by Gulvin, Jeff
‘The master of illusion.’ Swann sipped his bottle of MGD and looked across the table at Harrison, who was rolling a cigarette around in his mouth. The three of them were sitting at a table in the diner across the highway from the Holiday Inn. ‘When I first interviewed Boese in London, he was reading a book about Geronimo, the Apache. According to my boss at the Yard, Geronimo was the master of illusion. It’s why he evaded capture for so long.’
‘Like the van and the tanker.’ Logan sat next to him, spreading barbecue sauce on her hamburger. ‘Illusion.’
Harrison sighed audibly. ‘That’s a great hypothesis, limey. But it don’t answer the question why.’
Swann stared at him for a moment. ‘Look, Harrison,’ he said. ‘You don’t like me. I don’t know why. Maybe you’re just prejudiced against the English. Fourth of July or something. Maybe your grandad can’t find a record of him fighting with us in World War Two, I don’t know. But stop calling me limey.’
Harrison looked across the table at him, a faint sneer on his lip. ‘You know something, asshole,’ he said, ‘you really shouldn’t talk about stuff you don’t understand. You never fought in any goddamn war. You wanna pull all that “Yankee over here” shit on me and I’ll show you a fucking Yankee.’ He lit the cigarette and drew smoke in harshly.
‘Harrison.’ Logan’s voice was clipped and cold. ‘You get off whatever trip you’re on, baby, or I’ll call you in with Kovalski. You might be his Shenandoah buddy, but I’m running this show.’
‘You know what.’ Harrison stood up. ‘I need a real drink.’ He stalked over to the bar, where he perched himself on a stool and tipped back his hat. Swann stared after him.
‘What’s his problem, Chey?’
She hissed out a breath and tugged at the hem of her skirt. ‘I never got round to telling you, did I.’ She flapped out a hand. ‘I had a word with Cochrane back in New Orleans.’
Swann bunched his eyes at the corners. ‘What did he say?’
‘Honey.’ She touched his cheek with long fingers. ‘Harrison thinks you’re the reason he got burned in Idaho.’
Swann stared at her for a long moment and she nodded. ‘Salvesen arrested him under their mock common law. They tried him and would’ve hanged him if he hadn’t known about the tunnels. They chased him clear across the county, Jack. He ended up taking three of them out in a mine shaft. He nearly got killed, and I’m afraid he really does hate you.’ She shook her head then. ‘I think Kovalski might be running some kinda dumb joke, having put you two together. But the Bureau owes Johnny Buck big time. He can do no wrong after what he did to the militia. You got to watch yourself, Jack. Harrison’s a KMA. That’s a “kiss my ass” agent. He’s fifty years old and doesn’t give a damn any more.’
Swann felt as if someone had taken a punch at him, a sucker punch right under the ribs, knocking the wind from his body. He sat and looked at her, lips scrunched up, eyes half-closed, then he exhaled a long breath. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘How can he think that I was responsible?’
‘Your ex-girlfriend, Jack.’ Logan covered his hand with hers. ‘Pia Grava. Brigitte Hammani. Harrison got burned right around the time you and Byrne went to Paris. You told Pia you were going, remember? She would’ve known why.’
Swann thought about it then. He had gone to Paris while the army EOD men were trying to render safe the bomb in the City. There, he had identified Pia. It made sense. All it would’ve taken was one phone call from her. She was owned by Storm Crow; and Storm Crow, at the time, was employed by Salvesen.
‘Oh, Christ,’ he said. He laid his hands open, palm up on the table and looked across the bar at Harrison’s stiff back. ‘No wonder he’s pissed off.’
‘I’m sorry, Jack.’ Again she touched his hand and this time he squeezed her fingers.
‘I’m OK.’ He looked again at Harrison. ‘What can I do about it?’
‘Nothing, hon. Not a damn thing. He might get over it. He might not. But don’t call him out on it, Jack. He fought the VC, one to one, lying on his belly underground. They don’t come meaner than that.’
They stayed in the Holiday Inn. Swann lay in his room and stared at the ceiling. The loneliness was as intense as he had ever known it. His mind worked over itself; clouded images, the past, the present, Harrison’s tough face, those blue steel eyes, and the knowledge that his involvement with Pia had nearly got the man killed. God, no wonder he hated him. Guilt lifted from somewhere in the pit of his stomach and the weight was so fierce he had to stand up. He switched on the light and lit a cigarette. Then, pulling on his trousers, he opened the door on to the balcony.
