by Mark Dawson
Orville had been predictable. He had done exactly what she had thought he would do: he swooped into town, flashed his badge like he was the director, made the calls, and started to look so busy with it all that people who didn’t know any better might have thought it was his bust rather than hers. He had made a ham-fisted attempt at a reconciliation, but his heart wasn’t really in it, not enough to give him the backbone to push on when it became obvious that she hadn’t changed her mind about what she’d said, and after she blew him off when he had suggested dinner so that they could “talk,” he had punished her by sending her to Siberia, otherwise known as Green fucking Bay.
It happened fast. There had been no opportunity for her to speak to Milton.
The media had the story by the time she arrived in Wisconsin. It was a big deal. The director went on the air and laid down the edict that the militia was going to be completely squashed. The US attorney lost no time filing charges against the twenty men and women they picked up in the forest, plus Morris Finch and another ten who were involved. They were looking at trials for attempted bombing, plus conspiracy and weapons offences.
Milton was key to the case.
Orville had decided to do the interview himself. Ellie would have loved to have been in the room for that. She had been given the play-by-play by another agent with whom she was friendly. Orville had put Milton through two solid days of interviews. Word was, he had tried to turn him into a cooperating witness, tried to persuade him that he had to testify. He hinted that charges against him were being stayed on the basis that he cooperated. It sounded like a threat, and she guessed that threatening Milton was not likely to be productive. And so it had proved. His answers became clipped and then monosyllabic, much to Orville’s evident irritation. Eventually, he just stopped answering, saying he would only speak to her. When Orville refused that, Milton had insisted on a phone call.
What happened next had been plain bizarre.
Whoever it was Milton had called, it had blown things up. The director had scurried to meet with him personally. There had been the suggestion of a medal, which Milton had rejected outright, and then a fulsome apology from Orville for the way in which he had been treated. The suggestion was that Milton had agreed to cooperate with the investigation on the condition that he was made a confidential informant. He wouldn’t be asked to testify, but he would share his knowledge of the militia without any risk of being charged. Ellie had even heard that the bureau and the attorney’s office were working on creating the fiction that Milton was working for them as an informer all along.
After that, he was told he could go.
He was last seen walking out of town, his pack and his rifle slung over his shoulder.
And then, it got even weirder.
Ellie had been called by the director. He told her that she was in line for a nice bump in salary. She said great. He said you’ve done well, but this is on two conditions.
First, she had to play ball with the big media campaign they were planning. It was hazy, the details all to be confirmed, but it sounded like they wanted to make her into a heroine. Magazine interviews, morning television, the whole nine yards.
The second condition?
Milton’s involvement in the affair was not to be mentioned, under any circumstances.
She knew how the game was played, and she didn’t know how she felt about it. Her dad would have told the director to shove his media plan up his ass, but Ellie was more practical. He had been jaded, plus he was a man. Ellie was still fresh and keen, and she had found not having a dick was an impediment to quick advancement. She could see the benefits in playing nice.
One phone call from Milton had done all of this?
Who did he know?
She told the director she would think about it.
SHE LOOKED out of the window. She could see her reflection in the glass, the smart suit and the sensible shoes, and staring at herself, she remembered the trek up through the wilderness to get to the Lake of the Clouds.
It felt like another world.
A man detached from the table of five and came over.
“Excuse me. Mind if I sit down?”
Ellie waved her hand absently. “Free country.”
She was distracted. Orville and one of the bureau’s rising young stars, this fresh-faced ingénue flown over from Quantico, had spent several days shouting at the suspects. They had extracted leads, most likely wild goose chases, but they all had to be followed up anyway, just in case there was a grain of truth to them, some other wacko waiting in the shadows with a truck full of fertiliser and racing fuel. They had been told that there was another militia in Wisconsin, brave Christian soldiers waiting for the first sign of the Second Coming, ready to start the war. Ellie had been told to find them.
These people who almost certainly didn’t exist.
In Green fucking Bay.
“Get you a drink?”
“No, thanks,” she said.
“I’m Frank.”
He was wearing a Packers jersey with FRANK across the back. It was brand new, and he had forgotten to take the tags off.
The barman passed her a bottle of beer.
“Put that on our bill.”
“No,” Ellie said. “I’ll buy my own drinks.”
The man shuffled a little awkwardly, but Ellie could see that his friends were watching the show, and she knew that he wouldn’t give up after the first brush-off.
“You here for the game?”
“No.”
“Business, then?”
“Something like that.”
“What kind of business?”
“This and that.”
“Mysterious.” He laughed.
She ignored him.
“You going to ask what I’m doing here?”
“No.”
He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “There was a charity auction, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, my law firm bid for a box. I’m a partner there. It wasn’t cheap, never is, but we figured it was for a good cause, so why not, right?”
“Right.”
