by Greg Iles
“You’re right. But I used to want it for myself. Now I want it for someone else. Marston has done things he should die for, Stone. Take my word for that.”
The old agent fingers the pistol in his hand. “My daughter told me two days ago that I should testify. She thinks getting this thing off my chest would save my damned soul or something.” His face hardens. “She’s got no right to sacrifice her career for my guilty conscience. She doesn’t know how things really work.”
“She knows.”
“It’s not her choice, damn it!” His eyes flick around the interior of the cabin. “God, I wish I had a bottle.” He paces over to the fireplace and pokes the logs, sending a storm of sparks up the chimney. “You don’t want me as a witness, Cage.”
“Why not?”
“I’m damaged goods.”
“Because of your drinking?”
“Drinking isn’t one problem. It’s a whole constellation.”
“Why were you fired five years after the Payton murder? It wasn’t for drinking.”
He stirs the fire some more. “No. Though I was drinking like a fish at the time. When Hoover cut the deal with Marston, I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know why. I’d seen him do it enough times before. But usually it was cases that were dirty all the way around. This murder had a real victim. An innocent victim. And the Korea angle really weighed on me. I started drinking to forget about it. Things were turning to shit in the Bureau. Hoover was using us to harass antiwar protesters, all kinds of unconstitutional stuff. Then we got Nixon. Parts of the Bureau started to function like the goddamn KGB. It made me sick. The booze made it tolerable. For a while, anyway. It also made me impossible to live with. I drove my wife and baby away. I screwed up a dozen different ways. Then I topped them all. You’ll get a kick out of this, because it involves your friend Marston.”
“What?”
“In 1972 I was in Washington, doing some shit work Nixon had requested from Hoover. Something too boring for Liddy and his plumbers. I was walking through the lobby of the Watergate office complex, and there, bigger than life, stood Leo Marston. He was in town lobbying John Stennis for something or other. I was soused when I saw him, and I snapped. The Payton thing had been eating at me for four years. When Marston saw me, that smug bastard tried to make out like we were buddies from way back, in on the big joke. The dead nigger. I straightened him out quick. And everybody in the Watergate lobby heard me. Marston lost it. He took a swing at me, and I pulled my gun.”
I almost laugh, remembering the way I snapped and went after Marston yesterday.
“Henry Bookbinder had been outside parking the car,” Stone recalls. “He ran in and backed me down. Nobody died, but Marston screamed blue murder to Hoover. One of Hoover’s last acts before he died in seventy-two was firing me. I guess that’s a distinction of sorts.”
“Where was Portman then?”
Stone goes still, the poker hovering above the crackling logs. “Climbing the Bureau ladder. I didn’t tell you everything before. When Hoover took over the Payton case, I started making copies of my case notes. I also copied the audiotape that incriminated Marston.”
The hair on my forearms is standing up. “Do you still have that copy?”
He shakes his head. “Portman saw what I was doing. He started spying on me, reporting to Hoover as the case progressed. I can just imagine his reports. May be ideologically unsound, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, everything was stolen out of my apartment two days before I was fired. That was Portman, I guarantee it. On Hoover’s orders.”
My heart sinks.
“You don’t want me as a witness. They’d make me look pathetic on cross. Too many sins of my own.”
“What’s Portman so afraid of now? From the story you told, his involvement was peripheral.”
“The Bureau’s been under siege for ten years, in the public-relations sense. Its big Achilles’ heel is racism. The FBI has been sued by black agents, Hispanics, women, all claiming systematic discrimination. And these groups have won. Portman was appointed to correct these problems, to polish the image, and he was appointed by a Democratic president. If it was to come out that his ‘heroic civil rights work’ in Mississippi consisted of helping to cover up a race murder, he’d be out on his ass in an hour. The President would have no choice.”
“So, let’s make it known. Do the Bureau and the country a favor.”
