Covenant

by Jeff Gulvin

  Jean sat very quietly at a table by the window in the bar, thinking how suddenly alone she felt. What the detective had described was ugly and brutal, and for a few moments she had been back in the past with her mother and her sister, fleeing the armies of the North. Her son was a victim of the same kind of brutality that had killed her father, only in a different place and in a different time. Names like Limpet, Southern Sidetrack, The Voyageur and Ghost Town, men who for some reason had to spill the blood of others—for money, for drugs, or just because the colour of their skin was different. What could make one person kind, gentle and loving, and another a raging beast who would kill you as easily as look at you?

  Harrison stood at her table. She had not seen him come in, but now she looked up. His hair was washed, unbraided and hung over his shoulders, and the grey of his eyes seemed to share the sadness she saw these days in her own. He was not a tall man, slim still for his fifty years, with wiry muscles knotted against the skin of his arms. His neck had begun to show his age and his face was tanned like old leather. Yet there was something about him, some depth in him that she saw, sensed or felt, and it sparked something inside her. ‘Hey, Miss Lady Mam,’ he said gently. ‘How you doing?’

  ‘I’m doing OK.’

  He sat down, steepling his fingers on the table, and looked evenly at her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Every little piece of information must add to the shock for you. Strange country, strange people. Everything, everybody, feeling alien.’

  She smiled, but a single silent tear glassed against her eye. ‘I wish there was something more I could do,’ Harrison said softly.

  ‘Thank you.’ She mouthed the words and looked at the floor between her feet.

  Harrison left her for a moment then and brought some drinks from the bar. Jean had wiped away her tears, but her eyes were tinged red at the edges when he sat down again. He passed her a drink and she accepted one of his cigarettes.

  ‘What’re we going to do?’ she asked him.

  ‘Tomorrow, we’re going to visit one of the freight yards with Spinelli, see if we can talk to some of these hobos ourselves. There’s more than just random murder going on here, Jean. This is a gang—organised, disciplined and strong.’

  ‘You think they’re running drugs?’

  ‘I know they’re running drugs. What I don’t know is, how big of a set-up we’re looking at.’

  ‘How will you find out?’

  Harrison sucked breath, aware that he was not keen on the answer. ‘There’s a number of ways,’ he said. ‘But close-range surveillance is the best.’

  Fachida Harada sat on the bare wooden floor of his house in Falls Church, meditating at the Shinto shrine he had built. He sat cross-legged, wearing a silk kimono, with the eighteenth-century sword laid to one side of him in the open casket. He prayed silently, as samurai had prayed before him, as he himself had prayed and chanted softly down the ages. He knew, all before him had known, that there was no equating the Buddhism of his religion with the way of the bushido. He had been a samurai and would remain so for all eternity, incarnation after incarnation, paying penance for the violent way of life. He thought of Tetsuya, and the last time they had been together as warriors, three years previously. He had been close by when the National Police Agency in Osaka had arrested him. That had been the worst moment of his life. Perhaps it was at that moment that the extent of his own betrayal and the depths to which he had fallen were laid bare before him.

  The causes of the early eighties had seemed just at the time, and yet the Marxist philosophy followed by Shigenobu was in direct opposition to the bushido way of his father and grandfather. It was diametrically opposed to the nationalist way of the master. Yet the master was already dead when Shigenobu formed the group, and Harada was just a disillusioned teenager. But the way of Shigenobu quickly turned to the capitalism that bloated their enemies. The funds paid by the Libyan and others were enormous, and their members grew fat in the North Korean enclave. Harada had only remained with them until 1990 and then he had returned to Japan, endeavouring to set his feet back on the path appointed to him. But it was not easy and, as before, they trapped him, ensnared him with new possibilities, angry that he had returned to Japan. They had played on his disillusionment with Shigenobu, with the Marxist theme in general, and he had been pliable. But their anger was raw when he quit and went home. They had lost on a massive investment: time, money, resources. And all the while, Tetsuya had held fast to the old ways, somehow equating them acceptably with the work of Shigenobu. It had been that way ever since they set foot in the Bekaa Valley, all those years ago.

