Covenant

by Jeff Gulvin

  ‘It might create an angle for negotiation,’ Mallory suggested.

  ‘It might, but we’re not gonna release Shikomoto, so I want to keep him out of it for the time being.’ Kovalski looked at Swann again. ‘Jack, your research threw up nothing that links Shikomoto with Harada other than their days in the JRA. Am I right?’

  Swann nodded. ‘They were in the JRA together. They’re both married and both have families in Japan.’

  ‘Which excludes Japanese organised crime connections, or at least makes them very unlikely.’ Kovalski sat back in his chair. ‘OK. We’ve got till noon.’ He looked at the police chief. ‘Let’s get as many cops on the street as we can. Visible show of force.’

  ‘Legion patrols,’ Swann muttered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s what we call them in London. It’s a good idea.’

  Kovalski looked at the police chief once more. ‘Can you organise it with the parks, the metro and the counties?’

  ‘I’ll get right on it.’ The police chief got up from his chair and left.

  Swann looked at Kovalski. ‘Why d’you think Harada’s chosen to keep his identity secret?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Weird that he should send that message to Smylie.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s keen to exploit the militia links, Jack. The inference has been there from the get-go. Maybe that’s not coincidence.’

  ‘You could go public and dismiss the militia thing.’

  ‘I’d like to. The militia link is far more dangerous in its implication than Harada’s own agenda.’

  ‘Unless they really are linked,’ Logan put in. She stood up. ‘He sent that message to Smylie to perpetuate that rumour. Tom, I figure we ought to find out what it really means.’ She picked up a copy of the Washington Post that lay on the circular table.

  Swann looked up at her. ‘How?’

  ‘George Washington University. The Japanese history department.’

  They were met by a small, quietly spoken Japanese woman in her fifties. She introduced herself as Akiko Habe, the chair of the faculty. Logan had cut out the section of newspaper where the message from Harada to Carl Smylie had been reproduced and showed it to her.

  The woman offered them seats in her office, then sat behind her desk and took her glasses from the case at her elbow. ‘I heard this on the television last night,’ she said. ‘I thought it interesting then, and now it’s in print, I can see just what it is.’

  ‘Does it refer to some kind of militia group?’ Logan asked her.

  The woman smiled, steepled her fingers under her chin, and looked from Logan to Swann and back again. ‘After a fashion, yes.’

  ‘Dr Habe,’ Logan went on. ‘You need to understand that this conversation must remain confidential. We’re trying to catch this bomber, and we want as many cards in our hand as possible. If too much is made public too quickly, our job will be that much harder.’

  The woman nodded. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. This conversation will remain entirely confidential.’

  ‘Can you tell us anything about the message?’ Swann said.

  ‘Young man, I can tell you everything about it.’ She picked up the paper and reread the message aloud. Then she paused and sat back in her chair. ‘The Shield Society,’ she said. ‘In Japanese, it is the Tatenokai, a group of one hundred men. It was a private army, or was purported to be such, at least. Formed in 1970 in Japan, by Yukio Mishima.’

  Swann stared at her. ‘Mishima.’

  ‘D’you know him?’

  ‘I’ve heard of him.’

  ‘He followed the way of the samurai, Mr Swann,’ she said. ‘Or, at least, he tried to. He certainly died that way. On 25 November 1970, he committed sepukko. Are you familiar with the ceremony?’

  Swann nodded. ‘Hara-kiri. Stab yourself in the stomach, then draw the knife from one side to the other and cut upwards.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Dr Habe sat forward again. ‘A friend close by to decapitate you when the suffering becomes unbearable. If it were not for the beheading, death could take hours, days even. The warrior chose the abdomen because it was the centre of being, the soul—the basis for all the emotions.’

  ‘What was the Tatenokai for?’ Logan asked her.

  ‘Mishima believed that Japan was falling into spiritual ruin, particularly after the treaties of 1969 were signed with the United States. He saw Japanese society as being infected and all that was pure being eroded.’

  ‘Was he from a samurai background?’

