Last Witness

by Glen Carter

  Poole nodded. “Let’s empty the truck. Get them out of here. They’re stinking up the place.”

  It took another few minutes to finish the job. Kirill talked the whole time, drawing the occasional hard look from Mahmud’s men. When the last of the bales was securely tucked inside the bunker, the two Afghans boarded the truck and rumbled off into the night.

  Poole was doing another count when his friend took a seat next to him. A cigarette was offered which Poole declined.

  Kirill lit his own, drawing hard. “Well?”

  “It’s all here,” Poole replied. “No one got stiffed.”

  “This is good.”

  “No one has to die.”

  Kirill laughed. “I know you’re disappointed.”

  “You know me, well,” Poole said.

  “How could I not? After all these years.”

  They locked the bunker and walked a hundred yards across hard packed sand to a squat structure that appeared as a black stain against the distant lights of the village. Poole knew there were many bunkers like his. It seemed every villager was a grower. The poppy gave up opium,which was the only useful thing to ever come from this shithole of a country.

  They stooped low to enter the stone andmud hovel.

  Kirill lit a lamp while Poole retrieved a bottle alongwith two filthy glasses, a bowl of olives, and loaf of bread.

  For a while, they ate in silence.

  Poole checked his watch. “Our friends with the crooked noses and black leather arrive soon. You know what to do, once I’ve confirmed the transfer.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “Just keep your weapon out of sight until I signal.”

  Kirill nodded.They were both aware of the brutal methods of the men they were dealing with.

  “Don’t worry,” Poole said. “I’ll be watching. Any offensive moves and I’ll take them out before you get a chance.”

  Poole retrieved a long leather case from beneath his bed, checked its contents, and slung it over his shoulder. They’d been in some tight spots before, but Kirill had proven himself to be a good man. Poole trusted him without question. It was why he recruited him from the drudgery of barracks life.The low rank and low pay.

  It was time. Poole slapped Kirill on the back, and left.

  Five minutes later. The ghostly image of Kirill. Standing next to the hut. Eyes like green orbs. Poole checked the range, made a couple of adjustments to his night vision scope. An easy shot had Kirill been the target. In truth, Poole didn’t expect any bloodshed.The Russians were hungry for a reliable supply, and they wouldn’t fuck with the one he was providing. A satellite phone blinked beside him. The money would be wired first. Then the product would be on its way, along with the goons from Moscow. It was a simple arrangement, unless someone got greedy or foolish, or both. Just to be sure, Poole had taken other precautions, and at that moment, there were several armed men, watching the same scene he was.

  3RD SPECIAL OPERATIONS SQUADRON, UZBEKISTAN

  The Predator was far from home.

  GPS and telemetry froma half-dozen onboard sensors confirmed, within a few feet, its exact location. The information bounced off a satellite high above the earth, and was being monitored by an operator, who sat comfortably before a bank of monitors inside a ground control trailer at a mountain base somewhere in Uzbekistan. Night-vision optics, mounted on the Predator’s belly, provided a crystal clear infrared image of the moon-like landscape, which it fed as encrypted real-time video to that same trailer.

  The MQ-1 Predator was sleek and quiet and carried a deadly payload. It wasn’t conceived for that, but with some tinkering, it proved to be an effective killer. Smaller than a school bus, it loitered lazily on station, poised for further orders to complete it smission. No one on the ground would ever have known of its presence.

  At that moment, a small group of people were glued to a computer screen thousands of miles away at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. In the soundless room, they watched intently as a man filled the screen. Even from ten thousand feet up, they could tell the subject was beardless and without the characteristic headdress of a talib. The western clothes were also closely noted. All of this only confirmed what intel already had. One of the people in the room nodded, followed in unison by the others.

  Satisfied, one of them picked up a secure telephone and when contact was established at the other end, only one word was spoken.

  The operator in Uzbekistan immediately rechecked his targeting system, with its critical laser designator. Within a few seconds, a solid lock-on was confirmed. He then made a series of keystrokes, and without further consideration, the operator punched a final command.

