Cowboy Angels (20 page)

‘I think it would be a waste of good bourbon.’

‘I think you’re right.’ Tom took a last swig and threw the bottle away with a stiff-armed toss. Saying, as it thumped on grass somewhere in the dark, ‘There are other ways of bringing back the dead - if this works out you’ll see what I mean soon enough. Besides, in some other sheaf, the poor schmuck is still alive. He missed that tree, or the fucker supposed to cut his brakes had a heart attack on the way, or I didn’t start this thing, or they caught me early and disposed of me. We made a difference? Maybe in a dozen or so sheaves, but what’s that in the face of infinity? You might as well try to raise the sea level by taking a piss in the ocean.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tom.’

‘Suppose I told you that there are people in the Company doing things far worse than anything the Church Committee ever accused us of?’

‘Let me bring you in, Tom. You can talk about everything then.’

‘I took a big enough risk luring you out here. You and Linda. I asked her, what do people in the Company say when they discover she’s the daughter of Tom Waverly? Know what she said? If they’re smiling, she tells them that she’s very proud; if they aren’t smiling, she tells them it’s none of their business. And if they push it, she tells them to go to hell.’

‘From what I’ve seen, she has the makings of a good officer.’

‘Help her out, Adam. That’s all I ask.’

‘Is this something to do with what you guys were talking about, back in the motel room?’

‘You want to know why I’ve been killing Eileen Barrie’s doppels? It isn’t because of what she did to me, although that was bad enough. What it is, I’m trying to make a difference. I’m trying to save myself from myself. I’m trying to make sure that when you lift the lid on that dumb box Prof Lehman told us about, the cat’ll be alive and well. Are you afraid, Adam?’

‘Of you? A little.’

‘I’ve killed eighteen people for the Company. Sometimes I was close enough to feel their last breath on my face. And I’ve killed other people too. After I got you back from Jack Walker and his grim little band of ecowarriors, I killed General E. Everett McBride. Poisoned his whiskey with ricin. The fucker went out a lot more quickly than some of the teenage girls he raped and murdered.’

In the quiet dark of the cemetery, Tom Waverly was calling up all his ghosts. Stone, afraid that his friend was looking for judgement or had already passed judgement on himself, said, ‘I’ll help Linda any way I can, Tom. And I can help you, too, if you’ll let me.’

‘Knightly found out about McBride, he also found out about a little something I had going on the side, and he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Either I went to work for him, or I’d be hung out to dry. All the people I killed, it was the one who deserved it most, General E. Everett fucking McBride, rapist, murderer, self-righteous scum of the earth, who fucked me up. Want to know why I killed Nathan Tate? Because he’d gone over to the dark side. He was one of them. And God help me, I was one of them too.’ Tom looked at Stone across the grave of his doppel. ‘Know why I wanted you to come here? Because this is all your fault. Because, back when SWIFT SWORD kicked off, you shouldn’t have stopped me. You should have let me go out in a blaze of glory.’

Stone understood. ‘You were running away from Knightly.’

‘You got to ease your conscience in front of the Church Committee, ’ Tom said, bitterness colouring his voice for the first time. ‘You got to retire. I got Knightly, telling me I could work for him or spend the rest of my life in jail.’

‘You staged a disappearance because you were working for Knightly on some black op within the Company, something the DCI doesn’t know about. And you carried on working for this black op after Knightly was indicted, and had his stroke.’

‘Something like that.’

‘And Eileen Barrie was part of this thing too.’

‘I wish I could tell you everything, Adam. But if I do it might not work out the way it’s supposed to. Besides, I believe we’ve run out of time. Listen.’

Stone heard it: the faint wail of a siren twisting somewhere in the night. ‘I guess Linda woke up.’

‘My little girl wouldn’t turn me in.’

The siren was growing louder, getting closer.

‘Come with me, Tom. I can get you out of this.’

‘I wish you could.’

Stone knew with sudden cold certainty what Tom Waverly was planning. ‘Let me help you. We’ll talk everything through, figure out what to do.’

‘It isn’t any big thing. A couple of gates, a clandestine research facility, a question of delivering a few good men and a few megatons to the right place at the right time . . . You don’t believe me. You think I’m crazy. You want to know more, ask Welch about Operation GYPSY. Ask Kohler.’

