Maps of Hell (13 page)

A
braham Singer pushed his glasses above his forehead and rubbed his eyes. He had been examining the medieval text since seven in the morning. Getting up from his office desk, he went over to the window. The lights of Georgetown spread out beneath him, those of central Washington visible in the distance.

The university had put him on the top floor of the building. At first he’d considered complaining, as there was no elevator and his knees weren’t as good as they had been, but he’d quickly realized the benefits. He got the daily exercise that Naomi had been nagging him about since the bypass operation, plus—even more important—there was very little noise up here. Not that it mattered. He’d be retiring from the department in under a year.

The elderly scholar ran his fingers through his beard and looked at his watch. He should have gone home hours ago, but the text promised some new insights into the kabbalah, and he couldn’t resist working on it to the exclusion of every other consideration. Naomi would be annoyed, but she’d have gone to bed already. He’d get an earful at breakfast.

Abraham looked at one of the photographs on his desk—him and Naomi on their wedding day all those years ago in Jerusalem. He had been doing his military service and hardly recognized his young self, his face fleshless and his body rake-thin. Naomi’s cheeks dimpled and her dark hair glowing in the sunlight, even in black and white. There weren’t many people at the celebration as both their families had been ravaged by the Holocaust. The Singers had lived in Nuremberg and had been sent to the camps early in the war. Abraham’s parents survived, but both had been taken by cancer soon after they’d arrived in the home country. Naomi’s mother had also returned from Auschwitz, but she never spoke of it. She had still managed to be the most cheerful person Abraham ever met.

He took in the shots of their children—David, a lecturer in film at Berkeley, and Judith, a journalist in Miami. They had given him great joy, as did the five grandchildren, but, if he was truthful, he would have to admit that his work had always taken priority.

Abraham Singer was that rare bird, a scholar of Jewish religion with serious misgivings about the ancient faith. The easy answer would have been that the fact of the Nazi horrors had created an entirely justifiable skepticism. He knew that wasn’t the whole story. He needed to believe, he needed to maintain a link with the past that was creative and fertile, but he found much of the ritual primitive and obscurantist. That was why he had established lines of academic debate with Christian and Muslim scholars who harbored similar attitudes about their own faiths. But it wasn’t enough. He was still haunted by the suspicion that somewhere in the mass of manuscripts and texts was hidden the key to an intellectually rigorous traditional belief. He knew that feeling was as deeply rooted in Jewish tradition as the orthodoxy he distrusted, but it was irresistible.

And so he had turned to the kabbalah. The problem was that the ancient and medieval texts contained as much contradictory information as the most dedicated controversialist could desire. Although he was a rationalist, he couldn’t resist delving into the mystic wisdom that tried to link God and the universe with the individual mind and body. To his surprise, he even found the occult text of Cornelius Agrippa fascinating in its identification of kabbalah with magic and the mystic meanings of numbers.

Abraham Singer walked across to the mirror above the disused fireplace. The building had once been a town house and he supposed that this would have been a servant’s room. The floorboards creaked and the windows, still in their original frames, were hell to open. He glanced at himself and shook his head. Sixty-five, but he looked much older. Perhaps that was the price you paid for ignoring ordinary life and burying yourself in books.

There was a soft knocking at the door. The professor was surprised. Normally he heard people coming up the stairs. Besides, who would be in the building after ten at night? It must be the cleaner.

Abraham went over to the locked door—he had taken the university’s security instructions seriously ever since one of his colleagues had been robbed at knifepoint a few months earlier.

“Yo, Professor, I gotta take your garbage,” came an accented voice.

Singer didn’t recognize it. Then again, the cleaners changed all the time. He turned the key, expecting a young Latino. Instead, what he saw made him step backward in horror, his hands raised. He was pushed hard in the chest and fell to the floor.

Then the light was taken from his eyes.

Peter Sebastian climbed out of the helicopter onto a football field on the outskirts of Sparta, Maine. The nearest field office was Boston, so he was on his own up here. He had left Dana Maltravers behind to keep an eye on the Washington end.

At least the state troopers were making an effort. The area commander had driven up when he was advised Sebastian was on the way and they had coordinated checkpoints on the main roads in all directions. Although the wanted man had been seen leaving the town heading south, he could have changed direction on the back roads. Unfortunately there weren’t enough officers to cover all the possibilities, but if Matt Wells was planning on crossing into Canada, he’d probably have to do so on foot.

