by Jeff Gulvin
Logan squinted at him. ‘What?’
‘You two gals. Two agents from Washington D.C. Not even Portland, but Washington D.C. Both of you women.’ He shook his head. ‘One of you black. Way out here in the boonies.’
Logan laughed then. She liked Cameron, and was suddenly glad this was a state police investigation. She had nothing against the county system, but sheriffs were elected and every now and again one like Riggins popped to the top of the pile. ‘Tell me about the Asians, Detective,’ she said.
Cameron pulled off the highway and started to climb up a dirt road, dust rising to mist up the side windows. ‘A lot of people saw them,’ he said. ‘Three men in grey suits, black ties, Ray-Ban shades. You know, the real deal.’
‘And they were driving a black Chevy Suburban?’ McKensie spoke from the back seat.
Cameron looked at her in the rearview mirror. ‘That’s right.’
‘A federal government vehicle, the kind of thing Mel Gibson had so much trouble with in Conspiracy Theory.’
He pulled a face. ‘That’s about the size of it.’
‘And the helicopter?’
‘Black, of course,’ he said. ‘I don’t know a whole lot about that. We only have Lafitte’s word and he’s dead.’
They were halfway up the mountain now and Cameron pulled over opposite an area which had been taped off by the police. He put on the handbrake and took his sunglasses and raid jacket from where they were stuffed under the windshield. The two FBI agents followed him and crossed the dirt road to the tape. The mountain fell away sharply here. Part of the landscape had been logged and was open, leaving the soil brown and scarred. Part of it remained thick with forestation. Logan stood with her hands in the pockets of her raincoat and studied the ground: a mishmash of tyre tracks. She could see where the vehicle had slewed as the driver tried to take the bend, then rocketed over the edge. A trail of broken-up ground and foliage led off down the mountain. Perhaps five hundred feet below them, she could see the back end of a truck wedged between two pine trees. Cameron pointed and pursed his lips. ‘It’s gonna take something to get it out. We’re waiting for a truck with a big enough winch, right now.’
Logan nodded slowly. ‘Where does this road lead to?’ she asked him.
‘The Lafitte place, that’s all.’
She turned to him then. ‘So who cut his brake lines, Detective?’
Cameron looked from her to McKensie and back again. ‘You tell me, Logan.’
They drove to the top of the road and Cameron pulled up outside the property. Logan could see maybe seven vehicles stacked up along the driveway and people were milling about in front of the house. ‘Lafitte was a popular figure round town,’ Cameron told them. ‘He ran the outdoor store, you know—fishing rods, guns, etc.’
Logan nodded. ‘Are all these people local? That licence plate’s Montana.’ She pointed to a white Ford 250 truck. And then she saw BobCat Reece come striding down the drive towards them. Two younger men accompanied him, one on either side. They were wearing jeans, lace-up cowboy boots and baseball hats, the peaks curved into tunnels above their eyes. She recognised Reece from the picture the Bureau had taken of him, when he had been arrested and ultimately released over the shooting of a forest ranger near the Canadian border. There had been no witnesses and the ranger’s weapon had been fired. Reece walked on a plea of self-defence.
‘Those are Lafitte’s sons,’ Cameron said, pointing to the two younger men.
‘Can we talk to them?’
He blew out his cheeks. ‘If they’ll talk to you. But I wouldn’t step on the property if I were you.’
They got out and stood just on the dirt road. Reece stopped ten feet from them. ‘Morning, Detective,’ he said, then eyed Logan in particular, the hint of a sneer creasing the edge of his lip. ‘These must be the G-men, or should I say women.’
‘Good morning,’ Logan said. ‘I’m Agent Logan and this is Agent McKensie. We’re with …’
‘The FBI. We know.’
She looked at Reece and smiled. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You have me at a disadvantage. I don’t know your name.’
Reece half closed his eyes then. He was a tall man, with dark hair and a heavy moustache reaching to his lower jaw. Lafitte’s sons were in their twenties, both black-haired, heavily tanned, and with sharp eyes. One of them wore a shirt cut off at the sleeves and his muscles bulged as he hooked his thumbs in his horsehair belt.
