Storm Crow

by Jeff Gulvin

‘Then why did you come to see me?’

  ‘I want to ask you a question.’ He moved closer to her then, hands in his jacket pockets. ‘Is Ismael Boese the Storm Crow?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You spoke to him, Storm Crow, I mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Face to face?’

  ‘Somebody sat in front of me, always disguised. I was never allowed to look at his face.’

  ‘Westminster Cathedral?’

  She nodded.

  ‘His voice, Pia. The same voice on the telephone?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Then think?’

  She lifted her hands. ‘I don’t know, Jack. People sound different on the phone.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘Louis Byrne. Have you ever met him before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Spoken to him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure? Your face yesterday—you looked as though you recognized his voice.’

  ‘Did I? I don’t remember.’

  Swann breathed out audibly and leaned against the wall. ‘How did the crystal get over here—the pirillium derivative?’

  ‘I don’t know. That was nothing to do with me. I just had to do my end. Get the accommodation and drivers.’

  ‘Why was Jean-Marie Mace killed?’

  ‘A marker, same as the Soho bomb and Northumberland.’

  ‘Europe. The federalization, trying to give us an idea what he was playing at?’

  ‘I suppose so. I was never told the whys of anything.’

  The sergeant opened the cell door then and Swann looked one last time at Pia. He felt the frustration and anger all over again.

  ‘Goodbye, Pia,’ he said.

  She stared at him, her eyes suddenly soft. But she did not say anything.

  Back at the Yard, the squad room was in a state of excitement. Swann cornered McCulloch. ‘What gives?’ he said.

  ‘Word just came in from Porton Down. The scaffolding pipes were full of water.’

  ‘Just water?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about the PINS analysis? EOD diagnostics found positive traces.’

  ‘In the plastic container, yes. They only had time to test four of the pipes, Jack. Porton Down checked the rest. No trace.’

  Swann scratched his head. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said.

  ‘It’s good news, Flash. Means he can’t quite do what he wanted us to think he could.’

  ‘That, or he didn’t have to. The city was still evacuated, wasn’t it.’

  Ismael Boese sat in the lounge of the Mount Pleasant Hotel in Hammersmith. He was watching Sky News on television. The commander of the Antiterrorist Branch was giving a press conference, talking about the operation to liberate the city and of how a major catastrophe had been averted. He relayed the information they had received from Porton Down: the thirty-five mortars contained nothing but water. Boese’s eyes were dark. Fool, he thought. You stupid, stupid fool.

  Pier-Luigi Ramas got on the tube train for Heathrow, carrying a small leather suitcase, and a lightweight travel bag. In the bag was a Ruger 9mm handgun. His flight was due to leave in just over two hours. He hadn’t wanted to loiter in the country like this. As far as he was concerned, the job was more than done and he longed to get home. Tal-Salem did not seem overly bothered and Boese had insisted. Still, he had checked this morning and all of his money was safely accounted for. Yesterday, Boese phoned to tell him it was time to go. Women were waiting in Rome and he was itching to get away.

  Christine Harris was manning the base in the operations room, when a call came up from the central command complex. ‘SO12.’

  ‘We’ve just received an anonymous tip-off. Pier-Luigi Ramas is on a tube train bound for Heathrow.’

  Jakob Salvesen was brought to the interview room in chains and guarded by four FBI agents. He still bore the mark of Harrison’s garrotte on his neck. Kovalski, Jackson and Harrison were going to interrogate him. Kovalski had arrived on a flight from D.C. via Cincinnati and Harrison had spoken briefly to him and Jackson before they went down.

  ‘You did one helluva job, John,’ Kovalski told him.

  ‘Would’ve been easier if I didn’t get burned.’

  Kovalski looked at him then with concern evident in his eyes. ‘You found out how?’

  ‘I’m looking, Tom. I’m looking. Interviewed a militia man in Hagerman. He got a call which may’ve come from the Storm Crow. It was after I sent in the stuff I got from Salvesen’s office.’

  Kovalski tapped a tooth with his forefinger. ‘Somebody on the inside.’

  ‘Had to be.’

  ‘A lot of people saw that product, John. Myself included.’

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘What d’you wanna do?’

  Harrison glanced at Jackson then, who frowned. Harrison knew there was no way he could find out for sure, let alone prove anything. ‘I guess we took out Jake,’ he said wearily.

