Storm Crow

by Jeff Gulvin

  Harrison kicked his toe against the hearth. ‘Drive me back to my trailer, Max. I need to get my stuff.’

  They left Jackson at the compound with the rest of the team and Scheller drove him into town. Harrison hadn’t phoned Guffy or anybody else. His cover was blown and everyone in Passover would know that he had lied to them for all but two years. He sat silently in the car, window rolled down, a cigarette between his blackened fingers.

  ‘What about the Indian?’ Scheller said.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Maybe it was him.’

  ‘You kidding me, Max? Chief got Salvesen for us.’

  Scheller made a face. ‘I heard he was at Wounded Knee with Banks and Means.’

  ‘We fucked up at Wounded Knee, Max. You know it as well as I do.’ He flicked ash out of the window. ‘Anyway, why would Chief wanna burn me?’

  ‘He called us out.’

  ‘Which clears him.’

  ‘Does it?’ Scheller made a face. ‘People do weird things, John.’

  ‘Listen.’ Harrison grabbed a handful of Scheller’s jacket. ‘He got shot for his trouble.’

  ‘Hey.’ Scheller shook off his grip. ‘You’re the one with a hair up your ass.’

  Scheller drove him into town, slowly, twenty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit. Most people were home from work. Joe’s club was busy, as was the Silver Dollar. FBI agents were everywhere and you could smell the tension and distrust in the air. They were almost at Joe’s club when Harrison said: ‘Drop me off here, Max.’

  Scheller looked at him. ‘Forget it, JB. Just get your gear and get out. There’s nothing for you here.’

  ‘Stop the fucking car.’

  Scheller shook his head and pulled over. Harrison opened the door and climbed out. He caught a glimpse of his features in the door mirror, a blackened mark on the side of his head where the filth of the mine still stuck. He’d yet to take a shower or change his clothes.

  Scheller drove off and Harrison stood for a moment outside the laundromat. Two other agents were watching from a parked sedan across the street. Harrison took another cigarette and flipped his Zippo, then he crossed the side street and walked into the Silver Dollar. The conversation dribbled to nothing. Harrison stood in the doorway, the cigarette clamped so hard between his teeth he almost bit through it. Everyone was there: Danny sitting at the far end of the bar, Monty, Cecil from Galveston Bay, Randy Miller and Sandy; Junior and Smitty, Wayne Olson, Colin, Kevin; Greg Gibson standing next to them, with Chris Shea and Mike and Billy. Fathead held a can of Coors in his hand. Cody was sitting with Terri, and Tracey Farrow and his brothers looked across the bar at him. Right at the far end, with Tracy, sat Lisa Guffy.

  Harrison made his way towards her and the men parted in front of him. Charlie Love stared at him, but when Harrison caught his eye he looked away. Nobody looked him in the eye and nobody said anything. ‘Guffy,’ he said quietly. She looked up, narrowed her eyes and then slapped him hard across the face. She did not say anything, lips compressed to white, her whole body shaking. Harrison took it, didn’t flinch, eyes not wavering from hers.

  ‘Guffy,’ he said again.

  ‘Get-out-of-my-face.’

  He stepped back and turned to the bar. Vicki folded her arms. ‘Gimme a Bud, Vicki.’ She nodded to the sign above her head: ‘We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.’

  Harrison bunched his lips, sucked on his cigarette and crushed it under his thumbnail. He turned then, walked through the people who used to be his friends and stepped outside. Across the road in Joe’s club, the crowd on the stoop stared at him. From his jeans pocket he took a pinch of chew and placed it under his lip. He sucked and spat, then walked down to his trailer.

  Inside, he threw his clothes into a suitcase and grabbed a beer from the fridge. Scheller sat on the couch and watched him. ‘Fucked you over, huh?’

  Harrison looked at him. ‘Nobody fucked me over, Max. It was the other way round.’ He picked up the keys to his truck. ‘See you in Salt Lake.’

