Storm Crow

by Jeff Gulvin

  John Garrod, the commander of the Antiterrorist Branch, spoke on the phone to Major Ronald Hewitt of 11 Explosives Ordnance Disposal. ‘Storm Crow, Ron,’ Garrod was saying, ‘responsible for the incident in Northumberland.’

  ‘And you say there’s a dirty room somewhere in the City?’

  ‘We don’t know for sure, but all the evidence points to it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘God only knows. But we need you on standby. I’m going to speak to the Home Secretary shortly, because if this is what we think it is—we’ll be facing the worst threat this country’s known in peacetime. Operation Storm-cloud, Ron. It’ll be a category A incident, no soak time, a disposal operation will have to be activated immediately.’

  For a moment Hewitt was silent, then he said, ‘D’you know how many category As we’ve dealt with, John?’

  ‘I can’t remember one.’

  ‘No, neither can I.’

  Garrod put down the phone, glanced briefly at the pictures of his daughter and granddaughter on the desk, then he dialled the Home Office.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but you need to be aware,’ Garrod told him. ‘The threat is very real. You saw what happened at Healey Hall Farm. My instincts told me then that we were being put on notice and this fresh purchase of glass confirms it. Right now, we think the target could be the City because this is something to do with the European Union, maybe currency convergence, I don’t know.’

  ‘Why would an American be that concerned about currency convergence?’ the Home Secretary asked him.

  ‘I don’t know, sir. I can’t believe that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘We can’t have the City closing down, Mr Garrod. We need to find this dirty room and find it very quickly.’

  Garrod looked briefly at the ceiling. ‘I know that, sir. We’ve got every available officer on it now. We’re checking anything that’s happened in the City over the last six months—business rentals, fresh employment, residential rentals and purchases. We’re working round the clock.’

  Swann stared across the table at Tommy Cairns, who sat dressed in a white paper suit with his arms folded. Cairns stared back impassively.

  Swann said it again: ‘Tell me about Joanne Taylor.’

  Cairns shrugged. ‘I’ve told you. I don’t know what the hell you’re on about.’

  ‘OK.’ Swann sat back. ‘For starters, we’ve got you for passing a false driving licence to Denis Smith, so he could hire a van.’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘That’s not what he told us.’

  ‘His word against mine.’

  ‘Is it?’ Swann leaned towards him then. ‘Frank drove the cab that Tal-Salem and Pier-Luigi Ramas used when they shot Jean-Marie Mace. That makes Frank an accessory to murder. When I tell him that, and tell him that we can prove it, he’s going to have a lot to think about. I don’t suppose it’ll take him very long before he decides to tell us the rest.’

  ‘Frankie was with me the day that Frog got shot,’ Cairns said. ‘We were playing cards with Charlie Oxley. Ask Charlie’s mum, she was there.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Swann shook his head at him. ‘Then explain to me how we found a thread from Frank’s Levis on the driver’s seat?’

  Cairns stared at him and for a moment his eyes wavered. ‘If you did, you planted it.’

  Swann began to laugh then. Behind the two-way mirror, Byrne and Logan watched them. Swann snarled at Cairns. ‘It won’t wash, Tommy. When we get old Frank into the Bailey, he won’t have a leg to stand on. That’s him and Denis, accessories to murder. They’ll be gone for ever. We’ve also got Frank’s training shoe splashing through a puddle and leaving a nice fat print. We found them in the locker at the builder’s yard.’

  ‘He lent them.’

  ‘Oh, do me a favour.’ Swann rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘You know, I credited you with more intelligence than that. We’ve got a witness who can identify him.’

  ‘I want my lawyer.’

  ‘Ingram’s in custody.’

  ‘Not fucking Ingram.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell us about Ingram, Tom?’ Swann said. ‘Do yourself a favour.’

  Webb and Christine Harris were in the City, traffic fumes choking them, taxis and motorcycle couriers rushing by. They were checking the serviced offices off London Wall for any hint of Joanne Taylor. Elsewhere, hundreds of other officers were doing the same thing. The Legion patrols had been running for three days now and police officers were everywhere. SO19 armed response vehicles, helicopters from Lippetts Hill, the City police and even some specialist firearms officers had been seconded.

