The Rybinsk Deception (14 page)

‘Forgotten the words, have you?’ O’Halloran said.

‘What?’

‘Now you’ve read that you’re supposed to be singing the Star Spangled Banner.’ O’Halloran grinned. ‘Long live America. If you care about your kids, send the FAL a cheque, and they’ll see to it that North Korea gets bombed back to the Stone Age.’

The pamphlet didn’t mention North Korea by name, but it didn’t have to, Coburn thought. The message wasn’t even ambiguous – an outline not just of what the FAL stood for, but a statement of intent that left little to the imagination.

‘If you didn’t know what you’re up against before, you do now,’ O’Halloran said. ‘With that many signed-up members, they’ll have people working inside every government department in Washington.’

‘Including yours.’ Coburn refolded the pamphlet and placed it on O’Halloran’s briefcase. ‘That’s where the leak came from. Someone in your office decided I was making waves.’

‘So what? It’s not illegal to belong to the FAL. If there’s a guy in my department who’s a member, he’ll have no idea what Shriver and his friends are up to. He’ll be the same as all the other members – contributing cash, helping the FAL keep America strong and waving flags when he’s told to. He probably thought Shriver’s publicity machine could use the information in my report about nuclear material on the
Rybinsk
going to North Korea. Once he heard you were asking questions he’d have passed your name on to the FAL. Why wouldn’t he?’

‘That means you don’t care, does it?’

O’Halloran shrugged. ‘What it means is that you’ve got yourself a problem. At least the US Government pretends to play by the rules. You’ve been dealing with an outfit that doesn’t have any. Carry on the way you’re going and you won’t have to fake your death a second time. Shriver isn’t about to let anyone stop him now. He has enough cash coming in to buy whatever he wants and whoever he wants anywhere in the world. If he finds out you’re still alive and wants to spend another hundred grand getting rid of you, he will.’

‘How much do you know about Shriver?’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Whereabouts in Oregon is Canyon City?’

‘All I can tell you is that it’s on the same State highway as Shriver’s ranch – somewhere between the Ochoco and Malheur National Forests. Are you any the wiser?’

Coburn shook his head. ‘I will be when I get a map. How big is the ranch?’

‘How would I know?’ O’Halloran drank some of his coffee. ‘Look, if you’ve got some idea of going to have a chat with Shriver, I’d have a real good think about that if I were you.’

‘I already have. Can you do one more thing for me? See what you can find on Canyon City and dig up what you can on the para-military camp you say Shriver’s running.’

‘That’s two things. When do you want it by?’

‘Tomorrow will be fine. I can either pick it up here or from your place, or if you’re feeling like a drive, I’m staying out at the Pimmit Hills motel over on the Pine Ridge highway.’

‘So you’ve figured out which side I’m on, have you?’ O’Halloran finished the rest of his coffee and closed the lid of his case. ‘You’re dreaming,’ he said. ‘You stand about as much chance of proving the FAL are a subversive organization as I do of getting that pat on the head from the President. If I come across anything useful, I’ll give you a call. I wouldn’t hold your breath, though.’ Depositing a handful of change on the table he got to his feet, nodded a goodbye and walked away.

Since Coburn had nowhere in particular to go, and because he could think of nowhere in particular he wanted to be, he ordered a coffee and spent the next half-hour wondering whether it would be unwise to mention the FAL when he made the first of his phone calls to Heather, putting off his return to the motel until he’d convinced himself that hearing her voice again might help bring back some of the confidence that O’Halloran had successfully stripped away.

Stopping on his drive only to buy a large-scale map of Oregon, he went straight to his room and placed the call, hoping that wherever in the village she happened to be she’d have the phone with her as she’d said she would.

She answered on the second ring, sounding sleepy, but anxious to discover if it was really him.

‘Are you in bed?’ he asked.

‘Mm. The sun’s only just up here. Where are you?’

‘Where I said I’d be. Satellite links aren’t too private, so it’s best we don’t use names. Is everything OK?’

‘Sort of. Have you found who you went to find?’

