by Paul Johnson
‘Good coffee?’ Special Agent Simonsen asked when he picked me up outside the hotel. There was a hint of a smile on his thin lips.
‘I only drink tea,’ I lied. It didn’t surprise me that I was being watched. The Feds could check what I’d been doing on the computer, but it would take time and I had the feeling that everything would come to a head in New York soon.
The hospital was a military one, a lot better organized and staffed than the facility in the camp where Karen and our son had died. I pushed them from my thoughts, feeling like a traitor-the only way I would get through this was by focusing on the worrying number of targets I was gathering.
‘Quincy,’ I said, as I approached the tube-festooned, monitor-haunted bed in the single room where he lay. ‘How goes it?’ His upper body was swathed in bandages.
He looked up with initial bewilderment, and then recognized me. ‘Matt,’ he said, his voice rough from the feeding tube that had been inserted down his throat. ‘You okay?’
‘You should see the other guys. What about you?’
‘I’ll live,’ he said, frowning as he tried to move an arm. ‘Got a smashed shoulder on one side and a collapsed lung on the other. They say I’ll come through.’
‘Shit, I’m sorry, Quincy,’ I said, wiping his forehead with a tissue. ‘I didn’t think Sara…would…’ I let the words trail away as guilt flooded through me. Of course I knew she would kill him; that was what she did. I should have tried to stop her.
‘Forget it, man. What happened to her?’
‘I…I killed her. Rothmann’s dead, too, not by my hand. He killed the hit man Apollyon.’
‘Jeez, I missed a big show.’ He took a ragged breath. ‘Matt, I-’
I raised a hand. ‘Don’t talk, Quincy. You need to rest. I’m just glad to see you alive and doing well.’ I leaned closer. ‘Listen, did you ever hear of a company called Hercules Solutions?’
‘Shit, yeah,’ he gasped. ‘I…I was seconded…to them in… Iraq. They…they were cowboys. Paid…a fortune and killed anything that moved, ’specially after some of their people got…taken out.’
‘They’re run by a reverend.’
‘Yeah, I met him out there…’
‘Really? What’s he like?’
Quincy coughed painfully. When he finished, I saw that a smile had formed on his lips. ‘He…he makes like he’s full of love for everyone, but he still lives and breathes the old South. I didn’t tell you I was Jewish, did I? So…so I made sure my Star of David was obvious. He…couldn’t get out of shaking my hand, but he…looked like he wanted to spit in my face.’
It had never occurred to me that Quincy might be a Jew. Knowing that, I was even happier that he had escaped from the coven of racist shitheads with his life. I put my hand on his forearm. ‘Okay, my friend, that’s enough. I’m going to go now.’
‘No, Matt, I-’
‘Shh,’ I said, stepping back. ‘I’ll see you in a day or two.’
I heard his voice again as I reached the door. He was calling my name. A nurse brushed past, shooting me a furious look. I felt bad that I’d disturbed him, but at least I knew what kind of scumbag Rudi Crane was. How much good that would do me, I couldn’t tell. Then I thought of the Indian and Pakistani troops in the Hades complex. Had the color of their skins led to them being treated as cannon fodder? That wouldn’t have surprised me at all.
The Bureau plane landed at La Guardia at ten the next morning. The Director sat opposite me during the flight and tried to get me talking about Rothmann. I brushed him off without being rude and looked through the early editions of the newspapers. They all carried stories about the climate change conference to be hosted by the UN at its headquarters. The world’s main players would be there, but most attention was being paid to the Russians and Chinese, both of whom had indicated that they were finally prepared to make cuts in their emissions. This chimed with the U.S.’s new approach to the issue. Although the President wasn’t attending the first sessions, he would be at the Secretary-General’s dinner in the evening, while the secretary of state and several other cabinet members would represent the U.S. during the day. Writers were supposed to have big egos, but I still wasn’t sure why the Director had asked me along. Maybe he thought my presence alongside him would arouse media interest in advance of the evening press conference.
