Ghosts

Chapter Nine

The detective removed the handcuffs from John Milton’s wrists and he rubbed the skin where it had chaffed against the metal bracelets. The officer dropped the cuffs on the scuffed and scarred surface of the table, went around to the other side, drew back the chair and sat down.

“Sit,” he instructed.

Milton did as he was told. The detective was young. He couldn’t have been that long out of the Academy. Young and fresh and keen to make a name for himself. Just his luck.

There was an old-fashioned tape recorder on the table. The detective tore the plastic sheath from a micro-cassette, took it out of its box and slipped it into the slot. He set the unit to record.

He cleared his throat. “All right, then. For the record, the speaker is Detective Dennis Bennington of the Victoria Police Department, and, also present, Detective Robert Kenney. The man being interviewed here this afternoon is Mr. John Smith. That’s S-M-I-T-H. Can I have your address, please, sir?”

“I don’t have one.”

“No fixed abode?”

“I’m travelling.”

“I see. And your accent?”

“I’m English.”

“Alright, then. Before we get started, you must understand your rights. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to talk to a lawyer for advice before we ask you any questions and to have him or her with you during questioning. Do you understand that?”

“I do.”

“If you cannot afford a lawyer, a lawyer will be provided for you at no cost. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “Fair enough. Put your initials right here, please.”

Bennington gave Milton a pen and a printed form that noted that he was waiving his rights. He initialled it. “Can we get on with this, please?”

“You say you’re English but you have an American passport?”

“My mother,” he said. It was a lie. The passport was a fake, but it had been useful to have one as he passed through South America.

“Where were you before you came here?”

“Just got out of San Francisco.”

“How long were you there?”

“Six months, give or take.”

“Doing what?”

“I had a couple of jobs. I worked for an ice distribution company in the day and drove taxis at night.”

“Why did you leave?”

“Is it relevant?”

“Answer the question, please, sir.”

“It was just time to go.”

“And where are you headed?”

“Nowhere in particular. Wherever I end up.”

“Alright, then. What did you do before that?”

Milton hesitated. What would they say if he told them the truth? I was an assassin for the British government for the better part of a decade, I killed one hundred and thirty six men and women, my employer ordered that I be eliminated after I tried to resign and now I’m on the run.

What would two good old boys make of that? They would think he was insane.

“This and that,” he said instead.

“So why’d you stop in Victoria?”

“I’ve never been to Texas before,” he said. “And it was on my way.”

“So you want to explain what happened in Bill’s?”

“You were there, officer. You saw what happened.”

“Why don’t you tell me your side of things.” He tapped a finger against the tape machine, spooling quietly on the side of the table. “For the record.”

Milton sighed with frustration. “I went to the bar for something to eat and to watch the game on ESPN. It’s a nice bar, reasonably busy. I was sitting at the counter, right next to you. You tried to start a conversation about the chicken wings I was eating. The sauce, I think. You said it was good. I agreed. You tried to start a conversation but I wasn’t interested in talking to you and, eventually, you got the picture and shut up. I concentrated on the game and my food again. Then two men came into the bar. Big guys. Both drunk and looking for trouble. They went over to a table where three girls were sitting down having a drink and made a nuisance of themselves. They made inappropriate advances. The girls asked them to leave and they didn’t. I went over and asked them to stop. I was polite but I don’t think they took too kindly to it. One of them tried to stab me with a broken glass. I banged his face against the table. The other man swung a pool cue at me. I broke his nose. You arrested me. How does that sound, officer? About right?”

“Have you ever met either of the men you attacked before?”

“Never. Have you?”

Bennington shuffled a little in his chair.

“You arrested them, too?”

Bennington shuffled a little uncomfortably. “No.”

“Who are they?”

“Cliff Manziel and Johnny Robinson.”

Milton frowned. He remembered a sign on the wall as they were booking him last night. “Manziel — that’s the Sheriff’s name, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

“And let me guess — Cliff is his son?”

Milton closed his eyes and smiled. Just his dumb luck: out of all the drunken bullies he could’ve gotten into a brawl with, he had to pick them. He had no idea the guy was the son of a cop. He just looked like some idiot in a bar. It probably wouldn’t have made a difference, but he might have handled it differently. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so inconvenient.

“Did you have any other questions?” he asked the detectives.

“Not now.”

“So what’s next?”

“We arrange a bail hearing for you.”

“And until then?”

“You’ll be transferred to the county lockup. It’ll be a couple of days before we can get you in front of a judge.”

