by Layton Green
-13-
Grey signaled to the bartender for another rum. Zaya 12 year, neat. And keep the cocktail napkin.
Modern décor, warm lighting, floor to ceiling windows with long elegant drapes. A couple of late-night businessmen at a cocktail table pattering about bonds and luxury cars and the most effective forms of digital marketing, a cacophony of white noise.
Grey knocked his first one back.
Ordered another.
Earlier that same night, on the way to the hotel from the police station, Grey had had a long conversation with Viktor. They exchanged notes on the case, and the professor relayed that Jacques had briefed Captain Gregory on the case.
Then Viktor told Grey about W.A.R.
Contrary to Captain Gregory’s belief, W.A.R. was not a new group. Or at least Interpol didn’t think so. They really didn’t know much about it, which scared them, but the suspicion was that the group had been around for some time and was just starting to emerge from the shadows. No one was sure when or how the group had arisen, or where it was based. What little they did know came from rumor and internet chatter.
The group had cells popping up all over the globe. Law enforcement groups from various nations had managed to plant informants, but no one had penetrated the leadership. W.A.R.’s nerve center remained shrouded in secrecy, its objectives disturbingly opaque.
Nor did Interpol have any idea who the red-headed man at the rally was.
That accent, Grey wondered. What was that accent?
If even half the rumors were true, then W.A.R. was hard-core even for hate groups. There were reports of torture, beheadings, crucifixions. On the fringes of Europe, witnesses had linked them to mass killings in refugee camps, then later recanted. Authorities in the States were working hard to pin down cells, suspecting the group’s hand in violent attacks against mosques and border communities.
The truly frightening part, as Captain Gregory had mentioned, was the inclusive nature of the group. Most hate groups argued about everything from the number of stars on their flag to who really killed Martin Luther King. Somehow, sweeping aside past differences, W.A.R. sucked in disgruntled whites like a vacuum cleaner of hate.
After hanging up with Viktor, Grey had not bothered going to his room for a shower. He went straight to the bar and started drinking.
Muslims killing whites killing blacks killing browns. Crucifixions. Targeted rape.
God, it was a vile world.
Even Grey’s father had not been a racist. Not from any moral stance, or at least not one communicated to Grey, but because his father respected something else more than the color of one’s skin.
Power.
Might makes right was his father’s favorite credo. Big Stick diplomacy.
Never forget about power, his father used to say to Grey after a beating. Like it or not, power makes the world go round. What do you think happens if I don’t rule my own roost? I’ll have a wife who talks back. A son who walks all over me. That’s small scale, son. What do you think happens if our country doesn’t police its borders, stockpile the most nukes? We’ll be speaking Chinese or Russian. The world is ready to tear your throat out, right after you turn the other cheek.
Grey hated that argument. Hated it even more because his father’s words bore some truth, both about the world and about human nature.
Grey had studied racism, and he knew it all went back to power, from some group in history who wanted to keep what they had from others, or who wanted what the other had, or who wanted to use another group for profit.
He had also studied pacifism. And learned that amid the unspeakable atrocities of World War II, prominent pacifists across the globe had been forced to adjust their belief systems.
A swallow of rum went down with a vengeance. He couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn’t handle the world. The amount of pain and suffering had always depressed him, but the senseless tragedy of Nya’s death had sent him hurtling off a bridge, limbs flailing, the ground rushing up to meet him.
She was gone, he knew that. He didn’t need to pine over her or smash things or talk about her death with anyone.
He just wanted to hurt. Disappear.
Dr. Varela seemed like a nice woman and Grey was sorry she was in trouble. He really was.
But he couldn’t dance anymore.
His cell buzzed, and he looked down. Captain Gregory wanted him to ride along with the lieutenant tomorrow, see if they could find Big Red.
Grey ran a hand through his hair and left it cupping the back of his neck. Charlie and her knowing young eyes were a long, long way away. Tomorrow he would go with the lieutenant, wallow in the world of these disgusting neo-Nazis, and find out what he could before the trail got too cold.
