Prime Target u-10

by Hugh Miller

  * * *

  She came round with a stink like rotting fish in her nostrils. The pain in her head was so bad she was sure her skull was fractured. When she tried to touch her head something kept her hand from moving.

  It was a long time before she opened her eyes. When she did the faint light penetrated like knives, sending a shaft of pain across the back of her head. She shut her eyes, waited a while, then slowly opened them again. This time the pain was only a throb.

  She was lying in a filthy little room with broken floorboards and cracked, pock-marked plaster on the walls. It was intensely hot. Beams of light poked through gaps in the boards across the window, illuminating floating particles of dust. When she moved her head even a fraction it hurt, so she took several minutes to understand her position in the room.

  It came to her a piece at a time. She was on the floor. She was half sitting, her shoulders against a wall. The smell came from a cracked waste-pipe beside her. Her wrists were held in handcuffs, which were looped through the waste-pipe, which was under a sink.

  She was desperately thirsty.

  After a few more minutes her training asserted itself. She had to accept her situation calmly. Emotional calm was the only route to a productive frame of mind. She had to put herself in a state of alertness where she could make the most of the slightest advantage.

  So she faced facts. Her situation was serious. Probably grave. This was the case because she had failed to take adequate precautions. However, regret for past actions was inappropriate. It was a squandering of spirit. She must concentrate on setting matters right.

  If she was left like this for too long she would die of dehydration. If she called out somebody might come, but whoever came could possibly kill her. On the other hand, only another human presence would provide the opportunity to reverse her position.

  Sabrina tried out her larynx. As she had suspected, it was so dry she could only croak.

  She began moving her legs and flexing her calf muscles. That would stimulate the movement of blood and enliven her lymphatic system, which would in turn create a little moisture in her mouth. With a moist throat she could swallow and, after that, perhaps she would be able to call for help.

  14

  The telephone on Philpott’s desk rang as he was preparing to leave the office. He finished buttoning his overcoat and picked up the receiver.

  ‘Philpott.’

  He heard the electronic burble as the scrambler circuit cut in.

  ‘Glad I caught you,’ Mike Graham said.

  ‘Only just. I have a Trusteeship Council reception this evening.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’

  ‘One of the penalties of high office, Michael. Where are you?’

  ‘Berlin. The apartment on Husemannstrasse. I got here two hours ago. I’m just calling to touch base.’

  ‘Fine. Can I just mention — something interesting happened this morning, not far from where you are. An American citizen was barbecued in his hire car minutes after he completed a transaction at a nearby bank.’

  ‘I was going to tell you that,’ Mike said. ‘The man was Harold Gibson of Waxahachie. He was oil-rich and real-estate-rich, and five years ago he inherited six thousand acres of prime land around Lake Texoma, about sixty miles north of Dallas. This was a seriously wealthy man.’

  ‘But it didn’t make him fireproof. How do you know so much about him?’

  ‘It’s an interesting coincidence. I researched him two years ago, after the Fossil Rim killing. Actually interviewed him, too.’

  The murder of a black police officer at the wildlife centre at Glenrose, south of Fort Worth, had been faked to look like an animal attack. Mexican grey wolves were blamed but careful investigation by C.W. Whitlock, and follow-up work by Mike Graham, proved that the killing was carried out by white supremacists and was linked to a number of other murders in the vicinity of Dallas — Fort Worth over a six-year period. No one was ever charged with the Fossil Rim killing.

  ‘One of the police officers on the case had bad feelings about Gibson and his chums, and the bad feelings worked their way back to UNACO.’

  ‘What did you find out?’ Philpott said.

  ‘Well, it was a while ago, but I remember Gibson was a worshipper of all things fascist. He made no secret about it. I introduced myself as a journalist doing a series on rich men of principle. He was flattered to pieces. Told me about his possessions, his business coups, his skill at making things happen. He also told me about the promotional effort he put into republishing Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent articles about the International Jew.’

  ‘Saints above,’ Philpott groaned, ‘have you ever read that stuff?’

  ‘No, sir, I never felt inclined. Always thought it would depress me.’

