by Jackson, Gil
‘You reckon.’ Johnny Bingham said.
‘That’s what we saw and if the authorities want to keep a lid on it, that’s good enough for me, I’m putting my name to none of it. And if you try to use me I’ll deny I saw anything.’
He got up to go. ‘That’s a hundred you owe me, Mr. Weinberg, you’ve had you’re money’s worth, I’ll see you first thing in the morning.’
‘I’ll be here.’
He left and Dave got up. ‘Well, I want another drink, you going to have to decide how to handle this one, Ham.’
‘So what did happen to the dredger operator?’ Johnny Bingham asked Hamilton.
‘Somebody took him before anybody could get to him, and apart from you, I know why you threw up.’
* * *
The following morning they called a meeting with Max. That three of his most experienced reporters had not been able to get a corroborated story from anyone other than a man called Larry King disturbed him. This turned to anger when he was told by them he would be in denial by Chief-of-police Edwin Gojke if he was to print any story. The fact that none of the other papers reported more than contractors dredging the Hudson and uncovered an archaeological site put him on their side.
‘Did anyone make any inquiries over the dredger operator? Why he’d been taken into custody, for instance?’
Johnny Bingham piped up. ‘Yeh, I did.’
‘Well. Would you like to tell me, Johnny Bingham, or are we going to have to drag it out of you,’ Max said angrily.
‘They wouldn’t comment,’ Hamilton added. ‘Just said they had arrested a man that they had been after for some time.’
‘What a dredger operator?’
Hamilton shrugged.
He turned to Mike Crawford. ‘And you. Had your camera confiscated. So no pictures?’
Mike took an envelope from his file of notes and dropped three A4 colour pictures in front of him.
Johnny Bingham turned to Mike. ‘You had the film developed.’
Mike smiled. He pulled a small Canon digital from his pocket. ‘Developed. I’ve moved on. Only from that camera, not from this one.’
‘You crafty bas—’
Max turned them over and looked at the line of children laid out on the pier. ‘Victoria! Get me the Mayor’s office.’
‘Yes sir.’ She picked up the phone.
‘And Victoria.’
She looked up at him, her hand over the mouthpiece, before answering her caller. ‘Don’t take busy for an answer. If he won’t come to the phone tell him Max Stenna is putting a story to bed that he wouldn’t sleep with.’
* * *
Apart from letting Mayor O’Connell know that he was confused as to why city hall had decided to turn the discovery of forty immigrant children into an archaeological site; he also proposed to combine resources of the New York media and let the public know. Mayor O’Connell denied all knowledge of what Max was talking about; made an excuse to get off the phone with: I’ll call you back, Max, don’t do anything foolish. Max knew that all the powers at his disposal would be called in as to what he was to do now. When he called back he said that he had been trying to contact the Chief-of-Police to get confirmation of what had happened: like he didn’t know, Max thought, but gave him the benefit of a bit more rope, and a promise that the subject would be given his priority.
Max called Hamilton in when the call came again. The Mayor said that it had all been a bit of a mix up. Apparently, as they had apparently been told, some archaeological remains had been removed from the bottom of the river and to make sure that the contractors could carry on unheeded. So that the contractors could carry on a bomb story had been created. The archaeological remains had been taken away by a government department that dealt with such matters and no more could be said on the subject to the point of press notices being sent out asking kindly for the media to make no more mention of any of it. Max asked for the department concerned but Mayor O’Connell said that he didn’t know. There was a silence while Mayor O’Connell waited for a reaction from Max; but as they both knew that would be an end to the matter the Mayor waited for Max to put the phone down with no further comment. Max silently looked at Hamilton and he instinctively knew that they would get no more. This was one story that would never get printed. The biggest criminal cover-up that either of them had ever come across meant that this was something extremely big. Big enough for witnesses to disappear and the ever so slight feeling that their own lives could be in jeopardy.
