Fire Hawk

by Geoffrey Archer

He looked away, looked down the Mall. The Hawk flew straight and true, passing half a mile south of the crowd round the Monument. Then, as it reached the Potomac River, it made a slow turn left, followed a few seconds later by the F-16 fighter that was tailing it.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Burgess croaked.

  The crowd in the Mall had seen the drone too. Cries of panic rolled towards the Capitol like a mist, a swelling ululation of terror as men, women and children fought to get away from the invisible cloud of pathogens they believed the drone had dumped on them. At its edges the crowd began to bleed into the neighbouring streets.

  Burgess was transfixed. Somewhere in that mob down there were the three people who mattered more to him than anything else in the world. Much, much more than anything else. How the heck had he ever doubted it?

  He pulled himself together. He had to report in. He bent his head to the microphone in his lapel and told SIOC what he’d done.

  Sam ran back to the steps and down to the lawns. He needed to be certain. By the time he reached the slumped body two police officers were turning it face up, guns in their hands. Despite the mess the bullets had made, now that the ludicrous wig was gone the sand-blasted face of Naif Hamdan was unmistakable. Sam looked down at the man responsible for so much misery, unsure still whether he’d won or lost.

  ‘You see him press anything on that radio?’ Burgess asked, running up to Sam. ‘No,’ Sam answered, ‘but that doesn’t mean he didn’t.’

  The radio lying on the ground was spattered with blood – a compact black VHF receiver with a long aerial and preset tuning buttons that had a very different function from switching music channels.

  ‘Maybe the technical guys’ll be able to work out whether or not he transmitted,’ Burgess muttered, his mind locked onto procedural matters to prevent it thinking of what could be happening a mile down the Mall.

  They turned away and walked numbly for a few paces, unsure what to do next. The noise of the panicking crowd was drowned now by a cacophony of sirens.

  ‘They’re sending in the clean-up teams,’ Burgess mouthed, repeating what he’d heard on his earpiece. His face crumpled.

  Lines of military trucks appeared on Pennsylvania Avenue, disgorging soldiers dressed in protective suits and masks. Helicopters clattered overhead. An FBI scene-of-crime team from the Washington Field Office came running from behind the Capitol, carrying silver boxes of equipment. All wore gloves and respirators. They opened one of the boxes and handed masks to Burgess, Sam and to the two police officers.

  ‘Put ’em on, quick!’ said a muffled voice from behind one of them.

  Burgess donned his, then quickly briefed the field office men on what had happened. He wanted to be away from here. He asked for the FBI car to drive them back to the Hoover Building.

  ‘Jesus God!’ he hissed as they walked towards it. ‘This is a holocaust.’ Then he touched a hand to his ear. ‘Hold on.’ He put out a hand to stop Sam. ‘F-16 pilot saw no release of agent.’ His voice rose in pitch. ‘Says his FLIR should have picked it up if there had been any release. What the heck’s a FLIR?’

  ‘Forward-Looking Infra-Red,’ Sam explained. ‘Thermal imager. I imagine the anthrax spores would be a different temperature from the surrounding air, making them visible.’

  They turned to one another.

  ‘Does that mean we did it?’ Burgess coughed.

  ‘It’s beginning to look that way,’ Sam grinned.

  ‘Hold on, there’s more,’ Burgess added. ‘I don’t believe this. The Hawk impacted in the grounds of the Pentagon when its fuel ran out. An army biological team landed by helicopter a couple of minutes later. They think the warhead’s intact.’

  The two men gripped each other by the arms.

  ‘Hey! You beat the bastard!’ Sam howled, whipping off his mask.

  ‘Me? It was you that—’

  ‘But you shot the guy,’ Sam insisted.

  ‘Asshole! You’re going all British on me again.’

  Five minutes later the FBI support car dropped them outside the entrance to the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue. As they walked towards the door Sam heard a stifled gulp from the man at his side and turned to see him fling his arms round a tall, dark-haired woman who reminded him of that stunner in A Fish Called Wanda whose name he could never remember. Her face was grubby with tears.

  A girl and a boy, both looking to be less than ten years of age, clung to the legs of their parents.

