By day three at the Arnarhvoll Thurston’s ready to move on Miller again. He picks up the new rental and starts assembling what he needs. The farmer’s shotgun turns out to be a piece of crap so Thurston drops it in the bay. In a tourist bar on Tryggvagata he gets a line on somewhere to score dope, which, in turn, takes him to a run-down cafe in the Efra-Breiðholt district to the east, the nearest thing Iceland has to a rough neighborhood. A few steps and a couple of false starts later, he’s out by the warehouse talking to a Russian guy who works at a car body shop about guns. The Russian, despite his energetic sales pitch, doesn’t have much stock worth shit. But beggars can’t be choosers so Thurston takes a semiautomatic Zastava pistol and an Ithaca M37 shotgun from him. He buys all the ammo the guy has along with a lead-weighted police baton.
By Wednesday night Thurston has what he needs.
He pays the hotel bill and leaves Reykjavik at midnight. By two he’s at Miller’s place out by Gullfoss, amped up and ready. There’s only one problem.
The bird has flown.
Chapter 25
“Where?”
The guy sitting on the kitchen floor shakes his head. Blood from the crack Thurston had given him spatters across the tiles. He’s a big man with a beard, in his late twenties with plenty of tats. Thurston has him pegged as a local recruit. From the look of the guy he might have done some boxing once but he’s running to fat now. Probably got a rep in Reykjavik but, fuck, we’re talking Iceland here. By Thurston’s standards this tub of guts is an amateur all the way up. No wonder Miller was looking to recruit back at The V if this represented the standard local issue. Thurston guesses that’s why he’s been left behind to look after the joint: the gangster equivalent of a janitor.
“Fuck you!” he snarls, and says something else in Icelandic.
Thurston jams the muzzle of the Ithaca hard into the guy’s mouth. He hears some teeth break.
“Don’t try that ‘fuck you’ movie shit,” Thurston snarls. “It doesn’t work in real life, buddy, and I’m not in a forgiving mood. Where’s Miller?” Thurston pulls the muzzle back and places it flush against the guy’s right eye socket.
“English, not,” says the guy, spitting blood. Thurston pulls the Ithaca back, flicks the gun around, and smashes him backward into a table with the stock of the rifle.
Thurston has no problem doing it: he remembers seeing this guy through the window getting his tiny dick sucked by one of the teens. He’d poured beer over her head and laughed.
“I told you,” says Thurston. He steps forward and stands over the guy, the gun aimed straight at his face. “You speak English just fine so don’t try that bullshit with me again, understand me?”
The guy looks dazed. He rubs blood from the gash on his temple.
“So, again,” says Thurston. “Where’s Miller? I know he’s gone: no cars left, rooms all empty, closets empty, girls gone, the equipment in the sheds on standby. I’m guessing there’s been a big shipment out and Miller’s gone back to whatever hole he calls home. This is where you come in and tell me where that is.”
The guy looks around the kitchen as if expecting Nate Miller to show up.
“Miller kill you.”
Thurston’s tempted to blow the guy away simply for wasting his time. He pulls the slide on the Ithaca and lifts the stock to his shoulder.
“Wait! Wait!” Miller’s guy flinches and Thurston nods, lowering the Ithaca a fraction.
“Go on.”
“He’s in America, okay? Okay?”
“Where?”
The guy shakes his head.
“I said, ‘Where?’” Thurston pushes the gun in closer.
“Vermont. He has place there. I don’t know where—”
Thurston cocks the Ithaca again.
“Not far from the border! I don’t know exact! Some French name. Isle de something. All I know is it’s on lake. Supposed to be a chemical fertilizer plant. That’s all, I swear! I swear!”
“More,” says Thurston. “There’s more.”
“The compound?” says the guy. “The compound is called ‘White Nation.’”
“‘White Nation’? You have got to be kidding me. Miller’s a Nazi?”
The guy on the floor doesn’t say anything but Thurston suddenly clicks on a few images: the skinhead Russian at The V, Miller’s eagle wrist tat, the cold stare at Lenin.
