Storm Crow

by Jeff Gulvin

  ‘But he owned your life,’ Byrne said quietly.

  She looked down again, stubbed out the cigarette and reached for another. ‘He owned me, yes. I had to do what he told me, although sometimes he would not contact me for months. It was always the same though, he reminded me that he watched me always and with one phone call I would be visited by Mossad or the Palestinians.’

  ‘So he effectively blackmailed you,’ Clements said. ‘For nearly ten years.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Byrne sat back and crossed his legs. Swann watched from behind the mirror. ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘Nothing. Only what he does.’

  ‘D’you have any Mexican clients?’

  She looked at him strangely again. ‘I don’t personally, but the bank does, yes.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Roberon Manuel Ortega, for one.’

  ‘Ortega banks with you?’

  ‘In Bermuda.’ She smiled then. ‘The bank haven’t got a clue what he really does.’

  Byrne looked at Clements. ‘The Ortega Querrer cartel,’ he said. ‘Fort Bliss.’

  He looked back at Pia once more. ‘Jakob Salvesen. He was your client?’

  ‘The biggest.’ She drew harshly again on the cigarette. ‘The Storm Crow wanted Salvesen. I didn’t know what he knew about him but I was instructed to get him as a client.’

  ‘How did you do that?’

  ‘First of all the Storm Crow attacked a bank in Bilbao and then killed a man called Alessandro Peroni in Paris. He was a European currency adviser. Storm Crow had researched Salvesen and knew he was concerned about the United States of Europe and the rise of the Antichrist. He was mad, of course, but convincing. Storm Crow committed those two acts to put himself on the market. I then made sure I was invited to the same parties Salvesen was. That’s how the business works. In order to get the job in the first place, I had to convince Paul Ellis that I could bring people to him. I had a false background and Storm Crow gave me targets to get, so I got them.’

  ‘How did you do that?’ Clements asked her.

  ‘How do you think, Inspector?’

  Swann looked at the space between his feet and shook his head. The door opened behind him and Webb came in with Logan. She laid a hand on his shoulder.

  In the interview room, Clements was speaking. ‘So he used you to get to wealthy clients, clients who might have work for him. Is that it?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Ortega?’ Byrne asked her. ‘The drug-runner?’

  ‘Not directly through me but yes, the same principle.’

  ‘And Salvesen?’

  ‘Definitely Salvesen.’

  ‘How much did Salvesen pay?’ Clements asked her.

  She crushed out her cigarette. ‘Ten million dollars.’

  Both Byrne and Clements watched her. ‘You arranged it?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘Yes I did. It was paid in cash.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Salvesen gave it to me, then I took it to a dead drop and left it.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The Virginia City overlook in Nevada.’

  Pia sat back then and looked through the glass at Swann. ‘You know something,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you caught me. I was sick and tired of this. I’d rather spend the rest of my life in prison than be party to any more. Who caught me—Jack?’

  Clements nodded.

  ‘Paris, was it? He told me he was going to Paris.’

  ‘You had a meeting with Salvesen.’

  She nodded.

  ‘You used Swann to get information for Storm Crow. Is that right?’ Byrne asked her.

  She nodded. ‘He needed insurance. He always does. There’s always a policeman or government official somewhere. Jack didn’t know I was doing it.’

  ‘He chose Swann specifically?’ Clements asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he was just divorced, a bit fragile, and Storm Crow knew he had a weakness.’

  ‘Weakness?’ Byrne said.

  ‘Yes. In 1993, Jack killed his climbing partner in the Himalayas. He’s never got over it.’

  Swann felt the hairs rise on his cheeks. He got up, pushed past Webb and went out into the corridor. He left Paddington Green and caught a tube train home. When he got there, he locked the door and sat in his living room with a bottle of beer and a cigarette. He felt as though somebody had taken hold of him by the scruff of the neck, shovelled out all that he was, then dumped it on the pavement for everyone to look at. The flat was empty, the children gone, and Pia Grava was Brigitte Hammani, a terrorist. The Storm Crow had singled out his life and ruined it. Boese’s face, the first time they had met, stuck in his mind like an open wound.

