Agents of Darkness

by Campbell Armstrong

  He dialled Justine’s number, expecting the inevitable answering-machine, but Justine herself picked up on the first ring. Justine emitted politeness, oozed concern over the fate of the Galloway union, then said that Karen was unavailable. Unavailable? This word was a popsicle pressed upon Charlie’s heart. What did unavailable mean? It was the most sinister word he’d ever heard.

  “Don’t upset yourself, Charlie,” Justine said. “She’ll be back later.”

  “Later? How much later?”

  “Don’t force me into being a go-between, sweetie,” said Justine. “I resent having roles thrust upon me. In any case, I understood you and Karen were in disarray permanently.”

  “Did she say where she was going?” he asked.

  “I don’t police her movements. She’s a big girl.”

  Galloway fought for control over the images that assailed him. “Is she … I mean, is she out on … a, what’s the word, date?”

  “Sweetie, she’ll get in touch. I’m sure.”

  “You didn’t answer my question, Justine.”

  “Goodnight, dahlin.”

  “I need to talk to her, Justine.”

  Galloway heard the line die. He dropped the receiver back in place. Okay. Okay. Put Karen out of your mind. Set her aside. Pretend she doesn’t exist, never has, she’s a product of your brain on overtime. Some illusory Being decorated this wigwam of a room in which presently you stand on the panicky margin of hyperventilation. Gasp. He kicked the door open, breathed the heat into his chest. This was no way to live. Without Karen. Not knowing where she was. Or what she was doing. Or with whom.

  A mature man would not be bothered by these dire possibilities, Charlie. A mature man would not be lingering over pictures of his estranged wife seated at a candelit table in some uptown restaurant with a Mister Smoothcock, footsie under the hanging linen. A truly mature man would be planning his life, assessing this factor, weighing that, making absolutely certain he had some control over his future – unlike you, Galloway, you who are destiny’s air-filled pigskin, kicked up and down the rutted playing-fields of your own sorry ways. He drew more stale oxygen into his lungs. God. Bring her home. Bring her back.

  The telephone rang. Such were the irrational leaps of faith a sad-hearted romantic drunk made that he assumed at once it was Karen getting back to him. His second thought was that it could be one of the airlines responding to his inquiries. Earlier, he’d begun calling airline desks at LAX in alphabetical order to see if there were records of tickets purchased by Raymond Cruz and/or Elizabeth Honculada. But the computers were down, as computers tended to be. He was informed that maybe in an hour or so they’d be up again, but it was, gee, hard to predict; could be tomorrow, he was told, real sorry.

  He snatched up the receiver and was assaulted by loud music, over which a woman’s voice was barely audible. It wasn’t Karen. It took him a few moments to recognise the woman and when he did he was tempted to hang up.

  “You bastard, you miserable fuck. How the fuck you sleep last night? Huh? Huh? Huh?”

  “Brenda, listen,” he said.

  “Don’ Brenda me, I saw you, slimesucker, I saw you push Freddie off, I was there.”

  “I didn’t push anybody –”

  “Eat it, Galloway. Eat it and choke. Choke, scumbag. You think you can push my Freddie off some goddam balcony and walk away, huh, huh, that what you huh think –”

  Shaken by the woman’s inebriated rage, Galloway put the receiver down. Lord, yes. What he really needed was abuse. He went into the living-room and watched the sluggish moon climb over Los Angeles, passing through skimpy cloud cover – the first clouds in how many days? – and then reappearing, surrounded by rust-coloured haze.

  He stepped outside. He stuck his trembling hands in his pockets and wandered toward the avocado tree. A toad croaked, leaped toward him, stopped. It had barely any spring in its jump. Charlie found the garden hose, turned on the tap, sprayed a good-sized puddle of water around the creature and watched it immerse itself. He felt merciful, brimming with infinite compassion, St Charlie of the Hollywood Hills, saviour of frogs.