Harrison stood there, leaning on the rail and smoking. Swann opened his mouth to say something, but stopped himself. Harrison was staring out over the highway, the lighted roads running crossways towards downtown Meridian. He flipped away the butt of his cigarette, blew a stream of smoke and looked round.
‘Logan got a call from the ERT guys in Jackson,’ he said slowly. ‘Last thing tonight. The prints they lifted from room 202 were definitely Storm Crow.’
‘Right.’ Swann avoided his eye.
Harrison moved off the rail and opened his door. ‘I’m getting some shut-eye. Better get some yourself.’ He looked coldly, once, right into Swann’s eyes, and closed the door to his room.
Webb spoke to the briefing at Scotland Yard. That morning, the operatives from MI5 had come back to him with the coded messages broken. They had turned to one of their academic contacts at Oxford University. He had worked on the tail end of the Enigma programmes during World War II and had broken this code easily.
‘Apparently the code was used by Caesar,’ Webb explained. ‘Anyway, the eggheads have broken it. There’s three messages. Two going out and one coming in. I don’t know who they were going to, but we all know Tal-Salem was never captured.’ He paused. ‘The first one is weird, from Boese to whoever was outside. It says: “We have been betrayed.”’ He broke off and looked at Colson. ‘Why would Storm Crow say we? And also, how was he betrayed? I mean it’s not as if he didn’t get out of prison, is it.’
He went on to tell them the second and third messages: Greer dead TJ CC and the trial date. ‘I’ll phone Swann with these,’ he said. ‘They might be relevant over there.’
Harris stood up then and told them what she and her Special Branch colleagues planned to do about The Regiment. ‘Janice Martin is the key,’ she said. ‘Or, at least, the weakest link we can find. They all sleep with her because she’s so good-looking. If she wasn’t, I doubt they’d tolerate her coke habit, considering their apparent aversion to class A narcotics. We’re putting a team on her. We’ll need to be bloody careful, because they operate a third eye most of the time. But I doubt she’s accompanied when she scores gear, so that’ll be prime time. I’m going to try and bust her on a possession charge and get her to lay down.’ She chewed on her lip for a moment. ‘She’s already got two previous convictions for possession and this time she’s looking at a stretch.’ She sighed then. ‘Boys, you’re going to love this bit. I’ll admit it was Swann’s idea, not mine. But Janice Martin is a mamma, which, like I said, means she sleeps with any gang member at any time of his choosing. I’d say she was regular fodder, and she has the privacy of her own flat. We’ve got some hair from the crash helmets, which will give us DNA if we can get something to match it with.’
‘Oh, God.’ Webb rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Jack Swann’s mind.’
‘I know, but it might work. We can get semen samples from her and ID the owner. If we get a DNA match with the hairs, we might start to create some waves.’ She looked at Colson. ‘That’d make the sound in the clubhouse interesting listening.
‘The point is,’ she went on, ‘if we can ID the helmet-wearer, then we can start a little psychological warfare. We can listen in to conversations inside and put a tap on the phone. Gang members who live out of the area have to phone in at least twice a week.’ She broke off again for a moment. ‘My instincts tell me the
re is a connection between the Poles and The Regiment. I’ve no idea what it is, but that trial day’s events were just too coincidental. The Poles were planning something. Box 850 said possibly Ulster Loyalist links, but maybe it was something else. One thing is interesting, however, and it might give us a break if we can ever get to it: biker gangs operate written contracts. They do it over drug territories, lines of supply, etc. The word from NCIS is that The Regiment might just do requests. If they do, they’ll be contracted on paper. The details are only known by one or two, and it stops flapping mouths. I’m getting a Schedule 7 search warrant to look at their financial activities, some of which are in America. I’ve already contacted the US Secret Service.’
Swann took the call from Webb at 5 a.m. in his room. Every time he moved, he paged London with a contact number. He was fast asleep, and dreaming that he was back on Nanga Parbat, but it wasn’t Steve Brady he was killing, but Harrison. He woke to the sound of the phone ringing, with sweat on the sheets and a clamminess to his skin.