  But something still nagged at him. Boese had not been in Israel in 1989, or if he had they didn’t know about it. But Boese had been in Queen’s House Mews. Boese had been in Northumberland, and in Liddesdale Tower. What Pia had just described was the most cynical, systematic piece of planning he had ever heard. And the bottom line was profit. Somebody, somewhere, was pulling the strings and it was not Ismael Boese.

  Harrison was in Salt Lake City, at the FBI field office with Bob Jackson, his supervisor. Tom Kovalski was due in from D.C. later that morning. Harrison sat at a desk and leafed through the information he had gathered from the Strategic Intelligence Operations Center in D.C. He wanted to know exactly who had had access to his product, he wanted all the names and he made no bones about why.

  ‘JB, Kovalski isn’t gonna thank you for this,’ Jackson told him.

  ‘Hey, Bob.’ Harrison looked up at him. ‘Remember that video tape we watched? That was me in there.’

  ‘I know that.’ Jackson leaned his fists on the table. ‘But what’re you gonna prove—and how’re you gonna prove it?’

  Harrison sat back and sighed. There were upwards of a hundred different people who had access to the product. ‘I owe this to myself, Bob,’ he said. ‘And the Bureau owes it to me.’

  He returned to his work, evidence copies laid out before him. Mackey, the militia man in Hagerman, had told him about the phone call and the message for Jake Salvesen. He said he knew no more than that and Harrison believed him. He had requested his phone records, however, to check the incoming calls. He knew the date and he knew roughly the time. Salvesen himself was being shipped from Blaine County to a holding centre there in Salt Lake so that the Bureau could begin their interrogation. That was partly why Kovalski was coming over. Salvesen had been arming and training the militia, not for a march on D.C., but in readiness for when the European Antichrist invaded or whatever the hell he thought was going to happen. But that still left a well-trained and heavily armed bunch of private armies all over the country.

  Harrison stared at the photos in front of him. The compromise had corresponded with him getting inside Salvesen’s office, so something he had filmed was the key to that timing. Somebody saw something they didn’t want anyone else to see. By the time the FBI Hostage Rescue Team got inside the compound, the contents of Salvesen’s drawers were gone.

  He flicked through the pictures of the maps and the books and the Bible texts and then he stopped and considered the receipt from Paris. He knew now that Scotland Yard had picked up Brigitte Hammani because of it. He looked at it again; maybe that was it, just the receipt. But that only implicated Salvesen and Hammani. He was about to discard it when he paused and looked more closely at the slip of paper poking out from underneath, handwritten bits of words. ‘Ten, ction, aces’. He didn’t know what it meant, but it was handwritten and he could tell from the shape of the letters that it was not Salvesen’s hand.

  Bob Jackson was back in his office when Harrison went looking for him. ‘Who else was in the FEST that went over to England?’ Harrison asked him.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I need to know.’

  Jackson steepled his fingers in front of him. ‘Johnny, why don’t you just sit and think about this for a few da
ys, huh. We’ve got Jake Salvesen and the British rendered the bomb safe. You did a great job out there and you deserve a vacation. Why not get some rest?’

  Harrison sat down opposite him. ‘Bob, somebody tried to kill me.’

  ‘I know that. But it could’ve been anyone. It could easily have been the Indian. You know he was at the Wounded Knee stand-off in 1972.’

  Harrison shook his head. ‘You know that doesn’t make sense. Why would he compromise me, then call in the cavalry and then get himself shot?’

  ‘I don’t know. But he obviously knew who you were and what you were doing. How come he didn’t mention it to you? From what you told us, you were friends.’

  Harrison shook his head. ‘Bob, you know it wasn’t Chief.’

  Jackson sighed. ‘Listen, JB. I know how you feel, but don’t go making waves, huh. If it is somebody on the inside, we’ll get him in time and we’ll get him quietly. We’ve had enough bad publicity in recent years, what with Oklahoma and Richard Jewel. This is a great victory for us and we can show the public just what some of these militia guys are really like. Washington is not gonna like a UCA running around with a hair up his ass.’

  Harrison looked across the desk at him. ‘I want Tom Kovalski to know how I feel, Bob. If you don’t tell him, I will.’