  ‘What about residential, Webby?’ Christine said, as they came out of their eighth property management company with yet more reams of paper.

  ‘Couple of the others are doing it. Let’s get this lot back to the Yard. My feet ache from all this walking.’

  They found Swann and McCulloch talking to Byrne and Logan. ‘We can make it stick with Frank Cairns and Smith’ll testify against Tommy,’ Swann was saying.

  Byrne scratched the hair that bristled on his scalp like fur. ‘Doesn’t get us any closer to the main man, though. Does it, Jack.’

  Swann shook his head. ‘Joanne Taylor’s the key. She’s the lynchpin, body on the ground, co-ordinating.’ He looked at Webb, who had just dumped a great pile of papers on the desk.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Shit is happening, Flash. Haven’t you noticed?’

  DI Clements came in then with Colson. They had just completed an interview with James Ingram.

  ‘What’ve you got, Guv?’ Swann asked Clements.

  ‘Not much. Ingram’s pleading ignorance and harassment. Did Cairns give him up?’

  Swann shook his head. ‘Cairns isn’t saying anything. He’ll happily let his brother take the fall along with the rest of them.’

  ‘If he does—they’ll hang him for us.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Swann sighed. ‘We’ve got the foot soldiers all right, but then they’re easy to get. What we need is Ramas and Tal-Salem and, above all, Boese.’

  Christine Harris looked over at them then. ‘Why haven’t we been contacted?’

  ‘He won’t necessarily call,’ Byrne said to her. ‘Not until afterwards, anyway.’

  The door opened then and the commander walked in. ‘What’s happening?’ he said to nobody in particular. They told him what they had and the lines deepened above his eyes.

  ‘I’ve just been on the phone to the Prime Minister. He isn’t very happy.’

  ‘Yeah well, shit happens to all of us.’ Webb yawned as he said it. ‘What’s he think we’re doing—lying around scratching our arses?’

  Police Constable Ray Stewart drank a pint of Guinness in the Bishop’s Finger in Smithfield. He had just finished a twelve-hour shift of Legion patrols and was enjoying one quiet pint before he went home to his family. The days had been long of late, the tension tangible, SO13 officers charging around all over the place. It made the activities of PIRA look small fry. He sipped the froth off the top of his pint, and licked his lips.

  Two stools down from him, a bunch of window cleaners were enjoying a joke. He knew them vaguely, part of the team that looked after the tallest office blocks and some of the residential ones. One man in particular was having a good laugh, tall and thin with lank, mouse-coloured hair and a thin drooping moustache. ‘Unbelievable. Wasn’t like it last time I cleaned. Painted completely black,’ he said.

  ‘The window?’ his mate next to him asked.

  ‘Yeah. I reckon there’s some kind of shagging party going on there. Some old slapper servicing all those rich geezers or something.’

  Stewart looked at him then and frowned. The man caught his eye, held it and looked away.

  ‘What did you say?’ Stewart asked him.

  The window cleaner stared at him.

  ‘What did you say?’ Stewart asked again. ‘A window-painted black?’

  ‘What’s it to you, mate? This is a private conversatio
n.’

  Stewart swivelled round on his chair and took his warrant card from his pocket. ‘City police,’ he said. ‘Now tell me about this window.’

  Swann phoned Pia at his house. She was not working and Annika was away for a few days. Swann had asked her if she would look after the girls till he got home.

  ‘How you doing?’ he said.

  ‘Fine. I’m quite enjoying myself actually. Are you coming home soon?’

  ‘Can’t, love. All hell’s breaking loose.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘We’re looking for something and we really need to find it.’

  ‘You can’t tell me any more?’

  Swann sighed. Before him on the desk was the series of photographs that the FBI agent had taken in Idaho, the Parisian receipt uppermost in the pile.

  ‘It’s the Northumbrian thing,’ he said. ‘We think he’s doing something similar in London. Can you stay with the kids till I get there?’

  ‘Jack, darling. I’ll stay all night if you want me to.’