‘Hello.’
‘Jack.’
‘Hey.’ Swann rubbed his eyes. ‘It’s five o’clock, Webby.’
‘It’s elevenses here. How you doing?’
‘I’ve been better. I’m working with this ground task force the FBI have got going. Three of us: me, Logan and Harrison.’
‘Logan? You lucky bastard.’
‘Yeah, I think I fancy her, Webby. I mean, I do fancy her. I mean, I like her a lot.’
‘Never shit where you eat, Jack.’
‘No, right. I’ve got enough problems, eh.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Harrison. He’s the UCA from Idaho? The one who was nearly executed by the militia.’
‘What about him?’
‘He thinks I’m responsible for it.’
‘What?’
Swann fumbled for a cigarette, the ache back in his gut. ‘He thinks I got him burned, George. I went to Paris with Byrne. That meal receipt, remember. I told Pia I was going, and the next thing you know, Harrison is compromised.’
Webb was silent for a moment. ‘Shit, Jack.’
‘Yeah, I know. Harrison is one pissed-off man, an ex-Tunnel Rat for Christ’s sake and enough service with the FBI to not give a shit any more.’ Swann exhaled cigarette smoke and pulled the blankets up to his chin again. ‘We never asked Pia about compromise, Webby. We didn’t have to.’
‘I suppose it’s obvious.’
‘Yeah. I suppose it is.’
‘Can you deal with it?’
‘I’ll have to, won’t I. I’m not running home with my tail between my legs.’
Webb was silent for a moment, then he said: ‘Listen, the reason I’m ringing is because we’ve worked out how Boese got messages out of Reading. He used Brynn Morgan’s sister. You know we picked her up. Well, she coughed yesterday morning.’ Webb told him about the coded messages. ‘We cracked the code through Box. The first one is strange, Jack. I can’t understand it.’
‘What is it?’
‘“We have been betrayed.”’
‘We?’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘Why would Storm Crow say we?’
‘Exactly.’
‘And who in their right mind would betray him?’ Swann lay back against the wall, a pillow behind his head, and put out the cigarette. ‘He knew he was getting out,’ he said. ‘He must’ve done. He’d never have been caught otherwise.’
‘Right.’
‘So why betrayal?’ He could hear Webb’s breathing down the line.
‘I agree, it makes no sense.’
‘What did the others say?’
Webb told him the second message and finally the date of the trial.
Swann wrote them down and he was about to put the phone down when another thought stalked across his mind. ‘How did Boese know he’d been betrayed, George?’
‘Sorry, I’m not with you.’
‘How did he know? Something must’ve happened to tell him.’ Swann paused for a moment. ‘No calls, no letters, and only one visitor.’
‘Benjamin Dubin,’ Webb said.
Swann went over to breakfast in the diner with Logan. They had had a brief telephone conference with Kovalski and Byrne, who were both back in Washington. The stolen Ford that Boese had used had not, as yet, been sighted. Undoubtedly, he would have changed the licence plates. Harrison came in a few minutes after them and sat down to eggs, bacon and hash browns. He looked as though he’d had a skinful of whisky, and drank his coffee hot and black with no sugar. Swann thought about the events of the early morning and his long-distance phone call with Webb. All of it disturbed him and he did not know what, if anything, to say to Harrison.
‘So, what’s the plan, Stan?’ Harrison squinted at Logan. ‘We gonna sit here, go to Jackson, back to New Orleans, or what?’
‘I wanna go over to Jackson field office and talk through everything the ERT have got.’
‘Your call, baby.’ Harrison looked at Jack. ‘Sleep well, did ya, bubba?’
‘No. Actually.’ Again Swann wanted to say something, but Harrison turned his attention back to his plate. ‘SO13 phoned me at five o’clock this morning,’ Swann said in the end.
‘Up with the roosters, were you?’
‘Something like that.’ Swann told them about Boese’s escape and the messages in the International Herald Tribune. He took the slip of paper he had written them on and read them out. ‘Second one was: “Greer dead. TJ CC.”’
