Nom de Guerre

by Gulvin, Jeff

  Fifteen minutes later, he reloaded the clip with fresh ammunition. Two hulls had been left with Jefferson, and he pocketed the other four, before loading six fresh ones.

  Then he made his way back up the road to the cottonwood trees and his truck. The name El Kebir rang inside his skull, and his features were set in a scowl. He was closer and yet he was no closer and the irritation showed in the tick at the corner of one eye. He got to his truck, opened the unlocked door and climbed in. He sat on something that had not been there when he got out. He cursed silently and felt under his backside. His fingers brushed something soft and then a small square of card. He remained absolutely still, his free hand creeping to the butt of the pistol. His eyes scanned every inch of what could be seen through the darkness. He saw nothing, no movement. He heard no sound. The night was still, the valley sleeping soundly. Switching on the interior light, he looked at what he had sat on, a single black crow’s feather and a book of matches.

  Benjamin Dubin was in Washington D.C. He was due to give a lecture, as he regularly did, to FBI recruits at Quantico. Tomorrow’s lecture was on the political beliefs and objectives of Hizbollah and the current stuttering status of the Oslo Peace Accords. Tonight he was dining with Louis and Angie Byrne in the Oyster Bar in old town Alexandria. Byrne had offered to put him up in his own house, which was only a couple of blocks from here, but Dubin always preferred the anonymity of hotel furniture. The two of them went back a long way; 1985, in fact, when Byrne was about to leave the marine corps, after his experiences in Beirut. Angela, he knew less well, but he was aware of her reputation. They were talking about Boese.

  ‘So far the media has backed off,’ Byrne was saying. ‘Our Fugitive Publicity office have released minimal information. We’re not confirming it is Storm Crow, and we’ve said nothing about feathers.’

  ‘But you received one in New Orleans.’

  ‘That’s right. John Dollar got it. His name’s been public since Jakob Salvesen got indicted.’

  ‘That, I can never understand about our legal system,’ Dubin said. ‘Puts the man in danger.’

  ‘His name had already been bandied about on the militia Internet web sites,’ Byrne said. ‘They issued a death threat, tacitly of course, but somebody somewhere’s putting up a million dollars reward.’ He smiled wryly then. ‘JB doesn’t seem to be worried by it. Even the Mob think twice about contracts on FBI agents. After all, we’re the biggest, meanest gang in the country. Nobody fucks with us.’ He smiled at his wife who was playing with, rather than enjoying her oysters. ‘Remember the DEA agent who got killed by the Mob in New York? He was a close friend of one of the old-timers in our field office up there. Well, our guy and some of the other agents grabbed one mobster a night, and beat the living shit outta them. They told them to tell the wiseguys that this would continue until the killer was given up. A week or so later, his head was delivered in a box to the field office.’ Byrne sipped white wine and laid a palm on his wife’s smooth and naked arm. ‘You doing OK, honey?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She smiled at Dubin and laid down her fork. ‘Don’t pay any attention to me, Ben. I’ve got work on my mind as always.’

  ‘And how is the President?’ he asked her.

  ‘Not my client personally, I’m afraid, so I couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘I’d like to come up to your offices one of these days, Angie. Must get a great view of the White House.’

  ‘White House, Washington Monument, Jefferson Memorial, all the way down to Woodrow Wilson Bridge on a clear day.’

  Dubin was quiet for a moment, finishing the last of his oysters and refilling his wine glass. He had been in the States for a couple of days already, spending some time at the State Department on Virginia Avenue. There were one or two diplomatic security guys he needed to speak with. He had always found they had their finger on the world pulse much more effectively than the CIA, which was somewhat ironic. They were on the spot in the embassies and most of the intelligence they fed back was sound. He looked across the table at Byrne’s blue eyes. ‘How’s the hunt going, anyway?’ he asked.

  ‘So so.’ Byrne sat back, fingers entwined in his lap. ‘There’s been no sightings since New Orleans. No doubt he’s got his make-up bag with him. He can be just about anyone, given enough time: Mexican, black, Chinese. Makes him damned hard to track.’