Their feelings sunk lower when Larry King reappeared and contacted the Post’s office denying all knowledge of what he had told Johnny Bingham and Hamilton Fitch. He told Hamilton when he had asked him about his new car that he had won a large amount of money in the New York lottery and had since retired.
Hamilton, suspicious, but, that it could not be impossible, accepted the man’s good fortune until a large yacht turned up in the Post’s own car-park on a trailer. Apparently Max Stenna had won first prize in a Maxwell House coffee competition. Max said that he didn’t take part in competitions and certainly didn’t entertain drinking Maxwell House; sent the trailer and the driver back from whence he came.
The evening of the same day Max received a call from Sister Annie Carter to say that people that were concerned for his safety after the events of the previous day had taken Hamilton Fitch into protected guardianship. Max said she must be joking, and what the hell was all this, a woman with no tits. She rang off.
Immediately after the call Max tried to ring Hamilton but all he got was his answer machine. He put the phone down without leaving a message with the intention of trying again. Didn’t bother as he guessed he would be wasting his time.
Hamilton didn’t turn in for work that following day. After a week of having not heard from him — the President of France having been and gone — Max Stenna sent out a missing person’s communiqué to Borough Queens South of the NYPD.
His phone rang. He snatched it up. ‘Hamilton, where are you?’
It was Walter Oakey to complain that someone had poured coffee in his ashtray and put his cigarette out while he was in the John and that he was fed up with being persecuted by members of staff because he smoked. Max impatiently sighed and told him not to be such a fucking nob-head and that he’d deal with it and would he mind kindly getting the fuck off the line as he was trying to make an important call. Still holding the phone he waited for Oakey to clear then tried Hamilton’s internal number and, getting no reply, he called his mobile; getting similar he tried to work a connection with the woman that he had spoken and the children that never were and getting no where with it. He paused again for thought, started seriously worrying for the health of one of his staff for the first time since he’d been in the job as editor-in-chief of the New York Post.
But Max Stenna had not been wrong about the state of health of one of his staff. Hamilton had seen something in Mike Crawford’s photograph that would resonate mentally with him for the remainder of his life.
* * *
That children had been abused on such a scale gave him cause for concern not because of the obvious, but because when he returned to the Post, Max Stenna called an urgent Press meeting telling them that an FBI directive to keep the story under wraps while they investigate local authorities’ version of events that had recently taken place regarding the archaeological finds of deceased minors within the vicinity of the Hudson river; had they an opinion regarding the statement: A complete blackout would be appreciated by all concerned and hope they could be relied upon to allow these unorthodox investigations to take place.
PART THREE
CHAPTER 24 – 1997
General Michael (Mick) Mahon peered across the space between the gate-house and the building. Dressed in black and wearing a balaclava, his eyes became accustomed to the dark, they pierced the night like lasers moving and stopping — watching. He was away. Zigzagging and crouching — fast. Unbelievably fast. He could make a 100 metres in 15 seconds in this pose; sto
p on a dime — freeze frame and drop to the ground unnoticed at the first sign of an enemy. Listening and still watching — his heart-beat under control — he would be up and away again on an all-clear. Not quite as good as a few years ago, but passably so. The security guard never stood a chance.
This was a one-man operation — there was to be no third party cock-ups getting in his way. It was, he decided, to be executed at speed. If cctv security at this establishment was as good as Spannocs had said it was, and he installed it, he must be in and out with the girl before they — whoever they! were — had time to mix, match and apprehend.
Inside the building he quietly closed the door and removed his backpack. Placing it on the floor in the centre of the elegant foyer. There in front of him, to the right of the wide staircase, was the red door that Spannocs told him would lead to the room the girl was being kept. He went through, hurried along the corridor and through another door finding himself in a room that looked like an operation theatre.
Along the wall, body cabinet drawers he had been told to expect were in position and the one he wanted would be marked: ALIEN. Shining his torch quickly along the drawer fronts the camera lens in the corner moving and exposing its quarry. The name he had been looking for flashed back at him. Put his blue rubber gloved fingers into the handle, pulled it open. The body was encapsulated in a green plastic body bag. He’d seen enough of those in his time. Hurriedly dragged it out into the middle of the room and unzipped its inhabitant.