“This woman who’s helping him, who is she?” Sebastian asked after they’d got into the unmarked car.

“Name of Mary Upson,” Major Arthur Stevens replied. “Grade-school teacher. Trooper Condon can tell you more.”

“He can also tell me how he managed to lose the wanted man,” Sebastian said sharply. “My understanding is that your guy had him at his mercy.”

The major kept his eyes on the road. “Seems the suspect knows how to handle himself.”

They arrived at the state troopers’ station. The three men in uniform straightened their backs when they saw their superior officer.

Peter Sebastian swept up the steps. “I want to see Trooper Condon.” He stopped inside the door and eyed the young man who had followed him. “Take me somewhere private. You don’t want your bosses to hear this.” He looked beyond him. “I’ll handle it from here, Major,” he called.

Stu Condon opened the office door and took him inside. “He pulled a gun on me,” he said, before the FBI man could speak. “I couldn’t—”

“What kind of gun?”

“A Glock,” the trooper replied, his face pale. “Seventeen shot, I reckon.” He paused. “He…he took mine, too.”

“Another seventeen?”

Condon nodded, his eyes to the floor. “And…and he had a combat knife in his belt. On his back.”

“Is that the full total of his arsenal?” Sebastian asked, acidly.

The trooper shook his head. “I saw a rifle on his shoulder before he got into the car.”

The Bureau man’s eyes widened. “A rifle?”

“Yes, sir. I think it was an M16.”

“Jesus Christ! Where did he get
that?
”

“Couldn’t say, sir.”

Sebastian glared at him. “What can you say about the woman, then?”

“Mary Upson? Schoolteacher, sir. Been here a year.”

“I’m looking for local knowledge here, Trooper. She married? Have a boyfriend? What kind is she—lively, reliable, depressive, what?”

Condon looked at him awkwardly. “Well, sir, I don’t really know. She isn’t married. I don’t think she has a boyfriend. Don’t know if she has
any
friends, actually. She goes to the bar at weekends. Sometimes leaves with guys.” He looked away.

Sebastian laughed. “How about you, Trooper? I see you’re wearing a ring. You try your chances?”

Trooper Condon shrugged. “Nothing happened.”

“All right, I’m not interested in your private life. This Mary sounds like a bit of a live wire.”

“Yeah, I guess she can be. Sometimes she gets raging drunk. Then she won’t let anybody near her.”

“What about at school? Is she popular?”

Stu Condon chewed his lip. “My…my wife is a teacher, too. She doesn’t like Mary. Says she’s a troublemaker, always trying to change procedures. The kids seem to appreciate her, though.”

“She got any family here?”

“No, sir. I heard she was from Portland.”

Sebastian called in the major.

“Have your people in Portland been notified about Mary Upson? Apparently she’s from there.”

Stevens nodded. “They’re checking on her now. Shouldn’t take long.”

The FBI man glanced at Trooper Condon. “I take it your men know about the weapons Wells is carrying?”

“They do. Anything more you can tell us about this guy?”

“Yeah,” Sebastian said. “He’s a judo and karate black belt, he knows boxing and he’s trained in rifle and pistol use. Oh, and he’s killed at least one person before.”

Major Stevens and Trooper Condon exchanged glances.

“Um, there’s been a development,” the major said.

“Spit it out,” Sebastian said, instantly alert. “Has he been sighted?”

“No. But local troopers have found two men tied up behind a house not far from here.”

“Who are they?”

“We’re not sure. There’s no ID on them. They’d been knocked unconscious and only recently attracted attention—one of the locals heard shouting and called it in.”

“Wells,” Sebastian hissed.

“But why would he have been involved with them?” Stu Condon asked. He ran his hand over his short hair. “There was something strange about Mary Upson. She was wearing a kind of uniform jacket, gray like the pants Wells had. And her jeans were trashed.”

Peter Sebastian eyed him dubiously. “Anything else you haven’t told us?”

The trooper pursed his lips. “No. But why did they come into the station house, if he’s on the run like you say?”

The Bureau man gave him a tight smile. “Let us do the thinking, Stu. This uniform, what was it? Military?”

“I don’t know.” Condon glanced at the major. “I never saw it before. There were some letters on the shoulder, but I can’t remember them.”