We were driven to a hotel on East 42nd Street, only a short walk from the UN complex. Rain was pouring down and Simonsen handed me an umbrella. I was glad it didn’t bear the letters FBI in bright yellow-I still had mixed feelings about the Bureau, given that my family died on its watch. We met in the lobby shortly afterward and I was handed a laminated UN tag with my photo and name and a bar code underneath.
‘Right, are you ready to talk the talk?’ the Director asked.
His use of the slang expression surprised me. He was wearing a suit that must have cost several thousand dollars, as well as a putrid yellow tie. I had again declined the suit I’d been given and stuck to smart but casual, no tie. I had nothing to prove, at least not on the sartorial front.
Security at the glass tower on the East River was tight and even the Director’s group had to pass through several scanners. Although there were armed personnel outside the building, there was no sign of weapons inside. That was reassuring, though I was sure the security detail was carrying concealed handguns. At least there wouldn’t be a rerun of the Washington Cathedral massacre, where members of the armed forces conditioned by the Rothmanns had fired automatic rifles into the crowd. Then again, why would anyone want to disrupt a climate change conference? Even the automobile lobby had begun to accept there was a problem. If a private security firm like Hercules Solutions could play the eco card, surely there was hope for the world.
Which reminded me. Where was the Reverend Rudi Crane? I wanted to have a look at him. I glanced round and was surprised by the person who had appeared behind me.
Crane led his group of executives toward the elevators in the UN building’s entrance hall. The security checks had been adequate, although he would have advised even more care if H.S. had handled the work. You could never tell what kind of demented terrorist might sneak into a gathering like this-the place was full of former communists: Muslims, Africans with a grudge against the civilized world, even misguided Europeans who thought the U.S. was the devil. They were benighted sinners, all of them.
Crane told himself to keep his breathing steady. He had struggled to do that sometimes in the field, resulting in costly reprisals against militias in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. His personal rule was that the body count always had to favor H.S. or its subsidiaries, even if the numbers of enemy dead were inflated by noncombatant women and children. Some people called them collateral damage, but he preferred the company jargon, ‘fertilizer.’ Those people weren’t human beings, they were animals, put on earth for the benefit of their betters.
Entering the large conference hall, he took a deep breath. Even here, there was a hint of the high smell you got in underdeveloped countries, that mixture of sweat, excrement and death. It filled his nostrils and almost made him puke. Good Lord, give me strength, he prayed silently. It wasn’t the first time he had made that request today. The news from Texas had been bad. At least his supervisor there had managed to convince the FBI that he had been kidnapped by the ‘foreigners’ who ran the camp-who were now supposedly on the run. As instructed, he had mentioned March Violet Partners-much joy might they have of that carefully constructed ghost. The fact that Thomson/Rothmann/ the Master was dead, as were the assassins, was positive. No trails led back to him, as long as Xavier Marias held his well-paid tongue.
Cameras clicked ahead of him and people crowded around men in dark suits. One group had almond eyes and off-white skin-the Chinese: communist hypocrites who were doing their best to destroy American power. The others were mainly fair-haired, with high cheekbones and greedy eyes-the Russians: no longer communists, but liars and thieves whose former soldiers-turned-mercenar
ies were H.S.’s biggest competitors. How could anyone entrust degenerates like those with personal, corporate or national security?
If there was any justice, the Lord would smite them all with his glorious thunder, but Rudi Crane knew praying for that would be sinful. Maybe he would be lucky-it would hardly be the first time; maybe some individual or group with a justified grievance would take action.
He looked around the international crowd in expensive suits and curious national costumes, but didn’t see any likely candidates. Then he caught sight of a familiar figure. The Director of the FBI was striding purposefully toward the Russian delegation. But who was that man behind him, wearing inappropriately informal clothes? Surely he had seen images of those features very recently.
