Nom de Guerre

by Gulvin, Jeff

  Webb smiled at him, shaking his head. ‘Don’t want to do that, Macca. It won’t do any harm for the man to know we’re wondering.’

  Whatever game Tal-Salem was playing with them, the August 1997 rental records had already come in from National and Avis. Each individual car and hirer from all their branches in and around that area. Webb and McCulloch read through them, checking each one in turn for anything that might stick out. They waded through the papers, but really had no idea what they were looking for.

  ‘What’s he trying to tell us, apart from the fact a car was hired?’ Webb said, after an hour or so of sifting.

  ‘I don’t know. Why should he want to tell us anything?’ McCulloch yawned and scratched his head. ‘By the way, that flight manifest you asked for.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘What was the date?’

  ‘Of the flight?’ Webb checked his notes. ‘August 21st. Why?’

  McCulloch made a face. ‘No reason. It’s three days after the Shrivenham conference finished, that’s all.’ He thought for a moment. ‘When’s it coming through, by the way?’

  ‘It’s an internal US flight, Macca. Washington D.C. to Detroit. It’ll come whenever they send it.’

  Christine Harris came into the squad room and sat down opposite Webb. ‘I’ve spoken to our girl again,’ she said. ‘First one’s home. Fagin. Number three in the gang.’

  ‘Is he one that NCIS identified?’ Webb asked her.

  ‘No. But I’m showing the stills we’ve got to Janice again, the next time we set up a meet. She can pick him out for us.’

  ‘How long will it take to compare the DNA?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I’ll have to talk to Lambeth. In the meantime, there’s a big club meeting this weekend, which should be worth our while eavesdropping.’

  The Irishman sat in a grey Chrysler on South Glebe Road, and watched the comings and goings in the Arlington Valley Project, across the four lanes of carriageway. Red brick dwellings, built in square, flat-roofed blocks, rising back up the hill towards the raised section of Highway 395. Hispanic children ran around on the grassy areas. Women stood in the doorways, four apartments per block, with God knows how many families living in each of them. Section 8 government housing. The Irishman was only interested in one—445, apartment B—the home of Chucho Mannero. Chucho was not at home right now, he was working up the road at the hotel. A thought struck the Irishman: perhaps he would wander up there this evening for a drink. Again he looked at the grimy little block where Chucho lived with his alcoholic girlfriend, and wondered what it would be like after dark.

  Boese phoned Angela Byrne again on her mobile. ‘Calmed down?’ he asked her.

  ‘You’re a sick sonofabitch. Cut and dried asshole.’

  ‘Remember,’ he said savagely. ‘All may not be what it seems.’ He could hear the sharpness of her breathing in his ear then. ‘Tell me, Angela, who can get to Pentagon City, the airport and home again in forty-five minutes?’

  ‘Don’t start your fucking games …’ she began, but the line was already dead in her ear.

  Louis Byrne told the ground team what his wife had just told him. ‘Pentagon City, the airport and home in forty-five minutes,’ he said.

  ‘Anyone, depending where you live?’ Logan wrinkled her eyes at the corner.

  ‘That’s brilliant, Chey.’

  Harrison looked at his watch. The Cub was due to arrive from Paris in thirty minutes. He nudged Swann and coughed. ‘Tom,’ he said, to Kovalski. ‘I’ve got to meet somebody out at Dulles in under an hour.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Just somebody flying in. Somebody who could throw some light on what’s happening here.’ He looked at Cheyenne. ‘I want to take Jack with me, Chey. He might be able to help.’

  Byrne was watching him. ‘We’re busy, Harrison. People have been checking prison records round the clock.’

  ‘I know it. But there’s other ways of skinning a cat.’ He nodded to Swann and they left.

  Kovalski laid a hand on Byrne’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘That’s just Johnny Buck.’

  Byrne folded his arms. ‘Not exactly a team player, is he.’

  Harrison got a car from downstairs and started the engine. ‘So talk to me, bubba,’ he said.

  Swann lit two cigarettes and passed one across to him. ‘I’m thinking about Dubin. And I’m thinking about the FEST.’

  ‘Who’d you have most to do with?’

  ‘You mean workwise? Logan and Byrne.’

  They headed out of the city on Highway 29. Harrison sat leaning against the window, one knee drawn up, chewing tobacco, the lines bunched in the leathery skin of his face.

