Nom de Guerre

by Gulvin, Jeff

  ‘How many dead?’ Swann asked.

  ‘The entire SEG, bar the one outrider who chased the suspect.’ Colson pointed to the doorway where Swann had seen his fellow officer die. ‘They did their job thoroughly, no police witnesses. That guy in the doorway was the last one. All the others are gone.’

  Swann popped air from his cheeks. He looked at the prison truck with the roof seals sticking up at right angles. ‘The two guys in there?’

  ‘Shot in the head.’

  ‘And Boese gone.’ Swann voiced his own thoughts, their combined thoughts. The words slipped out and a coldness went through him again. Boese out, gone, on the loose all over again. Storm Crow. He saw once more the photo that Boese had sent to him, his face with a mock bullet hole punched in his skull.

  Swann looked up as Garrod switched off his mobile phone and walked over, face pinched, lips a line of colourless tissue. He looked directly at Swann. ‘That was the Yard,’ he said. ‘We’ve just received a crow’s feather. It was addressed to you, Jack.’

  The Fireblade raced down the M3. Boese, knees buckled up, perched like a bird on the raised part of the saddle, his face forward, looking over the shoulder of the driver as they screamed along the outside lane. He saw no traffic cops. They were doing over 120 miles an hour. The exits flashed by, Hook and Fleet and then Basingstoke, and before very long they were winding through the big bends past Winchester. Less than an hour since he climbed out of that truck. The driver lay on the tank again, as they exited on to the M27 and headed east for Portsmouth. Boese glanced behind him, the G-force nearly wrenching him from his grip; but he was lithe and fit and had spent eight prison months sleeping on the floor of his cell, preparing himself for exertions he knew would follow.

  Halfway to Portsmouth, they left the motorway and crossed it again from the slip road. The driver glanced left and right, then pulled into an industrial estate. Boese climbed from the back of the bike and stripped off his helmet. He could see Morgan’s sister waiting, with her son, in an estate car, parked by the Litho Supply building. The biker didn’t look at him, didn’t say anything, just twisted the throttle and cruised back out to the motorway. Boese walked over to the car and got in the passenger side. The young boy handed him a bag from the boot and Boese stripped off his leathers and passed them back. He did not say anything, but merely placed the documents in the glove compartment as she drove back to the motorway.

  Twenty minutes later, they were queuing for the ferry to take them across the channel to Le Havre. He was driving now; Morgan’s sister, his wife, according to the tickets, in the passenger-seat and their young son in the back. The helmet and leathers had been discarded before they reached the terminal, wrapped in a black plastic bag, then deposited in one of the large wheeled dustbins for the council to remove. Boese wore chinos, an Aran sweater and sports jacket. He wore no make-up, no facial disguise, save a pair of heavy spectacles. His papers were in order and his manner as relaxed as it had ever been. Their turn came and their tickets were inspected by the officer at the gate, then they were waved into another queue ready to join the ship. One hour later they were boarded, car chained down, and Boese was standing at the stern rail with his arm round Morgan’s sister, watching the grey waves toss the foam in the ferry’s wake.

  Webb followed the blue Renault van into Liverpool. The Poles were long gone, having headed, presumably, back to London, with their load of weighty boxes transferred to the other van. They stayed with the cargo, moving the entire surveillance team to the van and its two unknown occupants. Initially, they headed towards the docks and Harris was on the phone to contacts in the Irish Republic, but then the van changed course and instead drove right into the city centre and pulled up outside a charity shop. A motorcyclist passed the parked vehicle, confirming its position. One car dropped off three people to keep the eyeball on foot, and they confirmed two boxes being unloaded. The crew of the van came out again and climbed back into the van, then drove off once again. Two streets away, they stopped outside the Deep-sea Fishermen’s Mission and unloaded two more boxes. Back at the charity shop, one of the female spotters wandered in and began to peruse the racks of clothing. Behind her, two little old ladies were busying themselves at the lid of the box. The observer watched them unpack a bundle of second-hand clothes.

  Harris looked at Webb’s eyes looking back at her in the rearview mirror. ‘Old clothes,’ she said. ‘What the hell’s going on? It’s bad enough being cooped up with a bunch of dinosaurs like you lot, without someone taking the piss.’