  Both of them ultimately married, both of them had children to carry on the code, yet the love between them was that of the highest calling. Warrior to warrior, as it had been in the days of seclusion when Japan was closed to the world.

  He opened his eyes, the meditation interrupted, disturbed by emotions that welled up from within. Once again he looked at the sword, its pedigree perfect for what might be required in the end. The moment was over. He got to his feet, bowed before the shrine and closed the lid on the casket. He blew out the candles and showered, then considered the words he would use. Before him on the bedroom floor lay a cardboard box, a length of ribbon and two ounces of C-4 plastic explosive.

  The previous day he had visited one of his dead drops, just on the eastern side of the Appalachian Mountains. He had chosen it carefully, by the entrance to a culvert just off Highway 340. It was a hole in the ground that lay parallel to the twenty-five-mile road sign between Bentonville and Front Royal. From the rented house in Falls Church, it was a couple of hours’ drive along Interstate 66. He alternated between the grey sedan, the black independent taxi cab, and the red security truck with C U SAFELY painted on the side. He had sectioned a chunk of earth, just to the left of the culvert, under the cover of darkness some six months before, and placed a large, dry cool-box into the hole. This time, four individual rolls of C-4 military-grade explosive had been delivered. One kilo per roll, plus a case of RD6 phosphorus grenades. He had slipped the rolls of C-4 inside two lengths of plastic plumbing pipe that he carried as a matter of course. Later, if and when they instituted their stop-and-search procedures, no cop or sheriff’s deputy would see anything out of the ordinary. He stowed the grenades in a sectioned compartment where the spare wheel was housed, and climbed back into the truck. The mortars he had requested would come later, much much later, when panic was everyone’s watchword.

  Logan picked up Tom Kovalski’s phone. ‘ASAC’s office,’ she said.

  ‘Agent Kovalski, please.’ Something in the tone of the voice made her stiffen.

  ‘He’s not here right now. This is Agent Logan. Can I help you?’

  ‘That depends, Agent Logan.’

  There was an accent, but she could not quite place it. ‘On what exactly?’

  ‘On your role with the FBI.’

  And then she recognised the voice as the one on the tape. ‘I’m the terrorism response co-ordinator.’

  ‘That’s fortuitous.’

  ‘Is it. Why?’

  ‘Because I’m a terrorist.’

  7

  LOGAN PAGED KOVALSKI AND he was on the line three minutes later. ‘We’ve just had a call from Harada,’ she told him.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said there’s an improvised explosive device planted in the Arlington Cemetery and we have forty-five minutes to evacuate the area.’

  ‘Forty-five minutes.’

  ‘That’s all. He gave us what he claims is a legitimate codeword. He told me it was for us only, but if we did not co-operate, then he would disclose who he is to the media, which he assured me would not be good news. He didn’t say why.’

  ‘Where in Arlington Cemetery?’

  ‘It’s in a garbage can by John F. Kennedy’s grave.’

  ‘Did he say why he’d planted it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about the codeword?’

  ‘Wind-bl
own.’

  ‘That it?’

  ‘Yes,’

  Kovalski thought for a moment. ‘What the hell does it mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. But Jack Swann told me the reason the cherry blossom is the symbol of the samurai is because as soon as it blooms, it’s blown away on the wind.’

  ‘OK. Evacuate the area. And see if you can get Swann to fly up here from New Orleans. I want to talk to him.’

  Logan got everything rolling. The parks police began the evacuation, and the Office of Emergency Management for D.C. together with that of Arlington County were placed on standby. Kovalski called the chief of police for the District of Columbia and the chief at Arlington County and the parks, as well as the leading members of the joint terrorism task force. The EOD squads from the field office and headquarters rolled, together with the metropolitan police squad. The rendezvous point was set at the junction of Roosevelt Drive and Weeks Avenue, a hundred and fifty yards down the hill from Kennedy’s grave.