“That makes things easier,” says Thurston. He looks at the guy on the floor. He represents a problem. As if reading Thurston’s mind, the guy starts speaking.
“I say nothing!”
Thurston grimaces. He can’t afford for Miller to be aware of him this time. The problem is Thurston has standards—standards that separate him from the Millers of this world.
And then the guy on the floor makes the decision for him. Reaching down he pulls out a pistol stowed in an ankle holster. He probably thinks he’s being slick but Thurston blows the guy’s head off before he’s released the safety.
Chapter 26
To say Nick Terraverdi looks pleased to see Cody Thurston would not be accurate. As Thurston slides into the corner booth Terraverdi looks like someone who’s bitten into an éclair filled with dogshit.
“Jesus, you look like crap, Thurston.”
“Gee, thanks, Nicky,” says Thurston. “Always a pleasure.”
“You’re welcome.”
They’re at a joint called Connolly’s on South 4th Street over by the Williamsburg Bridge. It’s afternoon in New York and gloomy outside with the dull promise of snow in the air.
Terraverdi is a trim, nervy-looking man in his mid-forties wearing a tailored business suit and glasses. He’s one of those guys who seldom look at the person they’re talking to. His eyes endlessly flick around the diner as his left leg pumps up and down, his restless fingers constantly picking at labels on the ketchup bottles, or flicking microscopic traces of lint off his sleeve. What he does not look like is a seasoned FBI field agent, something he has been for the past ten years.
A waitress comes over and both men order coffee.
“Be right back,” she says. The two men watch her go and wait until she’s back at the counter before starting to talk.
“How’s the meditation going?” says Thurston. “You’re looking mellow as ever.”
“Very fucking funny.” Terraverdi leans forward. “I’ll give you fucking mellow. You know I can get in big trouble talking to you? My bureau chief gets wind I’m meeting a wanted felon it won’t matter shit how things have been before. I’ll be out on my ear, Cody. Or is there another name? I assume you’re not in the country on your regular passport?”
“No,” says Thurston. “It got burnt, along with everything else.”
“In the fire.”
“Yeah, what else?”
“The fire you didn’t set.”
There’s a pause while the coffees arrive. As soon as the waitress is out of earshot Thurston leans forward, frowning.
“What the fuck do you think, Nicky? You think I’d be here talking to you if I did this? What did you hear? I went nuts? Suddenly flipped into a killer rapist with a taste for arson?”
“Pretty much,” says Terraverdi. He takes a sip of coffee and grimaces. “If it’s any help, I don’t swallow any of that bullshit.”
“I assumed as much, Nicky.”
“And your beef is not on US soil so maybe I was kind of overstating how bad it would be for my boss to find out. We haven’t had any notification about you. When you contacted me I did some background reading. It’s been a while.”
“True,” says Thurston. “Ten years.” Both men fall silent and regard each other thoughtfully. Terraverdi taps a finger absentmindedly against the table. After a few seconds Terraverdi leans back and opens the palms of his hands in a tell-me-more gesture.
“So…”
“So I need to tell my high-ranking FBI buddy maybe he’s going to be hearing some things about me. Probably some bad things. Like about me killing a bunch of people up in Vermon
t.”
“And they’re all going to be lies.”
“No,” says Thurston. “They’re all going to be true.”
That makes Nicky sit up straight.
“Jesus, Cody. What the fuck are—”
“Listen, Nicky, I’m not here looking for your approval. I just want someone official to take a look at things if…if everything doesn’t turn out the way I’m hoping. I don’t want this to all be for nothing if I get a stray bullet. The guys I’m dealing with are flat-out bad motherfuckers, Nicky. Killers, rapists. Christ, given the age of some of the girls I saw in Iceland, they’re practically child molesters. No one’s going to spend a split second mourning. And you get to shut down a sizable North American pseudoephedrine supplier.”
“Why don’t you give me the details and leave it up to us?”