  44

  Sunday, 13 October

  London

  SAM’S DEPARTURE FROM the United States had been as unheralded as his arrival there, but carried out with greater modesty. MI6 was funding his fare home and they’d booked him on a 747 in economy.

  In Washington, after the US Army Technical Unit confirmed incontrovertibly that anthrax spores had not been released from the crashed VR-6 Hawk, Dean Burgess had wanted to lionise Sam for the part he’d played in averting a catastrophe. But Sam would have none of it. British he was and British was the way he was going to behave. The Intelligence Service he worked for was secret, he told them, like his involvement with it.

  He arrived back in London at six a.m. after an unexpectedly good sleep in the crowded rear of the jumbo. His body clock had remained on British Summer Time since leaving England fewer than twenty-four hours earlier.

  Duncan Waddell met him at Heathrow airport and personally drove him home, oozing satisfaction at the way things had turned out.

  ‘Saddam Hussein’s done an interview on CNN,’ Waddell told him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Denying all knowledge of the anthrax plot and branding Hamdan and his friends as traitors. Mowbray’s picked up rumours in Amman that Saddam’s arrested another two hundred army officers.’

  ‘God! Night of the long knives.’

  ‘Talking of which, you’ll be interested to know that your old friend Viktor Rybkin has been taken out of circulation,’ he confided dryly. ‘The SBU assure us he’ll never be seen again. We didn’t ask for specifics, but word has it his body had seventeen holes in it when they dumped it in some swamp on the outskirts of Odessa.’

  ‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.’

  ‘And one other thing. And this may really surprise you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oksana Koslova has said no to our visa offer.’

  ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘She told Figgis she thought she was safe enough in Kiev now and feared that if she did come to England, all her illusions would be shattered. In Ukraine at least she has none. It’s what she said, Sam, honest!’

  Sam smiled. He could imagine her saying it. He guessed too that a good few of those illusions would have been centred on him.

  ‘There is something still troubling me about all this, Duncan,’ Sam ventured. He knew what Waddell’s reaction would be but felt compelled to raise it again.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Baghdad. The question of how Chrissie knew that I was on a mission there. It had to have been Martin Kessler who told her.’

  Waddell hunched over the wheel as if troubled by an ulcer. ‘Forget it Sam,’ he cautioned. ‘It’s history, okay?’

  He dropped Sam in the side street outside the mansion block by the river in Barnes, promising to ring him to fix lunch so they could have a proper chat about things.

  Sam climbed the stairs to his flat and closed the door behind him, trying to think of it as an act of symbolism, a final back-turning on the recent past. But it didn’t work, because he wasn’t finished with the past and wouldn’t be until the Kessler issue was resolved. There was an injustice here, one he had to deal with personally.

  He removed his clothes, which felt sweatily uncomfortable after being in them for twenty-four hours. He looked down at his shins and noted that the scars were healing well at last. Then he took a shower, dried himself and shaved.

  London was grey and rainy that morning. He padded to the kitchen, enjoying the liberating feel of his own n
akedness, made some fresh coffee and some toast, then dressed in cord trousers and a shirt and pullover.

  He did feel differently today. And he instantly knew why. For the first time in a long time Chrissie was no longer with him. Her aura which had lingered in the flat after their breakup in the summer had finally been exorcised. It felt as if he’d got his life back.

  The answerphone had been bleeping since he got in and he could no longer ignore it. The message was from Tom, telling him he bloody well had to fetch the boat back to the Hamble, because he hadn’t the time or the money to go to Guernsey to get her.

  Yes. He would fetch the boat. Tomorrow maybe. First there was Martin Kessler to be dealt with.

  Duncan Waddell’s insistence that he consign the ‘who told who’ issue to history had convinced him that SIS must have accepted Kessler’s suggestion that it was Sam himself who’d told Chrissie about going to Baghdad. Apart from any other considerations, that record had to be straightened.

  It was nine a.m. by now. He pulled on a light Goretex jacket, then went downstairs to the street. The Sunday morning traffic was sporadic. He waited for a bus to pass, then crossed the main road to the towpath and began to walk along the bank downstream.

