The Knowland Retribution

by Richard Greener

  St. John

  “Still got nothing to say?” Billy asked. Walter had been sitting in his regular seat at the bar in silence nursing the same Diet Coke all morning. He hardly ate his breakfast, and the New York Times lay folded on the bar, unopened. Walter muttered something at Billy, nothing he could make sense of.

  “I knew a man once,” Ike said. “Didn’t say nothing to nobody for damn near two months.”

  “Who was that?” Billy asked, astonished.

  “Isaac. You know him, Billy? Runs that Budweiser stand over near the beach.”

  “The hot dog place?” Billy said, clarifying things. “It’s got that big Budweiser sign on it? Yeah, I know him.”

  “Well, like I said. Nothing to nobody for two months.”

  “You said ‘damn near two months,’ not ‘two months’.”

  “Thank God A’mighty!” hollered Ike, managing not to cough in spite of the prodigious puff of smoke coming out of his mouth simultaneous with his words. “Walter, you can talk.”

  “Better than the two of you.”

  “I talk pretty good,” Billy said, a tiny bit of hurt in his voice. “You know, you can’t run a bar, not one as popular as this, and not be a good talker.” Walter nodded, but clearly not in agreement. Ike took another deep drag, the sound of the burning embers racing toward the butt, carrying all the way to where Walter sat.

  “Christ, Ike,” he said. “You’re going to explode. So, are you going to tell us?”

  “Tell us what?” Billy said.

  “Alright Ike,” said Walter, putting on his best third-grade teacher voice, “why didn’t Isaac say anything for . . . however long you said?”

  “Well,” Ike said, “I can only tell you what he told me—later on, of course. He said he didn’t have nothing to say.” Walter stared at Ike, the question of the old man’s credibility written all over his face. Ike, as always, smiled.

  “Best talker I ever heard was Hitler,” Billy said, and neither Walter nor Ike could think of what to say next. They looked at each other with flat amazement. Finally, Walter said, “Hitler?” And Ike followed with, “Shit,” sounding more like bed linen than anything else. Billy rose to his own defense.

  “Hey, I don’t like him. I’m just saying, did you ever hear him speak, talking? I’ve seen him on The History Channel. I don’t even know what he’s saying, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him. And then that crowd—all those Germans—yelling like that. All I’m saying is I never heard anyone else talk that way. That’s all.”

  “I have,” Walter said. “Ever hear of Martin Luther King, Jr.?”

  Billy picked up a rag and began wiping down the already spotless bar. His embarrassment was painful. Walter knew Billy wouldn’t be the next to say anything. Then Ike spoke up.

  “Minister Henry Broomfield,” he said. “Come here a long time ago, must be forty years. Preached three weekends in a row, mind you. Out by the old slave battleground. In a tent. Went back and stayed on the rock during the week. Everybody went that first weekend. Ain’t that many of us here, right? And not much to do neither. But we went back again the next week, and then again another time just to hear that man talk. Spellbinder. For a few days after he’d gone I was this close to seeing Jesus myself.” Ike held up one finger on each hand about a foot between them. He laughed, and Walter did too.

  “Powerful, huh?” Billy said, feeling a bit rehabilitated. Jesus and Hitler were equally irrelevant to him.

  “And that wasn’t the best part,” said Ike. “You see, Minister Broomfield come here only once and leave. But he come back a few years ago—thirty, thirty-five years later. He sets up his tent in the same exact spot as before. We all went. Why not? My wife—” Ike stopped and took a very deep breath, this time without the cigarette. Walter remembered when Sissy died about a year before Billy arrived on St. John. The old man needed a minute. “We all went,” Ike continued, “and my wife wanted to speak to Minister Broomfield after his services, so she waits in line to see him and I’m waiting with her. Well, Sissy finally gets to shake his hand and she says something like, ‘I bet you don’t remember me, but I heard you when you were here before—twice, actually.’ That minister looked right into her eyes with a big smile, held her hands with both of his—you know, sort of like he was Christ himself—and he says to her, ‘Of course I remember you, darlin’. And your sister too.’”

