Storm Crow

by Jeff Gulvin

  Swann pushed out a cheek with his tongue. ‘So you think this boy took some training and went solo?’

  Again Byrne spread his palms. ‘Jack, at this stage, it’s conjecture.’

  ‘What about the prints Webb gave you—did you get anywhere with them?’

  ‘Not so far. Trouble with the States is not every county sheriff or police department uses the national crime info center properly. We’ve got too many different law-enforcement agencies, I guess.’

  Swann chewed the end of his thumb. ‘He’s a doer this guy, which makes me wonder.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘What we’ve seen so far has taken two things above all else, a hell of a lot of planning and a hell of a lot of money. He’s blown up a car in Soho, letting us think it was PIRA, which means he’s had access to a Mk 15 TPU. The driver he used to collect him from that scene gave an address where Huella was actually living. We think he wanted us to find him. We had him under surveillance for a month and somehow he knew it, though we saw no sign of antisurveillance. We hit him on the ninth of June and somehow he knows we’re coming.’ Byrne stared at him then. ‘You got a leak here, Jack?’ The hubbub around them suddenly ceased, everyone looking at Byrne. Swann shrugged his shoulders. ‘He knew we were watching, maybe he saw us substitute his dustbins. Anyway, he had an escape route already planned and he used it. Somehow his intel’ is very, very good, which makes me wonder if he could have planned this, or whether there’s someone else in the background. He knew how SO19 attack, and he had the whole house rigged up to keep us there all day.’ He broke off, conscious of his colleagues looking at him. ‘I don’t know how he knew, Louis. Maybe he’s just the best antisurveillance man on the planet.’

  18

  SWANN AND WEBB WENT up to Northumberland for a few days with Louis Byrne, while Logan remained in London to brief the Operational Command Unit on the possible militia connection.

  They were allocated an office in Ponteland, where the local officers had already conducted a house-to-house inquiry. People remembered Ricky Gravitz: a talkative, open young man, typically American but pleasant enough. They traced his movements back to his arrival in the UK, where he hired a car at Manchester Airport after flying in from Denver, Colorado. Nobody had seen any second occupant. There had to have been two, at least, if only to build the dirty room, and sabotage the respirator.

  Swann sat at a desk and studied the map, picking out the most direct route from Manchester. Kuhlmann could have gone two ways, he decided, either up the M6 to Carlisle and then across the A69, which to the man in the know would have been the least busy route, but more likely he would have tried the more obvious route—M62 to the A1 and up. Swann had confirmed that the rental car was full of petrol, which he had paid for when he left Manchester. That gave him enough to get across to Consett, so there was no point in dispatching officers to check the filling stations along the way. He had arrived in Manchester just after lunch. Lunch would’ve been on the plane, which might mean a stop before Consett for food, given the size of aircraft portions. Swann looked over at Webb, who was reading some of the witness statements regarding Kuhlmann’s movements.

  ‘If you were going to get some grub on your way from Manchester, where would you stop, Webby?’

  Webb bunched his eyes. ‘Little Chef, probably. Easiest, isn’t it.’

  Swann nodded. ‘But where, round here?’

  Webb came over and looked at the map Swann had in front of him. ‘I reckon he came M62, then A1,’ Swann said.

  ‘Jesus. Hundreds of places.’

  ‘Maybe he met someone.’ Swann scratched his chin. ‘Just in from the States?’

  ‘Unless it was set up by phone. Nothing we’ve got so far shows us anyone meeting anyone else.’

  ‘Except the estate agent at Queen’s House Mews.’

  ‘True,’ Webb agreed. ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘I want to check all the cafés. See if he was seen and if so whether he was with anyone. There can’t be that many Americans in the north-east at any one time.’

  Webb tapped the map. ‘If he did stop, it wouldn’t be until he got more this way. You’ve got the Al or the A167, then you’ve got the A691. I’d go the A68—but that doesn’t mean he would.’

