Penance

by Dan O'Shea

  Weaver just sat. Thing he’d learned interrogating people, turning people, when they’re busy torturing themselves, don’t interrupt. He’d let Clarke drop all the way to the end of the rope, let him feel the tug.

  Finally, Clarke looked up. “Why now? Just over your job?”

  “Name Zeke Fisher mean anything to you?”

  Clarke shook his head.

  “That’s who took the picture. Ezekiel Amos Fisher. My mentor, actually. That’s who Riley called to clean up little Davey’s mess. Well, not Riley, Paddy Wang. Riley called Wang, Wang called Fisher. You know Wang, right?”

  Clarke nodded. “Still do, talked to him last week, trade agreement with China.”

  “Well, Riley needed somebody but figured this was a little over his head, so he called Wang, and Wang called Fisher. And less than ninety-six hours after you found the bodies, Fisher had the whole thing wrapped up tight in a bow of dead radicals.”

  “I was horrified, you know, when I heard. My god, five dead, including that cop–”

  “Not so horrified you didn’t run for senate, though. Not so horrified you didn’t start talking up David Hurley like he was the white Martin Luther King. Not so horrified you didn’t ride his corpse into office.”

  A tired, sad smile from Clarke. “Not that horrified, no.”

  “Anyway, Fisher took the photos, and he held on to the paperwork. Guess he figured having a pet senator might be a good idea someday. He was still regular Agency back then, back before the Church Committee, back when the Agency could color outside the lines. He kept these in his private files. Anyway, things changed, and guys sitting in your chair found out they got their hands tied maybe a little tighter than they liked, and they set up the group I run, or ran. Zeke ran it first. He bought it in Laos, in 1978. And I took over. And this,” Weaver reaching out and tapping the photo, “was part of his legacy. But there’s another part. There’s Zeke’s kid. Ishmael. That name you know. The story you don’t.” So Weaver told him. The family history, the car bomb, the murders in Chicago, the clusterfuck in Moriah, the whole thing.

  When Weaver had finished, the president got up and walked over to the sideboard against the wall, poured a couple of inches of whiskey into a glass, then sat back down.

  “So this Ishmael Fisher is trying to clean up his father’s mess somehow?”

  “Can’t say for sure,” said Weaver. “Fits with what our shrink worked out.”

  “And if he’s taken alive, he knows?”

  “About you, sure. And about better than thirty years of other shit we need to keep in the dark.”

  The president took a long pull on his drink.

  “So what do you need?”

  “I need InterGov back. I need somebody to keep the Judge off of me. I need shooters. Ten of them. Good ones. And one last thing. It’s likely to get loud and messy the next week or so. We won’t leave any fingerprints on anything that points back easy, but I need to know somebody’s got our back here. It’s too late for nothing to come out. Press’ll be chasing lots of shit, but we’ll be able to muddy the water up well enough they won’t be able to make any of it stick. But we need to close ranks here. People start pushing, I need to know somebody’s gonna push back, hard, not get all weak at the knees.”

  That tired smile from Clarke again. “My character, actually, is more in the weak at the knees camp. Always have known that about myself, and have always tried to keep too much stress off my knees as a result. But I don’t suppose I have much choice this time, do I? You’ll wrap this up quickly?”

  “Yeah, but you gotta move fast,” said Weaver. “Start making your calls now. I need to be up and running in the morning. Then I’ll wrap it up just like last time. In body bags.”

  Weaver’s alarm went off at 4am. If Clarke was playing ball, Weaver would know by now. He picked up the phone and called the ops desk.

  “It’s Weaver. You guys get word?”

  “Yes. You’re back in charge.”

  “OK. What’s our disposition on Fisher?”

  “Ferguson and Chen are on the ground in Chicago. Ferguson said he’d send for shooters once he reconnoitered. Just got a roster on the QT out of Langley fifteen minutes ago. We have some reinforcements coming in. Should have them by 1200. I told Langley to send them straight to Andrews. Didn’t figure they’d do us much good here.”

