by Matt Hilton
Our rescue plan had been risky, and always there was the possibility some or all of us wouldn’t get out alive, but it’s one thing going into battle in that knowledge, something else coming out of it. We’d gone there in the hope of saving Sue’s life, and ultimately failed. The only saving grace was that we’d thinned our enemies down massively. Not that it was much solace, because Arrowsake had plenty of other guns for hire they could send after us. Once Vince found time to catch his breath and rally, I fully suspected a second team of reinforcements would be fielded to assist him.
Best-case scenario?
Mercer’s bullet had flown true, and even though Vince had fled the field, his wound was a bad one and he’d succumbed to it. It was a pleasant thought that he could be out there on the bayou still, the boat going round in circles, him lying in the bottom, the hull awash with his blood, his dead eyes staring at the uncaring moon above.
No, that wasn’t the best case, at all. It was too easy a death for the bastard, and wholly unsatisfactory for me. Although Harvey didn’t have a personal stake in ending Vince’s life, Rink and Mercer did. Perhaps I was being greedy imagining personally throttling the life out of him with his guitar string garrote.
We’d driven north, taking trails and seldom-used roads, and were approaching Vicksburg, though it wasn’t our intended destination. We were at a loss where to go next. Rink and I discussed holing up in a motel somewhere until we could dress our wounds and plan our next move, but it would be difficult getting Sue inside without anyone noticing. Harvey, at our summons, had driven in from Arkansas, so had no real idea of where he was, let alone where to go next. It was Mercer who came up with an idea. He’d been sitting as if wallowing in grief, but he’d also been thinking hard too, and listening to what we were discussing. He said, ‘Sue returned home to collect some stuff…’
‘You’re talking about the property dossiers?’ I asked. ‘The ones with your network of safe houses?’
‘Uh, so you know about that?’
‘We figured it out,’ Rink said, ‘but maybe you can fill in some gaps.’
He ruminated a moment, possibly deciding on how much he could trust us, but after everything that had come to pass, what about us was to be distrusted? ‘Our business was a front for a ‘relocation service’,’ he admitted. ‘We helped people like us — people afraid for their lives — on the run, needing somewhere to hide, people requiring a new identity. Sue had successfully faked her own death—’ he swallowed at how ironic that statement now sounded ‘—and after tracking me down, she helped me stay hidden from Arrowsake for years. Using her experience, she saw an opportunity to earn a living and to help others in similar positions. Don’t get me wrong, not all of our clients were assassins and spies on the run from their own agencies or enemies; there are many reasons why people choose to disappear, or begin a new life, mostly banal, so our business became quite lucrative. We amassed a decent property portfolio. Mostly our clients are genuine renters; they have to be, so that we don’t attract too many awkward questions. We have empty properties: if I had access to Sue’s files I could find us somewhere to hole up.’
‘Easily rectified,’ I said, ‘they’re in the trunk.’
‘Let’s stop somewhere and check then?’ he said.
There wasn’t a handy spot to pull off road yet.
Rink, despite the painful wound to his forearm, had taken the wheel again. He used to joke that, with me being a Brit, he didn’t trust me to stay on the right side of the road, usually arguing semantics with “how can the left lane be the right lane?” His reason for driving again was because it helped keep his mind engaged and off Sue’s senseless murder, but it wasn’t working. I could tell from the way he chewed his bottom lip that he was hurting. Out of the blue he asked Mercer a question: ‘You and Sue, you were an item?’
Seeing Mercer’s face was unnecessary to tell it had set off another stab of grief. Behind me, I heard him shift, and assumed he was using the pretence of moving her to a more comfortable position to control his emotions. Finally he croaked out a reply. ‘It…it was never like that for me before. I loved her, but not the way you think. I thought of her more like a little sister. But, well, when I saw her alive, after thinking…she was so happy to see me…I…’
Rink changed the subject as abruptly as he’d brought it up. He pulled the car on to the shoulder of the road and popped the trunk. ‘This isn’t finished, Mercer. Not by a long shot. You loved her; it doesn’t matter how, only that you did. Tells me you probably want to avenge her every bit as much as I do. Then let’s get her somewhere safe, and then let’s get on with it.’
29
A few hours later a limousine worked its way slowly down a track with its high beams cutting filigree patterns through the low hanging branches of the trees on either side. The track exited the woodland into a wide meadow, and continued its serpentine path around low hummocks of grass and boulders deposited there during the retreat of the glaciers, millennia ago. It paralleled a river for several hundred yards, before the track swung away once more and led arrow straight towards a sprawling fisherman’s lodge. A long time before it drew to a halt on a crushed gravel hardstand, the car’s approach had not only been noted but also monitored. It had been tracked all the way from where it left the road and through the gate, electronically unlocked for it by the security detail inside the lodge.
The driver stayed seated within the limo, but a tall, suited man got out the passenger side and his gaze darted, taking in and noting his surroundings, and any perceived threat. The door to the lodge stood open, and a short, elderly man had stepped out onto the raised porch in greeting. Bald but for a strap of white hair over his ears, and bespectacled, the old man wore a plaid wool shirt tucked into jeans, held up with suspenders, and sturdy boots. The tall man had no idea, but anyone familiar with Walter Hayes Conrad IV would’ve known these informal clothes were at odds with his usual attire: ordinarily he wouldn’t be seen out of a tailored suit, complete with vest, and most often paired with a western-style necktie at his throat.