The nurses were still angry with Quincy Jerome’s visitor. The patient had been upset all evening, pressing the call button frequently and repeating the name ‘Matt’ over and over. He had become delirious and had been given medication. When he woke in the morning, he started the litany again.
What could it be that he wanted to tell the Englishman so much?
Thirty-Six
Gordy Lister had been in a bar north of Malvern, Arkansas, when he saw the TV news. So the useless idiots who called the shots were gathering in the Big Apple to save the planet-kinda like hiring Jesse James to crack down on bank robbery or General Custer to improve relations with the Indians, screw that Native American bullshit. He drained his Bud and ordered another, thinking of the time not too long ago when he’d been a bigshot newspaper man and had drunk ultradry martinis every night. Thanks to his loony tunes ex-boss, that had all gone up in smoke. He’d been lucky to slip away from the scene in Texas. He’d dumped the sedan on the outskirts of Texarkana, shaved his head, bought a suit and tie, and rented a car using one of the credit cards and fake driver’s licenses he always carried. There would be more changes in his appearance and transport in the days to come.
He watched as the wide-eyed anchorwoman with her neatly sculpted hair and her glinting marble teeth turned to the economy. That was another thing he’d been screwed on-after the self-proclaimed Master had gone AWOL, all Gordy’s accounts had been blocked and he’d been reduced to stealing from the donations of the deluded faithful. Fortunately, the transfers he had made to the bank in Tahiti hadn’t been nailed, but they weren’t much use to him here. Fuck Jack Thomson. Fuck Heinz Rothmann. Fuck the Master. Shooting him was the best thing he’d ever done.
Familiar faces appeared on the screen above the bar and Lister paid attention.
What the-? The Director of the FBI was boasting about the Bureau’s success in tracking down the fugitive businessman Jack Thomson, the mastermind behind the massacre in Washington National Cathedral that had so nearly cost the President his life. He would be hosting a press conference after attending the climate change conference in New York tomorrow and details would be given there. In the meantime, he could say that the Hitler’s Hitman killer had been identified as a professional assassin, in part due to the sterling work of the English writer Matt Wells, who was no longer a suspect in the attack on the President.
Gordy Lister rocked back on his stool. That bastard. Wells was the main reason everything had turned to shit. If he hadn’t escaped from the camp in Maine and got to Rothmann, life would still have been peachy-his former boss’s plans to rip apart American society and bring back Nazism had been crazy, but he’d have been in a good position to make the most of them. The madman wouldn’t have got so obsessed with the Antichurch if he’d been able to stay in Washington and play Fuhrer.
Not only that: Wells had been involved with the blonde bitch who had killed Mikey. And now the fucker was going to be paraded in front of the cameras, modestly accepting the praises of the FBI Director? No way.
He ordered a shot of Wild Turkey and thought about the dead Nazi. Sure, the Kraut was as cracked as a mirror in an earthquake zone, but he’d been good to him-cool apartment, luxury cars, plenty of tight young snatch. The limey bastard Wells would tell the Feds all about Rothmann’s sidekick. Every law enforcement professional in the country would be looking out for Gordy Lister, no matter how many changes he made to the way he looked. Unless…
In the back pocket of his pants, he kept a small, leather-covered notebook.
He’d never been good at remembering numbers, but when he saw them written down he always knew what they were, meaning he didn’t have to add names or other identifying symbols. On page thirty-seven was a number that Rothmann had given him a couple of months back. His boss had given him to understand that the white-haired former admiral had been an early conditioning subject-apparently it hadn’t taken fully, though Rothmann still thought a certain trigger could provoke an ‘interesting’ response. All right-it was time to see what form that response might take.
Gordy went out into the parking lot and made the call. He recognized the respondent’s tones immediately and spoke the trigger, ‘Erfurt’-he’d never had any trouble remembering words. There was silence, and then the person said, ‘I am at your command.’
