Covenant

by Jeff Gulvin

  ‘Agent Logan, this is Carl Smylie. I just thought you’d like to know that Tommy Anderson’s been found.’

  ‘Are you kidding me?’

  ‘No, mam. I’m not kidding you. Of course, he’s not saying much. Hard to, when your palette’s been blown clear through the top of your head.’

  Logan signalled to Swann. ‘How do you know this, Carl?’

  ‘Because a rancher friend of his has just called CNN and told them.’

  Logan stood, one hand fisted on her hip, and looked at the brilliant blue of the sky. ‘He didn’t think to call the police first.’

  ‘Why would he do that, Agent Logan? He thinks the police are his enemy.’

  Swann squatted beside the corpse, still being photographed by the evidence technician from the Highway Patrol. They were just off Highway 50, on a slip road where the rancher had found Tommy Anderson lying face down in an irrigation ditch, with his head blown apart. ‘Shotgun,’ the medical examiner was saying. ‘Twelve-gauge I would say, but don’t quote me on it yet.’ Logan was standing with him, listening. ‘It’s as if he put it in his own mouth and pulled the trigger.’ The ME pressed his glasses against his nose and wiped sweat-moistened gloves on a piece of muslin cloth. ‘But somehow I don’t think he did that. Again, we’ll find out at the autopsy.’ He stepped back and nodded to the two paramedics who were standing by. ‘OK,’ he said, stripping off the surgical gloves. ‘You can wrap him up now.’

  Swann and Logan exchanged a glance. Behind them, backing up the road was the mass of television vans with their masts waving in the breeze that was drifting in from the north. Helicopters were flying overhead and Swann knew that live pictures were being beamed into every home in America. This was not his country. This was nothing to do with him, but he had a sense of trepidation that dug deep into the pit of his stomach. The doctor was right. Anderson had not shot himself. He had been murdered just like Lafitte and Daniel Pataki.

  FBI agents from all over Nevada had gathered now and they were working the crime scene in conjunction with the Highway Patrol. Swann caught Dorothy Becker’s eye and admired her taciturn indifference to the locals who wanted to hang her. He walked away from the crime scene towards the photographers and news crews, and saw Smylie talking on a mobile phone. Their eyes met and Smylie waved at him.

  ‘You OK?’ Logan touched his arm. ‘Yes, I’m fine. I’m just thinking, that’s all.’

  ‘Have you ever come across anything like this before?’ Swann shook his head. ‘It’s a different mindset, Chey. Different mentality. What I dealt with, the Irish thing, the differences are historical. It goes back five hundred years.’ He scanned the faces in the crowds, not just the media, but the townspeople who had driven out from Austin in their trucks, cars and vans. He bunched his eyes to the sun and looked back at Logan. ‘For a population of two hundred, there’s a hell of a lot of them,’ he said.

  The freight train, now reloaded, pulled south out of the Lufkin loop to join the Union Pacific tracks. Harrison stood up, stretched and reached for his pack. He had watched the two Southern Blacks moving along the railbed to beyond the signal point before setting their stuff down. Now they were on their feet.

  Harrison had circumnavigated their position to the west, moving along the riverbed and crossing the gravel bar into the hills, before setting himself down some two hundred yards further up the track. The sun was going down behind him now, rendering him all but invisible to anyone looking west, and he shaded his eyes and counted the cars till the two men jumped. Then he shifted the pack over his shoulder. By the time the train reached him, it would be moving much faster and he would have to trot along at a fair crack to get aboard. He would be vulnerable in that moment, both to the train wheels and to the two men in the boxcar. But they would not be expecting him and he was well armed. He moved off the hill and picked his way between cactus stalks until he could smell diesel and hear the groaning metal as the train clanked its way south.

  The first few carriages thundered by; Harrison started counting and at the same time he broke into a run. When he got to the tenth car, he tossed his pack ahead of him and hauled himself up, slipped and almost fell, whirling his legs back behind him to keep them away from the wheels. Then a hand gripped his arm and he was hauled into the boxcar. He rolled and knelt, and looked into the faces of the two Southern Blacks. Again, Spinelli’s words rang in his head: We’ll be your best friend, but when you turn your back, we’ll kill you. He muttered his thanks and scrabbled up his pack, banjo and water bottle, then squatted for a moment at the far side of the door. He glanced at his two travelling companions and the ginger-headed one leered at him. ‘Didn’t expect to see us again, huh? We knew you was coming. You asked me yourself, back in Lufkin.’