  Outside, he threw his case into the back of the truck and got in. He fired her up, clanked in reverse and backed out. Little T stared at him from the stoop of his trailer. Harrison turned the truck round and drove down to the entrance. Danny Dugger stood in the middle of the road; a slight, hunched figure with his hands in his jeans pockets, jacket zipped up to the neck. Harrison stopped the truck in front of him. Danny looked left and right and moved over to the driver’s door. Harrison rolled the window down. Danny sniffed, wiped his moustache with his fingers, then looked up out of clear blue eyes. He offered his right hand and Harrison clasped it firmly. ‘Good luck,’ Danny said, then turned and walked away.

  Harrison drove the hour and a half to Hagerman in the southern part of the state. Down by the Snake River Dam, in a sun-filled valley surrounded by flat-topped bluffs. Farming country, flatter and hotter than Passover. He parked the truck outside the Angler bar and stepped inside. It was dark and cool and a number of men sat at the rail watching basketball on the TV. Two Mexicans shot a game of pool, one with a pockmarked face and a straw cowboy hat. He squinted briefly at Harrison, who walked the length of the bar, his gun hidden in the waistband of his jeans, and set himself on a vinyl-topped stool. The bartender served him a beer and a shot of Jagermeister, which he downed in one. She handed him his change.

  ‘John Mackey drink here?’ he asked her.

  ‘John Henry? Ever’ night.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Pretty soon. You a friend of his?’

  ‘Kinda. Do me a favour, hon’. Would you? When he gets here, let me know.’

  She drew up her face. ‘You’re his friend and you don’t know what he looks like?’

  ‘Only spoke on the telephone.’

  She went to serve somebody else. Harrison lit a cigarette and nursed his beer for a half-hour or so. He could still feel Guffy’s palm on his face. No more than he expected. But for a while there, you hoped they would understand. But how could they, when he’d told them a bunch of lies for two solid years. It was bitter though and the feeling of loss was intense. Ironic really. He’d got back a piece of himself stolen in the tunnels of Cu-Chi, almost thirty years ago; and yet in doing so, he had lost everything else. UCA, he told himself. Never a-fucking-gain.

  Mackey came in at seven-thirty. The bartender was as good as her word and pointed him out to Harrison. He was a surly-looking big man, with black hair and a dusty red baseball hat. He bought a bottle of Bud and started talking to the man on the bar stool next to him. Harrison listened in.

  ‘Fucking FBI busted Jake Salvesen,’ Mackey was saying. ‘Sonofabitch Feds. Can’t leave a man alone.’

  Harrison smiled to himself and drank. A few minutes later, Mackey slid off his bar stool and hitched up his pants, then he made his way to the men’s room at the back of the bar. Harrison followed him. There were only two rest rooms—men’s and women’s—one pan in each, with no separate urinal. Harrison glanced back to the bar, then jerked open the men’s room door. Mackey jumped, dick in his hand, and sprayed piss all over the cistern. Harrison closed the door and leaned on it.

  ‘What the fuck—you goddamn fucking faggot.’

  ‘Shut up.’ Harrison pulled the Glock from his waistband and Mackey’s mouth fell open. His piss dried up and he stood there holding his dick, with his pants around his ankles. Harrison worked a round into the breech, then very deliberately he pointed the gun at Mackey’s privates.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  Harrison pulled his shield from his shirt pocket and flapped it under his nose. ‘I’m a sonofabitch Fed.’ He stepped right up to him then and pressed the gun against the soft flesh at the base of Mackey’s throat. ‘You told Jake Salvesen that I was watching his compound. That really pissed me off.’ Mackey’s eyes were balling now and he was backed up against the wall. ‘I wanna know exactly how you knew.’

  Swann and Clements drove along Upper Grosvenor Street and parked on double yellow lines. McCul
loch and Tania Briggs pulled up behind them in the second car, placed the Met warrant book on the dashboard and got out. Swann stood on the pavement and tugged at the cuffs of his suit. He could feel the knot in his gut and the loneliness was just about unbearable. This morning, he had taken the girls to school himself. This afternoon, their mother would collect them and they would go home with her. McCulloch looked across the roof of the car at him.

  ‘Jack, you don’t have to do this. Why don’t you fuck off and get drunk?’

  Swann shook his head. ‘I do have to do it, Macca. But thanks all the same.’