‘You ain’t welcome here.’ His voice was deep and guttural. He sucked on whatever it was he was chewing and spat into the dirt. His brother leaned on the gatepost.
‘Detective Cameron, sir, that don’t include you. Not right now, anyways.’
The sheriff’s been on the cellphone, Logan thought. She looked at Reece once more. ‘Are you a family member, sir?’
‘You know fine who I am, lady. I bet you got my picture pasted on your walls back east.’
Don’t flatter yourself, she thought, but smiled. Cameron saved the situation. ‘This is Mr Reece from Montana,’ he said. ‘These two gentlemen are Jim and Jacky Lafitte.’
Logan offered her hand. Reece kept his in his pocket. She looked at the two sons. ‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ she said.
Neither of them replied.
‘What’s the FBI doing here?’ Reece said then. ‘Checking to make sure all went according to plan.’
Logan laughed lightly. ‘You don’t seriously think this was down to us, do you?’
‘You got a good reason why I shouldn’t?’ Reece took a pace towards her. ‘You wanna explain the presence of three Hong Kong soldiers driving a Chevy Suburban in Oregon?’
‘Mr Reece.’ McKensie spoke then. ‘Do you really think if we wanted to kill Mr Lafitte, we would send in three Asians driving a black Suburban?’
‘I think you’d do what you damn well please, lady. Just like you people always do.’ He stuck out his chin. ‘Now, my reading of the law tells me this is a state investigation and I know I speak for everyone when I tell you you’re not welcome in Hope Heights.’
‘I expect you do, sir,’ Logan told him. ‘But the funny thing is we’re just as concerned about this homicide as anyone else. It’s why we’re here.’
She took a pace forward and Jacky Lafitte, the elder of the two brothers, snapped his head up. ‘Lady, you step on my daddy’s property and I’m within my constitutional rights to shoot you.’
Logan looked at him, shook her head sadly and then turned to Cameron. ‘Detective, I think we should leave these good people to their loss.’ She turned for the car and somebody muttered the words ‘nigger bitch’, and she paused, almost turned, then bit her lip and walked back to the car.
The District of Columbia was sweating, eighty per cent humidity, and the traffic was backed up downtown due to the security surrounding the state visit of Israel’s newly elected prime minister. Fachida Harada sat in his red security consultant’s truck, with C U SAFELY painted on the side, in the no-waiting zone, watching the parks police officer on a Harley Davidson making his way towards him. He shifted the baseball hat, embossed in the same manner as the truck, higher up his head and picked up the sunglasses from where they lay on the passenger seat. The cop pulled up and revved the weighty V-twin alongside him. Harada rolled down the window and heat struck at the air-conditioned interior of the cab.
‘Can’t you read, buddy?’
Harada smiled at him. ‘I’m sorry.’ He pointed across the road to a hotel. ‘We’re working there. Security. My partner’s on his way back.’
The cop looked at the side of the truck. ‘You fitting alarms?’
‘And CCTV. He’ll only be two minutes.’
The cop twisted the throttle again, tight-fitting black gloves reaching to his bare forearms. He wore a shirt with no jacket and high-leg leather boots.
‘It must be nice,’ Harada said, ‘riding round the city when it’s this hot.’
‘Are you kidding me?’ The cop looked through mirror-lensed sunglasses
at him. ‘You can’t get enough speed up to cool down.’ Again he revved the engine, glanced over his shoulder at the traffic, then looked back at the driver. ‘You got ten minutes, buddy. Then you get the ticket.’
Harada saluted him and smiled, but the smile dried on his face as he watched the bike roar off up the road. He stared across the street once again, then started his engine.
He drove down Pennsylvania Avenue, past the many flags flying outside the Hoover building. Here, he slowed and counted the number of black-uniformed FBI police who were guarding the place. Somebody in a dump truck hooted his horn behind, and he thrust his hand out of the window and waved apologetically before speeding up again. The traffic slowed to a crawl as he approached Capitol Hill.
