Last Witness

by Glen Carter

  Jack looked her in the eyes. “I still shudder when I think about it.”

  “Please, don’t. Not now.”

  “I nearly got you killed.”

  “Don’t. It’s not the time.”

  “Sorry,” he whispered.

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  “Then what?” he teased.

  “Just don’t stop.”

  Afterwards they disentangled from damp bed sheets and lay still while cool air puffed softly from the open window. Kaitlin padded to the bathroom, showered briefly, and then returned to bed, snoozing a minute after hitting the pillow. Jack watched her for a long moment and then turned onto his back. Listening to the muted sounds of traffic and far away music. Headlights streaked the ceiling from passing cars. Frenetic. Illuminating shadows in the same fashion he needed to reveal everything he could. About a madman, and dreadfully, Jack realized, much, much more.

  26

  ARTEMISA PROVINCE, WESTERN CUBA

  The hard-shelled insect on Poole’s arm was ugly and large. Bigger than any bug he had ever seen. Poole lay absolutely still, watching the insect benignly before flexing a muscle,which made it impossible for the creature to feel secure. It tumbled off and skittered away.

  The man in the shack on the other side of the river was sort of like that insect. Secure only as long as Poole wished him so. The man would never know of his presence, not five hundred yards downwind, expertly camouflaged within the plush greenery that lined the riverbank.

  Poole pressed his eye against the riflescope. Still no sign of the human who lived inside the mud and brick hovel. His hardened shell.

  Poole has chosen the Snaiperskaya Vintovka from the Georgian’s hidden arsenal. “Who didn’t want the SV-98 when Stronskiy delivered it,” the Georgian had said. “So superior to the SVD. Too bad it was after our time.” The Georgian hefted the weapon and smoothly brought the scope to his face. “Even me, half blind now, could be made deadly again with such a weapon. But why would I wish to be eaten alive by insects when there are younger men to hide and wait. I was eager and petulant too.” The Georgian passed him the sniper rifle. “Let’s see what you can do with Stronskiy’s fine instrument.”

  The man in the hut had to be dealt with, and Poole needed to kill test his weapon. Not just it’s precision, because that could be done by sighting a melon instead of a man. A thousand things happened before the trigger was pulled. Chemicals laced the blood to quicken heart rate and breathing, which Poole manipulated skilfully. Endorphins and adrenalin heightened the senses. He’d need to know how this weapon would respond when his body underwent the collision of those physiological forces.

  To get here he’d taken a back road to the river’s edge. He then followed a narrow trail until it ended abruptly about a mile further back. Poole had spent half an hour cutting palm fronds to hide his vehicle and then he had trekked, soaking wet, to reach this position on the riverbank. The Georgian’s directions had been dead on. The GPS was nearly unnecessary.

  Two hours had passed, and with the sunlight fading, Poole was beginning to wonder whether the man was dead already, a rotting corpse inside his little shell. Then a silvery thread of smoke emerged from the stone chimney and after another moment the door opened. Poole quickly went to his scope.

  He was short and had grey hair that hung to his shoulders and even at this distance his gut appeared as a large white balloon. The hermit was completely naked, which Poole guessed he was fond of. He scratched his genitals and then on stubby legs hobbled to a large blue barrel and removed its cover. He dipped a cup and drank, stopping briefly to survey his surroundings. Under other circumstances, he would have seemed an amusing gnome from a mother’s bedtime fairy tale.

  Poole went to work. Deftly he clicked a pair of dials to compensate for a slight breeze and the curvature of the earth. The scope was impressive. At seven times magnification the hermit appeared close enough to touch.

  Another cup of water. The little man was thirsty. So was Poole. He shoved his discomfort aside and slowly positioned his finger against the trigger. Breathing slowly, he applied pressure.

  The hermit replaced the barrel cover, lazily swirled his cup. Poole felt the chemical soup bubbling in his bloodstream. A swish of air escaped his lips. The sniper’s world narrowed to the scope’s field of view. Poole tightened his abdominal muscles, halted his breathing, and retreated to that part of his mind where it was possible, after years of practice, to lower his heart rate. More pressure was eased onto the trigger. The hermit splashed water on the ground and was about to turn.