  “You told them right. Have everybody muster at the hangar. I want us wheels up by 1500.”

  “Chicago?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll notify Ferguson.”

  “Negative. He or Chen been in touch at all since I was put back on top?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Keep them out of the loop.”

  A pause on the other end. “Yes, sir.”

  CHAPTER 41 – CHICAGO

  Ishmael Fisher took a quick reading with the range finder from the planned location of his next hide.

  Fisher had planted cameras and mics in seventeen churches, all over the city. Once Weaver picked up the signals, he’d have to start running intel, matching possible targets against locations, trying to ID shooting hides, trying to set up ambushes. He wouldn’t have enough bodies or enough time. And he wouldn’t get a signal here. Not until the chosen day.

  CHAPTER 42 – CHICAGO

  Lynch, Slo-mo, Starshak, McCord and Cunningham were crammed in a corner both at McGinty’s. 10am, the place not open yet, McGinty in back cleaning up.

  Starshak had the paper from 1971, files on the Hurley case and the raid on the AMN Commando. Lynch brought what he’d found in the garage, papers scattered around the table. Lynch ran down what he knew, and Cunningham filled them in on the spook angle, on Ferguson, the Dragon, Fisher.

  “This shit has all got to tie together,” Starshak said. “Too many intersections.”

  “Whatever happened back in ’71,” Lynch said, “this Fisher’s got the facts. And he had them before we did.”

  “But why now?” said Starshak. “Been forty years.”

  “Doesn’t matter in a way,” said Bernstein. “We’ve got enough to start putting a murder case together for 1971.”

  “Murder case for who?” Lynch said. “Riley’s dead. Old man Hurley’s dead. Riordan’s dead. I checked on the ME from 1971. Anthony? Guy who put the serology together? Died of a heart attack the same night my dad was killed.”

  “Convenient,” Starshak said.

  “You want more convenience? The two Feds in my dad’s notes? The ones at that meeting? One was killed in action in 1975. The other one died in a car crash in 1977. This Zeke Fisher? If he’s not dead, he’s gotta be a hundred years old. And I can’t seem to prove he was ever alive.”

  “Except now we have somebody half that age with the same name running around the city shooting people,” Bernstein said.

  “Got the beginnings of a conspiracy case against Clarke,” Cunningham said.

  “Obstruction maybe, statute’s run out on that,” said Starshak.

  “Tie him to the murder, then the clock keeps ticking,” Cunningham said.

  “Except we can’t, not with what we’ve got.”

  “One thing we could do, exhume the bodies,” said McCord.

  “Which ones?” said Bernstein.

  “Hurley Jr and Stefanski. Lots of advances since ’71. Might be able to get some physical evidence. Anthony, too. Heart attack my ass.”

  “But where’s that get us, except more evidence for a case against dead guys?” said Lynch.

  “Might shake the tree a little,” said Starshak. “Somebody’s got a bug up his ass about this stuff. He sees somebody taking a look at ’71, maybe he makes a move we can spot.”

  “It’s an idea,” said Lynch. “What about Fisher? Any thoughts on who else he might wanna shoot?”

  “Gotta throw the mayor in the mix,” said Starshak. “Guy seems to be going after survivors.”

  “And the president,” said Bernstein.

  “Shit,” said Cunningham. “We notify the Secret Service
, they’re going to want to know why. We tell them why, we’re sticking our heads up a little higher than I want to right now.”

  “It’s all been Chicago so far,” said Lynch. “Maybe we can hold off on the president, at least until we have more evidence he was actually in on it. Everybody who got it so far is tied to somebody who was in on it for sure.”

  “But the mayor’s a lock,” said Starshak.

  Nods from everybody.

  “Still gonna be putting our heads up,” said Cunningham.

  More nods.

  “Anybody else?” asked Lynch.

  “Stefanski never had kids, so far as I know,” said Starshak. “Kind of a notorious skirt hound, though, so who knows? Tommy Riordan’s got a sister and a couple kids of his own, so that’s possible. There’s Eddie Marslovak. Riley’s kid croaked from cancer, and his wife’s dead. Got a nephew that’s an alderman.”