  Five minutes later he turned away from the river, heading into the maze of leafy streets that made up the suburb of Barnes. He walked for a couple of hundred yards. Most of the cars that lined the kerbs had newish registrations. A grubby builder’s van spoiled the otherwise pristine line of Audis, BMWs and Golfs.

  He stopped outside a semi-detached, cream-stuccoed house which had a paved front garden and a white picket fence.

  The home of Martin and the late Christine Kessler.

  He’d never stood here before. No-go territory in his relationship with Chrissie. He felt like a trespasser.

  He looked up at the windows of the main bedroom, still baffled by the bizarre relationship that had been conducted behind its lace curtains. A relationship of infinite deception.

  A woman with a small grey dog emerged from the neighbouring house and stared at him with the hostility due a burglar. Sam stepped smartly up to the porch and rang the bell.

  It was only a few seconds before Kessler opened the door. He was dressed in a blue track-suit and clean white trainers. He looked pale and drawn, and extremely startled.

  ‘Sam! What d’you want? I can’t see you here.’

  He swung the door shut, as if repelling a duster salesman.

  ‘Oh yes you can!’

  Sam shouldered forward to prevent the latch clicking. He shoved hard, knocking Kessler aside.

  ‘How dare you!’ Kessler protested. ‘This is private. My home.’

  ‘Exactly. And we’re neighbours. So I thought it time for a chat.’

  The small entrance hall of the 1930s abode had a polished woodblock floor and smelled of lavender wax. Against one wall stood an oak side table with a silver bowl on it of the type in which people once left visiting cards.

  Above it hung an oil painting.

  The picture took Sam’s breath away. It was a life-size portrait. The likeness was remarkable. He felt caught in a time warp as the vortex of Chrissie’s cool grey eyes drew him in with the same look they’d had in life, a look of restless longing, of always wanting more from life than she’d already squeezed out.

  He turned away. The picture’s image was too strong for him.

  ‘The artist was American. Quite in demand,’ Kessler said, warily. As he spoke he circled round Sam and quickly pulled shut the door to the living room. ‘Chrissie sat for him when we were stationed in Washington.’ He pulled himself up straight. ‘Now look. This is most improper your being here. You’re as good as trespassing.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sam, ‘but I’ve got reason to.’

  He shot a quick glance round the small entrance hall. Tucked to one side beside the front door was a large black suitcase.

  ‘Going somewhere?’ he demanded.

  ‘A few days’ break, that’s all,’ Kessler explained uncomfortably. ‘A visit to some friends. It’s been a hell of a shock, Chrissie’s death. Only just catching up with me. Now look. I’m very busy. Go away before I call the police.’

  ‘No.’ Sam folded his arms. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m here?’

  ‘What the hell does that mean? Look, you can’t just come barging in. If you don’t get the hell out of my house right now, I’ll . . . I’ll make damned sure you never work for SIS again.’

  Sam fixed him with a look that would ignite paper.

  ‘You had it done in Washington you said.’ He pointed at the portrait of Chrissie. ‘By an artist in demand. A fashionable artist. Expensive no doubt. Yes, it must have been a truly fascinating post, Washington. Chock-a-block with interesting people. People with money. Terrific for networking. For building contacts – contacts with men like Viktor Rybkin.’

  Kessler blanched.

  ‘Are you implying something?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kessler remained in the living room doorway, one hand gripping each side of its frame.

  ‘What are you hiding in there?’ Sam snapped.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Sam moved towards him. ‘In that case you won’t mind showing me.’

  ‘I certainly would mind. Who the hell do you think you are? Get out of here! This is my property.’

  ‘And this is my life you’ve been buggering about with!’ Sam’s anger was erupting like magma. He grabbed Kessler’s shoulders and tried to shove him aside, but the man clung to the door frame like an octopus.

  ‘You bloody will move, you bastard,’ Sam raged, bringing his knee up sharply.

  Kessler buckled forward, air howling from his throat, hands hovering over his groin. Sam elbowed past him and pushed open the door.

  It was in here, he told himself. He felt it. In this room somewhere. The proof he needed.