‘I’m not here to pass judgement on you, Tom.’

Blue lights whirled beyond the trees at the edge of the cemetery.

‘We did some good work together, Adam. That’s really why I wanted you to come out here. Because here at the end I’ve become a sentimental son of a bitch. Because I know you’re a good, capable operator. Because I know you’ll help Linda.’

Stone shifted his stance, lifting onto the balls of his feet. Sweat pricked his palms. ‘Don’t do this to me, Tom.’

‘Listen to her. Trust her. Help her.’

‘I won’t let you do this to me.’

‘I wish I could have told you everything. I wish I could have told Linda everything. But I’m pretty sure this is the way it has to be,’ Tom said.

Stone made his move, but although Tom was sick and drunk, and much slower and weaker than he’d been in the good old days when he’d trained the rest of the cowboy angels in hand-to-hand combat, he was still a formidable opponent. He pivoted as Stone crashed into him, used Stone’s momentum to swing him around and send him sprawling, and gave him a love tap on the back of his head with the grip of the .38 as he went down. Stone rolled, came up in a crouch, dizzy and dazed, his head ringing from the blow. He saw Tom stick the .38 under his chin, saw an orange spark and heard the shot. Something spattered across the grass and Tom collapsed across the grave of his doppel.

As Stone lifted his friend’s wrist, trying and failing to find a pulse, a spotlight ignited in the dark beyond the cemetery. Its beam swept across rows of headstones, flared in his eyes. He let go of Tom Waverly’s wrist and stood up slowly, raising his hands above his head.

By the time David Welch arrived, in the first of two Company helicopters that touched down on the green in front of the church, the scene had turned into a circus. Police vehicles, a pair of ambulances, and the town’s fire truck were parked nose-to-tail alongside the cemetery. State troopers and sheriff’s deputies were holding back a crowd of rubbernecking citizens in dressing gowns and overcoats. The county sheriff had arrived, his uniform buttoned over pyjamas, and was threatening to arrest Stone for refusing to cooperate.

Welch turned his charm on the sheriff and shook hands with the town constable. As far as the locals were concerned, the man was the hero of the hour. Despite being handcuffed, he’d managed to break down the door of the cupboard in which he’d been locked by Stone and Tom Waverly, and put out a call on his radio that had sent every available police officer racing to his aid. Welch listened to his story, shook his hand again and said something that made him smile, then took Stone aside and asked for his version of events.

When Stone was done, Welch said, ‘We didn’t want it to go down like this, but I guess we’ll have to play it as it lays.’

‘Meaning I screwed the pooch, so I’ll be blamed for any blowback,’ Stone said.

‘You’re upset. It’s completely understandable.’

‘Tom shot himself right in front of me. Of course I’m upset. But that doesn’t mean I can’t think straight or see what’s going on.’

A white sedan drew up and Linda Waverly and a woman in a black skirt suit climbed out. When she spotted Stone, Linda broke away from her escort and ran to him and started to hit him, hard shots to his ribs and breastbone.

‘Tell me the locals shot him! Tell me it was some fucking Company sharpshooter!’

Stone caught her wrists and told her how sorry he was.

Her hot gaze searched his face for a moment. Then she let him gather her into his arms and said in a fierce whisper, ‘You have to make sure we leave this sheaf together.’

‘It’s over, Linda. I did what I could, and I’m sorrier than I can say that it wasn’t good enough, but there it is. It’s over.’

‘It isn’t over. Not yet. Promise you’ll come with me, Mr Stone. Please. Help me help my father.’

‘What did he ask you to do, Linda? Back at the motel, after he asked me to leave the room, what kind of story did he spin?’

Linda had been convinced that the only way to save her father’s life was to turn him over to the Company. That was why she’d told Welch about Stone’s plan. That was why she’d worn a bug. And now, after she’d spent a few minutes alone with Tom, she was asking Stone to go on the run with her.

‘I can’t explain everything, Mr Stone,’ she said. ‘Not yet. But if you come with me, if you trust me, you can help me make things right.’

‘Whatever it was, you should give it up. It can’t hurt him now. It can only hurt you.’

Linda shook her head and pulled free, saying loudly, ‘You let him die, you son of a bitch!’

