The Long Shot (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  The woman ordered a brandy and Coke and when she’d been served she raised her glass to Joker. “Down the hatch,” she said, and he smiled. She had the eager-to-please look of a scolded puppy.

  “Cheers,” said Joker.

  When she put the glass back on the bar it was smeared with lipstick. She nodded at the bottle in his pocket. “You need a hand to drink that?” she said. “I don’t live far from here.”

  Joker felt a sudden wave of compassion for the woman. She looked as if she expected men to treat her badly and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. “I can’t,” he said, “I’m visiting a friend and he’s a big drinker.”

  Her face fell momentarily, then she smiled. “Enjoy yourself,” she said.

  Joker drained his glass and left the warmth of the bar. He walked quickly, surprised at how much the temperature had dropped. He wondered if he was getting soft. The church was a brisk ten minutes walk away from the pub. It was built of grey stone with a slate roof and shielded from the road by a line of spreading chestnut trees. The wooden gate squeaked as Joker pushed it open and he walked slowly down the gravel path. He’d been to the church on more than a dozen occasions in his dress uniform: three times for weddings and the remainder for funerals. The churchyard was where the SAS buried its dead.

  Joker followed the path around to the left of the church. The graves were immaculately maintained, the grass verges trimmed with military precision and there were fresh flowers in brass vases on many of the stone and marble slabs. As Joker’s feet crunched along the gravel, the graves he passed sparked off memories and he shuddered. Two of his friends had died in an ambush on the Irish border, another had perished in a car bomb in Germany. Mick Newmarch was the only one he’d seen die.

  There was a fresh grave to the left, covered with bouquets of flowers which had begun to wither. The stone was clearly new and it bore the name of Pete Manyon. Joker stopped for a minute and looked at the cards that were still affixed to the floral tributes. A wife. Parents. A wreath in the form of the regimental crest.

  The stone on Newmarch’s grave was brutal in its simplicity: it was a grey granite block into which had been carved the officer’s name, rank, date of birth and the date he’d died. That was it. No words of condolence, no prayers for his soul. Just the facts. When it came time for Joker to be buried six feet below the ground, that was all the epitaph he wanted. The grave was set back from the path and Joker walked across the short-cropped grass, unwrapping the bottle of Famous Grouse. He took off his pea jacket, dropped it down next to the stone and sat on it. “Evening, Mick,” he said.

  He looked up at the darkening sky as he unscrewed the cap on the bottle. One or two of the brightest stars were already visible and it didn’t look as if it was going to rain.

  “It’s been a while, Mick,” said Joker. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner.” He took a long, deep pull on the whisky and felt its warmth spread across his chest. He looked at the bleak stone monument. “Drink, Mick?” he asked. He poured a measure of the spirit in a slow trickle onto the lush grass and then took another mouthful himself.

  Cole Howard picked up a copy of Electronics Monthly and glanced through it. He looked at his watch and pulled a face. He’d been kept waiting for fifteen minutes in his father-in-law’s office, yet he’d arrived right on time for the four o’clock appointment. There were times when Theodore Clayton could be an out-and-out bastard. Clayton’s secretary looked up from her word-processor as if she’d read his mind. “I’m sorry, Mr Howard, he’s still on his call. He knows you’re here.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he does, Allison. I’m sure he does.”

  He tried to read an article on a new Japanese microprocessor but his vocabulary wasn’t up to it. He tossed it back on the table and watched the tropical fish in the tank by the secretary’s desk. Brightly coloured fish weaved in and out of fronds of plants that seemed too green to be real and a stream of small bubbles dribbled up from a plastic galleon sitting on the gravel at the bottom.

  At Howard’s feet was a brown leather briefcase. All it contained was the original Mitchell video. Howard could have carried the videocassette in his jacket pocket but he felt more confident entering his father-in-law’s office with a briefcase. It suggested status and authority, as did the dark grey suit he’d put on. Theodore Clayton always managed to make Howard feel as if he hadn’t washed behind his ears that morning and that he was about to be scolded for the oversight.

