by Gulvin, Jeff
‘Which means what, exactly?’ Kovalski asked him.
Swann glanced at him. ‘If you were Storm Crow, would you allow yourself to be caught, after you had spent a lifetime hiding your identity?’
‘What’s your point, Jack?’
‘I think Boese’s trying to tell us that he’s not who we think he is.’ Silence. All eyes were on him now. ‘He talked to Louis’s wife about “other endeavours”. He wants an attorney to represent him. He said something interesting happened to him with feathers.’ He broke off again. ‘I think he’s trying to tell us we’ve got it wrong. We’re looking at the wrong man. Boese is not Storm Crow.’
It took a moment for them all to digest what he had said. Byrne scratched his cropped hair at the scalp. ‘Jack,’ he said. ‘Why in heaven’s name would he want to do that? Right now, he’s still the most wanted man on the planet.’
‘I know, Louis. But he’s been misrepresented. Yes, he was with Carlos in 1982, he may well have been a protégé. But he is not Storm Crow. That’s what all this jackal and crow stuff is about. You’re the man who has hunted Storm Crow like no other. Your wife just happens to be a defence attorney. What better way of making his point than by spinning riddles to your wife?’ He sat forward now. ‘Think about that first coded message in the International Herald Tribune. “We have been betrayed.” Boese went to prison on the orders of somebody else.’ He looked round the table. ‘I was there. I arrested him. The real Storm Crow would not risk that. But somebody had to do it, so the point could be made in Rome. Whoever is behind Boese was showing us the kind of power he wields. His own vanity; yet he still didn’t make the mistake that Carlos did, by allowing his identity to become public. He’s thrown us a curveball, as you people would say. He’s made us all believe something that’s total bullshit.’ He looked at Logan now. ‘I think Boese was expecting his “Get out of jail free” card, but he didn’t get it. Hence the message to Tal-Salem. They must’ve had a contingency plan of their own.’
He stopped talking and thought about it for a moment or two. Suddenly, he felt certain that Jorge Vaczka and his Polish gang were the original choice to break Boese out. ‘The real Storm Crow would have to prove to Boese that he could and would get him out, after he became the sacrificial lamb,’ he continued. ‘That would mean two things—money and know-how. We never found the money. The know-how, I believe, was a gang of Polish hardmen who were operating in the UK.’
He thought hard again. ‘Boese must’ve been told he would be broken out, but that promise was broken. Hence the betrayal message. Tal-Salem must’ve gone to have a look at the Poles to see what had gone wrong. We had an informant …’
Then, all at once, he knew where the original tip-off that went into MI6 had come from. A shudder rang through him as he considered the implications. ‘The Poles were looked at by MI5,’ he said. ‘And if Tal-Salem hadn’t shown up, we’d have caught them trying to get Boese out.’ He stood up then. ‘I need to use a phone,’ he said.
Kovalski motioned to the one on the table. Swann dialled the Yard and got Campbell McCulloch. ‘Macca, it’s me. I want to speak to Chrissie in the SB cell.’ McCulloch put him through.
‘Harris.’
‘Chrissie. It’s Jack Swann.’
‘How are you, Jack?’
‘Making progress. Listen, I think I’ve figured something out. Jorge Vaczka was the original choice to get Boese out of the nick. He knew he had been looked at, hence, the shit we went through with his charity run to Liverpool. Do me a favour, will you, talk to Box, get them to check with 850. The original source, Chrissie. Try and find out who it is. I know they won’t tell you, but check the reliability. Have they had information from that source before, you know the sort of thing. Get Julian on it, he’s old school tie. If I’m right, Boese is not Storm Crow. But whoever tipped off Box 850 just might be.’
He put the phone down and looked at the FBI agents, talking now around the table. Byrne was staring at him. ‘You seem pretty sure, Jack,’ he said.
‘I am. Boese is telling us that we’re looking for the wrong man. That’s why he made such a public appearance in New Orleans. He could gain nothing from hijacking that tanker other than our attention. He did it spectacularly. And he effectively did it in the name of Storm Crow. If I am right, think how the real Storm Crow would’ve reacted to that.’