  Swann made some phone calls and located the restaurants on the roads in question. He took Byrne with him to check them. Five minutes after he left, Webb took a phone call from Nick Patterson at the forensic science laboratory in Lambeth.

  ‘The fibres you scraped from the second bedroom at Healey,’ Patterson said.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘I’ve got a match with Queen’s House Mews.’

  Swann decided to start with Consett and move out on one road. If that proved unfruitful, they would come back in on another and then out again on another. He had close-ups of one of the surveillance photographs that the undercover FBI agent had taken.

  ‘You ever been up this way before, Louis?’ he asked.

  Byrne looked out of the passenger window and shook his head. ‘Furthest north I ever got was Shrivenham, the last time I was over.’

  ‘Good conference?’

  ‘Not bad. You ever been to the ones they hold in Israel?’

  ‘At the Jonathan Institute?’

  Byrne nodded.

  ‘Can’t say I have. The commander’s been over once, I think.’

  They stopped south of Consett at the first restaurant on the A691, but nobody remembered Bruno Kuhlmann. Not everyone working the day in question was on duty, however, so Swann left them a picture and the phone number of DC Newham’s office in Ponteland.

  ‘So what about our man, Louis?’ Swann asked as they drove on to the next one. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Storm Crow?’ Byrne made a face. ‘If I knew that, Jack, I’d take him for what he did to us in Texas.’

  Swann glanced at him. ‘How close have you got to him?’

  ‘Well, I’ve got close to somebody, whether it’s him or not I don’t know. He knew I was gunning for him in Texas. I’m damn sure he was holed up in Mexico at the time. Covertly, myself and a few other guys tried to trace him using our embassy in Mexico City. But he got wise to us and disappeared. He’s the master of disguise: one of his favourites is a Greek Orthodox priest, but he’s been everything from a Sikh to a Rastafarian. It’s hard to track a man like that.’

  They drove on in silence and then pulled into the car park of the second restaurant. ‘What about Huella?’ Swann said. ‘From what your man in Israel said, he must be a definite maybe.’

  Byrne wrinkled his brow. ‘Could be. We’ve never had a positive sighting of him in the States, so I can’t tell you. We had a John Doe at Fort Bliss, but he was a Mexican driving sheep on a horse. The Chicanos couldn’t tell us anything.’

  ‘Chicanos?’

  ‘American-born Mexicans.’

  ‘Huella could pass for a Mexican,’ Swann said. ‘His hair’s IC3, but he keeps it short. Easy to wear a wig.’

  ‘IC3?’

  ‘Afro-Caribbean.’

  ‘Right.’ Byrne nodded. ‘Longer hair, Fu Manchu moustache and a hat. I guess it could’ve been him.’ He shifted sideways in the seat. ‘There’s something else familiar about him, but I can’t get a handle on what it is.’

  It was not until the sixth restaurant that they got anywhere. Swann went straight in and asked the girl standing at the till if she recognized Bruno Kuhlmann. She looked at the picture, screwed up her face and looked again. Then her eyes brightened. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do.’

  Swann felt the first surge of excitement since this Northumberland thing blew up. ‘American,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right. He came in with a woman.’

  ‘Can you remember what she looked like?’

  The waitress thought for a moment. ‘Blonde hair, quite long I think, and blue eyes. Yes, I remember, because she kissed him just as I picked up their coffee cups.’

  Swann’s heart was beating that little bit faster now.
‘Would you recognize her again?’

  ‘Probably.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Swann said. ‘Thank you very much.’ He took her details and then he and Byrne went back to the car. ‘Joanne Taylor,’ Swann told him. ‘We’ve had the description before.’

  ‘Brigitte Hammani,’ Byrne said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it, and I reckon they’re one and the same.’

  They went back to the headquarters at Ponteland and Webb greeted them. ‘How’d you get on?’

  ‘Eyeballed,’ Swann told him. ‘Little Chef on the A68. Woman with him, long blonde hair.’

  ‘Joanne Taylor?’

  ‘I’d say so.’ Swann looked at Byrne. ‘Louis thinks she’s Brigitte Hammani.’