  The furniture was antique Victorian, neat and attractive. Chrissie’s taste. But the place was in chaos. On the floor lay a roll of plastic bubble wrap, sheets of brown paper, some string and sealing tape. Leaning against a glass-fronted cabinet of fine blue and white china were several hardwood frames with canvas stretched over them. Oil paintings.

  Sam picked the first one up and turned it round. It was good. Very good. Reminded him of Hockney. He read the signature. God, it was a Hockney.

  He heard movement behind him and spun on his heel. Kessler was bearing down on him, wielding a large crystal vase. He aimed a swinging blow, but Sam deflected it with his forearm. He staggered back, smarting from the pain.

  ‘Fuck you, Kessler!’ he spat, searching frantically for a weapon for himself. ‘Is this what you spent all your payoffs on? Bloody oil paintings?’

  The spymaster was advancing on him again, murder in his eyes this time and the vase raised above his head. Sam grabbed the Hockney as a shield.

  ‘Careful Martin. Wouldn’t want to wreck your investment, would you now?’ He saw Kessler falter.

  He couldn’t believe this. The two of them, Chrissie and her husband, endorsing mass murder in order to surround themselves with valuables.

  ‘Thousands of people were going to die so you could have these, Martin!’ Sam yelled incredulously. ‘Don’t you understand? That’s insane.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Kessler retorted self-righteously. ‘We knew absolutely nothing about the anthrax. Nothing whatsoever.’

  Sam gaped. An admission at last. An admission of Martin Kessler’s total involvement.

  ‘Didn’t know about the anthrax? What the hell did you think it was all about?’

  ‘A financial scam,’ he answered dismissively, ‘that’s all. A scheme to get hold of some of Saddam’s hidden cash.’

  Sam searched for shame on Kessler’s face but found none. The man was as free of conscience as his wife had been. Defiant even.

  ‘Oh! That’s okay then,’ he mocked. ‘If it was just for money. Perfectly all right to betray a few minor state secr
ets. Perfectly okay to send poor old Sam to hell and back, if it helped you on your way to a Rembrandt!’

  Kessler lowered his head contemptuously. He looked like a bull ready to take out the matador. His glasses were askew and the eyes behind the oval lenses contrived to be both expressionless and calculating.

  Sam edged to one side, still clutching the painting. Out of the corner of his eye he’d spotted a mahogany bureau with its flap open.

  ‘Where were you taking these pictures, Martin?’ he asked as a diversion.

  ‘Not mine. Borrowed from a friend. Taking them back,’ Kessler mumbled, moving sideways.

  ‘You borrowed a Hockney,’ Sam mocked, shaking the painting. ‘Who from? The Saatchis?’

  ‘Look, put it down will you. It’s valuable.’

  ‘I know it’s fucking valuable. That’s why I’m holding it.’

  Sam had reached the desk. He’d spotted an air ticket on it. And a folder of travellers’ cheques. And a passport. He rested the painting on the floor and made a grab for the ticket.

  ‘Jamaica,’ he read quickly. ‘Oh, very nice.’

  Suddenly Kessler lunged. The painting flew aside before Sam could restore his grip on it. He lost his balance, falling backwards, hands flailing the air as Kessler went for his throat. Thumbs fixed onto his windpipe like artery clamps. The floor came up behind him, his head cracking down on the parquet. The weight of Kessler on top of him burst air from his lungs, air that wouldn’t come back.

  No air.

  No air for God’s sake!

  He was choking, with Kessler’s smelly breath daubing his face like a sick-soiled flannel.

  Panicking, he scrabbled for Kessler’s own throat, but the man tucked his chin hard into his breastbone. He went for the eyes beneath the glasses, but Kessler pressed his face down onto Sam’s chest. He tore at his hair, pushed against his shoulders, kicked up with his legs, but the man’s weight pressed down on him with a strength that seemed to grow as his own consciousness began to ebb.

  Jesus, thought Sam. He’s going to kill me. After everything that’s happened, the bastard’s going to squeeze the life out of me.

  Suddenly he heard a crash from the hallway. He felt Kessler flinch. Feet thudded on the floor. There was a shout, then the weight was lifted from him. Air roared back into his lungs.