Dead Men's Harvest

Chapter 11

His trip to the Adirondacks had proven more a distraction than a step in the right direction. Tubal Cain had never seen the man responsible for saving his life that day in the cavern at Jubal’s Hollow, but he had heard his name whispered during frequent visits by doctors who conducted their studies upon him while he was confined at Fort Conchar. He didn’t feel that he owed Walter Hayes Conrad a thing: the man’s apparent magnanimity hadn’t been born from humanity. He had tracked the CIA man to his retreat in the woods, before news of Cain’s escape forced him into deep hiding. He’d ambushed the two goon-like bodyguards, shooting both of them before moving on to the older man. Give the old bastard his due, he’d held out even when Cain dismembered his bodyguards in front of him. Only when Cain turned his ministrations to the CIA man himself did he elicit any answers. Shame that he hadn’t mentioned sooner that he wasn’t the one Cain was looking for. It would have earned the man a quicker death than the one that followed.

Still, he wasn’t complaining. The distraction had proven quite enjoyable. Just like old times. Cain left the Adirondacks feeling rather nostalgic.

With Conrad apparently aware of his escape, he would be untouchable for now, so Cain had moved on to another avenue that would lead him to his prey. He found Michael Birch easily enough.

Birch thought he had made it when he’d landed the job with the Virginia State Attorney’s Office. He was only an underling to the state attorney himself, but so what? He was moving in the kind of circles he’d always aspired to. Securing the job, he’d expected a new lifestyle that included big money. As a top analyst in his field, he’d attained the rewards befitting his position, but had avoided the media interest that occasionally made the state attorney’s life unbearable. He rested easy in his obscurity, just took the remuneration and left the accolades to his boss. He’d thought himself safe from the men and women that his office prosecuted. Untouchable. But he hadn’t vectored the Harvestman into the equation.

Cain — once an agent with the United States Secret Service — knew how the Federal Witness Security Programme worked. He also had insider knowledge of the creation of new identities for those placed into the safe keeping of the US Marshals Service.

The idea was to create total anonymity for the witness, to help them relocate and blend into a new community. Jobs, housing, subsistence payments and identity documents were all laid on. In a country of over three hundred million people the witness should be untraceable. Since its inception in 1970, no person under the WITSEC programme, who’d followed the strict security guidelines, had come to harm. But there was always a first time.

It was a system in which Cain saw too many flaws.

For one, there was no such thing as a fresh start when it came to criminals. Notification of past transgressions was often passed to the local law enforcement community. A thief of John Telfer’s magnitude would be on someone’s database.

Second, and most important, although witnesses were given new names, they were encouraged to keep their first names, or select a new name with the same initials. There couldn’t be too many JTs on the Marshal Service’s books.

Then there was the reason why Cain had sought out Michael Birch. Although a secretive process, there was always a trail back to some lowest denominator. The attorney general made final determination based on the recommendation of the state attorney assigned to the federal case, but it was always the lackeys of said attorney who wrote up the accompanying reports. Birch was one such lackey.

Birch wasn’t a brave man.

Not when Cain was standing over him with a knife in his hand.

He soon gave up the codes to enter the database on his laptop computer. As well as the fingers Cain took as a memento of their meeting.

Cain would have liked to have spent a little more time with Birch but he had to get from Virginia to Montana fast.

He worked best alone, but wasn’t averse to a little assistance on occasion. He touched down at Glacier Park International Airport north of Kalispell and alighted from Kurt Hendrickson’s Challenger 604 private jet only a few hours later. The jet was of the type employed for executive travel and could carry up to nineteen passengers, a flight crew and steward. It had a full galley with the capacity for gourmet catering, stereo DVD, satellite phones, the business. It was sheer indulgence for one man. But Cain would have it no other way.

A rented Ford Explorer was waiting for him.

Cain was extensively travelled, but he’d never been to Montana. He’d formed the impression that the state’s topography was primarily grassland, but in this north-western corner near the Canadian border he was surrounded by towering, snow-capped mountains. He had his own take on the veneer of reality that surrounded him, but even he could appreciate the beauty of the mountains. The tree covered slopes offered plenty of opportunities for the concealment of corpses.

Tapping coordinates into the sat-nav, he picked up the route south towards Somers at the head of Flathead Lake, before turning east towards Bigfork — the aptly named ‘village by the bay’. On the drive down he made a point of studying the vehicles passing in the other direction. Jeffrey Taylor could be in any of them.

Michael Birch’s laptop had offered up three names with the initials JT. Joanne Theriault was a no-brainer, and it didn’t take much digging to find that Jonah Thexton was a fifty-eight-year-old African-American. Jeffrey Taylor and John Telfer had to be one and the same.

Something else that Birch’s computer had given up: Telfer was due to be moved within the next few hours. Cain could have waited for him at the airport, but there was also an Amtrak depot in the nearby Glacier National Park, where he could board a train to Seattle or Chicago. If Cain missed him, he might never get another chance at finishing what he’d begun at Jubal’s Hollow. So too, at remote Jewel Ridge, the likelihood of taking Telfer away from his protectors would be greater than at either an airport or rail terminal. There was less chance of outside intervention.

WITSEC normally leave their charges pretty much to their own devices. They don’t offer a round-the-clock bodyguard service, not until the witness is being returned to give evidence at trial. Still, Cain knew that Telfer would have been afforded more than the norm. Not only was he the key witness in the trial of the Hendrickson/Petoskey counterfeit currency ring, but he also knew the secret of the Harvestman.

Official records said that the Harvestman was Robert Swan, Martin Maxwell’s estranged half-brother. The government said that Swan had murdered Maxwell, along with his wife and children, before going on his four-year killing spree. Cain found that most insulting. Swan, a hopeless musician, could barely pick a tune out of a guitar, never mind pick the bones from a body. Nevertheless, the story served the government well, considering they did not want a scandal erupting that one of their own was a psychopath. John Telfer knew otherwise, so the CIA, Secret Service and others would want to ensure that he kept that knowledge to himself. Likely he’d have twenty-four/seven chaperones so that he didn’t get too loose in the lips.

Cain and Telfer shared a common bond.

Both were living dead men.

According to the government records Telfer had been the Harvestman’s final victim and, like Cain, he hadn’t survived Jubal’s Hollow. It was time to put a final exclamation mark on that statement.