  ‘You fought in Vietnam,’ Swann said.

  Harrison pushed up the sleeve of his shirt and showed Swann the tattoo—a rat standing on two legs, holding a whisky bottle and gun. ‘Underground,’ he said. ‘Musta had a death wish or something.’

  ‘Cu-Chi?’

  Harrison nodded.

  ‘I read about it.’

  ‘Yeah? They never interviewed me.’

  Harrison worked the chew in his mouth and flipped the butt of his cigarette out of the window. They left 29 at Falls Church and jumped 66 up to the airport road.

  ‘What was it like?’ Swann asked him. They were cruising, Harrison’s foot only lightly on the gas.

  ‘Dark. Hot. Dangerous.’ Harrison looked at him out of the corner of his eye. ‘Not a nice place to go hunting.’

  ‘So why’d you do it?’

  ‘Buddy of mine got all blowed to hell when a gook popped outta one of those holes. Hell, I volunteered right there. Did all right, till the one time I fucked up.’ He shook his head. ‘You only get the one crack at it, Jack.’

  ‘That’s what I heard.’

  ‘Loosed off six shots all at the same time.’ Harrison pulled a face. ‘My second tour. Got drummed out and within a few months I was back over here.’ He looked at Swann again and cocked his head to one side. ‘I killed three men in Idaho, Jack. I crawled tunnels for the first time in thirty years, faced down the ghosts, and I won.’

  Swann looked enviously at him and Harrison nodded. ‘I know, brother. Cheyenne told me about what really happened to you back in the UK. You got fucked over big time, didn’t you. That sonofabitch really suckered you in.’ He paused then. ‘You ever think about that, Jack? I don’t just mean your emotions. I mean the planning, the forethought that went into that one thing alone. He must’ve studied every face that ever went into your outfit, looking for someone he could exploit. I wonder how long that took him?’ He checked his watch and accelerated past a U Haul truck in the centre lane. ‘You know what else that makes me wonder?’

  ‘Yes,’ Swann said quietly. ‘How he had that kind of access.’

  They parked at Dulles and took the shuttle bus to the airside terminal. Harrison showed his shield to the security people and they were allowed across without having to go through the metal detector. ‘Why over here?’ Swann asked him, as they climbed into the strange bus that lifted itself on hydraulics to reach the door of the terminal.

  ‘Very simple. They’ve got a half-hour connection time and there’s a smoking room this side of the building. These days, smoking rooms are private,’ he said.

  They got to the far terminal, which was one long corridor of gates, and Harrison turned right and they walked past the duty-free shops to the end. Two men sat behind the glass door of the smoking room, one of them lighting a cigarette. The other one stared through the glass at them. He looked like a younger version of Harrison, only his hair was very black and his skin the copper of Native Americans. He wore a faded blue baseball hat and his eyes were the coldest, blackest lumps of ice Swann had ever seen. The man smoking the cigarette was taller, thinner, perhaps a little older. His eyes were blue, no expression in them whatever. He wore jeans and the dusty desert boots favoured by ex-soldiers. His hair was long and looped in a ponytail, which hung over one shoulder.

/>   Harrison opened the door and the black-eyed man continued to stare at Swann. ‘It’s cool, Cub,’ Harrison said. ‘He’s with me.’

  Swann stood a little awkwardly, hands in his pockets. Harrison closed the door behind him and sat down sideways in one of the forward facing chairs, plucking a cigarette from his shirt pocket. Still The Cub stared at Swann, and Swann looked back at him.

  ‘He’s a cop, Cub. British.’

  The other man looked up then. So far, he had ignored them.

  ‘Jack Swann. Antiterrorist Branch.’ Swann offered his hand.

  Outside, a business-suited man looked as though he wanted to come in. The Cub stared at him, eyes widening slowly. The man looked at him briefly, checked his pockets, then turned on his heel and walked back up the corridor. Harrison took a fresh pinch of chew from his tin and popped it under his lip. He offered the tin to The Cub, who shook his head.

  ‘I wanna know if you could check out some names for me,’ Harrison said. ‘There’s five of them. Cheyenne Logan, Larry Thomas and Louis Byrne. They’re all with the FBI. Bob Hicks is diplomatic security, and a guy called Ketner from your outfit.’

  The Cub nodded slowly. ‘The FEST that went to London,’ he said.

