by Ian Edward
‘Cops?’ asked one of the others.
‘Yes.’
‘We can’t afford to have them asking questions-’
Ethers cut him off angrily. ‘I know that.’
‘I’m calling off the search,’ he announced to the group. ‘We’ll regroup later and set up watch points. For now we circle back into the town and blend in.’
Later, Ethers made a call and waited for the First Keeper to answer.
It was not the news the First Keeper wanted to hear. His anger was crystal clear over the line. ‘Make damn certain no one is apprehended. It’s essential to remain invisible. And Ethers, once the coast is clear again, get back down to the river. The boy’s on foot, he has no contacts, he shouldn’t be hard to find.’
After the call, the First Keeper paced the oak panelled room that served as his inner sanctum. He went to the large double-window and looked out on the lush grounds and the wooded landscape that surrounded the estate. He reflected on the last time he’d had a runaway, a number of years before, and the unpleasant task of finding and then silencing that particular youth.
It pained him such action had been necessary. In his mind, it stood as a symbol of failure – failure of the security that was in place at The Com; and more importantly, failure of his methods in moulding and leading this remarkable extended family. He felt his blood pressure rising and he paced the room like a caged animal. He thought of Warren Ethers’ comment at that earlier time – that with so many young souls involved, you had to expect the occasional rebel. He supposed it was true and he consoled himself with that thought.
He sat on the lounge that was placed against the far wall and he took deep breaths. On the wall opposite him was the photographic mural he’d lovingly crafted over the years – photos he had taken; news pictures he’d obtained; maps and paintings, all depicting the Mekong Delta . Vietnam. So long ago. Such a powerful, life changing, spiritual experience.
Just as young Daniel was a fugitive now from this place, and from the Keepers, so the First Keeper had been a fugitive, back then, from the world, from himself, from his own inner confusion. He closed his eyes and saw those muddy banks, the current of the wide rivers, the reeds, the villagers, and the soldiers. He saw himself and William wandering like lost souls through that steamy, insect ridden battlefield.
Was it mere coincidence, or a spiritual intervention he didn’t yet understand, that led Daniel to the drowning victim, in the same town as Westmeyer’s Institute.
The First Keeper couldn’t escape the creeping dread that something was unravelling. Perhaps he should never have agreed to help his old friend? At the same time, how could he refuse when he was given so much assistance by Westmeyer, and the men from Nexus.
Now the time had come to warn William of this problem, and to call in help. He needed back-up for Ethers. He picked up the phone and punched in the numbers for Westmeyer’s direct line.
‘William,’ he said quietly when the call was answered, ‘we have a situation…’ As he spoke, his eyes focused on the mural and his memories flowed freely.
In his office, Westmeyer listened with growing concern. His gaze wandered to the photograph on his desk and his thoughts, also, were drawn back across the years…
CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN
The familiar roar of the choppers, whump! whump! whump!, blades cutting the air, filling his head with the sound. He was certain there must have been a fleet of them, streaking over the camp in the Sun La Province.
Twenty-one-year-old William Westmeyer leapt up from the straw mattress and went to the doorway of the mud hut. It was early evening, the sun so low on the horizon that the light was no more than a spectral thing.
But the sky above the camp was clear. No choppers. They had passed by several miles to the west. William’s imagination had amplified the thunder of the engines.
The camp itself was a masterpiece of camouflage. The huts were woven into the mosaic of the jungle in such a way that the village was mostly invisible from the air. In the past year they’d only had to move the community once – an extraordinary achievement in a Vietnamese jungle crowded with locals, and with the Allied Forces, and with those damn ‘copters crawling like bugs through the air.
He often wondered why he’d allowed Joseph Vender to suck him into going AWOL and living in the wilderness like this. In the early days he’d felt Vender’s infectious passions and strange beliefs igniting something similar in him; or maybe he’d just gone troppo, like so many others.