  He’d caught the first flight from Washington with Andy Kim, who was now out in the desert with the men from the Sheriffs Department who’d been first at the scene. Howard had wanted to go with them but he knew it was important to get the video to Clayton now that he knew the limits of the FBI’s technology. He looked at his watch again and smoothed the creases of his trousers. After a while he stood up and walked over to a display case containing some of Clayton’s kachina dolls. The religious figures, carved from the roots of cottonwood trees by the Hopi Indians of Northern Arizona, were extremely valuable, and some of them dated back to the eighteenth century. Clayton was an avid collector of Native American art, and he enjoyed putting it on show, more as an exhibition of his wealth than his good taste.

  “Mr Clayton will see you now, Mr Howard,” said the secretary. She stood up and opened the door for him. Howard knew that Clayton wouldn’t even consider walking to the reception area to greet him, and that when he entered his office the man would be sitting behind his big desk. He was right. Clayton waited until Howard was halfway across the large expanse of shag-pile carpet before getting to his feet and he adjusted the cuffs of his made-to-measure silk shirt before stepping around his antique desk. Clayton’s suits were made for him by a tailor in London’s Savile Row who flew over every six months for fitting sessions and they cost more than Howard earned in a month. Clayton was as well groomed as a TV weatherman and had the chiselled good looks to go with the wardrobe: brown hair greying at the temples, the sort of teeth that only serious money can buy, a light tan which suggested business trips overseas rather than vacations, and just enough wrinkles to imply maturity and confidence.

  “Cole, Cole, sorry to have kept you waiting for so long.” Clayton’s apology and gleaming smile seemed as artificial as the plants in the fish tank outside. He slapped Howard on the back and guided him to a sofa in the corner of the office.

  “Oh, I know how busy you are, Ted.” Howard sat down and put the briefcase on his knees.

  “You said this was important?”

  “Very,” said Howard.

  “FBI business, or is there a problem at home?”

  Howard felt himself flushing involuntarily. “No, Ted, there’s no problem at home.”

  Clayton put a firm hand on Howard’s shoulder and squeezed. “Glad to hear it, Cole. Glad to hear it. So, what can I do for you?”

  Howard opened the briefcase, took out the videocassette and handed it to the older man. “This is a recording of an incident out in the desert near the Havasu Lake Wildlife Refuge last week. A small plane was shot down by a group of snipers. We’ve gone as far as we can with our video equipment, and we need to know who the men are.”

  “Snipers in the desert? What in God’s name would they be doing in the desert? Leaving aside the fact that it’s a wildlife refuge, there’s nothing worth hunting out there. I should know.” Theodore Clayton was an avid hunter and had a large trophy room in the basement of his home, where he insisted on taking Howard at regular intervals. Howard hated the glassy-eyed stares of Clayton’s victims but humoured him for his wife’s sake.

  “We think they were rehearsing an assassination,” said Howard.

  Clayton’s eyebrows leapt up. “You’re joking!” he exclaimed.

  Howard shook his head. “I wish I was. There are three of them at different distances and heights from four dummies which we assume represent the target. We think the plane was shot down because they inadvertently stumbled on the rehearsal.”

  “Cole, this almost defies belief. Wh
o on earth would go to the trouble of rehearsing an assassination in the middle of a desert?”

  “The rifle sights have to be calibrated, the timing has to be practised. Assuming they’re only going to get one chance, they’d obviously want to do a dry run somewhere secluded. They chose the site carefully. The only major highway anywhere near is 93 and that’s the other side of the Hualapai Mountains.”

  Clayton held up the cassette. “And they recorded the whole thing?”

  “No, one of the passengers had a camcorder. It survived the crash.”

  “Fortuitous,” said Clayton.

  “Depends on your point of view,” said Howard, thinking about Mrs Mitchell trying to calm her son as the plane plunged to the ground.

  “So, what is it exactly that you want me to do with this?”

  “We can’t make out the faces of the men in the video. There are three with rifles, and three more who seem to be organising the rehearsal. There are several vehicles there; we can see what make they are but we’d like to pick out the licence plates.”

