There were six men inside, seated around two mismatched tables that had been pulled together in the center of the room. A few Canadian one-dollar coins were piled in the middle and each man was holding several playing cards. All of them smoked the same cigarettes and all wore variants on the same basic theme: leather boots, jeans and thick woolen shirts in a colorful variety of scotch patterns. All but one of them had a beard.
When Lester entered, the conversation died and twelve eyes turned toward him in unison, each less welcoming than the next. They grew visibly uncomfortable as he approached the table. One even produced a knife and put it down in front of him with a deliberate clang.
“English?” Lester asked.
Their eyes all moved in the direction of the man sitting at the end of the table. He was the smallest of the group and looked about fifty, but that may just have been the beard. The man regarded Lester with dark-green malevolent eyes, then stood and pushed his chair back. “I speak English.”
“Are you American?” Lester asked.
The man shook his head. “I’m from Vancouver. Is there something we can do for you, mister?”
“There is. I’m looking for someone hiding on the other side of the lake.”
The man translated this for the rest of them. Two of the men laughed.
“Do you hunt over there?” Lester asked.
“Who’s asking?”
“I am.”
“And you are?”
Lester put one hand behind his back and reached into the waistband of his pants. The man with the knife stood up. When Lester brought his hand back around, he was holding a thick wad of American hundred-dollar bills.
“I’d make it worth your time,” he said and threw the bills onto the pile already on the table.
A murmur went up among the men and Vancouver said something to them in French. He bent over, picked up the bills and leafed through them.
“My friends and I might be able to help you,” he said.
“Good. Are there any dwellings over there?” Lester asked.
Vancouver frowned.
“Houses or cabins?”
He consulted two of the others and said, “This man says he knows of two cabins on the other side. He says one of them is in pretty good condition.”
“I need you to take me to them,” Lester said.
When Vancouver addressed them again, an argument erupted in French. All eyes remained on the bills in the short man’s hand. As the exchange grew more heated, Lester reached back and produced another wad. He threw it down on the table with deliberate effort and the group went quiet.
“Money is not an issue,” Lester said. “Time is. That’s ten thousand dollars. And this makes it twenty. Get me to where I need to go and there’s another twenty in it for you.”
This time there was no argument, just a lot of surprised faces. The men all stood up at once and headed for the door. Vancouver put on his jacket, picked up the money and stuffed it into his pockets. He held a hand out to Lester, who looked at it as if it were covered in shit.
“I don’t want to know your name,” Lester said. “And I don’t want to be your friend.”
Vancouver shrugged and said, “Suit yourself, pal. That your car?”
“Yes,” Lester said. “I need you to get rid of it.”
The man shrugged again, “Sure; why not?”
One of the men turned off the lights in the bar and locked the door. Vancouver asked Lester for the keys to the Saab and handed them to one of the others who got in and drove it away.
“You can ride with me,” Vancouver said.
They moved out in a convoy, the quad bike taking up the rear. Within a few minutes the truck was bumping along a badly maintained set of ruts through thick woodland. When they broke through the trees into a clearing, Lester saw they were on the tip of a peninsula that ran some way into the lake.
From here the opposite shore was only half the distance it had been by the boathouse. The men began to assemble their hunting gear, looping knives to their belts – and in one case to a leg – checking flashlights and other equipment and stowing these away in any one of a hundred pockets. Each man had a rifle with a scope. Lester saw that two of them were equipped with night-vision.
When the group was ready, Vancouver handed Lester a Canadian Army-issue raincoat with a fleece lining. It had a strange pattern of camouflage that looked like a badly pixelated image of small green, black and brown squares. The men moved in single file toward the shore where a small wooden dock led out to two four-man, steel-hull fishing boats. Each had a large outboard. One of the men was in the process of starting one of these up when Lester shook his head “No motors!”
Vancouver didn’t need to translate the message. The man held up his hands in exasperation and reached down to pick up the oars.
“We’ll lose time if you’re in a hurry,” Vancouver said.
“Then I suggest we stop talking and get going,” Lester said and pushed past him.
Lester climbed into the boat already occupied by two of the men and indicated for the one holding the oars to move aside and let him have them. When both boats were in open water, Lester began to row, first at a steady pace to keep up with the other boat, then faster. He increased the breadth of his strokes until the stern sank visibly and produced a steady series of small waves in their wake. Within minutes the other boat was at least a hundred yards behind them. The two men in the boat with him sat looking at Lester in a montage of horror and wonder. By the time they reached the far shore, the other boat was at least two hundred yards behind. Lester hadn’t even broken a sweat.
“Where are the cabins?” he asked.
Vancouver called to one of the men with a night-vision scope on his rifle.
“The closest one is a mile inland from here,” he said. “The other is about three miles in that direction, a few hundred yards from the shore.”
“Just the two of you,” Lester said, pointing at Vancouver and the man beside him. “Tell the others to wait here.”
“Can I ask who you are you looking for?” Vancouver said.
“That doesn’t matter. If you see anyone, just stop and signal.”