Then he would step away. Pack his bags and find some forgotten corner of the world until he could breathe again. Viktor might not like it, but Grey had told him at the beginning to find someone else.
The bartender gave him an inquiring look. Grey pointed at his glass.
The next morning, Grey felt as if a heavy bag was wobbling inside his skull. He dragged himself out of bed and splashed cold water on his face until his eyelids were no longer gummy. Threw on some clothes without looking at them. Tripped on the entrance to the elevator. Mainlined coffee in the hotel lobby.
Lieutenant Palmer texted that he was waiting by the curb. The sun flared like Armageddon as Grey stepped outside. He squinted and eased into the unmarked police car.
“You go on a bender last night?”
Grey mumbled a reply.
“Listen, we appreciate your help. Both the captain and Jacques think Big Red might be important to getting inside this group. You’re the only one who’s seen him up close.”
“Why isn’t the F.B.I. involved?”
“They’re watching from on high, believe me. They’ll swoop down like harpies once we do the dirty work.”
Grey gave a careless wave. “Drive on.”
After a stare, the lieutenant pulled into traffic. “What do you think they wanted from that CDC doctor?”
“Her files, obviously.”
The lieutenant snorted. “Let me ask it better, smartass: what do a bunch of backwoods rednecks have to do with the CDC and whatever happened to that Gullah?”
“No idea.”
“If it’s really some kind of virus, that’s some nerve-racking shit,” the lieutenant said. “You know they got Muslims working in the CDC, right?”
The interstate split and they headed north on I-75. Just past Buckhead, the trees thickened for a few minutes, before another urban cluster came into view.
“I saw your background,” the lieutenant said. “Hand-to-hand Recon instructor, Diplomatic Security, three languages. Pretty impressive stuff. Why’d you give up gov work? Better pay?”
“The State Department fired me.” Grey looked at the lieutenant. “For asking too many questions.”
“Yeah, okay, we don’t have to be friends.”
Grey leaned back against the headrest, shutting his eyes to block out the sun.
They spent the day wading through the muck of the poor white underbelly of metropolitan Atlanta, mostly in the northern towns and neighborhoods where the lieutenant said the far right elements were concentrated. Marietta and Kennesaw and Acworth, Roswell and Powder Springs Road. At a glance, the scenery was pleasant, tree-lined streets and stately old homes and graceful front porches, but as soon as they scratched the surface, got behind the historic districts and the swim-club communities, they entered a whole new America. Strip mall after strip mall after strip mall, pawn shops and dollar stores and fast food restaurants, block after block of cheap duplexes and mobile home parks, pit bulls straining on leashes, everyone in sight covered in ink. Endless stoplights and cracked pavement and a barrage of banal commerce that sucked every ounce of charm out of the world.
The tragedy of poor white America, Grey theorized, was that their poverty would forever be overshadowed by the blight of the ghettoes. As heartbreakin
g as the class-based, institutionalized poverty in certain white communities was, the legacy of slavery was worse. Shoeless children in Appalachia with cola-stained teeth didn’t get the news cameras or affirmative action. The general consensus was buck up, trailer trash. You don’t even have slavery to blame.
Grey was shocked by the extent of the Atlanta underclass. The blighted areas went on for miles and miles, cutting across counties, as pervasive and depressing as the desiccated kudzu that smothered the light poles and chain link fences.
The white ghettoes did share one thing in common with impoverished communities of color: they didn’t like cops.
Grey and Lieutenant Palmer stirred the hornet’s nest all day long and had nothing to show for it except lies and curses. They even went door-to-door in certain hotspots, showing a sketch of Big Red, offering a five hundred dollar reward and then threatening a crackdown.
Nothing worked. No one knew a thing.