  Dumb fuck, Harrison thought, but said nothing. Both of them leaned against their packs and then Harrison noticed that the smaller canvas one was missing. He smiled inwardly. So the dealers of Lufkin had fresh supplies on the street.

  The ginger-headed man rolled a cigarette and offered it to Harrison. He stared at it for a long moment, then slowly, reluctantly, took it. He snapped a match on his boot, cupped his hands and lit the cigarette.

  The black-haired man grinned, showing long yellow teeth like those of an ageing horse. Harrison thought of Jean Carey’s son. He wondered where Jean was, how far she had driven. She would be somewhere in Texas, but he had no idea where. He missed her, could see the moon shape of her face in his mind, skin clear and unmarked by age; just the trace of silver lightening the black of her hair.

  ‘You play that thing?’ The red-headed guy motioned to the banjo, and Harrison picked it up, stroked the strings and then plucked at them with the thumbpick.

  ‘You got a string missing, bro,’ the black-haired guy said. ‘That’s a five-string banjo with only four strings.’

  ‘Four-string.’ The other man laughed then, and nudged his partner. ‘Four-string.’ He looked at Harrison. ‘Hey, you gotta road name, brother?’

  ‘I ain’t your brother.’

  The ginger-headed man nudged his partner again and jerked a thumb at Harrison’s chest. ‘Four-String.’

  The other guy laughed. He leaned forward then and stuck out his hand. ‘Van Horn Hooch. Or just Hooch. I first got on a train at Van Horn, Texas.’ Harrison looked at the hand, then reached over and shook it. He wondered if this was how it had been with Tom Carey. Were these two there? Did one of them give the young kid a name, other than Charlie or gook, before they killed him? He could feel the sweat inside his boot where the butt of the pistol chafed the skin. Hooch was still talking. ‘This here’s Carlsbad the Bad.’

  ‘And is he?’ Harrison looked across the semi-darkness at them.

  ‘Oh, yeah. I’m one mean motherfucker.’ Carlsbad widened his eyes.

  ‘Carlsbad, New Mexico,’ Harrison said.

  ‘You been there?’

  ‘Seen it on a map, is all.’ Harrison squatted cross-legged now and inspected the burning end of his cigarette. ‘I had a map in Angola. Alls I did when I wasn’t working the fields was stare at that map.’

  Hooch looked at him, his head slanted to one side. ‘How long was you in?’

  Harrison had to be careful here. The stagehands had set him up with the identity of a dead man who bore an uncanny resemblance to him. It was a pure coincidence that they found him. One night, one of the gang squad was at the Vieux Carré District station house when the guy’s rap sheet was pumped through the NCIC. He had been out of prison for only three weeks, when he robbed a drugstore in Jefferson Parish and was shot dead by a state trooper. The Vieux Carré dicks had been trying to speak to him about a similar robbery in the French Quarter.

  ‘A while,’ he said.

  ‘Whatcha do?’

  Harrison looked him in the eyes then and said nothing. Hooch held up his hands. ‘Just being friendly.’

  ‘I ain’t the friendly type.’

  ‘You figure we didn’t notice?’ Carlsbad showed him dirty teeth. ‘Reg’lar Mr N
ice Guy, ain’t you.’

  ‘Where’s this train going?’ Harrison asked them.

  ‘South.’

  ‘Where’s it finish up?’

  Hooch looked slantedly at him again. ‘Why? Where you headed?’

  Harrison bunched his eyes at the corners and looked beyond him.

  ‘Nowheresville, huh?’ Hooch nodded. ‘You and us both, brother.’

  Harrison lit another cigarette without offering his tobacco, then he worked his pistol looser in his boot with his other heel and took a chance. He pointed with the lighted cigarette. ‘What’s with the matching headgear? You two a coupla faggots?’

  Hooch stared at him. Carlsbad stared at the gap in the door.

  ‘Hit the nerve, huh.’ Harrison was aware of how dry his mouth was and hoped it didn’t show. He had the bowie knife slung under one arm in its sheath and he would pull it before either of them could drag their bulk across the floor. Slowly, Carlsbad looked up at him. It was darker now and Harrison could no longer see his eyes.