“I only ask because even forty grand doesn’t cover being shot at if they have guns.”
“They’re not armed,” Lester said.
The man with the night scope took the lead. Lester stayed ten yards behind Vancouver. It took them half an hour to cover the distance. Alone, Lester would have cut that down to ten minutes. But the men in front of him were both unfit, and surprisingly clumsy, for people who called themselves hunters.
By the time the lead man stopped and held up an arm, the light was growing poor. A storm front was moving into the area and it had begun to rain.
Lester saw the cabin. One of the walls had partially collapsed and half the roof had caved in. Most of what was left was covered in a thick growth of shrubs and vines.
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s here,” Vancouver said and handed Lester his rifle. “Take a look.”
The grass around the crumbling building was undisturbed. Two rusty tin cans sat in what had once been a window.
“They’re not here,” Lester said. “We’re going back.”
He let them walk ahead a few yards. When they reached a small patch of soft grass, Lester closed the distance quickly and grabbed Vancouver’s head from behind. He put his right hand over the man’s mouth and his left against the back of his head and snapped his neck in a single jerk.
The other man kept walking, oblivious to the carnage behind him. Lester pulled the knife from Vancouver’s belt and ran forward. Instead of bringing it around to the man’s throat, Lester lifted the knife and brought it down into the base of his neck in the fashion of a Roman execution. The man was dead before he hit the ground.
Lester picked up the rifle, checked the breach and the scope, then walked back to where Vancouver lay and removed the money from his jacket. He returned to the other body and searched it. What he
found in the inside jacket pocket would have made any other man smile.
Lester pulled it out and examined it. It was a silencer for the rifle, about eight inches long and as thick as a coke can. When he had it on, he knelt and turned back toward the empty cabin.
He aimed at one of the cans in the window and pulled the trigger. A puff of dust and stone chips exploded in the wall about a foot to the left of the can and almost two feet below it. He lowered the rifle and adjusted the sight then tried again. The impact was level with the can, but still several inches to the left. He adjusted it again, and this time the can flew off the ledge. The only sound from the rifle was a dull thump, the sound a flat rock makes when dropped on soft ground.
He set off at a brisk jog, following his own tracks. When he saw the lake through the trees in the distance, he veered left to avoid approaching the others from the same direction they had set off in.
The rain had increased from a drizzle to a steady downpour and it had become too dark to make out anything but the silhouette of the three men a hundred yards ahead. Lester nestled the butt of the rifle into his shoulder and leveled the barrel. He spent a moment rehearsing the order of his shots. Two of the men were sitting side by side on the narrow strip of pebble beach. The third stood several yards behind them, looking out at the lake through the scope of his own rifle. Lester brought the crosshairs to a point just above the head of the standing man, exhaled slowly and pulled the trigger. A piece of the man’s skull flew off and the head jerked back. Before his body hit the ground, Lester moved the cross hairs to the first of the seated men and fired. The aim was slightly off and the bullet hit him in the neck. The man beside him moved and his third shot missed, sending a spray of water up in the lake several yards from the shore. The man ran to one of the boats and jumped in. Lester aimed at the hull just above the water line and fired two shots.
When he reached the boat, the man was on his back, holding both hands over his ribs and groaning. Lester placed one foot inside the boat and brought the butt of the rifle down on his skull.
He found a handful of bullets for the rifle on one of the men, put them in his pocket and set off along the shore.
He had been walking for over an hour and didn’t see the tarpaulin until he stepped on it. Lester reached down and pulled the tattered cover aside to reveal the bottom of a small wooden boat with a compact outboard lying underneath. He raised the rifle, turned on the scope and scanned the woods. When he saw no sign of the cabin, he began walking slowly inland.
Chapter 38
New York, New York Thursday 20 July 2006
1830 EDT
Mike woke to the sound of someone knocking on the door – three soft taps followed by three more. When had he fallen asleep? How had he fallen asleep?
The last thing he could remember was watching a segment on Fox News, a breaking story about Gerald Ross and his wife that suggested both had been up to their necks in some drug-trafficking scandal linked to Al Qaeda.
There were another three taps on the door. Mike tiptoed into the hallway and pulled his service weapon from its holster on the side table. Someone was trying the doorknob. He moved closer and leaned forward to look through the peephole. All he could see was the top of a head covered in white hair.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Mr. Banner? It’s Mrs. Jackson from down the hall.”
Mike unlocked the bolt and opened the door. Mrs. Jackson was a black woman in her late seventies. She was wearing a yellow nightgown and leaning over a walker that looked as old as she was.
“Mr. Banner, you have a phone call,” she said.
“I do?”
“Gentleman says it’s real important.”
She didn’t seem remotely curious as to why the call had been made to her apartment instead of his, just lifted one hand off the walker and pointed a bony finger toward the end of the hall. “I thought it was my daughter. She always calls around this time. But the man said he was looking for a Mr. Banner in 845.”
“Did he say who he was?” Mike asked.
She thought about it for a moment then shook her head. “Oh, he might have. I’m a little slow in remembering these days.”
Mike stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind him. Mrs. Jackson pointed to her door again.
