Without Remorse

  Zacharias almost stumbled. His posture made it hard to look up, and he didn’t see the truck until he was only a few feet away. It was a beat-up Russian vehicle, with fence wire over the top, both to prevent escape and to let people see the cargo. They were going somewhere. Robin had no real idea where he was and could hardly speculate on where he might go. Nothing could be worse than this place had been—and yet he’d survived it somehow, Robin told himself as the truck rumbled away. The camp faded into the darkness, and with it the worst trial of his life. The Colonel bowed his head and whispered a prayer of thanksgiving, and then, for the first time in months, a prayer for deliverance, whatever form it might take.

  “That was your doing, Mr. Clark,” Ritter said after a long, deliberate look at the phone he’d just replaced.

  “I didn’t exactly plan it that way, sir.”

  “No, you didn’t, but instead of killing that Russian officer you brought him back.” Ritter looked over at Admiral Greer. Kelly didn’t see the nod that announced the change in his life.

  “I wish Cas could have known.”

  “So what do they know?”

  “They have Xantha, alive, in Somerset County jail. How much does she know?” Charon asked. Tony Piaggi was here, too. It was the first time the two had met. They were using the about-to-be-activated lab in east Baltimore. It would be safe for Charon to come here just one time, the narcotics officer thought.

  “This is trouble,” Piaggi observed. It seemed facile to the others until he went on. “But we can handle it. First order of business, though, is to worry about making our delivery to my friends.”

  “We’ve lost twenty kees, man,” Tucker pointed out bleakly. He knew fear now. It was clear that there was something out there worthy of his fear.

  “You have more?”

  “Yeah, I have ten at my place.”

  “You keep it at home?” Piaggi asked. “Jesus, Henry!”

  “The bitch doesn’t know where I live.”

  “She knows your name, Henry. We can do a lot with just a name,” Charon told him. “Why the hell do you think I’ve kept my people away from your people?”

  “We’ve got to rebuild the whole organization,” Piaggi said calmly. “We can do that, okay? We have to move, but moving’s easy. Henry, your stuff comes in somewhere else, right? You move it in to here, and we move it out of here. So moving your operation is not a big deal.”

  “I lose my local—”

  “Fuck local, Henry! I’m going to take over distribution for the whole East Coast. Will you think, for Christ’s sake? You lose maybe twenty-five percent of what you figured you were going to take in. We can make that up in two weeks. Stop thinking small-time.”

  “Then it’s a matter of covering your tracks,” Charon went on, interested by Piaggi’s vision of the future. “Xantha is just one person, an addict. When they picked her up she was wasted on pills. Not much of a witness unless they have something else to use, and if you move to another area, you ought to be okay.”

  “The other ones have to go. Fast,” Piaggi urged.

  “With Burt gone, I’m out of muscle. I can get some people I know—”

  “No way, Henry! You want to bring new people in now? Let me call Philly. We have two people on retainer, remember?” Piaggi got a nod, settling that issue. “Next, we have to keep my friends happy. We need twenty kees’ worth of stuff, processed and ready to go, and we need it right fast.”

  “I only have ten,” Tucker noted.

  “I know where there’s some more, and so do you. Isn’t that right, Lieutenant Charon?” That question shook the cop badly enough that he forgot to tell them something else that concerned him.

  36

  Dangerous Drugs

  It was a time for introspection. He’d never done anything like this before at the behest of others, except for Vietnam, which was a different set of circumstances altogether. It had required a trip back to Baltimore, which was now as dangerous a thing as any he’d ever done. He had a new set of ID, but they were for a man known to be dead, if anyone took the time to check them out. He remembered almost fondly the time when the city had been divided into two zones—one relatively small and dangerous, and the other far larger and safe. That was changed. Now it was all dangerous. The police had his name. They might soon have his face, which would mean that every police car—there seemed an awful lot of them now—would have people in it who might spot him, just like that. Worse still, he couldn’t defend himself against them, he could not allow himself to kill a police officer.

  And now this ... Things had become very confused today. Not even twenty-four hours earlier he’d seen his ultimate target, but now he wondered if it would ever be finished.

  Maybe it would have been better if he had never begun, just accepted Pam’s death and gone on, waiting patiently for the police to break the case. But no, they would never have broken it, would never have devoted the time and manpower to the death of a whore. Kelly’s hands squeezed the wheel. And her murder would never have been truly avenged.

  Could I have lived the rest of my life with that?

  He remembered high school English classes, as he drove south, now on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. Aristotle’s rules of tragedy. The hero had to have a tragic flaw, had to drive himself to his fate. Kelly’s flaw ... he loved too much, cared too much, invested too much in the things and the people who touched his life. He could not turn away. Though it might save his life, to turn away would inevitably poison it. And so he had to take his chances and see things through.

  He hoped Ritter understood it, understood why he was doing what he had been asked to do. He simply could not turn away. Not from Pam. Not from the men of BOXWOOD GREEN. He shook his head. But he wished they’d asked someone else.