  In the black of night, on the other side of the world, a Hellfire missile dropped from a reinforced pylon on the underside of the Predator drone and rapidly gained supersonic speed towards its target.

  4

  ODESSA, UKRAINE

  He wasn’t totally nuts. The letter had names. Names provided information. Records were checked and after a couple of long days, Malloy was satisfied. That’s when he’d called his travel agent.

  “Odessa’s a long haul. It’s in Ukraine.”

  “I know where it is,” Malloy told him.

  “I’ll see if I can find you a deal.”

  “Make it quick.”

  Three days later, he was on the other side of the planet, his stomach a bucket of acid. His head pounding.

  Watching a woman on her deathbed.

  “Just ask her the question,” Malloy barked. Instantly regretting his tone.

  The girl showed her displeasure.Her name was Renalda. She was thin. Funereal. Perched like a raven on her grandmother’s bed. Long black hair framing a bloodless face. Eyebrows full of metal. She studied him with pale blue eyes and then turned away, speaking slowly in a language full of edges.

  Malloy listened closely, understanding only a few words. Another moment was spent before Renalda turned with a sneer. “It is useless. She needs to rest.”

  Malloy ignored the girl, and instead turned to the man standing motionless on the margins of the room. He had arrived a short while ago carrying a worn black medical bag that hung forgotten at his side. Malloy figured the good doctor looked more like a funeral director.

  “Maybe if you come back tomorrow,” Miss Face Metal said.

  Malloy assessed the patient. Vacant eyes sunk deep in a face the colour of slate. He turned once more to the physician.

  Slowly, the doctor shook his head.

  Malloy drew a hand through closely cropped grey hair and sighed. He tugged at the knot in his tie. Stiff sweaty fingers fumbled at his collar until the button broke free. “When did it happen?”

  “Not long,” her granddaughter replied.

  “Stroke.”

  “Yes. Stroke.”

  “Shit,” Malloy hissed.

  “Excuse?”

  “Nothing.” Malloy swung his head. “Has your grandmother ever said anything about America?”

  Renalda appeared confused. She turned to the doctor who shrugged. “America was long ago,” she replied. “America sucked.”

  “Does that mean yes or no?”Malloy asked.

  “Excuse?”

  “Did she ever talk about Dallas?That’s in Texas.”

  “I know where is Dallas,” the young woman said. “Cowboys. Oil wells.”

  Malloy’s eyes narrowed. “Well?”

  Once again, the girl shook her head.

  Mallow saw that the patient was shivering even though the room was a sweatbox. It was a bad sign that added mightily to his disappointment.

  The roomwas nearly bare. Abed, a dresser, and a small oval rug. A picture of the Pope was hung beneath a crucifix. Not the new guy. John Paul from Poland who spoke about a hundred languages and who took a bullet from that creep in Saint Peter’s Square. Malloy remembered the photograph, taken years later, showing the shooter and the Holy Father kneeling in a prison cell. Praying together. Malloy couldn’t figure that o
ut. How you could kibitz with a guy who tried to put you in the ground.

  This was a nun’s place but the woman was no nun. Malloy felt foolish that he’d travelled all this way, knowing little else.

  He leaned forward, ears buzzing. A sleepless flight had left him exhausted and nearly crippled.The cab from the airport was a blur. The drive to his hotel had taken half an hour and after ordering the driver to wait, he checked in. Twenty minutes later, Malloy was dropped on Spiridonovskaya near Tiraspolskaya Square.That had been a mouthful. That was an hour ago.

  The patient wasn’t moving. Malloy wondered if she had already passed.Then came a slight motion beneath the blanket. Thank Christ. Malloy turned sheepishly toward John Paul’s saintly face. You forgive a man who put a bullet in you—you can forgive a foul-mouthed cop. Malloy decided that he’d earned the absolution.

  He got up with an aching back and walked to the open window. Five storeys down, the sidewalk was a riot of vendors. A large red umbrella popped open, and Malloy imagined blood spatter on sacrificial stone. Like I feel. An offering to the god of stupidity.