  They followed the van for another hour until the last of the boxes had been delivered. They had been to half a dozen Polish missions or charity establishments of one kind or another. Webb’s pager vibrated. The message was to call the Reserve. Harris dialled while he drove. Mick Rob, the SO19 firearms team leader, sat slumped in his seat with his arms folded across his chest, an expression of abject boredom dominating his face. Harris spoke to the SO13 baseman. Webb half watched her face, half watched the road ahead. She spoke quietly, asked what was going on, then her voice stilled and the colour died on her cheeks. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘We’re on our way back now.’

  ‘What?’ Webb said, as she hung up.

  For a moment she did not speak, looking out the window, eyes knotted amid the smooth skin of her face. She flicked at an irritating strand of hair that tickled her jawline. ‘The SEG’s been massacred,’ she said. ‘Storm Crow escaped.’

  Swann sat in the waiting room outside the operating suite at Ealing Hospital, half a cup of machine-vended coffee between his palms. Boese’s face stalked the recesses of his mind. He could smell the oil in the black feather he had not yet even seen. McCulloch shifted his position next to him. They were watching the lunchtime news on the television set above their heads. The waiting room was empty, save the two of them. Swann got up and turned the sound up. He could see Garrod in the background, talking to Colson, as the reporter spoke into the microphone.

  ‘I’m here at the scene of the worst shooting incident in the history of the Metropolitan Police Force,’ he said. ‘Today, Hanwel Green, this quiet corner of West London, witnessed scenes of violence more akin to the streets of Los Angeles. Sixteen members of the special escort group were murdered this morning, by a gang of gunmen whose intention was to stop Ismael Boese, the international terrorist known as Storm Crow, from going to trial at the Old Bailey. Boese, as you will remember, was allegedly responsible for the chemical-bomb alert that saw the capital evacuated last spring. And for the subsequent attack in Rome, where two hundred and eighty people lost their lives, after being contaminated by the deadly nerve agent, pirillium E7/D10.’ He broke off and the camera panned the street scene behind him. ‘Three civilians were also killed and seventeen others wounded, six of those are critical. Eye-witnesses talk about the skip lorry, you see in the foreground, coming at speed from the old bus depot and crashing into the prison truck that was holding Boese. Gunmen then opened fire with machine guns, from these two bus stops here. One woman, who looked from her flat window above this shop,’ he pointed, ‘talked about seeing something from a Hollywood filmset, with glass flying and guns firing for a full minute or more. So far, the forensic experts have yet to tell us anything, but two of the three escort vehicles appear to have been attacked by grenades.’

  Swann looked at McCulloch. The commander was then interviewed, his face closed. He talked about terrorists, he talked about a concerted plan carried out with what appeared to be military precision, and then he talked about Storm Crow on the loose again. An all-ports warning had been issued within one hour of the attack. Only one of the assailants had been apprehended and he was currently undergoing emergency surgery in hospital. Swann stood up and switched the set off. McCulloch reached into his bag and brought out the transparent nylon evidence bag, which housed the automatic pistol they had recovered from the biker. ‘I haven’t seen this before,’ he said.

  ‘Neither have I. Why not get it down to Lambeth now, Macca. Get something goi
ng, at least. It doesn’t take two of us to wait for the fucker to wake up.’

  McCulloch nodded and got to his feet. He blew out his cheeks stiffly. ‘They should’ve had a firearms team,’ he said.

  Swann shrugged his shoulders. ‘Maybe.’ He looked into McCulloch’s eyes. ‘But would it have made any difference?’

  He sat on his own for another hour after McCulloch had gone, and then finally the surgeon came out, stripping blood-streaked rubber gloves from his hands as he did so. The mask hung loosely from his neck and he pushed his thick-lensed glasses higher up on his nose. Swann looked at him and understood. ‘I’m afraid he didn’t make it,’ the surgeon said.

  Louis Byrne was up at six-thirty, as he was every morning. The sun was just beginning to break between the cracks in the slatted pine shutters that covered the inside of their bedroom windows. He lay in the silence, listening to Angie sleeping next to him. Their bedroom spanned three windows of the first floor and he loved the space it afforded. Getting up quietly, he ran a finger over the muslin drapes that were tied back to the four iron posts of the bedframe, and stretched. Angie stirred. He looked at her, deciding to bring her coffee before waking her. She was moody in the mornings at the best of times, and she was due in court by nine.