  A slight sound made him turn, a dull thump caused by a premature avocado falling to earth. Why couldn’t they just hang in the branches long enough to ripen? What the hell was going on in the world? He went back indoors, telephoned the airport, asked about the condition of the computers, but no change – Eastern was down, and so was Continental and Delta and American, even All Nippon Air. The female voice that informed Galloway of this unhappy state of affairs might have been relaying the temperatures of a patient in an intensive-care unit. Down, sir, and still plummeting. We can only pray.

  As Charlie hung up, the lights of a car illuminated the front yard. He looked out to see Clarence Wylie approaching the house. As soon as he entered the living-room Clarence sat on the sofa, undoing the knot of his tie. He removed his notebook from his hip pocket and laid it on the coffee table. He looked, Galloway thought, very uneasy.

  Clarence stared at his notebook. “It took some effort, but I managed to get you something,” he said. “I warn you now. I think it’s unhealthy. What you’ve walked into is a pile of shit.”

  “Not an unusual phenomenon.” Galloway, balanced on the arm of the sofa, glanced at the hieroglyphics that covered the pages of Wylie’s notebook. They were unreadable.

  Clarence removed his tie completely. “This is what I have. From the description you gave me, I think the man you know as Raymond Cruz is also known as Arturo Paz and Joseph Salongo and quite a few other names as well. His real name appears to be Armando Teng. The Philippine Constabulary have a warrant out for his arrest on charges of killing three of their cops a few days ago. We have this information because Teng is also suspected of murdering an American national called Eugene Costain in Manila recently. Our Embassy there was advised. Routine in such matters.”

  “Who was Costain? Why was he killed?” Charlie asked. He was eager, anxious for Clarence to finish. A vitality possessed him, a sense of being close to the heart of a mystery. It was as if a formerly bare room had become furnished all at once. There were particulars now. Things to touch. Windows and skylights to look through.

  “I’ll get to Costain,” Clarence Wylie said. “Teng first. Some time yesterday, and this is hot off the press, Philippine Military Intelligence arrested a man called” – here Clarence checked his notebook – “Jovitoe Baltazar, who was wanted for questioning in connection with your Mister Teng. This same Baltazar was deported from the United States in the late 1970s as an illegal alien. I put that in parentheses because I don’t know if it has any bearing on this.”

  Clarence played with his tie, the label of which said MADE IN THE USA. “Jovitoe Baltazar, it would seem, was happy to ‘cooperate’ with Philippine authorities. I use ‘cooperate’ loosely. Bones might have been broken, a bruise or three inflicted. Who knows? According to Baltazar, Teng was despatched to the United States to do some killing. Which is what Joaquin told you.”

  To do some killing. Yes. Yes. What came back now to Galloway was the first impression he’d had of the man he knew only as Raymond Cruz. This one’s a killer –wasn’t that what he’d thought when he’d shaken hands with him through the open window of Freddie Joaquin’s car? Charlie moved round the room like a loose particle, readjusting things for no real reason, just an overflow of energy, a discharge of electricity. A matchbook here, a vase there, a copy of Good Housekeeping.

  “Despatched by whom, Clarence?” he asked.

  “By Baltazar himself, presumably. But I also figure there’s a group of some kind helping out here in the States. If Baltazar spent time in this country, he could have a number of acquaintances in place assisting Teng. Your Elizabeth Honculada, for instance, turns out to be the daughter of a certain James who, according to the Treasury Department, has been known to transfer large sums of money to bank accounts in Manila. He could be Teng’s financier. That’s a guess.”

  Wylie was quiet, inward-looking, as if h
e’d left some part of himself elsewhere and couldn’t remember the precise location. “Now let’s go back to Costain. According to our vague information on him – supplied, I may say, by a so-called information officer at our Embassy in Manila – Eugene Costain sold securities to Filipino businessmen. Trouble is, Costain had no affiliation with any corporation doing business in the Philippines, nor is there any evidence he operated in a self-employed way. No tax ID, nothing of that kind in the IRS computers, which I was able to access.”

