Avenger

by Frederick Forsyth

  Devereaux had studied terror, its creation and infliction. He knew that whether imposed by the state or a non-governmental source, it always divides into five levels.

  At the top are the plotters, the planners, the authorizers, the inspirers. Next come the enablers, the facilitators, without whom no plan can work. They are in charge of recruiting, training, funding, supply. Third come the doers: those deprived of normal moral thought, who push the Zyklon-B pellets into the gas chambers, plant the bomb, pull the triggers. At slot four are the active collaborators: those who guide the killers, denounce the neighbour, reveal the hiding place, betray the one-time school friend. At the bottom are the broad masses: bovine, stupid, saluting the tyrant, garlanding the murderers.

  In the terror against the West in general, and the USA in particular, A1 Qaeda fulfilled the first two functions. Neither UBL nor his ideological Number Two, the Egyptian Ayman Kawaheri, nor his Ops chief, Mohamed Atef, nor his international emissary, Abu Zubaydah, would ever need to plant a bomb or drive a truck.

  The mosque-schools, the madrassas, would provide a stream of teenage fanatics, already impregnated with a deep hatred of the whole world that was not fundamentalist, plus a garbled version of a few distorted extracts of the Koran. To them could be added a few more mature converts, tricked into thinking that mass murder guaranteed Koranic paradise.

  A1 Qaeda would then simply devise, recruit, train, equip, direct, fund and watch.

  On his way back in the limousine from his blazing row with Colin Fleming, Devereaux once again examined the morality of what he was doing. Yes, the disgusting Serb had killed one American. Somewhere out there was a man who had killed fifty, and more to come.

  He recalled Father Dominic Xavier who had taxed him with a moral problem.

  ‘A man is coming at you, with intent to kill you. He has a knife. His total reach is four feet. You have the right of self-defence. You have no shield, but you have a spear. Its reach is nine feet. Do you lunge, or wait?’

  He would put pupil against pupil, each tasked to argue the opposite viewpoint. Devereaux never hesitated. The greater good against the lesser evil. Had the man with the spear sought the fight? No. Then he was entitled to lunge. Not counter-strike; that came after surviving the initial strike. But preemptive strike. In the case of UBL he had no qualms. To protect his country Devereaux would kill; and no matter how appalling the allies he had to call in aid. Fleming was wrong. He needed Zilic.

  For Paul Devereaux there was an abiding enigma about his own country and its place in the world’s affections, and he believed he had resolved it.

  About 1945, just before he was born, and for the next decade through the Korean War and the start of the Cold War, the USA was not simply the richest and most militarily powerful country in the world; it was also the most loved, admired and respected.

  After fifty years the first two qualities remained. The USA was stronger and richer than ever, the only remaining superpower, apparently mistress of all she surveyed.

  And, through great swathes of the world, black Africa, Islam, left-wing Europe, loathed with a passion. What had gone wrong? It was a quandary that defied Capitol Hill and the media.

  Devereaux knew his country was far from perfect; it made mistakes, often far too many. But it was in its heart as well-meaning as any and better than most. As a world traveller, he had seen a lot of that ‘most’ in near vision. Much of it was deeply ugly.

  Most Americans could not comprehend the metamorphosis between 1951 and 2001, so they pretended it had not happened, accepting the Third World’s polite mask for its inner feeling.

  Had not Uncle Sam tried to preach democracy against tyranny? Had he not given away at least a trillion dollars in aid? Had he not picked up the hundred billion dollars a year defence tab for Western Europe for five decades? What justified the hate-you-hate-you demonstrations, the sacked embassies, the burnt flags, the vicious placards?

  It was an old British spymaster who explained it to him in a London Club in the late Sixties as Vietnam became nastier and nastier and the riots erupted.

  ‘My dear boy, if you were weak you would not be hated. If you were poor you would not be hated. You are not hated despite the trillion dollars; you are hated because of the trillion dollars.’