  She shook her head. ‘In reality, no. He did not have the lineage. But he chose to adopt it. In sentiment, given his suicide, it’s hard not to accept that he embraced the tradition wholeheartedly. The Shield Society was there to protect the emperor when the rest of the country was falling into western degradation. That’s how Mishima viewed it, at least. Other people thought he was mad.’ She looked at Logan again. ‘In answer to your original question, it does indeed draw some parallels with the patriot movement here. The reporter on television believed this message came from the militia.’ She smiled again. ‘After a fashion, it did.’

  Logan nodded. ‘We know who it came from, Dr Habe. And you’re right, it certainly was not the militia in the given sense of the word.’

  Swann was chewing his lip. ‘Dr Habe,’ he said. ‘Mishima was married, wasn’t he?’

  She nodded.

  ‘But didn’t I remember reading somewhere that he was homosexual?’

  Again she nodded. ‘You did. Many of his novels had elements of that theme, most explicit in Confessions of a Mask.’

  ‘But he was married.’

  ‘Yes.’ She clasped her tiny hands together. ‘You must understand that Mishima really did embrace the way of the bushido. In ancient Japan, many of the samurai warriors had male lovers. Love between warriors was the highest form of that expression.’ She shook her head. ‘Terms such as heterosexual or homosexual were not even thought of. There were no words for them. There was no single essence of sexuality. The warriors had wives and children; the whole family was samurai. But the greatest expression of love was between warriors, both platonic and physical love. The samurai were the fiercest swordsmen who ever lived, but equally they were some of the most delicate and refined people. They would spend as much time painting or writing poetry, arranging flowers perhaps, as they would practising their swordsmanship.’

  Swann was staring at Logan. ‘Homosexual love.’ He looked back at Dr Habe. ‘Doctor,’ he said. ‘Would one warrior go to war over the love of another?’

  ‘Certainly,’ she said. ‘If his honour had been besmirched in some way.’ She smiled then. ‘Honour was everything to a samurai. If he fell from his own grace, he would fall on his own sword.’

  ‘Harada’s gay.’ Logan rested her fists on Kovalski’s desk. ‘He’s in love with Tetsuya Shikomoto.’

  Kovalski stared at her. ‘You’re sure?’

  They told him what they had discovered from Dr Habe. ‘She’s an expert on ancient Japanese history,’ Logan finished.

  Kovalski drew his brows together in a frown. ‘So, you’re telling me Harada’s bombing us because we arrested his boyfriend.’

  ‘Possibly.’ Swann looked at him. ‘Carlos did it to the French, Tom. The Paris-Toulouse Express. Cafés, discos. He killed a lot of people just because his girlfriend was banged up.’

  Kovalski sat back. ‘So he’s gay.’ He chipped at his teeth with his knuckles. ‘We can use that.’

  ‘If he gives us the chance to talk to him.’ Logan made a face. ‘Which, so far, he hasn’t.’

  ‘He holds all the aces,’ Swann said. ‘He’s been a terrorist for twenty years. He knows just what to do and just when to do it.’ He looked again at Kovalski. ‘We know he was in Japan up until six months ago. He must have entered the US on a false passport after then. If he’s been here six months, he will have all the groundwork well and truly covered.’

  Kovalski looked back at him. ‘Jack, you’re a r
eal barrel of laughs in the morning, you know that.’ He looked at the clock on the wall. It was nine-thirty. ‘We got two and a half hours.’

  There was nothing they could do but sit and wait, with every FBI agent in the capital on standby. Kovalski had warned everyone up the line; the FBI Director had had another meeting with the national security adviser, and the President was being kept informed. Everybody was agreed that they would not release Shikomoto.

  At eleven-thirty, Kovalski’s direct line rang and he picked it up. ‘Kovalski.’

  ‘There is snow at the foot of Mount Fuji.’

  ‘Harada, listen. We …’

  ‘Puddington Place and 3rd Street. You have thirty minutes.’