  ‘You’re wonderful. I’ll get home as soon as I can.’

  He put the phone down and looked again at the pictures. Louis Byrne was standing the other side of the desk. ‘I’m going to go to Paris, Louis,’ Swann said. ‘Check this receipt out.’ He lifted the picture. ‘Salvesen must’ve met somebody there.’

  Byrne nodded. ‘I’ll tag along, Jack. If we can pin something on him here, the Hostage Rescue Team can take him back home.’

  Swann looked at the receipt again and squinted. ‘What d’you reckon that is?’ He pointed to the scrap of paper that was poking out from underneath the receipt, bits of words written on it. ‘Ten, ction, aces’.

  Byrne lifted his shoulders. ‘Probably nothing,’ he said. ‘Our UCA couldn’t have thought it that important or he’d have snapped it separately.’

  Swann looked at it again. ‘Somebody’s handwriting,’ he said. ‘Looks to me like some kind of Winthrop directions. “Aces” could be paces, “ction” could be action or junction maybe.’ He laid it down again. ‘I’d need to see the rest.’

  The phone rang then and Swann picked it up.

  ‘Jack, it’s Campbell. Upstairs. We’ve just had a uniform on the phone from the City. There’s a flat on the twenty-third floor of Liddesdale Tower with the window painted black.’

  Jesse Tate checked the outer perimeter fence with the rest of the men from the compound. They walked slowly, feeling their way along the wire to see if it had been breached. Ever since Mackey had showed up, Salvesen was a different man—angry, smarting with indignation. A federal agent watching him. They were trying to figure out who it was, somebody from the town, somebody on the move maybe. Jesse stopped at the back fence and scanned the hillside climbing up to the saddle. The snow was gone from the lowest slopes, but still drifted up in the draw. If anyone was going to watch, it would be from up there. He would have seen them, twenty years in the service taught him that much. He had been trained in covert observation and he knew its limitations. Yet Mackey and his phone call. Salvesen took it very seriously, the bit about the crow had convinced him. Jesse didn’t know why he needed foreign terrorists anyway. They could’ve done it themselves.

  ‘Hey, Jesse!’ Wingo was calling to him.

  ‘Whatcha got, buddy?’

  Wingo pointed to the bottom of the fence wire, directly beneath the goon tower. ‘It’s been cut,’ he said.

  Jesse dropped to one knee and inspected the wire at the base. Wingo was right, the wire had been cut and curled back, then rolled again and pressed into the earth. ‘Sonofabitch,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’ Salvesen thumped the desktop. ‘Who, Jesse? By God, when I find him, I’ll hang him myself.’ He stared at Tate then. ‘It’s beginning. You know it’s beginning. We must act before they do. Treason. That’s what it is. I want everyone in that town checked out. Everyone. I don’t care how long they’ve been there. Start with the ones who’re newest. Check out their lives, Jesse. Call whoever you need to call. I don’t care what it costs. I’ll find the sonofabitch whoever he is and when I do, I’ll hang him.’

  Harrison smoked one cigarette after the other as he sat in his trailer and pored over the papers spread out on the coffee table. He had both books by Hal Lindsey and a copy of the Bible, plus his own selection of the pictures from Salvesen’s office.

  He remembered Salvesen’s words on the Dictaphone and he checked it against the books. In 1970, Hal Lindsey, an evangelical preacher from Texas, had written The Late Great Planet Earth and traced certain prophecies of the Bible, linking them with the modern day. That had been almost thirty years ago. In 1995, Lindsey had updated events with Planet Earth 2000 AD. Harrison found comments in both books referring to the restoration of Israel as a nation in 1948. According to Lindsey’s interpretation of events, the end times would come about in the generation that witnessed the rebirth of Israel. On page 149 of his second book, he referred to Matthew twenty-four. ‘When its branch has already become tender, and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near: even so you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.’

  According to scholars, a Biblical generation was regarded as about forty years. ‘Well, that makes it way past time,’ Harrison muttered to himself. Over the page, though, Lindsey went further: ‘Did it perhaps begin in 1967 not 1948?’ Harrison recalled Salvesen’s words about the Gentile times being over. The Gentiles had ruled Jerusalem until the Israelis took it back in the Six-Day War.