  Kovalski nodded. ‘Yeah, but if there’s a bad guy about, I want him.’

  ‘You and me both.’

  ‘But quietly. There’s no point in raising a stink when over one hundred people had access to that product.’

  ‘I know.’ Harrison blew out his cheeks. ‘What we got is good, Tom. I know that. Might turn a few people off the militia.’

  ‘It’s what we needed. If Salvesen had been trying to get them all together, we’d have a hell of a problem. Right now, we need every weapon possible we can use against them. I’d appreciate it if you kept your suspicions between us for the time being. You know how things get leaked.’

  Harrison pulled a face. ‘No kidding. Remember the Palestinian internment saga?’

  ‘Oh God. Don’t remind me of that.’ He looked Harrison in the eye then. ‘You know me, John. This won’t get whitewashed. I want to see you in D.C. We’ll talk about it then.’

  They went down to see Salvesen. He sat in the chains with his hair tousled, looking old but still defiant. When he saw Harrison, his face turned lobster red. ‘I’m gonna have your balls,’ he said, touching his neck. ‘You nearly cut my throat.’

  ‘You know what, Jake,’ Kovalski said. ‘There’s those that wished he had.’

  Salvesen sat more upright in his chair. ‘Where’s my attorney?’ he demanded.

  ‘On his way. Who made the pirillium derivative?’

  Salvesen sneered. ‘You think I’m going to speak to you? I claim the Fifth Amendment.’

  ‘Abel Manley?’ Kovalski said.

  ‘I claim the Fifth Amendment.’

  ‘He was in your compound. We’ve got photographs. You knew him from the sixties Minutemen. He was a chemist like Robert DePugh.’

  ‘I claim the Fifth, sir. Did you not hear me?’

  ‘Fine.’ Kovalski leaned his forearms on the table. ‘We got you, Jake. Whether you claim the Fifth or not.’

  Salvesen smiled, the same light in his eyes that Harrison had witnessed in his courtroom.

  ‘For now, maybe,’ he said quietly. But I don’t recognize your authority. You see, I only serve one master.’

  ‘And you did that by trying to bomb London.’

  ‘London, Frankfurt. Wherever. You fools. Don’t you realize that I’m the patriot here? I’m the one on the side of righteousness.’ He shook his head. ‘Can’t you see you’re just puppets. The world is changing as we speak and you cannot see it. The Beast is alive and well and living in Western Europe. It takes a God-fearing American to stop him.’

  ‘The beast?’

  ‘The Abomination that causes desolation. The number of his name—Six Six Six.’ Salvesen’s eyes were shining. ‘You ought to thank me. I’ve made a noise out there and people will begin to listen. When there are sixteen nations in the European Union, you will see him rise. Then you’ll come to me.’

  On the fifteenth floor at Scotland Yard, a sterile arrest team was being dispatched to Heathrow. SO19 had been tasked and armed-response vehicles were heading for t
he airport.

  On the tube train Ramas read the newspaper. When he got to the airport and quartered it, he would dump the gun in the toilets and move through to the departure gate. Just an hour or so more and he would be home free at last. He closed his eyes for a moment, then glanced up at the route-planner on the wall above the far window. They had just left Hounslow West, the next stop was Hatton Cross. He was due to get off at Terminal 2. The train thundered into Hatton Cross station and the doors opened. Two black women with children got off. Ramas looked again at the route-planner. Then two uniformed police officers got on, and both of them had MP5 carbines strapped across their chests. Ramas felt the ball of tension curl in his gut.

  He sat where he was, the paper lifted to his face. The policemen stood by the door, each one leaning against the glass partition, facing one another. Ramas was three seats down; he could feel the blood at his temples. His hands were shaking just a fraction and he closed his eyes to calm down. The train pulled into Terminal 4. He would get off here and get back on when they’d gone. Picking up his bags, he moved down to the exit. He waited, the light came on and he pressed the button to open the doors. On the platform, he walked towards the exit. When he got there, he glanced over his shoulder. The two police officers were following.

  Now his heart was beating; he could feel their eyes on his bag. He shouldered it, slipped one hand inside and gripped the butt of the gun. He needed the escalator or lift to take him up to the terminal. Two people were waiting by the lift with luggage trolleys. Ramas took the escalator, and behind him the police officers followed. Upstairs, he came out by the café and hesitated. Three more armed officers were standing in front of him, two of them had a sheet of paper in their hands. He ducked left and walked briskly. One of the officers glanced at him, then at the paper and back at his face once more. Ramas dropped his bag and came up pointing the gun.