  Inside, Bailey, the commissionaire, looked up, saw Swann and smiled. ‘Mr Swann,’ he said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Just fine, Harry. Is Pia in?’

  ‘I’ll buzz her for you.’

  Swann shook his head, laying a hand across Bailey’s arm. ‘Official, Harry. We’ll make our own way up.’

  He led the way; wide stone stairs spiralling up to the third floor. Clements walked alongside him, with Tania and McCulloch behind. Swann was aware of the sound of his footsteps, exactly how many he took before they met with the carpeted landing. He paused, glanced at the others, then opened the door to Pia’s office. Debbie, her secretary, was sitting at her desk, with Pia across from her on the telephone. Her eyes lit up when she saw Swann and then darkened again as the others followed him in.

  ‘Hi, Jack,’ Debbie said. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’

  Swann did not say anything. He stood to one side and looked at Pia. He had never seen her looking so beautiful. She put the phone down and stood up. Tania moved across the room to her, with Clements and McCulloch.

  ‘Jack,’ Pia said. ‘What’s going on?’

  Clements showed her his warrant card. ‘Brigitte Hammani,’ he said. Pia flinched, the shock standing out in her eyes. Swann looked away: for a moment he had still hoped, but the recoil, the recognition there in her face. He wondered how long it had been since anyone had called her that. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Clements,’ the DI went on, ‘Antiterrorist Branch. I have a warrant for your arrest.’

  Pia sat down, opened her mouth and then closed it again. She looked across at Swann and he looked right back. Tania moved to her side of the desk. ‘Stand up, please,’ she said. Pia didn’t move. She was still staring at Swann, something broken up in her eyes. ‘Stand up,’ Tania repeated, and this time Pia did get up. Debbie was still sitting in her chair, staring open-mouthed.

  Paul Ellis, the banking director, walked across the landing and Swann moved out into the hall. From the corner of his eye, he could see Tania putting handcuffs on the woman he had slept with for the past eighteen months.

  ‘Jack,’ Ellis said. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  ‘Pia’s under arrest, Paul. Conspiracy to cause explosions.’

  Ellis stared at him. ‘What’re you talking about? She’s a banker.’

  ‘No, she’s not. She’s a terrorist.’

  Clements sat one side of her, with Tania Briggs on the other. McCulloch drove the DI’s car and Swann drove on his own. They took her straight to Paddington Green where Webb and the FBI team were waiting. She was stripped and searched and given a paper suit to wear and then she was locked in a cell. Swann went over the road for a drink. He sat on his own, chain-smoking. The barman polished glasses. Swann looked at his watch and thought about his children. Rachael would be picking them up pretty soon and tonight he would be in the flat on his own. His hand shook as he lit yet another cigarette, then he felt somebody behind him and looked round at George Webb.

  ‘Guinness,’ Webb said to the barman and sat down next to him. He sighed heavily. ‘I don’t know what to say, Jack.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I don’t either.’

  ‘I haven’t told Caroline yet.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I’ll tell her tonight.’

  ‘What’s happening over the road?’

  ‘Getting ready to interview her.’

  ‘Who’s doing it?’

  ‘Clements and Louis Byrne.’

  ‘Has she asked for a lawyer?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  Swann drank the last of his beer. ‘I want to watch,’ he said.

  He was sitting in the anteroom, looking through the two-way mirror as Pia was brought in. Brigitte, her name was Brigitte. He must stop thinking of her as Pia. Byrne and Clements were already there and both of them got up as she was brought to the table. She looked very small in the oversized paper suit and Swann could see from her eyes that she had been crying. She looked long and hard at the mirror as if she knew he was there.

  ‘This is a preliminary interview,’ Clements told her, ‘and we won’t be taping it. If you want legal representation at this stage, you’re entitled to it.’

  They had taken everything from her desk, and established that on the occasions Joanne Taylor was active, Pia was not in the office.

  She sat now, mouselike almost, with her hands in her lap. ‘Do you want a solicitor present?’ Clements asked her.

  She shook her head. ‘Can I smoke please?’