  “You’re not asking much, Cole!” laughed Clayton.

  “Can you do it?” asked Howard.

  “Depends,” said the older man, walking back to his desk. “Depends on how detailed the tape is, depth of focus, quality of the lens. There’s a whole series of factors at work. I’ll have to get my people to take a look at it before I can give you a verdict.”

  “But you are doing work on this sort of tape analysis, aren’t you?”

  “We sure are,” said Clayton, sitting down in his high-backed leather chair. “And the Government’s picking up most of the bill, too, so I’d be more than happy to help out the FBI. It’ll help us when it comes time for appropriations.”

  “What’s Uncle Sam’s interest in video technology?” Howard asked.

  Clayton smiled and beat a tempo on the top of his desk with his palms. “It’s not just Uncle Sam, Cole. Image processing is big business in medicine, physics, astronomy, biology, you name it, there’s hardly a scientific field not involved. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface. The day’s going to come when machines will read and analyse X-rays and Cat-scans, without any humans being involved at all. Diagnosis by machines. It’s coming.”

  “That would explain why MIT would get involved, but not Clayton Electronics,” pressed Howard, recognising his father-in-law’s familiar evasion technique. He’d long ago learned that when Theodore Clayton was being flexible with the truth, his hands tended to betray his lips.

  “Well, I can’t deny there are certain military applications which we think will be particularly profitable,” said Clayton. “But there’s a big future in the commercial computer processing of satellite photographs – things like crop monitoring and weather assessment. And there are opportunities in all sorts of quality control operations – computers can make interpretations on the basis of mathematical equations and statistical moments, with none of the distractions that make human decisions so unreliable.” Clayton’s fingers were tapping silently on the desk blotter. He looked levelly at his son-in-law and his voice was as steady as a judge pronouncing sentence, but Howard knew that he was hiding something. “You tell me, whose judgment would you most trust – a computer which has a one hundred per cent record of accurate diagnosis of cancer from X-rays, or a radiologist who has just broken up with his wife and had his BMW vandalised?”

  “No contest, I guess,” said Howard. He wondered what Clayton was hiding. Howard crossed his legs and looked out of the window to the side of Clayton’s desk. It overlooked the parking lot and he could see Clayton’s pristine Rolls-Royce gleaming in the afternoon sun. Theodore Clayton hadn’t got to where he was by working to help further the cause of medical science, he’d made a fortune on the backs of a series of multi-million dollar defence contracts including night sights, heads-up displays and computerised video surveillance equipment.

  Howard realised that his father-in-law was talking to him. “Well?” said Clayton.

  “I’m sorry, Ted, what did you say? I was miles away.”

  Clayton looked irritated. “I asked if you were all right for Sunday night.”

  “Sunday night?”

  “You and Lisa are coming round for dinner.”

  Howard’s heart fell. He hated going to his in-laws’ house, and he figured that his wife had been waiting for the right time to tell him. “Sure,” he said, “we’re looking forward to it.”

  Clayton stood up, leaving the cassette on the desk. “Good, good,” he said. “Hopefully I’ll have some news for you then.”

  Howard frowned. Sunday was five days away. He stood up. “Is there any way of getting the results faster?” he asked. “We don’t know when the real thing is set to happen.”

  “I’ll speed them up,” agreed Clayton. He patted Howard on the back as they walked to the door. “I’ll call you as soon as I have anything. By the way, haven’t you forgotten something?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m really grateful, Ted. Really grateful.”

  Clayton laughed. “No, I meant your briefcase. You’ve left it on the floor.”

  Howard felt his cheeks flush. “Thanks,” he said through gritted teeth.

  The Colonel handed Joker a bulky manila envelope and leaned back in his chair. Joker opened the package and slid the contents onto the Colonel’s desk. On top of the pile was a British passport. He picked it up and flicked through it. The passport was three years old and featured a photograph that must have come from the SAS’s files, the face thinner and the hair almost shoulder length. The name in the passport was Damien O’Brien and the date of birth was Joker’s own. He looked at the visa pages: they were blank except for a multiple re-entry visa to the United States.

