Blood and Ashes (24 page)

Hicks studied his old comrade. Lloyd was a paradox. On the one hand he was a staunch patriot, but on the other he was as keen to disrupt his nation as Hicks was, primarily because he believed that the heroes returning from Vietnam had been fucked over by their own country. Lloyd’s argument: men just like the two of them had been reviled by the liberal fuck-wits who then abandoned them to some corner of history they’d prefer to forget. He pointed out that today’s fighting men were being held up as paragons of virtue, while their old buddies were sitting on street corners begging change for food. He had a point, Hicks agreed, but he didn’t give a damn. Hicks’ hatred of the government went much deeper than that.

‘Where is the goose-stepping little shit anyway?’ Lloyd went on. ‘I thought he’d have come with you.’

‘He’s busy,’ Hicks said.

‘I bet he is. What’s he doing, touching up those ridiculous tats he’s so fond of? Beats me why you let him hang around, Cars. You’ve gone to all this trouble to change your face and he’ll give you away in an instant.’

Hicks ignored the comment. Instead he said, ‘Don Griffiths had help. Gant’s trying to find out who it was.’

‘Probably another feebie,’ Lloyd said.

Shaking his head, Hicks said, ‘From what I hear the guy sounds more like one of our old team. Took out almost everyone Gant sent against him. He even wounded Gant.’

‘Shit, that wouldn’t take much. An eight-year-old girl would be trouble to the kind of assholes that Gant’s pulled around him.’ Lloyd went very quiet very quickly. He moved on. ‘Anyway, it’s probably best he stays out in Pennsylvania. I don’t think our contacts would appreciate him turning up at the meeting.’

‘It’s set up?’

‘Of course. All they need is paying and it’s a done deal.’

‘They’ve come through?’ Hicks couldn’t help glancing at the boxes stacked in the room.

Lloyd laughed. ‘Sure they’ve come through. But you don’t think I’m going to be as crazy as to store the goods here, do you? Are you insane, Cars? I’ve enough Agent Orange bubbling through my veins without exposing myself to any of
that
crap!’

Hicks shared the laugh, again unimpressed by Lloyd’s offhand insult.

‘When and where?’

Lloyd turned to his computer, placing down the empty whiskey bottle so he could jab at keys. He brought up an email account for which he and Hicks shared administration tasks. He opened a draft document and typed in the details. He didn’t send the message. Hicks could enter it from any console and read the draft, before deleting it. That way there was no record of the message and no chance of them being traced by it. It was the same method used to communicate by many terror cells, the way in which 9/11 and the London bombings were allegedly planned.

When Lloyd turned round again, he was surprised to find that Hicks had opened the door and that the minder was standing in the doorway. In his hand was a gun, a tubular suppressor screwed on to the barrel. Lloyd, a veteran of combat, couldn’t even get his feet to move, let alone reach for a weapon. ‘Cars? What the hell is this?’

Hicks smiled coldly. ‘Thanks for setting up the meeting with the Koreans, Jim. I couldn’t have done it without you.’

Lloyd eyed the gun pointing directly at his face. ‘This is some way to show your gratitude.’

‘Oh, no,’ Hicks said. ‘This is payback. I think you set us up, Jim. You were the one who introduced Vince Everett to your daughter, knowing full well he was FBI, and you’re the one who warned Don Griffiths that we were coming. And you know something, Jim, I think you were the one who tipped off Griffiths the first time round and had me jailed for more than nine years.’

Lloyd’s groan told Hicks that everything he’d just charged his old friend with was the truth. He jerked his chin and his minder fired in response. The bullet struck Lloyd’s forehead and he dropped to the floor with a flexibility that gallons of Tiger Balm would never give him. The little dog yelped in response, cowering in a corner of the room.

Hicks pulled on a pair of leather gloves, then accepted the gun from his minder’s hand. He went and stood over his old comrade. Looked down on him. Fired twice into his chest. This time the dog stayed quiet.

