by Gulvin, Jeff
‘The master of illusion.’ The voice was thin and cruel and came out of nowhere. Boese whirled and crouched, breath coming short in his chest. Laughter, low, and edged by the wind.
Boese fired the Beretta into the darkness; two shots, two more. He heard the laughter again, and then he was running for cover. No lights came on. Nobody came to their windows. Nobody wanted to know about gunfire in the night. He paused in the lee of the next block and looked back. He could not tell where the voice had come from. Then he realized why. He stared at the fire escapes bolted to the walls of each block and saw that they climbed to the flat of the roof. He heard an engine start, then saw headlights, and somebody drove the Chrysler between the buildings. Boese raised his gun again, but did not fire. Two turns and the car was out of sight.
Teresa woke with the very first cracks of dawn filtering through the inadequate blinds and the grime that stained the window. Her head fizzed with last night’s booze. She yawned and opened her eyes. Something stuck to her back; her nightdress was clinging to her skin, and, for a moment, she thought in horror that she must have peed herself. Then she saw Chucho’s rolling eyes and the choking mass of drying blood that had soaked through half the bed. Her throat was so tight she could not get the scream out.
Byrne woke to the sound of Angie taking a shower, yawned and stretched and looked at his watch. He was later than he wanted to be, but this investigation was wearing everybody down. Throwing off the bedclothes, he joined his wife in the shower.
They ate breakfast together, wearing matching white dressing gowns, at the breakfast bar in the kitchen. Byrne watched the early morning news on TV. Three murders overnight, one in Arlington, two in Georgetown. ‘Only three,’ Angie said. ‘That’s not bad.’
Byrne brushed her neck with his lips. ‘How you doing now, after your ordeal?’
His wife looked at him, dressing gown open to the waist, tanned muscular chest with the dark curling hair. His wedding ring hung from the silver chain she had bought him the last time they were in New York together.
‘I’m a tough guy, honey, you know that.’
‘Yeah, I do. But this is a little different.’
‘He’s just some jerk with a hard-on.’ She patted him on the cheek. ‘Thanks for the concern, darling, but really I’m all right.’
Byrne looked back at the TV screen. He started as a picture of Chucho Mannero flashed up. The news anchor reported his shooting the previous night.
‘Oh, fuck,’ Byrne said. ‘That’s the guy we’re looking for.’
The ground team were already at the scene when Byrne pulled up and parked. Kovalski was back at headquarters, and Logan was running things on the ground. The evidence response team had been scrambled and they were on their way now to join the agents from Arlington County. Logan caught sight of Byrne and came over.
‘Shot through the back of the mouth, Louis, while he lay in his bed. Goddamn girlfriend didn’t even wake up.’
‘That’s three,’ Byrne said. ‘What the hell is he doing, Chey?’
He followed her inside, and the bedroom looked as though a barrel of red paint had exploded, only the smell told you it hadn’t. Harrison stood at the window, smoking a cigarette. ‘Made a helluva fucking mess,’ he said.
Swann was outside, looking at the area in general. He could feel Boese here, almost sense his presence. Logan touched his arm. ‘You OK, honey?’
‘Fine. Just trying to figure him out, Chey. None of this makes sense.’
‘What gets to Pentagon City, the airport and home again in forty-five minutes?’ she asked him.
‘I don’t know. Tell me.’
‘The Best Western courtesy bus. Chucho Mannero drove it.’
‘He worked up there?’ Swann pointed to the hotel on the hill.
She nodded. ‘Will you and Harrison go check it out?’
Harrison drove and they parked in front of reception. The manager had been summoned and was on his way in now. The staff looked very distressed, and already a number of them had been questioned by the Arlington County detectives. Harrison nodded to a couple of the dicks, but they merely eyed him suspiciously. ‘Can’t say I blame ’em,’ he muttered. ‘FBI takes everything and gives nothing back.’ He spoke to the receptionist. ‘Can we look at your guest list, please?’
He and Swann sat down and began to peruse the list while they waited to speak to the manager about Mannero.