  He looked left and right, then ran for the exit. He could hear sirens outside. His heart was jumping in his chest, and he looked around for a hostage. Nobody close enough. The automatic doors opened and he rushed outside. As he hit the pavement he stopped. Two marked police cars drew up with a terrible screeching of brakes. Ramas stared, looked for a way of escape, but there was nowhere he could go.

  ‘Armed police. You in the black. Stand still.’ He looked up. Two officers were out of the first car, pistols drawn, using the doors as cover. Behind him, the others came out of the terminal. He thought of Boese and he thought of Tal-Salem. Betrayal. Again the man at the car shouted. ‘Drop the weapon. Now.’

  Ramas half turned and stared into the eyes of the uniformed officer nearest the terminal door. Young face, young eyes, more than a little bit frightened. Slowly, he levelled the gun. Bullets hit him, back and front. He forced the cry away, body jerking, arms flailing, the gun spinning into the air. He didn’t hear it land; concentrating on keeping his feet, hands to the holes in his chest. A bloodied hole in one hand, another in his elbow. He retched and blood spilled on to the pavement. For a moment he looked at it, globs of saliva dyeing the red to pink. He fell then, forward on to his knees, one hand on the cold concrete. Gently, he lowered himself and twisted on to his back. He was aware of the life leaking out of him and the last thing he saw was the barrel of an MP5 pointing down at his face.

  Julian Moore of MI5 was sitting at his desk scanning a copy of the International Herald Tribune. This was technical intelligence, the art of finding what did not appear to be there. The phone rang on the desk and leisurely he picked it up.

  ‘Julian Moore.’

  ‘This is the duty officer at GCHQ. Operation Ding Dong, you gave us a tracker a year ago. It’s just been activated.’

  Harrison sat in his hotel room with the caller information on John Henry Mackey in his hand. He had one number ringed, a payphone in London. In his other hand he held the telephone. ‘Listen, Mackey. Don’t fuck with me. I’ll have your ass in chains so fucking fast, you won’t know what day it is. Who do you know in London?’

  ‘I don’t know no one. I ain’t never been there. I ain’t never called there. I ain’t never even spoke with nobody from London. You got that, Fed? I don’t know nobody.’

  ‘If I find out you’re lying to me, I’ll kill you myself. Even if I gotta come to jail to get you.’

  ‘Do what you gotta do, asshole.’ Mackey hung up the phone.

  The call had come from London. That cleared everyone on this side of the ocean. Harrison stared at the names of the Foreign Emergency Search Team. Graham Ketner from the CIA. Bob Hicks, State Department. The other three were FBI. He had not known about the guy from the Weapons of Mass Destruction Unit. Logan he knew, ASAC with Tom Kovalski. And, of course, ‘Lucky’ Louis Byrne. He pursed his lips and lit another cigarette. He didn’t know the guy from the Company, or Hicks for that matter. Cheyenne, he had met a couple of times, but not Larry Thomas. He laid the paper down and placed his hands behind his head. ‘Lucky’ Louis Byrne, the original Storm Crow hunter. Everyone knew that was his particular bête noire.

  He closed his eyes then and thought instead about the people of Passover. Scheller had constantly warned him about going native. Not that there was any need. He had been a UCA twice before and he had never gone native. But he thought about Guffy and how warm her bed had been. He was forty-eight years old, battered about the face and heart, and he was alone again once more. He opened his eyes then and the thought of somebody on the inside compromising him pushed in on everything else. A death sentence, passed by someone reputedly on your own side. He picked up the papers and flicked through them over again. He sucked hard on his cigarette. What about the Englishman who’d been screwing Brigitte Hammani? They said it was down to him that Boese had stayed so far ahead of the game. Jack Swann. Who was Jack Swann and what did he know?

  ‘Get a helicopter up, Jack. We need to follow the car.’ There was urgency in Colson’s voice and Swann picked up the telephone.

  ‘We need SO19 over here now.’ Colson looked at Webb, who picked up the other extension. He got Sergeant Graves from blue team.

  ‘Hello, Nick,’ he said, looking at the CAD in front of him. ‘Remember Queen’s House Mews?’

