Act of Vengeance

by Michael Jecks

  He looked about him with frustration. He wasn’t used to losing a subject like this. They’d set up the surveillance well, too. The taxi should have been ideal but Hansen, if that was his real name, had lost them easily. The cab that was driven by Frank’s driver edged forward, and was in position to pick him up, but almost at the moment he slid to a halt beside Hansen, the bastard had smilingly given up his place to an elderly couple three behind him. The next cab was a fall-back, but Hansen was engaged in talking then to the despatcher, and he waved on the next man in the line. It was only the third cab he took, to Qwest Field Stadium, Frank learned later, where Hansen took a quick walk over the road and got a bus towards the university campus. But from there the trail died. There was no spoor to follow.

  Across the table from him, Debbie Stone crossed her short legs, tapping a pen against her legal pad.

  ‘Why’d he go and hide? He’s a victim, he ought to be trying to get away from here, and he could use our help to make sure he was safe, couldn’t he? Running makes him look like a felon himself.’

  ‘He’s a Brit. Perhaps he was scared,’ Frank Rand guessed. But then he remembered the look of cool calculation he had seen in Jack’s eyes at the bar in Anchorage. ‘No. He wasn’t scared. More, he was angry.’

  ‘Then what’s he up to?’ Debbie demanded. She narrowed her shrewd grey eyes. Debbie was shorter than common for the FBI, and had short legs and a round face that looked like a sulky teen’s. Her complexion was very pale, matching her blonde hair, but her dark grey eyes were striking. Frank was happy to keep her in his team for her eyes alone. They held his attention for some reason. But in addition, she was one of the top marksmen in his team with her issued Glock 23 and her privately owned Glock 27, both in .40 cal. She was definitely not the sort of girl who would suffer a fool gladly. For two years she’d worked in the Behavioural Science Unit, and she was always interested in the motivations of the felons they hunted.

  ‘Who knows?’ Frank said, as he sucked at his teeth and leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling.

  ‘Did he strike you as dangerous?’

  ‘Nope. He seemed perfectly normal. Just not a lawyer, from what I saw. And I’d guess he could be worried that the same Muslim terrorists who killed Lewin could be after him now. Lewin came here because he wanted to get a handgun.’

  Frank swivelled his seat away from her and stared out through the glass-panelled wall at the team in the main room. A series of desks were in there, giving seating for eight men and women at computers, while behind was a Steelcase-built unit with similar space, but this time with high partitions creating pod spaces for agents to work in private.

  It was a long time since Frank had worked in an environment like that. He missed the camaraderie of the team never more than now. As soon as he had taken the first step on the rungs of management, he had become aware of his separation from the others, and he missed them.

  ‘And?’ Debbie said.

  Her matter-of-fact tone brought him back to the present. She was never one to become sentimental or maudlin. She stared at him seriously now, and he said nothing for a few seconds, feeling his purpose return under her steadfast gaze.

  ‘And now he’s gone to ground somehow. That means he must have cash. Any credit card transactions would have shown up. He’s not using his own phone, and it can’t be turned on, or we’d find it and him. It’d be easy to find a foreign number on the local cells. He’s not registered to a hotel with the passport and name he gave me in Anchorage, so that means he’s deliberately hiding.’

  ‘Which sounds less like he’s got a phobia about cops and Feebies, more like he’s got his own reasons for hiding. Perhaps he’s got something else he’s hiding, boss?’ Debbie said.

  ‘Like what?’ Frank said.

  ‘If he was a felon, and he was involved in firebombing the shack where this guy Lewin lived, he’d have reason to hide, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything to say he’s a felon.’

  ‘Uhuh. But he’s got some reason to want to hide.’

  ‘You don’t buy the idea he’s just scared of being shot at again?’ Frank grinned.

  She didn’t.

  ‘Do you? If he was that scared, like I said, he’d have asked for protection. Did he? Did he call his consulate? The embassy?’

  ‘Ah, shit!’ he muttered and picked up the phone again. ‘Look, we don’t know if he’s here or not, but I guess we have to assume he’ll do what he said he would, and visit the British Consulate. Get all available teams over there. I want all entrances and exits monitored.’

  And meanwhile this British son of a bitch could wander the city at liberty.

  ‘Shit!’

  *

  17.29 Seattle; 01.29 London

  Jack took a cab from the airport as Hansen, but when he arrived at downtown Seattle he was already a new man.

  The sight of his attacker at the airport had shocked him more than he would have expected. It was one thing for someone to warn him away from the place of Lewin’s death, although he had no idea why, but it was a different matter to be followed all the way to Anchorage and from there to the airport. The man was in the departures area, too, which meant he was taking an airplane himself. But he wasn’t on Jack’s flight, which was some relief.

  However, he could have been taking a later flight to Seattle. Jack wasn’t going to have that. He didn’t want to find the man in Seattle, maybe waiting for him in his hotel room. No, he was going to have to disappear. With a new identity, he would be able to register in a hotel and find some peace for a little while.