Sebastian’s cell phone rang. He answered it and then groaned. “Another one? Jesus, Dana, what’s going on?” He held the phone tightly to his ear. “Yes, I realize that means Wells couldn’t have done it. But he could still have killed the first two victims and got up here on the early shuttle. He’s involved some—what’s that?” He rolled his eyes. “Yes,
obviously using a false ID.
Have you checked the airport CCTV? Well, get on with it. Anyway, he could still have a confederate who did the latest one.” He listened again. “Okay, I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Bad news?” the major asked.

“Yes,” Sebastian said, “very bad news indeed.”

He stepped past them, his expression thunderous.

Nora Jacobsen drove her daughter’s Toyota out of the shed and down the driveway. It was a chilly night and the ground wasn’t quite soft enough to register tracks. When she got back, she would rake the gravel. The place she was heading was a couple of miles up the road. The local farmer dumped his old machines in a clearing he’d made in the woods. She’d leave Mary’s car there. Old Snodgrass wouldn’t even notice. Better still, the law wouldn’t, either.

It occurred to Nora that she shouldn’t be helping her daughter—at least, not this way. She should have sent this latest man of Mary’s on his way with the shotgun up his ass, like she’d done in the past. But she reckoned there was no point anymore. Mary was old enough to make her own mistakes. She laughed. The one who’d made the mistake was the man called Matt.

Nora turned down the narrow track. No, Mary would be all right. She always got herself together again after the flings. That was the good thing: her daughter fought her own battles—she wasn’t one of those overgrown kids who were continually around the parental home. That was just as well. The Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant didn’t take kindly to snoopers.

T
here was no map in Ms. Jacobsen’s pickup. Road signs were rare and Mary sometimes even took gravel tracks. I had no idea where we were going. I put my hand on the Glock, fearful that the vehicle would suddenly be surrounded by gray-clad figures carrying assault rifles. That didn’t happen, but there was something about the schoolteacher I couldn’t put my finger on. In the light of the dashboard, her face had taken on a weird hue—pale green like a ghost in a child’s dreams. Her jaw muscles were set hard as she concentrated on the difficult road surfaces and constant bends. That only made her more attractive. I tried to forget the fire that had ignited in my veins when she’d kissed me. I had the feeling that the blonde woman who was haunting me wouldn’t be at all keen on that.

I looked at the compass from time to time. We had headed west for several hours, but had now turned south. That made me feel better. I assumed the camp was in the north of the state and the farther away I was from it, the nearer I’d be to some kind of safety. Then I recalled that the troopers were looking for us all over Maine. No doubt the FBI would have alerted the law enforcement agencies in the neighboring states, too.

“Want me to take over?” I asked. “You should get some sleep.”

Mary turned her head toward me. “I have to navigate, remember, Matt?”

“You don’t
have
to do anything. This trek is all my doing.”

“We’ve been over that,” she said impatiently. “Okay, you can drive for a bit.”

She stopped the pickup and got out.

I joined her. In the moonlight, the road was like a snake winding down toward a lake.

“It’s beautiful country,” I said. “If you don’t have to stay alive in it.”

Mary looked at me. “Why were those people after you?”

I shrugged, aware again how little I knew. We went back to the vehicle.

“How come you were wearing that uniform?”

“My own clothes disappeared.” I felt her eyes on me. “I’m not one of them, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“What were they called again? The North American…”

“National Revival.”

“The North American National Revival,” she repeated. “They sound like a gang of crazies. What do they want? Removal of the Zionist Occupation Government, an end to income tax, forcible repatriation of foreign workers?”

I slowed as a large animal shambled across the road. “Christ, was that a moose?” Then I thought about her words. I glanced at her, an icy finger stirring in my gut. “You seem very well informed about groups like that.”

She met my gaze and smiled. “I had an argument with some of the more shithead parents at my school. They wanted me to teach their view of history. It got heated. I told them to go fuck themselves.”

“Good for you.”

“Fortunately they didn’t tell the principal.” She was looking at me warily. “So how can I be sure you aren’t one of them? How do I know they weren’t chasing you because you—I don’t know—dissed one of the officers?”

I managed not to laugh at the irony. There was I worrying that Mary had some connection to the camp and she was doing the same thing.

“As far as I can remember, I didn’t do anything to piss them off.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Seems to me your memory isn’t the most reliable part of your mind.”

I kept my eyes on the road. Mary had noticed that I wasn’t telling her the whole story. I wanted to, but something was holding me back. Something…

“Matt!” There was alarm in Mary’s voice. “Look out!”

I blinked. The road had disappeared and all I could see was a line of men in gray with rifles at their shoulders. I heard myself scream, but instead of the blast of guns, there was a shriek from Mary and then a sudden, bone-jarring smash that jerked my head forward into the wheel….