Logan folded her arms and looked from Swann to Byrne. ‘If Jack is right, it raises another question,’ she said. ‘Who is Storm Crow?’
Harrison pushed one booted foot against the leg of the table. ‘And why hasn’t he done anything about Boese?’
After the meeting broke up, Logan, Harrison and Swann set about the files that had come in from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, still searching for the elusive connection between Jefferson and Ismael Boese. ‘What about going down to Ellis Island?’ Harrison suggested to Logan.
‘If we have to. But Boese might still be in D.C. Let’s see what we can come up with here first.’ She thought for a moment. ‘What we need is the patsy. We must be able to trace him. Jefferson was only there between ’82 and ’83.’
‘Who’s gonna talk, Cheyenne? They’re all cons. Who’s gonna talk to the Feds?’
‘Cowboy up, Harrison,’ she said. ‘Leona Boese was looking for parole. She talked, didn’t she.’ She slapped him on the shoulder. ‘There’s gotta be some old con down there who knew what was going on, maybe even one of the bulls.’
Harrison’s pager went off and he made a call from Kovalski’s office with the door closed. When he came out, he looked thoughtful. Swann bought coffee from the machine and Harrison joined him in the corridor. ‘How you doing?’ he asked.
‘Fine.’
‘You did good in there this morning. I think you got the respect of the people. That takes some doing. Especially for a limey.’
Swann laughed and sipped frothy coffee. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
Harrison looked at him then, and stuck out his right hand. ‘I guess I owe you an apology.’
Swann cocked his head to one side. ‘Yeah, you’re right. You do.’
‘I’m sorry for being an asshole.’
‘Don’t mention it.’ They shook hands and Harrison slapped him on the shoulder. ‘What’s this Shrivenham conference thing? You mentioned it and then you didn’t mention it.’
‘It’s an annual conference on terrorism. Tal-Salem asked for car hire records from August 1997. Three months later, we had our first chemical crisis in Northumberland.’ He chewed his lip for a moment. ‘Louis Byrne was at that conference, Harrison.’
Harrison stared at him for a long moment. ‘Byrne?’ He cocked his head to one side. ‘You’re not telling me you think Byrne’s got something to do with this, are you, Jack? Lucky Louis—he’s about the most celebrated FBI agent in history.’
Swann pulled a face. ‘I know he is, Harrison. I’m just saying—he was at Shrivenham, that’s all. So were a lot of other people.’
Harrison leaned against the wall and folded his arms. ‘He was part of the Foreign Emergency Search Team, though, wasn’t he.’ He looked left and right down the corridor. ‘We need to talk, bro. But not here. If you can keep your hands off Logan for one evening, I’d like to buy you a beer.’
‘I’ll try. But she’s better looking than you are.’ Harrison laughed. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘That was The Cub just now on the phone. He’s got a two-hour stopover in Dulles tomorrow. I’m driving out to meet him. You can tag along if you want.’
Boese checked into the Best Western Inn and Tower on South Glebe Road, in Arlington, Virginia. He was bearded, long-haired and Venezuelan, booking in under the name Sanchez, which he thought was a good joke considering all this talk of the ‘jackal’.
Chucho Mannero cleaned rooms and drove the shuttle bus. He had picked Señor Sanchez up when he arrived at the National Airport, and they had driven from there to Pentagon City Metro station, before arriving at the hotel. Chucho was in his forties, small and grey-haired and Puerto Rican. He told
Señor Sanchez that the bus left the hotel on the hour, stopped at National Airport on the quarter hour, and Pentagon City on the half. It was back in the hotel parking lot by fifteen before.
Now, Boese lay back on his bed and relaxed, two new encrypted cellphones beside him. They would be getting the heavy equipment out for him now. The more he called Angela Byrne, the closer they would get—Triggerfish II, or whatever they called it. He switched on the television news and saw his face fill the screen. He was slightly taken aback, and turned the volume higher.