  ‘I’ll tell you something really depressing. Adolf Hitler acknowledged that the Ford articles were an influence on the arguments he put forward in Mein Kampf.’

  ‘I’ll bet Harold Gibson knew that. He thought Hitler was the hottest visionary since John the Baptist. He had a little framed picture of Adolf on the wall in his den.’

  ‘Intriguing.’

  ‘On the last news bulletin I heard,’ Mike said, ‘they reported that forensic examiners found the incinerated remains of two hundred thousand dollars lying on the car seat next to Gibson’s body.’

  ‘I think the matter could merit some attention. Before you ring off, there’s one piece of sad news from this end.’ He told Mike about Lucy Dow. ‘It’s part and parcel of our business, of course, but it’s no less unfortunate for that.’ Philpott looked at his watch. ‘I must go, Michael. Thank you for calling. Get back to me as soon as you have anything on the Stramm woman.’

  Philpott’s evening was frenetic. Over a period of five hours he spoke to a lot of people and gave his attention to numerous issues. At 11 p.m. he was back in his office, going through classified status files on the computer.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ C.W. Whitlock said from the doorway. ‘You couldn’t stand the idea of wasting hours and hours doing nothing but lying unconscious in your bed.’

  Philpott turned. ‘You too?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Philpott looked at him levelly. ‘Domestic trouble, is it?’

  ‘More than I need.’ Whitlock came in and closed the door.

  ‘Is it because of your work?’

  ‘Part of it is.’ Whitlock poured himself a cup of coffee.

  ‘Well, it’s customary for someone standing where I do to say it’s no business of mine, and of course it isn’t. But I’ll interfere to the extent of expressing one opinion. In our trade, a man who can live with an unstable domestic background is better at his work than one who enjoys a life of wedded bliss.’ Philpott smiled. ‘It’s a peculiarity that gets stimulated by the nature of our work, I think.’

  Whitlock was nodding. ‘It’s the same in the police.’

  ‘That’s where I first noticed it.’

  Whitlock’s discomfort was showing. To change the subject, he asked if Philpott was doing anything he could help with. Philpott explained he was researching a Texan right-winger called Harold Gibson.

  ‘I had a rummage through the status files and turned up a couple of interesting things. Two months ago, at a garden party in the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, a field agent of the FBI overheard Harold Gibson tell a lady guest that he counted himself blessed, because he had shaken the hands of several men who had shaken the hand of Adolf Hitler. It also appears that twice a year, since 1989, Harold made trips to Berlin. That’s about as much as I’ve found.’

  ‘I could have a flip through the bigot book if you like,’ Whitlock said. ‘There may be something in there.’

  ‘A very sound idea.’ Philpott vacated the chair by the computer. ‘Be my guest.’

  Whitlock’s bigot book was an assemblage of data on fanatics, dogmatists and racists, randomly gathered, fed to the computer and organized into categories. The information was encoded by software that Whitlock h
ad helped to design, and there was agreement within UNACO that only he should be able to access the files.

  The computer began to click softly and purr as it conducted searches and file-collections based around the name Harold Gibson.

  ‘I get the feeling the man’s well represented,’ Whitlock said. He glanced over his shoulder. Philpott was behind his desk, drumming his fingers softly on the blotter. ‘I can do this on my own if you want to go home.’

  ‘No — I’ll need to make a decision shortly,’ Philpott said. ‘It will involve you.’

  A photograph appeared on the computer screen. Philpott saw it and came to the table. It was a shot of a middle-aged man with a grey crew-cut and an ornament on a cord around his neck in place of a necktie. He was fat and he was laughing heartily.

  ‘Is that him?’

  ‘Harold Gibson, sixty years old, resident of Waxahachie, chairman and managing director of Munro, Davis and Gibson, realtors, of North Main Street, Fort Worth.’ Whitlock ran his finger down the column of close-printed details. ‘Here we go. In 1960 he was listed among the members of the US Nazi Party, founded by George Lincoln Rockwell. In ‘62 he was present in London as a member of Rockwell’s entourage when Rockwell was ordered to leave Britain after attempting to disseminate Nazi propaganda. In August ‘67, following Rockwell’s assassination by a sniper, Gibson was a principal mourner at the funeral and later gave an address to followers, in which he praised the dead Nazi and pledged himself to carry on what he called the noble fight.’