  Harrison laughed then and glanced at Swann. ‘What did I tell you?’ He stood up. ‘Can you figure it for me, buddy?’

  ‘We’re going duck hunting,’ The Cub said. ‘But I’ll put feelers out first. Where can I get hold of you?’

  ‘Just page me, bro. I can get to a secure phone.’

  They shook hands and turned for the door. ‘It was nice to meet you, Swann.’ The other man spoke for the first time; cultured voice, the accent very English. Swann turned and nodded to him.

  ‘Likewise,’ he said.

  They rode back in Harrison’s car, and he was quiet and thoughtful.

  ‘Weird guys,’ Swann said, breaking the silence.

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘I said, a couple of weird guys.’

  ‘I don’t know the other guy, but I heard a rumour. Something to do with the British army, behind Soviet lines, before the Berlin Wall came down. May’ve been in the Legion after that. I guess he’s for hire now. Gotta be, if he’s hanging out with The Cub.’

  ‘Psychotic eyes.’

  ‘The Cub? I’ll tell you something about him,’ Harrison said. ‘He got married when he was first in the marine corps, back in the eighties. Did reconnaissance work, special forces. He had a buddy stay in his basement for a while, and one day his wife took off for a weekend vacation with her girlfriend. The guy was gone too. So The Cub, being a suspicious sonofabitch, checked with the girlfriend, and, of course, his wife wasn’t there.’ He sighed. ‘Anyways, one thing led to another and he got dumped. Three months after that, he ran them down in his pick-up truck. He just saw them in the street, the red mist came down, and he rolled the rig right over them.’

  Swann was staring at him.

  ‘He did twenty-six months in Leavenworth for attempted manslaughter. Had to fight for his life every day for the first eight months. Course, he was dishonourably discharged from the marine corps. But he’s very bright, and as far as deniable ops go, he was one of the very best. Didn’t take long for Langley to pick up on him.’

  They got back to Pennsylvania Avenue and found Logan in a state of excitement. She was in the conference room with some agents from the fugitive unit, trying to work out a plan of campaign. Swann and Harrison joined the meeting and Logan told them what she had discovered. ‘We’ve found the inmate who Jefferson supplied in the Ellis Island Correctional Center,’ she said. ‘We got lucky with some parole violators who were looking for a favour. The guy was an inmate from 1979 to 1986. His name is Chucho Mannero.’ She laid her palms on the tabletop. ‘The problem now is nobody knows where he’s at.’

  Chucho Mannero was in the hotel on South Glebe Road, only a few miles from FBI headquarters in the Federal Triangle. Ten p.m. and he was preparing to go home, having done the last trip back from the Metro. Tips had been good today and he was enjoying one bottle of beer before he walked home. Teresa had gone earlier. She said she would cook dinner, but she was probably already drunk by now.

  Boese watched Mannero from where he sat, sipping 7Up, at the far end of the bar. Another Mexican had been in earlier. One of the other guests, he assumed; although he had not seen him before. He had watched Jeopardy on the television and answered a lot of the questions.

  Boese looked at Chucho now, and considered the other drinkers. There was Bill, the ex-naval man, who talked a lot and saluted everybody. He lived in one of the apartment blocks and came in every evening. Apart from him, a fat guest from Michigan, who ordered pitchers of beer, and a couple of suntanned oldies from California. No one who set his spine tingling. Leaving the last of his drink, he went back to his room. He had already checked out, telling the staff at reception that he would be driving off early in the morning. He lay quietly on his bed till one o’clock, then he changed his clothes to black sweater, jeans and a zipped jacket. He stretched black leather gloves over his fingers and took his weapons from the canvas bag. Under the jacket he wore a double shoulder holster, and he slipped the silenced pistol into one and a Beretta into the other. In the back of his jeans, he had a third gun tucked in the waistband. Now he was ready and he sat quietly for a moment to compose himself. He thought of the Mexican in the bar, and tried to think if he had seen the man before. He observed everyone; he always had. But he did not know that man. He stowed the rest of his things in the concealed section he had fashioned in the trunk of his car, then he got behind the wheel, pulled out past reception and glided down South Glebe Road. Across the street, a Chrysler fired its engines.