‘Ismael Boese, alias the international terrorist known as Storm Crow,’ the news anchor was saying. ‘The FBI have just released this picture of him. Formerly a member of the “Friends of Carlos” group, Storm Crow took over the mantle of the world’s most wanted man after Carlos faded into obscurity. The name first surfaced in 1989, when the US Ambassador’s motorcade came under fire in Tel Aviv, Israel. Since then, Storm Crow has appeared in many parts of the globe, although only once before in the United States. He was responsible for the mortar attack on Fort Bliss, Texas, in March 1995. That, according to DEA sources, was drug-related. Until recently, nobody even knew for sure who or what Storm Crow was. An individual, a group. But last year he was positively identified as Ismael Boese, the only son of Pieter and Leona Boese, two active members of the Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1970s. According to FBI sources, Boese is the archetypal terrorist—an idealogue, born to it, brought up in it, then perfecting his trade at the knee of Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez, alias Carlos the Jackal.’ He paused and smiled. ‘Tonight, I’m delighted to say, we’re joined here in Washington by Dr Benjamin Dubin, a leading academic on terrorism, and the most recent biographer of Carlos.’
Boese stared at the screen now, eyes dull in his head. Such a sudden turnabout. And Dubin again, the little man with the strange eyes, who spoke fluent Hebrew and Arabic, and had surfaced at just about every terrorist event in the world, offering his considered opinion.
‘Dr Dubin,’ the anchorman was saying, ‘can you throw any light on what Boese, Storm Crow, is doing in the United States?’
‘I wish I could.’ Dubin shook his head. ‘It could be anything. When he attacked Europe in such a devastating way a year ago, the authorities there did not know what was happening until the last possible moment. That’s his style. As you rightly pointed out, he first surfaced in his own right ten years ago, but he was a member of the so-called “Friends of Carlos” group in the early eighties. A very young man then, but already he had been weaned by two SLA parents, and then supporters of the Provisional IRA. I had a brief interview with him, following much longer sessions with Carlos himself, in Paris.’
‘Fool.’ Boese spoke aloud at the screen. ‘You learned nothing from the Jackal. He played games with you. He toyed with you, let you think you were important.’ He spat in disgust on the floor and cast his mind back to the last time he had seen Carlos himself: sitting on the balcony of his well-guarded flat, under the protection of Assad in Syria. January 1991, just after the Americans launched their attack on Saddam Hussein. The Jackal was fatter, his features even more rounded. He drank brandy and smoked cigarettes and let the sun warm his face. Boese sat next to him, watching the guard with the AK47 in the street below. He sipped Café Arabi and told Carlos about the feather he had just received.
Carlos smiled then, his boyish face open. ‘Storm Crow,’ he said, as if tasting the word. ‘Take up the feather, my friend. I hear he pays very well.’
Boese gazed at the sun-bleached buildings that stacked against the blue, almost purple sky above them. ‘I would,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know who he is.’
Carlos thinned his eyes and looked, for a moment, through him. ‘I heard a whisper about him only the other day,’ he said, voice soft in his throat. ‘From friends on the Gaza Strip. The name they gave was both interesting and a little troubling.’ He broke off for a second and drew heavily on his cigarette, inspected the end and tapped off the ash. ‘I had heard the name before, you see; fifteen years ago now, after I walked away from Entebbe.’ His gaze shallowed at the memory. Boese was intent on his eyes. ‘Apparently, there was a plot to kill me. There were always plots to kill me. The French would’ve cut off my head if they’d caught me in the Rue Toullier. This one was different, though; somebody from the PFLP had turned, somebody who knew me. To this day I do not know who it was.’ He tasted the brandy in his glass. ‘It was a CIA plot, to be carried out by this PFLP turncoat, but engineered by an agent of the Americans called Josef El Kebir.’
22
BOESE WATCHED THE NEWS for a little longer and learned that a special programme of America’s Most Wanted was to be dedicated to him. He laughed out loud, then his eyes clouded. He thought he heard movement outside the door, and, leaving the television with the volume high, he moved towards it on the balls of his feet. He recalled the chill he had felt when he climbed into the truck in Nevada. He thought of the cowboy in the whorehouse, the cowboy sitting on his horse by the lake. He peeked through the edge of the curtain, but only the late evening sunshine winked back. He let the curtain fall across the window once again and stood for a long moment, watching the images on the TV screen. Then, picking up his coat, he left the room, and found Mannero standing at the desk in reception.