…images cascading past the eye of my mind, visions I’d seen before but that were buried deep—a cell with all the angles wrong, a thin blanket, freezing water gushing in, men in bloodstained leather aprons, a complicated machine that lowers over me, swallows me up…music that deafens me, words full of hatred drilling into my brain…

And then I see her—the naked man tied to the post, the woman tormenting him, torturing him…cutting his throat—the woman, I can’t make out her face, blond hair concealing it, blond hair turned into rat’s tails by the spurting blood. Then the hair parts and I take in the features, the broken lips and split skin over prominent cheekbones…no, it can’t be…it can’t be her, not the woman I love, the woman who disappeared from the picnic spot in the meadow, no…

…and then I find myself in another place, high above a wide expanse of water, the white caps of the waves marching away to a horizon of low hills. The sound of high-powered machinery in the background. Jets. From an oval window I see a raked wingtip with a pod beneath, an engine nacelle. Now we are passing over a jagged coastline, the land cut by ravines, pine trees dotted around, but not the slightest sign of human habitation.

“That must be Newfoundland,” a woman’s voice says.

I turn and take in the blonde woman in the seat next to me, with an airline magazine open at the map page on her lap.

“Hello, calling Matt Wells,” she says, with a tight smile. “Anyone at home?”

“Sorry,” I hear myself say. “Pretty desolate country down there.”

She laughs and her stern face is transformed. “You’d love it, Matt. Think how much work you could get done. No distractions, no nights in the pub, no me.”

“No you?” I say. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

She gives my ribs a solid jab with her elbow. “Aw, Matt, that’s almost the nicest thing you ever said to me.”

“Is that right? What’s number one in that chart?”

She feigns deep thought. “Well, I suppose it would have to be the time you admitted you were wrong and I was right.”

“I don’t remember that.”

My ribs take some more punishment.

“What a surprise.” She looks into my eyes. “No, seriously, Matt. It would be the first time you told me you loved me.”

“I don’t remember that, either.” This time I gasped as her elbow made even heavier contact. “Shit! All right, I do. It was the night I took you back to my place, unzipped your—”

“Stop it,” she said, looking around. “We aren’t alone.”

“Oh, forgive me,” I say, with exaggerated subservience. “How could I behave in such an inappropriate way with a senior member of her majesty’s Metropolitan Police force?”

“Kindly call me by my rank,” she says, a smile quivering on her lips.

“Forgive me—Detective Chief Superintendent.”

She relaxes. “That’s more like it.”

I give her a haughty look. “Now it’s your turn to call me by my rank. That’s more like it,
sir.
”

She laughs. “Sir! You’re just an ordinary member of the public. Why should I address you like you’re my superior?”

“Em, because I am?” I reply. “Intellectually, morally, physically…”

“Now you’re just being childish,” she says, opening a folder. “I’ve got work to do.” Her expression is severe, but I can see she’s suppressing laughter.

“Bullshit,” I say, my elbow extracting overdue retribution from her ribs. “You’ve read your case notes at least twice since we left London. You must know Gavin Burdett’s activities off by heart.”

She gives me a warning glare. “Keep your voice down,” she says, in a loud whisper. “You know how sensitive this is.”

And suddenly my memory supplies the relevant information. Gavin Burdett—British investment banker, Eton and Cambridge—he has extensive contacts with American business and specializes in burying funds in untraceable offshore accounts. And the woman next to me has found the evidence to nail him. Since she was promoted to run the corporate-crime team at the Met, high-profile business figures have been falling like ninepins. No one expected a violent-crime expert to be so effective in the most complex investigation branch, but in her first year she’s really shown her mettle.

She puts down the folder and sighs. “You’re right, Matt. But this is the big one. If we nail Burdett, the way will be open for us to nail corrupt companies all over the world.”

“
If
you nail Burdett,” I say. “What’s the name of the company you think he’s connected with in the States?”

“Woodbridge Holdings. If we can put the squeeze on it, that’ll really impress the politicians. Woodbridge has got international media interests, as well as subsidiary companies all over the place. They’re into everything from logging to high tech, radio stations and newspapers to pharmacological research and development.”

“Yeah, but lobbyists are already working on their behalf in Washington and London, aren’t they?”

She nods. “Which is why this trip’s so important. You know the hoops I had to jump through to get the commissioner to sign off on it.”