  The phone went dead and Swann could see the sweat on Kovalski’s brow. He was on his feet looking at the map, and then he jabbed his index finger into the junction of Puddington Place and 3rd. ‘Capitol Hill again.’

  ‘Tom.’ Swann laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘The device will be in a rubbish bin. He’s going to continue to use them until you get them all off the street.’

  Kovalski stared at him. ‘Yes. And then he’ll use the garbage dumps that spring up in their place.’ He looked at Logan. ‘Let’s roll.’

  Logan went through to the outer office and sent the warning out over the city. All the elements of the task force would come together again, but this time there was only half an hour to evacuate. Swann stood where he was, as Kovalski strapped on his gun.

  ‘You coming?’

  Swann shook his head. ‘I’ll stay here if you don’t mind. Man your phone for you.’

  ‘OK.’ Kovalski ducked out of the door.

  Swann sat down behind Kovalski’s desk and picked up a copy of the Constitution, which Kovalski always kept there. A small white booklet entitled We the People. He flicked it open and read the Second Amendment: ‘A well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ He thought about Smylie and his comments on the television. He thought about the death of the detective in Hope Heights, Oregon, and the murders of Tommy Anderson and Billy Bob Lafitte. Three Asian men. He thought about what Dr Habe had told them this morning: Yukio Mishima and the Tatenokai. Then he considered the similarities between Mishima’s sentiments and those espoused by the modern US militias. Was this all just a wonderful coincidence for Harada? Or was there something else going on here, something far more sinister?

  He sat, thought and watched the clock as it ticked towards twelve o’clock. He heard the sirens screaming outside, vehicles racing from every part of the city. Then a thought struck him and a shiver rippled across his scalp. He called Logan on her cellphone. ‘Chey, it’s me. Listen, where’s the RVP?’

  ‘I’m standing in it.’

  ‘It’s an obvious place, right?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s two blocks down the street.’

  ‘Search it.’

  ‘It’s been searched already.’

  ‘Get them to search it again. Listen, Chey. He’ll have monitored what happened the last time. Search that RVP again. He may not want to kill civilians, but anybody connected to law enforcement is the enemy. Get them to search it again.’

  ‘OK. I’ll do it.’ She hung up, and Swann could feel the sweat on his brow. He got up and went into the outer office where the Triggerfish operators were sitting, just waiting for Harada to call. They had been working round the clock since the equipment had been set up; double shifts, then changeover. Swann looked at his watch. Three minutes to twelve.

  ‘It’s gonna go bang again, isn’t it?’ one of the technicians said to him.

  Swann nodded.

  ‘Gonna piss people off real quick.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not used to it, you see, us Americans. This doesn’t happen too often here.’

  ‘I know.’ Swann turned back into Kovalski’s office. Two minutes to twelve. The phone rang and Swann jumped. He glanced over his shoulder at the technicians and then reached for it.

  ‘Harada,’ he said.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Jack Swann, the Englishman.’ Swann watched the clock ticking down. ‘Listen, we know about Shikomoto. We know about Mishima. It doesn’t have to be this way.’

  ‘Oh, but it does, Mr Swann.’

  ‘“Snow at the foot of Mount Fuji”, that’s what Yukio Mishima means, isn’t it?’ Swann watched the clock. ‘Mishima wasn’t his real name, was it?’

  ‘The master.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘You cannot keep me talking. Thirty-third and Prospect. You have another thirty minutes.’

  ‘Harada, wait.’

  Harada hung up. Swann held the phone, and then the bomb went off and the glass rattled in the windowpanes. Frantically, he dialled Logan’s cellphone. She answered and he breathed more easily. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah. The RVP’s safe, Jack. It’s OK. It’s gone off, though.’

  ‘I know. I heard it. It’s bigger than the last ones. Listen.’ Swann told her what Harada had said.

  ‘Oh, Jesus.’

  Logan put the phone down and Swann looked up to see one of the Triggerfish technicians looking at him. ‘We got a fix on the phone,’ he said. McKensie was standing behind him. ‘It’s a payphone right outside.’