  ‘If I was you, I wouldn’t fall asleep tonight.’

  Hooch stood up suddenly and Harrison was on his feet with the knife out, blade glinting in a shaft of moonlight breaking through the open doorway.

  ‘Mister,’ Hooch said. ‘You got a real attitude problem.’

  Harrison looked up into his face. ‘I’m fifty fucking years old. I survived three years in Vietnam and twenty years in holes you can’t even imagine. I figure I can survive a coupla hobos on a goddamn freight train.’

  Then he heard a metallic clicking sound that was all too familiar. ‘You know what they say, asshole.’ Carlsbad’s voice came from the shadows. ‘Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.’

  Harrison still held the knife on Hooch and they looked one another in the eye, and Harrison could feel the sweat gathering under his hat. The adrenaline was pumping and he went for broke. ‘When I was in the hole,’ he said softly, ‘I saw a cop video about knives that one of the bulls smuggled in.’ He licked his lips. ‘Your buddy there’s packing, but I can still cut you real deep before he slots me.’

  Hooch slowly raised a palm. ‘Nobody’s gonna shoot nobody and nobody’s gonna cut nobody,’ he said. ‘We’s three guys sharing a ride, is all. Ain’t that right, Carl?’

  No reply.

  ‘I said, ain’t that right, Carl. Put the gun up and chill the fuck out.’ He looked in Harrison’s eye. ‘And you—get the hair outta your ass.’

  Harrison stood his ground, aware of the pulse at his temple, at his wrist. He put the knife up and waited. If they were going to kill him, now was the time. If not, all his front would be worth it. He said nothing, just continued to stare at Hooch, while sliding the bowie back into its sheath. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. The wheels rattled and groaned underneath them, shaking the boxcar; and moonlight poured silver through the side of the train. Harrison heard the click of the hammer coming down. He sucked breath and took off his hat, letting his hair fall across his forehead. He squatted and swigged from his water bottle.

  ‘Here.’ Carlsbad sat forward and nudged his arm. ‘Have yourself a shot.’

  Harrison took the bottle, sniffed cheap bourbon and drank. The whiskey burned his throat, but sent warm feelers into his chest and upper arms. He handed the bottle back and sat down on his pack.

  For a good few miles, nobody spoke. Harrison sat where he was and smoked, legs drawn up to his chest, avoiding eye contact and staring into the night. He could feel their gaze picking over the shadows of his face and he could almost hear the wheels turning inside their heads. ‘We’re Southern Blacks,’ Hooch said suddenly. ‘Normally, we don’t share our boxcar.’

  Harrison cocked one eyebrow at him. ‘You look like white boys to me.’

  Hooch grinned in the darkness. ‘It’s a play on words, Four-String. What you might call an irony.’ He glanced at Carlsbad, then he rolled up his sleeve to reveal a small tattoo which Harrison had to pop a match to see. It was the letter A, crudely drawn in a capital, with FTR set round it in an arc. Hooch said: ‘Freight Train Riders of America.’

  ‘Club, is it?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Carlsbad drank from the Kessler bottle. ‘Real exclusive. You gotta be white and mean and homeless to get in.’

  ‘Sounds like jail to me.’

  Carlsbad shook his head. ‘They let anyone into jail, asshole. Niggers, spicks, gooks.’

  The train rolled on again and the conversation stilled. Harrison sat in the darkness, listening to the whistle and the thunder of the wheels, and watching the two men through the shadows. He left the conversation-making to them, but a major hurdle had been vaulted and he knew now they were not going to try and kill him. He imagined most of their victims, kids or old men, unarmed with nothing backing them up. They respected force, strength, violence. Anything less was weakness, and weakness to men like this was there to be crushed. Strength, on the other hand, gave him an edge. It unnerved them, knocked them off their course and made them think. Here was a man unafraid enough to back up his mouth with a blade, even in the face of a gun. It had been a while since Harrison had placed himself in such an openly dangerous situation and the blood was still fizzing round in his veins. He was happy to sit and watch and let the beating still in his heart. Around dawn he dozed, and when he opened his eyes, the two men were gone. Quickly, he checked his pack and found that everything was intact. His other gun was still there, his roll of cash was still there and the knife still hung in its sheath.

