Act of Vengeance

by Michael Jecks

  He led the way into a large room. It was high-ceilinged, and had two stainless steel autopsy tables and a cloying smell of antiseptic and formaldehyde. It made Jack feel claustrophobic; he could feel sweat prickling under his shirt.

  A white-coated aide had already fetched the body on a gurney, and now stood at the side of the white-wrapped body. Jack wondered whether the bodies were stored in sheets like this, or whether they were kept in body-bags, and only displayed more sympathetically when visitors came to identify them.

  ‘I should warn you,’ Jewson said more quietly, ‘a .357 in the head isn’t pretty. Are you sure you are ready?’

  Jack nodded, and Jewson nodded to the assistant. The man pulled the sheet away, and Jack stared down. He pursed his lips after a moment, and nodded.

  ‘It’s him.’

  ‘I am very sorry you had to see him like this,’ the coroner said, motioning. The sheet was pulled over the ravaged mess, and Jack stood a moment, staring down at the sheet.

  ‘Would you like a coffee? Perhaps you need a seat? I know it’s a shock to see a man you knew like this. If it helps, there’s no doubt he died instantly,’ Jewson said, as the gurney was pushed through a double door at the far end of the chamber.

  ‘Yes. Thanks,’ Jack said. He wanted to be sick; he felt that he and his Service had betrayed this man.

  *

  13.46 Virginia; 18.46 London

  The car rolled up silently outside the church and two SUVs parked a short way behind. The driver remained in his seat, but the guard in front got out quickly, stood still and surveyed the broad street ahead, while the passenger collected his thoughts. Then the rear door was opened for him, he climbed out, placed a grey fedora on his head, and walked smartly up to the doors.

  He stood at the entrance a moment, scanning the room, before marching down the aisle to a chair up at the front. Here he bowed, genuflected, and moved off to a seat, staring at the altar.

  It was a simple table, which he found satisfactory. There was a cloth upon it, which ran from side to side without concealing the plain wood beneath. A silver cross stood upon it, and behind there was a magnificent mosaic in gold and yellow, of a Caucasian holding his hands up to a bright sun high overhead while trumpets intruded. He always felt that this church had a belief in loud blasts.

  He bent forward and hid his face in his hands as he prayed. There was so much to plead for. For God knew all the threats to the nation in these troubled times. So many countries hated all that America stood for, their populations were convinced that America was evil, and they sought to thwart her in all she did. They didn’t realise that American had a divine purpose – she was there to help to save the world. And she would do so. With God’s help, they would bring the rest of the world to the recognition that there was only the one God, and that He was supreme.

  But he also prayed for the men who had been employed. He begged for their souls, asking that God forgive any excess of enthusiasm. Occasionally the innocent would be harmed. He regretted that, but it was a simple fact. God would understand. God would forgive.

  He heard the door open, but made no move until he had finished his prayers, and only then, after standing again, making the sign of the cross, and turning from the altar, did he look up at the man in the doorway.

  ‘Sir, a call from Islamabad.’

  The deputy director of operations, CIA, took the STU-III telephone from his guard.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mission accomplished.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Peter Amiss passed the receiver back to his guard, and before he left the church, he glanced back at the altar with a small smile.

  His prayers had been answered. Now it was time to move to level two.

  *

  11.51 Anchorage; 20.51 London

  It had been a relief to leave the coroner’s offices and get back to his hotel. On the way, Jack had the taxi stop at a liquor store, and he went inside and bought a bottle of Jack Daniels from the man at the till. He took it back to his room at the Hilton and had finished a quarter of the bottle before the shaking would leave him.

  Lying on the bed afterwards, he had closed his eyes for a moment. But when he did, he could smell that stench again: preservatives and cleaning fluid. A noxious mixture that made him want to vomit.