  29

  SWANN COULDN’T SLEEP PROPERLY and was at the Yard by 6 a.m. Byrne was there already and Swann was surprised to see him so early, sitting at the allotted desk in the squad room, his mobile phone in front of him.

  ‘Hotel beds not suit you, Louis?’ he said.

  Byrne pushed his chair back. ‘Get up at five when I’m working, Jack. Habit from my service days. I work in the hotel or at the embassy before I come in here.’

  They were the only two in the squad room. Swann sat down at his own desk and looked through a few papers. An IRA trial was coming up and he was due at the Old Bailey to give evidence.

  ‘I gotta message for you, Jack,’ Byrne said, and Swann glanced over to him again.

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘Pia.’

  ‘You mean Brigitte Hammani.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What’d she say?’

  ‘She asked me to tell you that she was sorry.’

  Swann stared at him. ‘Thanks, Louis. But you know what—I really don’t want to hear it.’

  At the morning briefing later, Colson was speaking about the arrest of Brigitte Hammani. ‘She was interviewed informally yesterday,’ he said. ‘Her full statement will be made today, but she is being very co-operative.’ He looked at Clements. ‘Relieved almost. Wasn’t that how you put it, Dave?’

  ‘How it felt to me.’

  ‘She admitted to being Joanne Taylor,’ Colson went on. ‘She also told us she was the woman who met Bruno Kuhlmann in Northumberland and liaised with Action 2000.’ He paused. ‘So we have a partial result at least. We’ve got the Cairns brothers and maybe James Ingram.’

  ‘But not the guy we really want,’ Swann said.

  Colson glanced at him and shook his head. ‘Hammani told us she had meetings with a man in Westminster Cathedral. Sometimes he dressed as a Greek Orthodox priest.’

  ‘Boese,’ Byrne cut in. ‘And Storm Crow. Favoured disguise. They’re one and the same person.’

  Swann looked sideways at him then. ‘I don’t think so, Louis. What we were told yesterday, the planning, the patience of it all. That tells me someone else is behind this. Boese’s just the man on the ground.’

  ‘Profile, Jack. Background.’

  Swann shrugged. ‘Means he’s a good man on the ground, that’s all.’

  Colson cut in on them: ‘We won’t know till we catch him, but I have to agree with Louis. My guess is Boese. Anyway, we’ve asked for CCTV tapes from the cathedral, but they wipe them every week. According to Hammani, the first meeting took place months ago.’

  ‘Does she think Boese’s the Storm Crow?’ Webb asked him.

  Clements answered for him. ‘She doesn’t know, George. The bottom line is no one does for sure, except Boese himself. She says she spoke on the telephone with someone, starting when she was in Israel. Recently, he’s always used a mobile. She believes some of the calls came from the States, which puts Boese back in the frame.’

  Colson nodded. ‘What we can confirm for sure is Louis’s theory that he’s in this for the money. Hammani was effectively his researcher. He created an education, put her through college and made sure she got into banking. He then used her to pick up on some of the world’s more unsavoury but wealthy individuals. That’s how he established his reputation, cold cunning and calculating.’

  ‘A strategist and a planner,’ Swann said. ‘In my experience, those guys tend to be REMFs.’

  Rear echelon motherfuckers. Colson’s features darkened, but Swann ignored him.

  ‘When did Napoleon or Hitler actually pick up a gun and fight anyone?’ he went on. ‘They sat in their bunkers and planned what to do. What you’ve just described, sir, is serious strategic planning. I listened in to that interview yesterday. She talked about the Storm Crow claiming he’d recruited Said Rabi for the attack on the ambassador’s car. Does that sound like Boese? Boese doesn’t recruit, he’s on the ground. Action man. I reckon somebody else recruited Rabi and that same person recruited Ismael Boese.’

  ‘Hang on, Jack,’ McCulloch said. ‘You’re saying that Boese’s too much of a doer to have planned all this. I don’t agree. He could easily have done it in advance. Let’s face it, most of the donkey work was done by your ex-girlfriend.’

  Swann stared at him.