“Because you’d find nothing, Nicky. From what I hear this operation is running pretty tight. Besides, there’s weird vibes about the setup and I’m guessing you don’t want to be the fed at the tail end of that kind of fuckup? No, thought not. Listen, this is personal, I admit it. But it’s also the kind of thing that’s best dealt with off the books, you get me? In, out, nice and—”
“I can’t hear this, Cody,” says Terraverdi.
“Hear me out. You owe me.”
There’s a moment’s silence while both men flash back to that night. The night of the firefight in Fallujah. The night Cody Thurston went right back in to the bleeding eye of the storm for Nick Terraverdi, a man he’d never met before, and got both of them out alive.
“Yeah,” says Terraverdi, “yeah, I guess I do.”
“You gonna let me take care of it?”
Terraverdi nods. “Now tell me what the fuck it is you got yourself into.”
Thurston lays it out and, as snow begins to settle on the darkening streets of Brooklyn, Nick Terraverdi listens.
Chapter 27
Nate Miller hasn’t given the Australian much thought since he’d gone into Gullfoss but he’s thinking plenty about him now. Maybe it’s the sound of running water, or maybe it’s the dope. Or both. Whatever it is, Thurston’s face keeps stubbornly swimming back into Miller’s view and Miller’s not sure he likes it.
He picks up his roach and takes a long drag.
He’s laying back in a cedar tub set up on a deck overlooking the lake with Mercy, the hot little Hispanic bitch Donno brought over from Montpelier yesterday. Donno’d bought her off a guy running girls out of some juvie halfway house for wards of the state too old for the kids’ home. Real nice piece. Young, too. Not that Miller’s asking.
Mercy’s about on the edge of unconsciousness. She’s got her eyes half-closed and a sappy smile on her face. Cute, though. Miller thinks he might keep this one around a while longer than his usual. Train her up in his ways.
“What you thinking of, daddy?” Mercy drawls in a baby-doll voice. “Anything nice?”
“Shut the fuck up, perra,” says Miller. “I hate that ‘daddy’ shit.”
“Jeez. Touch-ee.”
Miller looks her way and it’s enough to straighten her right out. The girl drops her eyes and shuts her mouth.
“That’s right,” growls Miller.
He takes another toke and turns back to the lake and his thoughts on Thurston.
He’d done some asking around about the Australian after that dickwad Brit cop, Hall, fucked things up. Heard Thurston had decked two cops and waltzed out of jail smooth as you like. Disappeared into nothing faster than kiss-my-ass and then shows up in fucking Iceland looking like a completely different guy.
That took training. Skills.
Of course, Miller had seen it for himself back at the bar in London.
A guy who can put down the Axe is someone worth taking seriously. Which is one reason Miller had had the place torched. Sofi had been thrown in as a bonus. No sense in having one of his castoffs wandering around London shooting off her dumb Icelandic mouth. It had all gone just fine, but this guy didn’t accept his fate like he should have.
And showing up at the farm right before they made the big shipment? Had that been a coincidence?
A thought occurs to him: a thought that, despite the temperature of the tub, sends chills down his spine. Maybe the Australian was some kind of cop? Miller turns that one over. He was “working” in the same joint where Sofi Girsdóttir had been working. Could Thurston have been tracking the Iceland connection? Jesus Christ.
Miller rubs his mouth. That was a fucking idea he really hoped was just dope paranoia. If Viktor thought the same…
Miller shakes his head. It’s bullshit. It had all worked out. The Russians never knew Thurston had set foot in Iceland and Miller had seen the fucking guy take a dive into the Falls. No one could survive that shit. He relaxes. He’s got this thing all boxed off neat and tidy.
Miller smiles as he remembers again the guy’s face as he dropped into the river and flicks the roach through the clouds of steam rising from the tub.
“Come here, baby,” he says to Mercy. “Let’s kiss and make up.”
Chapter 28
At first glance, East Talbot doesn’t look like much of a place.
A second doesn’t improve things.