Milton sighed. He’d beaten the son of the local sheriff. That couldn’t possibly be good. If daddy was upset, and he would be upset, he was going to want to get some revenge. That spelt trouble. He could imagine what it might mean for him in the short-term: a few good ole boys in an empty cell back at the lock-up, a fight where he would be badly outnumbered and retaliating would just make things worse for him. He would have to suck it up and take it. And what then, assuming they didn’t put him in the hospital? The judge would undoubtedly be a friend of the sheriff. The jury, if it was to be a jury trial, would look at him as an outsider who thought it was acceptable to start bar brawls with the sons of local dignitaries. Texas was an insular kind of place. That kind of thing was probably a big deal. All kinds of witnesses would turn up to say that the attack was unprovoked. He would end up convicted and in the penitentiary, just like that. He would end up with a long stint in some dismal establishment.

Although, of course, it would never get to that.

He doubted whether he would even get to the bail hearing. Control would find him before two days were up. His prints and personal details had been taken when they booked him last night. They would have been transferred by now, passed between servers, an electronic handshake that would trigger an alarm somewhere. The Group had located him easily enough when he was in Ciudad Juárez and that had been a pit. How much simpler would it be to find him in Texas?

Options? He looked around the room. It was secure — bars across the window, a double-locked door — no obvious way for him to get out. Bennington and Kenney were armed but he would have been able to disable them both without much difficulty, but where would that get him? What would he do then? He was inside a locked room in a police station. Even if he managed to escape, how far would he be able to get? Victoria was a town he didn’t know. He had no means of transport. He had looked out of the window as they brought him to the interview room. It was mid-morning and the sun was already burning bright, heatwaves radiating off the scorched ground. Not the kind of weather to be hiking across open country. He figured he’d have five minutes to find a ride before the locals had enough time to raise a posse and come after him. Five minutes, maybe ten if he was lucky.

And then what?

It was pointless. Hopeless. He was going to have to let things play out. He started to prepare himself for the inevitable: a beating and then, much worse, whatever would happen to him when the Group finally found him. Forced rendition back to London if he was lucky; a bribed guard to press a shiv into his heart in the penitentiary showers if he wasn’t.

It turned out he was wrong about that; he was wrong about all of it. It turned out that he was wrong about a lot of things, and his day was about to take an unexpected turn.

Chapter Ten

It was early evening when he heard footsteps approaching down the corridor. He had been lying on the squalid cot, staring up at the ceiling. The bugs had come out of the cracks and were marching across the ceiling two by two. He lay there, his fingers laced beneath his head, watching them with vague disinterest, when he heard the cage door at the end of the corridor open and swing closed. He swung his legs off the bed and stood, bracing himself. Here they come.

The key turned in the lock and the door swung open.

It was Bennington.

He was alone.

“What is it?”

“Up you get, partner.”

“What for?”

“You’re free to go. The charges have been dropped. Come with me, please.”

Milton hid his surprise. He followed Bennington out of the cell, along the corridor and out into the office beyond. There was a desk, two chairs and a couch pushed up against the wall. A woman was sitting on the couch. Medium height, slender build, long legs, lots of red hair. Milton had never seen her before.

Bennington touched his hand to a cardboard box on the desk. “Here are your things,” he said. Milton looked inside: his wallet, cigarette lighter, leather jacket and shoelaces. “Sign for them, please.”

Milton signed the form and took his belongings.

The woman stood. “Mr. Smith?”

“Yes?”

“My name is Frances Delaney. I’m with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“How can I help you?”

She paused and turned to Bennington. “Is that all, detective?”

“Yes, ma’am. He’s free to go.”

“Thank you. Mr. Smith, will you come with me, please?

Milton was confused; he had anticipated several possible outcomes and this was certainly not one of them. Delaney stepped across the office, through the public waiting room beyond and then into the hot night outside. Milton looked around: he had been driven to the station in the back of a patrol car and it had been daylight. It looked different at night. Neon displays glowed above the entrance to bars and clubs. Youngsters hung out of car windows as they cruised down Main Street.

A Lexus with blacked out windows was parked against the curb.

“What’s going on?” he asked her.

“Get in the car, Captain Milton.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Let’s dispense with that, shall we? I’m sure you’d rather get away from here?”

“How do you know my name?”

“I’m not from the F.B.I., Captain Milton. You’re fortunate that you were arrested in a place like this. Somewhere they’d leave an officer like that to look after you. I’ve managed to pull the wool over his eyes, but it won’t stand up to scrutiny. It’d be better if we got moving.”

“How did you find me?”

“I’ll tell you later. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

“No,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you want.”

“Just to talk, Captain Milton. Get in the car, please.”

