round to find Byrne studying the chart. ‘Everything you got so far?’

  Swann nodded.

  ‘Tal-Salem.’ Byrne pointed to the shooting of Jean-Marie Mace. ‘Throwback to the eleventh century.’

  Swann glanced sideways at him.

  ‘You ever hear of the Hashishin?’

  ‘I can’t say I have, no.’

  ‘Shiite assassination sect. Used to get stoned on hashish before they carried out attacks on their Seljuk oppressors.’ He paused. ‘Tal-Salem always smokes before he kills someone.’

  Swann sat on the desk and folded his arms. ‘You know a lot about all this, don’t you, Louis.’

  Byrne moved his shoulders. ‘The job, Jack. Everyone’s got their area of expertise. Not many people handle domestic terrorism like you guys. Up until recently we’ve not had too much of a problem in the States, though I figure that’s all changing.’

  ‘Was McVeigh working on his own?’

  Byrne puckered his lips. ‘Apart from Nicholls, you mean? We don’t know for sure.’

  ‘Militia? The “patriots”, or whatever they call themselves?’

  ‘The use of that word’s a moot point, I can tell you.’

  ‘I bet it is.’

  Byrne sat down. ‘Cheyenne’s the one to talk to about the militia problem, Jack. Me, I move around the world. I already told you about the Mexican situation we had. I tracked him for a while in Colombia, too. There’s not been anyone like this guy since Carlos the Jackal.’

  ‘You’re convinced it’s one man.’

  ‘Ego, Jack. The feather, the photos, use of the Spanish, the French for Storm Crow when he claims stuff. Theatre, isn’t it. One man’s ego.’

  ‘Any idea who it is?’

  Byrne lifted his foot to the desk. ‘That’s the difficult bit. Unlike the Jackal, we don’t have a starting point. We knew he was recruited by the KGB in Venezuela, before going to school in Cuba and Patrice Lumumba.’

  ‘Moscow.’

  Byrne nodded. ‘He had a history. El Gordo—we knew about him right from the beginning—Ramirez Sanchez, rich boy revolutionary.’

  ‘We interviewed him recently,’ Swann said. ‘Shooting he did over here, twenty-five years ago.’

  ‘Edward Sieff.’

  Swann’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Shit, you do know your stuff.’

  ‘You gotta remember,’ Byrne said. ‘I got blown up in ’83. Victim of terrorism, myself. I was lucky—I got out with a few cuts and bruises. Two hundred and forty-one of my friends didn’t. I’ve pursued these bastards ever since. Call it my life’s work.’

  ‘We call it job pissed.’

  ‘Job what?’

  ‘Pissed. Drunk. Drunk on the job, nothing else mattering.’

  Logan looked up from where she was reading the notes that Dr Firman had left. ‘That’s Louis Byrne,’ she said.

  ‘What about this Idaho militia, then, Cheyenne?’ Swann asked her.

  ‘It’s not really a militia.’ She laid down the notes and came over. ‘Sam Sherwood’s the Idaho militia man. This guy Salvesen’s in the south, the rest are almost in Canada.’

  ‘So what is he, then?’

  ‘We think he might be the man to bring the militias together.’

  ‘It’s what we don’t want to happen,’ Byrne explained. ‘We think there may be upwards of a hundred thousand of them around the country. They have at least one presence in every state, something like eight hundred militias in total, four hundred and forty of them armed. They communicate via web sites on the Internet, and now and again they might conduct some mini-battle manoeuvres up in the Dakotas, but apart from that there’s not much physical contact between them. So far, they’ve practised what they call “Leaderless Resistance”, small cells of about seven or so people. That way, if a cell gets knocked out, the whole is not affected.’

  ‘Like PIRA,’ Swann observed.

  ‘Sort of, but PIRA have a war council, an established chain of command. So far, the militias don’t have any such council, or a groundswell of public support, and we hope it’s gonna stay that way.’

  ‘You don’t need many of them, though, do you,’ Swann said. ‘With your gun laws, any fucker can own a grenade launcher.’

  ‘They’re waiting for some kind of revolution,’ Logan told him. ‘They stockpile food, weapons, that kind of stuff. Women as well as men. Some of the toughest ones are women, particularly the Christian Identity people, they believe they carry on the seed. They all think that the government’s been infiltrated by communists, that we have concentration camps all ready to put them in when we take their guns off them. They avoid paying taxes, drive without licence plates and try to claim they’re no longer citizens of the United
States, therefore they don’t have to abide by its laws. They think the Federal Reserve is a Jewish conspiracy, with the IRS its collection agency.’

  Byrne ran a hand across his scalp. ‘They see black helicopters in the sky and believe they’re covert government agents. They think the Russians are massing along the Canadian border, and that we’re secretly training the Crips and the Bloods in LA to take their guns off them.’

  ‘And you think this bloke Salvesen is uniting them?’

  ‘We think he might be trying to. The ATF know he’s supplying weapons. That isn’t illegal though. He owns a munitions company or two. If he wants to give M16s away, he can. He’s got a lot of money, Jack. Runs two private airplanes and flies their leaders in from all over the States.’

  ‘What’s his connection with the fatality in Northumberland?’

  ‘There may not be one. All we know is that Kuhlmann was spotted in his compound.’ Logan took Harrison’s product file from her case and sifted through the photographs. ‘There you go,’ she said, ‘that’s what he looked like before his face got burned.’

  Swann studied Kuhlmann’s face. Then he looked at Salvesen. ‘This the man you’re talking about?’

  Logan nodded. ‘Jakob Salvesen, heir to Salvesen Connaught, or at least his father’s shares. I think he’s sold them all now. He’s holed up in southern Idaho with a bunch of churches and about five billion dollars.’

  ‘Going back to the original point about ID’ing the Storm Crow,’ Byrne said. ‘I talked in detail to Ben Dubin before I got on the plane. The only clue we have is a John Doe with Carlos when he bombed the French police train in 1982. Dubin believes that one of the players there, a man of about twenty-one, might be the guy who became the Storm Crow. He was mixed race, which might suggest your man Huella. Also, Huella would be about the right age now. Anyways, Dubin has intelligence sources that got into GRU, Soviet Military Intelligence, which suggested that Carlos may have had a protégé who had some training in Russia and also in Cuba. Since the Wall came down, we’ve got some information out of the DGI in Cuba, which was effectively Soviet Intel, anyway. They confirmed the same. But nobody knows who he was or what his raison d’etre was. My own feeling is that he did have a connection with Carlos for a time, but he was smart enough to see what would happen if he had a particular cause. Carlos worked for causes, and finally he lost his usefulness. First the Russians, then the Syrians. They sent him to Sudan, where the French extradited him in their own particular fashion.’