Stone sets the poker in its rack and sits on the hearth, his face weary. “I wish I could. Every trial decision Portman ever made as a federal judge would come into question, every decision as a U.S. attorney. He’d never work in the public sector again. And once the media got its nose into his past, God knows what they’d find. A guy like Portman doesn’t cross the line once or twice. It’s a management style with him.”
“Why didn’t the media discover anything during his confirmation hearings?”
“The Bureau is a closed culture. It outlives presidential administrations, judges, even Supreme Court justices. If the leadership of that culture wants to keep Portman’s secrets so he can be appointed FBI director, that’s the way it’ll be.”
Stone takes out his phone and checks the line again. “I’d like to help you, Cage. But they’ve held my daughter over me for a long time. Since she was a kid.”
“What?”
“Oh, yeah. After he fired me, Hoover sent me a message. Portman delivered it. If I tried to air any dirty Bureau laundry, my kid wouldn’t live to watch me on Meet the Press.”
“That’s pretty hard to believe.”
He laughs bitterly. “This was 1972. Worse things were happening every day, and the government was right in the middle of it.”
I pull the curtains away from the front window and squint through the gathering dusk. Beyond what must be the jeep track, the snow-covered wall of Anthracite Mesa climbs toward the sky, with spruce and fir trees marching up it in dark ranks. What I do not see is human beings.
“What did you mean about Presley and Marston making a nice package? You said, ‘Why complicate it?’ ”
Stone stands and walks toward me, telephone in hand. “I didn’t mean anything. Forget it.”
“You’re holding something back, aren’t you?”
He has the phone to his ear now, and his face has gone white. He throws down the phone and rushes me, holding out his pistol. “Take it!”
“What?”
“The phone’s dead! Take the gun!”
I take the gun, which looks like a Colt .45, and Stone snatches the hunting rifle up from the table. A Winchester 300, with a scope.
“Open the back door for me!” he orders. “There’s a sniper out there.”
As I run to the back door, I decide that not bringing Daniel Kelly with me was about the stupidest idea I’ve ever had.
Stone kneels six feet back from the door, shoulders the Winchester, and puts his right eye to the scope, as though preparing to shoot right through the door.
“Open it,” he says. “Slowly. Then get clear, fast.”
I slowly turn the handle, then stretch as far away as I can from the door and pull it halfway open.
Stone quickly adjusts his aim, then fires. The report of the rifle inside the cabin is like a detonation.
“He’s down!” shouts Stone. “Follow me!”
“Where to?”
Before he can answer, the front window of the cabin explodes inward and a bullet ricochets off the hearth. Stone whirls, draws a small automatic from his belt, and empties half a clip through the broken window.
“Move!” he yells, grabbing my arm and jerking me toward the door.
“Where?” I ask, my throat dry as sand.
“Somewhere they can’t follow!”
“Where’s that?”
“The river.”
“The river? In what?”
“You’ll see. Move your ass!”
CHAPTER 35
As Stone pulls me through the back door of the cabin, something explodes behind us. We fall facedown on the snow, stu
nned like cattle after being hit with an electric prod, but we scramble blindly backward for the cover of the cabin wall, knowing instinctively that exposure means death.
Hunched against the side of the cabin, I scan the swollen river and its banks in the dying light. I see no way to use that flooded stream as a means of escape. Stone’s lips are moving, but I hear nothing. He turns and begins tugging at something beneath his cabin. It’s some sort of inflatable boat, a long red plastic thing, like a cross between a canoe and kayak. Seeing that I can’t hear his orders, Stone takes back the pistol he gave me, then motions for me to drag the kayak to the water, a distance of about eighty feet. He obviously means to cover me while I do this, but I’m not going to drag anything. If I have to cross that open space, I’m going to do it as fast as I can.
Dropping to my knees, I turn the kayak upside down and crawl under it, sliding it onto my back like an elongated turtle shell. Its coated fabric skin probably wouldn’t stop a pellet gun, but at least I’ll be able to run with the thing.