  Dubin tapped his lip with one finger. ‘I’m not sure if I’m supposed to talk about this,’ he said, ‘but Scotland Yard interviewed me.’

  ‘I know.’ Byrne lifted his eyebrows. ‘We got Swann over here on liaison, right now.’

  Dubin nodded. ‘He interviewed me after Boese escaped,’ he said. ‘Apparently, I was the only one to visit or even speak to him from the outside all the time he was on remand.’

  ‘He was smuggling messages through the sister of one of the inmates,’ Byrne told him. ‘Scotland Yard know that now.’

  ‘Do they? Perhaps they think the messages and me have something in common.’

  Angie looked sharply at him then. ‘Did you know he’s been calling me?’ she asked. ‘He says he wants me to be his attorney.’

  Dubin nodded slowly. ‘So I understand.’

  ‘So what does that mean?’

  ‘I hunted him,’ Byrne said. ‘Above anyone else on the planet, I’ve hunted him. He’s a professional, Angie, been playing the game all his life. His intel’ is excellent.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s why he was able to give the Brits the run-around for so long. I mean, look what he did with Swann. How long had that been planned? Brigitte Hammani in Swann’s bed for six months, before anything started to roll.’

  ‘That doesn’t answer my question.’

  Again Byrne touched her arm. ‘He’s just playing games, honey. Getting at you to get at me.’

  ‘But his attorney? Why does he want an attorney?’

  Byrne sighed then. ‘Who knows what’s going through his mind. It’s a pity your people won’t let us wire up your work phone.’

  ‘It’s a law firm, Louis. What’d you expect?’

  He made a face. ‘I said, it’s a pity, that’s all.’

  Dubin looked at him for a moment, sitting back as the waiter brought the next course. ‘What d’you think about the message to the outside,’ he said. ‘“We have been betrayed.” What d’you think that means?’

  ‘You know about that?’

  Dubin smiled. ‘I have my sources. Who would betray the Storm Crow, Louis? Or, alternatively, who could betray him?’

  Byrne was silent. Then, ‘Swann says he always intended to get caught. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe that was the betrayal.’ He sat forward, gesticulating. ‘Or maybe the phrase was coded in itself, intended just to get Tal-Salem on the move.’

  ‘Tal-Salem is still involved?’

  Byrne nodded. ‘Right now, we’re checking DNA on him over another matter. If the profile checks out, then that message was undoubtedly meant for him.’

  ‘The we could refer to him and Boese together, then,’ Dubin said.

  ‘What about the jackal and the crow,’ Angie said softly.

  ‘When the prey is down, does the jackal or the crow eat first? That’s what he said on the phone.’

  ‘Carlos?’ Byrne suggested, eyes intent on Dubin.

  ‘I’d say so, yes.’

  ‘Why is he talking about Carlos?’ Angie asked.

  ‘They have an association. Carlos was his mentor.’

  ‘So what does it mean, eating first, when the prey is down?’

  ‘It could mean all manner of things.’ Dubin picked up his fork.

  Angie widened her eyes then and looked at the gathered food on her plate. ‘You know what, guys, I’m not really hungry.’ She scraped back her chair. ‘This is real rude of me, Ben, but then I’m a court lawyer, so what the hell. I’m going to go home. It’s been a long day and I’ve got a longer one tomorrow. You guys go ahead and eat.’

  Byrne looked up at her. ‘You want me to get you a cab, honey?’

  She shook
her head. ‘It’s two blocks, Louis. I’ll walk.’

  It was raining outside and a chill wind was blowing in tight gusts off the Potomac River, only one block to her left, as she walked along Union Street. The cobbles on Prince were slippery underfoot and the wind lifted to batter her from behind as she climbed the slope to their home. She had left lights burning in the lounge and in their first-floor bedroom, where the three arched windows were like triple eyes looking out from the middle of a black face in the darkness. She loved the house: three floors, with a paved yard out the back, and an underground garage, housing three cars and Louis’s Harley Davidson. She climbed the stone steps to the front door and went inside. After the phone calls, Louis had wanted protection agents assigned to her, but she had refused. Something in Boese’s voice told her that she was not a target—at least, not yet anyway—and she prided herself on being an excellent judge of conversation and motive.

