The Bergamese Sect (37 page)

He returned to the bright street and headed back toward the T station.

Logan Airport was only four stops away.

Chapter 21

The tyres of Walsh’s Pontiac Aztek crunched over the parking lot, spewing clouds of ochre dust into the air. The clean black rubber skidded to a halt, shooting pebbles against the wooden wall of a cabin. Walsh shut the engine off, removed his shades and glanced at his watch. It was just before 9am.

Five minutes ago, he hadn’t even been sure where he was headed. But coming down Golden’s main street, he’d spotted the Purcell motel cowering away from the road, and something had clicked into place. Lewis’ message in the
Globe
had been explicit –
Funeral Mass at Purcell 10th Avenue Church
. This was the place.

The motel had seen better days. The single-storey buildings were painted a sickly shade of brownish puce. They were featureless cabins, the windows shielded with dirty, torn nets, the doors damaged and chipped. The reception hut looked battered and uninviting.

Walsh checked the weapon under his jacket and jumped out. He took a deep lungful of mountain air. It smelt heady, almost spicy.

The parking lot held a couple of rusting, muddy pickups and an ancient blue Winnebago with no wheel trims. None of them would be Lewis’ Walsh thought to himself. A sparkling black Explorer was more his style.

There was movement in one of the windows. A hand came between the window and the curtain, waved slowly and deliberately up and down. Walsh pulled out his gun and approached the door of the motel room. He took the safety off and knocked lightly on the door.

The handle bent down and the door pulled inwards slowly. It was dark inside, only a few inches of floor visible. Walsh instinctively stepped away from the line of fire within.

‘
Walsh?’ a voice called, and the door swung back quickly. Lewis was standing in the shadows just inside, his own weapon at the ready. ‘Come in, quickly.’

Walsh jumped in and slammed the door behind him.

Lewis was beaming a smile. ‘Am I glad to see you?’ he said, slotting the gun back into his jacket.

‘
Likewise,’ replied Walsh, also slipping his weapon into its holster.

The room was quite large, though it was almost filled by a king size bed with a hideous orange and brown cover. A twenty-year-old TV was attached to the wall with a dangerous homemade iron bracket and the place had a fusty, damp smell that tickled Walsh’s nostrils angrily.

It was dark. Linsky was standing at the back wall. He reached out and switched on a bedside lamp.

‘
Where the hell have you been?’ Lewis asked, motioning for Walsh to come away from the door.

The Assistant Director moved into the room. ‘I’ll explain everything, just hold on,’ he said. ‘First of all, did you get rid of your implants?’

‘
Yes, but not without hassle.’ Lewis turned round briefly, showing Walsh the surgical dressing taped to an unsightly patch of shaved skin on the back of his head. ‘We went to the CIA field station in Calgary. They took the chips out but then tried to jump us.’

Walsh was nodding. ‘I’m not surprised.’

‘
I’m afraid we left a guy dead in Calgary. The doctor. Self-defence.’

‘
Don’t worry about it. When this is over I’ll make sure you’re not held responsible.’ Walsh fell silent, allowing the faint sound of morning traffic to buzz through the room.

‘
What’s happened Larry?’ asked Lewis.

The Assistant Director squeezed his eyes and looked at the two young men. They looked like they’d been through a spin dryer – their hair tangled and dirty, their faces unshaven and drawn. Lewis’ eyes were bloodshot, his unkempt appearance and washed-out complexion making him look like a tramp.

‘
Wait,’ Walsh said. ‘The target, where’s the target?’

‘
We had to leave them in the mountains. They went west, arrived in Vancouver last night. The target and two accomplices. We’ve got a spike on the girl.’ Lewis pointed to the GPS tracking device that was blinking away on the bed.

‘
Thank God. We can’t afford to lose him.’ The tension in Walsh’s shoulders eased.

‘
As long as he’s with the girl, we’ll be able to find him.’

‘
What were they doing up in the mountains?’

‘
Don’t know. A couple of them were fishing around on a glacier a few nights ago. We couldn’t see what they were doing. We had to leave; the men who attacked us in Warsaw were on to us. Your GSB arrived just in time to warn us. We headed straight into Calgary.’

Walsh was nodding again. He went silent, reassured. ‘Okay, we haven’t got much time,’ he said.

‘
For what, Larry?’ Lewis’ face was expectant.

There was a long sigh from Walsh. He brushed the hair over his brow, wiped the corners of his eyes again and plunged his body into a soft chair by the window.

‘
Okay,’ he said. ‘The target you’ve been following has information on the whereabouts of an anonymous informant codenamed Sebastian. A subversive group is intent on finding this informant and has abducted the target in order to track him down. But it’s vital we find the informant first and neutralise him. Argent was charged with finding him.’

Lewis frowned. ‘Who’s ‘Argent’?’ he said.

‘
Sorry. Argent is a code name for NSA covert operatives.’

‘
You mean us, right?’

Walsh smiled. ‘Yeah.’ Sometimes he forgot Daedalus had its own jargon. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘I discovered that a saboteur was trying to prevent me from reaching the target. That saboteur is a man in the security services, a very powerful man; one I thought I could trust implicitly. He found out it was you tracking the target and used your implants to locate you. It was his men who attacked you in Warsaw. Their orders are to kill you. When the saboteur realised I was onto him, he shut down all NSA covert operations.’

‘
He shut down the NSA?’

‘
Well, at least the stuff run out of Virginia Avenue.’

‘
How did he manage that?’

‘
By force. He stormed the Masheder complex with a bunch of gung-ho marines. I only just managed to escape.’ There was a look of total shock from both agents. ‘Petersen was killed,’ Walsh added.

Lewis’ face showed genuine grief. ‘Petersen?’

‘
Yeah, he was shot as we tried to get out.’

‘
Shit! He was a good man.’

Walsh nodded. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get to you sooner. I had no way of contacting you, to warn you of the danger.’

‘
I suppose this saboteur gave our descriptions to the CIA. That’s why we were attacked in Calgary,’ Lewis said.

‘
Yeah. As I say, he’s a powerful man. We probably have every security and law enforcement agency in the US looking out for us. And maybe some up here too. And I can guarantee they won’t want us taken alive if they find us.’

Lewis was biting his lip, thinking. ‘I guess this isn’t a hunt for paedophiles, or a campaign against white supremacists. Who’s this Sebastian and why are these men willing to kill to get to him?’

As he poured out his story, Walsh felt a strange emotion seeping through him. It tasted of panic, a fear that his words couldn’t possibly convey what was straining his soul, couldn’t possibly sound anything but delusional. To him his words sounded too animated, even hysterical. Mustering what composure he could, he tried to sound detached, like a newsreader concealing his emotion and partiality as a catastrophe unfolded before him. But still, Walsh thought he was too impassioned. The catastrophe was too much to witness with indifference.

He told them about the sinister reality of abduction, the anonymous defector’s quest to reveal a staggering truth, and the possibility that a secretive society were bedfellows of extra-terrestrial visitors. In chilling frankness, he described the world he foresaw if Sebastian’s truth were revealed – a world of instability and nihilism. A world torn apart by the destruction of the universal equilibrium between the known and the unknown, what humanity could and couldn’t accept.

When Walsh had finished, there was a full minute of silence from the agents. They were stunned. The gravity of the disclosure was drawing the blood from their skin.

‘
I intend to protect the world from this truth, for its own good,’ Walsh added, still staring at two men in total shock.

Eventually, Lewis drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly, his cheeks bulging comically. ‘That’s some scoop, Larry,’ he said.

Walsh blinked slowly. ‘I know. Don’t try and get used to it just now. And don’t ask for more explanation. Time isn’t on our side. I need your help and I could do without you two guys getting philosophical.’ He shot a look at Linsky, but the agent was staring blankly at the floor.

‘
Who are these subversives?’ Lewis asked.

‘
I’m not sure,’ Walsh replied. ‘Not a group we’ve previously been aware of. They’re conspiracy theorists as far as we can tell, though they seem to be much more polished than the usual suspects. We haven’t been able to infiltrate them. Sebastian obviously wants to use them for his final disclosure. The girl appears to be their ring-leader.’

‘
And the target?’

‘
An innocent guy. Sebastian is using him as a proxy, I guess as a kind of insurance policy.’

‘
Hold on,’ Lewis said suddenly, over Walsh’s final words. ‘This girl. You say she’s one of the subversives? Well, Steve and I have some suspicions about that. We think she might be in league with the guys who’ve been following us from Warsaw. We saw her talking with them on a train in Poland.’

‘
Are you sure?’ Walsh’s voice was tense.

‘
Well, it could be just a coincidence, but she was talking with two guys who later killed one of the subversives. I assume it’s the same people who’ve been trying to get rid of us.’

‘
Jesus!’ Walsh exclaimed. A sudden rush of panic shot through his chest, hanging there painfully, constricting his throat. ‘If you’re right, we’re in real trouble. The target is in mortal danger. He’s unaware the people he’s with are going to kill him. Once they have what they want. I thought that Sewell was tracking the target through you’re implants. But they’ve had people on the inside all along.’

‘
It seems your saboteur has got all the exits covered. Who is he?’

Lewis’ words shook Walsh out of his panic. ‘A guy called Sewell; Bob Sewell,’ he said. ‘He’s what you might call an untouchable; one of those powerful, anonymous figures that run the country from behind an impenetrable screen of security. When he caught me at the Masheder building he said he wasn’t protecting Sebastian, he wanted him found, but not by me. So I figure he’s part of the organisation that’s involved in the abductions. They want this renegade silenced before he exposes them.’

‘
Then we need to get moving. Extract this target.’

‘
No, wait,’ said Walsh. He was agitated. Standing, he began pacing around the room, rubbing the wrinkled skin of his neck nervously. ‘If there’s a chance of losing Sebastian and his information, Sewell will just kill the target to protect himself. If we try to extract him, he’s dead. If we leave him alone, he’s dead anyway.’

‘
Still,’ Lewis said, ‘whatever we decide to do, we can’t hang around any longer.’

Walsh nodded. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘You guys need to get off to Vancouver.’

‘
Aren’t you coming with us?’

Walsh shook his head. ‘No, I’m on the trail of Sewell’s organisation. I’ve got some suspicions about an academic society in New York. I think it’s a front for whatever Sewell’s doing. I need to sniff around there a bit.’

‘
And you’re just going to walk in there and ask what’s going on?’

‘
No,’ Walsh said quietly. ‘I’ll need some surveillance equipment – phone taps, cameras.’

‘
With respect, Larry, you’re a pen-pusher now. You don’t know how to surveil. For a start, you wouldn’t know how to operate up-to-date equipment. Things have moved on since Irangate you know.’

Walsh looked up with a strange half smile. ‘A pen-pusher and a retired office clerk? I’ll remember what you called me when I’m handing out the medals.’ Walsh turned several times on the spot. ‘Besides, it makes no difference anyway. We don’t have the sort of equipment we’d need.’

Lewis shot a glance at Linsky over his shoulder and both men smirked.

‘
I could tell you where to get some though,’ Lewis said casually.

‘
What do you mean?’

Lewis turned again to Linsky. ‘Chris Kaplan,’ he said. ‘He owes us a favour.’

Linsky nodded and smiled again. The two men understood each other.

‘
Who’s Chris Kaplan?’

‘
Don’t ask too many questions. You’ll have to trust us on this one.’

Walsh raised his eyebrows. He didn’t have to ask for explanation; his expression demanded it.

Lewis shrugged his shoulders. ‘We get our job done whatever the cost, and sometimes we’ve been known to employ the services of private individuals – individuals in the surveillance business.’

‘
Private investigators?’ Walsh asked, sounding scornful.

‘
We can’t be expected to be streetwise on every city corner. Sometimes we need external collaborators and lucky for us we have some favours to pull in.’

‘
That’s a severe dereliction of protocol, Jeff.’

‘
I know, but you’re not going to reprimand me. We have a job to do, and quite frankly, we’ve got no choice. This guy, Chris Kaplan, has the kind of equipment you’ll need. Don’t worry, he’s a patriot; he owes us a favour and he won’t ask any questions. And more to the point, no one in the security services will find out. He’s very discreet; he knows which side his bread is buttered. Believe me.’ Lewis and Linsky flashed each other another knowing gaze.