No words passed between them, but Walter gave a slight lift of his chin. The invitation to enter was not for the tall man. The bodyguard turned and opened the back door, and then stepped aside to allow another man to get out. This man was as tall as his minder, but lacked the steely strength beneath his similar dark suit. He had neat grey hair parted on one side, and metal-rimmed spectacles perched on an aquiline nose that wouldn’t look out of place on the bust of a Roman Emperor. He was a man at odds with his height, and carried his long head on a thin neck and rounded shoulders. Bony wrists and large hands with long pianist’s fingers extended from the sleeves of his jacket. When he walked, his gait was peculiar, as if he stepped over a series of low, invisible objects. He didn’t appear formidable but he was a powerful individual. He was Spencer Booth, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and currently one of the cabal of grey men and women behind Arrowsake.
The bodyguard escorted Booth to the door of the lodge, and that was as far as he was permitted to go by Walter’s duo of guards. Walter’s security detail halted the bodyguard there, then moved outside on the porch with him, while Booth stepped over the threshold. Walter had already gone further inside and he beckoned Booth to join him. It was the first time Booth had visited Walter’s Adirondacks retreat, and he peered around taking in its rustic charm. It had been converted from an original log cabin, and retained much of the original features, but with additions that made it almost impregnable to attack both physically and electronically. It was furnished for comfort, even slightly chintzy with the inclusion of a feminine touch here and there in the flowery material on the chairs and tablecloth. There were also stuffed trophies, several of them fish caught by Walter during his frequent angling trips here over the decades.
The men didn’t greet each other formally.
Walter waved at a chair, and said, ‘Get you a drink, Spencer?’
‘I’ll pass.’
‘Worried I might spit in it?’
‘I’m worried you might spike it with something more poisonous than saliva.’ Booth offered a withering smile, before perching on the edge of the proffered seat. He studied the room. ‘We can speak freely?’
‘Totally,’ said Walter. The lodge was regularly swept for surveillance devices, and was also protected from satellite spyware by what amounted to a Faraday shield concealed within its walls and roof. ‘But if you’d feel safer, I have a panic room in the basement we can retire to.’
Walter wasn’t kidding. After a crazed enemy had once assaulted his fishing lodge, he’d had the secure vault constructed as a last resort bolthole.
‘I’m satisfied with your assurance we can’t be heard,’ said Booth. He sat back and crossed his legs, settling his cupped hands on the uppermost thigh. Hi skinny ankle stuck out four inches from the cuff of his pants. ‘What we are about to discuss can’t be shared with anyone,’ he said needlessly. ‘For all our sakes.’
‘I think what you actually mean is your sakes, Spencer.’
Booth sniffed in admission.
Walter chugged two fingers of bourbon into a glass tumbler. ‘So what is it you don’t want anyone hearing?’
‘It concerns us that you are actively assisting our enemies in thwarting us,’ said Booth.
‘In what way? Sure, I acted as a middleman to arrange an exchange of hostages, a role sanctioned by Arrowsake, I should remind you. Tell me, Spencer, how does that equate to me assisting your enemies? You wanted your hands on Jason Mercer, and I made it possible. That the op went sideways has no bearing on my involvement.’
Spencer exhaled sharply.
‘Your team,’ Walter went on, ‘were the ones intent on disregarding the agreed terms. They attended with the purpose of taking the lives, not only of Mercer and Bouchard, but also of Hunter and Rington.’
‘You’re aware of the outcome, that they were outmanoeuvred and most of our team died?’
Walter didn’t answer directly. In the past hour he’d been updated with the sorry details by Joe Hunter, but wouldn’t share his information source with Booth. He took a slow sip of his bourbon, watching Booth over the glass’s thick rim. ‘I warned Vince what would happen if he made war with my boys.’
‘You say your boys? That’s the problem here, Walter; you seem to have an issue with whom you owe your loyalty.’
‘I’ve no issue with it.’
‘You choose to back Hunter and Rington over your own people?’
‘Hunter and Rington are my people. You forget, Spencer, I was their handler, their sponsor, their teacher, since they were wet behind the ears. They were like my own kids.’
‘They were assets,’ Spencer scoffed. ‘As expendable as all the other assets you sent to their deaths.’
‘Soldiers died on my watch, and it never sat well with me, but I never sacrificed any of them.’
‘Keep telling yourself that, Walter. Maybe one day you’ll even convince yourself.’
‘I don’t need any convincing.’ Walter fought the urge to look away, to conceal the lie, but Spencer caught it and again offered a withering sile.
The former ASD(I) uncrossed his legs and settled his feet flat, leaning forward to stress a point. ‘Need I remind you that you were the one that sent Jason Mercer to his death…albeit we now know his death is a misnomer?’