‘Yep. If I hadn’t, I’d have gone on looking in the wrong place. I got things kind of wrong. It’s not the government. I’ll explain another time. What do you mean, things are only sort of OK?’

‘Nothing.’ She made an effort to sound brighter. ‘It rained yesterday so all the dust’s gone, and it’s much cooler.’

‘Hey,’ Coburn said. ‘Whatever’s wrong, I want to know what it is.’

‘It’s just that someone in the village was caught trying to sell methamphetamines. Indiri says the last time that happened, Hari shot the man who was doing it, so everybody’s kind of on edge.’

‘You’re not at a holiday camp,’ Coburn said. ‘Hari runs a tight ship.’

‘I know, but it’s different with you not being here. I’m all right, though – really I am. If it’s not the US Government, are you going to be able to get evidence to prove who else it is?’

‘I’m working on it.’

‘Don’t be too long. Indiri says if you are she can introduce me to a nice young fisherman she knows from up the coast.’

Coburn didn’t tell her he had no idea how many days this was going to take, nor did he explain what had brought on his sudden need to call her. Instead, after endeavouring to prolong their conversation by searching for words that wouldn’t come, he asked her to let Hari know that things were more or less in hand then said goodbye, unsettled and annoyed with himself for not waiting until he’d been in a better frame of mind before he’d made the call.

To combat a sense of anti-climax he spread out the map beside him on the bed and traced out highway 395 with his finger until he found Canyon City. It was in the middle of nowhere just south of the intersection with route 26 – a tiny dot on a map that meant no more to him than a dot on a map of Siberia would have done.

So where was the ranch, he wondered? And what were the chances of Shriver being there? Would Yegorov be there? And if one of them was, what then?

The more he tried to formulate a plan, the more unknowns there seemed to be, and the faster the questions came, so many of them that it was relief when he had to stop searching for solutions to answer his phone.

It wasn’t the motel restaurant calling to ask if he’d care to place an
overnight order for breakfast, and it wasn’t Heather calling back to say something he hadn’t given her the opportunity to say.

It was O’Halloran, sounding artificially casual, and apologizing for interrupting Coburn’s evening.

‘You still planning on a trip out west?’ he asked.

‘Why?’

‘If you are, I’ve got a proposition for you. I got to thinking a bit more about your problem so on my way home I called in at the office and had another look at that information we were talking about.’

Coburn waited to be surprised.

‘You still there?’ O’Halloran’s voice changed.

‘Yeah, I’m still here. What did you find out this time?’

‘Quite a bit. According to US Immigration records, Yegorov went on a trip to Russia in early April of this year. There’s no information about why he went or where he went afterwards, but the timing’s right for him to have been in Vladivostok for a few weeks before the
Rybinsk
headed off for Bangladesh. If anybody had thought to ask him why he was going to Russia, I guess he could’ve always said he was visiting his brother there.’

‘How long was he away?’

‘He’s listed as arriving back in the US on July 14th. That matches pretty well with him being in Bangladesh in mid June when you first saw him, and after that he had all the time he needed to get those men on board the
Pishan
and organize that attack on the village you told me about.’

‘And leave me a present in my fridge.’ Coburn was wondering where all this might be leading. ‘What about Shriver? Did you find out any more about him?’

‘The CIA databases have pages of information on him and the FAL, but the interesting thing is what happened to Shriver’s parents when he was still a kid. His father was a US Army officer who died in the Korean War, and his mother was in Korea at the same time working as a nurse at a hospital in Pusan. She was there when the South Korean Army were overrun, and officially listed as missing in 1951. From the age of five, Shriver was raised by his grandparents at the family ranch in Oregon. If you go back and look at some of the early interviews he
gave to the press before he retired, it’s pretty clear he’s inherited a deep hate of all things Korean and, like I told you yesterday, he’s on a crusade to stamp out anything he thinks is anti-American.’

‘And stamp on anyone who gets in his way.’ Coburn was still waiting to hear why O’Halloran had taken the trouble to make the call. ‘You’ve uncovered enough information to make you happy then, have you?’

‘Enough to make me think that maybe I ought to be giving you a hand. I could use a break, and I’ve already told you how far you’ll get trying to crack this by yourself.’