  The Washington Post was half sticking through the letterbox and he had to open the front door to get it. February and cold, no snow here yet, but there was a storm warning for later in the week. Tennessee and West Virginia were already without power where the snowfall had been harshest, and parts of the Virginia coastline were flooding. Some beach houses had had the stilts ripped from under them. Byrne scratched the raised stubble on his chin and glanced the length of the block, where Prince Street ran into the Potomac River. It was rising, no doubt about that. Shaking his head grimly, he recalled last year when it had swept half the length of their street. Fortunately, the town house was the last but one on Prince and Lee, so the river had a block and a half to rise before getting to them. The Oyster Bar on Union Street got it last year, though, and they’d be worrying now.

  It was cold. He closed the door and went into the kitchen to make coffee. Angie was stirring when he took the cups upstairs. He touched her nose with the tip of his tongue and she flicked at the moisture with a finger. ‘Wake up, honey,’ he said. ‘Time to get up.’

  His wife opened one eye, rubbed at her forehead with long-nailed fingers and sank deeper into the pillow. ‘Aw, shit,’ she said. ‘Is it today already?’

  Byrne laughed then and wafted the smell of coffee under her nose.

  He left her and showered in the en suite bathroom. It had a black marble floor with a garden-sized bathtub, and a black marble shower unit with solid brass fittings. Angie had chosen it, to suit her moods she had told him; morning moods, no doubt. He stood at the end of their bed as she took a shower, and watched the early morning news from CNN while he fixed his tie. Images of London filled the screen, and, turning the volume higher, he sat down slowly in the Henry VIII chair that stood on the edge of the rug. He sat very still, tie only half fastened, while he stared at the images that Swann and McCulloch had witnessed an hour earlier.

  Angie came out of the shower, a towel about her hair, another wrapped round her from above the breasts. ‘Louis …’ She stopped and looked at the screen, her husband hunched forward in his chair, the skin of his neck bunched above his collar. ‘What’s up?’ she asked him.

  Byrne did not reply, eyes intent on the screen. The last words of the newscaster: ‘Storm Crow is on the loose again.’

  Angie stepped in front of him. ‘Escaped?’ she said. Byrne was not listening, a frown deepening the lines above his eyes. ‘Louis?’ She shook his shoulder. ‘Louis.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He stood up sharply. ‘Jesus Christ. I thought we’d got rid of that sonofabitch.’

  ‘What happened?’ She looked back at the screen.

  ‘The worst massacre in the history of British law enforcement is what happened.’ He stepped past her, finishing his tie and lifting his jacket from the back of the chair. ‘You’re in court today, right?’

  ‘Yeah. Leaman’s trial’s starting. But I doubt we’ll get much beyond the opening statements.’

  ‘I might be late.’

  ‘We’re out tonight, remember. The French Ambassador’s reception.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten.’ Byrne looked past her to his reflection in the mirror. Only two people from the FBI had been invited to the White House, along with a whole bunch of foreign and US dignitaries: Louis Freeh, the Director; and himself, the man who put Storm Crow behind bars.

  He flipped the electronic doors on the underground garage and drove up on to the cobbles. Right on Lee, he headed out of old town Alexandria and into Washington D.C. itself. Forty minutes later, he parked in the space allotted to him as unit chief of the International Terrorism Section, and went up to the fifth floor and his office. Leather desk, leather furniture, replacing the old stuff that Randall Werner had left behind when he moved to his last posting as SAC in San Diego. Byrne had taken over from him. He picked up the phone and dialled Scotland Yard, plucking Jack Swann’s card from his pocket. Somebody answered, but it wasn’t Swann. ‘This is Louis Byrne from the FBI,’ he said. ‘Can you get Jack Swann to call me as soon as he comes in.’ He put the phone down, clasped his hands together and looked at the photograph he kept on the wall—himself at Fort Bliss in Texas, with a bullet hole in his head. Next to it, the black feather from a crow.

