Covenant

by Jeff Gulvin

  Hooch shook his head wearily. ‘Four-String, you might figure you’re a tough guy, but I killed more guys on the skids than you ate hot dinners.’

  Harrison squinted at him. ‘Is that a fact?’

  Carlsbad interrupted them, lying on his side on the boards. ‘Anyways, man. How come you was packing so much hardware?’

  Harrison flicked ash from the end of his cigarette. ‘Are you kidding me, Carlsbad? I was fresh outta Angola. You figure I’m gonna go anywhere without packing?’

  ‘Yeah, but two guns, man.’

  ‘And the knife. Don’t forget the knife.’

  Carlsbad looked sourly at him. ‘How can I forget the fucking knife?’

  They switched trains east of Dallas, and Hooch told Harrison they were due to meet up with Sidetrack in Paris, twenty or so miles south of the Oklahoma line.

  ‘How come you know when to hook up with him?’ Harrison asked.

  Hooch looked at him then as if he was stupid. ‘You from the dark ages or something?’ He produced a cellphone from inside his pack. ‘I call him up on the phone.’

  Harrison shook his head. ‘I thought this riding the skids was getting away from regular life,’ he said. ‘Next, you’ll have fucking e-mail.’

  Sidetrack, as always, was with Limpet, plus four other Southern Blacks, some of whom Harrison recognised from his initiation ceremony. The three of them left the train in Paris, and found Sidetrack and his cohorts already settled beside a campfire at the far end of the freight yard. Harrison walked next to Hooch, who towered above him, wheezing a little as he moved.

  ‘How much do we pay the guards?’ Harrison asked.

  Hooch looked round at him. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean, I’ve been in a dozen fucking freight yards and I’ve never seen one of them.’

  Hooch grinned at him and dumped his bags by the fire.

  Sidetrack seemed preoccupied and Harrison’s survival instincts prickled. He sat across the fire from him and leaned with an elbow resting on his pack. Carlsbad had a bunch of steaks laid on top of one another in waxed paper and he set them on sticks to cook. Sidetrack was sipping mescal and Harrison watched him. He was wearing his thoughtful expression, exemplified by the canine tooth pressing down on his lower lip. Neither of them had spoken as yet. They looked at one another across the fire and Harrison licked the edge of his cigarette paper.

  ‘What you been doing, Four-String?’ Sidetrack asked him suddenly.

  ‘Just bopping along.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘No place in particular. I hooked up with a gal I know, for a day or so.’ He could feel Hooch’s eyes on him. ‘Woulda been rude not to, seeing as how I was in the area.’

  ‘Where would that be?’

  ‘De Ridder, Louisiana.’

  ‘Who’s the gal?’

  Harrison wanted to keep everything as close to the truth as possible. Ninety-five per cent of the undercover agent’s story is true: that way, lies don’t catch up with you. Sidetrack had no idea where he had been, but this was his first major test since initiation.

  ‘Just a gal, Sidetrack. If you wanna know, I first met her when I was in ’Nam. She came here with the rest of the refugees.’

  ‘A gook?’ Hooch said. ‘You been fucking a gook?’

  Harrison smiled along with them, but he was thinking of Jean and just how precious she was to him. ‘That’s right, Hooch. And you know what? When they lie with you all night and tell you how much they wanna be with you, it’s a whole lot better than paying for it.’

  Everybody laughed then, including Sidetrack, who corked the bottle of mescal and tossed it to Harrison. He took a swig, got up to stretch his legs and sat down on the other side of the fire. He handed the bottle back to Sidetrack. ‘So where you been at?’

  Sidetrack looked at the flames. ‘Here and there. Setting up some deals. You know how it goes.’

  ‘Tough at the top, huh?’

  Sidetrack leered at him. ‘Somebody’s got to do it.’

  Harrison sucked on his cigarette, then took one of Carlsbad’s steaks from the fire and chewed on it.

  Later, Sidetrack had drunk most of his bottle and they had all begun to relax. Harrison wanted to know what their movements were, whether they were making any more shipments, whether the crew with Sidetrack was carrying any cargo of weapons. He wanted to know where the C-4 had come from and what Randy Meades planned to do with it, but he knew better than to ask any questions. He plucked at the strings of the banjo, with the breeze pulling at his hair and sending smoke from the fire drifting this way and that. Sidetrack watched him and nodded appreciatively.