  He sat back, sucked the froth of a Coors and lit another cigarette. Salvesen was always going on about the fourth kingdom as dreamed by Daniel and King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. He turned back to The Late Great Planet Earth, chapter eight: ‘Rome on the Revival Road’.

  Lindsey believed that the fourth kingdom was the resurrected Roman Empire. A ten-nation confederacy as foretold in the books of Daniel and Revelation. Harrison knew that in 1957 the European Community was born. Six countries—France, West Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy and Luxembourg—signed the original Treaty of Rome. He glanced back at the pictures he had taken in Salvesen’s study. Those six countries had topped the list with Rome marked in red above them. Three of the countries, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, had asterisks next to them. Why? He looked at the next nine countries on the list. Four of those had asterisks too—Spain, the UK, Denmark and Sweden. Seven in total marked out as separate from the others. What did they have in common?

  He heard a car pull up outside and Chief wandered in. Harrison had no time to shift the stuff from his coffee table, but he managed to cover the product from the office itself. Chief looked down at him, saw the Bible open and squinted. ‘You really do got religion, don’t you, Harrison.’

  Harrison looked up at him and shrugged.

  ‘What’s Guffy gonna say about that?’ Chief sat down next to him and Harrison shuffled the covert papers and stacked them on the floor. ‘Guffy’s got my religion,’ Chief went on. ‘Man, she burns more sage than I ever did.’

  ‘Wards off evil spirits. Why not—hell, there’s enough of them around.’

  Chief picked up The Late Great Planet Earth. ‘You reading this?’ He laughed then and flicked through the pages. ‘Man, I used to study this stuff when I was a Pentecostal.’

  ‘You were a Pentecostal?’ Harrison looked sideways at him. ‘What about all those war songs?’

  ‘Back on the Res’ when I got back from ’Nam,’ Chief told him. ‘Right about the time we were fighting the FBI. They threw me out because I couldn’t get a handle on it.’

  ‘The Pentecostals threw you out?’

  Chief nodded. ‘Said I was disruptive. Told me I couldn’t be in their church and a member of the American Indian Movement.’

  ‘Figures, I guess.’

  ‘Hell, it was the Christians that fucked us over in the first place.’ Chief picked up Harrison’s beer and took a swig.
>
  Harrison gave him a cigarette. ‘You know much about it?’ he said, nodding to the books on the table.

  ‘I guess.’ Chief looked at the second book. ‘Never saw this one. How does he explain the fact that Europe has fifteen countries and not the ten he kept harping on about?’

  ‘He doesn’t,’ Harrison said. ‘He just reiterated what he said. Ten, not fifteen. He thinks they’re the ten horns of the beast in Revelation.’

  ‘Right on, and the little horn being the Antichrist. God, I remember all that.’

  ‘He says five countries will drop out or amalgamate.’

  ‘How’re they gonna do that? European countries are splitting all over the place. Bosnia and Serbia, the Czechs. No one’s gonna amalgamate.’

  ‘That’s what I figured.’

  Chief took a pipe out of his pocket and pressed in a little pot. ‘How come you’re so interested, anyways?’

  ‘Just am I guess. Comes of going to Jake Salvesen’s church.’

  Chief regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Talking of which, that guy’s one agitated man.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I don’t know. But Jesse and his boys are in town right now, drinking in the Dollar and looking meaner than fuck.’

  Harrison took the lighted pipe from him and sucked on it, pulling the aromatic smoke deep into his lungs. He passed it back again. ‘What’ve England, Denmark, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Sweden and Luxembourg got in common?’ he asked him.

  Chief closed his eyes and blew a steady stream of smoke at the ceiling. ‘Kings and queens.’

  Harrison frowned. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Well, all except Luxembourg, that’s what they call a dukedom.’

  Harrison stared at him. Revelation, chapter twelve. Seven crowned heads. In chapter thirteen the horns were all crowned, but in chapter twelve it was the heads. ‘How come you know all this stuff?’ he said.