She noticed the small details: expensive shoes, designer denim, Rolex that probably cost the same as a small family car. “Listen,” he said, “if you’re around tonight and you’ve got nothing planned, we’ve got a spare seat. We’d be delighted to have your company.”
Ellie was about to tell him to take a hike when she paused, the words dying on her lips. She saw the indistinct outline of a man standing outside the entrance. He was peering in through the glass, maybe looking at the menu they had there to tempt diners inside, maybe looking into the restaurant, she couldn’t be sure. There was a lattice of frost across the glass, and it was difficult to make out the details, but something about the man said that she knew who he was.
“So?”
She realised he had continued to speak. She hadn’t heard a word of it.
“What do you say?”
She stood quickly, her stool clattering back against the bar.
Frank rested his hand on her elbow, blocking her way forward. “So, you gonna come and have a good time with us?”
The man at the window turned and faded away into the falling snow.
“Excuse me, Frank.”
“Come on, don’t be like that.”
“I’m not interested in your company. It’d be best for everyone if you just took your drink and went back to your table, okay?”
He still didn’t get the hint.
“What’s your name, honey?”
She reached into her pocket, took out the leather wallet that she used to carry her badge, flipped it open and held it up so that he could see it. “Special Agent Ellie Flowers,” she said, angling her torso a little so that her jacket fell back enough that he could see the glint of the Glock 22 on her belt.
He looked down at the badge, wide-eyed. “You’re FBI?”
“That’s right. And I’ve had a hell of a week, and I’m not feeling all that sociable, so go on, go back to y
our buddies and enjoy the game. Give me a fucking break, okay?”
The man did as she asked and went back to the table.
She hurried to the door and threw it open, the cold air rushing in to embrace her. The snow fell softly, the cars crunching across compacted ice. The road was busy as fans meandered towards the stadium and two blocks over the big floodlights threw up a corona of golden light that reached up into the dark, snowy night.
There were too many people. The man she had seen had been absorbed into the crowd.
She went back inside. Frank’s friends welcomed him back with amused expressions on their faces that said his pride had taken a bit of a slap.
She finished her beer and decided to have another, taking it to a table next to a window. She looked out at the snow again, whipping up against the window, and, beyond it, a cityscape carpeted in white.
JOHN MILTON adjusted his pack across his shoulders so that it was more comfortable and trudged on through the snow. The sidewalk was busy with people in Packers’ green and 49ers’ red and white, crowds of fans enjoying good-natured banter, their expectation for the game buzzing in the air. The convivial atmosphere was different from the equivalent back home, he thought. It was better than it had once been, but you could still get a fat lip for wearing the wrong colours on the wrong street.
He paused at a crosswalk, just one man within the crowd. Faceless and anonymous, just how he liked it. The traffic hurried ahead under the green light. The light went to red, and a mounted cop edged forwards, marshalling the crowd.
He had been in town for three days. He had located Ellie on the first day without too much difficulty: a call to the Detroit field office under a pretext provided the information that she had been sent to Green Bay. A brief stop in an Internet café revealed a host of stories about how the FBI was investigating reports of copycat militias in Wisconsin. It had been trivial to find the bureau office and stake it out until he saw her. He had watched her. She was staying in the Marriott, room two-twelve. On the second day, he watched her eat breakfast at six, saw her take a cab across town to the office, and then it picked her up again at eight when she finally finished for the day. He had been close to going over to her, asking her out, seeing if she wanted that dinner. It was cheesy, but he knew it would work.
So why had he backed out? What had stopped him?
He had waited outside her office again today. It was six o’clock when she had finished, stepping out into the cold with a thick winter coat wrapped around her. She had deviated from her routine, and he had followed fifty feet behind her as she had walked, alone, to the restaurant.
That meant something.
He had walked around the block to ensure that he wasn’t being tailed, old habits, and, by the time he had made it back to the entrance she was with another man. He was dressed for the game, Packers colours, but he had the look of an agent: short, well-trimmed hair, anonymous clothes, good quality. Milton had watched as he had laid his hand on Ellie’s elbow. They looked intimate. They were going to the game. He must have been her date.
She hadn’t mentioned whether she was seeing someone but come on, seriously, there had to be someone, right?
What did he think? That they were going to have a relationship? She was an FBI agent, and he was who he was. As far as Milton was concerned, a relationship could only work if it was built on a foundation of total honesty. He felt that very strongly, and it was something he would never be able to offer. Secrets were toxic and he had a million of them. And even assuming that he could be honest, assuming that he could ignore the legal and moral implications of telling her about the things that he had done, it would poison the way that she saw him.
How could it ever have worked?
It couldn’t.
He had been stupid for even entertaining the notion.
Best to leave it as it was. They had their moment.
Ellie would be better with someone from the same world as her. The guy in the bar. They would be a better match.
He thought about mortgages, credit cards, consumer goods. He thought about children and nine-to-five jobs, about medical insurance and dental plans, about pensions and savings accounts, and he knew he was making the right decision.
