Dark Justice (2 page)

"The mortuary, waiting for the disposal team."

"Fine. Take care of it, Blake. This never happened. I don't want it on the front page of the
New York Times.
I'll order a plane to pick up you and Clancy. I want you back here as soon as possible so we can sort things out."

"Yes, Mr. President."

"And since it was our British cousins who alerted us to the existence of Morgan, you'd better telephone General Ferguson and let him know."

In London, it was four o'clock in the morning when the security phone rang at General Charles Ferguson's flat in
Cavendish Place
. He switched on the bedside light and answered.

"At such an appalling hour, I can only assume this is of supreme importance."

"It always is when it concerns the Empire, Charles."

It was the code word used to indicate the President in danger.

Ferguson was fully alert now and sat up. "Blake, my good friend. What happened?"

"Your information on Henry Morgan was dead-on. He tried to hit the President tonight, but Clancy and I stopped him. Unfortunately, he had a cyanide tooth, so he's no longer with us."

"Is the President all right?"

"Absolutely. As for Morgan, what's left of him will soon be six pounds of gray ash. I'll probably flush it down the toilet."

"You're a hard man, Blake, harder than I believed possible."

"It's the nature of the job, Charles, and the bastard did intend to assassinate the President. Anyway, thanks to you and the rest of the Prime Minister's Private Army, it's all come out fine. Thank them all for me: Hannah Bernstein, Sean Dillon, and Major Roper."

"Especially Roper on this one. The man's a genius on the computer."

"Got to run, Charles. I'll be in touch."

Blake put the phone down, and Romano entered carrying a videotape and several documents.

"Good man," Blake said.

"Not really." Romano lit a cigarette. "I'm smart enough to know my place, that's all."

Clancy had gone out to check the corridor and found two men in black coats pushing a gurney with a body bag on it.

One of them, a quietly cadaverous man, said, "Mr. Johnson?"

Blake leaned out of the office door. "He's all ready and waiting for you. Load him on and we'll see you at Highgrove. Tell Mr. Coffin to wait until we arrive."

"As you say, sir."

They moved away. Clancy said, "Coffin? Is that for real?"

"If it's the man I know, it certainly is." Romano smiled bleakly. "Fergus Coffin. I believe it's called life imitating art." At that moment, the gurney returned with what was obviously Henry Morgan in the body bag. "On your way now, gentlemen. I think I've had enough for one night."

In the mortuary at Highgrove, Blake and Clancy waited by the ovens. Fergus Coffin and an attendant pushed the gurney forward, the body still enclosed in the black body bag.

Blake said, "Open it."

Coffin nodded and his associate unzipped it, exposing the head. Henry Morgan it was.

"He looks at peace," Blake said.

"He would be, Mr. Johnson," Coffin told him. "Death is a serious business. I've devoted my life to it."

"No questions?"

"None. I've seen the presidential warrant, but it's more than that. You're a good man, Mr. Johnson. Every instinct tells me that. You've known great sorrow."

Blake, remembering a murdered wife, stiffened for a moment and then said, "How long?"

"With the new technology, thirty minutes."

"Then get on with it. Put him in, but I need to see." He held out the documents and video. "And these."

The other man opened one of the oven doors, Coffin pushed the gurney forward, Henry Morgan slid inside. Coffin pulled the gurney away, the glass door closed, a button was pressed. The oven flared at once, the gas jets peaking, and the body bag flared instantly, also the video and documents.

Blake turned to Clancy. "We'll wait," and led the way outside.

In the office, they smoked cigarettes. Clancy said, "You want coffee?"

"Not in a million years. A good stiff drink is what I need, but we'll have to wait until we're on the plane."

Rain hammered against the window. Clancy said, "Does it ever bother you, this kind of thing?"

"Clancy, I went to war for my country in Vietnam when I was very young and full of ideals. I never really regretted it. Someone had to do it. Now, all these years later, we're at war with the world--a world where global terrorism is the name of the game." He stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray. "And Clancy, I'll do anything it takes. I took an oath to my President and I take that to be an oath to my country." He smiled slightly. "Does that give you a problem?"

And Clancy Smith, once the youngest sergeant major in the Marine Corps, smiled. "Not in the slightest."

At that moment, the door opened and Coffin entered, holding a plastic urn. "Henry Morgan, six pounds of gray ash."

"Excellent," Blake said, and Clancy took the urn.

"Many thanks," Blake told Coffin. "Believe me, you've never done anything more important."

"I accept your word for that, Mr. Johnson," and Coffin went out.

"Let's go," Blake said, and added, "Bring the urn with you."

He led the way out to the parking lot, where the rain poured down relentlessly. They walked to their limousine, which was parked by what, in season, would obviously be a flower bed.

Blake said, "I was going to put those ashes down the toilet, but let's be more civilized and do something for next year's flowers."

"Good idea."

Clancy unscrewed the top of the urn and poured the ashes over the flower bed.

"I believe it's called strewing."

"I don't care what it's called. Washington next, so let's catch that plane."

WASHINGTON

Chapter 2.

But a cold front moving in from the Atlantic had done unmentionable things to the weather, and in spite of the rain, or because of it, low clouds produced heavy fog and closed things down at Kennedy.

Blake and Clancy made the best of things in one of the VIP lounges, dozing fitfully, but were still there at six the following morning when they got word that their Gulfstream had managed to get in.

As they walked out through the terminal, bags in hand, Clancy said, "There's no romance in this work anymore. I must have seen every James Bond movie on TV at one time or another, and he never got held up by bad weather at any airport, not once. Here we've got a Gulfstream, one of the classiest aircraft in the world, and it still couldn't get to us."

