Covenant

by Jeff Gulvin

  Farrow nodded. ‘Can you check with the cabs in London? There must be a helluva lot of them.’

  Weir smiled. ‘We’ve issued a public request for any cabbie to come forward who either picked up or delivered to that address that night. If no one’s got anything to hide, we should get something. In the meantime, we’ve requested the security video tapes from Paddington tube to see if she got on there. If she did, we can start to check her journey.’

  ‘That’s a helluva long job.’

  ‘It certainly is, Dan. But we’ve got enough bodies back at division to cope with it. It’s man-hour intensive, which means nothing happens in too much of a hurry, though, I’m afraid.’

  Farrow eased the door closed and leaned on it, hands behind his back. ‘What about the cash?’ he asked. ‘Even without salary records, right now, I can tell you that’s an expensive apartment. Most of the sergeants live in quarters.’

  Webb jangled the change in his pocket. ‘There’s lots of possibilities,’ he said. ‘Kibibi was a good-looking girl.’

  ‘Smart, too, from what I can gather.’ Farrow pulled a face. ‘Me only being in situ a couple of weeks doesn’t really help you guys that much, huh?’

  ‘No.’ Weir looked evenly at him. ‘We might want to talk to your predecessor, though.’

  ‘I can arrange that. He’s based back in D.C. right now.’ He pushed his cheek out with his tongue. ‘What about the money?’

  ‘Sugar daddy somewhere, maybe?’ Webb said. ‘Rich parents?’

  Farrow laughed. ‘You’ve seen them, George. They’re downhome Mississippi folk, just real proud they got their kids in the service. If anything, the kids send them money, not the other way round.’

  ‘There’s other things she could’ve been doing,’ Webb went on. ‘It’s a nice apartment, and well located. She could have been tomming.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A hooker,’ Weir cut in. ‘Prostitution. It would account for the cash.’

  Farrow looked wide-eyed at him. ‘A serving US marine sergeant—a hooker?’

  ‘It’s possible, Dan. Everything here is possible.’

  ‘In which case, her killer could’ve been just about anyone in London.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Webb said. ‘Man or woman.’

  Farrow blew out his cheeks. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the responses from all staff to you just as soon as they come in. UK and US personnel.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘By the way, the ambassador wants to be kept up to date at all times on this thing. Is that OK?’

  ‘Of course.’ Weir smiled at him.

  They drove back to Southwick Street and the wine bar below Kibibi’s rented flat. Two Australian girls were serving. They told them that Kibibi did frequent the place quite a bit.

  ‘She drank a lot of wine,’ one of them said. ‘Always red, unless it was champagne.’

  ‘Expensive red?’ Webb asked her.

  The girl nodded. ‘I’d say so.’ She looked at her colleague. ‘That’d be right, Gail, eh?’

  ‘Yeah. I reckon.’

  ‘Who did she come in with?’ Weir asked her.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean, regularly. Did she come in with anyone on a regular basis?’

  The girls said that they had only been working there a month and had not noticed anyone in particular, but they called the Italian manager, who was very helpful. He leaned on the bar, sleeves pushed up, hairy arms making up for the lack of it on his head. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘You could not help but notice. Very pretty girl. Even in this bar, where we get lots of pretty girls.’

  ‘Was there anyone who accompanied her or met her here regularly?’ Webb asked him.

  ‘One guy, sometimes. They come in late, maybe two, three times a week.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  The Italian lifted his shoulders. ‘He’s not been here in a long time. Maybe four or five weeks.’ He made an open-handed gesture. ‘But he was white and he was a lot older than her, I think. Maybe forty-five, maybe fifty. I don’t know.’

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  ‘Sure. He was always well dressed. Nice suits. Armani mostly.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘He had grey hair, lots of gel, always flat and right back on his head. You know, like Michael Douglas in Wall Street. Good-looking guy. He always liked to look at himself in the mirror.’ He tapped the glass behind the bar. ‘Vain, I think. You know.’

  ‘Would you recognise him again?’

  ‘Oh sure. He was American, I think.’ He gestured with his fingers to his mouth. ‘You know the accent.’

  Webb glanced at Weir. ‘If we sent an artist down here, could you describe him more fully?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Weir got up off the stool. ‘What about anyone else?’

