“I know,” he replied. “Second option: inform the director and buy into his conspiracy. Hope for clemency.”
She resisted the urge to move away from him but remained silent.
“Third option: go with your plan. Brace Kennedy and the others, and tell them about the frame-up. They might have thought that they were safe for the moment. They might have thought that Webster was still in the dark. This little twist might make them more cooperative. Then we approach the Executive Department.” He lit another cigarette. “What do you think?”
Malcolm walked slowly back to her seat. She said, “I’ll have the tac agents alert the Raptor, let them know we’re planning on flying to Houston. That should appease them. In the meantime, we interview all three prisoners, separately and together.”
“Sounds good,” Reid replied. “But I’ll take care of the Raptor. I want you to find the nearest ENIAC and trace every last fuck on this list, so we can account for everyone who’s ever trained at Omega. Any one of them will be able to give us the location.”
He caught a look in her eyes. “What’s the matter?”
She was thinking back to the memorandum she’d brought with her from Houston. “I was just wondering what happens if it turns out that the President is already involved.”
Reid’s expression darkened. “Then,” he said, “we might as well get ourselves fitted for shrouds.”
VI
April 27, 2012
Hot Springs, Arkansas
Lightholler stood numbly with his hands behind his back while the tactical agent snapped on the cuffs. There simply hadn’t been enough time. No time to evaluate the consequences of the journal’s loss. No time to devise a new strategy to deal with their captors. Not nearly enough time to—
“Just a few questions.” Reid was watching them from the other side of the bars. His eyes flicked from Kennedy to Lightholler and back. “No blindfolds or bullets.”
Kennedy stepped up to the bars and said, “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
“I know that, Major,” Reid purred. “We’ve dealt with the appetiser and we’re working our way through the main course. Think of yourself as dessert.”
Lightholler checked Kennedy for a signal. He had no idea what form the gesture might take or what his response would be. The cuffs had his wrists pinned close to his spine. A tug on the bracelet and he tottered a step towards the door. Kennedy fixed him with a resolute stare.
Lightholler said, “Be seeing you, Joseph.”
They led him past the adjacent cell. It was empty now. There was a pile of soiled bandages coiled on the floor. The tactical agent directed him towards a corridor that had been concealed from the vantage of his cell. Occasional pale squares and bare nails on the yellow walls marked where a poster or calendar may have hung. There were no clocks and no windows.
The corridor opened into an area that had been divided into several workspaces. Government-issue metal desks competed with filing cabinets for floor space. It had the look of a station house rather than a governmental office. The windows had all been sealed over; the little bands of light that crept into the room were skewed columns of dancing dust. Judging from the angle of the light, the day was almost done.
Reid directed him past a coffee recess where an urn simmered. He felt a sudden pang of hunger.
“After you, Captain.” Reid indicated a small room that lay beyond the recess.
The tactical agent gave him a nudge. The room was sparsely furnished. There was a table and four chairs, a phone and an ashtray. The mirror on the far wall had to be a two-way. Lightholler gave it a brief self-conscious glance. There was a faintly unpleasant tinge to the air that hinted at putrescence. The agent undid one of the cuffs and clasped it to a metal link embedded in the desk. Then he and Reid left the room.
Lightholler kept his eyes on the table. He felt as if his face might betray every wild thought that flashed through his mind. Hadn’t he driven through the streets of New York anticipating just this moment, this escape from madness? His own words returned derisively.
When we do get hauled in, I’ll be sure to remind them to add abduction to the charges of conspiracy and treason.
He’d accused Kennedy’s crew of improvising in New York, and they’d continued to do so across half of America: commandeered an airship and a bullet-ridden scout, ridden freight trains and stolen cars. Gangsters had guided them, and intrigues had formed and clung about them, and somewhere along the line he had begun to believe.
Kennedy had little to say about their captors, but there was something between him and the girl. That much was certain.
He could tell his captors now. Tell them how he’d been taken at gunpoint. Tell them about the deals Kennedy had brokered, selling out his country many times over, all for a madman’s crazed delusion. They’d believe it. All those roads travelled and all those deaths. The children’s faces pressed against cracked window panes on the streets of Nashville. His opportunity stood before him. It was a doorway, a linchpin—it was a beam of the purest light. A simple turn of phrase and he might never see Kennedy again.
A simple turn of phrase and he might never see anyone again.
A truck stop in Pleasant Valley, Tennessee. Dishwater eyes and flapjacks.
“I think that a couple of days from now, none of this will matter.”
“I can’t afford to tell you. If we get captured...”
“They’ll just put us both in an asylum, if we’re not hung for treason.”
He realised he was straining his cuffed hand against the bracelet.
Damn you, Joseph, just when did “you” become “we”?
There was movement from beyond the room. Lightholler raised his eyes slowly to the door. Reid held it open for Malcolm. Her hair was tousled and lines creased the edges of her dark eyes. She sat across from him and placed a folder on the table. Reid lingered at the door for a moment, arms crossed, as if forming a mental picture of the tableau. He moved to the table and pushed the ashtray towards Lightholler and offered him his old brand. He gave an easy smile as he lit their cigarettes.