‘And just in case I was totally wrong about you, Jim, I’m sorry. But I had to kill you anyway. Seeing as you aren’t capable of leaving this dump, I wouldn’t want you to suffer through what I’ve planned for the Big Apple.’

When he’d read what Lloyd had written on the screen Hicks deleted the message. Then for good measure he shot Lloyd in the head a second time.

‘By the way, that’s for calling me a pig’s ear, Jim.’

Chapter 32

SAC Birnbaum’s helicopter transported me, Rink, and Agent Vincent to a clearing alongside a tumultuous river in the Adirondacks in New York State. On the opposite bank of the river the trees grew thick on the sloping hills, but on this side the ground had been cleared and made way for a two-storey wooden cabin and outbuildings. Cars parked at the rear of the buildings had been visible as the chopper descended. They were town cars, black with tinted widows, sitting low on their chassis due to the concealed armour plating. Hard-looking men in heavy overcoats stood ready by the cars. They weren’t an unusual addition, considering who we’d come here to meet, but the numbers didn’t seem to add up.

‘What kinda party are we gatecrashing here?’ Rink asked.

‘Beats me, but there’s only one way to find out,’ I said.

Vince didn’t offer an explanation. He’d been unforthcoming about many things since we met him the day before. All he’d allowed was that we had to make the trip to the Adirondacks due to an urgent change in plans. He’d left the meeting telling us to eat and to get some rest. His parting shot, ‘You’re going to need all the strength you have.’

We’d dined, but neither of us had got much rest.

On the flight from Pennsylvania, Vince had conducted business over a satellite telephone, often shouting to make himself heard over the thrum of the rotors. Despite the racket Rink snored but I was too wired to doze, even though I could count on one hand the hours of sleep I’d caught in the last few days. I felt mildly nauseated, telling myself it was due to the turbulence as rain-laden wind assaulted the chopper from all angles, and it was a good feeling when I finally set my feet on sturdy ground. But that wasn’t why I’d felt queasy; it was the horrible sense of foreboding clawing at my insides that was responsible.

I was wearing the winter coat purchased in Hertford, and was glad of it. It was even colder here than it had been in the Alleghenies and the rain had built from a steady drizzle to a deluge. It was like the winters I’d left back home in northern England, but I didn’t feel even slightly nostalgic. I joined Rink and Vince in jogging towards the beckoning warmth of the log cabin a hundred yards away.

Before we’d made it halfway there the door of the cabin swung open and a man stepped out, an unlit cigar jammed between his teeth. Maybe it wasn’t that warm inside the cabin because the rotund man was sheathed from knees to throat in a quilted parka and had a flat cap pulled low on his round head.

The rain conspired to soak us before we reached sanctuary, driving from the heavens. The sound was like the thunder of hooves, and a sheet of teeming water obscured Walter Conrad from sight.

‘I’m missing Florida already,’ Rink muttered into my ear.

‘Tell me about it.’

We ducked under the canopy at the front of the cabin, but the pounding rain made greetings pointless. Rink shook himself like a dog. I stamped. Vince tried to put his hair in some order. Walter directed us all inside, using his cigar like a band leader’s baton. I was last through the door, and as I entered it wasn’t the plushness of the interior that gave me pause for thought: it was the three men reclining on easy chairs.

Each was as old as the next, probably in their mid- to late seventies. Like Walter they all had the grey pallor of men who spent their days in places hidden from the light of day. They reminded me of a cabal of ghouls who’d risen from their crypts in the dead of night to feed on the corpses of humanity. It wasn’t the disquieting affect these men exuded that made me pause, but the fact that I knew all three faces. Here, in Walter’s bolt-hole in the Adirondacks, sat the men behind Arrowsake. Without exception I’d believed each one of them dead. Rink cast me an indiscreet frown, equally perplexed by the reanimation of these supposedly dead men.

All three of them smiled at me, but with expressions reserved for prodigal children. A worm of unease crept up my spine: if we’d been manipulated by Arrowsake in the past, then this was positive proof that they weren’t finished with us yet.