  “We start going out to nephews and such, we’ll be in the hundreds,” said Bernstein.

  “OK, so I at least gotta get on the phone upstairs, tell them about the mayor,” said Starshak.

  “Maybe I ought to do that,” said Lynch.

  “Why?” asked Starshak.

  “Because I’m on the list, too. If this ties to ’71 and Fisher is targeting the descendants. Officially, the rest of you are out of this. I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “I’m not hanging you out to dry, Lynch,” said Starshak. “We all get in it, the jig’s up. They know they can’t take us all down.”

  “But once they know we’re in, then they’re going to start covering their tracks. Nobody knows we’re looking back to ’71. I let em think I’m playing ball, just me, maybe I can still sneak up on somebody. I’ll call Paddy Wang.”

  “Risky play,” said Starshak.

  “I’ve been living with the fact my father was murdered for most of my life, but always thought the guys who did it went down at the same time. Just found out they didn’t. Worse than that, just found out they set him up. Risky or not, I’m in.”

  “Just keep an eye out,” said Starshak.

  “An eye’s all I got left right now,” said Lynch.

  CHAPTER 43 – ABOVE VIRGINIA

  Weaver was sitting next to Nancy Snyder on the plane heading out to Chicago, the new troops in the back.

  “Your Moriah tip didn’t play out too well, Doc.”

  “Our Mr Fisher has an impressive mind, Colonel. I believe he anticipated us understanding his motivations in general and so looked for an opportunity to add an element of religious symbolism upon which we would seize. It fit in very nicely with all the data that you believed, I might add.”

  “I’m not playing gotcha here, doc. We all fucked up. You still think this all souls go to heaven angle is the right one?”

  “It might help if I had more context. I am not one of your shooters, as you like to call them, but I have to assume that choosing to shoot people only immediately after they attend the Catholic sacrament raises considerable tactical complications for our friend. If he could shoot whomever he wanted where and whenever he wanted, then you wouldn’t even know where to look.”

  “You got me there, Doc.”

  “So I still believe that the victims being in a state of grace is a central feature of Fisher’s pathology. However, he has moved away from the geographic line, which we now assume to have been simply part of his ruse. And he has returned to Chicago, where he was raised. And, if I understand correctly, his father did favors of a certain sort for the ruling family there.”

  “Yep.”

  “In all likelihood, then, these killings are meant, in some way, to expiate familial guilt for some previous action, either by Fisher or by his father.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “So, Colonel, if you would kindly share with me whatever details you have been hiding about these activities, then perhaps I can provide some meaningful assistance.”

  “Who says I’m hiding something, Doc?”

  “You are always hiding something. It is your nature. And you used something to undermine the Judge.”

  Weaver thought for a minute. And, strange as it was, he trusted Snyder. “OK, why not. My ass is hanging out so far now, it’s not going to matter.”

  He gave Snyder the entire story – what happened in ’71, the current investigation, what happened between him and Ferguson, everything.

  “My, what a tangled web we do weave,” said Snyder when he had finished. “I assume that we have the president’s blessing.”

  “We’ve got the president’s nuts in a vice is what we’ve got.”

  “Along with yours, if I read things correctly.”

  “Doc, my nuts have been in a vice since Vietnam. I’m used to it.”

  “I think, then, that Fisher’s motivation is fairly plain. He is not, as I previously assumed, trying to balance his books, as you put it. He is trying to clear his father’s account. You’ve said before that Fisher and his father shared not only their religious zealotry but also their patriotic zeal. I now believe that killing bad men did not and does not trouble Fisher. But what may trouble him is that his father killed a good man. One can assume in the context of the Fishers’ shared patriotic mania that the black activists framed for the old murders were acceptable victims – political apostates, if you will. But the detective, this Lynch? He was a truly innocent party. Beyond innocent, even. Actually heroic. And so Fisher is harvesting innocent souls connected with Lynch’s murder and offering them to God as a holocaust in penance for his father’s sins.”