  He found a Best Western hotel off Pioneer Square. Sitting on a bench at the square, he picked up his backpack and reached round under the grab handle. The thin plate of plastic under the handle was perfect for concealing his spare passport and ID. He had two credit cards there as well, and now he had space to pull out his spare documents, and shoved Hansen’s ID away into the recess, before walking to the hotel and checking in using his alternative identity: Rod Avon. He had never been to Seattle before, and all he knew was that the city was renowned for coffee, seafood, and an internet retailer that had taken over the world. He needed a place to buy a phone, and the best place he could think of was a market or mall. As soon as he had washed, he picked up his rucksack and his book and walked out of the hotel and on to Yesler Way.

  With a city map from reception in his hands, he strode fast. There was a mall up to the north, a scant mile from his hotel. Walking up 1st Avenue, he kept a wary eye open for surveillance.

  All about the market Jack routinely noted faces. It was a principle he had learned when he had spent a little time with the Watchers in London, the Service undercover surveillance units: that a man’s clothing was irrelevant. The Watchers all had reversible coats, changes of trousers, hats, gloves and everything they needed to give different combinations of clothing to confuse any alert watcher. But a man or woman would not be able to so easily conceal their eyes and the outline of their faces.

  On the way there, he had changed his pace, he had stopped, doubled back, hesitated to read notices, taken a road east to Second Avenue, and wandered up there, and while outside a large building called Benaroya Hall, under the pretext of reading a stone tablet in the Garden of Remembrance, kept a wary eye open for anybody who could have been loitering. It made a fifteen minute walk take three quarters of an hour, but it was worth it. He had no doubt that Frank would have put a surveillance team on to him if he had the opportunity. There was a water feature a little farther back along the road, and he walked to it, his eyes keen for any sign of recognition or alarm, but saw nothing. He studied the water rippling over a series of stone steps of some black rock, and every sense was alert.

  It was a little after that that he heard the jarring screech and horns of emergency vehicles. A massive red fire truck came along first, honking and bellowing as it thundered up the streets, then a smaller truck with a box cabin behind the cab, and “Medic One” printed on th
e red bonnet. The two hurtled past him, and he kept his head low, but his eyes scanned the people all about. If there was a team trailing him here, they were good. So good, he could spend a year looking for them and still fail.

  No. There was no point. He turned and made his way north again, and soon he was in the market.

  All the while a cool breeze blew from the sea to the west. Snuffing the air, he remembered that scent. It reminded him of days with Claire at Dartmouth. That port, now little more than a tourist’s playground, had been one of the Royal Navy’s greatest centres in its day. He remembered sitting on the benches near the ferry over the river, eating fish and chips or pasties, while the sun played over the rippling waters. Once they had climbed down to the little fort at the mouth of the river, and they had made love on the hillside behind it, careless of the boats passing by en route for the sea. That was when they were first courting, and their passions had seemed all-devouring.

  It was hard to believe that they had been so happy then.

  *

  17.35 Seattle; 01.35 London

  The team had calmed down for a short while, but now there were more men and women in the rented offices off 3rd Avenue and Roy Sandford was forced to keep his head down as he worked on the transmissions.

  In the past, there was always a single wireless comms officer on missions like this, but in recent years the development of new forms of electronic communications had rendered many of the officers obsolete. There was a firm belief that men like Roy weren’t needed any more. With automated systems like Echelon, the view went, you just typed in the keywords you needed checking, and Echelon would do the rest. The supercomputers could sift through billions of emails, faxes, text messages, and even phone calls. In many countries now, it was a policy with all businesses never to discuss patents over the phone in case Echelon heard the discussions, because then a series of patent applications would quickly appear in American Patent offices. It had become the single biggest tool for industrial espionage ever created, and because the British, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders paid for their own hubs: the NSA had computer rights to impose their own keyword searches over them, it was a cheap form of espionage, too.

  But the success of Echelon had created its own problems. Just as in the Gulf before the second Iraq war there had been too much information for the intel officers to pick what was relevant and what was not, with Echelon and the other listening devices, there was ever more information to be sifted. More and more telephones meant that there were ever more officers needed to listen and evaluate data, and Homeland Security, the FBI, NSA, CIA, DEA and others didn’t have the manpower. So when there was a specific mission, there was even more need now to have a specialist on communications with a field team.

  Roy Sandford yawned, smothering it with the back of his hand, his fingers returning to the keyboard while his mouth remained wide, and carried on. There were seven main feeds coming in to him now: a main switchboard from the British Consulate, a second that was supposed to be a secure line from the Consulate to the British Embassy in Washington, two which were telephones used in British safe houses, and the rest were feeds from mobile networks used by British staffers. Roy had no qualms about listening in to the British. This was merely one mission amongst many. He glanced up at the screen behind his monitors. There where three ranged about him on the table top, and a rack with three more above them, while on the wall above was a plasma with feed from various other sites.

  ‘Sandford?’

  ‘Hi. What do you need?’

  Roy responded automatically. It was Frank Rand, he realised.

  ‘Any traffic from Hansen?’

  ‘Nothing yet. He’s not turned up at the consulate yet, sir.’

  ‘Any telephone intel?’