Whatever the real reason for the offer was, Coburn knew he was in no position to turn it down. Trusting O’Halloran could still be something of a gamble, he thought, but since the only other person he could trust was thousands of miles away in another country, and she was relying on him, all he could do was take the risk and hope like hell he was making the right decision.

H
AD EASTERN OREGON
been easier to reach, Coburn would have had less opportunity to get to know his travelling companion. To begin with, during their flight from Washington to San Francisco, O’Halloran had offered little in the way of fresh information about himself, and on their subsequent flight to Portland and during the one that had brought them across to Pendleton, the American agent had been largely uncommunicative.

Since then, though, once they’d rented a car and checked themselves in to a small motel just north of the Malheur National Forest, he’d started to unwind, and by breakfast time that morning had opened up and become more friendly.

By leaving their motel early for their journey south, they’d hoped to reach the intersection with highway 20 by ten o’clock, but the number of logging trucks on the road was slowing them down, and although the Chrysler had reasonably good acceleration up to fifty miles an hour, at anything above that the engine seemed to falter. As a result, their progress had been poor, and for the last five minutes they’d been stuck behind a slow-moving Winnebago that Coburn had given up trying to overtake.

It had been his idea to do the driving, a suggestion that had been intended to leave O’Halloran free to navigate once they reached Canyon City and could start their search for the location of Shriver’s ranch.

So far, instead of reading the map, the American had been busy going through the notes he’d brought with him, only occasionally glancing up to discover how much further they had to go.

Ahead of them, the Winnebago had an indicator flashing and was slowing for the intersection with the main east-west highway. The vehicle turned right, allowing Coburn to make up time until they encountered more traffic on the outskirts of the John Day township where a large, colourfully painted billboard welcomed visitors to The Adventure Capital of Eastern Oregon: Elevation above sea level 3120 feet: Population 1891.

‘Big place,’ Coburn said.

‘It is for around these parts.’ O’Halloran found the map and had a look. ‘Canyon City’s less than a mile from here,’ he said, ‘so we’re nearly there.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then we’d better hope we come across Shriver’s Long Creek ranch. According to the information I’ve got here, Canyon City isn’t even a third the size of John Day, so it might not be too smart to start asking for directions in a little place where everyone is going to know everyone else.’

If Coburn had thought John Day was on the small side, Canyon City was so tiny he was surprised it had a name at all.

Nestled between the rock walls of a dry canyon, it was cute rather than pretty, and like John Day, thronged with tourists, most of whom looked as though they were here for the hunting or fishing, or to experience the white-water rafting trips that were advertised on shop-fronts along the main street.

‘Some city,’ Coburn said. ‘Blink and you’d miss it.’

‘You wouldn’t have done once.’ O’Halloran smiled. ‘Back in the 1860s, if you wanted some action, this is where you’d come to get it. At one time, over ten thousand prospectors were living here – all of them panning the river for gold. In fifty years they pulled out nearly a billion dollars worth of the stuff.’

It was hard to imagine that many people in such an unlikely place, Coburn thought, and harder still to believe his hunt for Yegorov had brought him here in a search, not for gold, but for a way to run down an organization that was manipulating the hearts and minds of Americans by killing and maiming men, women and children in countries half a world away.

He remained silent while they drove through the canyon, waiting until he saw a lay-by before he suggested they stop to discuss their strategy and have a fresh look at the satellite photograph that O’Halloran had brought.

Parking the car in the shade of some lodgepole pines, Coburn got out to stretch his legs. He’d first seen the photo last night when O’Halloran had showed it to him at the motel. At the time, without any first-hand knowledge of what the countryside was going to be like, Coburn had decided that the picture was unlikely to help them much. Now though, having driven through the canyon and seen how rugged the surrounding terrain could be, he’d changed his opinion, realizing that without the photo they’d have been at a serious disadvantage.

Until today, they had deliberately made no plan, believing that, since the Long Creek ranch was the headquarters of the Free America League, it would be easier to come up with a course of action once they’d been able to inspect the place.

