Blood and Ashes

Chapter 49

I made the drive to Bedford Well in a rental car paid for by the bogus Danny Fisher credit card. I felt I’d earned the right, seeing as it had been supplied as expenses to help bring down Carswell Hicks’ outfit. I enjoyed the drive this time. The rain was a memory, and now the hills were backed by a clear sky and hazy sunshine. I drove with the windows open, taking pleasure in the breeze ruffling my hair and snapping at my jacket collar. It was good to be outside again.

It was a full week since the events at the Statue of Liberty, but it felt more like months. Both Rink and I had spent time in cells, then in interview rooms where we were interrogated about our part in the horror that had struck Manhattan. We told our tale over and over again, but neither of us mentioned Arrowsake or its inclusion. Not through loyalty, but through necessity. In a cell we were sitting ducks for an assassin. We would deal with that problem ourselves. Another time, I promised. Special Agent Vincent was conspicuous by his absence. I wondered if Arrowsake had already deemed the young hothead a liability and had him terminated. There was always that possibility, but I doubted it: Vince had the instincts and the ability to disappear if he wished. I thought the young man might just make a reappearance somewhere down the line. A quote came to mind. A seventeenth-century author called Francois de la Rochefoucauld once wrote: ‘Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.’ The author’s words could be true of Vince’s disappearing act, meaning when he showed again it would reignite a firestorm. Let him come, I decided, just not while we’re penned in a jail cell.

Deals were struck on Capitol Hill, favours cashed in, warnings levied: whatever occurred, we were kicked loose from jail and into the waiting hands of the CIA. Walter Conrad met us, suggested we take a vacation for a while until he could straighten everything out. He wasn’t referring to the screaming and accusation coming his way from the senators and congressmen who made up the Judiciary Committee, but to the lack of contact from his overseers at Arrowsake.

‘What’s their problem? Makes me wonder if they secretly wanted Gant to succeed,’ I said. ‘That would have proved their point that domestic terrorism is a dire threat.’

Walter didn’t answer. Perhaps he was thinking the same thing.

‘I’ve a business to run,’ Rink said. ‘I don’t have time for another vacation. I’ve already had a few days break on taxpayers’ money, thank you very much.’

‘Seriously, boys, I think it’s best that you lay low for a while.’

‘We aren’t hiding from them, Walter,’ I said. ‘It’s those old men who have to cover their heads in shame.’

Rink grunted. ‘They need to cover their asses. I see their wrinkly butts again, I’ll pop a cap in ’em.’

‘Stay away from them, boys. They’re very dangerous people.’

‘So are we,’ I said. ‘When I last spoke to Don Griffiths, I suggested he put everything he knew about this plot in a file someplace, with instructions that it should be opened if anything suspicious happened to him, his family or any of us three. Maybe you should whisper that in one of those old bastards’ ears.’

‘You think that’s enough to keep us safe?’

‘It will be for now. Maybe somewhere down the line they’ll try something but not now. Our silence keeps them safe, so they have to keep us all happy.’

Walter’s face settled into a semblance of resignation. ‘Leave it to me, son.’

I hugged my mentor, a show of full forgiveness for the old man’s indiscretions. ‘You should watch yourself, Walt. Maybe it’s you who should take a vacation.’

‘I’m too busy overseeing damage control for that.’ He dug in his pocket and brought out his ubiquitous cigar. He looked at it fondly. ‘But maybe I should give up on my old ways, huh? Once I’ve passed Arrowsake your message I’m going to sever all ties with them.’ He flipped the cigar into a waste basket.

We left him then. I wondered if Walter would delve in the basket after we were gone, because bad habits weren’t as easily dropped as that. As he was to the cigar, I felt the old man was too much of a slave to Arrowsake to let it go so easily, or it him.

Together we took a ride out on the Staten Island ferry. There were a couple of hundred passengers, all jostling for places on one side of the boat, cameras poised, as the ferry chugged past Liberty Island. Everyone had come to see the Lady in all her glory. She’d stood here as a symbol of freedom from persecution for a century and a quarter and she’d stand here for many more years to come.

Gant’s attempt at destroying her had failed miserably. My theory had proven unfounded: Kwon hadn’t double-crossed Hicks; he’d delivered to him the real deal: plutonium 238. Only Samuel Gant’s ham-handed attempt at jerry-rigging a bomb had failed. The petrol container had blown as he’d planned, but it wasn’t enough to damage the plutonium flasks. They’d been fabricated to withstand blunt force in case they were ever mishandled or involved in a collision. The containers had come without the capacity for fission or fusion, and with no spillage the plutonium retained its atomic structure — although it had degraded substantially from its original weapons grade capacity. Thank God. The containers had been found undamaged, and already maintenance teams had scrubbed the scorch marks and soot residue away and Lady Liberty was once more open for business. She had thwarted the attack with stoic will, her torch still bright.

Later, Rink took a flight out of Newark, and once he’d passed through security, I had detoured to a rental booth and picked up the car. I’d set off through New Jersey, a rhythm and blues collection playing through the CD system. Maybe it was sheer coincidence that the first track was John Lee Hooker’s ‘Boom, Boom.’

I only stopped once on the drive over. Eating at a diner, I downed more mugs of coffee than were good for my health, then looked for a telephone booth. I called Imogen Ballard and apologised for missing spending St Valentine’s Day with her. I meant every word, as well as the promise that I’d come over to Maine as soon as I was finished up. She told me to bring flowers and maybe she’d forgive me. Flowers and chocolates, I promised. After hanging up, I returned to the rental car and I was smiling. I only wished that I’d had the nerve to tell her I loved her.

The road past Hertford wound up into the hills. It went over the crossroads and I followed it with barely a glance to the north. Up along there was the shell of the house where Adrian Reynolds had died. I didn’t want to think about that now. Most of the journey here from New York City had been filled with those thoughts already. For now I felt at peace. It wouldn’t last, I knew, so I relished the simple comfort. I passed where I’d concealed the first two men I’d killed. I didn’t think of their deaths as murder any more, not when it had been proven that Rooster and Cabe had both been part of Hicks’ gang. I passed the Seven-Eleven where all of this started, and on into town to the green and its wishing well. I thought of the coins I’d dropped into it and how it had proven a waste of money after all.

I parked on the drive outside Don Griffiths’ imposing house. As I sat in the car, I took a steadying breath, not quite sure how I should play this.

Nice and easy, I told myself.

Finally I got out and walked up the path to the door. There were new vehicles on the drive. Before I could ring the bell the door opened and it was deja vu as I was greeted by Millie. Her smile didn’t extend to her eyes, perhaps because she understood why I’d come.