Bloodland

by Alan Glynn

  Jimmy makes a face, nervous.

  Up to now being under surveillance has been almost academic. They were invisible. It was something he took on faith. But with Tom Szymanski talking like this, all of a sudden it seems very real.

  And dangerous.

  ‘We’re in a public place,’ he says. ‘What can they do?’

  ‘They can wait. We’re not going to stay here all day, are we?’

  ‘And when we leave?’

  ‘Whatever. Neither of us will get very far.’

  ‘That’s insane.’

  Szymanski leans forward. ‘Have you not been listening to this conversation? Have you not been listening to yourself ?’

  Jimmy looks at him. ‘Haven’t you?’ He leans forward as well. ‘This is a two-way street.’

  ‘Not as far as they’re concerned.’ Szymanski yanks up the side of his jacket to the table and partially opens it. With his eyes, he indicates, down here, look.

  Jimmy looks. What he sees is the barrel of a handgun.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘This is the only way I’m getting out of here.’

  Jimmy shakes his head. ‘Yeah, but not alive. If you take that out, you won’t stand a chance.’ He pauses, then whispers, ‘Look, there is another way.’

  ‘What other way?’ Impatient, unconvinced.

  Jimmy hesitates. He nods his head in the direction of the guy two places behind them and makes a face that says, nah, not if he’s listening in.

  It takes a moment for Szymanski to catch on, but when he does – and to Jimmy’s shock – he gets out of the booth, stands up and strides back to where the other guy is sitting. With his back to the rest of the coffee shop, careful to conceal what he’s doing – not that anyone is paying attention – Szymanski takes out his gun, holding it discreetly, and whispers to the guy, ‘Get the fuck out of here. Right now.’

  The guy doesn’t react for a second, then he gives an almost imperceptible nod.

  This surely indicates that he isn’t what Szymanski might call – or what Jimmy imagines Szymanski might call – a civilian.

  After a moment, the guy gets out of the booth, leaves a five-dollar bill on the table, picks up his newspaper and walks out of the coffee shop.

  Szymanski returns to his place, sits down, and raises his eyebrows.

  OK?

  OK.

  Jimmy breathes in. ‘Er . . . so, first thing, can you prove definitively that you were a Gideon contractor, and that you worked in Congo?’

  Szymanski takes a moment to answer. Maybe he’s deciding whether or not he’s offended by the question, or if he’s going to dignify it with a response. Jimmy doesn’t know. But eventually, Szymanski says, ‘Fuck, yeah. There’s a paper trail. Pay cheques from Gideon, the contract I signed, my fucking passport. Plus, I’ve got a ton of pictures on my phone.’ He shrugs, dismissing it. ‘Was I there? Yeah, of course I was there.’

  ‘OK,’ Jimmy says. ‘Good. Now.’ He slides over to the edge of the booth. ’You order some refills. I’m going to take a piss and make a quick phone call.’

  *

  ‘Where’s he going? Fuck.’

  Rundle punches the back of the driver’s seat in front of him.

  Beside him, Ribcoff is pressing one hand against his ear and holding the other one out, forefinger raised, looking for quiet.

  ‘He . . . he what? Jesus . . .’

  He brings his hand down and turns to Rundle. ‘Szymanski has a Beretta M9.’ He shakes his head. ‘This is fucked.’

  ‘It was fucked already, Don. Gun or no gun. One Beretta M9 isn’t going to make any difference now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What do you . . . you’ve got to go in there and take him out, take them both out.’

  ‘But we don’t –’

  ‘Or at least take Szymanski out, Jesus, while he’s on his own, like you said. I mean, look.’ He points. ‘The guy is just sitting there.’

  ‘Clark, he has a gun. There are people in there.’

  Rundle dismisses this with a flick of his hand. ‘People.’

  ‘Oh, so, what, you’ve got no problem getting into a firefight in a coffee shop on Third Avenue? That’s OK with you, yeah?’

  Rundle explodes. ‘For fuck’s sake, Don, you heard them in there. I have to explain it to you?’ He punches the seat in front of him again. ‘There’s no turning back here. For either of us.’