She took the key fob from her bag and blipped the door. She crossed the sidewalk and opened the driver’s side door. Milton paused, working out the angles. He looked out at Main Street, the cars rolling slowly by in either direction. There was a bar nearby, the sound of loud music and raucous, unfriendly hollering spilling out. It was a boiling hot evening: fighting weather. The place suddenly felt charged and hostile. The sheriff was still around, plus his boy. He didn’t know what Delaney had pulled to get him out, but he didn’t doubt that if he stayed and ran across the Manziels there would be nothing to prevent them from settling the scores. If they found out that he had been freed by deception, they would come after him. It would be even worse.

He would have to leave. He would walk back to his hotel, collect his things and catch the first Greyhound out of town. Or he could go straight to Hertz, hire a car and drive himself away. He would do that. The girl was intriguing, but he hadn’t lasted as long as he had by trusting good-looking women he had never met before.

“Thanks for your help. I’ll take my chances.”

She shook her head. “I know about the Group, Captain Milton. I know how close they were to catching up with you in Mexico.”

He fought to maintain a nonchalant front. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“There are some things you need to know. You should know that they’re already in the country. There are four of them. They flew out of RAF Northolt last night and landed in Houston an hour ago. They’re driving here now. The last I heard, they were in Ganado. That’s not far. They’ll be here in thirty minutes. How far do you think you’ll get with them on your tail?”

Milton tried hard to hide his discomfort.

“Captain Milton — John. Get in the car, please. I’d rather not be here when they arrive. And I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

He couldn’t deny that Delaney was intriguing. There was a quality about her that made him want to hear her out.

“Alright,” he said.

He stepped around into the street and got into the other side of the Lexus.

They drove for half an hour. If Delaney wanted conversation then she was happy to wait to get it started. She paused behind a truck until the road ahead was clear and then pulled out behind it without a word. Milton took a moment to check out the interior of the Lexus. It was a four door, a big executive number, very fancy. He would have guessed it was six months’ old; it still had the smell of a new car and it was kept in good shape. The leather had that deep smell that spoke eloquently of money and the glass was tinted black like a hearse. There were two small suitcases on the back seat. They were identical Samsonite models, the kind of wheeled design favoured by business travellers who prefer to avoid checking their things into the hold. A garment cover was hooked on the handle above the right-hand rear door.

The road became a three-lane interstate and she accelerated up to seventy.

“Comfortable?” she asked him.

“Fine.”

“Put the seat back if you want more room.”

“How long are we going to be driving for?”

“About an hour.”

The chair was motorised. Milton pressed the rocker button on the door and, with a hum of its motor, the chair slid back a few inches. Might as well stretch his legs out; he didn’t know what he was going to find when they got to where they were going and the last thing he wanted was to have his muscles cramp up.

He thought about what she had said. He had no idea how she could have known about the Group but, if what she said was true, she had probably saved his life. He looked out through the window at the sparse traffic heading into Victoria as they sped away from it. The lights of the cars and trucks shone brightly, high-beams raking into the sky until the drivers approached and flicked them down. He looked at them and wondered if he would see a face that he recognised.

Delaney glanced into the rearview mirror at the traffic behind them and changed lanes. Milton took the chance to look at her reflection in the windshield. She was average height, slim and had a delicately-boned face. The auburn hair was the most striking thing about her: long and glossy, all the way down past her shoulders. He guessed she was a hundred and thirty pounds and five-nine. Age? Somewhere between thirty or thirty-five, he thought, although he’d never been good at guessing women’s ages. Her eyes were vivid emerald, her skin was flawless with little make-up. She was very striking. She was wearing a trouser suit with a white shirt that had a prominent collar. It was simple and elegant and obviously expensive. Her hands were slender and her nails were polished and manicured. She didn’t wear a wedding ring. The only jewellery she wore was a discrete silver cross around her neck.

“Where are we going?” he asked her.

“Houston,” she said.

Chapter Eleven

Delaney had booked two rooms at a motor court that served the airport. They arrived at eleven; she checked in while he waited in the car. He wondered whether he should disappear now, open the door and fade into the busy night, but he resisted the temptation. She knew too much about him and about things she should never have known for him not to be just a little intrigued. Instead, he arched his back and reached into the rear of the car for the nearest suitcase. He unzipped it quickly and pulled open the lid. There was nothing there save for a couple of changes of clothes, two pairs of shoes and a toilet bag. He settled back into the front and opened the glove compartment: he took out the car’s manual and insurance details and put them to the side. There was some documentation from a rental agency; the car had been hired yesterday from the Hertz counter at the airport. The documents were signed in her name. Whoever Delaney was, she had flown in to pick him up. There was nothing else in the compartment, and so Milton put the documents back and shut it.