  Poole applied the last measure of force and then came the weapon’s muted cough. The hermit spun on his heel. Mouth agape beneath a red blotch that appeared almost magically at his forehead. He crumpled to the dirt, a marionette tangled in its strings. Without delay, Poole quickly dipped the weapon’s free-floating barrel, and fired again.

  Poole breathed the warm moist air and allowed himself to relax. For five more minutes he lay absolutely still, studying the twisted body in the distance. Then, in a flash of movement, he pounded his fist against the hard-shelled insect hiding near him.

  Poole smiled. Collected his gear and left the same way he came.

  Later, he pulled off the road and skidded to a stop outside the only cantina he had seen for miles. Poole stepped from the vehicle and stretched. He would not eat here, but a cold beer would be good. He slapped pesos on the counter.

  The beer came quickly. Poole wiped the top and placed it against his lips, draining half the bottle. There was a small black and white television on a rickety table.

  Poole watched as the American President climbed the stairs of Air Force One and stopped to wave.The scene changed to the Cuban, Pilious Ortega, at some official function, shaking hands and smiling while photographers snapped his picture. The news reader droned on.

  For a time, Poole imagined both men standing at a podium. Smiling proudly. People cheering. The sniper swallowed another mouthful, slammed the empty bottle on the counter, and calmly walked back to his vehicle.

  27

  HAVANA, CUBA

  The Secret Service command centre in Revolution Square was a series of squat nondescript structures that were a far cry from the luxury that symbolized the mafia rape of Havana. Though, to Richard Wolff, this decrepit city still seemed a bleeding and bruised victim. Without justice from criminals long dead. He thought about those violent men—Lansky, Luciano, and Fischetti—who ran this place as a whore and cash frazione.

  The Secret Service man took measure of the mid-afternoon shadow, which swallowed him whole, running from where he stood to the top of the Jose Marti memorial, a full 360 feet. He noted the exact time at which the sun disappeared behind the concrete monolith and jotted it down, alongside a dozen other entries in his standard issue notebook.

  “A million people,” said the voice behind him. It was Slayer.

  “What was that?”

  “That’s how many people they stuffed in here for Castro’s marathon speeches.”

  “That’s a lot of people,”Wolff said with a nervous sideways grin.

  “Too many,” Slayer replied.

  The number came as no surprise to Wolff. It was also written in his notebook. The grin disappeared as he turned to his lanky second in command. “Whaddya thinking?”

  “I’m thinking I’d prefer something a little more secure. Say Fort Knox or Alcatraz.”

  Wolff nodded his agreement and then lifted his little book to fan the humidity from his tired eyes. At fifty-eight, with thirty years on his secret service record, he’d seen plenty of kill zones, and Plaza de la Revolucion was one of the worst. “Castro loved his crowds,” he said, benignly.

  “The good news for Razor, is crowds love him,” Slayer added. “The bad news is there can be lots of haters sprinkled in a crowd, too. No one here’s ever voted for POTUS, remember.”

  “Never voted,” Wolff added, staring up at the marble form of Cuba’s beloved revolutionary. He thought for a mome
nt. Vega had agreed to a limit on spectators. A couple hundred thousand would be picked by public lottery. Luck of the draw. Wolff’s guts churned, but he took orders without question, even bad ones.

  Wolff gazed into a bright blue sky where the beltway boys had slaved one of their new satellites, and wondered whether it was snapping the look on his face at that moment. At one of the gates, a Cuban uniform was checking someone’s identification. It was one of the CSRT boys, but Wolff couldn’t remember his name.He didn’t look happy having his credentials checked by some kid. It was a big bitter pill they’d had to swallow. Cubans riding herd on the finest security outfit on the planet. Many more of Wolff’s teams would be arriving with the C-5 Starlifters, in the crazy hours before the arrival of the President. Jose Marti Airport was already a gridlock of aircraft carrying heads of state and all the rest.They were still arriving. The President’s marine helicopters were already in country. Wolff always felt better when Razor was in the air, rather than a motorcade. They’d won that one, though it was a concession sourly surrendered by the West Wing geniuses. As much as he resented their meddling, Wolff accepted that everyone was working towards the same goal. POTUS, the President of the United States, gets in and out.Happy and healthy.