  “That’s impressive,” Walter said.

  “Let me tell you,” Ike went on. “I was shocked. How this man remember Sissy’s sister? Sissy’s so happy she just sort of drifts away and I’m left standing there, just me and Minister Henry Broomfield. I look at him and say how could he remember my wife’s sister after maybe forty years? Her sister! That man put his hand on my shoulder, and with that same smile he just gave my Sissy he whispers to me, ‘They all got sisters.’”

  The three friends were silent. What more was there to say. At last Billy said, “Sonofabitch. You want me to write it?”

  “That’s good,” Ike said.

  “How can people vote for this one?” asked Walter.

  “How can they vote for any of them?” said Billy. “Nobody’s got the slightest fucking idea what this stuff is all about.”

  “Okay,” Walter said, looking over to Ike for approval.

  “That’s good,” the old man said again.

  “Well then,” Billy said. He rambled over to the chalkboard next to the ancient cash register and, for the time being, a miniature Christmas tree, picked up the blue chalk, and wrote, “Hitler/Martin Luther King, Jr./Henry Broomfield.”

  Walter ordered a fresh Diet Coke and Billy’s special swordfish steak with everything—the salad and potatoes too. He was hungry at last. And he was thinking, “They all got sisters.”

  St. John

  The chase was easy. The path well traveled. It was a foregone conclusion that he would find what he was looking for. At the heart of it all lay what people call “intuition.” Walter understood intuition as hidden calculation, invisible counting, and weighing. It made some card players rich, told goalies where to stick the glove without ever seeing the shot, drove scientific breakthroughs. As Walter had tried to explain to Billy and Ike, the conscious mind can’t find or control the place where these calculations are made.

  Intuitive people get results through a one-way door in the mind. This worked better for some than others. Walter believed that to fully exploit intuition, people needed intelligence. What’s more, high intelligence plus intuition equals genius. True, people of average intelligence also have hunches and often know how to play them. Walter considered himself an average man with better-than-average hunches.

  These skills and the resources he nurtured in thirty years spent finding people gave him a great advantage over cops and associated freelancers. He was confident of that. He faced no bureaucracy or any of the other multitudes of institutions that claim to be so vital to human sociology, yet more often than not are designed primarily to make things harder than need be. He worked without warrants, court orders, or permission, unshackled by rules. He encountered none of the legal, political, or jurisdictional red tape (priding himself on actually knowing the origin of the term) that plagued law enforcement. Most of all, when he thought about what made him a success he credited much of it to the simple fact that he knew what he was doing. His natural affinity for the process, going all the way back to Freddy Russo in Saigon, was only sharpened by years of experience. He wasn’t quite able to recognize it, let alone have such feelings see the light of day, but deep inside he knew he loved it. The plane rides, the long drives to the middle of nowhere, the finest hotels in the capital cities of the world and the cheap ones in towns nobody wanted to spend time in. He loved the solitude, the privacy, the assurance of being alone, the certainty he could not possibly run into anyone who knew him. Especially himself.

  Over t
ime, Walter accumulated and cultivated a list of people who could get him access to information he needed either to begin or continue his searches. He made a conscious point of staying in touch with former clients and others he met along the way who could be useful to him in the future, and he was a truly good friend to those among them whom he really liked. He learned to distinguish gratitude from relief. Some clients lost their gratitude fast. Some never had it at all. Some never lost it—and many of these were positioned to help. The well was deep, and now he drank from it yet again.

  “Hoe gaat het, Aat,” said Walter, sitting on his deck, the tropical sea spread out beneath him, the telephone resting easily on his shoulder.

  “Walter, my friend,” was the surprised and happy reply. “How are you?”

  Aat van de Steen was a Dutchman, a man of rare candor with a ripe sense of humor and a self-confidence Walter knew to be of awe-inspiring proportions. If you asked what he did, he most probably would describe himself as a soldier of fortune. And he would do so with a flourish, a smile, and a twinkle in his eye. What did Aat van de Steen do? Who could be sure?