It was time to move on.
And so he walked on, heading west. There were seven hundred miles between Green Bay and Minneapolis. That would take him three weeks to walk in weather like this. He would have to hitch a ride to make it in time for the gig. He would hike out to the WI-29, get to a truck stop, and see if he could find a driver who wanted some company.
Milton took his battered headphones from around his neck and put them over his ears. He reached into his pocket, took out his iPod and scrolled through his playlists for the one he wanted. He settled on The Smiths, pressed play and nodded his head a little as the distorted guitar riff from “How Soon is Now?” started to play. He took a woollen beanie from his pocket, pulled it over the headphones and then put on his gloves.
He set his face to the west, the icy blast of the wind lashing against his cheeks, his breath clouding before his face, and started to walk.
SALVATION ROW
A John Milton Novel
Mark Dawson
Part One
Saturday, August 23rd, 2005
Chapter One
JOHN MILTON peered through the rain that hammered on the windshield, trying to pick a path that would spare the car the deepest of the potholes that disfigured the muddy track. He had been driving for six hours, the headlamps on all the way, initially caught up in the throng of traffic as people sought to escape the city. Then he had been slowed by the terrain, the visibility, and his lack of familiarity with his surroundings. He rolled past a fork in the road, slowed and parked the rental on the margin of the road. It wasn’t much more than a backwoods track by this stage, cutting between groves of cypress trees that were garlanded in Spanish moss, heading straight into the heart of the bayou.
His directions told him to look for a big red maple tree.
Milton saw it, just off the road.
He had been in New Orleans for a week, arriving just as the meteorologists had given Katrina her name and warned the city that she was headed straight for it. People had initially laughed it off, and Milton had overheard plenty, suggesting that this would be no different than any of the other storms that made landfall here. But then the forecasters had become more and more apocalyptic, upgrading Katrina all the way to a category five storm and warning that she could be the big one. The mayor and the governor had issued mandatory evacuation warnings, and people had started to listen. It had been bumper-to-bumper gridlock until he was out past Norco, and even then, the roads had only started to flow easily when he exited at Laplace and made his way into the swamp.
Milton had been in hurricanes like this one before, and he knew what they could do. Some people still refused to evacuate, telling newscasters proudly that they weren’t going to be chased out of their homes, and Milton had looked at them and shaken his head at their blasé stupidity. He would have evacuated, if he had been given the choice. But his target was one of those stubborn-headed locals and, because of that, he had to stay, too.
Milton looked down at the instructions for a final time. He had followed coordinates that he had plotted into his GPS at first and then, when that had reached the limit of its utility, he had found the rest of the way with a set of written instructions that he would burn as soon as he was done.
It had been raining heavily for hours, the grim outrider of the monster that was gathering its resources out in the Gulf of Mexico. He stepped out of the car and onto the muddy verge and was quickly soaked through. He opened the passenger door and took out the shovel that he had purchased at the Walmart that he had passed on his way out of town. He rested it across his shoulder and started to walk out into the swamp.
He recognised the spot from the picture that he had been shown in London. There was a cypress grove, fringing a narrow clearing, and, at the centre
of that, a large boulder sat incongruously amid the grass and foliage.
Milton went up to the rock, paced out three steps back into the clearing, and then started to dig. The ground was saturated, and the shovel sliced through the grass and sod with ease. He rammed the blade into the earth, pressed it home with his boot, scooped out the wet muck and slung it over his shoulder. He was quickly covered in mud. He worked for ten minutes, digging a wide trench until the shovel clanged against something metallic. Milton assessed the dimensions of the object and then worked around it, quickly excavating enough so that he could stand the shovel in the ground and haul the object out of the ground with his hands.
It was a metal locker, five feet long by a foot wide, secured with sturdy steel clasps. A large padlock held the lid closed. Milton took a key from his pocket and undid the lock, unthreading it from the clasp and opening the lid.
The first thing he saw was the M16 assault rifle, but he didn’t need that. There was a wide assortment of weaponry: a long gun, machine pistols, semi-automatics. There were boxes of ammunition in several different calibres. Night-vision goggles, scopes for the sniper systems, surveillance and anti-surveillance gear, and encrypted satphones. And more than a million dollars in banknotes of various denominations, sealed inside a series of waterproof polythene bags.
Milton didn’t need anything extravagant. He ignored the heavy artillery and selected a Sig Sauer P226, a discreet shoulder holster, and a spare magazine. He removed his leather jacket, slipped the holster over his shoulder and tightened it, secured the Sig in the holster and put the spare magazine in his inside pocket. Next, he took out a hideaway .25 NAA Guardian with a holster that could be Velcro-strapped around the ankle. He stood, replaced his jacket, closed the lid, reattached the padlock, and hauled the locker back into the ditch.
He took up the shovel and started to spread the displaced earth over it.
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