  The old mandarin gestured towards Grosvenor Square, where left-wing politicians and bearded students were massing to stone the embassy.

  ‘The hatred of your country is not because it attacks theirs; it is because it keeps theirs safe. Never seek popularity. You can have supremacy or be loved but never both. What is felt towards you is ten per cent genuine disagreement and ninety per cent envy.

  ‘Never forget two things. No man can ever forgive his protector. There is no loathing that any man harbours more intense than that towards his benefactor.’

  The old spy was long dead, but Devereaux had seen the truth of his cynicism in half a hundred capitals. Like it or not, his country was the most powerful in the world. Once the Romans had that dubious honour. They had responded to the hatred with ruthless force of arms.

  A hundred years ago the British Empire had been the rooster. They had responded to the hatred with languid contempt. Now the Americans had it, and they racked their consciences to ask where they had gone wrong. The Jesuit scholar and secret agent had long made up his mind. In defence of his country he would do what he believed had to be done, and one day go to his Maker and ask forgiveness. Until then the America-haters could take a long walk off a short jetty.

  When he arrived at his office Kevin McBride was waiting for him and his face was gloomy.

  ‘Our friend has been in touch,’ he said. ‘In a rage and a panic. He thinks he is being stalked.’

  Devereaux thought, not of the complainant, but of Fleming at the FBI.

  ‘Damn the man,’ he said. ‘Damn and blast him to hell. I never thought he’d do it, and certainly not that fast.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Peninsula

  There was a secure computer link between a guarded enclave on the shore of the Republic of San Martin and a machine in McBride’s office. Like Washington Lee, it used the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) system of unbreakable cyber codes to keep communications from prying eyes; the difference was that this one had authority.

  Devereaux studied the full text of the message from the south. It had clearly been written by the estate’s head of security, the South African van Rensberg. The English was over-formal, as of one using their second language.

  The meaning was clear enough. It described the Piper Cheyenne of the previous morning; its double pass, heading eastwards towards French Guyana and then back again twenty minutes later. It reported the flash of sunlight off a camera lens in the right-hand window, and even the registration number when it passed too low over the col in the escarpment.

  ‘Kevin, trace that aircraft. I need to know who owns it, who operates it, who flew it yesterday and who was the passenger. And hurry.’

  In his anonymous apartment in Brooklyn, Cal Dexter had developed his seventy-two frames and blown them up to prints as large as he could before losing too much definition. From the same original negatives he had also made slides which he could project onto the wall-screen for closer study.

  Of the prints he had created a single wall-map running the length of the sitting room, and from ceiling to floor. He sat for hours studying the wall, checking occasionally on a small detail with the appropriate slide. Each slide gave better and clearer detail, but only the wall gave the entire target. Whoever had been in charge of the project had spent millions and made of that once-empty peninsula a fearsome and ingenious fortress.

  Nature had helped. The tongue of land was quite different from the hinterland of steamy jungle that made up much of the small republic. It jutted out from the main shore like a triangular dagger blade, guarded on its landward side by the chain of hills that some primeval force had thrown up millions of years ago.

  The chain ran from the sea to the sea
, and at each end dropped to the blue water in vertical cliffs. No one would ever walk round the ends to stroll from the jungle onto the peninsula.

  On the landward side, the hills climbed gently from the littoral plain to about a thousand feet, with slopes covered in dense vegetation. Over the crests, on the seaward side, the slope was a vertiginous escarpment, denuded of any foliage, whether by nature or the hand of man. From the estate, anyone with binoculars looking up at the escarpment would easily see anything trying to descend onto the forbidden side.

  There was one single cut, or col, in the chain. A narrow track ran up to it from the hinterland, then twisted and turned down the escarpment until it reached the estate below. In the col was a barrier and guardhouse, which Dexter had seen too late as it flashed below his window.

  Dexter began to make a list of the equipment he would need. Getting in would not be a problem. It was getting out, bringing the target with him, and against a small army of estate guards, that would be close to impossible.