I never pretended to understand the politics behind the shadowy organisation, of which even those in the top echelons of government had little or no genuine knowledge. Arrowsake had fielded search-destroy teams in total contradiction of political convention and international treaty, under the aegis of total deniability. As such, the men at the head of the organisation were neither politicians nor military leaders, therefore member states could not be held culpable for their actions. In effect, Arrowsake was a ghost organisation that didn’t
officially
exist, and it was headed by men who had no tangible presence upon the earth. When Arrowsake fell foul of the modern war on terror, its members had been disbanded, and those at the head of the organisation had been struck from the annals. In effect, the three men here had been metaphorically killed, if not physically so. They had disappeared without trace.

But now they were back.

My next and more important thought was, had they ever been gone?

Conspiracy theorists argue about a hidden world government, giving it a fanciful title like the New World Order, but as absurd as it sounded, I feared there was some validity in it. The men sitting opposite me were living proof.

More worrying than their re-emergence was why they had chosen now to rear their heads. The men from Arrowsake wouldn’t emerge from obscurity because of a low priority threat like Carswell Hicks. These men were concerned about the overall stability of nations, primarily anything threatening the security of international finance, infrastructure and commerce, with the loss of life being tacked to their list almost as an afterthought. From what I’d learned about Hicks, he was a vicious son of a bitch suspected of a number of racially motivated murders, who’d also executed a series of bombings against financial institutions before Don Griffiths had thwarted him. If he was planning something similar now he would be palmed off on to the FBI to deal with, which explained the presence of Vince, but wouldn’t raise as much as a blip on these men’s radar. Therefore it was obvious that Hicks had stepped up dramatically and the reason for my being drafted in wasn’t to cover up a government blunder as I’d been led to believe, but to end a threat capable of rocking the entire Western world.

All I’d wanted to do was save an old friend and his family. What the hell had I got myself into this time? I looked at Rink, trying to impart my most sincere apology. My friend had followed me here through blind loyalty, and I had more than likely dragged him into more crap than either of us could possibly imagine.

My next glance was for Walter, but the man who was famous for twisting the truth to fit his own ends could only study the drips marking his floor. This
was
something big when even Walter was ashamed of himself for pulling us into it.

Under the gaze of the Arrowsake men I pulled to attention, not quite as formally as I once would have, but the old indoctrination was still there. Alongside me, Rink shoved his hands in his pockets in a show of nonchalance but I felt his impulse to straighten up like it was a static charge.

‘Sirs,’ was all that I could think to say to the men. At least I didn’t salute.

They nodded like sages but didn’t offer a reply. I considered their silence and recalled that though this wasn’t my first time in their presence I’d never heard any of them speak before. It looked like nothing would change now. They each stood, nodded at Walter and then filed out of a door at the back of the cabin. Engines started and then receded as the vehicles were driven away, bearing their silent occupants back to their hidden holes in the ground.

‘Why don’t you all sit down?’ Walter pulled off his cap.

‘What the hell was that all about?’ I demanded.

‘Sure wasn’t like any show and tell I’ve ever been a part of,’ Rink said. ‘If I didn’t know otherwise, I’d say we just met the three wise monkeys.’

I couldn’t find a smile for Rink’s joke; those three had seen, heard and talked more about evil than any other people on the planet.

Walter busied himself with shedding his parka and cap, now that he had no reason for going out in the rain again. He must have had to bow and scrape to the Arrowsake men when first they arrived, greeting them at their vehicles, and he hadn’t had the opportunity to get comfortable before now. The CIA controller did a good impression of Edward G. Robinson by jamming the cigar in the corner of his mouth. As ever, the cigar was unlit, but by the sheen of cold sweat on Walter’s brow he sure as hell was battling the urge to set it ablaze.

‘You got any coffee on the go, Walt?’ I asked. There was much for the old man to tell, and something strong that didn’t come from a liquor bottle wouldn’t go amiss.

‘I’ll have some made.’ Walter looked grateful for the opportunity to step out, no doubt his first opportunity to order his thoughts before we launched ourselves at him like rabid pit bulls. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen the black-ops man flustered by anything.