"Nature rules," Blake said. "Face up to it and shut up. We'll be on our way in fifteen minutes."

They rose up very quickly to thirty thousand feet. The crew was air force and their stewardess a young sergeant who introduced herself as Mary.

"Now, what can I get you gentlemen?"

"Well, I know it's only six-thirty in the morning," Blake told her, "but for very special reasons I think a bottle of champagne is in order. Could you manage that?"

"I think that could be arranged." She gave them a dazzling smile and moved down to the galley.

"We didn't do too badly, did we?" Clancy said. "Considering that the President could have been facedown on the pavement."

"That he isn't is due to Major Roper warning us that there was something fishy about Morgan in the first place. But I anticipated taking him alive, Clancy, squeezing the juice out of him."

"It's not your fault, Blake. We did everything right. The tooth thing was just unfortunate."

Sergeant Mary appeared with two glasses of champagne, which they took gratefully.

Blake toasted Clancy. "Let's hope the President agrees with you."

In Washington, the rain was even heavier when they arrived, but a limousine was waiting and they were taken through at once and on their way, moving along
Constitution Avenue
toward the White House. In spite of the weather, there was a sizable crowd of demonstrators, a kind of moonscape of umbrellas against the rain, shepherded by police.

"Which war are they protesting against?" Clancy asked.

"Who knows? There's some sort of war going on in nearly every country in the world these days. Don't ask me, Clancy. All I know is some people seem to make a profession out of protest."

The chauffeur lowered the glass screen that separated him from them. "Too difficult from the front, Mr. Johnson. May I try the East Entrance?"

"That's fine by me."

They turned up
East Executive Avenue
and stopped at the gate. Blake leaned out and the guard, recognizing him at once, waved them through. The East Entrance was much used by White House staff, especially when wishing to avoid the media. The limousine pulled up, Blake and Clancy got out and went up the steps. A young marine lieutenant was on duty, and a Secret Service agent named Huntley greeted them warmly.

"Mr. Johnson, Clancy. You're looking stretched, if I may say so."

"Don't ask," Blake said. "We spent most of the night stranded by fog at Kennedy, and the President's expecting us."

"You know where he is, sir, but I'll lead the way. It'll give my legs some exercise."

The President's secretary, a pleasant woman in her mid-forties, admitted them to the Oval Office, where they found Jake Cazalet in shirtsleeves at the desk, working his way through a raft of documents, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. He glanced up, smiled.

"The return of the heroes. Have you eaten?"

"Early breakfast at Kennedy. Congealed scrambled eggs and fries at five-thirty, and that was the VIP lounge," Blake said.

Cazalet laughed and turned to the secretary. "We can manage our own coffee, Millie, but speak to the chef and find them something exotic like bacon sandwiches."

"Of course, Mr. President."

She withdrew, and the President said, "Okay, gentlemen. Let's hear the worst."

"The worst didn't happen, Mr. President. The worst would have been Morgan shooting you from the first-floor window of Gould & Co. when you got out of your car outside Senator Harvey Black's town house to join him for dinner."

"Which invitation I canceled on your advice a week ago. You said then you wished to handle this business yourself. No one from the FBI, no police, no military. Even the head of the Secret Service was excluded, which makes it puzzling that you got away with using Clancy in this affair."

Clancy intruded. "I was served a presidential warrant, Mr. President, so I had to do as I was told."

"I have a stack of them in my safe," Blake said. "All signed by you."

"Really. And you just fill in a name?"

"Correct, Mr. President. You know how the Basement works."

During the Cold War, when it appeared the Communists were infiltrating at every level of government, the then-President had invented the Basement as a small operation answerable only to him. Since then, it had been handed from one President to another. It was one of his most valuable assets. All other agencies were tied up in rules and regulations, the legal system. This was not. The presidential warrant cut through the crap. People thought Johnson was a deskman. In fact, he had a file of names of ex-FBI and Secret Service men he could pull in on an ad hoc basis. He could connect at any time with General Charles Ferguson in London, who ran a similar organization for the British Prime Minister.

"I can, in effect, kill for you," Blake went on. "I can have, for example, someone like Morgan disposed of without a trace, but only if I'm left alone to do things my way. The war on terrorism can't be won unless we're willing to fight back on our own terms. Fight fire with fire."

"And where does that leave the rule of law?"

"I'm not sure. People at Al Qa'eda would have their own answer to that. All I know is that we won't beat them by playing patty-cake."

"Okay, I take your point. Tell me about this Morgan business. You said you didn't want me to know too many details before. Tell me now."

"It was Major Roper who came up with it."

"Yes, I know about him. The bomb-disposal hero who ended up in a wheelchair."

"And made a new career for himself in computers. Anything you want in cyberspace, Roper can find for you, but his great gift is developing new programs in which millions of facts can be overviewed in seconds. Take your evening out with Senator Black. The computer imaged that town house on Park Avenue, the surrounding properties. He then tapped in to every detail about the buildings, what was going on there, the personnel involved, and so on."

At that moment, Millie came in with a tray and the bacon sandwiches. "They smell good enough to eat, Millie. I might have one myself. Eat up, gentlemen, but carry on, Blake. What's so special about what Roper's up to, surely our people can do that?"

"Frankly, not as brilliantly as he can. His programs can show given nationalities, religious backgrounds, family, anything you want, and all at lightning speed. It also indicates anomalies, things that shouldn't be. It means his computer is thinking for itself and making deductions, but doing it at a speed beyond human comprehension."