  ‘Nothing from any known numbers,’ Roy said. ‘I checked with the UK phone companies and found three guys with his name. One of them was in the area of Manchester, and his address agreed with the one Hansen gave you, but that number’s still not responding. I have checked the cell network, but there’s nothing showing for that number. I’m guessing if he’s got a phone, it’s a throwaway.’

  ‘So we’re stuck with the numbers for the Brit agents over here.’

  That was their problem, of course. There were potentially many more British agents here than they knew of, and while the FBI and other agencies were theoretically forced to cooperate with each other under the Homeland Security regulations, in reality each was still a separate, competitive organisation determined to see to their own interests and maintain their own budget. It was likely that the other agencies had information on agents that wasn’t being shared. For this mission, Amiss had gained additional clearance for Roy, and he had a separate feed from his systems into the Homeland Security’s system that linked to the other main agencies, which was a help, but he was looking for someone using a phone number he didn’t know.

  ‘So as far as you know, he hasn’t made contact with the Consulate,’ Frank said.

  ‘No. I’ve no way of telling. But I don’t like the idea he has a throwaway. That makes him seem more suspicious.’

  ‘Yeah. I’m sure he’s an agent. He had tradecraft written all over him. Which could mean he’s set himself up with another alias for a hotel room.’

  Frank grunted.

  ‘So, we have no idea where he could be?’

  ‘He’s in Seattle, I’d guess. None of the feeds from the car rental firms have showed him getting a drive. He could have taken a train or bus and paid cash, I guess. And if he does have another passport or ID, we’re fucked.’

  Frank Rand said nothing for a moment, then, ‘OK. Keep looking for him, and if he uses a phone to call in, you get a trace on it.’

  ‘Sure,’ Roy said. And how, he added to himself, how the fuck am I gonna find him without knowing what number he’s got, or the number he’s calling? There ain’t nothing here for me. It’s just fuckin’ guesswork.

  He’d have to call Amiss and let him know what was going on. This whole mission was screwed so far as he could see. The line went dead, and he waited a moment before pressing the speed dial for Amiss.

  The calm voice on the other end of the line was soothing. ‘There is nothing to worry about. If he’s a British spy, he’ll turn up again soon.’

  ‘Down here the local Feebies are getting kind of pissed at him.’

  ‘It isn’t surprising. They will have had some concerns since he has been present at an explosion and a shooting.’

  ‘I just hope we can find him soon.’

  ‘Yes. We don’t want any more violence on our streets. Hopefully you will find him, and we can put him under protection. Then we can send him on his way. The Brits can deal with him when he gets back home. The sooner he’s off our backs, the better,’ Amiss said, and the line was cut.

  *

  18.13 Seattle; 02.13 London

  At the Pike Place Market, Jack savoured the smells and colours of the fruit and vegetables. There was an atmosphere here that soothed him. A little of the nervous panic that he had felt since seeing Ginger at Anchorage dissipated as he eyed the chillies hanging in brilliant bunches and the tomatoes and squashes in baskets beneath. There was a stall with handmade glassware, another with sculptures, and all around was noise, bustle, and happiness.

  There were a pair of guitarists at the entrance to Pike Place Market, and he used the opportunity to pause again and monitor the people browsing the wares. The odour of fish was all about, and he felt the temptation to stop and buy some food, but quashed it. First he had work to do.

  In Pike Place there were no phone vendors that he could find, and after a frustrating half hour, he gave up. Looking at his map again, he saw another mall a few hundred yards away, and he made his way to it. Here he was more lucky. A bored boy in faded denims that sagged almost below his groin said ‘Yuh,’ when he asked about a pay-as-you-go phone, and soon he was in the street with his new Nokia.

  There was a coffee bar he remembered from his walk up
here, and he retraced his steps to it. A pleasant little café it was called the Online Coffee Bar, and he walked in and ordered himself a large Americano, taking his seat at a comfortable leather chair. Next to him was a plug, and he set his phone to charge. By the time he had finished his coffee, he was happy that the phone was good to go, and he put the cardboard cup into the trash bin as he left.

  In the street he dialled the number he’d memorised in London.

  A man’s voice responded.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘This is the tourist. Is there a message for me?’

  ‘Strange – I was just talking about you. Sounds like you’ve had some fun. We should meet up.’

  *

  21.17 Langley; 02.17 London

  Amiss had been at his desk since lunchtime, and while it was growing late, he remained there, waiting with a faint frown on his face. In the darkened room, shadows from his desk lamp made his face a hideous mask.

  He did not, as a rule, believe in arriving too early nor in staying too late. Easier by far to do urgent work at home in the morning, and read background material at night in front of his fire. The guards and safes he possessed were adequate for the papers he took home. While he could subsist on four hours of sleep in a night, he often found that the best ideas and reasoning came to him during the hours of sleep. Often he would wake, refreshed, with a problem resolved, and then he would have his secretary come in for dictation while he was still in his bed. It freed his mind, he felt. Sometimes, like today, he would vary his routines. It was good on occasion to have his chauffeur drive him to the office and to walk up to his floor alone, without the bustle and hectic noise of all the other staff. To come up here and sit at his desk and cogitate, considering the different possibilities and risks. Threat and opportunity, those were the two headings he used most often on paper when he was reviewing options.