  ‘It belongs to a one-plane, one-man charter firm based at Georgetown, Guyana,’ said Kevin McBride that evening. ‘Lawrence Aero Services, owned and run by George Lawrence, Guyanese citizen. It looks perfectly legitimate, the sort foreigners can charter to fly into the interior . . . or along the coast in this case.’

  ‘Is there a number for this Mr Lawrence?’ asked Devereaux.

  ‘Sure. Here.’

  ‘Did you try to contact him?’

  ‘No. The line would have to be open. And why should he discuss a client with a complete stranger on the phone? He might just tip the client off.’

  ‘You’re right. You’ll have to go. Use scheduled flights. Have Cassandra get you on the first flight. Trace Mr Lawrence. Pay him if you have to. Find out who our inquisitive friend with the camera was, and why he was there. Do we have a station in Georgetown?’

  ‘No, next door. Caracas.’

  ‘Use Caracas for secure communications. I’ll clear it with the station chief.’

  Studying his wall-sized photo montage, Cal Dexter’s eye moved from the escarpment into the peninsula known simply as El Punto. Running along the base of the escarpment wall was a runway, taking up two-thirds of the fifteen hundred yards available. On the estate side of the runway was a chain-link fence that enclosed the entire airfield, hangar, workshops, fuel store, generator house and all.

  Using a pair of compasses and estimating the hangar length at one hundred feet, Dexter was able to start calculating and marking distances between points. These put the cultivated farmland at around three thousand acres. It was clear that centuries of wind-borne dust and bird droppings had created a soil rich in goodness, for he could see grazing herds and a variety of lush crops. Whoever had created El Punto had gone for complete self-sufficiency behind the ramparts of escarpment and ocean.

  The irrigation problem was solved by a glittering stream that erupted from the base of the hills and flowed through the estate before tumbling in a cataract into the sea. It could only originate in the high inland plateau and flow through the protective wall in an underground flue. Dexter noted the words: ‘Swim in?’ Later he would line-dash them out. Without a rehearsal, it would be crazy to attempt a passage through an unknown underground tunnel. He recalled the terror inspired by crawling through the water traps of the tunnels of Cu Chi, and they were only a few yards long. This one could be miles, and he did not even know where it began.

  At the base of the runway, beyond the wire, he could see a settlement of perhaps five hundred small white blocks, clearly dwelling units of some kind. There were dirt streets, some larger buildings for refectory halls and a small church. It was a village of sorts; but it was odd that, even with the men away in the fields and barns, there were no women or children on the streets. No gardens, no livestock. More like a penal colony. Perhaps those who served the man he sought had little choice in the matter.

  He turned his attention to the main body of the agricultural estate. This contained all the cultivated fields, the flocks, barns, granaries, and a second settlement of low white buildings. But a uniformed man standing outside indicated these were barracks for the security staff, guards, overseers. By the look and the number and size of the quarters, and the likely occupancy rate, he put the guards alone at around one hundred. There were five more substantial villas, with gardens, apparently for the senior officers and flight personnel.

  The photographs and the slides were serving their purpose, but he needed two things more. One was a concept of three dimensions; the other was a knowledge of routines and procedures. The first would need a scale model of the whole peninsula; the second would require days of silent observation.

  Kevin McBride flew the next morning from Washington Dulles direct to Georgetown, Guyana, with BWIA, landing at 2 p.m. Formalities at the airport were simple and with only a handgrip for a one-night stay, he was soon in a taxi.

  Lawrence Aero Services was not hard to find. Its small office was in a back alley off Waterloo Street. The American knocked several times but there was no reply. The moist heat was beginning to drench his shirt. He peered through the dusty window and rapped again.

  ‘Ain’t no one there, man,’ said a helpful voice behind him. The speaker was old and gnarled; he sat a few doors away in a patch of deep shade and fanned himself with a disc of palm leaves.

  ‘I’m looking for George Lawrence,’ said the American.

  ‘You Briddish?’

  ‘Uhuh. American.’