  Charlie Galloway had an uneasy moment during which he considered the nature of privacy in the United States. He thought of computer linked to computer, one police department to another, one federal agency to the next, privileged information freely sent back and forth across the electronic linkages of the land, wires abuzz with names and addresses and income tax returns and who was sleeping with whom and whether somebody’s sexual preference was for sheep or stirrups. A massive Federal ear eavesdropped everything – tax accountants, psychiatrists, physicians, debt-collection agencies, the offices of archbishops, probably even confessionals. Was it any wonder there was such anxiety loose throughout the land? That paranoids roamed the streets and people sought safe harbour in booze and drugs? America was a listening post, a Big Ear.

  Clarence said, “Costain had a wife in Poughkeepsie who might have been in a position to tell us more about her husband’s activities in Manila – except she o-deed on Tuinal a couple of days ago. Not the kind of slumber you come back from. Odd business. She also snuffed about a dozen spaniel pups by poisoning their chow, a demented act. If you want my informed guess, Charlie, Costain was CIA, or at least one of its nebulous branches, but that hasn’t shown up on our computers. Some stuff the Bureau just doesn’t have access to, because our stepbrothers at Langley, typically, aren’t into sharing. They like secrecy. They can cloud a glass of water just by looking at it.”

  “Is that a way of saying nobody knows who Teng intends to kill?” Charlie asked.

  “No,” Wylie said. “According to Philippine MI, Baltazar named two men, one of whom was shot dead four hours ago in Dallas. The description of the assailant – provided by the victim’s daughter, poor kid – matches Teng. The victim was a certain Thomas Railsback, whom we know to have been a CIA contract employee, or at least somebody with Langley connections. That much is in the data banks.”

  Dallas. Cruz had flown deep into the dark red heart of Texas. “What’s the CIA doing about the murder?”

  “To the best of my knowledge, nothing. They’d probably deny a connection with Railsback anyhow.”

  “So Ray, or Armando, or whoever, has a vendetta against our beloved Central Intelligence Agency.”

  “It would appear.”

  “What about the second proposed victim?”

  “Agents have been assigned to protect him.”

  “Who is he?”

  “This is where it gets heavy, Charlie. I think this is where you have to walk away.” Clarence hesitated. “Have you been watching TV?”

  Galloway shook his head.

  “Then you missed seeing William Laforge. The President just nominated him for the Directorship of the CIA.”

  Some high-up. Sweet Jesus, Freddie. The wee man hadn’t been yanking Galloway’s string after all. Charlie looked through the window at the moon, whose aura suggested some kind of illness. Perhaps it had been surveying Mother Earth, the sick old hag, too long. Charlie tried to imagine Cruz under this same diseased moon, stalking dark places with a gun, bearing violent grudges against the Central Intelligence Agency.

  But who in the Third World didn’t? Who in the decaying cities of Central and Latin America, in the Middle and Far East, on the Pacific rim, didn’t think the initials CIA stood for one of the many secret names of Satan? Who, bathing in some shit-infested river or scrubbing clothes where macheted bodies floated blithely past, or slaving in the blistering heat of a sugar cane field or sweltering in a hellish basement sewing silk dresses they could never themselves wear, didn’t believe that the CIA was a laboratory where atrocious schemes were hatched to overthrow unacceptable governments and assassinate the alleged opponents of American democracy? Who didn’t believe crackpots walked the corridors of the Langley complex, soft-skinned, pink men who emerged from think tanks with a deranged, pumped-up vision of a planet dominated by US policy and backed by US guns?

  Never mind the goddam Third World! Who in these United States, in this loose federation of dismaying contrasts, didn’t consider the CIA a law unto itself, a secret nation within a nation, beyond the reach of the Supreme Court and the Constitution and the Bill of Bloody Rights? Who didn’t believe they kept the darkest of dark secrets? Who didn’t deem them masters of conspiracy who had hoisted into power some of the most appalling villains to have darkened this miserable century? And who didn’t believe that the CIA controlled the United States and with it the Presidency?

  Charlie wondered what in particular had set Teng’s clock running, what infraction, what personal injustice Langley had enacted upon him. “I assume there’s a full-scale search on for Teng?”

  “Any moment Vanderwolf is probably busy assessing the data himself, then he’ll consult with Washington before any decision is made. Since he’s only Director of the Western Region, he won’t wipe his nose without talking to Hugo Fletcher. I wouldn’t rule out a massive operation within the next few hours, Charlie.”