He eased on to the ring road that skirted the seat of democracy and took Maryland Avenue as far as Stanton Park. Here, he pulled into a parking zone and let the engine idle. He sat in the truck and watched for a few minutes longer, hands lightly gripping the wheel, his flat features impassive. Then he shifted into first gear and pulled back into the traffic. He headed up 4th Street and when he drew parallel with the FBI’s field office, he slowed, scoured the windows, but saw nothing. SCIF. That’s what he had been told: a secret compartmented information facility. The windows were protected from unwanted eyes by dark, impenetrable glass.
He parked the truck in the self-storage unit he had rented in a large complex, not far from the US soldiers’ and airmen’s home off North Capitol Street, and stepped through the adjoining door into the next unit. Here there was a shower, and he undressed slowly, meticulously folding the red overalls he had made specially, then hanging them in the first metal locker set against the wall. The showerhead was wide and the water fell in an icy torrent, and Harada tensed every muscle in his body until they stood out against the skin. When he was finished, he stood on the mat and let the water dry naturally until he started shivering. It pleased him—the movement of flesh, the chilled freshness after the heat of the city. He had learned a little today, and then again, perhaps he had learned a lot. The police were as he had found them over the past six months. Ten minutes in a no-parking zone. That was close to the best. Thirteen minutes and thirty-two seconds was the actual record length of time that a cop had let him wait, but this one ran a close second. Not that he required anything like that amount of time. Preparation was everything and he had been preparing for a very long time.
He caught sight of his reflection, naked in the mirror alongside the locker, and it pleased him. Every muscle was visible: the horizontal layers against the flat of his stomach, the smooth arch of his pecs. There was not a single grey hair on his cropped black head and, after forty-four years, this pleased him. He opened the door to the second locker and took down his plain grey suit. He dressed carefully, his body still damp so that the white shirt stuck to him in places. When he was finished, he straightened his cuffs and picked up the briefcase he always set down beside the locker, and climbed into the sedan. He started the engine, left it running, then opened the roll-over door. He drove the car out and parked, then closed the door again and locked it. The self-storage complex had no guard, but twenty-four-hour access, which was why he had chosen it. Back in the car he looked at his watch, rolled the window up and switched on the air conditioning.
Across the road, an old man sat in his room in the old soldiers’ home, dreaming of the past when he still had his legs. He tried to remember exactly when he had lost them, or for that matter, where. Sometimes he woke up, saw they weren’t there and could not recall for the life of him when they had gone missing. But they were missing and the continuing shock of the discovery was debilitating. He thought (now that he tried hard) that it could have been Omaha beach, but he could not remember when that was. Some time in World War II, but he could not remember when that was exactly, either. He did not have much to do these days except read, and as he could not remember whether or not he had read something, he did not have to change his book very often. He wondered at his memory loss, thinking that if he could ever get out of here, he could tell the world about the conspiracy to keep him. Maybe the doctors took his legs to stop him walking out. He was a dangerous man with this knowledge.
He saw the red truck pull in again and the little man in overalls get out and open the lock-up. Then he saw the truck drive inside. Half an hour later, a door on the next unit opened and a car drove out. Then he saw another little man (who looked like a Jap from here) get out of the car and lock up. Funny thing: he watched every morning and every night and never saw the guy in the overalls leave. The guy in the suit came and went, but he never saw the guy next door. Again he shrugged his shoulders: it was all part of the same conspiracy, most likely. The door to his room opened and that young nurse came in, the pretty one whose name he could never remember.
‘Charlie,’ she called from behind him. ‘It’s time for your medication.’
‘Will it make my legs grow back?’
‘No. But it will make you feel better.’
‘I ain’t taking no medicine unless it makes my legs grow back. Which one of you stole them, anyways?’