  “I haven’t travelled much,” he said with a smile. He picked up three sheets of typed paper which had been stapled together and read through them quickly. “Ah, I see why,” he said. “A labourer, some part-time bar work, and two convictions for drunk and disorderly conduct and one for assault. I’m not a particularly nice character, am I?”

  “It’s only cover, Joker. Nothing personal.” The Colonel wrinkled his nose. The man sitting in front of him didn’t appear to have shaved for a couple of days and he stank to high heaven. His clothes looked as if they’d been slept in and there were grass stalks all over his coat.

  If Joker was aware of the Colonel’s disdain for his dishevelled appearance, he didn’t show it. According to the fake CV Joker had been born thirty-six years earlier in Belfast, had lived for his first twelve years in Londonderry and attended a Catholic primary school. The house, and the school, had both been demolished years earlier – the house as part of a development project, the school following an arson attack in which the records had been destroyed. Joker had used the road and the school in previous identities when going undercover in Northern Ireland and was familiar with both.

  “We’ve kept most of the background close to your own between the ages of twelve and eighteen, so that you won’t have too much trouble remembering it,” said the Colonel. “From eighteen years on we have you travelling around, never staying much in one place. That’s pretty much up to you – you can say you’ve been to Ireland, bring up your time in Scotland, use any background you feel comfortable with. There’s a number there they can use if they want to speak to someone you’ve worked with. If anyone calls they’ll be told it’s a bar in London and they’ll give you a glowing reference. The two bottom sheets are a summary of Manyon’s last report.”

  Joker nodded and put the typewritten sheets back into the envelope. There were half a dozen large photographs on the desk and Joker picked them up. His eyes hardened as he looked at a woman in her mid-forties, dark brown hair lightly curled in a pageboy cut and her eyes moist. Another of the photographs was a full-length shot, clearly taken at a funeral because she was wearing black and had a handkerchief in her right hand. In the background he saw men in black berets and sunglasses and a coffin covered with the Republican tricolour flag.


  “They’re the latest pictures we have of Mary Hennessy, taken at her husband’s funeral five years ago,” said the Colonel. “You’ve seen her since, of course.”

  “She hadn’t changed,” said Joker, his eyes fixed on the picture. He could see a big automatic in the hands of one of the men standing by the coffin.

  “She’s certain to have altered her appearance by now. She could be blonde, a red-head, brunette, we’ve no way of knowing. Her hair could be longer, or permed, and she could be wearing coloured contact lenses. And she could have put on weight.”

  “No,” said Joker quietly, looking at the woman’s slim figure and shapely legs. “She was too vain about her looks. The hair, yeah, she might change that, but she won’t change her figure and she won’t risk plastic surgery. And even if she did, I’d always recognise her.”

  There was a photograph of her getting into a car, and another of her outside a large red-brick house. Joker recognised several of the men with her, all of them leading IRA and Sinn Fein figures. The rest of the photographs were of Matthew Bailey. He was below average height with an unruly mop of red hair and piercing green eyes. He had a snub nose dotted with freckles and a deep dimple in his chin, as if someone had poked him with a finger and left an impression in the flesh, and a mole under his left eye. “Bailey is now twenty-six years old, and is responsible for the deaths of at least four members of the RUC,” continued the Colonel. “The IRA sent him to the States about six months ago when Northern Ireland had become too hot for him. One of the FBI’s anti-terrorist units almost caught him in Los Angeles four months ago trying to purchase a ground-to-air missile system but he was tipped off and disappeared for a while. Last month we received reports that he’d surfaced in New York and we sent Manyon in.”

  Joker looked up sharply. “Tipped off, you said? Who could’ve tipped him off?”

  “You know as well as me that the US is full of Irish Americans who sympathise with the IRA, Joker. They don’t see them as terrorists but as freedom fighters. And the law enforcement organisations have more than their fair share of Irish Americans. Every second cop in New York has an Irish name, just about, and they all wear the shamrock on St Paddy’s Day.”