  Webb looked at Byrne then. ‘The body from the first recorded incident?’

  ‘In 1989.’

  ‘Long time ago, Louis.’

  ‘Yes, and she’s never been seen since.’ He lifted his shoulders. ‘Just a theory, George. It doesn’t mean I’m right.’

  Webb sat down on the edge of a desk and told them about the results from Lambeth. Swann lit a cigarette and dropped the match in a metal bin. ‘Huella,’ he said. ‘Why am I not surprised?’

  ‘There’s something else,’ Webb said. ‘The glass. We’ve got a bloke with a London accent asking directions to the supermarket in Crook.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Five weeks ago.’

  ‘Driving a van?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hire companies?’

  ‘Already done. I’ve been on to the lads back at the Yard.’

  Swann looked at him then. ‘If he came up from London, he would’ve bought petrol,’ he said.

  Webb nodded. ‘How many possible routes are there?’

  ‘A1, Ml maybe, or even the M6.’

  ‘Carrying four eight-foot sheets of glass. How big a van, d’you reckon?’

  ‘Luton?’

  ‘Or a high-sider, maybe. What’s that going to do—two hundred and fifty, three hundred miles to a tankful?’

  Swann nodded. ‘Full when it’s picked up. You could get to Newcastle on that.’

  ‘Yeah. But you’d have to fill up pretty quickly afterwards. Say, forty miles south. Let’s check the red priorities.’

  They went through to see John Newham. ‘How many bodies can you give us, John?’ Swann asked him. ‘We need to hit every petrol station going forty miles south of here, for videos.’

  Newham looked doubtful. ‘Lads, you’ll be lucky if they’ve kept them this long.’

  ‘We know,’ Webb said. ‘But we need to do it anyway.’

  Newham arranged it, a bomb-burst of personnel covering every possible filling station forty miles south of the farm. Swann, in the meantime, went to the supermarket to try to find out if anyone had seen the van. While he was out, a call came in from Carter’s Car Auctions in Sunderland. The investigation team had been aware that Kuhlmann had been seen driving a white Ford Escort with a G prefix letter on the number plate, and they had requested anyone who had sold a G-registered Escort to an American to come forward.

  That first night they stayed at the Holiday Inn near Newcastle Airport. None of them had checked in yet, having driven straight to the headquarters at Ponteland. Louis Byrne dumped his case by the reception desk and made for the toilets. Swann showered, phoned Pia and got her answerphone, then went down to the bar for a drink. Byrne and Webb came in a few minutes later and they went into the restaurant. The waiter handed a wine list to Byrne. He laid it on the table and ordered two bottles of Barolo. ‘Bureau’s paying,’ he said.

  Back at the Yard, Bill Colson was poring over the undercover product brought across by the Foreign Emergency Search Team. ‘If this Kuhlmann got killed by Huella, then Huella must be working against Salvesen, if there is a Salvesen connection at all,’ he commented.

  Logan rubbed a hand through her hair. ‘I guess. It’s possible there is no connection, but it’s very coincidental. Kuhlmann was a fringe lunatic, did some service time and he was on the far right of society. He had dealings with militia in other parts of the States, but he wasn’t a compound dweller like some of them.’

  Julian Moore sat with them, together with David Campbell from MI6. Campbell picked up a photograph and studied it. Two men sitting at a wooden table in front of a huge log building, drinking steaming coffee from tall glasses with handles. ‘Where is this?’ he asked.

  Logan took the picture and squinted at it, then she looked at the marker on the back. SVL and dated 12 Feb 1996.

  ‘Looks like the lodge. Sun Valley Ski Lodge in Idaho. That guy’s Jake Salvesen. I don’t know who the other one is.’

  ‘Can I make a copy of this?’

  Colson looked quizzically at him. ‘What is it, David?’

  Campbell laid the picture down and tapped the second man with his fingernail. ‘Him, I recognize. Can’t tell you his name right now. But I do recognize him.’