  Cyrus Birch sat in his office in Langley, Virginia, and looked at his watch. The Cub was back in northern Idaho, doing whatever he did when he was not killing people, and

  The Talent were on standby. Everything had gone quiet, though, and every feeler imaginable was probing away at the silence. Birch had contacts with the French, the British and the Germans. He had a courier in the Russian Embassy in Islamabad, as well as Secret Branch 40 on his side. And it was the Israelis who he figured would come through. Their intel’, coupled with the NSA listening stations and GCHQ in England, had located Bin Laden’s whereabouts in the first place, and it was only later, after The Cub had been despatched, that the shit hit the fan. They knew Bin Laden was missing within an hour of The Cub’s departure from Islamabad, but it was too late to get him back. Birch had been the most surprised man on the planet when his phone call came through. That had chilled him even more. He did not believe that anyone could get out of a situation like that, especially when the rumour factory had spilled the name of Mujah al-Bakhtar long before The Cub did.

  It was why Birch used The Cub whenever he could, and the way he looked was always a bonus in the Middle East. God bless his grandfather for running Chinese whores. Right from the off, notwithstanding his own feelings about the national intelligence estimate and the seriousness of the threat, he had doubted they would achieve their goal. The barrage of missiles back in October had not managed to get him, so how could one man. He would never admit it to Wendell Randall, but he was surprised the President had gone for the assassination finding at all.

  Right at that moment, however, Birch had other things on his mind. He was trying to read the analysis gleaned by one of his intelligence officers in Cairo and put forward his own recommendations vis-à-vis covert action against Gama al-Islamaya, but he could not concentrate. Tom Kovalski at the FBI had played the counter-espionage cards really close to his chest when Birch had phoned him after the Arlington bomb. Initially, the CIA had thought it was the Priesthood or some other militia faction. But then a little bird had squawked something in his ear that worried him greatly. Right now, he was waiting for confirmation from a fresh source inside the Israeli Embassy. This source needed paying and Birch was pretty sure he was also the FBI’s source, but would happily play one agency off against the other. Birch was aware that Kovalski had personally built up a raft of embassy contacts, and not just in Washington.

  He looked at the phone and then at his watch, and then, as if in further confirmation, the clock on the far wall. He check
ed his pager was switched on, scooped his jacket from the back of his chair and went out to the main office. ‘Jenny,’ he said to his assistant. ‘If anyone’s looking for me, I’ll be in the Metropolitan Club massaging congressmen. Metaphorically speaking, of course.’

  He drove into Washington, let the valet park his car and breezed into the Metropolitan Club, where various craggy-faced alumni members liked to gather and imagine they still had influence within the intelligence community. He noticed Admiral Pavell, who had been a long-time friend of his father, and nodded to him. Pavell was talking to Erickson who had worked briefly with Bill Casey when he had been DCI, before Woodward wrote his book detailing the Iran-Contra scandal. But the man he was looking for was not there, which was not unusual. Birch was not usually flappable, but he did need to know what was going on. If the information he had received was right and it became public, then he might have some questions to answer.

  He drank a cocktail and perused the grill menu, while watching the comings and goings for a few minutes. The pager vibrated against his hip and he unclipped it and read the message. Outside on the street, he sought a payphone. ‘I got your message,’ he said, when the line was answered. ‘What’ve you got to tell me?’

  The man on the other end of the line was still for a moment, then he said: ‘His name is Fachida Harada.’

  Birch felt the sweat form in a line beneath his hair. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I’m absolutely positive.’

  12

  FACHIDA HARADA SAT IN the small office attached to the self-storage unit he had rented. Next door, the red C U SAFELY security consultant’s truck stood idle. Seventy-two hours had passed since he had planted the device in Arlington Cemetery. He looked above his head at the street plan pasted to the wall and considered the array of different-coloured stickers he had marked. The first incident had been by way of introduction: a device set off in the middle of their dead; a warrior laying down his warning at the memorial to US dominance. There had been no casualties, but the selection of different newspapers he had collected on his way in all still headlined with the story. The FBI were saying nothing about who the telephone warning had come from, other than an ‘unknown subject’. Harada sat back and weighed their reaction in his mind. They had been on the scene pretty quickly, highly visible in their Chevrolet Suburban trucks with the blacked-out windows and array of computer equipment inside. They had been backed up by the parks police, the metro police and the metropolitan police. He had seen Washington JTTF stamped on the back of some of their raid jackets, which meant the various agencies were working together.