  The woman lived on a narrow cobblestone street lined with bleak apartment buildings. Tiny balconies were strung with laundry. Beyond the tenements, glass and steel skyscrapers stabbed at lowslung clouds of gunmetal grey. Cooking odours wafted in through the open window, a neighbourhood lunch of root vegetables and butcher’smeat.

  The patient suddenly coughed. The only sound she had made since he’d arrived.

  Malloy spun around. Returned quickly to his chair and sat, leaning forward as though the closer he got, the better the chances that she might actually speak. Malloy reached into his pocket and produced a small tape recorder, which he fiddled with before placing it on her bedside table. He waited.

  The doctor edged closer.

  Renalda spoke softly, stroking the embroidered flowers and goose down that was now her baba’s death shroud.

  “Quiet,”Malloy ordered. “She’s trying to tell us something.”

  She could not speak. She could not move. Her thoughts were slipping away. She was Helena Storozhenko. Daughter of Bodashka, who had once written for Kievskaia Starina under Lebedyntsev. She wanted to shout it, but was unable to do anything other than lie there. Staring.

  Renalda sat close. Speaking so softly the words seemed to be coming through walls.There was a man next to her bed. He spoke a jumble of smooth rolling sounds. He didn’t frighten her. She was dying.The American hovered above her with a soldier’s haircut and hands that were made for controlling large machines. He looked like a good man.

  She felt comfort in Renalda’s hand as it pressed down on her, swept across the thick bed covers. Beautiful Renalda, who would make sure the American got what he needed because secrets like hers were too important to die.

  Even with the drugs, daggers of pain stabbed her. Helena focused on the crucifix—the face of compassionate Jesus. Christ had died for man’s sins. But no sin was blacker than the one she had witnessed. Helena knew what she had seen was important because they had searched for her. Though Helena Storozhenko would not be found, would never speak of what she saw. A memory of the man with a rifle came to her. A flash of fire and a wisp of smoke.Then he was among them. Everyone panicked, but not him. She had spied the thing at his side and immediately understood. Even after all these years, Helena could still see the man’s face, the way he’d looked at her in the seconds after he’d killed that handsome young man. He had vanished within a moment. Almost made her believe he was never there.

  She lay dying now; never able to shed the image of the young president slumped over, hands at his throat. In a second, his head burst apart. His beautiful wife scrambled to the back of the limousine and for an instant too short to measure, they had locked eyes. Two women connected by the horrible intimacy of a man’s death. Helena knew if they’d kill a president they’d certainly kill a simple housemaid from Odessa. In those paralysing moments she had feared another gunshot. One intended for her. Helena ran, like the others. Clutching her camera and damning it. Wanting to cast it away, but knowing she never could.

  An hour later, still shaking, she had locked herself in her room. The children pounded at her door. “Helena, Helena!The President is dead!”

  “Go now,” she mewed, warm tears soaking her pillow. I loved him too.

  Hopeless and alone, Helena mourned. For the young Camelot prince. Everything that was lost had flashed in the face of his widow on the back of that car.

  Odessa.

  Renalda’s voice a whisper.

  One last breath.

  A veil of red fluttered upon unseeing eyes. The face of Christ beckoned, and then Helena Storozhenko surrendered to the comfort of release.

  5

  BARK ISLAND

  The power saw bucked to a screeching halt in ancient wood as tough as steel.

  Jack Doyle stumbled and fell. Down on his ass in a cloud of dust.

  Face red, fingers still attached. He laughed aloud.

  Then the doorbell rang.

  Jack freed himself from the debris and thumped down the staircase. When he opened the door, Tommy Shanks was standing there with a stupid grin on his face.

  “Thought you were gonna wait till I got here,” Tommy said.

  “You’re late,” Jack replied. “I got impatient.”

  Tommy looked at the mess of him.

  “Alright, alright,” Jack said, stepping aside. “Lesson learned.”