  Rundle knows this is easy to say, and saying it even provides him with some tiny measure of relief, but he does mean it. What route back from this could there possibly be? The weight of responsibility sits on him now like a boulder. In its distinguished, nearly 150-year history, the BRX Mining and Engineering Corporation has never once had to defend its name in court or in the press. For generations the company has been fiercely protective of its privacy and its reputation. And now, what? Clark Rundle comes along and allows it to be dragged through the mud?

  The dissolute scion of a once-great family.

  Rundle shakes his head. That last part is bullshit and he knows it, but still . . .

  If it was just a little bit of corporate malfeasance, they could bring in the lawyers, tie things up for years with depositions and injunctions and all sorts of shit, but this? Allegations of, at best, collusion in two multiple homicides? To say nothing of the link to a discredited presidential campaign?

  He glances left. ‘Oh great, he’s back.’

  They both watch as Jimmy Gilroy sits into the booth again opposite Tom Szymanski, and then as the waitress arrives and refills their cups.

  ‘That was a chance there, Don, and we blew it. Who knows if we’ll get another one.’

  ‘We didn’t blow anything, Clark. Jesus Christ, we have to be careful.’

  ‘Careful? Please. Get me a gun and I’ll go in there and shoot those two bastards myself. I swear to God, I’m serious. Careful.’

  Ribcoff exhales wearily, but says nothing.

  ‘Because you know what, Don? They will destroy us. In a fucking heartbeat. And whatever about us? BRX, I mean? Whatever degree of culpability we’re shown to have? You guys? Gideon? You personally? You’re going to jail for the rest of your fucking life.’

  Ribcoff waits a beat, then snaps his laptop closed. He tosses it beside him and reaches for the door. ‘Give me a minute,’ he says. ‘I’ll be back.’ He opens the door and gets out.

  Rundle turns and watches him scurry back up Fifty-fifth Street. He stops halfway and gets into a parked SUV.

  Across the street in the coffee shop Tom Szymanski and Jimmy Gilroy are chatting away. Gilroy seems to be writing stuff down, taking notes. What’s he doing, conducting an interview?

  Rundle looks away, stares ahead.

  Degree of culpability.

  Where did he get that one from? Too many billed hours spent in the company of lawyers, he suspects. With many more such hours in prospect, hundreds of them probably, Rundle feels a sudden wave of nausea. What might be beyond those hundreds of hours he can’t even contemplate. Because they’ll be bad enough in themselves, tedious, contentious, humiliating in the extreme.

  And the weird thing is, in anticipating this humiliation the one clear, disapproving face he sees looking back at him is not Eve’s, or Daisy’s, or J.J.’s, or James Vaughan’s even – it’s the old man’s.

  Not the Henry C. of legend either – the commanding presence, the head of the table, the chairman of the board. No, consistent with the same horrorshow logic unfolding here, it’s the Henry C. of that Saturday afternoon in the house out in Connecticut, in the study, when his heart failed him and he couldn’t reach his medication over there on the desk – couldn’t move, while his son Clark just stood in front of him and watched, not raising a hand to help, waiting, as he had been for many years . . . the chairmanship now within his grasp, his turn, his crack of the whip.

  That Henry C.

  Pale, horrified, desperate, beseeching . . .

  Incredulous.

  Yeah, degrees of cu
lpability, Rundle thinks to himself, don’t get me fucking started.

  The car door opens and Ribcoff gets back in.

  ‘OK,’ he says, reaching for his laptop, ‘here’s the new plan.’

  *

  ‘And how long had you been working with this guy, this, er . . .?’

  ‘Ray Kroner?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Few months, I guess. On and off.’

  ‘And what was he like?’

  ‘Ray was OK, you know, but he was always wound pretty fucking tight, I’d have to say, and –’

  Jimmy looks up from his notebook. ‘Maybe tone the lingo down a bit?’