  ‘Did he have a sheet?’

  ‘Nothing criminal. A couple of cautions for inflammatory behaviour at rallies, and a civil action for obstruction when he did a protest sit-in on the proposed site of a synagogue.’

  ‘Anything on fund-raising?’

  Whitlock scrolled the text. ‘Indeed, indeed. Together with Don Chadwick and Emerett Pearce, listed here as entrepreneurs of Fort Davis and Brownsville respectively, he formed the Lone Star Patriots.’

  Whitlock was silent for a moment, scrolling the dense text. ‘Well now. The Lone Star Patriots isn’t quite the localized hick-racist outfit it sounds. They’re shown to have links with long-term Swiss-based eugenics research, aimed at proving the intellectual inferiority of the non-Caucasian races. Three Washington sub-committees have studied evidence implicating the Patriots in financing the protection of Nazi fugitives in South America. There is strong evidence that their propaganda teams have infiltrated university campuses and the boardrooms of major corporations. They are also known to provide funding for three extreme right-wing senatorial hopefuls. Three years ago Gibson personally put up half the defence money at the trial of a Nazi war criminal in Kraków.’

  ‘I don’t think we need to know any more.’ Philpott sat down again. ‘The man whose works you’ve been describing died less than twenty-four hours ago in Berlin. He appears to have died as a result of possible bomb-planting, and he perished in the company of a lot of money. Do you sense a connection there to matters that have taken our attention lately? Or at least a possibility of one?’

  ‘It warrants digging into.’

  ‘So you think we should go to Texas?’

  Whitlock stared.

  ‘The European and North African aspects of the case are in competent hands,’ Philpott said, ‘or so I’ll assume until I hear anything to the contrary. The possibility of an American side merits attention.’

  ‘So when you say we…’

  ‘You and me.’ Philpott studied Whitlock’s face. ‘You think perhaps I’m not up to field work?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘I’ve been considering this move since I left the reception this evening, but at that point my first instinct was to send Geoff Prentice. But I learn he’s laid up in the Punjab with a touch of Delhi-belly. A second choice would have been Timothy Osborne, but new intrigues in Bosnia are exercising a powerful draw on him right now.’ Philpott shrugged. ‘So then I thought, why not go myself? I’m an old cop, after all, an old conniver, and frankly I spend too much time behind this desk. The change will do me good. My secretaries can earn their keep for a change and front for me while we’re away.’

  ‘The trip could all be a big mistake, of course,’ Whitlock said. ‘But I suppose wild goose chases are OK now and then.’

  ‘Of course.’ Philpott’s eyelid dropped a fraction, as near as he ever came to winking. ‘Time away from New York could work wonders for your domestic situation.’ He stood and stretched carefully. ‘If I don’t sleep soon, I’m going to collapse.’

  ‘Don’t for pity’s sake do that.’ Whitlock had been with Philpott when he suffered a myocardial infarction, two years before. ‘I’m under enough stress already.’

  ‘So the decision is taken?’ Philpott got his coat. ‘We go to Texas and we do some prospecting.’

  ‘Whatever you say.’

  ‘I thought you might have put up some resistance.’

  ‘At another time, in different circumstances, maybe.’ Whitlock switched off the computer and came to the door. ‘Right now it seems like a good plan. Besides, I couldn’t really trust anyone else to keep an eye on you.’

  15

  Dusty beams of light had moved from high on the wall on Sabrina’s right to low on the wall to her left. She had long since lost the power to shout. For a while she must have slept, though she could not be sure. It had grown hotter in the room but, ominously, she no longer felt thirsty. The handcuffs had chafed away the skin on both her wrists, and she was aware that her hip and buttock had gone completely numb where they touched the floor.

  She tried to move now, and found that her body seemed too heavy to shift.

  I’ve lost my strength.