Mostly it was because of Hoang Thi Mai. Certainly she was the reason he’d stayed as long as he had. The simplicity of these people’s lives had spoken to him, and the rivers and forests had a beauty that touched the soul, but life with such a woman as Mai had at times been like some ethereal kind of paradise. Time had stood still…
She was due back, with the other women, from the river where they’d been washing clothes. William wiped the sweat from his brow. There was no breeze this evening and he wished for one. The humidity was thick.
He decided to walk down to the river. His friend Nguyen Le Nam gave a casual wave as William passed his hut on his way through the village. He’d just reached the edge of the pathway when he heard frantic, raised voices, shouting in Vietnamese, and he watched with rising panic as men appeared from the forest, running and yelling.
Then came the first round of gunfire, staccato bursts that smashed the serenity of the night.
William hurled himself to the ground, rolling into the thick underbrush, his heart pounding. Mai! Where was she?
He never really knew how it was he escaped, bullets ricocheting all around him, the roar of flames engulfing the huts.
He crawled across the jungle floor until he was close to the river. He saw some of the village men standing motionless, a gargled, crying noise coming from them. He heard the harsh shouts of the Vietcong soldiers – ‘Charlie’ the Allied forces called them – and he saw they had their rifles trained on the villagers. What the hell was going on?
He inched forward, unseen.
It took him a moment to take in the scene. The women had been herded into a line by the river’s edge, rifles thrust into their faces.
Groups of soldiers were dragging them into the water. Two and three at a time, they were being forced down and held under the water as their stricken, helpless men folk looked on.
The women thrashed about as the leering soldiers held them firmly. The bodies of previous victims bobbed lifeless to the surface and floated around them.
One of the village men shrieked with fury and broke from the group, rushing madly forward. A hail of bullets cut his body in half.
William felt the bile rise to his throat, suffocating him. He stifled a cough and gulped in air, thin sprays of vomit weeping from the sides of his mouth as he swallowed hard and swallowed again. William’s eyes fell on the man that appeared to be the soldiers’ leader, a squat, pug faced man with savage eyes. He barked orders, laughing, his face twisted with a manic glee. The man was a psychopath, one of the monsters who’d found his own lawless killing ground in the jungles of ‘Nam.
William couldn’t tell if Mai was one of the women in the line or one of the floating corpses. What could he do? If he broke cover, they would cut him to pieces in a hail of bullets.
He gritted his teeth and stifled the primal scream he felt bursting inside.
One small ray of hope touched him. Mai and some of the girls had grown up by the coast, where they dived and swam deep in the rivers and the ocean, catching fish in their bare hands. They were able to hold their breath for long periods, in the same way the Japanese pearl divers had done in earlier centuries.
It was her only hope…
When the Vietcong had finished their “fun” with the women, they turned their attention to the village men and gunned them down. Ashen faced and dry retching, William listened to the ruthless laughter of the Vietcong as they moved on.
Finally, it was safe for him to stagger to the river. He waded in, gr
appling with the bodies in the slow moving tide, turning up their faces and looking for Mai. He was only able to perform such a grotesque search because his mind and body were numb.
His fear was palpable though, a silent shriek inside him, as he turned each body in anticipation.
The first face he focused on was not Mai.
Nor the second. Nor the third. But he knew the faces of these women, knew their mothers and their fathers and their boyfriends and their husbands and their children.
The fourth body was not Mai.
Nor the fifth. There were many more, but William found a glimmer of hope deep within. Maybe some of the girls had escaped into the forest.
Maybe Mai was still out there somewhere. Running. Hiding.
The sixth face he came to was not Mai.
The seventh body he turned over was the girl he loved. He didn’t care how loud or how long he screamed, nothing mattered, nothing made sense.
He wouldn’t have cared if the soldiers returned, right then and there, and blasted him to eternity.
CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT
‘This act of industrial sabotage at the Institute, appears to be totally unrelated to our investigation,’ O’Malley told the Task Force detectives, ‘but it’s timing provides us with our Trojan Horse. Northern Rocks police will offer to send in Adam, as the local detective, to work alongside Westmeyer’s people to catch the saboteur.’
‘Given the damage this leak could cause to the Institute’s reputation,’ Wal Hester added, ‘I’d say Westmeyer will be only too pleased to have the local detective right on side.’
‘While you’re working that case from within,’ O’Malley directed this specifically to Adam, ‘you’re perfectly placed to seek out links between Westmeyer and the drownings, without arousing suspicion.’
‘Regarding your anonymous caller,’ Hester added, ‘Megan’s on to that. We know that last week Westmeyer hosted a meeting with potential investors. One of them, a banker by the name of Meredith Seals, spent extra time in Northern Rocks and was seen boarding Westmeyer’s private boat.’
‘She could’ve overheard Westmeyer’s conversation-’
‘We plan to confront her as being the anonymous caller, and ask her to identify, from tapes of the mayor, if his voice is the other one she heard.’
Driving back, Adam called ahead to check on messages.
An urgent message to phone Harold Letterfield puzzled him. Adam attempted the call but he was picking up too much interference; he’d have to wait until he was back at the station, to make the call from the landline.
Instinctively, he suspected it had something to do with Kate.
Daniel staggered from the water, exhausted. He sank to his knees and then lay on his belly, oblivious to the man and boy who sat with fishing lines cast.
‘What’s wrong with that boy?’ Joey wondered aloud, his eyes wide with sudden interest. ‘Was he drowning?’
‘I don’t think so, but something’s wrong.’ Costas put his rod aside, leaving the line trailing in the water, and moved quickly to where the boy lay panting. Joey followed.
‘You okay, son?’ Costas knelt beside the boy. Daniel tried to answer but words wouldn’t come. He gasped for breath..
‘Okay, now, take it easy.’ Costas’ hand rested on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Try and slow your breathing, and take in long, deep, slow breaths. After I count to three, okay?...One...two...three. Breathe in. And now, slowly, breathe out. That's the way. Now, again...'
Joey’s eyes never left the boy.
‘You’re quite safe, young man, so try and relax.’ Costas looked from the boy to the river. It occurred to him the boy had swum – not from the other side of the river – he and Joey would’ve noticed that, but instead from much further upstream. ‘I’m Costas, and this is Joey. What’s your name?’
‘…Daniel.’
‘Okay, Daniel, do you think you can get over to this tree just behind us? You’ll feel better if you can sit up against the side of the trunk.’ Daniel inched across the grass and propped himself against the tree.
‘Please don’t…hand me over.’
‘To who?’ piped in Joey. ‘The police?’
‘No…’ Daniel’s breath was returning fast and he tried to push himself to his feet. ‘Got to go…’
Costas gently manoeuvred him back. ‘Not so fast, you need a little time to regain your strength.’
‘The Keepers are right behind me, Mr. Costas. I can’t go back to The Com.’
Keepers? Com?
‘Okay, I’ll tell you what. My car is just over the slope. Why don’t you come with us, back to Joey’s place. A nice hot breakfast and a warm shower’s what you need, and you’ll be quite safe with us. Won’t he, Joey?’
‘Sure you will,’ Joey said to Daniel.
Daniel didn’t reply. He stared at Costas and Joey. Could he trust this man and boy? His eyes locked with those of Joey. ‘We’ll make sure you’re okay, Daniel. These Keepers don’t know where I live.’
Costas helped Daniel to his feet, noting at the same time Joey had become vital and caring, a different boy from the one who’d sat silent and pouting just minutes before. ‘Come on,’ Costas said to Daniel, ‘let’s see if you can stay on those feet and walk with us to the car.’
It was a warm, cloudless day in Bethesda, Maryland, but Michael Renshaw braced himself for an inner storm as he entered his boss’ office in the old brownstone building.