“You go ahead now. I’m going to be a while,” she said and started turning the walker with small shuffling steps. He hesitated for a moment, but she lifted her hand again and waved it impatiently. “Go on. He’ll have hung up and gone to bed by the time I get there.”
The place reeked of mothballs and stale piss. An enormous black cat stood in the doorway to the kitchen regarding him with suspicion. About the only thing he could see that looked like it had been made in the current decade was the phone – a wireless handset sitting on top of a stack of phone books on a small table next to the door. Mike picked it up. “Hello?”
“Is this Special Agent Michael Banner?”
“It might be. Who’s asking?”
“Agent Banner, I need you to listen to me very carefully. Your life may depend on it.”
“Who the hell is this?”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not say over the phone.”
“Listen pal, you either tell me who you are or I’m hanging up and calling the cops.”
“What do you think happened to Ross?” the man asked.
“If you think you can scare me, asshole, forget it!” Mike said. “I know what you people are up to. I know you’ve got Mitch and I know you traced our call. I also know you’re responsible for what happened in Vermont. And you can tell Jessops he’s history. I’m taking what I know to the top. Fuck you very much!”
“Wait!”
Mike almost put the phone down, then brought it slowly back to his ear.
“I’m not who you think I am,” the man said. “But I am the guy they’re looking for.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because like I said, your life may depend on it.”
“All right. If you’re him, tell me this, how did you get into the Fed?”
“We used two modified RAM modules. One at the Fed and one at Allied Bishop. I switched both replacement parts en-route from California at the UPS depot in Sacramento.”
“That was all in the report,” Mike said. “You’ll have to do better.”
“Okay, safety deposit box 107. That’s what I broke in for. Was that in your report?”
“Go on,” Mike said.
“The box was leased to a real estate investment fund called Millennium Holdings. The company is a front for the CIA.”
“Assuming you’re not full of shit,” Mike said, “what do you want from me? If you think I can offer you protection, you can forget it. If I bring you in, you’re probably a dead man. A smart guy like you must have figured that out by now.”
“I don’t need protection. And I have no intention of turning myself in.”
“Then what do you want?”
“A simple trade. Whatever information you have in return for your own safety.”
“How did you find me?”
There was a long pause. “We can discuss that in person.”
“That’s going to be difficult,” Mike said.
“Because you’re being watched?” the man asked.
“I think so, yes.”
“I can help you with that.”
“Did it occur to you that I might not want help?”
“If what you said about people tracing your calls is true, you need my help. You may not believe it, but I might be the only worthwhile friend you have.”
When Mike didn’t say anything, the man continued. “You’re going to receive a package tomorrow morning. There’ll be a phone inside it. Go to Times Square at noon. Make sure you can’t be seen and dial the number in the phone book.”
The man hung up before Mike could answer. He stood there for a long time, going over the conversation again. His thoughts were interrupted by
Mrs. Jackson, who had made it back to the apartment and was lifting her walker over the doorjamb. Mike helped her inside.
“Not bad news, I hope,” she said.
“Oh, nothing serious.”
He was expecting her to start asking questions. If not, why had someone called her phone instead of his; then at least, how did they know her number? But she didn’t. He reasoned that her memory problems might run a little deeper than just forgetting names.
“Son, could you help me into the living room?” Mrs. Jackson asked.
Mike took the walker and held out his hand. He escorted her into the small living room where the smell of cats was even stronger. There were two more of them sleeping on the sofa. She raised a hand and made a shooing gesture at them. “Go on, get off the couch, you two. We have a guest.”
The cats looked up, but made no effort to move.
“Just go ahead and kick them off,” she said.
Mike did as he was told. One of the cats hissed and swiped a paw at him. The woman reached for the armrest and maneuvered herself onto the couch. “Would you mind bringing me my cigarettes? They’re in the kitchen.”
He found a half-empty pack of Winstons on the counter next to a red BIC lighter. He took one of the cigarettes out, handed it to her and lit it. She inhaled a long puff and blew it out slowly. “Started smoking on the advice of my doctor. Can you believe that?”
Mike could.
Mrs. Jackson reached forward, picked up the TV remote and handed it to him. “Don’t know where I’ve left my glasses. Would you be a dear and turn the television on for me?”
Mike did and was about to make his excuses and leave when a clean-cut young reporter on CNN appeared on the screen, standing outside the doors of a small brick building. Mike turned up the volume.
“There are, of course, well-known links between terrorism and the drug trade,” the reporter was saying. “As we know, the Taliban finances much of its activities with proceeds from the heroin produced in places like Afghanistan. There have been questions about the connection of these murders, and the Whitehouse has just made a statement to say they believe Mrs. Ross was killed by one of the men found just up the road here. Now it’s still unclear exactly what happened after that, but the prevailing theory is that there was some kind of dispute within the cell operating here which may have led to the death of the four men. That explanation isn’t going down so well with some of the local residents, however. I spoke to the owner and chief editor of the local paper earlier, and here is what she had to say.”
Origin - Season One Page 18