  Logan raced to the scene, down 4th Street and on to Constitution Avenue, then across the Memorial Drive Bridge. There was only one entrance to the cemetery off Memorial Drive and she could see the hordes of tourists being ferried out of the area on the blue sightseeing buses. McKensie was with her in the passenger seat. ‘Do we know anything at all about this guy, Cheyenne?’

  Logan shook her head, kicked down hard on the bridge, and the police package roared.

  ‘He’s Japanese and he might be something to do with the yakuza. That’s it so far.’

  ‘Are we talking a pipe bomb?’

  ‘We haven’t got a clue.’

  Logan turned into the cemetery at the women’s memorial and pulled up at the rendezvous point, where the police and other emergency services were gathering. She looked up the hill to where General Lee’s mansion, with its white pillars and bright yellow fascia, dominated the skyline. The crisis site was blocked by trees and the concrete oval set directly before it. Both John Kennedy and Jackie lay up there, together with their son, Patrick. The eternal flame between them. Logan knew that there were two trash cans made of stone, one on either side of the grave. She looked round the open rendezvous point—the road, grass and small white gravestones, which had already been searched. She could feel her heart beating, her shield pinned at the breast of her jacket now, as she approached the uniformed parks police officers winding tape across the adjoining roads.

  ‘Agent Logan,’ she said to a sergeant. ‘I’m on-scene commander. What’s the situation?’

  ‘Well, we got the cordons in at one-fifty yards, and the cemetery limits have been cleared. You want us back another fifty?’

  Logan bit her lip. ‘Have we got EOD here yet?’

  ‘No, mam.’ As he was speaking, the big blue FBI van came roaring in through the gates below them. The driver pulled up and an explosives officer climbed out of the passenger seat. He was Italian-looking: wiry, with a thin black moustache and equally thin hair. He shook hands with Logan. ‘Callio,’ he said. ‘Bomb Squad. I want everybody back of that line.’ He jerked his thumb to the outer cordon perimeter. ‘Has this area been searched for booby traps?’

  Logan glanced at the parks sergeant. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’ Callio scratched his head and looked up the hill. ‘Where exactly is the crisis site?’

  Logan pointed. ‘There are two garbage cans on either side of the grave. We believe the IED’s in one of them.’

  Callio looked at his watch. ‘OK. I want to know exactly what happened. The full sequence of events that led to you and me standing here.’

  Logan told him exactly what had happened in the minutest of detail, the time of the call and the exact words spoken by Harada.

  ‘Do we know who he is, who he represents?’

  She shook her head. ‘He’s a new one on us, Callio. We don’t know if this is a bluff or what.’

  ‘Forty-five minutes.’

  She nodded.

  He looked at his watch. ‘Which was precisely seventeen minutes ago.’

  Again she nodded. Callio made a face and looked back beyond the cordon, to where the evidence response teams were gathering. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We wait the full forty-five and see if anything goes bang.’

  Harada was watching things unfold on television, flicking the channels between Fox News, NBC and CNN. So far he had only told the FBI his identity, but he wanted to see how much had been unravelled by the media. The media was a weapon he would use but sparingly, and in his own time. The skies had been closed over the crisis site and the only helicopter shots were from a good distance away, but reporters and media vans crowded Memorial Drive. The FBI had instituted cordons at what looked like a couple of hundred yards and were clearly waiting. They were professional. He did not know why, but he had half expected them not to be. He thought they might go in physically, or send a robot with a coil and line to hook the device from the bin.

  There was intense media speculation as to who had planted the bomb. So far, an ‘unknown subject’ was all the FBI had said. Everybody was being blamed: from the Islamic Jihad to the militia. One thing that was interesting, he thought. Historically, it was always some external force that was blamed first in this country, but since Oklahoma it was the militia. One reporter seemed to be being interviewed by another and Harada turned the volume up louder.

  ‘I’m here with Carl Smylie,’ the CNN man on the ground was saying, holding his microphone up to the face of a young man with long hair and round-rimmed glasses. ‘Mr Smylie is a freelance journalist and an expert on the rise of militia groups in this country.’ He turned to the long-haired man. ‘Tell us what you know, Mr Smylie.’