I smile. “Jumping hoops… Were you in full-dress uniform?”

Her eyes burn into mine. “Behave yourself,” she says primly. “You’re right, Matt. There are people in Congress under Woodbridge’s thumb. American jobs are at stake and you know how important they are, given the state of the global economy.”

“I don’t suppose it’s impossible that they’ve got friends in the Justice Department and the FBI, too.”

“True. But I think Levon Creamer is solid enough.”

“Crazy name,” I say, accepting a food tray from the stewardess.

“Yes, but he’s head of Financial Crime at the Bureau. He’s the one who got me the meeting with the politicians.”

I’m unable to stifle a yawn. That gets me another nudge.

“Sorry if I’m boring you.” She concentrates on unwrapping her scone. “Of course,
your
business in Washington is much more important.”

I spread clotted cream on the jam I’ve already smothered over my scone. “Oh, no, it’s just a minor project—international crime during the Cold War, illegalities at the highest levels of government, assassinations, regime change…”

“Quite,” she says. “Of course, there isn’t any hard evidence.”

I raise a finger. “That’s where you’re wrong, my dear. Joe Greenbaum is an expert in the field.”

“And he’s going to open his files to you, free of charge?”

I shrug. “Well, I can offer him a small consideration. And some information of my own in exchange.”

Her gaze locks with mine. “I hope you haven’t sneaked a look at my Burdett files.”

I shake my head. “Certainly not. But I’d advise you against leaving them open in my flat. The cleaner might be an undercover agent.”

She stares at me. “You haven’t got a cleaner.”

“What do you mean? I clean every Tuesday afternoon—” I gasp. “Ow, that hurt.”

She laughs. “Serves you right.”

I’m laughing, too.

But I still can’t remember her name…

“Matt! Matt!”

I moved my head and almost threw up. Opening my eyes wasn’t any more enjoyable. My vision was blurred.

“Matt? Are you all right?”

Mary Upson’s face swam into view to my left, blood on her forehead.

“Yeah,” I said, pushing myself up from the steering wheel. “What happened?”

“Never mind that. Let’s get you out.” She put her arm round me and pulled me out of the pickup. I slumped down on the bumper in the vehicle’s headlights. “Let’s have a look.” Her fingers were on my face. “Your forehead’s bruised, but the skin isn’t broken.” She raised a hand to her temple. “Unlike mine.”

“We might both be concussed,” I mumbled.

She nodded. “Have you got pain anywhere else? Ribs? Chest?”

I touched myself gingerly. “No, I think I’m in one piece.”

Mary sat down beside me. “You were lucky. Do you remember anything?”

“Not much.” I was thinking about the blonde woman on the plane. Where was she now?

“It was like you had a fit,” Mary said. “You started shaking and your eyes were rolling. You’re not epileptic, are you?”

I shook my head, which was a bad idea. Then I had a vision of the camp. Had I really been tied to a stake to face a firing squad? The woman I’d remembered—Jesus, had she been imprisoned, too?

“Matt?”

I glanced at Mary, my mouth slack. They’d put me under a machine; they’d messed with my brain. Had anything I remembered really happened? Or was it just the tip of a very large iceberg?

“What is it, Matt?” Mary shook my arm.

They messed with my brain,
I told myself again.
They screwed up my mind.
But I was fighting it. I wasn’t going to let them drag me down.

“Matt!”

I shuddered and then got a grip on myself. The blonde woman on the plane, my lover, the senior police officer—the one who’d disappeared in the Shenandoah Valley. She had meetings in Washington. The answers had to be there.

“Is the pickup okay?” I asked, getting to my feet unsteadily.

“The nearside front tire hit a rock. That was what made our heads whip forward. It’s flat. The spare’s in good shape. You stay here.”

By the time she’d finished, I already felt better.

“I’m driving,” Mary said, in a tone that didn’t invite contradiction.

I waited while she started the engine, then I gave the pickup a shove. The rear tires gripped on the gravel and we were back in business.

“There’s a small town about ten miles ahead,” Mary said.

As we drove on, a gray light began to spread from the east. The tips of the trees took on a brighter hue of green and birds flew across the road. The trees began to thin and we ran down toward a narrow lake. The road took a sharp turn to the right before the shoreline.

The state trooper had set his roadblock about thirty yards after the bend. By the time Mary braked, we were almost on top of it. I didn’t have any time to duck down, let alone slip out of the pickup.

All I could do was rack the slide of my Glock and prepare for action.