  ‘She was with one other guy a couple of times. Black. Tall, I think. With the haircut right up here.’ He rubbed his hand up the back of his head.

  ‘American?’ Webb asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t hear him speak.’

  They walked outside and Weir unlocked the car with the remote. ‘A grunt,’ he said.

  ‘The one with the haircut.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Webb leaned on the roof. ‘A grunt and Gordon Gekko.’

  ‘Grey hair, slicked right back, about forty-five.’ Farrow sat at his desk and looked at Webb standing opposite him. Weir had gone back to divisional headquarters to see how the video-watching session was going.

  ‘Well dressed,’ Webb added.

  ‘Shit.’ Farrow sat forward. ‘That sounds like Mitch Arnold, my predecessor.’

  Webb cocked one eyebrow. ‘The previous RSO?’

  Farrow nodded.

  ‘D’you know him?’

  ‘He’s a lot older than I am, but yes, I know him.’

  Webb sat down. ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Well, he’s in his mid-forties, very fit, always tanned. Likes to play tennis and golf. Hangs out with the right kinda people.’ Farrow broke off. ‘George. The guy’s been back in Washington for weeks. He couldn’t have done it.’

  ‘I know that, Dan. But I’m thinking of something else.’

  ‘Like the apartment?’

  ‘Yeah. Somehow, she must’ve paid for it. You said yourself, it’s out of a gunnery sergeant’s league.’

  Farrow squinted at him, ‘You figure maybe Arnold was playing sugar daddy. He’s got a wife and four kids in college.’

  ‘That must be expensive.’

  Farrow nodded. ‘In the United States. No kidding.’ He laughed then. ‘Kibibi was a good-looking gal, George.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’ Webb stood up. ‘I want to talk to him.’

  ‘I figured you would. Listen, he’s real well thought of in the department. Can you make it discreet?’

  ‘Initially, I can. But I can’t guarantee to keep it that way.’

  ‘I’ll try and get hold of him for you.’

  Webb got up and turned for the door, then a thought occurred to him. ‘Has he been in touch since the murder?’

  Farrow nodded. ‘I got one call and then an e-mail. The call was right after it happened and I passed the e-mail on to her folks.’

  ‘How did he sound on the phone?’

  ‘I don’t know. As shocked as everybody else, I guess. Why?’

  ‘No reason. I just wondered, that’s all.’

  Back at the incident room, Webb relayed the information to Weir.

  ‘So, you’re thinking that maybe Arnold was paying for the flat so he had somewhere they could sleep together,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll have to ask him. But in and out of the wine bar with her, fancying himself—it’s got more mileage than her being on the game.’

  Weir nodded. ‘We’ve had a result with the tube station,’ he said. ‘No cabbie’s come forward yet, but she definitely caught a train from Paddington at eight o’clock on the night she died.’

  ‘But we don’t know where to yet?’

  Weir
shook his head. ‘She had a one-day Travelcard in her wallet, which doesn’t tell us anything.’

  Webb groaned. ‘So now we have to look at the tapes from every possible tube station in London.’

  ‘Well.’ Weir sat forward. ‘Not every one. Think about it, George. The girl was all dolled up. It’s got to be somewhere up west.’

  ‘Not necessarily. Some of the trendiest clubs are in the East End now, or Tulse Hill, or even Brixton.’ Webb went on. ‘She was black, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah. But with a penchant for well-dressed, middle-aged white men. I think we can discount Brixton, George.’

  The Cub flew into London under the mutual visa waiver system. A tourist looking to see the sights—the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, etc. He was booked into the Marriott, close to the US Embassy, which he thought was a nice touch on Cyrus Birch’s part. The last time they had met, when Birch flew out to Boise, he had been agitated. He had tried not to show it: Mr Cool, as ever. But years of covert action had taught The Cub to detect the simplest of changes in behaviour. It was an art he had perfected and one that had saved his life on more than one occasion.