  ‘Larry, I’ve just got back from Hope Heights, Oregon, a small town on the Pacific coast, where the people are all but barricading their houses. The scene reminds me of the time a few years ago when the FBI and the National Guard descended on Reserve, New Mexico, and people fled from their homes. The authorities claimed they were helping local law-enforcement officers search for the body of a murder victim, but it was a year since that crime took place.’ Smylie looked straight into the camera. ‘Billy Bob Lafitte, a local gun store owner, was murdered in Hope Heights a week ago, and it’s the general belief that government agents were behind it.’

  ‘Lafitte was a militia leader, wasn’t he,’ the CNN man said.

  ‘A patriot. Yes, sir. He was. Three Asians, driving what looked like a government vehicle, were seen in and around Hope Heights over a period of two days before Lafitte’s brake lines were cut.’

  ‘So, you’re saying that this incident today is some kind of militia backlash.’

  Smylie looked directly into the camera. ‘Larry, I’m not saying anything. I’ve noticed the timing, is all.’

  ‘There you have it,’ Larry was talking again. ‘Speculation right now, but a possible link with one of the unorganised militias. As we all know, the circumstances surrounding Billy Bob Lafitte’s death were suspicious and, as yet, the investigating police officers have come up with no significant leads, other than the three alleged Asians. That incident followed hard on the heels of the strange death of another militia leader, Daniel Pataki in Missouri. Pataki’s post-mortem examination revealed his death was caused by yellow fever, which can only be contracted in the tropics. It was well known that Pataki had never stepped outside the United States.’

  Harada looked on and waited.

  Logan took a call from Kovalski on her cellphone. ‘We’re waiting right now, Tom. The EOD guy wants to see what happens when the forty-five minutes are up.’ She checked her wristwatch. ‘That’s less than eight minutes from now. What’s happening back there?’

  Kovalski had remained at the central command post at the field office, from where he could talk by phone, radio or computer link to the tactical operations center, a massive Chevrolet Suburban, at the scene. He had an open line to the FBI Director, as well as the President’s national security adviser—Robert Jensen. Everybody was breathing down his ne
ck, but Kovalski was used to that. He had flown helicopters in Vietnam, and figured pressure in degrees of being fired upon, with no body armour, when you were trying to medevac wounded GIs from hot landing zones. He had been hit twice in the chest and upper arm. ‘Did you get hold of Jack Swann, like I asked you, Chey?’

  ‘Of course. Shit, Tom, you think I need an excuse to get his ass up to Washington?’

  Kovalski laughed. ‘How much does he know about what we know?’

  ‘He knows I asked him about the yakuza, that’s it.’ She thought for a moment then. ‘Tom, I’ve just seen a CNN monitor. That militia reporter Smylie’s in town. He’s already started the rumour mill turning with comments about Hope Heights. We’ve not released anything about Harada, have we?’

  ‘No. And we’re not going to.’ Kovalski sighed then. ‘It is an interesting coincidence, though, isn’t it. Harada being a Jap and three Asians showing up on the west coast.’

  ‘Those three guys were deliberately meant to look like government agents.’

  ‘Or they were government agents, depending on which conspiracy theory you adhere to.’

  Logan switched the phone off and climbed into the TOC, where an analyst had the Cascade programme running and was logging every detail of what had happened. Logan glanced at McKensie, who checked her watch and twisted her mouth down at the corners. Logan looked across the open space to the inner cordon line, where the only vehicle was the blue truck housing the explosive officer’s monitors, computer equipment, toolboxes and the Alvis Wheelbarrow. He was standing beside the vehicle, studying the crisis site through binoculars. Logan could hear the crackle of radios from the SWAT tactical ops center; and then the garbage can blew up.

  The sound was not loud, a muffled whump, but she jumped where she sat and waited, and then climbed out of the truck. The EOD agent was still watching through binoculars. Smoke rose and she could smell cordite, but it was not possible to see anything. Logan waited a full minute, then she and McKensie crossed under the inner cordon line and approached the bomb-squad vehicle. Callio was still standing with his driver and watching. He lowered the glasses as Logan came alongside.