  ‘Yeah. OK.’ Szymanski shuffles, repositions. ‘He was always wound pretty tight, but at the same time he was no different from plenty of other guys who get into this business, you know. When they’re over there they want to be back here, and once they finally get back here all they can do is dream about packing up and heading over there again. It’s the old story. But I mean, that was me, too, you get caught up in a cycle of it, and it’s just that, you know, you may as well earn good money while you’re doing it. Unfortunately, some guys never flush it out of their system, or else they never learn to control it.’

  ‘Right. And on that day?’

  ‘Well, Ray clearly flipped, but what you have to understand is that . . . in Iraq, in Afghanistan, there’s at least some semblance of a context, some sense that a war is being fought. But in Congo, it’s just totally insane. It’s not your war you’re fighting, there are no clear sides, and yet you’re in the middle of this epic shitstorm, six, seven, maybe eight million people dead in the last, I don’t know, fifteen years. You don’t have any compass, no flag, just an assault rifle and a fucking logo.’

  ‘A logo?’

  ‘Yeah, I mean, whether it’s Gideon Global or BRX or any of the others out there, that’s your point of reference. So it’s kind of hard to feel that any of it means anything. And when you witness some of the things we witnessed, well, I sometimes envy Ray Kroner, you know. What he did made no sense, not at all, it was . . . messed up. But in a weird way he escaped, he found release. You know what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Jimmy replies. But does he? Not really. He isn’t supposed to.

  That’s what’s going to make this such a compelling story.

  ‘Good,’ he says, flipping over a page of his notebook, ‘let’s try another question. Can you tell me when you realised that the man you were escorting in your convoy was, in fact, Senator John Rundle?’

  Szymanski glances out the window, then back at Jimmy. ‘Sure. It was afterwards. We were standing around waiting for back-up, a few of us, and the company CO, guy called Peter Lutz, more or less told me straight out, he said he had to shoot Ray Kroner because did I know who that was in the back of the car, it was Senator John Rundle, for Christ’s sakes, brother of the guy who owns the mine.’

  ‘And you had previously seen this man that your commanding officer identified as the senator having a meeting with Colonel Arnold Kimbela, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK, Tom. That’s good.’ Jimmy looks down through his scribbled list of questions. ‘Right, let’s go over the incident again, especially the part where the senator’s hand got crushed in the door of the car.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘That part needs to be really clear.’

  ‘Yeah, I get that, but believe me, Jimmy, it’s clear in my head. It couldn’t be any clearer. I can see him now, screaming, leaning back, crying like a fucking baby.’

  *

  ‘What’s the delay? Send them in.’

  ‘They’re not ready yet, Clark. They need a little more time. Jesus. This is an improvised operation. They have to be sure of what they’re doing.’

  Rundle exhales loudly, refraining from further comment, and goes back to his laptop.

  Fox and CNN, all they’re talking about is John Rundle.

  Commentators, panellists, pundits, bloggers.

  It’s a bit hysterical and hugely premature, Rundle realises that, but it’s still a great start.

  They’ll need to build on this momentum.

  He looks up again and across the street.

  Assuming they get the chance, of course.

  The next few minutes will be crucial.

  It seems unreal to him, what’s happening – unreal that everything hinges on the suppression of a conversation two guys are having in some coffee shop on Third Avenue.

  He closes his eyes.

  Ribcoff’s plan is audacious. It’s based on causing a diversion. Three men definitely not looking like Gideon security contractors – and this seems to be what’s causing the delay – will show up thirty seconds apart. The first man will enter the coffee shop and go straight to the counter and order something. As the second man is entering, the first man will feign a seizure of some sort and draw as much attention to himself as possible. Using a gun with a silencer, the second man will then shoot and kill Tom Szymanski. At this point the third man will arrive and Taser Jimmy Gilroy, who will then receive a rapid, surreptitious and lethal jab in the back of the neck. The two men will remove Gilroy’s notebook and phone and will then carry Szymanski’s body out to a waiting vehicle on the street.

  Amid the confusion, the first man will recover and leave.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  Right?

  Well, apart from the first hundred most obvious things, Rundle did have one question.