  He had driven down from Kamiah where he was visiting his mother, still a shaman for the Nez Perce tribe; and he had put himself through the purification ceremony after what had gone on in Afghanistan. He had never told her what work he did and she had never asked. She had stood by him all the time he was at Leavenworth, and then been amazed at his perfect French when he returned from five years with the Legion. That was when Birch had first approached him. Unbeknown to him, he had been earmarked for special ops way back, when he graduated with the Marine Corps. His superiors had marked him out as instinctively special and the IAD boys from the Agency had looked him over. But then he got mad with his wife, tried to kill her and her boyfriend, and did the seven-year stint in Leavenworth for attempted manslaughter.

  His father had been born to a white man and one of his imported Chinese whores, and had grown up as a ridiculed half-caste during the heavy mining days in southern Idaho, back in the thirties. When he got old enough to quit school, he had travelled north and wound up on the Nez Perce reservation amongst Chief Joseph’s descendants. He fitted in. Dark-haired and dark-skinned, he looked more like an Indian than a white boy. He married a shaman and they had one son, but he had died in a hunting accident when his son was only four. For the first twelve years of his life, the boy had slept, in animal skins and one day he came home with a mountain lion cub, not thinking that its mother would come looking for it. She did; and from that day to this, he had been known simply as The Cub. It was a story he liked to tell to the whores he slept with, especially the bit about his grandma.

  He knew he made Birch nervous—the man was a pen-pusher, an Ivy League turtle-hopper, no doubt with his sights set on the DDO’s desk or even the DCI’s. To him, men like The Cub were something of an enigma: in some ways no better than criminals, yet working for the United States government. Birch had met him at the Kopper Kitchen by the airport. The only other patrons were a couple of maintenance men bullshitting at the bar, one wearing a Navy Seals T-shirt, which meant he had probably been a cook on the Nimitz during his time in the service. Birch had been in a side booth and The Cub sat down next to him.

  ‘What news?’ he said.

  Birch picked at the paper beer mat. ‘We’ve had word. It appears your information was correct. The rules of the game have changed.’

  ‘Cyrus.’ The Cub sat forward. ‘When I get information from somebody, they don’t get a chance to lie to me.’

  Birch looked at him, and The Cub’s eyes were dead and cold.

  ‘He’s gone underground.’

  The Cub sat back and nodded. ‘Where?’

  ‘Well, we don’t know exactly, but al-Bakhtar showed up in London.’

  In the mélée on the pavement at Heathrow Airport, the Cub stood waiting for a cab. The day was cool and cloudy, and the air stank of traffic fumes. He closed his eyes and thought back to the mountains of Idaho twenty-four hours earlier. Then he let his mind focus on Mujah al-Bakhtar: that tall black Somali who wanted to rip his head off in Afghanistan. That would be a good meeting. But wherever the IAD had got their information, it was not as good as they would have liked. The word was that al-Bakhtar had taken a flight from Orly Airport in Paris to London, under one of his West Indian pseudonyms. But that was the only word. What happened to the West Indian when he landed, where he went and who he met was a mystery. But the word was out and both the Agency here in London as well as the NSA back home were scouring the British intelligence landscape for signs. Nobody knew what Bin Laden was doing—whether he was planning some other major action or merely hiding out. But wherever al-Bakhtar went, Bin Laden would be close by.

  He jumped in a cab and rode to the Marriott. His long hair had been cut short and he was travelling as an American businessman on vacation. Charles Canning had a reservation for two weeks at the Marriott. After that, it was up to The Talent to shift him, get fresh ID if needs be, until his quarry could be run to ground. The Cub was as relaxed as he had ever been on a covert mission alone. This was the West after all, a friendly town like London where they all but spoke the same language. It could have been Beirut or Pakistan again, where he had hunted Yousef down for the FBI. In comparison, London was easy. He would spend his days looking the place over and reconnoitring until such time as word came. Not only that, but he had other plans as well. The one thing he needed and lacked in Islamabad was somebody he knew he could trust to watch his back. In his line of business, people like that were few and far between, and not once had The Talent or the Intelligence Support Activity ever come up with a local operative who was up to it. He was not sure how much he would need to watch his back, but he was on British soil and, whatever Birch told him, he knew that the British secret services were good. If word had leaked to Afghanistan, it sure as hell had leaked across here. He was as adept as anyone at counter-surveillance measures, but it would be reassuring to have some back-up of his own. He had basically told Birch that he now had a second man on the payroll. After that, it had been a covert phone call to a small restaurant in the mountains of northern Spain.