Gordy swallowed a laugh. This was a gas. ‘The United Nations Climate Change Conference,’ he said, impersonating his former boss as best he could. ‘Dispose of people antagonistic to our ideology.’ That was the kind of tortuous language Rothmann favored. ‘And dispose of Matt Wells after use.’ Then he passed on the necessary word and he cut the connection.
Now he felt even better. Killing the Master had left him with a small piece of guilt that might have grown in the future. Not anymore. Vengeance for the both of them was his! He got into the rental car and headed north. He could get a flight in St. Louis that would connect with others for destinations much farther to the west. Winter in the South Seas would be balmy, sexually stimulating and light on Feds. From there, the world was his oyster, clam and abalone.
‘Hello, Arthur. What are you doing here?’
Bimsdale gave me a searching look. ‘I could ask you the same question.’
‘Ask your boss,’ I replied, turning away. Maybe Sebastian’s former assistant had heard about the press conference and wanted to be part of it. Then I thought of his ex-boss. I was still unsure about what had really happened to him. And why would Bimsdale have broken off the investigation in Texas to come to New York?
The question slipped away as the Director led me toward the Russians, a couple of whom I recognized: a shifty specimen who had gone from the KGB to become energy minister and a tall guy with overgrown eyebrows who was reputed to be the richest oilman in the world. The FBI chief was being effusive in Russian. He then raised his hands, apparently asking them to stay where they were, and moved to the Chinese delegation. He didn’t know their language, but his arm and head movements were easy enough to interpret-he was herding them toward the Russians. Another man whose face I knew from the TV arrived: the President of the European Union. In the distance, I recognized Rudi Crane. He was surrounded by men in sharp suits, while he himself-ever the preacher, apparently-was wearing a simple black combo. It struck me that he would be ideally placed to cause trouble; according to the Hercules Solutions website, he had hundreds of ex-special forces operatives working for him. All the same, he looked pretty harmless, a soft smile on his lips.
And then things started to get strange. I experienced a couple of lightning flashes in my brain and heard a babble of voices, which was rapidly reduced to one, that of a ranting, high-pitched speaker in a language I couldn’t understand, but whose meaning was somehow apparent. We are surrounded by enemies…neighboring states that have been historically hostile toward us… Slavic subhumans who wish to trample us underfoot…yellow-skinned barbarians interested only in rape and plunder…we will crush them all…
I came back to myself, my fists clenched hard. What was that? Some remnant of Rothmann’s conditioning that had been prompted by the sight of the various ethnic groups? I stepped closer and watched the delegates as they shook hands, reluctantly at first and then with increasing enthusiasm. The Director looked
gratified, not least when the secretary of state appeared, wearing the expression of someone whose thunder has been well and truly stolen. And then the former admiral turned to me, beckoning me closer. He bent forward till his lips were only a few inches from my ear.
‘Keep them together and don’t allow anyone to interfere, Mr. Wells,’ he said, his voice steady but euphoric. ‘Chanak, I say. Chanak.’
The sentient part of me was immediately separated from my body, aware of the subtlety of the trigger but unable to resist it.
Chanak, a Turkish town that had played a strategically significant role during the Gallipoli campaign of the First World War, a campaign orchestrated by German commanders, resulting in the defeat of British Empire and French forces by the Ottoman Turks.
I watched as my body pushed the Russians and Chinese closer. Arthur Bimsdale remonstrated and I threw him several yards through the air. He came back at me, throwing me over his shoulder with a skillful judo move. I got to my feet, planted my elbow in another FBI man’s gut, and lowered my shoulder. I rammed Bimsdale into the group of shocked statesmen. Security personnel approached and I rendered them harmless with karate strikes, head butts and punches.
Then I saw Arthur Bimsdale shoving through the crowd, trying to get to the Director, whose hands were moving inside his jacket. Instantly I understood what he was doing. He must have brought the undetectable chemical components of a bomb through the security checks and was now mixing them. At the same time, he was shouting to the politicians in Russian and in English to stay close, and that he was in control of the situation. Some on the outside of the circle had broken away, but there were still over a dozen in close range.