The decision itself was not unreasonable, Coburn thought, but by the look of things, deciding how to get hold of the evidence they needed was going to call for some thinking on a different level altogether.

O’Halloran had emerged from the car. Placing the satellite photograph on the boot lid he spread out the map beside it. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’re about here.’ Using a ballpoint pen he drew a circle on the map just south of Canyon City. ‘Which means that if we carry on for another couple of miles we should be pretty close to the northern boundary of the ranch.’

‘How big a place is it?’ Coburn asked.

‘Six or seven thousand acres. Not a bad spread.’ The American used his pen again, this time to draw a large rectangle, not on the map, but on the photo. ‘Far as I can figure, the property extends east about halfway to where it says Strawberry Mountain on the map. That means the ranch is around five miles long, so it goes back a fair way into the hills.’

During the time Coburn had spent in Iraq, he’d seen military reconnaissance photographs taken by US satellites, some of such high quality that it had been possible to identify individual buildings and
even see vehicles on the streets. The photo of the ranch, though, was nothing like as good.

He could pick out what looked like trails or river tributaries winding through areas of thick forest, but the buildings were little more than dirty smudges, so indistinct it was hard to tell how big they were or what they were. A group of smudges was concentrated at the end of a driveway leading from the highway, and a few others were dotted about, including one that Coburn thought might not even be a building, standing by itself near what he guessed was the southernmost edge of the property.

‘I can’t see this helping us a hell of a lot,’ he said. ‘We can’t even be sure where the house is.’

‘How about here?’ O’Halloran pointed to one of the larger smudges. ‘The other buildings are probably dormitories and kitchens for the men who come here on training courses.’

‘Did you find out if Shriver’s running a course right now?’

‘No. But he’ll be stupid if he isn’t. The longer the mess in Iraq goes on, the more money he’ll be making by supplying security guards to US companies that are working in places like Baghdad or out in the oilfields. The guys he’s training here can earn fifteen hundred dollars a day in Iraq, so he’ll be hauling in more money than he’ll know what to do with by hiring them out.’ O’Halloran smiled. ‘Better than getting his feet wet looking for gold in the local river.’

‘And a good way to get income for the FAL.’ Coburn had stopped inspecting the satellite photograph. ‘I suppose we’d better go and see what we can see,’ he said. ‘For a start we can just drive by.’

The idea was good, but five minutes later, having slowed the car to what he hoped was not a suspiciously low speed, his first glimpse of the property provided little information.

At the main entrance, a pair of tall stone pillars supported a twelve foot-long timber plank in which the name Long Creek Ranch had been burned with a blowtorch, and a sign attached to the left hand pillar instructed the drivers of cattle trucks and trailers and all new recruits to use the Stony Bridge entrance 600 yards ahead.

‘Can you see anything?’ Coburn’s view was obstructed by trees, and with a logging truck coming up behind him, he’d gained no more than a fleeting impression of the place.

O’Halloran was still peering out of the rear window of the car. ‘House and garages,’ he said. ‘And what could be a stable block. Matches the sat photo pretty well. If you let this truck by, we might get a better look at the next entrance.’

Pulling on to the shoulder, Coburn waved on the driver, then proceeded at an even lower speed, continuing to slow the car so that by the time they reached the Stony Bridge entrance the Chrysler was travelling at less than twenty miles an hour.

They were rewarded with a view of cattle yards, an open-fronted shed in which stood several tractors, an ATV and what Coburn thought was some kind of harvester that was being worked on by two men in overalls.

He was about to say the men looked more like mechanics than trainee security guards when he heard the sound. It was drifting in through the open windows of the car, faint but unmistakable – the distant crackle of small-arms fire.

O’Halloran had heard it too. ‘How about we check that out,’ he said. ‘The better picture we have of what goes on here, the better chance we’ll stand.’

‘Of doing what?’

‘Breaking into the house. What did you think I meant?’

If Coburn hadn’t witnessed the carnage at the Fauzdarhat shipyard and had he not met a young woman there called Heather Cameron, he would have rejected the idea out of hand. But he had been at the shipyard, and he had met Heather Cameron – the reason why the FAL had been trying to kill him ever since, he thought, and why, in the absence of a more sensible proposal, maybe he ought to be considering whether this one could be made to work.