  Swann was in the briefing on the sixteenth floor. He had been there for four hours now. Webb and the surveillance team were back, and Webb was sitting next to him, his hands across his stomach, eyes dull for once. No one was speaking. Bill Colson, the operational commander, had just switched off the video they had taken of the scene. Fittingly almost, there was no sound with it and the silence accentuated the devastation.

  ‘They should’ve had SFO back-up,’ Tania Briggs, from the exhibits office, observed quietly. ‘The SEG were only ever traffic guys with guns.’

  Swann looked sideways at her. ‘They took tactical advice, Tania. The chief inspector was a passenger in the front car. He got killed as well.’

  ‘What was the tactical advice?’

  ‘Only a general threat. If they’d identified anything specific, they’d have had a full SFO team on it, maybe ARVs as well.’

  ‘They face a general threat every time they move someone from PIRA,’ Webb added quietly.

  Colson waved at them to be quiet. ‘There is absolutely no point in raking over what no one can do anything about. The chief inspector made his decision based upon the information available.’ He leaned his knuckles on the desk then. ‘The bottom line is that Boese is out.’

  ‘Probably long gone by now,’ Webb said. ‘How long before they got the all-ports warning out?’

  ‘Over an hour. We didn’t get the CAD until ten minutes after the last shot was fired.’ He looked at Swann. ‘Just so you all know, we received another feather, his way of ensuring we understand exactly what went on. The feather was addressed to Jack.’ All eyes swung in Swann’s direction and he looked at the wall beyond Colson’s head. ‘This was planned to the minutest of details,’ Colson went on. ‘Whoever was behind it, knew exactly what they were doing.’

  Webb sighed heavily and looked across the room to where Christine Harris was sitting with Julian Moore from Box. ‘And half the fucking Branch were chasing a bunch of alleged Polish gun-runners on a charity mission to Liverpool.’

  Harris coloured. ‘I wasn’t to know that, George.’

  Webb shook his head. ‘I’m not criticizing, just pointing out the coincidence.’

  Everyone was silent after that. Then Colson looked at Harris. ‘It is a coincidence, isn’t it?’

  She sat forward, casting a brief glance at Moore, who cleared his throat. ‘I put Chrissie on to Jorge Vaczka,’ he said. ‘Some of you already know that we had a whisper from MI6 that this guy was in the UK. We weren’t aware he was here or of his existence
until they pointed him out to us. Subsequent checks indicate he’s been resident here for some three years.’

  ‘How did they know about him?’ Swann asked.

  ‘Jack, they don’t tell me that.’ Moore spread his palms wide, elbows resting on his knees. ‘They’d had word, I suppose. Like us, they have their sources. Vaczka’s gang were organized. The more we’ve looked at them, the more we’ve come to appreciate that. Jorge Vaczka himself has been around. He’s done some time, albeit briefly, in the United States.’ He sat back again. ‘We had a source close to him whose information was good. This morning was the first time that information was bad.’

  ‘Again, a hell of a coincidence,’ Swann said. He looked at McCulloch. ‘Macca, any word from the gun room at Lambeth?’

  McCulloch shook his head. Swann rested an ankle on his knee. ‘How the hell did Boese organize this?’ he said. ‘He’s not been in contact with anyone since he’s been on remand.’

  Harris squinted at him. ‘No visitors at all?’

  Swann was quiet for a moment. ‘He did have one,’ he said. ‘Dr Benjamin Dubin.’

  Back at his desk, he saw the note to ring Byrne and he showed it to Webb. ‘Lucky Louis must’ve seen the news,’ he said. ‘He’ll be well pissed off. Cheyenne told me he’d got a promotion on the back of this.’ He picked up the phone and dialled. Byrne’s phone was diverted to the Strategic Intelligence Operations Center, who located him in Quantico.

  ‘Jack,’ Byrne said, when they finally put him through. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘It’s been better, Louis. No doubt you’ve heard the news.’

  ‘This morning. I put a call in to you as soon as I hit my desk. What exactly happened, Jack?’

  Swann sat back and lifted one foot to press the edge of his desk. He watched Webb across the squad room as he spoke. Webb was looking at the wing feather they had received, wrapped now in an evidence bag. The phone rang alongside him and he picked it up, glanced at Swann, then, facing the window, he picked up a pen and scrawled something on a sheet of paper. Swann sat forward, doodling on the pad in front of him.