As they left a notoriously xenophobic Irish Pub near the historic Marietta Square, someone shouted “Take off, pigs,” and threw a half-eaten chicken wing at Lieutenant Palmer’s back. Furious, the lieutenant forced the bartender to wipe the wing sauce off his shirt, threatened to lock up the whole pub, and stormed out spewing curses. Grey absorbed it all with hooded eyes.
With daylight on the wane, the lieutenant returned downtown, muttering about his stained shirt and the decline of the middle-class. As they passed beneath the Seventeenth Street Bridge, the police radio chirped.
The lieutenant pushed a button. “Palmer.”
“Where are you?” Captain Gregory asked.
“Connector. Almost in.”
“Keep going. You must have ruffled some feathers today, because we just got a tip on the hotline. Some pipehead wants the five hundred bucks you offered. Said he doesn’t know Big Red personally, but heard about a super secret Wodan rally at midnight, led by some big shot out of towner.”
“What’s the rally about? Same old?”
“He said it was a leadership initiation. Something about getting a ring.”
Grey and Lieutenant Palmer locked gazes.
“Yeah,” the captain said, breaking the silence. “My thoughts as well.”
“Where’s this going down?”
“Piedmont Park. The trail near the dog run.”
“Are you serious? Right in the middle of town?”
“That’s the intel.”
The lieutenant tightened his grip on the wheel. “What do you want us to do?”
“Scope it out and get a team in place. Then take those fuckers down.”
By eleven p.m., Grey and Lieutenant Palmer had camped out in an unmarked police car on a road lined with graceful old homes, most of them restored Craftsman bungalows, near the eastern entrance to Piedmont Park. Set on nearly two hundred acres in Midtown, the park was the city’s premier green space.
Field officers disguised as vagrants had been inside since dusk. After midnight came and went with no suspicious activity, the lieutenant sent off a few texts. He frowned when he saw the replies.
“Not a peep,” he said to Grey.
“False advertising?”
“Probably.”
After another half hour, the lieutenant got on the walkie-talkie. “We’re coming in.”
“10-4.”
Disappointed, Grey and the lieutenant strode into the park on a paved bridge arcing over a lower-lying section of greenery. The skyscrapers of Midtown glowed in the distance like giant neon rockets waiting to lift off. After crossing the bridge, the lieutenant led Grey down a set of stairs to a footpath that ran alongside a dog run. The cityscape was no longer visible and the narrow, low-lying portion of the park felt cut off from the rest.
The officer in charge of the SWAT team, a slope-shouldered gorilla of a man named Robert Swanson, removed a filthy blanket and rose off a bench to greet them. “A little strange,” he said.
The lieutenant peered through the chain link fence, into the darkness of the dog run. “What?”
“There’s no one around. Down here, hidden from view like this, it’s usually a refugee camp at night.”
During the day, Grey and the lieutenant had walked the area and decided to post sentries on either end of the dog run. To their left, between the footpath and the steep hillside leading to the upper portion of the park, a wetlands trail wound through a marshy area for a few hundred yards.
Grey shone his flashlight onto the gravel footpath leading into the wetlands. “Anyone check in there?”
“Nothing inside but marsh,” Bob said, “and we’ve been watching both access points.”
“What about the hillside?”
“Really? A bunch of white supremacists are going to climb down an overgrown hill and hold a meeting in a swamp?”
Grey pursed his lips. Bob had a point.
“Might as well walk it,” the lieutenant said. “You guys stay on the entrances, and call the others down.”
The lieutenant curled a finger at Grey. They started down the paved wetlands trail. Off the path, their flashlights illuminated a nest of spindly branches and a stagnant creek that shone with the dull gleam of an oil stain. Except for the hum of distant traffic, they could have been traipsing through a swamp a hundred miles deep into the wilderness.
They almost missed the tiny trail. Littered on both sides with discarded wrappers and plastic bottles, the footpath led down a muddy slope and into the thick of the swamp. They might not have bothered to explore except for a new smell, one of death and rot, that overpowered the stench of the fen.