  Why leave Gilroy behind?

  Logistics, was Ribcoff’s response, manpower, timing. Szymanski is off the grid, this keeps it that way. Gilroy’s disappearance might drag things out, not to mention dredge things up. By doing it this way it’s open and shut, he’s here, he’s dead – questions remain, but they’re unlikely ever to be answered to anyone’s satisfaction.

  The whole thing should only take two minutes, max. Most people in the general area won’t notice a thing and those who do will inevitably have conflicting memories of it.

  It’s high risk, no question about it – but really, do they have any alternative?

  Rundle opens his eyes. He looks around, out the window, at his watch. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Few more minutes, Clark, trust me.’ Ribcoff texting with one hand, keying something onto his laptop with the other. ‘We didn’t come here today equipped for this. And the first guy who walks in there has to look like a civilian. Otherwise it won’t work.’ He pauses, nodding his head in the direction of the coffee shop. ‘Besides, look at them over there, yakking like two old ladies.’ He shakes his head. ‘No one’s going anywhere.’

  His other phone rings and he picks it up. ‘Yeah?’

  Rundle closes his laptop. He takes out his own phone. As Ribcoff is talking, Rundle dials the number for Regal. He faces away, gives his membership code in as low a voice as possible and asks if Nora is available.

  She isn’t.

  Nora is no longer with the agency.

  ‘What?’ Too loud. ‘Why not?’ Whisper ‘Where is she?’

  They’re not allowed to give out that kind of information. It’s confidential. But they have many other beautiful and sophis—

  He hangs up.

  Shit.

  Ribcoff looks at him, phone held to his chest. ‘Anything wrong?’

  ‘No.’ Rundle waves a hand at the window. ‘Except for this shit. When do we get moving?’

  ‘Now.’ Ribcoff says. ‘Zero minus thirty seconds.’ He nods at the screen of his laptop.

  Rundle doesn’t understand. ‘What?’

  ‘There.’ Ribcoff points. ‘Asset number one.’

  On the screen is a webcam feed from just around the corner, on Third Avenue. The man Ribcoff is pointing at is approaching the main entrance to the coffee shop. He’s of medium height, in jeans and a corduroy jacket, has longish hair, looks a little scruffy. A writer type, or an academic.

  Looking to score some joe.

  Surrounding him, flowing in both directio
ns, are . . . people – woman with a buggy, two businessmen, a flock of Japanese tourists, others, random, nondescript, it’s all very quick, and as well, to the left, there is a blur of passing traffic.

  Intermittent streaks of yellow.

  Rundle’s stomach turns. Is this really happening?

  The guy disappears in through the door.

  Rundle lifts his head and glances across the street.

  In the long side window of the coffee shop both men turn their heads for a moment, then turn back and continue talking.

  ‘OK,’ Ribcoff says, pointing, ‘here comes asset number two.’

  Rundle looks back at the screen. From halfway along the block comes a second man. He’s of similar height to the first but is dressed all in black.

  Baseball cap, shades.

  Zero minus . . . what must it be now for this one? Twenty seconds? Fifteen?

  Rundle stares intently at the screen.

  But suddenly, his focus shifts – from the black-clad asset in the centre to a streak of yellow on the left, a streak that solidifies into a cab pulling up at the kerb.

  Zero minus ten seconds.

  The cab door opens. A man gets out, then a woman.

  Seven.

  Rundle lurches forward, almost vomits. ‘Stop.’

  ‘What?’

  Five.

  ‘Abort.’ He elbows Ribcoff. ‘Abort. Stop.’

  ‘What?’

  Three.

  Moving across the sidewalk, striding with intent, the man and woman cut in front of the asset and get to the door of the coffee shop before him.

  ‘That’s Ellen Dorsey.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  One.

  Ribcoff raises a hand to his earpiece, squeezes it. ‘Abort,’ he says. ‘Repeat, abort.’

  *

  Jimmy stands up as Ellen Dorsey approaches. He extends a hand, whispering, ‘Shit, am I glad to see you.’