One name jumped off the page at Swann. ‘Here we go,’ he said. ‘Mr I. R. Sanchez. Venezuelan.’
‘So?’
‘Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez. That’s Carlos, Harrison.’
They summoned a second ERT from Pennsylvania Avenue, who went through Mr Sanchez’s room with a fine toothcomb. They came up with a set of fingerprints on top of the television, which were lifted electronically and sent down the computer line. Within a few minutes, they were identified as belonging to Ismael Boese.
Back at the crime scene, the FBI team were deep in conversation with the Arlington detectives. Logan was talking to Kurt Leuze, the evidence technician, while Randy Shaeffer was organizing a fingertip search of the area. Harrison and Swann pulled up and Logan beckoned them over. ‘The residents are being quite helpful, considering this is a project, they’re all Spanish and we’re the FBI,’ she said. ‘Apparently, shots were fired around two-thirty this morning.’
‘Have we got a time of death yet?’ Harrison asked.
‘Somewhere between two and two-thirty.’
‘There you go, then.’
Logan shook her head. ‘Look at this.’ She held up a transparent evidence envelope with a buckled shell in the bottom. ‘This was dug out of the wall where it came out the back of Chucho’s head.’ She looked at Swann then. ‘It’s from a Russian Vul, Jack. The PSS silenced pistol. The same as was used on Teniel Jefferson.’
‘So?’
‘So, don’t you get it? Other shots were fired, right after this one. Only these could be heard. A different weapon must’ve been used.’
In London, Christine Harris had the first genetic fingerprints from the DNA samples provided by Janice Martin.
She spoke with Webb and Superintendent Colson. ‘Negative. No match, I’m afraid.’
‘Have we got any more coming?’ Colson asked her.
‘Three. She gets around quite a bit. They’re all out of town members.’ She pointed to three pictures she had laid out on the desk, stills from the funeral parade. ‘Marco, I suppose because he looks Italian.’ She tapped the other two in turn. ‘Fatboy and Gib. All three of them slept with her over the past couple of days. Fatboy’s real name is Frank Burroughs, ex-Royal Green Jacket, now living in Portsmouth. Marco is ex-Green Jackets too, living in Maidenhead. And Gib was a para who now lives with his mum in Northampton.’
Colson glanced at Webb. ‘Has anything come from the meeting over the weekend?’
‘Couple of titbits.’ Webb looked at a transcript of the tape that GCHQ had given them. ‘Two references to contracts,’ he said. ‘And the word “hide” was mentioned.’
‘Excellent,’ Colson rubbed his hands together. ‘I want a team standing by.’
‘There’s a lot of them, Guv. Have we got the manpower?’
‘Box have,’ Harris said.
‘See what you can do?’ Colson leaned on fisted knuckles. ‘If we can just get a positive sample, we can really wind them up.’
Swann phoned them from Washington and spoke at length with Colson. He explained what had happened in Arlington and that Chucho Mannero was now being investigated in terms of possible links with Boese. Colson told him what they had accomplished, and updated him on the financial investigation. Swann said that Tom Kovalski was in touch with the secret service case officers who were looking into the situation, and there was a hive of activity down the street in Washington.
‘Did they ever find out what happened to the ten million dollars that Jakob Salvesen shelled out?’ Colson asked him.
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘J
ack, do us another favour, will you. According to St Andrews University, Ben Dubin is in Washington on some lecture tour. Webb wants to know if he was at the 1997 Shrivenham conference. He’s on the list of proposed delegates, but no one can confirm whether or not he actually attended.’
Swann hung up. Logan had called a full briefing and set up flip charts at the front of the eleventh-floor conference room. Byrne was there, with Harrison, Kovalski and the other agents working the case.
‘Listen up,’ Logan was saying. ‘We got three stiffs. Mary Greer, Teniel Jefferson and now Chucho Mannero. Two Caucasians and one Puerto Rican. So far, the only one we can link directly to Boese is Mary Greer. Her friendship with Leona Boese, who’s flipped out now in prison. If ever there was someone gone stir-crazy, it’s her.’