  It was plain enough that Lewin had died quickly. The bullet must have been soft lead. It had entered at the right cheek bone, and bone had slammed into the soft tissues with the bullet, making an exit wound that must have taken half his brain with it. Quick, certainly. The impact of the slug had distorted his entire head, almost forcing his left eyeball from its socket. As Jewson had said, it wasn’t pretty.

  But it left the question of his journal. Did he keep one, and if he did, where would he have hidden it?

  The first thing to do was to get to his house and start to search.

  Jack phoned reception and asked where he could rent a car. Then he took out his mobile phone, but there was still no signal. Muttering to himself, he called reception again, and learned that his tri-band phone wouldn’t work here in Alaska. The receptionist was sympathetic. She had to tell almost all her guests, she told him. Alaska had its own network operator with their own frequencies and ordinary mobiles wouldn’t work.

  ‘Can I connect you?’

  Soon he was talking to a helpful woman in the police station, who gave him the details of the cabin where his client had been found dead.

  ‘His name was Lewin. Daniel Lewin,’ he said.

  *

  16.10 Langley, Virginia; 21.10 London

  Roy Sandford was only half awake. The last night he’d managed to finally persuade Janice ‘Very Nice’ O’Hagan to accept his offer of a meal, and the result had been better than he had hoped.

  He settled his shoes on his desk and loosened his tie. It was still strange to be back here in the real world. The last few months he’d been out in Pakistan, a volunteer CIA agent teamed with the NSA checking the communications between tribal groups, trying to get decent intel on their activities, but the social life was shit. He was thirty, in Christ’s name, and the nearest he’d got to a woman was sitting next to a sergeant in the 142nd Military Intelligence Battalion. The 142nd were everywhere, because the 142nd came from Utah – it was a National Guard unit formed mostly of Mormons who’d been missionaries. Their knowledge of languages was superior to most others in the NSA. But their knowledge of laws regarding sexual relations on military service was just as hot, and their damned morals meant they stuck to them.

  Last night, with Very Nice, he’d got rid of a whole lot of frustration. With luck he’d be able to see her again after work tonight. So long as he didn’t fall asleep on the job. This morning’s early shift on the Echelon liaison desk was painful. Even now his eyes would hardly stay open.

  His screen was already turned on, even before his first coffee, and he eyed it blearily as the system logged him in, trying to concentrate on the job.

  Echelon was a network of computers designed for espionage. Any conversation in the world: fax, telex, text or computer message could be snatched up for US intelligence to look at.

  There was no need for the operators to do more than type in a few criteria or key words, and then sit back and wait. Compared to the misery of Pakistan, where there was the ever-present risk of a bombing or shooting, it was cool. Especially for Roy, who enjoyed hiking and shooting, because the South Fork Valley was in the mountains of West Virginia, on the edge of the George Washington National Forest. Not that he could tell that from inside. There were no windows, and while sitting at the desks, it was impossible to tell what time of day it was, let alone what the weather was like.

  He heard a bleep and stared blearily at the screen. A list of names appeared, then the timer telling him to wait. A light flashed on the boxes behind the screen, and then a little window opened. He read it through once, then sat upright, and read it again, frowning.

  At the side of his desk was a notepad, and he grabb
ed it, leafing through the pages until he came to a code name. Staring back at the window on the screen, he checked the letters one by one before snatching up a telephone.

  ‘Echelon Duty Officer, sir. I’ve had a hit.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Your coding "White Fuchsia", sir.’

  ‘OK. Give it to me.’

  ‘It’s a telephone call from the Hilton in Anchorage, Alaska, to the police station at Whittier.’

  ‘I see. You have it recorded?’

  ‘Yes. And it’s transcribed, too.’

  ‘Send me the copy.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Sandford put the phone down, shook his head and returned to thoughts of Very Nice, but even as he did so, a small part of his mind was wondering what on earth Ed Stilson, the private assistant to the deputy director, would want with a call to some obscure little town in Alaska?