  Water was the answer. Even in near-death situations, a few ounces of water could revive a human being and trigger the faculties.

  Water.

  She looked up at the cracked and grimed sink above her head. It looked as if it hadn’t held water in years, it was a derelict like the rest of the place. Sabrina had realized, after the first hour of consciousness, that this was not the place where she had spoken to Maruf-al-Hakim. That had been a house and gave off a smell of habitation. This place smelled of decay. It was a neglected hovel.

  She had heard no human sound here. Not even distant voices, or the shuffle of feet on a street. Once a rat had scuttled across the floor, but that was it; that was all the living nearness she had experienced.

  Her knees were skinned, and so was the top of her left foot — the sandal thongs on that foot were scuffed, too. She had been dragged, roughly; some of the pain in her head felt displaced from the point where she had been hit. She could picture herself being unceremoniously dragged along a stinking alley and dumped in here to die.

  Except they didn’t want her to die. Not yet, or they would have killed her by now. They wanted her weak and despairing before they questioned her — with torture, she would bet — so they could find out what she knew about Yaqub Hisham’s death.

  The scenario wasn’t new, although it was the first time for Sabrina. She had never been treated like this in the past, never made so weak. Before, people had simply tried to kill her. It was a dis-piriting thought that she had been jumped upon by more men trying to kill her than by men trying to make love to her.

  She began to sink into a delirious slumber, then she heard a sound and felt her skin prickle. A chain rattled and a bolt slid. The door swung open.

  A man came in. It was not Maruf. This one was shorter and thinner. As he came nearer Sabrina saw that although he was not old, his lack of teeth and his wispy hair gave him a seedy, crabbed look. She stared at him and mustered her loathing. In her position any chance for survival relied, among other things, on a clean wellspring of focused hatred.

  The man carried an enamel jug and a plastic tumbler.

  ‘You wish water?’

  ‘Please,’ she croaked.

  He knelt beside her and poured water into the tumbler. It was fresh and she smelled its coldness. He
put the tumbler to her lips and the small cool wave washed over her tongue. Her throat seemed to swell when she tried to swallow and the man drew back the tumbler. He knew what to expect. Sabrina coughed weakly, then he put the tumbler to her mouth again and she was able to take another sip. As the water went down it felt hard and sharp.

  The man withdrew the tumbler and looked at her. ‘You must wait a few minutes,’ he said. ‘Then you can drink more.’ His English was accented, but perfectly distinct.

  ‘Why is this happening to me?’

  ‘Do not talk.’

  ‘But I’m afraid.’ She managed a tremor in her lip. ‘Please tell me what’s happening.’

  ‘I do not know anything.’ He looked at her dis-passionately. ‘I am following instructions. Orders. You understand?’

  ‘But please…’ She took a deep shaky breath and produced a semblance of tears. ‘I haven’t done any harm. Can’t you tell me anything?’

  ‘I can tell you my guess.’

  Sabrina stared at him, looking pitiful.

  ‘I can guess that before tomorrow is over,’ he said, ‘you will be found in the rubbish at the Guersa el Kebir market, with no hands and no head.’

  She shuddered. ‘Can I have more water, please?’

  ‘Drink it slowly, then.’

  When the cup touched her lip she sucked in water and swilled it around her mouth.

  Focus, she thought.

  She let the water pass over her throat in tiny trickles, while with her lips she pretended to sip.

  Focus.

  When she had swallowed all the water in her mouth she deliberately coughed against the rim of the cup, pretending she was choking.

  ‘Please…’ She whimpered as the cup was withdrawn. ‘Please, let me have one hand free, I can’t swallow properly when you hold the cup.’

  The Arab grunted but made no move.

  ‘Just for a moment,’ Sabrina whined. ‘I’m so very thirsty.’

  He grunted again and stood up. He fumbled in the pocket of his voluminous trousers and pulled out a bunch of keys on a chain anchored to his belt. He found a small shiny key and squatted beside Sabrina. The smell of his breath and his sweaty clothes assailed her. He undid the right bracelet then locked it round the waste-pipe.