  “Lesson learned is right.” Tommy brushed past, pounded up the stairs, and stepped into the room that Jack was in the process of demolishing. It took him a few minutes to figure out what Jack was trying to do. Tommy shook his head and clucked his tongue. “See that wire?” he said. “You come this far from frying yourself.” Tommy parked his hand in front of Jack’s face, used his thumb and forefinger to create a space too small for the flat of a toothpick. “Kaitlin would’ve found you flat on your back, your hair burned off and eyes like a washed up tomcod.” Tommy gave another cluck. “Whaddya want? Make her a widow?”

  Shanks was right. Jack was sheepish. “Can you fix it?”

  “Yes, I can,” Tommy said. “Hand me that saw and get out of the way.”

  As Tommy got to work, Jack thought about Kaitlin. Married less than a year and that close to being a widow. Nice one, Jack. What a schmuck.

  She’d be back tonight, ready for a hot bath, some dinner, and a nightcap on the porch during which she’d tell him about her meeting with Walter Carmichael, the head of news at CNS. Jack missed her.

  “See that post?” Tommy stopped to point at the wall. “Load bearing. You cut that you’d bring down the roof.”

  “Nice to know,” Jack said, stuffing a hunk of something into a large plastic container.

  Tommy looked at him. “You gonna open a window, let the dust out before I come down with somethin’? Asbestos-itis or the like.”

  “That’s asbestosis, Tommy. Don’t worry. This house was built before asbestos.”

  “Yeah, well,” Tommy averted his eyes, “How am I supposed to know? Who can tell what the old bastard stuffed in the walls before you bought the place.” He turned to face Jack, lowered his voice. “Word is they carried old Gumb outta here covered with sores and tumours and stuff. Looked like he caught fire and someone put him out with a fork. If you want my opinion you better have the place checked out.”

  “Thanks, Tommy. I’ll have another look at the house inspection.”

  Tommy nodded. Then hoisted the reciprocating saw. “Back up, or you’re gonna get hurt.”

  An hour later, Jack got up and brushed off his jeans, then stepped carefully into the hallway. Better to stay out of Tommy’s way. Old Alvin Gumb was no handyman, so the place needed a lot of work. Jack was looking forward to getting his hands dirty. It was a stress buster.Mostly.

  Jack descended the old narrow staircase on a cacophony of squeaks that echoed through the magnificent house. He planned to paint and repair the fretwork and exterior gables the following
day, but maybe with Tommy on the job, he could begin that work sooner. Kaitlin favoured hunter green, had demanded a fresh coat on the entire house. It would take about a week. Jack reached the bottom of the stairs and an expansive foyer. Kaitlin had marvelled at the front door, a huge oak slab with bevelled stained glass that spilled warm light into their home. The old fashioned drawing room was on his right with its marble fireplace and elaborate ceiling cornice. On Jack’s left was a hallway that led to a den and, further back, a kitchen where you could sit for hours mesmerized by an ocean view that began at a pebbly beach and stretched a thousand miles to Ireland. Alvin Gumb was a crusty arthritic bachelor, tended to by a string of Bark Island widows. They suffered his foul disposition for mention in the old man’s will. Gumb, the bookkeeper, had no intention of that. His most valued possession was his ancient adding machine where he spent long hours until he was forced into retirement by the disease that damned his joints to the same miserable state as his personality. At ninety-five, his mind abandoned him to his soiled bedclothes, where he lay dead for three days before anyone noticed.

  Jack surveyed the fine workmanship that ran throughout the house, the oak cove mouldings and amber hardwood with its inlaid squares of red Brazilian teak. If the house were a living person, Jack decided, old Gumb would have been a boil on her elegant backside.

  Jack walked in the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He pulled out a pile of sliced pastrami, some pumpernickel bread, and a container of spicy mustard. Jack cleared the countertop of dirty dishes and ten minutes later a platter was piled high with sandwiches. He grabbed two cold beers and headed back upstairs.

  The saw was quiet, which meant Tommy was likely goofing off. Damn. Jack knew he’d have to feed him quick if there was any hope of getting the work done. Jack stomped up the stairs. “Food’s on the way. No more downtime, Shanks. There’ll be no slackers on my crew.”When Jack walked in he saw why Tommy had stopped.