  ‘How could I forget?’

  ‘How’d you like another go at him?’

  They briefed en route: three Gunships, a Range Rover and two Vauxhall Omegas, unmarked cars driven by SO13 officers with three firearms officers in each of them, everyone in plainclothes. Colson and Swann sat in the back of the control car, with Graves in the front passenger seat. The Gunships were currently behind them. Graves was in communication with the aircraft overhead, which was tracking the movements of the Mondeo.

  ‘Why go back to it after a year?’ Swann was saying. ‘It doesn’t make any sense.’

  Graves looked over his shoulder at him. ‘We need eyeball.’

  Colson nodded and got on the radio. ‘Four/two from Colson. Come in.’

  ‘Four/two, receiving,’ the response crackled back.

  ‘We need eyeball. Get up to him pronto.’

  He put the radio down. Graves was scratching his bald head and scouring the map on his lap. They were driving quickly with no lights or sirens, making their way through the traffic and out of London.

  ‘He’s heading for the Ml,’ Graves said.

  Webb was in another of the surveillance cars, ten in all, travelling in convoy away from the Yard in the direction of Hendon and the bottom of the Ml motorway. He was echoing the thoughts of Jack Swann. ‘Why go back, Macca?’ Byrne was sitting in the back seat with Cheyenne. ‘He’s been the consummate professional,’ Webb went on. ‘He must know we flagged the car. Jesus, why not just steal another one?’

  ‘We don’t know that it’s him,’ Byrne said.

  Webb glanced over his shoulder. ‘Ramas is dead. It’s either Boese or Tal-Salem.’

  ‘Or a car thief.’ Cheyenne lifted her eyebrows.

  McCulloch looked round at her. ‘Well, if it is—he’s going to get one hell of a shock when we catch up wi
th him.’

  The helicopter reported that the Mondeo had hit the bottom of the Ml and was travelling north. Graves spoke to the three Gunships. ‘We follow at distance for the time being,’ he said. ‘Let’s see where he goes.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Luton Airport, maybe. If he turns off, we take him.’

  They were still waiting for the motorcyclist to try to establish the identity of the driver. He was well ahead of them now, and every now and then he would check in to confirm the location of the target. Just south of Luton, he called in. ‘Control from four/two.’

  Graves lifted the microphone. ‘Go ahead, four/two.’

  ‘Contact. Blue Mondeo ahead, middle lane.’ He read out the index number.

  ‘Confirmed,’ Graves said. ‘Can you give us eyeball ID?’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  The communication broke and Swann sat in the back staring out of the window. He was praying this was Boese. He really wanted to see him again.

  ‘Control from four/two.’

  ‘Go ahead, four/two.’

  ‘Eyeball contact. Single occupant. IC3 male, short dark hair. Target confirmed.’

  Swann looked at Graves. ‘Let’s take the fucker, Nick.’

  Graves pondered for a moment, then spoke into the radio. ‘Central command from Bronze Commander Graves, SO19.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ the response came back from the sixteenth floor at the Yard.

  ‘Rolling take-out confirmed. SO19 will call the attack. Three Gunships, repeat three Gunships. Contact local forces along the route given by fixed-wing spotters. I want the entrances blocked on to the Ml carriageway travelling north. Junctions fourteen, fifteen and sixteen.’

  ‘Confirmed.’

  Graves looked over his shoulder at Colson. ‘I want the surveillance cars to fall back behind us, sit in the three lanes and slow everyone down, one-hundred-yard intervals, eighty, seventy, sixty, down to forty mph.’

  Colson nodded. ‘It’s your call, Nick.’

  He relayed the information to the ten surveillance cars and then Graves nodded to the driver. ‘Sirens and blue lights,’ he said. Let’s catch the bastard up.’

  They were twenty miles back, so they could afford to hit the lights. All cars corresponded and the convoy hit the outside lane with sirens wailing and stick-on blue lights flashing. Everybody moved out of their way and within a short while they were only five miles behind the target. The motorcyclist had pulled off at the services, re-entered the traffic and was now one hundred yards behind the Mondeo. The helicopter flew overhead. Boese was moving north, still with no sign of turning off the motorway. He had already passed junction thirteen and was travelling at seventy miles an hour in the middle lane. Swann could feel the tension beginning to rise. He thought of his children back with their mother and of Pia Grava in the cells at Paddington Green.