As I start toward the river, my Reebok-clad feet slip and crunch over the snow. The bow of the kayak bobs forward and back as I rush forward, obscuring my vision, making my gauntlet longer than it needs to be. I cringe at the stutter of an automatic weapon somewhere behind me, but the reassuring bellow of Stone’s .45 pushes me on. At least I haven’t completely lost my hearing.
The last half of my dash to the river has the terrible dreamlike quality of pursuing a receding horizon, the shock of my feet hitting rocks under the snow the only tangible proof that I’m awake. The swiftly falling darkness is probably providing more protection than Stone’s pistol, but it can’t be long before someone sprays a clip at the fleeing kayak.
When my feet kick up the first splash, I leap forward and land in a bone-chilling current that pulls at the kayak like a giant hand. Fighting to my knees in the current, I flip the kayak upright and lie down in the shallows beside it, leaving only my head exposed. Muzzle flashes in the cabin windows punctuate the flashes below them, where Stone must be firing. There’s a brief lull, and then Stone comes charging out of the darkness toward the water, a two-bladed kayak paddle in one hand and his Winchester in the other.
He whirls and fires twice on the run, then breaks in my direction, using the white propane tank for concealment. He’s halfway to the water when another flash lights up the interior of the cabin. Stone grabs his buttocks, lurches forward, then spins and returns fire as he goes down in the snow.
I start pulling the kayak toward the bank, but the bottom shallows quickly beneath me, forcing me into an exposed position. The water feels like glacial runoff, stealing my breath, making my teeth chatter uncontrollably. But it’s better than what Stone is enduring. Every five seconds or so he lets off a .45 round back at the cabin windows, but he can’t keep that up forever. Panic scrambles around in my chest like a crazed animal, urging me to flight. It wouldn’t take anything, just a surrender to the current. I could float downstream for fifty yards, then climb into the kayak and be on my way.
As though sensing my panic, Stone holds the paddle and rifle along the length of his body and begins rolling across the snow toward the river. The old agent looks like a kid playing a game. Bullets kick up white powder in front of him, but he doesn’t even slow down. When he is five yards away, I yell: “Th-throw me the pistol!”
The .45 skids across the snow, but I manage to get my fingers around it before it disappears in the river. The steel feels warm compared to the water. It’s too dark to aim accurately at the cabin from here, but two more muzzle flashes obligingly appear, and I let off three shots at the afterimage on my retinas.
“Into the current!” shouts Stone.
“What about the kayak?”
“Too easy to hit! Just hang onto the rope!”
He rolls into the shallows, then hangs up on the rocks somehow. I fire twice more at the cabin, then grab his belt and drag him into the current while bullets spray water against my knees. The muzzle flashes are between the cabin and the river now. They’re coming for us.
As I grope helplessly for the kayak, Stone rises to his knees in the water, the big Winchester braced against his shoulder. He fires once, then cycles the bolt, waits three seconds, and fires again.
A fireball the size of the cabin itself explodes out of the darkness, sucking up all the air around us. I feel the pull in my lungs and sinuses as a millisecond’s image of a blazing man is seared into my brain and I tumble backward into the freezing water. The propane tank, marvels a voice in my head. One shot to pierce its skin, the second to ignite the gas…
Stone is already in the main channel of the river, trying to keep his head and the rifle above the surface. Wrapping the kayak’s bow rope tightly around my wrist, I leap into the black water where the current is strongest and give myself to it. A couple of desultory shots ring out, but they could be loose rounds in the pistols of dead men, cooking off in the inferno Stone has made of his home. The river has us in its power now, and the assassins are but a burning memory falling behind us in the dark.
“Stone? Stone!”
“Ahead of you,” comes a faint reply. “Did they hit the kayak?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s got three cells. Check it out.”
Since I’m hanging onto the kayak for dear life, it’s not difficult to obey Stone’s order. The strange craft seems intact, though its cells don’t seem as fully inflated as they might be. Stone’s two-bladed paddle is wedged between the seats and the starboard gunwale.
“It’s okay.”