  Swann watched as Clements took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and gave them to her. She lit one with wavering hands and puffed nervously towards the ceiling.

  ‘I want to talk to Jack Swann,’ she said.

  Clements shook his head. ‘You need to talk to us first.’

  Byrne leaned across the table then. ‘My name’s Louis Byrne,’ he said. ‘I’m a supervisory special agent with the FBI, International Terrorism Operations Unit. You are Brigitte Hammani, aren’t you?’

  Pia was staring at him, a strange light in her eyes, as if she were unsure of something.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I am.’

  Swann could see the tension slip from Clements’s shoulders as he realized that he was going to get the information he wanted. There was a resignation about the set of her body, something like relief almost. Swann frowned and rested his chin on his fist.

  ‘I was in Israel in 1989,’ Byrne said. ‘Tell me about the fourth of July, when Welford-Jennings’s car was attacked.’

  Again she stared at him.

  ‘Said Rabi,’ he went on. ‘Yasser Arafat’s Fatah. Rabi was out on a limb. So, I believe, were you.’

  She looked at the floor then and drew fiercely on the cigarette.

  ‘Storm Crow,’ Clements said. ‘Ismael Boese.’

  She looked up again.

  ‘You know the name?’

  ‘I never knew names.’

  ‘But you did work with the terrorist known as the Storm Crow.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you do exactly?’

  ‘I co-ordinated things for him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I had to.’ She looked at Byrne then. ‘You were in Tel Aviv?’

  ‘Not on the fourth. I was in Athens, working with the legal attaché. I was dispatched to Tel Aviv from there.’ He sat further forward in his chair. ‘What happened afterwards?’

  She looked beyond them both then and straight into Jack Swann’s eyes. ‘Said got killed. I never saw it. We ran, he one way, me another.’ She paused and lit another cigarette. ‘I didn’t go to my flat. The Fatah were deciding whether to punish Said for things he had said. I was his girlfriend, they might look for me too.’ She sucked hard on the cigarette, drawing her cheeks into hollows. Swann was listening intently.

  Byrne shifted in his seat. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I went to the home of a friend. I stayed two days, then went to Bethlehem to a small hotel I know.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Somebody telephoned me. Said he was a friend. He told me that Said had been working for him.’ She frowned then. ‘I didn’t understand. I thought he was Mossad or maybe Fatah looking for a betrayal. Said never said anything about working for anyone else. He wanted to prove his worth to Arafat.’

  Clements pushed the ashtray closer to her. Her hands were shaking and ash was spilling on to the table. ‘Go on,’ Byr
ne said. ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I listened. I was frightened, but what could I do? This man knew exactly where I was and how I had got there. He told me to listen to the television news and then he would call me back. I did watch the news and they said the attack on the American was claimed by the Storm Crow. I had never heard of him.’ She paused again. ‘He called me back. He told me he had a passport and plane tickets.’

  ‘And did he?’

  She nodded. ‘The tickets came three days later. There was money and an Israeli passport with my picture in it. It said I was a banker.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Italy first. A hotel was provided for me and then I received another call. This time I had to go to London. When I got there, I was to check into a guesthouse and wait till he contacted me again.’ She made a face. ‘Money was provided for food and lodging and clothes. Good clothes. I received another phone call and another passport. Italian this time; the name was Pia Grava. He told me that my parents were dead and that I was half Jewish and half Italian. He told me to find work. He also told me that the Fatah, the Israeli Secret Service and the FBI were looking for me. If I did as I was told and worked well, then he would keep me safe. But if I didn’t, he would give me up to whoever caught me first.’

  ‘He owned your life,’ Clements said.

  She nodded. ‘From then until now.’

  ‘What happened—how did you get into the bank?’

  ‘I’m not stupid. I studied hard in the Middle East. But he sent me documents for qualifications that I did not have and I got a job with a bank. They put me on a management training programme and I went to college in England and then in the United States. I gained a degree in economics and then an MBA. He told me exactly what he wanted from me. I needed to get work with one of the private banking facilities. He didn’t tell me why, but he said, with my background, my looks and my qualifications, I could make it work.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I did make it work. Ask Jack Swann. I earned a lot of money.’