  She closed the door, leaned on it, and thought about a herbal bath. The telephone rang on the small table beside her. ‘Angie Byrne,’ she said, trying to keep the yawn from her voice.

  ‘You sound weary. Another long day defending the wrong people?’

  She stiffened. ‘You know,’ she said, steeling herself. ‘I’ve just been talking about you.’

  ‘My ears must’ve been burning. Tell me, how long d’you think I can stay on the line without the FBI catching up with me?’

  ‘I don’t know. You tell me. I guess if you were really worried about it, you wouldn’t keep calling.’ She paused for a moment. ‘You tell me something,’ she said. ‘What d’you mean when you talk about the jackal and the crow? Is the jackal Carlos?’

  ‘Ah, Angela. We do so well together, you and I. That’s why I picked you to represent me. You see, the jackal has fur, it runs on the ground, but the crow—the crow has feathers, black feathers, and the crow can soar like an eagle.’

  ‘So what does it mean?’

  ‘I’ve already told you, who eats first?’

  ‘But I don’t understand.’

  ‘They both eat carrion, Angela. Surely you know that. But did you ever see the crow on a kill before the jackal?’

  The phone clicked dead and she held the receiver for a moment or two. Uneasy now, she walked to the window and looked out. Where was he? Here in Washington? Close by perhaps, in some silent hotel room. Could he see her? What exactly did he mean? Why should he choose her to represent him? And represent him in what? Switching the phone on again, she paged her husband in the restaurant.

  Christine Harris observed the undercover buy in London. Janice Martin had been watched round the clock ever since they had identified her as their way in. Cocaine had a way of destroying people and she could not get enough of the stuff. Six days previously, she had made a purchase from her usual dealer in Camden Town, travelling by tube train up from Hounslow in the west of the city. Two Area drug squad had an informant who could put them on to the supplier, and they were ready to scoop up both him and Martin, the next time she tried to score. Twice now it had failed because she had turned up at the usual flat in Camden Town only to find him not at home. She had bitten down her nails and gone a little paler. Then GCHQ heard her make an illicit telephone call from The Regiment’s clubhouse.

  Now Harris sat with Julian Moore, as the SO19 firearms team plotted up the flat. It was a daytime buy, which gave them more problems because the team would have to attack quickly and very hard. The flats were difficult in themselves, in that there were no friendly faces, and three flights to get up before the reinforced door could be breached. It was tactically very difficult to deploy a full team wearing hidden body armour and carrying MP5 carbines in and around the site. It had been achieved by a five-man band of council workmen, working for three full days on the road outside the building. Three days was long enough not to arouse suspicion.

  Harris had no input on the SO19 attack. It was their call and anything could go wrong. As much as they had been able to recce the building, gain the plans and assess the threat and possible escape routes, it was still touch and go. They had to get Janice Martin with the gear in her possession and eradicate the source at the same time. Undoubtedly, word would get back to The Regiment. But if Martin played it straight enough, and they were careful, it might still work. She was pretty and she was a mamma, and all they needed her to do was to sit in her flat and wait.

  Harris and Moore were sitting in a Fiat van, parked one hundred yards down the road from the subject premises. They had the local drug-squad arrest team already primed with what was needed on standby, and the SO19 firearms officers were digging up the road, wearing bulky black donkey jackets. Janice Martin appeared at the tube station and made her way north-east up Camden Road. Harris pressed the transmitter on her radio. ‘Eyeball on target,’ she said. ‘Walking up Camden Road. ETA at subject premises in approximately five minutes.’ She stayed where she was, glanced at Julian and sighed. ‘The lengths we actually go to,’ she said.

  The SO19 team, who were working outside the small block of flats, observed her approach on foot. Five of them, with three more backing them up in their van. The team leader gave the instructions over the encrypted Cougar radio from the rear of the van. Information was relayed to him from the full team of observers that picked her up at various points along the way. She moved past the workmen, a deliberateness to her gait, looking good in skintight jeans and short leather jacket. Just beyond the workmen, she paused and looked back up the street, then, feeling in her handbag for her purse, she strode up the first flight of concrete stairs.