  The shadow’s cool burned away and Wolff shielded his eyes against the sun.

  Revolution Square was a cement slab surrounded by the structures and symbols of Cuba’s revolution.The brooding outline of Che Guevara stared at him from the grey façade of a building containing the Interior Ministry on the far side of the huge square. The National Theatre was a large modern building, which begged no description. Ortega’s private offices were in another building within sight of the tall star-shaped obelisk that served as the Marti memorial.

  Wolff had familiarized himself with the history of where he stood, but at that moment he was more concerned about the demanding task he now faced,which was to prevent a dark chapter of American history from being written here, in the blood of a president.

  A radio coughed. Slayer brought it to his lips and barked an order at one of his scouts. Half a dozen teams were beating shoe leather beyond the perimeter fence, securing line of sight windows.

  “Repeat.”

  The radio cackled. An over zealous bureaucrat was refusing entry to his office, which was no doubt bursting with state secrets.

  Slayer sighed. Snapped his transmit button. “Right. Let the uniforms handle it.”

  An armed Cuban escort always accompanied Slayer’s scouts and Wolff had lost count of the number of times those survey teams had run into attitude. The resisters were angry, stubborn, and not in the mood to cooperate. They were like worn threads sewn into a new garment. Problem was, when you tugged, they had a habit of unravelling.

  The head of Cuba’s armed forces, General Cayo Vega, was dealing with it, and thankfully it wasn’t like the old days when malcontents were simply imprisoned or shot.

  The fence around Revolution Square was ten feet high. Dozens of Cuban uniforms stood guard or shuffled lazily around the outside. Wolff followed the progress of the guy from the counter-sniper response team; his loose black shirt concealing a large holstered weapon. Benson. That was his name. The close-cropped hair was his giveaway, like the others. He had sharp piercing eyes, which were perfect for scanning rooftop perches and high windows overlooking Revolution Square. On the day of, Benson and his crew would be searching the crowd for suspicious movement or tense faces. Pity the poor sod carrying anything that looked like a weapon. Even a small coconut could resemble a grenade at five hundred yards.There was no time for second-guessing for the CSRT boys. Wolff didn’t envy the life and death decisions they had to make in the blink of an eye.

  Benson was headed their way. In a moment he’d be briefing Slayer on the latest threat assessments.

  Wolff walked away, leaving Slayer to handle it.

  A moment later, he stopped to stare at the long broad avenue that skirted Revolution Square. In a matter of hours, it would be closed to traffic and they’d descend into the subterranean world beneath one of the largest public gathering places on the planet. All manhole covers would be sealed, after miles of underground sewers were thoroughly checked. He didn’t envy those guys either, but guessed any one of them would rather be knee deep in Cuban shit than up to their necks in what he was choking on. For a moment he considered sitting, but thought better of it, even though his feet were killing him and hunger had seeded another whopper of a headache at the base of his skull. Suddenly, something else crowded into his head. The images from an old black and white film. He knew every frame. It was shot by a man named Zapruder on November 22, 1963, and it emblemized the darkest failure of the Secret Service. They had lost a president that day and so had a nation. John Fitzgerald Kennedy had once said that a president couldn’t be protected from a determined assassin. One who was willing to trade his life for the life of a commander in chief. It was prophetic of him to say so. He was dead months later. Wolff didn’t put stock in conspiracy theories. What was the point? At the end of the day, Kennedy was just as dead.

  Wolff stared up at the distant face of Che Ghevara, on the same building where Slayer’s scouts were probably watching their military escort pistol whip that bureaucrat. A diehard tasting the blood of his resentment. It had always been a potent ingredient for hatred.