She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts. ‘Mary Greer must’ve known Teniel Jefferson,’ she said, ‘if only from dealing his cards at the blackjack tables. Jefferson knew Mannero from Ellis Island Correctional Center, where he supplied him with illicit gear before moving to Nevada.’ She looked at Swann then, as if for support. ‘Something else happened last night. Something which makes me re-evaluate all Jack has said about Boese’s identity.’ She stopped and glanced at Byrne. ‘Something he said to your wife, Louis. Something like “interesting thing with feathers”.’ She rubbed her knuckles against her mouth for a moment. ‘I think Boese killed Mannero last night. Then I think he came out of that apartment building and right into something else. We recovered four shells, all the same type, all fired from the same weapon.’
‘A single shooter,’ Harrison mused. ‘Not a shoot-out.’ He frowned heavily, the lines creasing up in his forehead.
No one spoke for a few minutes, then Byrne said: ‘Greer, Jefferson, Mannero. We still don’t know why he killed them.’
Swann sat forward. ‘If Boese isn’t the Storm Crow, maybe he’s trying to find out who is.’
Silence.
‘By killing Greer, Jefferson and Mannero,’ Byrne lifted’ his eyebrows. ‘How does that work?’
‘Three links in a chain,’ Harrison said quietly.
Swann nodded slowly. ‘I think he’s tracing the line of his own recruitment.’
Again silence. Logan let breath escape audibly through her nostrils. ‘Greer knew Jefferson back in 1985,’ she said. ‘Jefferson could only’ve known Mannero between 1979 and 1984. Jesus, if this is correct, whoever’s behind this thing has been working on it for years. Just to get Boese on his team.’
A chill, almost tangible, replaced the heated atmosphere in the room. ‘Only one weapon got fired last night,’ Logan went on. ‘Outside the building, I mean. Either someone tried to kill Boese, or he tried to kill them.’
‘No blood. No corpse.’ Harrison rolled his snuff tin back and forth on the table. ‘But another player’s joined the game.’
Swann was still for a moment, watching each of their faces. He looked from one to the other of them and spoke very quietly: ‘There’s something else we have to address,’ he said. ‘Whoever is behind all this has got access to intelligence that I can hardly believe. Not only have they engineered incredibly complex situations, like myself and Pia Grava, for instance, they have access to gangs like Jorge Vaczka’s. If what we think is correct, they can also access the British Secret Intelligence Service, and be a reliable enough source to set a whole surveillance operation going on the UK mainland. They’ll have shown Boese the strength of Vaczka’s operation, before completely double-crossing him. They then double-cross the Poles by tipping off MI6. Think about the influence, the power, the money, and, above all, the inside information you need to have to be able to do all that. You’ve got to know how every secret service, every terrorist group in the world, virtually, operates. How many people can do that?’
‘Any one of us,’ Byrne said bluntly. ‘Tom Kovalski. Me. You, Jack. Your commander, any commander of any security group in the world. Lots of politicians. Lots of businessmen. Diplomatic security. CIA. You name it.’
‘You’re right, Louis.’ Swann looked evenly back at him. ‘There’s one thing you’re forgetting, though.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Harrison.’ Swann jerked a thumb at his friend. ‘He was compromised in Idaho, right around the time you and me went to Paris. Most people thought, logically so, that because I told Pia Grava I was going, that’s how it happened. The trouble with that theory is, she was with my kids at a friend’s house all the time I was there. She’s on remand in England right now, and she’s given us everything she possibly can on Boese. She categorically denies telling him I was ever in Paris. What reason could she have to lie?’ He stopped speaking for a moment and glanced at Harrison. ‘I wasn’t responsible for the compromise,’ he stated. ‘But somebody certainly was.’
23
SWANN, HARRISON AND LOGAN had a drink in the hotel bar. Logan sat on a stool next to Swann, with her hand resting in his lap. Swann was eyeing Harrison. ‘Time it was said, JB. I hope you don’t mind.’