It’s a small ex–lumber town lying in a fold of white hills consisting of a small grid of cross streets that straggle up and out into the woods on either side. The main highway leads to I-89 fifteen miles west. Heading east, the road crawls over a ridge of densely forested hills before hitting the New Hampshire border another fifteen miles away. East Talbot’s got a bar, a diner, a farm supply store with a sideline in maple syrup products, and a gallery some hopeful hipster had opened five years ago selling tourist shit for tourists who never buy enough. The gas station does a sideline in canoe trips on Lake Carlson, which sits under East Talbot like an oversized teardrop. There’s a motel bigger than you might expect in a town that size that dates back to more optimistic times when Lake Carlson brought in large numbers of summer vacationers from New York and Boston.
Thurston’s selected East Talbot because it’s the last town before Miller’s place at Isle de Rousse although, now he’s here, he’s wondering if he’ll stick out so much he might as well paint a target on his back. But Thurston guesses he’s got to start somewhere. Besides, from the look of things, East Talbot has been hit by a neutron bomb that’s left the buildings but removed all trace of humanity. Since he reached the edge of town he hasn’t seen a single sign of life on the slush-lined streets. A thick blanket of gray cloud sits across the town like a pan lid.
At the Top o’ the Lake Motel, Thurston’s rented Jeep carves black tracks across the entirely empty snow-covered lot. He pulls up next to the lobby and steps out of the car as a few flakes of snow begin to drift down out of the flat sky.
Inside two women are talking animatedly behind the counter. At Thurston’s entrance, both look up, startled, as if a bear had walked in. Thurston guesses they aren’t exactly overwhelmed by customers. After a moment’s pause, the older of the two women smiles.
“How you doing today?” she says. Of middle-age, she’s wearing so much polyester Thurston’s certain she’ll spark a fire if she crosses her legs too quickly. “The storm’s about due so you timed this right, hey.”
The other woman is around thirty, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt with the motel logo printed above her left breast. She’s got her blond hair pulled up under a striped bandanna and is carrying a clipboard. She looks coolly at Thurston but doesn’t speak.
“Well, it’s snowing,” says Thurston.
He knocks his Australian accent back and tries to give the words a New York twist. It won’t pass as American but he’s hoping up here in Vermont they might not listen too closely. From what he’s heard so far, rural Vermonters don’t sound much like Americans anyway.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Lou,” says the younger woman. “Don’t forget to add detergent to Pablo’s list, okay? We’re all out.” She slides the clipboard behind the counter and shrugs int
o a thick down jacket hanging on the back of the office door. She acknowledges Thurston with a brief flick of her eyes and leaves.
“Bye,” says Thurston to the closing lobby door.
“Don’t mind Terri. She’s kind of, uh…well, she’s Terri. Now, where was we?”
“Storm?” says Thurston, handing over a credit card.
“That’s right! Big one comin’ they say.” The woman swipes Thurston’s card and slides it back across the counter. “Could be a doozy! But you’ll be cozy with us, Mr. Flanagan. I put you in 205, second floor along to the right, Mr. Flanagan. Kind of an upgrade.”
“Kind of?” says Thurston.
The woman shrugs. “Between you and me, all the rooms are pretty much the same but 205 is on a corner. So it’s a little bit bigger. And with us bein’ so quiet you haven’t got no neighbors. Y’can make as much noise as you like.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks.”
“You want me to pick out the sights, hon?” says the woman as she hands Thurston the keys to his room. “Or you here on business?”
“Real estate.”
Lou’s eyes light up.
“Buyin’ or sellin’? Because this place is on the market, y’know. Get the right owner it could be a gold mine.”
“More of a farming type thing,” says Thurston. He shoulders his backpack and turns for the door, keen to end any inquiry into his nonexistent real estate story. “But thanks, anyway.”
“Okay, enjoy your stay. Oh, and we don’t have a restaurant on the premises but there’s a discount on meals over at the diner, and on drinks at Frenchie’s.”
“Frenchie’s?”
“The bar on Main? Stay there long enough and you’ll meet most folks in East Talbot. I’ll be there myself after eight.”
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