‘I conveyed the details of the mission to him, with no prior knowledge of the sanction he’d come under next,’ Walter sniffed, but once again he was lying. He knew Booth also knew he was lying, or at least he must’ve understood how it would end but had chosen not to let Mercer’s inevitable death register in his conscience. It had registered of course, no less knowing he was responsible for the stain now on Hunter and, especially, Rink, who’d been lied to and ordered to execute him.
The Sierra Leone civil war had raged on for more than a decade, and several outside interventions had failed to stabilize the country. Following the Lome Peace Accord, control of the country’s diamond mines was handed back to the Revolutionary United Front in return for a cessation of fighting. A UN peacekeeping force deployed to monitor the disarmament process, found the rebel RUF uncooperative, and worse. Soon the rebels were again advancing on Freetown and it was apparent the war might continue for many years to come. This was where Arrowsake came in, dispatching its assassins to target key RUF militiamen and their supporters. Such was its nature that the mission had to be totally deniable, with no connection to the UN peacekeeping force’s involvement in the country. Under the guise of a South African private military operative, Jason Mercer slew a Libyan intelligence operative assisting with the training and arming of RUF forces: Mercer had a single target but was instructed to cause obfuscation surrounding his death by taking out several other men and women at random. Mercer had carried out his orders to the letter — slaying the Libyan alongside a good number of innocent villagers. This was during a conflict noted for its atrocities, and should have stayed buried, but as the British were preparing to launch Operation Palliser under a new UN mandate, their actions had to be kept above reproach to the international community, and Mercer’s actions were disavowed as those of a free agent, a psychopathic mercenary. Walter had even assisted in the formulating of disinformation that would damn the former loyal operative, and, worse, had chosen two of his most capable assets to execute the kill order.
‘So you were only a middleman then, and only a middleman now?’ Booth sneered. ‘You’re as culpable as the rest of us, Walter. That’s the very reason why you should be as eager for Mercer’s death as we are. If the truth comes out that we were actively conducting wet work in Sierra Leone, under UN mandate, and then clearing up our crimes by murdering our own people, it won’t only cause great political embarrassment to them, it will also be damning of the wider intelligence services. Heads will roll, and I’m not just talking metaphorically.’
Walter swished some dregs of bourbon in the tumbler. ‘Is that a threat, Booth?’
Booth shrugged at the inevitability. ‘A warning,’ he said, and crossed his wrists, before drawing out his closed fists to each side.
‘I’m surprised you have any confidence in Vince, considering his ineptness in his mission to date.’
Booth turned down the corners of his mouth. He was reminiscent of one of the sad-faced trout decorating the lodge’s walls. ‘We still have faith in where Vince’s loyalties lie. I’m sorry the same can’t be said about you.’
‘It also surprises me that you’re affording me forewarning,’ said Walter.
‘My visit isn’t primarily for the purpose of threatening or warning you, Walter; it’s with the hope of bringing you back into the fold. We are not completely devoid of understanding, we know that on a personal level you care for Hunter, but what you must do now is think long and hard about who you most value.’
Walter had a granddaughter Kirstie, and a great grandson, he cared deeply for, but those were not to whom Booth referred. He thought he had Walter’s measure, that when all came to all, Walter would choose his own needs over those of a surrogate son.
‘It’s in nobody’s interest for Mercer to spill his story, or for you to help him to do that,’ Booth went on.
‘That’s the thing, Spencer; Mercer didn’t just resurrect from the grave yesterday. He has lived off your radar for almost two decades. If he’d intended causing trouble for Arrowsake, he would’ve done it by now.’
‘His only reason for staying quiet before was to protect his anonymity. Now that we know he survived his bungled execution, I see few avenues of recourse for him. He’ll run and hide, and will remain a future threat to us, or he’ll sing like a choirboy at his first opportunity. We can’t allow either scenario to happen. As I said, Walter, you are equally culpable, and our mutual destruction is assured. It’s as much in your interest to see Mercer dead as ours.’
‘My problem is that you won’t stop there. By now my boys have learned the truth too and will be targeted for termination.’<
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‘They’ll listen to you, Walter. Convince them that it’s in all our interests for them to hand Mercer over to us. In fact, we are prepared to sanction them to complete the hit they started back in Sierra Leone, with an assurance of reward and also amnesty from reprisal or persecution.’
‘And you genuinely believe they’ll buy your crap?’
‘It depends on how well you sell it to them Walter.’
‘You want me to sell them down the line? No fucking deal.’
‘Think about what you’re saying, Walter.’
Walter shook his head in disappointment. ‘You expect me to lie to them, to betray them, in order to save my own ass?’
‘If I was in your shoes, I’d sell them out in an instant.’ Booth sneered at the admission, but it was a given fact that Walter was already fully aware of.
‘Yes,’ said Walter. ‘I believe you would.’
He turned back to the bourbon bottle and poured another shot into his glass. Facing Booth once more, he swigged the liquor down in one, and reached back to deposit the empty glass.
‘I don’t see as how I have any other option,’ Walter said.
Booth nodded his head at the inevitability of Walter’s decision, allowing a smile of triumph to creep in place.
Walter added, ‘Seeing as you’ll then have to tie up all the other loose ends.’