Right behind Stone, Welch said, ‘I’m truly sorry to have to ask this, Linda, but the local ME wants you to identify your father’s body.’

Stone told Welch to give them a few minutes, but Linda said she wanted to get it over with. Her gaze met Stone’s for a moment, cool and determined and unforgiving, and then she allowed Welch to lead her toward the floodlit corner of the cemetery where her father’s body sprawled aslant the grave of his doppel.

 

One helicopter took away Linda Waverly and her father’s body; the other flew Stone and David Welch to New York. As it cut through the night, Stone tried his best to make sense of everything and work out all the angles. Assume that for whatever reason - coercion, blackmail, misplaced idealism - Tom had been recruited into a black op run by a circle of plotters inside the Company. He’d been unhappy, he’d been looking for a way out, and then he’d fallen terminally ill, decided that he had nothing to lose, and gone on the run. Okay, but why had he been killing Eileen Barrie’s doppels? Maybe he’d wanted to draw attention to the conspiracy in which they had both been involved, or maybe he’d been killing them simply for revenge, because of something the Real version of Eileen Barrie had done to him, but neither explanation seemed quite right. If Tom had wanted revenge, why hadn’t he simply killed the Real Eileen Barrie? And if he’d wanted to expose the conspiracy, why hadn’t he turned himself in and started talking?

Perhaps Tom had found out that the Company already knew about the conspiracy, Stone thought. Perhaps he didn’t want to spend what little time he had left being interrogated by a debriefing team. Or perhaps it had something to do with whatever it was Tom had refused to tell him.

I wish I could tell you everything, Adam, but if I do it might not work out the way it’s supposed to
.

Tom Waverly had let Stone know that he hadn’t told him the whole story, he’d had a private conversation with his daughter . . . Chills chased each other up and down Stone’s spine. Chains of tiny cold lightnings. Suppose Linda was a cutout? Suppose Tom had given her a vital piece of information that only Stone could understand?

By now, Stone was having trouble connecting one thought to the next. He was bone tired, recent memories he didn’t want to look at crowded the edges of his mind like shadows around an unsteady candle flame, and in any case he wasn’t sure how much of Tom Waverly’s story was true. Well, if Tom had been trying to set something up, it didn’t matter now. Tom had killed himself, and Stone was bitterly sorry for it, but he wasn’t going to let himself be drawn into his old friend’s paranoid games. He would give up everything at the debriefing interview, try to protect Linda as best he could from the consequences of her father’s last throw of the dice, and then he’d go home and try to put it all behind him.

At last, the heaped lights of New York rose out of the dark. The helicopter followed the black curve of the East River, flew over the Triborough Bridge and the Queensboro Bridge, and stooped toward the spotlit helipad on top of the Pan-American Alliance Assembly Building, a glass and steel skyscraper that stood on what had once been the United Nations Plaza.

Ralph Kohler was waiting for Stone on the windy rooftop. A tall man wearing gold-rimmed bifocals and an immaculate grey suit, he stepped out of a knot of aides and shook Stone’s hand and said he hoped that Stone would be able to make a preliminary statement right away.

‘I’m ready to talk, Mr Kohler,’ Stone said. ‘I’m ready to talk about everything. Especially Operation GYPSY.’

Kohler’s face gave away nothing. ‘I expect full candour,’ he said, and several large men closed around Stone and escorted him to the elevator.

They rode down to a sub-basement where a pair of officers, Carol Dvorak and Joseph Carella, were waiting in an interview room. Stone made only a token protest when it became clear that neither Kohler nor Welch were going to sit in on the debriefing; he was certain that they would be watching from the other side of the mirrored window in one of the green cinder-block walls.

Carella set a cup of coffee in front of Stone and switched on the video camera, Dvorak studied her palmtop computer for a moment, and then they were off. It quickly became clear that the two officers weren’t interested in why Stone had fled the scene in the Port Authority Bus Terminal, why he’d taken Linda Waverly with him and changed cars to lose the people tailing them, or what Linda had whispered to him in that final clinch outside the cemetery where her father had killed himself. They were interested only in what Tom Waverly had told him during their brief reunion. Stone took them through it slowly and carefully, giving them everything he could remember, but he ran out of patience after he finished his story and Dvorak insisted on going over it again.