  Although a diazepammed aging preppie called John J Coleman was the titular head of the FBI, it was Hugo Fletcher who made all the decisions that actually mattered, because Coleman was frequently hospitalised in serene locations where he was treated for his addiction. Fletcher, whom Charlie had met only once in those distant days when his star inside the LAPD had not begun to fizzle, had a shark’s easy grace, a hardness of eye, a predator’s razor-edged benevolence. He’d smile as he throttled you, no doubt.

  “What are the Dallas police doing?” Charlie asked.

  “They’re treading water because they’ve been told to.”

  That figured. A call comes down from the Feds and the Dallas cops back off whistling happily. One less homicide was one less burden. If the Feds wanted to hog the Railsback murder, happy trails to them. The Feds could do what they liked.

  “What you’re saying, Clarence, is that Teng is out there somewhere and nobody is looking for him yet.”

  “It’s only a matter of time.”

  “How much time?”

  Clarence shook his head. “I don’t know. It depends on a number of things. How Vanderwolf reacts. How quickly Washington responds. When Washington says go, then Vanderwolf phones Dallas and floods the place with agents.”

  “Where does Laforge live?”

  “Pennsylvania.”

  “Then Teng could be headed there already.”

  “If he is he’ll walk into a small army because Laforge will have protection. Teng will be cut to ribbons before he gets anywhere near Laforge. And if he hasn’t left Dallas yet, he’ll be picked up as soon as Vanderwolf gets his hordes into the field.”

  A limp breeze shivered among the brittle leaves of the avocado, then died, and the night was still again. Charlie thought of Cruz, and the people who had helped him, from Freddie Joaquin to Elizabeth Honculada to whoever supplied him with a gun in Dallas. Now, if he read Cruz with any accuracy, he imagined the man had already been assisted on his way out of Dallas and was headed east – by road, rail, air, perhaps some intricate combination of the three. But he couldn’t be sure of anything. Cruz was elusive, guarded, and moved quickly even when he seemed languid and detached. That was his cover, his protection, that camouflage of aloofness – and it was a good one too. Charlie shut his eyes, picturing Cruz as he’d last seen him in the parking-lot of the Palms Hotel. He’s mine. Nobody else has a right to him.

  He gazed at Clarence Wylie. “I deserve a chance.”

  Clarence shook his head. “Don’t tell me. You want to go out there and look for this guy and bring him in like some goddam hero?”


  A hero. No. That wasn’t it. Charlie didn’t want to be a hero. It was quieter than that, far less grand. It was a question of finishing something, a matter of ending what he’d already begun, an orchestration of all the half-heard notes that had been playing inside his head ever since Ella had died, symphonising them into one well-structured tune, a beginning, a middle, an end – that was what it came down to. Heroism was for heroes, not drunks, whose aims were less lofty. To stay sober. Finish a job. Wake without a hangover. Live a life free of chaos. These were surely modest ambitions. For Charlie they were matters, quite simply, of life and death. Sobriety required a form of courage he wasn’t sure he possessed. Even now, taunted by the ruin of a hangover, he wanted a drink, something to steady his hand. One small nip. No more.

  “I’m not hero material, Clarence. But I need Teng. I need to get to him.”

  Clarence walked up and down the room. His expression was one of frustrated sympathy. “Look, I understand how you feel. I know you think Teng is your personal business. You discovered him, Charlie. I know that. You need something to run the right way for you –”

  “Is that pity I hear in your voice, Clarence?”

  “Screw you, Charlie. You know I don’t pity you. I think you’re an ass at times, but I also think you’ll do just fine if you ever get your shit together – but this isn’t anything for you to get involved in because it’s too big and you don’t understand how the game is played at this level.”

  “Give me the address, Clarence. That’s all I ask. Give me Laforge’s bloody address.”

  Clarence Wylie sighed. “Listen. Teng’s probably in Dallas. He probably hasn’t left Texas. If he’s smart, he’ll lie low there until he imagines the heat’s off. Then and only then he’ll go on to Pennsylvania.”

  “I think he’s more desperate than smart. And I think lying low isn’t on his agenda.”