  The old-timer considered this as if the availability of charter pilot Lawrence was entirely down to nationality.

  ‘Friend of yours?’

  ‘No. I was thinking of chartering his aeroplane for a flight, if I can find him.’

  ‘Ain’t been here since yesterday,’ said the old man. ‘Not since they took him away.’

  ‘Who took him away, my friend?’

  The old man shrugged as if the abduction of neighbours was usual enough.

  ‘The police?’

  ‘No. Not them. They were white. Came in a rental car.’

  ‘Tourists . . . clients?’ said McBride.

  ‘Maybe,’ admitted the sage. Then he had an idea. ‘You could try the airport. He keeps his plane there.’

  Fifteen minutes later a sweat-drenched Kevin McBride was heading back to the airport. At the desk for private aviation he asked for George Lawrence. Instead he met Floyd Evans. Inspector Floyd Evans of the Georgetown Police Department.

  He was taken back downtown yet again, this time in a prowl car, and was shown into an office where the air-conditioning was like a long-delayed cold bath and delicious. Inspector Evans toyed with his passport.

  ‘What exactly are you doing in Guyana, Mr McBride?’ he asked.

  ‘I was hoping to pay a short visit with a view to bringing my wife on vacation later,’ said the agent.

  ‘In August? The salamanders shelter in August down here. Do you know Mr Lawrence?’

  ‘Well, no. I have a pal in Washington. He gave me the name. Said I might like to fly into the interior. Said Mr Lawrence was about the best charter pilot. I just went to his office to see if he was available for charter. Is all. What did I do wrong?’

  The inspector closed the passport and handed it back.

  ‘You arrived from Washington today. That seems clear enough. Your tickets and entry stamp confirm. The Meridien Hotel confirms your one-night reservation for tonight.’

  ‘Look, inspector, I still don’t understand why I was brought here. Do you know where I can find Mr George Lawrence?’

  ‘Oh yes. Yes, he’s in the mortuary down at our general hospital. Apparently he was taken from his office yesterday by three men in a rented four-by-four. They checked it back in last night and flew out. Do those three names mean anything to you, Mr McBride?’

  He passed a slip of paper over the desk. McBride glanced at the three names, all of which he knew to be false, because he had issued them.

  ‘No, sorry, they mean nothing to me. Why is Mr
Lawrence in the morgue?’

  ‘Because he was found at dawn today by a vegetable seller coming to market. Dead in a ditch by the roadside just out of town. You, of course, were still in the air.’

  ‘That’s awful. I never met him, but I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yes, it is. We have lost our charter pilot. Mr Lawrence lost his life and, as it happens, eight of his fingernails. His office has been gutted and all records of past clients removed. What do you think his captors wanted of him, Mr McBride?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Of course, I forgot. You are just a travelling salesman, are you not? Then I suggest you travel back home to the States, Mr McBride. You are free to go.’

  ‘These people are animals,’ protested McBride to Devereaux down the secure line from Caracas Station to Langley.

  ‘Come on home, Kevin,’ said his superior. ‘I’ll ask our friend in the south what, if anything, he discovered.’

  Paul Devereaux had long cultivated a contact inside the FBI on the grounds that no man in his line of business could ever have too many sources of information and the bureau was not likely to share with him the very gems that would constitute true brotherly love.

  He had asked his ‘asset’ to check in the archive database for files withdrawn by Assistant Director (Investigative Division) Colin Fleming since the request from on high had circulated regarding a murdered boy in Bosnia. Among the withdrawals was one marked simply ‘Avenger’.

  Kevin McBride, weary and travel-stained, arrived home the following morning. Paul Devereaux was in his office as early as usual and crisply laundered.

  He handed a file to his subordinate.

  ‘That’s him,’ he said. ‘Our interloper. I spoke with our friend in the south. Of course, it was three of his thugs who brutalized the charter pilot. And you are right. They are animals. But right now they are vital animals. Pity, but unavoidable.’