Harrison stopped eating, fork halfway from the plate to his mouth. ‘Run that by me again.’ His eyes narrowed and he set the fork down. Swann passed him the slip of paper. Harrison sat for a moment, then squeezed a white filtered cigarette from his shirt pocket. ‘Cheyenne, pass me that cellphone, would you.’
She handed it to him and he flipped it open, then dialled, waited, cursed and dialled again. ‘Hey, bro. What’s up?’
‘Martinez came through.’ Penny’s voice in his ear. ‘We got a meeting set up. But I need you, man. I told them you’re outta town looking at supply lines. I need you in New Orleans.’
‘No problem. I can fly in for a night. I’m trying to get hold of John Earl right now, but he don’t answer his phone.’
‘I’ll page him for you. What number you on?’
Harrison told him and switched off the phone.
Logan looked at him. ‘What gives, Harrison?’
Harrison picked his teeth with a cocktail stick. ‘That note. TJ CC. I think I’ve seen it before.’
The phone rang almost immediately and Harrison spoke at some length with Cochrane. ‘Check it for me, will ya, buddy?’ he said, then waited, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. Cochrane came back on the line. ‘Right. OK.’ Harrison hung up and looked at Logan. ‘Baby, you ever been to Georgia?’
‘I’m from Alabama. What do you think?’
He explained the situation in the car. They were two states west of Georgia and the part they wanted was all but in South Carolina. It would take them most of the day to drive, but it would still be quicker than finding an airport, waiting for a plane and flying. Swann listened intently as Harrison told them about John Earl Cochrane being the VICAP co-ordinator, and how they had had a call from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, with similarities between a murder in the small town of Royston and a series throughout the south. ‘Gal from the CASKU came down, but there were too many differences,’ he said. ‘Method of strangulation was wrong, for one. This dude used a ligature of some kind. The guy we were after has been dubbed “The Garbageman”.’ He squinted at Swann as he drove. ‘He left the bodies in dumpsters—used his forearm.’ He sucked on his cigarette and trailed smoke from the side of his mouth. ‘Not only that, but the age of the victim was wrong. They got all kinds of psychological theories up there in Virginia and most of the time they’re right.’ He paused and scratched his head. ‘There was something else too, but I can’t remember. Oh, yeah. The GBI dicks found the butt end of a joint in th
e yard at the back of the store.’
Swann tensed all at once. ‘A joint?’ he said.
‘That’s right, bubba. You know, a cigarette with drugs in.’
Swann ignored him. Logan leaned her arm over the back of the seat. ‘What is it, Jack?’
‘Yeah, what is it, Jack?’ Harrison mimicked.
Logan glanced sideways at him. ‘Harrison, why don’t you shut up and listen to what he’s got to say for once in your fool life.’
Harrison grimaced and pressed his foot to the accelerator pedal. Again, Logan looked round.
Swann sat hunched against the window, fighting the desire to punch Harrison in the back of the head. ‘There’s a killer I mentioned when we were in New Orleans,’ he said. ‘His name is Tal-Salem, and he’s the only one of Boese’s gang we couldn’t scoop up.’
‘What’s your point?’ Harrison cut in.
‘My point, Harrison, is we now think that this murder in Hicksville, Georgia, as you put it, may be linked to Boese.’
‘So?’
‘So Tal-Salem always smokes a joint before he kills someone.’
Louis Byrne was due to meet them at the offices of the GBI in Athens. They got there first, Harrison shaking hands again with Agent Gabriel Chaney, the big, bull-necked detective who had worked the case. He introduced Jack Swann as a limey from Scotland Yard and again Swann bristled. He remembered Logan’s words. Harrison would needle him and needle him until something snapped and then he would punch his lights out. He wondered how he’d do against a fifty-year-old.
Chaney looked Logan up and down and talked above her head. ‘Yeah, we still got the joint,’ he said. ‘Why?’
Swann sat on the edge of the desk. ‘Because the BKA in Germany and the DST in France have got Tal-Salem’s DNA. We’ve already matched it with a stub end of a spliff we found in London.’ He looked back into Chaney’s big, flat face then. ‘If there’s dried saliva on that butt, there’ll be DNA. We can maybe put an identity to it through London.’ He picked up the phone. ‘I’ll get them to send the configuration over.’ He looked at Logan. ‘Where shall I have it sent?’