  ‘Sorry, man. I didn’t mean it to sound like that.’ He made a gesture with the flat of his hand. ‘But, what better place to orchestrate things than at ground level. Carlos did it all the time.’

  ‘Yeah and Carlos got caught.’

  ‘Given up, Jack. Political will rather than police work.’ Colson looked at the rest of them. ‘At the moment, it’s immaterial. He’s not here to ask.’

  After the meeting, Swann drove to Paddington Green. He was not completely sure that was where he was going until he drove up to the gates. The security doors were opened and he parked. Downstairs, the custody sergeant met him.

  ‘Hey, Jack. How’s it going?’

  ‘Not too bad. I want to see Brigitte Hammani.’

  ‘Interview?’

  Swann shook his head. ‘Five minutes in the cell with her, that’s all.’

  The sergeant made a face. ‘I shouldn’t do it really.’

  ‘Pete, she all but lived with me for eighteen months. Give me a break, eh?’

  ‘OK, Jack. Only five minutes, though.’

  Swann’s heart was beating hard as the sergeant unlocked the metal door. Pia looked up from where she was lying on the bench with her back to them. She blinked a few times, then sat up with a jerk.

  For a few moments they just looked at one another. She sat on the bench, no make-up, dark circles dragging under her eyes. Her hair was mussed on her head and the paper suit rustled as she moved. She looked at him and tears started to glisten. ‘How are you, Jack?’

  ‘How d’you think I am?’

  She rubbed her eyes with stiff fingers. ‘I was nineteen years old,’ she said. ‘You don’t know anything at nineteen.’

  ‘Why didn’t you give yourself up there and then?’

  ‘They would’ve killed me. If the Americans or Mossad didn’t, then my own people would. The Fatah were the most deadly faction of the PLO even after it was unified. They’d’ve pegged me as an informer and made an example, even in jail. They’ve cut open pregnant women before now.’

  ‘You were a terrorist, Pia. Your choice, long before the Storm Crow picked you up.’

  ‘Was I?’ Furrows cut in her brow. ‘Maybe I was. Two Israeli soldiers smashed both my brother’s arms. What does that make them?’

  Swann just stared at her. ‘You’ll do thirty years, Pia. You’ll be sixty before you get out.’ He moved a little closer to her then. ‘Why
did you use me?’

  She looked at the floor.

  ‘Because I was weak. Isn’t that what you said?’

  ‘You’re not weak, Jack. You had a weakness is what I said, a vulnerability.’

  ‘Something to be exploited.’

  ‘His idea.’

  ‘But you did the exploiting.’

  ‘What else could I do?’ She lifted her hands. ‘He owned me body and soul. Have you any idea what that feels like?’

  ‘I know just what it feels like.’ Swann said it viciously. For a few moments neither of them spoke, a cold metallic silence in the cell. ‘I left you alone with my kids. I trusted you. Christ. I can’t believe I did that.’

  ‘Did I ever do anything to harm your kids?’

  ‘You were a good actor, Pia. I’ll give you that.’

  She got up off the bench and moved towards him, but he backed away.

  ‘Don’t touch me.’ He held up his hands, palm outwards. ‘Please, do not touch me.’

  She sat back on the bench. ‘I wasn’t acting, Jack. In the beginning maybe, but not later. In the end I loved you.’

  ‘Bullshit, Pia. You wouldn’t know love if it smacked you in the eye. You manipulated and used me. You set this whole thing up, a chemical bomb in London, for pity’s sake. Millions of people could’ve died.’

  ‘I did love you, Jack. You know I did.’ She wrung her hands helplessly. ‘Jesus Christ, the amount of times I nearly told you. You have no idea how sick of it I was.’ She stood up again. ‘I listened to you, Jack. In Scotland, remember? Your dreams, your fears, your pain.’ Her eyes flashed then. ‘You can think what else you like, but you know I loved you.’

  Swann leaned on the door. ‘What did he think, Pia, that you could get information from me—get to me because I was vulnerable? Fucked-up Jack Swann who killed his climbing partner.’ He shook his head very bitterly. ‘You know how that makes me feel?’

  ‘There’s no point in talking about this, Jack. You won’t ever believe me, so what is the point.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘There is no point.’