  ‘You ain’t bad on that thing, now you’ve got five strings.’ He looked in his eye then. ‘I guess I don’t mind having you around, even if you do sleep with gooks.’

  ‘Sidetrack.’ Harrison laid the banjo aside. ‘A gal is a gal is a gal.’

  ‘Not if she’s a gook.’ Sidetrack slurred slightly and then he looked at Limpet. ‘Remember Kinney County?’

  Harrison had the tape running.

  ‘She weren’t no gal.’

  ‘I know it, asshole. She was a he.’ He looked back at Harrison. His eyes were black and dead and, with his tooth glinting in the firelight, he looked like a misshapen vampire. ‘You wanna hear a war story, Four-String?’

  ‘If you wanna tell one.’

  Sidetrack sat up and supped mescal. ‘How many suckers we killed, boys? Hooch. You done plenty.’

  ‘Carlsbad done the most.’

  ‘What about the gook?’ Harrison said.

  Sidetrack looked back at him. ‘You wanna hear about the gook?’

  Harrison leaned on his elbows. ‘I haven’t looked one in the eyes that wasn’t a gal since Cu-Chi.’

  Sidetrack rolled on his belly. ‘You’d a liked this one, bro. Me and Limpet was coming outta Kinney County and found this gook kid in a boxcar on his own. He was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and looked as if his momma just quit with the diapers. We thought he was one of those motherfuckers who took all the shrimp fishing in Galveston Bay, but he weren’t.’ He looked back at Limpet. ‘He was some kinda tourist, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah. Some kinda tourist.’

  Sidetrack looked back at Harrison again, supped mescal and wiped his bristled chin with the back of his hand. ‘You talk about a six-gun, Four-String. We got this kid and gave him a handgun with three shells in it. Old Limpet kept him covered and I spun that chamber, and the sucker blew his brains all over the boxcar. Man, that was as funny a thing as I’ve seen. Kid going to Mardi Gras, ends up painting the tracks with his head.’

  Harrison looked at him then, trying to smile, while inside his heart leapt against his ribs. Sidetrack had killed Jean Carey’s only son, and he had just recorded him admitting it. He thought of Jean, her pain, her loss, and the five months of wandering. He wondered then whether to give up the tape to the Bureau or find the right moment to cut Sidetrack’s throat himself. ‘You gave it The Deer Hunter routine, did ya?’ he said slowly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Russian roulette. It’s a game the VC liked to play on prisoners. You musta seen the movie.’

  ‘Nope.’ Sidetrack slurred. ‘I figured it out all by myself.’ He was on his second bottle and pretty drunk now. Harrison watched his eyelids flutter and then his head flop on to his pack. Within minutes, he was snoring. The rest of them had eaten and drunk and were quiet.

  Harrison lay down himself and looked up at the stars. He was wrapped in his blanket, with his heavier coat over the top of that. The fire had burned low and the Texas night was cold. He lay for a long time, thinking of Jean. At least now she would know. He wouldn’t kill him. He’d arrest Sidetrack and indict him for murder, along with Limpet. With any luck, he’d get the death penalty anyway. Jean needed to see justice done. The moon drifted behind a cloud and a new darkness settled over the freight yard. Behind him, the aged wooden cars creaked in the wind, metal contracting with the steady drop in temperature.
When he was sure every one of his companions was asleep, he changed the tape on his back.

  Every FBI agent, every member of the joint terrorism task force, every police officer in Washington D.C. was looking for Fachida Harada. He drove his truck round the city and observed the results of his handiwork. They had five hours to release Shikomoto and he was watching their attempts to catch him. When he had got an idea of their exact tactics, he returned the truck to the lock-up and changed back into the woman’s clothing he now wore when driving the sedan to ‘work’. Her name was Chiang Soo Li and she had been resident in the US for seven years since coming here from Seoul. The police had not stopped her yet, but given time they would. They were targeting every Asian in the city. He sat for a long time in front of the mirror, shaving for the second time that day and then making sure that the make-up was perfect. He enjoyed the routine—it was part of the battle, part of his life with Shikomoto, and part of the long process of restoring his honour. When he was finished, he straightened the stockings under his cotton skirt and opened the roll-over door. He had to get out of the car to close it once again.