  ‘Stand by.’ The team leader’s voice in the ears of the SFO team. Harris could hear everything on her own Cougar set, back in the Fiat van. She listened as the armed officers moved off, deploying swiftly and quietly up the stairs to the flat. She could see nothing from here, and she cracked the little bones in her fingers, with Moore looking on in disgust. They both felt the adrenalin. You never got used to any kind of a raid, and this one was more important than most. Twenty-two people’s families were quietly urging them on.

  On the balcony outside the flat the SFO team gathered, with the battering ram held by the method of entry man—short and squat and built like a bear. He checked in with a click of his radio transmitter and the team leader called the attack. The door crashed after two blows, and armed officers swarmed into the premises. The dealer stared and paled, then dived for the toilet, only to be round-housed by a baton-wielding officer, and knocked to the ground. Martin was the only customer. Eleven-thirty in the morning and it looked as though the dealer had traded some of his wares in kind. She squatted, half naked, breasts hanging loose. In her purse, they found a small polythene bag filled with white powder.

  It had taken the ground team three days since the Leona Boese discovery to actually get to meet her. She was caged in a federal penitentiary, close to the port of Eureka, California, on the Pacific coast. Harrison had flown directly there to meet them, and Logan and Swann flew in from Atlanta. They were driven out to the prison by one of the resident FBI agents. It was set on the side of a hill, close to where the redwood forests began, and surrounded by three wire fences, eighteen feet high, with barbed and razor wire along the tops. Bulls with rifles and shotguns watched their approach from goon towers, and from ten miles back on the highway, they saw ‘No Hitchhiking’ signs.

  The resident agency office had been notified, as they had been nationwide, concerning the ground team and the assistance that they might require. Tom Kovalski had phoned Logan to inform them about the latest contact with Louis Byrne’s wife and Swann was mulling over the words. ‘The jackal eats first,’ he said. ‘That’s what he’s saying, but what’s the significance of that? Carlos came before Storm Crow. Well, we already knew that.’

  ‘It beats me. The guy talks in riddles.’ Logan sat in the back with him, Harrison in the front, window down and smoking. He had been pretty quiet since he got back from New Orleans.

  Right now, Harrison stared out of the window as they cruise
d up to the outer perimeter gates, watching the rifled guards in the towers. Two nights ago, he and Penny had made progress in the quarter, but Penny had criticized him in the morning for his attitude. His mind had been elsewhere: this guy Swann, Lisa Guffy up in Idaho, only two states from here. All of a sudden, it was like his age had caught up with him, as he looked across the table in Jean Lafitte’s at the worthless piece of shit that was Rene Martinez, and the even more worthless Cuban dealer, Manx. The part seemed to be harder and harder to play these days, when there was so much else in the world. And maybe now he had Swann and unfinished business in his sights, he might take that pension early.

  He could smell Logan’s perfume while he held the door open for her as she got out of the car. The shine on her skin reminded him of the fruitless, disallowed nights, pursuing Maria in the Jazz Café on Bourbon Street. Last night he had been there again, before finally getting hammered with Joey in the Apple Barrel. The early morning flight to San Francisco and then up here had been accompanied by a pounding head and no food in his stomach. He caught Logan’s eye as she moved past him, then he looked across the roof to see Swann looking carefully at him. Harrison held his eye, glanced behind at Logan again, and immediately he knew. Limey sonofabitch, he thought.

  Logan’s cellphone rang and she lifted it to her ear. ‘Logan.’

  ‘Cheyenne, this is Tom Kovalski.’

  ‘Hey, Tom. What’s up?’

  ‘DNA. The profile the British sent us? It matched the sample lifted from the reefer. Tal-Salem smoked that butt. That’s another round to Swann.’

  Leona Boese was fat and black with big hair and different-coloured nail polish on each hand. Harrison sat next to Logan, across from her in the interview room. Swann, who was not allowed to participate, sat behind with his ankle crossed over his knee.