  Swann went out on to the street with McKensie and she led the way past the Judiciary Center to where two payphones stood outside the Lutheran church. Some of the traffic had been redirected this way and everywhere was chaos, police cars and sirens. Swann touched McKensie’s arm as they got closer. ‘Gently, Carmen. We’re the enemy, remember?’ They stopped fifty yards away and Swann scrutinised the phones.

  McKensie crossed the street to the little park, chasing up an evidence response team on her cellphone. They were struggling, though. All resources had been directed at the first threat and now there was another one—Prospect and 33rd Street—right in the middle of Georgetown.

  Swann could see something on the phone booth, but he could not make out what it was. ‘Have you got any binoculars, Carmen?’

  ‘Upstairs.’

  ‘Send somebody down with them, will you?’

  One of the support staff came out on to the street with the binoculars, and Swann lifted them to his eyes, focused, then surveyed the booth again. On top of the coin box, he could see a small plastic sandwich box. Slowly, he shook his head. ‘He’s booby-trapped the phone booth,’ he murmured. ‘He deliberately stayed on the line long enough so we’d know.’

  Harada phoned in three more coded warnings and exploded five bombs in various parts of the city. The fifth was just across the Maryland State line. By the end of the day, two civilians had been killed and thirteen were in hospital, two of them critically injured. The city had been brought to a standstill and every news station across the world was broadcasting the chaos. The Cub lay on the bed in his hotel room and watched the BBC news show an FBI spokesman giving a press conference in the quadrangle at the Hoover building.

  ‘My name’s Kovalski,’ the spokesman said. ‘As you know, today has been the worst in Washington’s history as far as active terrorism is concerned. We’ve had to deal with five separate improvised explosive devices, in five separate locations.’ He paused and looked into the camera. ‘Last night, CNN broadcast an interview with Carl Smylie, a reporter who received a message allegedly from the bomber. Mr Smylie’s interpretation of that message was that the bomber was part of a militia group taking revenge on us for the murders of three militia leaders.’ He took a breath. ‘Firstly, the bomber here in Washington is not, I repeat not, connected to any group, organised or otherwise. As you are aware, we have received warnings about the devices. Initially, forty-five minutes for the Arlington one. This enabled us to evacuate the area without loss of life. Today, however, that warning time was reduced to just thirty minutes. Subsequently, two civilians have been murdered and a number are in hospital.’ He paused long enough to let his words sink in.r />
  ‘Secondly, neither the FBI nor any other federal agency has any connection with the killing of alleged militia leaders. On the contrary, we’re offering the local police departments every possible assistance in order to apprehend those who are responsible. Our opinion is that the three Asians who have been sighted have been used deliberately to feed the conspiracy theories that, if we are not very careful, will undermine this society.’ He broke off and looked at the camera again. ‘We know the identity of the bomber here in Washington. Thus far, we’ve not released the information publicly because we did not want to initiate a spate of hoax sightings and callers. In the light of today’s events, however, and those of last night, vis-à-vis the telecast, we have decided to issue the following statement.

  ‘The bomber’s name is Fachida Harada and he was formerly a member of the Marxist group, the Japanese Red Army. He is a Japanese national and has nothing to do with any US militia group. He is working alone and is demanding the release of a former colleague, arrested in Japan three years ago for his part in the mortar attack on our embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1986.’

  ‘Mr Kovalski.’ Carl Smylie was seated in the front row of the benches in the FBI quadrangle. ‘How do you explain the contents of that message? The references to standby armies, to the Shield Society and the connotations that the initials SS suggest?’

  Kovalski looked coldly at him. ‘Mr Smylie. I think it might’ve been helpful if you’d brought the information you received directly to the FBI, instead of going on national television to spread rumours.’ He leaned on the lectern. ‘I’m not going to answer any questions at this time. Further statements will be issued through the Office of Public and Congressional Affairs.’ He paused. ‘The important thing here is to catch Fachida Harada. We will be publishing photographs of him and welcome any support the public can give us.’