She asked all the questions.
“When were you first approached by Kennedy’s men?”
“Who was your contact?”
“Are you aware that Rear-Admiral Lloyd is dead?”
She rehashed conspiracy.
“What was your role with the Brandenburgs?”
“Why did you leave New York?”
She talked frame-up, planted guns and false accusations. She showed him the paperwork: matching serial numbers, one retrieved from Kennedy’s Mauser and the other from the Osakatown murders. She asked him about Camelot. Dates. Numbers. Locations.
He said, “I received a letter from the British War Ministry. It asked me to cooperate with Major Kennedy and the CBI. I had nothing to do with the Germans.”
Reid said, “We’re CBI—so why aren’t you cooperating?”
Malcolm said, “Where is the letter now?”
Lightholler shrugged. Kennedy had suggested that this was a rogue operation, down-scaled and outside of the director’s sphere of influence. Malcolm was implying corruption from the top down.
“I’m a British citizen with diplomatic immunity,” he replied.
“Your immunity ran dry round about the time you decided to shoot up Nashville.”
Reid smoked and paced. Malcolm needled and probed. Lightholler waited for the offer.
Reid agitated. He swept piles of paper off the desk and crumpled the cigarettes in a meaty fist.
“This isn’t what you were asked to do,” Malcolm cajoled. “This has nothing to do with the War Ministry. You’re as much a victim as these guys were.”
She spread photos on the table, from Osakatown. She pursed her lips thoughtfully and removed another batch of photos from her folder—the Queens Midtown Tunnel. She caught him off guard.
She said, “You were there.”
Lightholler blinked but said nothing.
“He wa
s there, Reid.”
Reid pounced. He made the offer.
“Frame-up or not, we’ll place you at the Tunnel. Conspiracy or not, we’ll place you at Nashville, Osakatown and every fucking homicide between here and New York City. Give us Kennedy and we’ll give you complete amnesty. Give us Kennedy and we’ll give you back your life.”
Lightholler noted Malcolm’s flinch.
“Tempting.” He smiled feebly. “I need to use the rest room.”
Reid looked at his watch and then back at Malcolm. “Let’s bring him in.” He picked up the phone and dialled a number. “We’re ready now.”
“Rest room?”
“It can wait, Captain.”
The tactical agent opened the door. He led his prisoner to the chair by Lightholler’s side. There was the source of the putrefaction, the decay. The prisoner’s head was wrapped in a bandage that extended down to obscure half of his face. He walked with a limp.
“I believe you and Mr Newcombe are acquainted,” Reid said with a wry grin.
Lightholler cast the prisoner a fleeting glance. The prisoner nodded back with a pained expression. Recognition came as a thunderbolt. Lightholler wondered if anything could surprise him after this.
The photographs were still on the table. Osakatown and the Midtown Tunnel. The cold-blooded murders of that terrible afternoon in New York.
Amnesty and a life returned? What life?
They’d said nothing about the journal.
Tell me, Joseph, what will we do with your time machine?
VII
The tac agent fumbled with the prisoner’s wrist. The desk only held a lock for one pair of cuffs. Malcolm gazed at Newcombe with a tinge of remorse; the man needed further medical attention.
“Leave it,” she said.
The agent shot Reid a look. He nodded and dismissed him. She decided to let it go.
The prisoner was broken—damaged goods well before he’d been scooped out of the Atlantic—but he served as a caution to Captain Lightholler. Look, she thought, this is what we can achieve just by mere neglect.
Reid kept looking at his watch. The other tac agent would be back from the airport any time now and Lightholler wasn’t giving them anything. Was it time to move on to Joseph, or pursue the Tunnel angle? She gave Reid what she hoped was a veiled look of entreaty.
He took the cue.
“Well, Captain,” Reid said, “what’s it going to be?”
“Don’t know. I can’t think straight,” Lightholler replied, and he was clearly troubled. The prisoner’s arrival had prised something loose. “I need to eat something. I need to take a piss.”
“Captain. Please.” Reid had seen it too. He gave Malcolm a look of mock horror.
“Captain,” she said gently, “if you would just—”
The phone’s sharp peal startled her. She glanced up at Reid, who responded with a shrug. She picked up the phone.
Reid moved to the door. He was beckoning the tac agent, saying, “Piss break.”
The agent made a show of weary indifference as he released Lightholler from the table. He clamped the free bracelet around Lightholler’s other wrist and led him out.
“Make sure he washes his hands,” Reid called out after them. He looked back at Malcolm with a smirk.
She gazed at him questioningly. Why had he cut Lightholler loose? Why had he broken their rhythm?
“This is Evidence in Savannah,” a voice was saying over the line.
“Sorry. Agent Malcolm here. What have you got?” She snatched a scrap of paper from her notes.
“The print matches you requested are back.”
She cupped the mouthpiece and said to Reid, “Prints are back.”
“’Bout fucking time,” Reid replied. He was still standing by the door, watchfully.
“Go ahead,” she said to the lab technician, and he gave her the details. She asked if he was certain, and he confirmed it was a verified match. She looked over at the prisoner. Her hands were shaking.