  Moore looked at it and furrowed his brow. ‘It’s Sebastian May,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ Campbell nodded. ‘You’re right. Sebastian May.’

  Colson looked from one to the other of them.

  ‘Sebastian May,’ Moore explained. ‘A Hertfordshire MP until 1992. He lost his seat to the Lib-Dems. He’s always been ultra right-wing, hugely Eurosceptic’

  Campbell nodded. ‘Then he surprised everyone by not only running, but winning a seat in the European Parliament two years later.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll make that copy.’

  Colson touched him on the forearm. ‘I want to be kept informed, David. No Box 850 silences, please.’

  Campbell smiled at him. ‘Of course, Bill. If there’s something you need to know, we’ll tell you.’

  ‘I bet you will,’ Colson muttered after he had gone.

  The following morning, Swann and Webb were back in Ponteland early. Newham had video tapes from seven garages so far. ‘You’re lucky, lads,’ he said. ‘They’ve kept quite a few of them. On the other hand, you’re not so lucky. Now you’ve got to watch them.’

  They could do nothing, however, until they knew what they were looking for. Hundreds of vans stopped at filling stations for petrol. They had to wait until they got something from DI Clements in London. At ten-thirty, however, they got another phone call: the Ford Escort purchased by Ricky Gravitz had been found in a service station car park near Leeds. Webb told them to cordon it off and leave it. He got his gear together and drove down the motorway.

  Swann was talking to McCulloch and Newham when DI Clements finally phoned him.

  ‘We’ve got something on the van, Flash,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s been hired that gives us anything. But we have got a stolen one. Blue Transit nicked about five weeks ago.’

  ‘Recovered?’

  ‘Wallington in Surrey. Plates had been changed, Jack.

  The ones on it now belong to a different van, which was scrapped two years ago. The owner recognized some bodywork marks and the engine number checks out. He says it’s done five hundred more miles than it should have.’ Swann was smiling. ‘Sounds like our van, Guv.’

  ‘The index number you’re looking for is E112 EEV.’

  ‘OK. We’ve got some videos up here to look at.’

  ‘Good lad.’ Clements paused then. ‘How’s it going with Byrne?’

  ‘Good. He really knows his onions.’

  ‘Heard a bit about him since he arrived.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Serious player, apparently. He’s the FBI’s top agent in international terrorism. I’m told the Arabs want him dead because he knows so much about who’s playing for them these days. It was him who got the intelligence on the bombers for the World Trade Center.’

  Harrison was settled in his mid-level lay-up point at the back of Salvesen’s compound. He lay on his side, the gilly suit covering him completely. Ten minutes previously, he had seen Tate and Slusher make their sweep of the area. They passed below him, disappearing into the grove of fi
r trees which drifted up the gulch above the groundswell, some fifty feet from the outer perimeter fence. Above him clouds were massing, pressing the sky ever flatter towards the mountains. The tops of the highest ones were already lost in curling grey cumulus like thick ribbons of smoke.

  One of his motion sensors was suddenly activated, jaggling the pager on his belt. He lay very still and from above him he could hear something moving. Had he missed a patrol? He lay as still as the grave, only his fingers inching over the ground until they fitted the hilt of his knife. The wind was blowing straight off the mountain from behind him. The sound moved closer, slowly—footsteps. And then Harrison relaxed. He ought to know the difference between a man and an animal by now. Those were hooves he could hear. Moments later, the head of a bighorn sheep jutted into view. It sniffed the air as if it knew something was wrong, but its eyes could not equate with its snout. Heavy, curling horns and thick neck, it moved right past him and stopped again, then it cropped at the grass for a moment, eyes ever watchful. He could see it all now, not ten feet from him, deep tan body with a white patch on its rump and down the backs of its legs. Another movement caught his eye, down in the compound this time, and he put one eye to the lens of his camera. In the yard at the back of the house, Salvesen was walking with another man. Harrison looked harder and snapped off a couple of shots. Stocky little guy with cropped grey hair. Harrison felt as though he should know him.