After radioing for backup and waiting for the other officers to arrive, Lieutenant Palmer drew his gun and took the lead. “Probably an OD,” he muttered.
Grey stayed right behind him. Branches whipped into their faces as they crunched on dead leaves and brambly overgrowth, and an owl startled them both by taking flight off a stump ten feet away from Grey.
The trail led to a squatter’s camp in a hidden hollow on the bank of a broad section of the creek. Bits of clothing and debris clung to bare branches, broken bottles littered the ground, and the odor of urine and feces would have assaulted Grey’s nostrils if not for the worse stench of a headless corpse lying beneath a pile of rocks. Off to the side, a stake impaled the brown-skinned man’s severed head, pinning it to the ground.
The other officers cursed as they gathered in behind them. Moving as if underwater, the lieutenant called out, “Hey Bob, did that informant leave his name?”
“Anonymous tip, and he insisted on a drop before he talked.”
Grey, along with everyone else, was still staring at the insect-covered corpse. The decapitated head looked Middle Eastern, mid-thirties.
“And you paid him?” the lieutenant asked in disbelief.
“He knew about W.A.R., and you said any info was real important.”
“Did he sound drunk? Like a vagrant?”
“I guess. Why?”
The lieutenant grimaced, took out his cell, and made a call. “Captain? The informant was right, there was an initiation. Only it happened last night.”
-14-
The scream cut off as abruptly as it had arisen, as if silenced by someone or something. Viktor thought the voice sounded muffled, coming from beneath a sheet or a blanket.
Sergeant Linde jumped to her feet. “What was that?”
“We have a number of cats,” Jans said smoothly. “I’m afraid they fight at times.”
“That didn’t sound like a cat.”
Viktor watched the conversation with interest. He was surprised the sergeant had stood up to van Draker.
“Unnerving, isn’t it?” their host said. “Feline cries sound surprisingly human when in heat.” He pulled the butler’s rope again. “If it will ease your mind, we’ll ask Kristof.”
“Who else is in the house right now?” Naomi asked.
“No one.”
Kristof appeared in the doorway half a minute later, a damp white cloth draped over his arm. Chlorof
orm, Viktor wondered? He kept an eye on both men. Neither seemed perturbed by the scream, though Viktor would bet his absinthe collection that it was not feline.
“Are the cats at war again?” van Draker asked with a chuckle.
Kristof paused a beat before he spoke. “Ah, yes. Sir Francis will not leave Sir Leopold alone this week.”
Sergeant Linde looked as if she were gathering her courage, torn between duty and some other force. Or perhaps she was saving face in front of Viktor.
“If you don’t mind,” she said, “I’d like to walk the premises.”
Van Draker opened a palm in consent, but his eyes were cold. “By all means. I’m glad to know our town is well looked after.” He met his butler’s gaze, and something unspoken passed between them.
“Would you care for tea or coffee?” van Draker asked.
“Neither, thank you,” the sergeant said. Viktor declined as well.
“Kristof? If you don’t mind?”
“I’d prefer if he stays with us,” Naomi said, again surprising the professor. “I won’t be long,” she added. “I’m sure everything’s in order.”
“It doesn’t solve the problem of my tea,” van Draker said. “Unless you object to a stop in the dining room?”
“Of course not.”
Kristof led them down the hallway to a dining room with a crystal chandelier sparkling beneath a wood-beamed ceiling. As Kristof crossed the room to the tea service, passing gold-framed paintings depicting spectacular vistas of the Western Cape, Viktor’s eyes lasered onto a full-size mannequin hanging on the wall. The effigy was encased in a leather body suit covered head-to-toe with one inch-long spikes.
Viktor walked over to the macabre figure, which resembled a human blowfish. “I’ve never seen this torture device before. Was it something used to punish slaves during colonization?”
Van Draker gave him an amused glance. “That is an original nineteenth century Siberian bear-hunting outfit. Rather striking, isn’t it?”