There as Spannocs had described the girl. Oriental in appearance she had a fur skin cloak at her feet. She was what he had come for. Grabbing a gurney he dragged the girl on to it and kicked the drawer shut. Turning the gurney round he opened the door and pushed it down the corridor until the red door. Letting go the gurney he opened it and grabbing it again, pulled it back through into the foyer then out of the building and into the night.
* * *
Within ten minutes Mick Mahon was on the road. The Jeep cruised gently but powerfully along, its four-litre engine giving off a masculine reassuring hum, and telling him that he had pulled off his last job. He smiled and looked behind him. The body was laid out in the back covered in a blanket. What was so important about her? he asked himself for the first time, that Spannocs was prepared to pay such a high price. What little he saw of her face he could tell that she had been beautiful; and that her skin gave her the look of an Asian. Mongol, possibly Russian. He wondered if she was as dead as Spannocs had said but didn’t know why he thought that. He was not comfortable with the thought that she might be in a coma; decided that as she was in a mortuary she must have been dead and put that thought out of his head. What did Spannocs want with a dead girl in an animal skin? He tried not to think. He supposed that everyman must have a hobby.
He stopped the Jeep on the mountain road above and got out. The stars were out and the moon was being covered and uncovered by clouds that were caught in the mountain’s jet-stream. There was a slight chill in the air and the sound of night insects scratching but nothing else. Below him he could make out the building he had come from. Security vehicles were surrounding the building. Removing a radio transmitter from inside the Jeep he extended an aerial and flicked a switch [ARMED] a button [READY]. Inside the building his back-pack on the floor clicked once. A light on the transmitter in his hand illuminated an orange [FIRE]. He put thumb pressure on it. Half-second. A white flash and an explosion rocked the building. Echoes of the action, like an endless re-play went across the mountain valley diminishing sound waves at every weakening rebound.
Within seconds the ground floor of the building was engulfed in a fireball. Flames ripped upwards through the ceiling and into the second floor. Windows blew out like gum bubbles from the lips of children. Black and acrid smoke billowed chasing shattering glass. Alarms rang until the heat from the inferno overcame them. Streams of smoke was coming from the pan tiled roof as the flames took over the top floor, before it surrendered and painted the night sky awash with bright orange red paint.
Mick Mahon could make out the wailing siren from a distant fire engine dopplering, but it would be too late to save this building. The incendiary had done its job well. Getting back into his Jeep Mick Mahon took a side-long glance before saying to himself, Mix and match me to that, you bastards. Putting the Jeep into gear, his adrenalin pumping, he dropped the clutch mercilessly the vehicle shot forward aggressively into the night its wheels spinning leaving a cloud of dust and stones.
In the rear of the vehicle in a closed body bag the girl opened her eyes, looked first left then right; closed them again. The body bag zip slid open. Mick Mahon feeling a cold shiver up his back; and making nothing of it drove on and straight off the mountain road without hearing so much as a sound.
* * *
Inside CIA security and surveillance headquarters in the Navajo town of Eckleston a bank of computers downloaded the last known movements of General Michael Mahon ex-Military Intelligence. Barrack room gossip went that he must have lost it. Which he had in the most bloodiest of ways 400 feet down in the valley below.
PART THREE
CHAPTER 25 – 1997
‘No, Mr. Spannocs, I can assure you we still haven’t found her.... Yes, I know you’re offering a reward but she’s still not turned up ... yes, yes, I know you’re a personal friend of the Governor but it doesn’t alter a damn thing, I wish it did. When we went back to recover the driver, or what was left of him, he was alone. If there had been a girl she’s gone.... Yes we’ve searched but there’s mines down there. If she’d been alive she could have wandered into any one of them, they go for miles.... Alright, Mr. Spannocs, I’ll get a wider search done, but no one could have survived that drop, and to my mind she would be as dead as he was ... hello, hello.... Arsehole!’ Sheriff Winfield Bell slammed the phone down: ‘DEPUTY! DEPUTY! DAVE CARSON! Where the fuck are you now?’