‘Chucho,’ he said. ‘What time does the bus leave again?’
‘At the top of the hour, señor.’
Boese rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘I think I need a ride.’
Mannero dropped him outside Pentagon City Metro station, where Boese bought a five-dollar pass. He caught the blue line and got off at the Federal Triangle, then switched on his cellphone. Now, the electronic serial number was active and could be identified within a given area, depending on the beacons. They would triangulate, and they could be starting now. He dialled Angela Byrne in her office.
‘Hello?’ Her voice in his ear.
‘Different tactics,’ he said. ‘Suddenly, I’m famous. What happened to the “unknown subject”?’
‘You motherfucking sonofabitch.’
‘Such a foul mouth.’ He tutted. ‘Is that any way for an attorney to talk to her client?’
‘I’m not your fucking attorney and after what you did to me last night …’
‘Last night?’ The hairs lifted on the back of his neck. ‘What about last night?’
‘You ever come near me again and I’ll kill you.’
‘Of course you will.’ Boese was thinking hard.
‘You sorry, sick bastard. What was all of that crap about shape-shifting and being in two places at once? What happened to the jackal and the crow, you fucked up sonofabitch?’
Boese looked at his watch; the phone had been on for thirty seconds now. ‘I’ll speak to you later, when you’re in a better mood,’ he said.
‘I’ll never be in a better mood.’
He switched the phone off, looked at his watch and stood for a moment on the sidewalk. The J. Edgar Hoover building was only two blocks from here. Shape-shifting, being in two places at once. The game had finally changed, and with it all of the rules.
Janice Martin sat in her flat in Pimlico. Cushions on the floor, biker posters on the walls and a pile of unwashed crockery on the stove. He father had bought the flat for her when she first moved to London; which seemed like a lifetime ago now, in the days of art college and grand ideas and some kind of progress. But then she had met Gringo, big, muscle-bound, dumb-as-a-fuck Gringo. Somehow he had risen to the ranks of second in command of this biker gang. The gang was cool and different and the thrill of it touched some dormant part of her being, which had been stifled by her father and the county set and the smashing of port glasses on public commons in Norfolk. She waggled the end of her thumb in her mouth and watched TV mindlessly. She did not seem to be able to concentrate on anything these days. Maybe it was the coke, maybe it was the hash or the booze, or the combination of all three. The doorbell rang and she looked out of the window. Fagin’s thin, fox-like features leered up at her.
She really didn’t fancy Fagin at all—of all of them, he was the least attractive. But he always gave her money for a score and she needed a score right now. Then she remembered the specimen bottles in the bathroom cabinet. God knows what they thought they were doing with them, but she had had to give them a sample of her saliva, so they could separate her DNA.
She didn’t bother to undress; Fagin was on his way to a meeting in the clubhouse and just wanted a quickie. ‘I heard you got busted,’ he said. ‘Not a good move with Collier, sweetheart.’
‘Oh well.’ She shrugged her shoulders, unzipped him and worked it hard, then dropped her knickers and knelt on all fours so he could take her doggy style, the way he liked to. She had a box of tissues in the bathroom, and when he was done, she waited for gravity to take its course, then placed the soiled tissue in the specimen jar and wrote Fagin on it in felt pen.
He was zipping himself away when she came back to the lounge, and she noticed the twenty-five pounds on the table. ‘Can you spare another tenner, Fagin?’ she asked, stroking his hair. ‘I could really do with it.’
He looked down at her, then lightly kissed her nose. ‘Go on then, but not a word to any of the others. By the way, you might get a few visitors this weekend. A lot of the lads are in town for the meeting.’
‘Whatever.’ She flapped an arm at her side. ‘I’ll be here.’ He left then and she closed the door and spread the notes on the table.
George Webb tried to get hold of Benjamin Dubin, but his secretary told him that Dubin was in Washington again for a brief lecture tour. Webb hung up and looked across the desk where McCulloch was watching him.
‘What d’you want him for, Webby?’
‘Tal-Salem’s trying to tell us something about cars being hired in Shrivenham, isn’t he.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I want to know if Dubin was at that 1997 conference.’
‘Phone the organizers and ask them.’