  Wolff turned at the sound of his name. Slayer was waving him over, Benson steely eyed at his side. Wolff slapped shut his notebook and marched towards them.

  28

  Poole waited patiently for the sun to disappear behind a cloud and then raised powerful binoculars to his face. He tweaked the focus until the men came perfectly into view. For a moment, he studied the way they moved. Stiff. Militaristic. Poole knew what they were. He also understood their weaknesses.The men below him were hobbled by rules and procedures with no room to improvise when they came up against killers like him. Technology and intelligence provided a flimsy sense of security upon which all was choreographed. Human resources and physical barriers were secondary to the eggheads who hunted a dark cyber universe for psychos with a grudge. It was their world. Never his.

  The men in Revolution Square stood in tightly clumped groups; some of them talking into radios, other’s scanning rooftops, including the one where he now lay.

  He watched the scene, though what he saw didn’t worry him. It never would.When his moment came, the Americans would be blind and deaf. Condemned to a world of slow motion.

  When Poole was satisfied he pulled himself to his knees and dashed to a doorway.

  Four floors below he stepped from a fire escape and onto the street, his binoculars tucked inside a camera bag with its Canadian flag. He walked half a mile and flagged a cab and five minutes later emerged onto a crowded sidewalk outside a crumbling grey church in Old Havana. He was just another tourist taking in the sights of Vedado. Blending in perfectly with his faded khaki shorts and a white t-shirt bearing the emblem of a Canadian hockey team. He wore high-top black sneakers, which he had purchased at a second-hand store. Everything he had was well worn, so that he attracted less notice in a country where nothing was new. He wore a blue ball cap and cheap sunglasses, his swagger suppressed. Poole stopped at a storefront window. Carefully, he studied the reflection, to confirm he was not being followed.

  Six blocks later.

  “Peso, amigo? Por Favor.” The voice came from a crumbling doorway. Yellowed teeth in a face the colour of spetsnaz boots.The tout had a child in her arms. Poole thought for a moment about touching the youngster but decided against it. Instead, he tugged a few paper notes from his pocket and threw them at the woman’s feet.

  He moved on, stopping at a sidewalk café. He took a table in the shade and ordered a Cristal. Five minutes later the waiter returned with his beer.

  He raised the glass to his lips and drank and only then did he begin to sort the information from Revolution Square. It was his third reconnaissance to that vantage point. His last. Poole thought again about the plans Asatian
i had provided. It had taken an hour to absorb every length and bend in the maze of ducts that Asatiani had guaranteed were wide enough for a man. Even a man with an SV-98.

  Colonel Bezhan Asatiani had been in enough tight spots to know. He was a hero who had been medaled in Afghanistan. Poole had respected him and had fought to become a member of his elite unit.

  “You are nothing to me, Vasily,” Asatiani had said on their first meeting. “You offend me with the presumption of your name.”

  “With due respect, Colonel.”

  “Fuck you and your respect. Your pretension makes me vomit.”

  Poole had glared back at him, then. “My pretention is earned. Like yours.”

  Asatiani had laughed loudly at that, reminding Poole of a cold tundra gale. “Your eyes are both eagle and arctic fox,” he had said. “Zaitsev himself would have been impressed, my young student.” Vasily Zaitsev, the heroic sniper of Stalingrad. Poole had beamed at the compliment.

  Then there had been the colonel’s beautiful daughter, Katrina. Asatiani had been as protective as a bear, but Poole had easily outflanked him and within two months she was his.

  “She doesn’t understand the animals that we are,” the colonel had said one night, a warning in his face that Poole couldn’t miss. “Hurt her, I’ll place a round in your head while you’re taking a shit.”

  Poole swallowed another mouthful of beer, capturing pieces of the conversation from nearby tables. He stared blankly at his glass, another Canadian sightseer enjoying the afternoon’s dregs. Under other circumstances he might have actually enjoyed the moment.

  Poole easily pushed the thought away.