  He walked up the steps of the Marriott and nodded to the doorman in his top hat and tailcoat. Inside, he stood at reception and waited while two fat Venezuelans checked out, then booked himself in as Mr Charles Canning.

  ‘Would you like a porter to help with your bags, Mr Canning?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ The Cub took the elevator and pressed his swipe card into the lock. The room was in darkness, the curtains pulled, and, as he let the door swish closed, he knew there was somebody there. He stood very still for a full thirty seconds, taking in every tiny sound, every chink of light. Gradually, his eyes grew accustomed to the half-darkness and he made out a shape on the bed.

  ‘Oui. C’est moi.’

  The voice came out of the darkness and The Cub let his travel bag drop to the floor.

  ‘Je sais. Ça va bien?’

  ‘Bien sûr. Je suis toujours bien.’ The lamp came on by the bed and The Cub stared at a lean man in his late thirties, with blond hair and blue eyes.

  ‘How did you know what room they’d give me?’

  The man swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. They were the same height, the same build, only the guest was lighter-skinned. ‘I just utilised certain skills similar to the ones that got me to be referred to as “mon capitaine” when we were in the Legion.’

  They sat on the bed. This was probably the only man The Cub had ever called, or would ever call, friend in his entire life. Jean-Emmanuel Haan: medically discharged from the 2nd REP commando team, after taking a bullet in the head in Bosnia. He had been part of a rapid reaction force trying to secure Mount Igman. He had medevaced a woman whose baby had just been murdered by the Serbs, and had taken the bullet intended for her. Now they lived together with the Basques high in the mountains of Spain.

  Haan sat with his hands restin
g in his lap. ‘I’ve swept the room and it’s clean,’ he said. ‘No bugs. No cameras. No ultrasound.’

  ‘They know I’m here, then.’ The Cub pursed his lips. ‘I thought they would. It’s why I called you in.’

  ‘Oh, they know you’re here all right. England’s been a veritable hive of silent activity.’ Haan smiled. ‘They just don’t know why and it’s really making them nervous.’

  The Cub got up and walked to the window looking out on to Duke Street. Two cars were parked, one where it should not be. He looked for footpads and saw two possibles. Nothing to worry about yet. He turned back into the room. ‘Do they know you’re here?’

  Haan shook his head. ‘Of course not. Now, tell me what’s going on.’

  The Cub went back to the window. The cars were gone and two different footpads were on the street. ‘This is gonna be interesting,’ he muttered, and turned to Haan once more.

  ‘Mujah al-Bakhtar is in London. We don’t know where, we just know he flew in from Paris under a West Indian nom de guerre.’

  Haan’s eyes thinned. ‘The Butcher of Bekaa,’ he murmured. Then he looked sharply at The Cub. ‘If he’s here, then …’

  The Cub nodded. ‘That’s what we think.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  The Cub smiled. ‘Oh yes, I am.’

  Fachida Harada rewatched the videotape he had made of the CNN coverage of the three Federal Triangle bombs. He sat in his living room in the sparsely furnished house he had rented in the quiet suburb of Falls Church, and re-examined every frame of the authorities’ reaction to the threat. He knew that the FBI led the fourteen formal joint terrorism task forces, and that the New York one had been effective in apprehending the bombers, behind the attack on the World Trade Center. On that occasion, however, the perpetrators, except perhaps for Yousef, had been inept to say the least. One of them had even gone back for a refund on the van used in the attack.

  Harada studied the screen, identifying the different vehicles in use. He recognised the black Suburbans as the FBI’s tactical operations centers. They had computer links to their headquarters and fixed command posts, which, in this case, would be the field office on 4th Street. The Washington police were simple to identify and their task force members had inscriptions on their raid jackets that were similar to those of the FBI. He calculated their response times and how quickly they had begun to instigate the evacuation. This had been done on the ground, initially in the cab and later in the security truck. Harada had set up the videotape to run from the moment he phoned in the coded warning, and was now able to rewatch the whole thing again. It was extremely useful—the US media doing much of his surveillance work for him.