The technician was still talking, saying something about a partial print. He paused, mid-sentence, and said, “I’m sorry, did you say you were Agent Malcolm?”
She wondered what was taking Captain Lightholler so long, wondered how to play this out, and here was another asshole struggling to come to terms with a female operative. She said, “Yes, this is Agent Patricia Malcolm.”
“Are there any other agents there with you? I’ll need to talk with one of them.”
She held the phone away from her for a moment, fuming, and caught Reid’s eye.
“What?” he said.
She rolled her eyes and handed him the phone. She looked across at the prisoner and shook her head. “What were you thinking?”
There was a sudden brisk movement at the corner of her eye. Why was Reid holding his pistol?
“You fucking bitch.”
“Reid?”
“You fucking conniving bitch.” Reid held the gun centred on her chest. He closed the door and walked back to the table. He perched on its edge. “Evidence control just came through with the partial print off Kennedy’s gun, honey, and it’s yours.” His voice was a snarled rasp.
“Are you insane? Of course my prints are on it. I’m the one who disarmed him.”
He lashed out at her chair with an abrupt kick. She landed on the floor, her legs twisted beneath her. He was standing over her with the pistol in her face. He kicked her again. His boot smashed into her hip, sending a searing jolt of pain down her leg and up her spine.
“I’m talking about the gun from New York. The gun from Osakatown.”
Hot tears streamed down her face. “That’s impossible. You know that’s impossible.”
“Is it?” He reached for the phone again, his eyes never leaving her.
“I’m being set up.” She tasted tears and blood in her mouth and she was crying and she was furious with herself and terrified beyond any previous concept of the sensation. “Framed like Joseph.”
“Your precious, fucking Joseph. You copied the serial numbers, you faked the whole fucking thing.” He dialled a number and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Bring your men in now. This shindig is over.”
He slammed down the phone. He groaned and dropped to the floor.
The prisoner was standing above him. He had Reid’s pistol in one hand and the ashtray in the other. The ashtray had a clump of blood-tangled hair on its scored edge. He looked down at Malcolm and said, “Are you okay, miss?”
She looked over at Reid. His face was pressed against the floor, a trickle of blood was pooling near his mouth. An ugly bruise was forming over the base of his skull. His chest moved with shallow gasps.
She looked back at the prisoner; he was swaying a little in the tide of his exertion. He kept the gun aimed at a point just beyond her.
He said, “Are you alright?”
She wiped at her face with the back of her hand. Her leg ached and there was a dull throb where Reid’s boot had connected. She wanted to vomit. “I’m okay.”
“I’ll need your gun.”
She patted herself down awkwardly. Her skirt was heaped up above her knees and she had to struggle to remove her jacket. She said, “It’s in the outer office.”
Reid was starting to move, his fingers scrabbling at the cement floor. The man who had been her prisoner reached for Reid’s cuffs. With one eye still on her, he twisted Reid’s wrists up and locked them behind his back. Reid groaned.
She looked up and said, “What are you going to do now, Mr Morgan?”
VIII
The tac agent rapped on the interrogation room door. The door swung open.
Lightholler hesitated at the entrance and a shove from behind propelled him into the room.
Agent Reid was gagged and cuffed to the desk. The lower part of his face, caked with fresh blood, was bound by a roll of bandages. Agent Malcolm was on her knees.
Morgan, unfettered, held a gun at the back of her neck. Reid saw them and let out a stifled howl.
“Hold it right there.” Morgan’s voice was gravel.
Reid bellowed, kicking at the desk.
“Easy, bud. Relax.” The tac had his hand on the holster.
Lightholler slammed a heel where the tac’s shin should have been, overshot and tumbled. The tac glanced down at him and drew his pistol.
The room shuddered explosively. Lightholler was deafened. He saw Morgan’s lips move. “Drop it.”
The request was redundant. The tac agent’s forearm was torn flesh and bone. He was staring at it incredulously. He said, “Shit,” as his pistol clattered on the floor.
Lightholler booted it to the far corner of the room.
Reid fell silent.
“Oh, fuck.” The tac agent was bent over, nursing his arm.
“Get those off.” Morgan was pointing at Lightholler’s wrists.
“Jesus Christ,” the tac agent howled.
“Captain?” Morgan urged.
Lightholler struggled to his knees and reached for the agent’s key chain. The agent, in an oddly obliging manoeuvre, shifted his wounded elbow to facilitate the exchange. Lightholler removed the keys. The question roared in his brain. What the hell happened to Morgan?
The historian’s pale eyes were still watery blue but they fixed towards some undefinable distance. His face was lined and carved from steel. Possessed.
“Can you manage, Captain?” Morgan asked in his new voice.
Lightholler nodded. He fumbled with the key, slipping it into the lock. A twist and he was free. He rubbed at his wrists, still dazed.
“Captain?”
Lightholler looked up. He was remembering the last time he’d seen Morgan, in the Shenandoah’s hangar. What had happened since? Where was Hardas?
“Would you mind cuffing the agent?”
The tac had his injured arm pressed close to his chest. Lightholler hesitated, read Morgan’s glance, and proceeded to apply the cuffs. The agent growled his anguish.
The Company of the Dead Page 41