‘Well?’ O’Halloran was getting impatient. ‘Are we going to check out that gunfire, or aren’t we?’

‘Yeah. All right.’

‘OK. Keep your eyes open for a dirt road that looks like it leads down to a ski field called Star Ridge. I can’t see it on the sat photo, but it’s shown on the map. I don’t think it goes through Shriver’s land, but it’ll take us closer than we are right now.’

O’Halloran had barely finished speaking when, at the entrance to a
pot-holed track, Coburn caught sight of a plywood offcut nailed to a tree. It was a sign, set back some distance from the highway, hand-painted and so riddled with bullet holes that the words Star Ridge had been all but obliterated.

Wondering whether they were doing the right thing, he swung the nose of the car on to the track, avoiding the largest of the holes before hurriedly winding up his window.

‘This isn’t going to let us sneak up on anyone without them knowing,’ he said, ‘not with us kicking up this much dust.’

‘We’re out of town fishermen.’ O’Halloran wound up his own window. ‘If anybody asks, we’re looking for a good steelhead spot along the river.’

The surface of the track wasn’t getting any better. In winter, when the ground was hard, it would probably be OK, Coburn thought; in the middle of a dry July it wasn’t, in places so soft that the car was bottoming out, and in others so heavily rutted that the Chrysler felt as though it was steering itself.

They had travelled little more than half a mile when the track became less overgrown, and the countryside began to change. Instead of the lodgepole pines along the highway, areas of juniper and sage were competing with huckleberry and bluegrass, and on some of the high-desert knolls wildflowers were still in bloom.

Too busy at the wheel to appreciate the scenery, Coburn was nearly at the point of suggesting they should go no further when O’Halloran called a halt to their drive.

‘Over there.’ The American pointed ahead to a small clearing. ‘We can walk the rest of the way.’

After checking that he had sufficient room to turn the car around, Coburn parked at the edge of the clearing, cut the engine and kicked open his door. ‘Walk to where?’ he said.

‘Listen.’ O’Halloran had already climbed out and was already listening, looking through the binoculars he’d brought to scan a bank of scrub 200 yards away.

From where they were parked, although the sound of gunfire was being muffled by the vegetation, it was loud enough and distinct enough for Coburn to recognize the characteristic crack of M16s. He
could hear other sounds as well – the occasional crump of a mortar shell and, now and then, the voice of someone shouting out instructions.

Wondering what was attracting O’Halloran’s interest, he went to find out.

The American continued using his binoculars. ‘Not that much to see,’ he said. ‘Barbed-wire fence, a couple of warning signs saying firing range, keep out, some kind of building, and what looks pretty much like a burned-out World War II battle-tank. I can’t tell whether that’s what’s being used for target practice.’ He handed Coburn the binoculars. ‘What do you make of the building?’

About twenty feet long and eight feet high, it was painted white and constructed from concrete blocks, but otherwise unremarkable. A row of low level ventilation slots had been cut in the south-facing wall which was the only wall Coburn could see, but it had no other features that would indicate what it could be for.

Judging by the number of rounds being fired, as many as a dozen men could be using the range, he decided, either recruits being trained as bodyguards and mercenaries before they were hired out to work for anyone who could afford their services, or others like Yegorov whom Shriver could rely on to support the cause of the FAL wherever in the world they happened to be sent.

Was Yegorov here, Coburn wondered? Could he be here now, only a few hundred yards away on the other side of the fence?

Either the same thought had occurred to O’Halloran, or he’d grown impatient again. He set off by himself, moving cautiously from one tree to another, using what cover he could find until he was in a position to get a better view.

Coburn followed him, taking a similar route and joining the American behind a group of spindly bushes on the north edge of the clearing.

‘Well, what do you know?’ O’Halloran pointed. ‘How about that?’

From his new vantage point, although Coburn could see little more of the firing range than he’d been able to before, he was looking at the building from a different angle, and he was closer to it – close enough to see padlocks hanging on a steel-reinforced door and to read the notice bolted to it: