The Bergamese Sect (26 page)

‘
Where’s that goddam coffee, bitch!’

Suddenly a man who’d been seated quietly by the window got up and came quickly over to the counter. His long stride didn’t falter as he approached, his serious expression remaining steady.

The trucker noticed him and greeted him sarcastically. ‘Howdy, pardner!’ he said loudly.

But the man wasn’t perturbed. He stopped inches from the lout’s face, slowly leant toward him, and whispered something gently.

Immediately the trucker’s face dropped, his body jolted. The blood drained visibly from the web of red capillaries that mottled his cheeks. He stood, stepping back from the tall man, staring at him in utter dread, and then rushed out the door.

As the man returned to his seat, the other customers watched his steady expression. They were unsure whether to applaud, for something about the stranger was just as menacing as the ruffian he’d ejected. His stride was precise and strong, the face aloof and uncompromising. An air of explosive determination seemed to hang about him. The customers watched the tall stranger sit down then returned to their meals, still faintly anxious at his presence.

Jeff Lewis pulled his dark jacket over his shoulders, hid his face from the customers, and glanced at Linsky.

‘
What did you say?’ his colleague asked in a whisper.

‘
I told him the place was staked out for a drug bust and if he didn’t shut his mouth I’d shove my hand up his ass there and then.’

Linsky restrained the urge to laugh, but allowed himself a wide grin.

The two NSA agents watched out the window as the terrified lout jumped in the cab of his eighteen-wheeler, tore out of the parking lot and joined the Trans-Canadian Highway.

The diner stood just outside Calgary, on the main route up toward Banff and the Rockies. It catered for truckers bound for Vancouver, the countless Winnebagoes ascending into the lush alpine valleys. Outside, the traffic was racing by in the failing evening sunshine, loud and furious.

Lewis had heard enough from the idiot at the counter. The guy was a nobody who believed the world owed him a slice of notoriety. Whereas Lewis was a professional stalker who’d held a gun to the heads of terrorists, who’d used jerks like him as chips in a game of poker. No schmuck with a mouth and an ego was going to spoil his cup of coffee. Shit, thought Lewis, if he’d had a weapon, he’d have stuck it in the trucker’s mouth and told him to say cheese!

It had been five days since that train journey in Poland – since Lewis had watched his quarry falling into the black night. They’d got off the Budapest train safely as it slowed at a junction north of Sosnowiec. Traipsing through miles of dry farmland, they’d finally reached the river in the early morning light. There they scoured the banks for signs of exit, convinced they would only find three sodden bodies draped on the grass. But by a small jetty, they’d picked up the trail; three sets of footprints squelched into the mud. They’d traced them several miles through a thicket to a farmer’s house. An old man had come out and they’d questioned him in their stilted Polish. He’d seen them, two men and a girl, given them shelter and something to eat, helped dress a gunshot wound. The farmer had grinned at the sight of the
Zlotych
with which Lewis had played, inviting the details.

For two more days, Lewis and Linsky had followed, racing through the Polish countryside toward Krakow. But on that journey, they hadn’t been alone. Lewis was sure someone was only miles behind them, even since that first morning sloshing about on the banks of the river.

‘
We should make a move.’ It was Linsky talking.

‘
There’s no rush,’ Lewis answered.

He thought for a moment then whipped out a small device from his jacket. A small black slab with a touch-screen, a rubber aerial and a few illuminated buttons. It was a compact GPS receiver, triangulating the signals from an array of satellites high above the Earth. But it was no GPS receiver from
Radio Shack
. Rather than giving the holder’s position, it indicated the location of a tiny radio beacon, unobtrusively stuck to a renegade’s bag. A renegade who at this moment was racing with that traffic toward the distant Rockies, unaware that her every movement was visible to agent Lewis of the NSA. At the airport in Krakow, Lewis had brushed past the subversives, finally getting a spike on the girl. It was a lifeline.

‘
They’re not going to get far. Let’s finish our coffee,’ Lewis said.

Linsky took a swig from his cup and bent down between his legs, reaching for the aluminium communications case. ‘We should try Walsh again,’ he said.

‘
What’s the point?’

They’d tried to contact Walsh every day for the past five days. They’d used every possible means, but nothing. First, they’d gone through Dougherty’s. But the operator’s response had said everything.
We don’t deliver past 12th Street
. It meant their access to the NSA had been denied; the usual route disabled for whatever reason. No explanation.

In desperation, they’d even tried Walsh direct, phoning his office extension from an unsecured public call box in Toronto. But the number was unobtainable. Finally, they’d called his mobile number, but the same thing; the number unrecognised. That had unnerved Lewis.

And soon that nervousness had become almost physical. In Toronto, they’d checked into a hotel for a few hours rest. Lewis had switched on the TV, flicking through the countless channels until up popped CNN. The details were sketchy but something had happened the previous day – an explosion in DC.

‘
Surely they’ll have communications up by now,’ Linsky said.

‘
I’m not sure. The secure lines should have reverted to Fort Meade if there was any problem in DC. Walsh should be reachable, even if the entire complex was destroyed.’ Lewis looked out the window again at the evening traffic whizzing by. There was a distance in his eyes. ‘Something major has happened, Steve. I think Walsh may be out of contact for good.’

Linsky was nodding, took another slurp of coffee.

‘
Question is,’ Lewis continued, ‘why has our link gone down? We should be in contact on a backup router. The hotel refused my credit card yesterday. Looks like our funds are frozen too. That makes me really suspicious.’

‘
There’s not much we can do about it.’

‘
I know. Walsh told us to keep tracking the target, to protect him. He said if we were out of touch, to assume our orders hadn’t changed. And that’s what we’re going to do.’

‘
Sure, but what about those guys following us? We need to know if we should take them out.’

‘
I know, I know,’ Lewis said with just a glimmer of annoyance in his voice.

‘
It didn’t take them long to catch up with the target.’

‘
No, it didn’t, and that worries me too. After that incident on the train, with both their guys killed, they’d have to bring more people in at short notice. I can’t see how they picked up the scent so quickly. It took us a few days, and we were right on top of them. There’s something very strange going on. We’ll just have to wait for Walsh to contact us, if he can.’

Linsky shrugged his shoulders and took another sip of coffee. ‘We’re gonna need some equipment,’ he said.

They’d only risked bringing their communications case through Canadian customs. Everything else they’d dumped on approaching the airport at Krakow.

‘
Yeah.’

‘
And some weapons.’

‘
I know.’

Lewis looked at the small GPS receiver in his hand again, noting the position of a small cross on the map on its display. It was edging along a black line, the highway.

‘
We’ll take a detour back into Calgary, contact the local CIA field agent and get him to help us out. Make some requisitions. It shouldn’t be difficult. C’mon, drink up.’

They finished their coffee and stood, grabbed their possessions and headed for the door.

―
§ ―

Two thousand miles away, in Massachusetts, another stream of traffic was cruising north along US3. The procession of vehicles was sparse and slow moving. People returning late after a day’s business in Boston – a few weekenders heading up to Vermont. No one was rushing their journey. Darkness had just fallen and the headlights picked out the tree-lined shoulders in a seamless flow of illumination.

In one of the cars, Larry Walsh gripped the wheel like a man possessed. His stare was glazed, his mind focussed on the mission before him. He’d been out on his own before, had dealt with more hopeless situations than this, but this time the stakes were much higher.

After he’d escaped that nightmare on Virginia Avenue, he’d got out of the metropolis as quickly as possible. He’d made only one stop – at a motel just north of Hyattsville where he kept a room on permanent rental. There he’d gathered his other identities. There was a stack of credit cards in various names, registered in various states. Several passports, identity cards and driving licences, numerous birth and marriage certificates, false bank statements. In the modern utopia of the West, you didn’t exist without the paperwork to prove it, and Walsh had reams of it.

He was riding in a car leased to a postal worker from Rhode Island. Paid for in cash. Tomorrow he’d dump the car a few blocks from another
Alamo
office, pick up another vehicle with a different identity. A blue-collar manager from Maine, paying by
American Express
.

It was all part of the method. Give your enemy no reason to make the connections that revealed your presence. Remain anonymous; make your trail complex and disjointed.

Yesterday, he’d pulled into a New Haven suburb and bought some supplies. Essential items for the mission now formulating in his mind. A few prepaid phones, a laptop and tape reader; casual clothes. Again, he’d paid cash withdrawn from a bank account only he knew existed.

The bright light of the laptop screen had filled his cheap motel room like the full moon. He’d sat long into the night, sifting through megabytes of documentation, piecing together snippets of information. Sidestepping the irrelevant, his expertise gathered strength, homing in on Sewell’s persona like a heat-seeking missile.

The Chairman was a hard nut to crack. There was almost nothing to implicate him. Almost. But in the early hours, as the orange sun peeked through the gap in the curtains, Walsh had him. Associations, investigations, indiscretions adding up like coalescing droplets of mercury, guiding him to an inevitable conclusion. A stunning conclusion.

The lights of the traffic were almost sending him to sleep. He shook himself awake, glanced at the dashboard clock. It was past nine and he suddenly remembered he hadn’t eaten since lunch. His stomach was tight with hunger.

Steering off the exit ramp at Nashua, he headed into the town. A few minutes’ drive and he’d found a shopping mall – one of those vast complexes with a parking lot that could house an airport terminal. The food court was still open. He went in, bought a turkey sandwich and a soda, came straight back out. He noticed a coin-operated newspaper rack by the entrance. Pulling out a couple of quarters, he crammed them in the slot, lifted the cover and grabbed a copy of
USA Today
.

Back in the car, Walsh sat in silence eating the sandwich and scanning the lead story. He read the words with no trace of emotion on his face.

Washington DC. Friday 20th. Authorities are still baffled by Wednesday’s attack on an office building in the heart of Washington. At least three people were killed and several injured in what has been described as ‘a well-planned assault by terrorists’.

Charles Meyer, FBI chief public affairs officer, said an explosion was heard at 4:45am Wednesday near the leased office building on Virginia Avenue. Police were on the scene within five minutes. The attack destroyed the entrance to the offices, killing a security guard. Meyer added ‘three government agents were shot inside the building and we’re still trying to locate a fourth official believed to have been present when the attack took place’.

Various financial sector companies occupied the Masheder building, which has now been sealed off pending forensic investigation. Officials would not comment on the purpose of the government installation housed within the building, except to say a branch of the central security services used the offices.

The FBI is currently coordinating efforts to establish the attacker’s identities. Local investigators, explosive experts and an evidence response team are already on the scene and a Marine Corps anti-terrorism unit is on route from Nebraska.

Whatever the identities or motives of the terrorists turn out to be, questions are already being asked in Congress how such an attack could take place barely two miles from the White House.

Walsh had expected nothing less of Sewell. It was an effective cover and one easily sold to both the media and the suits of Capitol Hill. Of course, Sewell would weave another story for the ears of Daedalus. But none of those nine men around the conference table would feel any remorse for Walsh’s loss. Sewell would ensure that.

Walsh had never supposed things would get this complicated – that his simple mission to find the truth would become so confusing. When Daedalus had first turned its attention to alien abduction, many years before Walsh’s time, things had been much simpler. The myth was still in its infancy and they thought the reality would turn out to be inane. One day a couple of college students would put up their hands and admit to the deception. It didn’t concern the men that sat at the pinnacle of the pyramid of intelligence. They were actually amused by it. The lonely highways, the drunken rednecks, the convenient amnesia. And funniest of all, the legend of the dark-suited angels of democracy, violently correcting the misinformed, concealing any trace of evidence. That was a myth they knew to be false and at first it had seemed quaint, even comical.