The water here is swift and smooth. The moon and stars shine with white brilliance, reflecting off the deep water like diamonds flung onto its surface. I kick with the current, hoping to ease my fear and aloneness by overtaking Stone.
A sharp cry comes from up ahead. I’m trying to place its direction when something smashes into my ribs, knocking the wind out of me. A rock. Stone must have hit the same one.
A white hand appears in the current. I grab it and pull, then wind the bow rope tightly around the wrist. Now at least we are riding the river together, and will share the same fate.
“Thanks,” says Stone, his face a gray blur beside mine.
“Are you h-hit bad?” I ask, trying to control my voice.
“Bad enough. I don’t think it hit bone, though.”
“Shouldn’t we get in the kayak?”
He shakes his head. “We’ll have to beach it to get in. Another forty yards or so.”
It’s tough to judge distance in the dark, so I count to ten before I start kicking toward the left bank, watching for a suitable place to land. My kicks seem futile against the power of the river; we’re like cars trapped in the center lane of an interstate, slaves to the main current.
“Get over!” Stone commands. “Hurry!”
At last a broad shelf of rock rises out of the river like a ramp, and it’s simple enough to float the kayak up onto it. Stone lets the current wash him up onto his back, then lies there, wheezing for air.
“What do we do?” I ask.
“G-get in. Keep going.”
“Where?”
“Town. Six miles south.”
“Six miles!”
“Listen, Cage. The river’s at flood. We’re moving faster than you think. And it’s a good thing, because we’ve got to beat those bastards back to town.”
“But they can drive.” I clench my arms over my chest in a vain effort to stop shivering.
“They had to abandon their vehicles just like you. They’ve got to cover three miles on foot before they can drive. In the snow. We can beat them if we hurry. You ever been on white water?”
It’s been ten years since I’ve been in a raft, and on that trip my guide went overboard and got crushed between the raft bottom and some rocks, breaking his leg in three places.
“A long time ago.”
“The Slate is easier to run at flood than at low water. But we’ve got two trouble spots. Both slot
canyons. The first one’s up ahead. It’s a class-five vertical drop, but the floodwater should shoot us right over it.”
An image of an eight-foot waterfall flashes into my head, the one I saw while trudging up to the cabin this afternoon. In my desperation to escape the guns, I somehow suppressed this memory. But that’s what Stone is talking about. Going over that falls in a plastic boat.
“Just grab the sides of the kayak,” he says, “lean back, and pray. I’ll handle the paddle. A mile farther on is the second one. Walls higher than you can reach, ending in a tight chute that’s like a piledriver. People drive their four-wheelers out there to watch the kayakers crash.”
Jesus…
He grabs my windbreaker with a weak grip. “If I was covering the river, that’s where I’d wait. It’d be tough shooting, though. We’ll come through that second chute like a runaway freight train, and if we clear it, we’ll be okay all the way to town. They won’t be able to find us in the dark.”
“This river goes through town?”
He grins. “Right through it. Let’s get this bus on the road.”
I slide the kayak down the rock ramp until the current is tugging it, then grab Stone by the belt buckle and manhandle him over the side near the stern. He goes rigid with pain when his buttocks hit the rock through the air-filled floor of the boat, but there’s nothing to be done. I drag the kayak the rest of the way clear, then roll over the side and into the bow.
Immediately the main current has us, pulling us to its center, gathering speed as the rising banks constrict the water in its headlong flight to the first canyon. I get to my knees and try to obey Stone’s barked orders-Lean left! Lean right! Right again!-as he expertly handles the paddle. Every twenty yards or so the bow lifts out of the water and slaps back down with a combative thunk.
“I hear the drop,” Stone says from the stern. “Lean left. We’ve got to stay in the channel.”
I don’t hear what Stone hears, but the black trough beneath us bears steadily left, and my forward line of sight has gone black. Then, slowly, the sound registers on my traumatized eardrums, like holding my ear to the biggest conch shell in the world. Fear balloons in my chest, pressing my heart into my throat.