  Saturday 17th September

  09.28 Whittier, Alaska; 18.28 London

  It had taken an hour for Jack to drive along the Seward Highway to the tunnel. An hour of driving on the edge of the Turnagain Arm, a long inlet heading south-west, had first bored, and then entranced him. It was a broad stretch of water, and opposite all he could see were mountains with their peaks of grey rock above the treeline. Here the trees did not survive higher up the slopes because of the extreme winter cold, he assumed. Yellow leaves made golden mists out of the woods, with occasional darker pines breaking up the softness, while the water looked grey and uncompromising, like the sea off Scotland, but for a man who adored the wilderness, this land looked perfect. It was an alpine view mingled with Norwegian fjords: steep, craggy rocks on all sides, grey roadway, grey rocks, and the gorgeous colours of trees in autumn. Every so often, he saw white crests, and then he realised that these were not spray from the water, but the pale grey fins and tails of whales. It almost made him drive off the highway.

  The road curled around at the end, and he had to stop, with the engine idling, in a queue of other cars at a tunnel’s entrance. A train came through, a huge yellow diesel hauling a line of tanks, and only when it was past could the cars move up to pay the tolls. Gradually the cars disappeared into the triangular housing that hid the entrance.

  It was a long tunnel. He measured it, and the car’s digital readout told him it was somewhere near two and a half miles long, a channel blown through the middle of a mountain. The roadway itself was flat concrete, and rumbled rhythmically as he drove. There was only one lane – clearly there hadn’t been the money to make a second – so while cars waited at one end, the cars flowed through from the other. Trains used it when there were no other vehicles. At first it was a little alarming to think of the weight of rock overhead, but Jack soon forgot that as he saw a pinprick of light in the distance and realised it was the exit. He carried on in the line of cars, and was impressed by the construction. Every so often there were what appeared to be wider spaces, with a door set in each. Safety chambers in case of fire or some other danger.

  He only appreciated the length of the tunnel seven minutes later when he came to the far side. Leaving the darkness, the daylight was a blinding, searing whiteness that made him wince and turn his head away. He drove carefully behind the car in front, following it while he blinked and frowned. Pausing a while at the side of the road, he glanced down at the map beside him and checked it against the address he had been given. Shotgun Cove, he read, and searched for it on the map.

  Whittier was a strange little town. A Cold War town, built by the military, and here, Christ, the war had lived up to its name.

  The place had first been used by fur trappers, and the Portage Glacier was where they had ‘portaged’ their boats, carrying them over the mountain passes to the water down here. Now it comprised a small looping road, with a trail that led off along the waterside, Portage Bay, and out towards the sea – not that it went very far, only a mile or two, according to the map.

  He was directed to this road by a cheerful man in a plaid jacket, and he took the car slowly along the rough tarmac. Mostly it was good surface, but the extreme winter weather had broken the edges down so that they were shredded into the waste at the roadside. The road led him out of town, past low buildings, including what looked like a small hotel, and on past the enormous military building. It loomed up on the right: a grey concrete block constructed in sections, that stood impressive and forbidding, strangely like a derelict Soviet apartment block, as though they had invaded but had been forced away again. All around it was luminous tape, tied to posts in the ground, and warning signs were everywhere. It looked like it was going to collapse soon anyway. There were builders all about, and cranes and JCBs stood idle. A sign he passed said that it was being made stable. Just another dump being demolished, he guessed.

  Once past that, he was into the trees. Tall pines rose on the right, the road turned away from the water, and the trees enclosed him. The road climbed, and he had to keep in a lower gear as the surface deteriorated further, the car bucking as the sedan’s two-wheel-drive slipped and slid on mud and twigs, the engine revving as he kept the pedal down, trying to keep the car heading up the track.

  It was a stiff climb but, after a while, the trees fell back and he found himself in a wide parking area. There was a footpath leading onwards, so he carefully turned the car around and reversed it so that it was pointing straight down the track again. Elementary fieldwork: a car should always be positioned ready to drive away.