‘Perhaps I should’ve seen all along it would come to this,’ Logan Asquith said to his aide, ‘but Westmeyer persuaded me he’d learned a valuable lesson from the last incident.’
It was rare for Renshaw to see his boss question his own abilities. In fact, Renshaw had never seen it before. The Logan Asquith that Renshaw knew was decisive, arrogant and supremely confident. Never self questioning.
He knew it wouldn’t last.
The storm was coming.
‘No doubt the situation can be contained, sir…’
‘It’s worse than that.’ Asquith waved Renshaw to the chair that was at right angles to his desk. ‘If there’s a saboteur inside the Institute leaking sensitive information, even if it’s just a prank, then it’s still going to attract attention. Damn it, Michael, one of the reasons we selected Northern Goddamn Rocks was because it was so out of the way, uninteresting, the last place anyone would go looking…’ Asquith picked up the report Renshaw had delivered just moments before. ‘…coupled with this other business, the death of the wildlife ranger and all these damn drownings coming to light…there was a time Erickson and Collosimo could be relied on in situations like this…instead, we’re heading for disaster. Another Florida.’
It wasn’t often Renshaw offered a personal opinion – his role was to compile and report the facts – but given Asquith’s outburst, Renshaw was tempted to speak. ‘I’ve always thought Westmeyer a lightweight, and a self-opinionated one at that…a dangerous combination. Wants the power but doesn’t know how to wield it…’
‘This is the team he wanted. But they haven’t kept the tight lid that was promised.’ The Florida incident still made Asquith wince. They’d had to pull out when the Institute was into the final phase of the project.
In less than four months a battery of haulage trucks had removed the twenty million dollars worth of computer hardware and shipped it on containers across the Pacific. The data on hard drive had been backed up to the Nexus mainframe in Bethesda. The Institute building near Everglades City had been placed on the market; the deserted food processing plant across the ocean in Northern Rocks had been purchased and transformed by an array of designers and building contractors.
The scientific community and the commercial business world were informed that due to long term financial considerations, the Westmeyer Research Institute was relocating
Asquith was furious the whole thing was happening again.
Under any other circumstances Asquith would have closed down the project – but they had come too far to stop it now. The
Institute’s latest reports had created great excitement among the executives who called themselves the Nexus Unit. There was no other choice than to spend the millions on another complete “relocation”.
‘Get the Board together for an emergency meeting,’ Asquith said.
CHAPTER FORTY NINE
Westmeyer put the phone down, barely able to believe the run of bad luck.
It was many months since he’d last spoken with Joseph Vender and that was the way Westmeyer preferred it.
At other times it amused him how Vender now referred to himself as the First Keeper, but on this occasion it simply irritated the hell out of him. If anything, it served as a very real reminder of Vender’s delusional mind.
Donnelly and Collosimo walked in. ‘I’ve just had Vender on the line,’ Westmeyer said, ‘he’s emailing a picture of a young man who’s turned up in Northern Rocks. Vender’s people are already out there searching for him, and he asked if we can help.’
‘Vender?’ Donnelly spoke the name as though it were a brand of poison. ‘You don’t mean-’
‘Yes. The boy escaped. We think he must’ve seen the news reports with the picture of the unidentified drowner…’
‘If Vender’s men are already out there,’ Collosimo said, ‘then what can we do?’
‘Vender doesn’t want the boy back. Says he’s too much trouble. He wants us to bring the boy here and take care of the problem.’
Donnelly and Collosimo exchanged glances. Collosimo didn’t miss the smug look in Donnelly’s eyes.
Adam placed the call as soon as he arrived back. He listened as Letterfield explained that Kate had returned to the Territory and was known to have gone into the wilderness with Walter. At this point, they were not contacting the grieving Kovacs family until they knew more.
Letterfield wanted to know if Adam had any idea what Kate and Walter were up to.