  Rain hissed against the tarmac as Boese let the car trundle down the hill, under Highway 395. He drove past the projects, along South Glebe, being careful to watch the movement of traffic behind him. He left the road a little further on, made a series of lefts, and then two rights before two more lefts, and he was back on South Glebe, coming the other way at the lights. There was nobody following him; he was expert enough to know. He drove more speedily now and pulled off in a side street, close to the edge of the Arlington Valley Project. Here he stood in the rain, which was sheeting down now, hazy in the orange light from the streetlamps. Traffic still rumbled on 395 and Boese watched for movement in the projects. These were deadly places at night. He could see a group of teenagers smoking hashish by one of the buildings. They had built a small fire and were huddled round it, trying to shelter from the rain.

  A state trooper rolled by in his cruiser and glanced at the group on his left. He was alone, though, and he did not stop. Boese crossed the road and walked into the projects. It was 2 a.m. now, and the grass was soft and mushy under his feet as he crossed between the first two apartment blocks. He wanted 445, apartment B. He knew exactly where it was, butting up against the road, about four blocks in from South Glebe. He moved cautiously, doubly aware tonight. His eyes darted, like black coals in his head, adrenalin high in his veins. Two youths moved from the shadows to his left and he paused. They looked at him, big Mexican eyes dulled by crank. He ignored them and walked on, off the grass now and on to wet pavement. He turned right and walked up the low hill, with 395 on his left. Boese watched the numbers; 445 was the next block on his right. Now he tensed and stopped moving altogether. He was standing in the shadow of the first block, and his hand was on the butt of the automatic on the left side of his chest. One jerk of the holster would free it. No movement. No sound. He moved on; 445 directly right now, the main door standing half ajar. Where there had been glass it was missing.

  Boese paused again, scrutinizing the doorway, looking for anything that shouldn’t be there. His heart bumped in his chest, and he looked back the way he had come. Then he stepped up to the door. The inner hall was concrete and cold, smelling of urine and dried sex. There were two apartments on the ground floor. He moved just inside the main door, looking at the concrete steps with the metal rail rising to th
e first floor. The wind blew rain against the outside door, making it creak. He drew the Beretta from its holster, and his gaze rested on the door of apartment B, where the letter hung at an askew angle. He crossed the hallway on the balls of his feet and waited, watching the main door, listening for movement upstairs. Then, taking a set of keys from his pocket, he began to work at the lock.

  It took him a little while, longer than he would have liked, but the lock finally clicked and he pressed gloved fingers against the wood and stepped inside. Debris greeted him: clothing, two old bicycles, a broken dresser in the narrow hall. Four doors led off it, and a light glowed under the one at the far end. Boese moved past the bicycles and the dresser, the rancid stink of the place in his nose. He stepped over the piles of dirty clothing and stopped outside the door where the light showed. He put the Beretta back in its holster and took out the silenced pistol. He put one ear to the door and could hear the low hum of the TV. Silently, he turned the handle.

  Bedroom: bed facing him with two people in it; a woman lying on her back with her arms flopped by her sides and her mouth open. Thick gurgling snores emanated from the cavity. Chucho was propped up on pillows watching TV—only he wasn’t. His eyes were closed and he did not open them until Boese placed the barrel of the gun between his lips.

  Outside, a figure moved in the shadows, silent, watchful, like a hunting cat. He had seen Boese enter and he made his way to the back of the building.

  Inside, Boese had what he wanted. Chucho Mannero was still propped up in bed, only his eyes were open and blood flowed over the whiteness of the pillow, where Boese had blown the back of his head out. He had taken the gun from his mouth just long enough to learn what he wanted. There had been an unexpected bonus. In a desperate bid for his life, Chucho had told him more than he needed to know. He stood over him now, watching his fat, drunken girlfriend, still snoring beside him. He considered shooting her too, but there was no need. If she had woken up he would’ve done, but the drink he could smell on her breath had dulled her senses to nothing.

  Weighing the gun in his hand, he looked one more time at Chucho’s shattered face, then walked back down the hall. Outside, the rain still beat at the streets and Boese paused briefly before stepping on to the sidewalk. He moved back the way he had come, watchful, listening. At the corner of the first block, he saw a grey Chrysler sedan which had not been there before. Steam rose from the hood, as the rain hissed against hot metal. Boese’s hackles rose and he felt in his shoulder holster for the Beretta. He stared at the car as he moved slowly past it. Silence, save the rain and the hum of the slowing traffic on the highway to his right. He knew the car had not been there when he walked in, and there was something about it that bothered him. Then he realized what it was—it was too new to be parked there for the night.