  “How are you, old man?” said the Dutchman. “So wonderful to hear your voice again.”

  “Old man?” said Walter. “You’re older than me.”

  Van de Steen laughed. “Not in the ways that count, my friend. For there I am forever young.”

  “Yeah, you and Zimmy.”

  “Zimmy?”

  “Dylan. Bob Dylan. ‘Forever Young.’”

  “You think I don’t know your Bob Dylan?” The Dutchman laughed again. “You are—how do you say—kidding me.”

  Walter said, “Good to hear your voice too, Aat.”

  The Dutchman was suddenly serious. “You must need some help, no?”

  “I do,” said Walter. “I certainly do.”

  Walter and Aat van de Steen first met in Laos in the summer of 1971. Both men were new to their trade, both blessed with special abilities, which, if handled with care and developed properly, were certain to make both successful. Van de Steen had begun with a few small deals with some Eastern European irregulars. He soon branched out to Northern Africa and the former Dutch colonies in Asia. It was through an Indonesian that he got his first contract in Laos. Over the years, the decades, in fact, Aat van de Steen had become one of the world’s busiest and wealthiest arms dealers. From his headquarters in Amsterdam, on the city’s fanciest canal, the Herens Gracht, he bought, sold, and controlled a lion’s share of the movement of weapons—from handguns to tanks, helicopters, even heavy artillery—on every inhabited continent on the planet. “War is the most fundamental attribute of humanity,” he once told Walter. “I serve the species.” Over the years, Walter ran into him on his occasional trips to Europe. He made a point of it. At each meeting they renewed their friendship with genuine warmth, affection, and respect. Then, eleven years ago, Aat’s brother suddenly disappeared when he was unable to pay a substantial gambling debt. Although Aat’s reputation and unquestioned power protected his brother from harm, Jan van de Steen panicked and went to hiding. He left behind his wife, three children, and a brother who was a friend of Walter Sherman. It took Walter a month to find the younger van de Steen holed up in an apartment in Vancouver, Canada. By then, Jan was ready to be caught. Walter returned him safely to his family in Zoetermeer, and, of course, he refused any money from Aat.

  Walter detailed the guns, the equipment, and the ammunition Leonard Martin used and deposited with Isobel. As Walter spoke and Aat jotted some notes, the Dutchman said nothing more than an occasional “okay.” Had the two been in the same room, a nod of his head would have sufficed.

  “I will call you when I have something,” van de Steen said. “And Walter, you would do yourself well to come see me in Amsterdam. Not now because it’s too cold here for an island man like yourself, but in spring—then we can sit in the Leidens Plein, drink coffee, and watch all the Swedish girls.” He laughed again, and so did Walter. “In fact, Walter, I will tell you what I will do. I will take you to the Yab Yum. Yes I will.”

  “What’s the Yab Yum?”

  “You will not be disappointed, my friend.”

  A picture was developing in Walter’s mind. After Leonard’s family died, his ties to everyone in Atlanta began slipping. When he discovered what really happened—when he received Dr. Roy’s CD—he cut the remaining shreds. Sources in the financial world had already provided Walter with Leonard Martin’s history. He knew Leonard had gone to cash and the money trail led straight to the Caymans. “We all keep our money there, don’t we?” he thought, and wondered if they shared the same bank. If so, Leonard’s account dwarfed his own. The move to Jamaica had been a hoax; a cheap one at that. There was a deed with Leonard’s name on it, but the property had been bought for only a few thousand dollars. It made no difference. Leonard was probably never there. But he was somewhere, for two years. Wherever that was, he had managed to stockpile weapons, some quite exotic and expensive, and found a way to use them proficiently, expertly. “Practice, practice,” thought Walter. Like a golf pro hitting hundreds of balls every day, rain or shine, he envisioned Leonard Martin firing round after round, day after day, week after week, month after month. As Walter put the puzzle together, he guessed there had been no way Leonard could have used a commercial shooting range. He would have been like a pool hall junkie, hanging around for hours on end, day after day after day. That would have attracted too much attention. There was no way that happened. Isobel had told him about Leonard’s use of a small trampoline, one he used to stand on to learn how to shoot accurately even while unstable. So where then did Leonard Martin stay? Where did he shoot? Something didn’t fit. Perhaps the answers would come from Aat van de Steen. Wherever the guns went, Leonard was there. Walter would wait until the Dutchman called.