Delaney returned. She put the car into gear and rolled into the parking lot next to a low single-storey terrace that was divided into a dozen rooms. She reverse parked the car into a space and switched off the engine. “We’ve got that one and that one,” she said, pointing towards two adjacent rooms. “Are you hungry?”

He was; he hadn’t eaten all day. “I could eat.”

“You could probably do with a shower, too. Why don’t you go in and get yourself sorted. I’ll order some delivery and then we can talk.”

“Alright,” he said.

They both exited the car. She opened the rear door and removed the suitcases and the garment holder. She draped the holder over the extended handle of one of the cases. “That’s for you,” she said. “There’s a change of clothes in the suitcase and some toiletries. There’s a suit in the holder. You’ll need to wear it tomorrow.”

“What am I doing tomorrow?”

“Get freshened up. I’ll explain later.”

The room was exactly what you would expect to find in a typical low-budget motel. There was a bed; a desk with a chair; a television on the desk; a kettle with little sachets of tea and coffee and sweeteners. Milton hauled the suitcase onto the bed and opened it: three pairs of boxer shorts and three white tee-shirts, still wrapped in paper; three pairs of thick woollen socks; a pair of leather brogues; a pair of Timberlands; two pairs of Levis; a pair of fur-lined gloves; a thick woollen scarf; a new toilet bag with a comb, a toothbrush, a full tube of toothpaste, a pack of disposable razors and a bottle of shaving cream. It looked as if Delaney had stopped at the shop on her way through the airport and, knowing that he was incarcerated and likely had nothing with him, had bought everything that she thought that he might need. He unzipped the garment carrier and took out the items that were inside. There was a charcoal Hugo Boss suit, single breasted, expensive, and a thick overcoat. He checked the tags: the measurements were more or less what he would have ordered if he was buying it for himself.

What didn’t she know about him?

He looked at the socks, the gloves, the scarf and the coat. They weren’t chosen for Texas weather.

Where did they want him to go?

Milton undressed and went into the bathroom. It was simple and clean and he stood beneath the shower for twenty minutes, letting the hot water slew off the sweat and grime that had accumulated over the course of the last couple of days. He scrubbed his face, softening the stubble that abraded his palms, and then spread on a handful of the cream and shaved.

He turned off the tap, wrapped a towel around his waist and stood at the mirror. His eyes were a cold greyish blue, his mouth had a twist to it that could sometimes make him look cruel and there was a long horizontal scar from his cheek to the start of his nose, the memento of a knife fight in a Honolulu bar. There were other scars all across his body. His hair was long and a little unkempt, a frond falling over his forehead in a wandering comma. The job hauling ice around San Francisco had improved his fitness and there was more definition in his arms and shoulders now than there had been since he had stopped working for the Group. He turned away from the mirror, catching a quick glimpse of the angel’s wings tattooed across his back, and changed into a fresh tee-shirt and a pair of jeans from the suitcase. They fit him very well. Delaney knew exactly what she was doing.

He pulled the door closed behind him and crossed the veranda to the room next door. He knocked, twice, and heard the soft footfalls as Delaney approached. She took the door off the chain, opened it and welcomed him inside.

Milton scanned the room. Force of habit. It was an analogue of his own, just in reverse; the furniture was arranged on the right, not the left. He went over to the bathroom and checked inside. It was the same as his, and empty.

“Relax,” she told him. “It’s just you and me.”

“You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “I’ve no idea who you are. Being here is against my better judgment.”

“So why are you here?”

“Let’s just say you’ve got my attention.”

“I’ve order burgers. I hope that’s alright?”

“Fine.”

“You want to sit?”

“No,” he said. “I’ll stand.”

“Okay,” she said. “But I’m going to sit. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed. Milton leant back against the wall.

“Who are you?” he said. “Really?”

“My name is Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko. I work for the SVR.”

“You’re Russian intelligence.”

“That’s right, Captain Milton.”

“Which Directorate?”

“Is that really important?”

“It is if you don’t want me to walk out of that door and disappear.”

“Directorate S.”

“Operations?”

“Correct.”

Milton couldn’t help the smile.

“What is it?”

“This is the first time I’ve been busted out of jail by a Russian spook. What are you — undercover?”

“For the last ten years.”

“Frances Delaney.”

She smiled. “That’s me.”

“But not FBI?”

“No. That was just a useful story.”

“Okay, Anna. You better tell me why you risked your cover to get me out of there. You know I’m not going to talk to you.”

“It would be easier if I showed you,” she said.