An oversize sweaty uniform appeared in the door of his office. A cigarette stuck between its lips moved in synchronisation with its voice. ‘You want me, Winfield?’
Sheriff Winfield Bell trying for a pocket of fresh air to breathe looked his deputy up and down with incredulity that any resemblance between this man and a law officer could surely not be any more than purely coincidental. He shook his head and despaired that the rest of his team (he used the thought loosely) were not much better turned out.
‘Take the four-wheel and anyone that you can find that’s sober and go back to Cheyne, have another look for that passenger and see if you can find her this time.’
The deputy protested. ‘What today, we’ve searched — it’s Derby, I’m meeting the boys after two, it’s one now...?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry to interfere with your social life, Dave, but today would be preferable — take Wood’s with you this time. A fresh pair of eyes might yield something this time.’
‘OK Winfield take it easy, what’s with the attitude?’
‘It’s sheriff to you, and my attitude is that some guy with trouble at arms length is giving me grief and could cause all of us a lot more, so if you wouldn’t mind just do as I’m telling you. And while I’m about it let me remind you, if you’d been doing your job properly in the first place we wouldn’t be in this mess now.’
‘Wasn’t my fault. She was probably snatched by someone.’
‘Snatched! Who the fuck do you think is going to snatch a dead woman from a car accident? In any case, I’m tired of repeating myself, she wouldn’t have gone anywhere if you’d stayed with the vehicle. We couldn’t get two bodies out of that valley at once. What were you doing while we were doing that, I’d like to know, that someone goes missing on your watch?’
The deputy looked sheepish and changed the subject. ‘Could be she wasn’t dead and something woke her up and she had just wandered off.’
Sheriff Winfield Bell was back at his desk, his face buried into his paperwork. He spoke while reading hoping that the deputy would leave but found himself forced to answer. ‘Yeh, and my prick’s a
bloater. Not out of that canyon she didn’t. Would you get on with it, I’m busy?’
He persisted and Bell wondered if he was merely taking the piss or was generally thick. ‘Well she could still be alive, there was that report that someone had heard a ghost wailing in the canyon, could have been her calling for help.’
Sheriff Winfield Bell’s face read resignation. Ever since he’d been lumbered with the title sheriff in this one horse town he’d been surrounded by idiots; if not from his own officers from the people that he was supposed to be serving — the good people of Cheyne County. He was getting it in the neck from the Governor and this Spannocs associate of his. Crooks all of them. He was beginning to wonder the importance of this girl. There was the call from the government research establishment that had the fire. A general enquiry, Anne Carter, had introduced herself. One of their inmates, a girl that had walked out in the confusion intellectually challenged. Could he keep an eye out for her? Someone off their head, walking into Cheyne County. How the fucking hell would he tell her from the rest of the nutters living here? He saw no need to mention the girl Spannocs was inquiring. That establishment was over a 100 miles away, nutter or not, she wouldn’t be able to wander that far in six hours.
He looked up from his paperwork and tried a different approach to his deputy. He spoke softly. ‘Forget the ghost, let’s assume she’s dead, as she would be if a mortuary was her last residency; do what we can to find her, and when we do, throw her down one of the vertical shafts, as we’ve been asked, and we’ll tip concrete down to seal her up, as we’ve also been asked to do! Now. Get on with it!’
Deputy Dave Carson happy with the change of attitude turned to go but was called back. ‘And another thing.’ The man turned to look at him with an expression of someone that was being spoken up to. ‘A favour,’ he smiled. ‘Should a representative from the government arrive, make some effort to tidy yourself up. You look and smell like a week old colostomy bag with month old aftershave on....’