  He shut off the engine. It was quiet here. There was some birdsong, but nothing like as much as in England in woods. Here, he felt the countryside had already shut down for winter.

  Climbing out, the door’s slam seemed unnatural in these surroundings. There was a constant background hissing, which he realised was the water in the Portage Bay down below him. If he peered hard through the trees, he could see a greyness that must be the water.

  He glanced about him one last time, and then began the walk up the pathway. There were five or six steps, each formed of wooden planks held in place by pegs, that led to a path of gravel, now heavily invaded by weeds, that curved past some large outcrops of rock. Soon, he could see a dark building up ahead.

  It was obvious why Lewin had chosen this. Jack stood a moment and took it in.

  He had seen cabins like this in old films of the gold rush. Formed from the trunks of a number of great pines, notched and locked together at the corners. The gaps between the timbers had been filled with mud or clay, to form a thick, insulated wall. It had a steep roof to allow the snow to slide away, and a window was next to the door, directly in front of him. There were steps leading to the door by means of a small stoop.

  Yes, it was like a cabin from an old film – but it was also a solid, easily defensible fortress for a man who sought safety. It would be difficult to broach the walls, and someone had cleared and maintained a kill-zone all around. Anyone attacking would be seen.

  Jack walked to the door. There was blue plastic police tape across the door, which he tugged aside, and then he was in.

  It was one large room with a log-burner over to the left and a metal chimney rising up through the roof. A single wooden armchair and a low table stood beside it. On it was a glass. Heavy curtains hung at the windows, and books were spread all over. A larger table was over on the right, and that was where the sink stood, as well as a cupboard. On top were some unmatching plates, while beneath was a larder. The door to it was open, and Jack could see that there was more whisky than food inside. He stood a while in the doorway, staring in, imagining Lewin’s life in this little chamber. Solitary, miserable, it would hardly be surprising if his depression had grown more intense out here. It was a breeding-ground for madness.

  There were some shreds of material on the floor. One or two had been rugs once, but now they had been washed and wrung out too often. A lone comfortable chair stood near the kitchen table, with more books lying on it. Jack walked over to one, which was still open, upside down. It was Fear Up Harsh, by Tony Lagouranis
. Jack flicked through some pages and pushed it into his pocket for studying later.

  Then he began to walk the room.

  It was the old process. First he took a series of photos with his mobile phone. Much like a forensic officer, Jack went through the clear, obvious areas first. He opened the cupboards, looking carefully inside. He reached up behind the doors, behind the cupboards themselves, into every nook and cranny. Looking at the walls, he tapped at any newer-painted areas, set his head along the wall, closing an eye to try to spot any lumps or bumps. He felt under the chair-seats, under cushions, behind the single picture, which showed an amateurish rendition of an old pine, the top blown away by lightning, and around the windows in case a hiding place had been cut out.

  He stared at the picture on his phone, and then idly pressed the call button. There, in the recent list, was Claire’s number, and he pressed it. He was lonely here without her. The last months had been so tough while they tried to patch their marriage. He just wanted to speak with her but the phone flashed a message. “Call Failed. No Signal”.

  Frustrated, he stuffed it into his pocket. All the modern technology in the world and he couldn’t even call his woman.

  That was when he finally opened the bedroom door.

  The smell was not as bad as it might have been. Someone had come in here to wash away the worst of the blood, and the sodden sheets had been removed, but there was still the sickly, sweet stench of decaying blood and brain matter.

  It was all over the floor. Where the simple bed lay, there was a shaded patch where the mattress had protected the floor, but away from that the floor had been liberally sprayed. It reached over the floor towards the walls, and there was some blood on the door, even. As he glanced about the place, he noticed that there was less staining on top of a chest of drawers near the bed, and the wall behind was clear of splashes, although the wall above had been marked.

  It made Jack narrow his eyes.