  New York

  Maloney was worried. The stories in the New York Times—Christ! Every day they print something else with his name in it. Photographers, TV trucks, reporters of all sorts hounded them everywhere. The publicity was making it impossible for him and the others to conduct the normal business of the firm. Day after day the public relations machine so much a part of the Stein, Gelb, Hector & Wills operation labored to deny, deny, deny. Nathan wanted Louise to direct this effort, but he was dissuaded when she looked at him in disbelief, the left side of her mouth noticeably twitching, and said, “That’s madness, Nathan. None of us—and I mean none of us—can be seen touching this. It will explode in our faces. Get someone else. You’ve got resources.”

  Wesley Pitts said, “It’s already blown up in our face, Louise.”

  “No it hasn’t!” she shouted. “It’s just a fucking newspaper article, some talking heads on the cable. Shit, nobody watches those goddamn cable networks anyway. It can’t hurt us. It will go away!”

  “I think Louise is right,” Tom Maloney interjected, seeing the need, as always, to get things under control. He tried not to show how desperate he was to get them all calmed down before it was too late. He knew Louise Hollingsworth didn’t believe a word she’d said. He could see fear in her eyes. Her reaction was visceral. She felt she was doomed. They were all doomed. Her emotions erupted into an open sore. Maloney did not share those feelings. No matter what the New York Times wrote, the killings had stopped. Leonard Martin had stopped killing people. Tom had earlier confided as much to Nathan, and Nathan, he thought, had bought in. Or so it seemed.

  “We’ll get someone to handle this,” Tom said. “The real problem is that we can’t operate effectively with any sense of routine. We can’t talk to clients because all they’re thinking about is what they saw on TV or read in the paper. No matter how many times the firm denies any

  involvement, it’s still out of the question to call someone—anyone—and say ‘Hey, let’s have lunch.’ Who wants to be near us? After all, who among us is willing to walk in the street like a normal person?”r />
  It was a question not requiring an answer. Nevertheless, Pitts said, “Not me.”

  “It’s not ‘out of the question,’” Nathan said, “it’s fucking impossible! The way they treat us you’d think we were priests, goddamnit! As of right now,” he said, rising from his big chair, looking as tall as he ever had, “we’re all on leave. Go home, or wherever you want to go, and don’t come back until this is over. We’ll stay in touch with cell phones.”

  The room was deathly quiet. The light behind Nathan’s desk was such that none of the other three could actually see his face. Were his eyes darting from side to side? Was his nose twitching? They had no idea. Despite the brief outburst, his voice was calm and smooth, his demeanor subdued, not agitated. Louise and Wes took the moment as a sign of Nathan’s leadership. Had they thought it through they would have seen the folly in such judgment, but they badly needed reassurance, and how they got it was of no importance. Maloney stayed seated and Stein stood, towering above him as Tom Cruise might be made to appear tall when shot from the proper angle. “He might be a wee little man,” thought Tom, “but his name’s on the door.” Wesley Pitts and Louise Hollingsworth left.

  “Let them go hide,” Nathan said. “This is real horseshit, Tom. You know that. What the fuck is going on with Sherman? He knows his guy is Leonard Martin—the whole fucking world knows it. Results!”

  “I haven’t heard from him, but that means he’s working, Nathan. That’s what it means. The time will come when Walter Sherman calls, and Leonard Martin will be right there.”

  “You still think we’re safe?”