She got up, crossed the room to her suitcase and removed an iPad. She activated it and jabbed her finger against the screen until she had opened the attachment to an email. She handed the tablet to Milton, the screen realigning as he held it up to look at it. It was a photograph of a man. He had short cropped black hair shot through with threads of silver and grey, a slab-like forehead and a nose that had been broken too many times. He had been beaten: his right eye was closed up, a livid purple bruise around the socket. There was a bloody welt on the side of his forehead and abrasions scraped down his left cheek. He was staring into the camera, the defiance on his face belying the punishment that had been meted out to him.

“Do you know him?” Anna asked.

Milton gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on the tablet. “Yes,” he said.

The man in the picture was Captain Michael Pope.

She watched Milton’s reaction. “We know you and Captain Pope have history. You were in the army at the same time. You are the same age, give or take a year or two, and you were both in Iraq during the first war, although you were in different battalions. Once the war was over, Captain Pope transferred into the First Battalion, B Company. The same Company, the same rifle platoon as you. You served in Northern Ireland together.”

Milton dropped the tablet back on the bed. “Very good,” he said. “You’ve done your research.”

“We know that he joined Group Fifteen a little while after you. An excellent reputation, although not in the same league as you, Captain Milton, of course. We believe he replaced you as Number One after you left. Is that correct?”

“You can’t expect me to comment on that.”

“No, I suppose not. And nor do I need you to. We know.”

“So stop wasting my time. Are you going to tell me what happened to him?”

“Captain Pope was arrested two months ago in Monaco. He entered the country with a false passport. He was apprehended with a Barrett M1 sniper rifle and a hundred rounds of ammunition. The weapon with which you made your name, I understand? The operation in North Korea?”

“Again…” Milton said, shrugging.

Anna ignored his reticence. “He was transferred to Moscow. He has been questioned, of course. At great length. He has been as”—she searched for the right word—“stoical as you would expect a man of his training to be, in the circumstances. We believe that his purpose in France was to assassinate my commanding officer. He has a holiday home there. Captain Pope had hired a motorboat. We believe his plan was to take the boat adjacent to his estate and make the shot from there. An audacious attempt, had it been allowed to proceed. Our experts considered it foolish, apart from those familiar with the skill of your country’s cleaners. It would take tremendous skill to snipe a target from a moving boat. You, perhaps, Captain Milton… a shot that you would have taken?”

Milton said nothing. He looked down at the bed, at the tablet, at Pope’s battered and bloodied face. The last time he had seen him was in Juárez. Pope had orders to bring him back to London, dead or alive. It would have been easier to have shot him — Callan had wanted to — but Pope had forbidden it. There was no question about it: they were on different sides now, but he had saved his life.

“Where is he?”

“Captain Pope is in a gulag in Siberia. You will be aware of the quality of life an inmate in a Siberian gulag can expect. If he survives five years, I would be surprised.”

Milton nodded. He knew he was being baited. “You know so much about us, you must know that we’re not on the best of terms. He still works for the government. I don’t. We have nothing in common.”

“Please, Captain Milton, I don’t believe that. You have a long shared history. I can’t believe that stands for nothing. And there is an alternative for him. Freedom is not impossible, even for a man for whom there is no question of his guilt.”

Again, Milton said nothing.

“Are you not interested?”

“I don’t like being played, Anna, and you would be wasting your time.”

“We know what happened between you and Control. We know that you tried to leave the Group and that he wants you dead because of it. All we want is the chance to talk to you. We have some questions which require answers. We would not ask for any operational knowledge and no agent will be put at risk. You might consider yourself to be a consultant. Some of the questions, if you answer them, they will embarrass Control, but mightn’t that be of use to you? We know that his stock is not high with your government at the moment. Your absconding has damaged his reputation. If he was replaced, perhaps the standing order to have you killed would be rescinded, too?”

“I doubt that.”

“Nevertheless…”

“What questions?”

“That is not for me to say. My superior wants to speak to you. His name is Colonel Shcherbatov. Do you know him?”

“No.”

“He is in Moscow. It would not be a simple thing for him to come here. Not as simple as it would be for me, in any event.”

“You want me to go to Moscow?”

“There is a flight from Houston to New York in the morning. We would take it and then transit to a flight to Moscow. I have a new passport for you. A cover story, should one be needed.”

“I’m not going to Moscow,” he said. “You’re out of your mind.”

“Think about Captain Pope. Think about what you could do for him. He has a wife, I understand. Two young children. You have it in your power to return their father to them. Sleep on it, Captain Milton. See if you feel the same way in the morning. Perhaps you will have changed your mind.”