Harrison sighed heavily, lit a cigarette and flipped the match into the glass bowl of the ashtray. ‘It’s the only reason I’m still an agent. When this is cleared up, so am I.’
Logan cocked her head to one side.
‘It’s true, Chey. Like you said, I’m a fifty-year-old dinosaur, and I got a lotta lake fishing to catch up on.’
‘Jack.’ Logan tugged at his arm. ‘What you said in there implicates a lot of people. The whole of the FEST for starters. I’m part of that FEST.’
Swann squeezed her arm. ‘That’s all right, love. He tells me you’re on the level.’ He winked at Harrison. ‘It implicates everyone at the Branch too, and SO12. Hundreds of people, Chey.’
‘It’s the handwriting,’ Harrison stated. ‘There’s nothing like seeing something as personal as your own handwriting to spook you, no matter how tough you think you are. The scrap of paper that was under the receipt. We concentrated on the receipt, Jack. But it was the bit of paper underneath it that mattered. I should’ve photographed it on its own. Directions to a dead drop, like you say.’ He looked keenly at Logan now. ‘Think about it, Chey. If we’d busted in on Salvesen after the covert entry, we would’ve had that paper. Whoever saw the product knew that. That’s why I got burned. There was jackshit in Salvesen’s drawers when the HRT got there.’
Swann undressed while Logan spoke to her mother on the telephone. She put the receiver down with a smile. ‘She’s gonna be a grandma,’ she said, with a flash of her teeth. ‘My brother Dale’s wife is gonna have a baby. God, I can all but hear her jumping up and down right now.’ She wriggled her hips out of her skirt and kicked it away. Then she sat on the bed and traced lines on Swann’s chest. After a while, she said: ‘What’re we gonna do when this is over?’
‘You mean about us?’
She nodded.
Swann drew in a deep breath. ‘I don’t know, darling. I suppose I’ll have to go back to London.’
She pulled at her lip with her teeth. ‘A transatlantic telephone relationship. Sounds just wonderful.’
Swann sat up and held her by her small, delicate shoulders. ‘Chey, I think I might be in love with you.’
She drew up her brows. ‘Might?’
He smiled. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘I do, yes.’ She unclipped her bra and her breasts swung free. He threw back the bedclothes and eased her out of her knickers.
Later, lying in their own sweat and breathing hard, she curled herself against him, wrapping her arms about his neck, and kissed him several times on the cheek. ‘You still dream, Jack?’ she asked. ‘You remember how you told me you dream?’
‘Oh, yeah. I dream. I dream a lot more than I did.’
‘Have you spoken to anyone?’
‘You mean professionally?’
She sat up, resting her chin on his chest. ‘Yes.’
‘No, Chey. I haven’t. I should’ve, I suppose.’
She lifted her eyebrows. ‘It might help, honey. Sure as h
ell can’t hurt.’
Swann placed one arm behind his head. ‘I don’t know. Somehow I think it’s going to take more than just talking to put the death of Steve Brady behind me. You see, after what happened with Pia, it’s ten times worse. I mean the whole thing, the whole episode in my life was punctured again. It was like somebody rubbing salt into an open wound.’
She kissed him again and lay back, looking at the ceiling. ‘Where do we go from here?’ she asked.
‘I’ve got kids in the UK, Chey.’
‘I know.’
‘And you’ve got your job over here.’
‘My life.’ She sat up again. ‘It’s all I do.’
‘You’ve got your family. Look at you just now, talking to your mum.’
She got up and poured them each a drink. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it,’ she said. ‘You get so wrapped up in things, your job, I mean, you forget other things. I mean, look at me.’
‘I am.’ Swann watched her walking about the room, naked, with the drink clutched in her hand, other arm crooked beneath her breasts. ‘You’re beautiful.’
‘You know what I’m saying, dumbfuck.’ She flicked fingertips dipped in whisky at him. ‘I’ve done nothing these last few years except work for the FBI. I’ve got no hobbies. I don’t socialize except with other Feds, and I haven’t had what you’d call a satisfying relationship for years.’