  “Great,” said Weaver. “Mess of guys involved in that. How do we narrow it down?”

  “The victims have to be religious. As I understand it, confession has fallen out of favor with many Catholics, so that should help. After that, some direct ancestral involvement with the act itself.”

  “Marslovak barely qualified.”

  “But she did. Her husband maintained his silence in order to benefit from the act. And when Fisher took Marslovak, he was also baiting his trap. Riordan would have been more overt, so he was harvested after your little tête-a-tête downstate.”

  “Fisher is a tricky bastard.”

  “You have to remember, Colonel, that his motivation, however demented it may appear to you, makes perfect sense to him. His pathology in no way compromises his cognitive skills or his training.”

  “Swell.”

  Snyder and Weaver rode in silence. Just as the plane began its descent, Snyder spoke again.

  “Colonel, I am in no way competent to offer what you would consider tactical advice, but I did have a thought.”

  “Shoot.”

  “How droll. In any case, you told me that a Darius Cunningham is assisting Lynch the younger with his inquiries.”

  “That’s who ID’d Ferguson.”

  “Darius is an odd name. It sounds as though he may be an African-American.”

  “He is.”

  “And I assume that, with your usual passion for detail, you have a dossier on him?”

  “Most of it. His father was a Kenyan national, immigrated during the Mau Mau business – seems his name was on somebody’s chop-chop list. Settled in Chicago, went into social services, got pretty political during the whole civil rights deal. Real pain in the ass for the Hurleys. He wasn’t one of the Panthers, more in the work-inside-the-system crowd, but he sure as hell played footsie with them. He was real wired in with King and the SCLC people during their fair-housing shindig in Chicago in ’66. Got roughed up pretty good during one of their marches, some kind of back injury, never came all the way back from it. Our Darius enlisted in the Marines in1968, eighteenth birthday. His old man died in ’71.”

  “The same year as Lynch’s father.”

  “Same month.”

  “And Cunningham is a contemporary of Lynch’s?”

  “Same age? Give or take.”

  “Colonel, I assume that, in addition to addressing the Fisher situation, you would like to provide an alternative explanation fo
r the killings so as to divert an investigation?”

  “Ideally, yeah. But I’ll settle for Fisher in a body bag.”

  “Don’t you see, Colonel? Lynch is seeking to avenge his father. Yet four other men, black men, also innocent by legal standards, died that night. Given Cunningham’s race and your talent for adjusting history, it should not be difficult to establish that Cunningham is also seeking to avenge a murder – if not his father’s then some other connection to the radicals killed in the raid. Given his father’s history, that should not prove overly difficult.”

  Weaver turned and looked at Snyder for a long moment. “And Cunningham is one of the few guys in town with the skill set to have done these church killings.”

  “Exactly,” Snyder said.

  “Blame the whole thing on the nigger with the gun?”

  “It is the American way, Colonel.”

  The plane landed at O’Hare and taxied to a hangar used by the local Air Force Reserve unit. As the team unloaded, Weaver pulled aside four of his new recruits. He had to admit Clarke had gone all out, cashed in some heavy markers. These guys were on loan from Mossad.

  Weaver handed a couple of files to Uri, the team leader. “Got a special job for you four. I know you don’t have much background on this whole situation, but we had a command breakdown a couple days ago. Two of our people went rogue. They still think we’re on the same side, and I want them to keep thinking that right up until you take them out. They’ve got tac support from us – money, comm. We can use the credit cards to track them and the phones to GPS em. Paravola’ll get you what you need for that. I want them off the board by tonight. Pictures, background, it’s all in the files.”

  “They any good?”

  “Damn good.”

  The Israeli smiled. “So are we.”

  CHAPTER 44 – CHICAGO

  “Young Lynch, after all these years, finally you honor me,” said Paddy Wang, standing behind his desk in his dark, intensely ornate office. The young Asian woman who had ushered Lynch in backed out, bowing. A tough-looking young guy in the black suit of Wang’s people stood next to the desk, eyeballing Lynch.