Blood and Ashes

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.

As soon as Walter was out of the way, I turned on Vince. ‘So when do you come clean, Vince? You’re no more an FBI agent than we are.’

‘Why would you come to that conclusion?’

‘First off, SAC Birnbaum didn’t get to where he is by being the whipping boy of a lowly special agent,’ I said. ‘Then there’s the fact that you’re here. You wouldn’t get to see those men’s faces without special clearance. What are you? CIA? Homeland Security? What?’

Vince thought for a second. ‘Let me throw a question back at you. Back when you were active, did you ever admit to being with Arrowsake? No, I just bet that you were Sergeant Hunter of One-Para, and Jared there was just plain old Private Rington of the Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment. Well, for that reason I am Special Agent Stephen Vincent of the FBI.’

‘Nothing plain about the Seventy-Fifth,’ Rink stated.

I had caught the weight of what Vince was trying to say. I stared at the young man, waiting for him to confirm the truth, and finally knew the reason for my unease on the flight here.

Vince threw up his hands. ‘OK, you’ve got me. I’m an Arrowsake alumnus, just like the two of you. Just don’t tell Walter that you got the confession from me so easily, eh?’

‘Arrowsake was demobilised.’ Even as I spoke I realised that my words held no meaning. Both Rink and I had been lied to. Following 9/11 and the change in methods employed by Western governments, the counterterrorism services had come under close scrutiny. Objections to Guantanamo Bay and then the furore following the alleged torture of prisoners in Iraq had forced rules which made the old style tactics intolerable, leading Arrowsake to be rapidly dismantled before an even greater scandal could be discovered. Rink and I, and all our colleagues, had been seen as virtual dinosaurs who had no place in the modern war on terror. Our demobilisation, I understood now, was nothing but a smokescreen, a lie.

‘ Your Arrowsake was,’ Vince confirmed. He gave a flourish like a Shakespearean actor. ‘Meet the new wave.’

Incredulous, I could only grunt. The truth had been staring me in the face for a long time now. When I thought about it, Walter seemed to have more sway than even a CIA sub-division controller should have. He had the ear of presidents and prime ministers, and had manipulated even the decisions of the US Secretary of State before now. Arrowsake hadn’t died; it had simply been buried even deeper than before — at the expense of the men who’d fought loyally for it in the past. Rink and I had been kicked loose to give way to younger hotshots like Stephen Vincent.

‘This is bullshit!’ Rink looked ready to go on a rampage.

I couldn’t have agreed more. For almost five years since we’d been cut loose I’d drifted, feeling like there was a huge hole in my life. The rift had destroyed my marriage, destroyed some of my humanity when considering what I’d become, and for no other reason than that we’d been treated like garbage to be disposed of before we became an embarrassment.

Rink jabbed a finger at Vince. ‘You ain’t part of us, boy. Never will be.’

Vince shrugged. ‘Don’t want to be, Rink. You’re old timers now. No insult intended.’

‘No fucking insult…’

I grabbed Rink, told him to take it easy. Rink snarled at Vince over my shoulder. ‘That little punk thinks he’s a better man than we are, Joe! Just give me a couple seconds an’ I’ll show him the truth.’

Vince straightened up. ‘Maybe you won’t find me so easy, Rink. I did all right with your buddy. Right, Hunter?’

I thought about Vince’s sneak attack with the garrotte. OK, he’d got the drop on me then, but a tactic like that wouldn’t help Vince if Rink wanted to kick his butt. Or if I decided a little payback was in order.

A door snicked open and all three of us swung round to see Walter standing in the threshold. He seemed to have got a grip on himself, because he wore the featureless expression he reserved for moments just like this. ‘I thought I’d better interject before this turns into a pissing competition. Jesus, it’s so bad that you can smell the testosterone in here!’

‘What you smell is the crap you’ve been feeding us all these years,’ Rink snapped at him. ‘I can’t believe you’d do this to us, Walter.’

‘You’re upset, and rightly so,’ Walter said.

‘Fucking upset? This little punk as much as says he’s a fuckin’ blue ray disc and I’m just a Beta-Max. Dead right, I’m fucking upset!’ Rink wasn’t one for going off like this and his fury was a surprise; normally it was Rink who had to caution me.

I turned a hurt look on my adopted father. ‘This doesn’t come as a surprise to me. Arrowsake was outmoded, but it was obvious that something else would take its place. What I am shocked at is the way we’ve been lied to.’

Walter waved me down. ‘I’ve never lied to you. I’ve just been selective with the truth.’ He looked me in the eye, before switching his scrutiny to Rink. ‘You know that I’ve protected you both, but it never occurred to you just how that could be?’

‘Friendship?’ Rink said sarcastically.

‘Yes, friendship. But also because you were important to me in another way.’

‘We were trained dogs to bark at your command,’ Rink snapped.

‘I wouldn’t put it that way.’

‘How would you put it?’ I asked. ‘You’ve been using us, Walter. You weren’t thinking of us as friends, you thought of us only in terms of personal assets.’

Walter shook his head. ‘No, Hunter, that isn’t the way it was.’

‘The Harvestman? Luke Rickard? Weren’t they hits designated by Arrowsake?’

‘Do you truly believe either of those assholes would be any concern of Arrowsake? I helped you with those problems, as well as the colossal fuck-ups you got yourselves involved in down in Florida and in Texas, because I wanted to. Like I said, you were important to me.’

I laughed mirthlessly. ‘You were saving us for a greater cause. Well, fuck you, Walter.’

Vince placed himself directly in front of me. ‘You can’t step away from this, Hunter. Have you forgotten the problem of a dozen dead people over in Pennsylvania? Maybe you should think about that.’

‘Is that right, Vince?’ I palm-heeled Vince under the chin and knocked the young man sprawling on his back. Only the fact that I’d tempered the blow meant that he was conscious enough to hear my next words. ‘There’s also the small matter of a dead girl who was shoved out of a car window, or have you forgotten about that, you son of a bitch?’

‘Sonya Madden was a potential murderer,’ Vince spluttered from a bleeding mouth.

On hearing the rumble of laughter from Rink, I couldn’t help shaking my head at the irony of it all. We looked at each other, and that was it. We both broke into loud laughter.

I pointed at the young upstart. ‘With people like him it’s no wonder that you’ve had to keep us on retainer, Walt.’

‘Then… you’re happy to be back?’ Walter asked.

Speaking for us both, Rink said, ‘We were never happy to be gone.’

A smile flickered over Walter’s mouth. The only one who didn’t look so pleased with the turn of events was Vince who scowled up at us as he checked for loose teeth. Around his fingertips, he muttered, ‘You took me by surprise, old man. Won’t happen again.’

‘Not unless you give me a good reason.’ I held a hand out to Vince. ‘That’s us square now, Vince. I owed you that for almost taking my head off with your garrotte.’

Vince thought about it, and again I noted that he was much sharper than he seemed. He stretched up and took my hand and I hauled him to his feet.

Vince gave Rink a steady look. ‘What about us? We OK, Rink?’

‘Call me Jared. You ain’t earned the right to call me Rink yet. That’s just for my friends.’ But then Rink clapped Vince on the shoulder and gave him a wink.

The door opened again and one of Walter’s ever-present bodyguards appeared carrying a tray laden with a jug of coffee and all the makings. Walter pushed his cigar between his teeth, using the excuse of playing host to move things on. ‘Excellent. Now we can get down to the real business.’

‘Yeah,’ Rink agreed. ‘It’s about time we got some answers.’

‘So what is the deal, Walter?’

A few minutes later I wished I’d never asked.