  Across the road in the old soldiers’ home, Charlie, with no legs, watched him.

  Logan and McKensie, with Swann’s help, were coordinating the task force response to the hundreds of calls they were getting. Not all of the calls were helpful by any means; some were abusive, accusing the FBI of lying and blowing up their own city. There were more and more of those type, and there had also been a number of telling editorials even in the more sensible newspapers. Swann had heard one TV commentator talk about the FBI’s track record in such events, citing the illegal activities over the American Indian Movement, Ruby Ridge and Waco as just three obvious abuses of power.

  Other calls came from the Japanese, Chinese and Korean communities, accusing the authorities of harassment. Two people were claiming civil rights’ violations against the Washington PD, and all of it was flowing across Kovalski’s desk.

  The support staff and analysts were pumping everything into the Cascade computer system for cross-referencing. Swann sifted papers in the operations room alongside Logan, and his thoughts drifted to New Orleans and Harrison going undercover again. The Freight Train Riders of America: killing hobos who got too close to their weapons-supply operation. That discovery had unnerved the whole office and Kovalski had been buried in meetings pretty much ever since. The big question was, where were the weapons coming from?

  Right at that moment, Kovalski was in the Old Executive building with the FBI Director and Wendall Randall, the Director of Central Intelligence. With them was the national security adviser and Cyrus Birch, the national intelligence officer for the Near East and Africa. Kovalski was doing the talking. Ever since Louis Beam had made his Leaderless Resistance call back in October of 1992, he had been voicing his fears about the growing threat posed by militia-type groups. Yes, they had a constitutional right to gather together and to bear arms, but they were progressively conducting military-style manoeuvres, generally under the auspices of BobCat Reece’s SPIKE teams. Local law-enforcement officers in Montana had commented on the growing security levels at Reece’s compound and his 1998 purchase of a three-thousand-acre tract of land from the Bureau of Land Management, which he subsequently used for additional paramilitary training.

  ‘Reece is just an old-fashioned, New World Order paranoid,’ Kovalski was saying. ‘But with his expertise and his influence, that makes him very dangerous. I think the days of single-cell resistance are numbered. There’s a new terrorism at work.’

  ‘What about these Asians?’ Jensen cut in on him. ‘The President wants to know what you’ve done about them.’

  Kovalski sat back. ‘They haven’t been located, sir,’ he said. ‘Our best estimate is that they’re yakuza. It’s hard to prove, because trying to get a source in the black mist is like finding rocking-horse shit. But they’ve clearly got access to a lot of money, what with their trucks and those black helicopters. They are specifically designed to look like the Hong Kong troops that the militias have been so paranoid about.’

  Randall frowned at him then. ‘You don’t think, Mr Kovalski, that they could actually be rogue agents, carrying on their own little war?’

  Kovalski bit down on his lip. ‘They could be, sir. We have a number of Asian agents in the Bureau, as do the ATF. But if you’re asking my opinion, I don’t think so. They’re much more likely to be yakuza, which suggests a link to Fachida Harada.’ He swivelled in his seat then. ‘But talking of rogue government agents—BobCat Reece is using that freelance reporter, Smylie, to promulgate his theory that either Harada is a government agent gone wrong, in other words one of the Hong Kong troops, or someone paid by us to implicate the militia. Harada has given us till two o’clock this afternoon to release his lover, or he’ll go public on some piece of information that’ll play right into the hands of the militia.’ He looked coldly at Birch. ‘Tetsuya Shikomoto told us that Harada was an asset.’ He paused, then added hopefully: ‘You’re gonna tell me that isn’t true, aren’t you?’

  Birch shifted in his seat and his tan seemed to fade in his face. The DCI was looking at him. The national security adviser was looking at him. They were all looking at him, seated, as they were, round the Victorian conference table.

  Birch looked at nobody. He sat forward and clasped his hands together. ‘We did use Fachida Harada,’ he said. ‘Some years ago. We’d been looking for a humint source in North Korea for as long as I can recall. The JRA were our best bet.’

  ‘So Harada was the other bomber in Jakarta,’ Kovalski said.

  ‘Tom, nobody got hurt in Jakarta. Shikomoto was the bomber. Harada just fetched and carried. We made a deal. You got Shikomoto and we got our source in North Korea. It was a good trade.’

  Kovalski clenched his fist on the table. ‘Was it? It’s why Harada’s here now. Why he’s bombing the shit out of us.’

  Birch did not say anything.

  The national security adviser was on his feet. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘This is all very well, but getting us nowhere. The fact is, we’ve got a problem. Harada is right. If word of this gets out, God only knows what the repercussions are going to be.’ He looked at Kovalski. ‘We can’t let him go public.’

  ‘Then release Shikomoto.’

  Jensen shook his head. ‘We can’t do that.’

  Kovalski sighed. ‘Then he’ll go public.’

  ‘And if we do release Shikomoto?’ Jensen said. ‘What then? We’ll be a target for every terrorist organisation going. What an advertisement. Hold the FBI to ransom and look what a result you get.’ He shook his head. ‘There’s no way the attorney general will go for it. You’ve just got to find Harada before the deadline is up.’

  Kovalski snorted. ‘With respect, sir, we’ve now got just four hours to do that. It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Mr Kovalski, you’re probably right.’ Jensen flared his nostrils. ‘But that’s all the time you’ve got.’

  In London, Webb and Weir interviewed Alton Patterson for the second time, with Carragher sitting behind Patterson to unnerve him. Since they had identified Dylan Stoval at Camden Town tube station, Webb had taken photographs of them both back to the wine bar below Kibibi Simpson’s apartment, and had shown them to their witness.

  The Italian barman looked at them very carefully. ‘It’s hard to say,’ he’d said. ‘I think he could be the tall one.’ He had handed the picture of Patterson back to Webb.

  ‘You only think. You’re not sure?’

  ‘No. I might be, if I saw him in the flesh. It was his size that stuck out, Sergeant. It’s difficult to tell from a picture.’

  Neither Webb nor Weir spoke immediately and Patterson sat there with his beret lying in his lap. ‘Thanks for coming to see us again, Alton,’ Webb said at last. ‘This is Detective Inspector Weir. He’d like to talk to you as well.’

  ‘Fine.’ Patterson smiled. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide.’ As if to emphasise his point, he swivelled in the seat
and looked at Carragher. Carragher looked back at him. He did not smile.

  ‘Mr Patterson, tell me about that Saturday night,’ Weir said. ‘Tell me exactly what you did.’

  Patterson turned again and shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘I already told your colleague, sir. I was with Dylan all that night. We were shooting pool at the Foxhole, then a couple of pubs.’

  ‘Dylan Stoval. Your room mate.’

  Patterson nodded. ‘All evening; sir. We do it most Saturday nights.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘Not always. We’ve got a little league going with some of the other guys. You know, a bit of rivalry—embassy guards against the naval building guards.’

  Weir nodded and smiled. ‘So what time did you start playing?’

  Patterson thinned one eye at the ceiling. ‘I don’t know exactly, sir. We were both off duty. You don’t keep count of the time so much when you’re off duty.’

  ‘Roughly, then,’ Webb said. ‘What time was it roughly?’

  ‘In the Foxhole. I guess about six, six-thirty maybe.’

  ‘When you started playing pool?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And you stayed there till when?’

  ‘I guess around seven-thirty, eight o’clock maybe.’

  Webb glanced over Patterson’s shoulder at Carragher, then back at him again. ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Just to the pub. The Red Lion.’

  ‘Straight there.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Straight there.’

  Webb nodded. ‘And what time did you get there?’

  ‘About seven forty-five, eight o’clock maybe. It’s only a short walk.’

  ‘Just you and Dylan?’

  Patterson looked back at him, leaving his answer for a fraction of a second. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said slowly. ‘Me and Dylan.’

  ‘You don’t sound too sure, Mr Patterson.’ Weir’s voice was sharper than Webb’s and Patterson looked at him then.

  ‘It’s not that, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s just the time. Like I said just now, you don’t take so much account of the time when you ain’t working.’

  ‘But it was no later than eight o’clock.’