Harada drove south on 95, the highway lined with trees all the way to Richmond. It was in truth a very boring drive, but one he would not have to make much longer. He drove carefully, watching for state troopers and never exceeding the speed limit. He had not exceeded the speed limit in the six months he had been here. Six months: he thought about that, thought about the suburb of Tokyo where his wife and children still lived, thought about the festival of the cherry blossom in April. Tadyoki, his son, would have taken part, as he had done every year since he had been able to walk, in the tradition of the family. He took part this year and would do so next year and all the years after that. Only nine years of life and every single one of them invested with the honour of generations. If Tadyoki knew only one thing of value in this world, it was the value of honour. Harada’s wife, Akiko, would continue the tradition, and her father, still revered even by the young men, would see to it she did. Not that he needed to—he knew his daughter was a good and faithful wife, one who would remain so even in solitude. Harada could smell the trees now, that soft pungency, the delicacy of petals which, as soon as they bloomed, were lost for all time to the wind. For a long moment he dwelt on the image, and the blacktop rolled beneath the wheels at a steady fifty-five.
At Richmond, he turned off the highway and took 195 as far as the toll road, where he cruised south-west till he came to the junction for the Johnston Willis Hospital and Chesterfield Town Center. He parked the car and sat a long time behind tinted windows, watching the people on the street. There were not many of them. All the main stores were in malls and everyone drove everywhere else; the antithesis of Tokyo.
A police officer drove by, wearing sunglasses, a tanned forearm leaning against the doorpanel through the open window of his car. Harada let him pass, then locked and left the Ford and crossed to the antique shop at the far end of the street. A little wind-chime bell tinkled behind him as he stepped into the darkened interior. It was so dark that he had to allow his eyes a fraction of a moment to adjust, after the sun-baked glare of the street. Then, at the very back of the shop, he saw the kimono-clad Japanese seated as if he was asleep. Harada moved between the cluttered racks of Asian curios, not all of them Japanese. He recognised items from Manchukuo and Korea, as well as the Chinese-influenced areas of Siberia.
He had been lucky to discover this store and even luckier to observe the Shinto shrine arranged just beyond the counter. The shopkeeper was of the old code and the old code was honour and silence. He opened his eyes now, light blue and liquid, rheumy almost from a distance. His face was seamed with age and his thin moustache as white as the bones which buckled his hands at the knuckles. Harada paused and bowed.
The man returned the gesture, ‘You are the gentleman who telephoned me last week.’
Harada nodded slowly, and the old man rose soundlessly, uncoiling himself from where he sat and led the way int
o the back room. He bent to a small wooden chest and, opening it, lifted out a gilt and velvet casket about two feet in length and six inches in depth. Harada could feel the breath drying the back of his throat. The old man set the casket on the small desk and unfastened the catches. Standing behind it, he opened the box so the lid lifted against his stomach, and subconsciously, Harada tightened the muscles round his mouth. The sword was a short samurai, not much bigger than a dagger, and the razor-sharp blade glinted in the half-light.
‘The pedigree is exceptional,’ the old man said. ‘The sword was minted in 1797 and last worn in 1853 when the US fleet anchored in Tokyo Bay.’ His eyes misted then. ‘When the old ways were lost for ever.’
Harada shook his head slowly. ‘Not for ever.’ He looked at the intricacies of the blade, run with gold amid the silver. The hilt was covered in velvet and bamboo, with velvet again as the final layer.
He could feel the depth of emotion welling inside him, and for a moment he was in Jakarta, and then in the Bekaa Valley with the Arabs he despised so much for their trickery. He thought of Shigenobu and Korea, and how much money had been salted away after the incursions on behalf of the Libyan. For a moment, his past appalled him. Then he looked again at the sword and thought of the master whose name means ‘snow at the foot of Mount Fuji’. He had been fifteen years old on 25 November 1970, when that last great deed of honour had been performed. He looked again at the old man and nodded. The old man smiled and snapped the casket shut.
Harrison walked the marbled length of the Vietnam War Memorial on Constitution Avenue. He had been here many times over the years and knew the first name was John H. Anderson, Jnr and the last was Jessie Calba. He passed a marine in uniform, who placed a US flag against the wall with a sheet of paper pinned to it. Harrison glanced at it; a photograph of a marine and the photocopied back of an envelope, stamped with the words: ‘Verified missing in action. Chief casualty branch, US Marine Corps.’