  The parkway became a city street, New York Avenue. The sun was long since down. Fall was approaching, the change of seasons from the moist heat of mid-Atlantic summer. Football season would soon begin, and baseball end, and the turning of the years went on.

  Peter was right, Hicks thought. He had to stay in. His father was taking his own step into the system, after a fashion, becoming the most important of political creatures, a fund-raiser and campaign coordinator. The President would be reelected and Hicks would accumulate his own power. Then he could really influence events. Blowing the whistle on that raid was the best thing he had ever done. Yeah, yeah, it was all coming together, he thought, lighting up his third joint of the night. He heard the phone ring.

  “How’s it going?” It was Peter.

  “Okay, man. How’s with you?”

  “Got a few minutes? I want to go over something with you.” Henderson nearly swore to himself—he could tell Wally was stoned again.

  “Half an hour?”

  “See you then.”

  Not a minute later, there was a knock on the door. Hicks stubbed out his smoke and went to answer it. Too soon for Peter. Could it be a cop? Fortunately, it wasn’t.

  “You’re Walter Hicks?”

  “Yeah, who are you?” The man was about his age, if somewhat less polished-looking.

  “John Clark.” He looked nervously up and down the corridor. “I need to talk to you for a few minutes, if that’s okay.”

  “What about?”

  “BOXWOOD GREEN.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s some things you need to know,” Clark told him. He was working for the Agency now, so Clark was his name. It made it easier, somehow.

  “Come on in. I only have a few minutes, though.”

  “That’s all I need. I don’t want to stay too long.”

  Clark accepted the waved invitation to enter and immediately smelled the acrid odor of burning rope. Hicks waved him to a chair opposite his.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “No, thanks, I’m fine,” he answered, careful where he put his hands. “I was there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was at SENDER GREEN, just last week
.”

  “You were on the team?” Hicks asked, intensely curious and not seeing the danger that had walked into his apartment.

  “That’s right. I’m the guy who brought the Russian out,” his visitor said calmly.

  “You kidnapped a Soviet citizen? Why the fuck did you do that?”

  “Why I did it is not important now, Mr. Hicks. One of the documents I took off his body is. It was an order to make preparations to kill all of our POWs.”

  “That’s too bad,” Hicks said with a perfunctory shake of the head. Oh—your dog died? That’s too bad.

  “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” Clark asked.

  “Yes, it does, but people take chances. Wait a minute.” Hicks’s eyes went blank for a moment, and Kelly could see that he was trying to identify something he’d missed. “I thought we had the camp commander, too, didn’t we?”

  “No, I killed him myself. That bit of information was given to your boss so that we could identify the name of the guy who leaked the mission.” Clark leaned forward. “That was you, Mr. Hicks. I was there. We had it wired. Those prisoners ought to be with their families right now—all twenty of them.”

  Hicks brushed it aside. “I didn’t want them to die. Look, like I said, people take chances. Don’t you understand, it just wasn’t worth it. So what are you going to do, arrest me? For what? You think I’m dumb? That was a black operation. You can’t reveal it or you run the risk of fucking up the talks, and the White House will never let you do that.”

  “That’s correct. I’m here to kill you.”

  “What?” Hicks almost laughed.

  “You betrayed your country. You betrayed twenty men.”

  “Look, that was a matter of conscience.”

  “So’s this, Mr. Hicks.” Clark reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag. In it were drugs he’d taken off the body of his old friend Archie, and a spoon, and a glass hypodermic needle. He tossed the bag into his lap.

  “I won’t do it.”

  “Fair enough.” From behind his back came his Ka-Bar knife. “I’ve done people this way, too. There are twenty men over there who ought to be home. You’ve stolen their life from them. Your choice, Mr. Hicks.”

  His face was very pale now, his eyes wide.

  “Come on, you wouldn’t really—”

  “The camp commander was an enemy of my country. So are you. You got one minute.”

  Hicks looked at the knife that Clark was turning in his hand, and knew that he had no chance at all. He’d never seen eyes like those across the coffee table from him, but he knew what they held.

  Kelly thought about the previous week as he sat there, remembering sitting in the mud generated by falling rain, only a few hundred yards from twenty men who ought now to be free. It became slightly easier for him, though he hoped never to have to obey such orders again.

  Hicks looked around the room, hoping to see something that might change the moment. The clock on the mantel seemed to freeze as he considered what was happening. He’d faced the prospect of death in a theoretical way at Andover in 1962, and subsequently lived his life in accordance with the same theoretical picture. The world had been an equation for Walter Hicks, something to be managed and adjusted. He saw now, knowing it was too late, that he was merely one more variable in it, not the guy with the chalk looking at the blackboard. He considered jumping from the chair, but his visitor was already leaning forward, extending the knife a few inches, and his eyes fixed on the thin silvery line on the parkerized blade. It looked so sharp that he had trouble drawing breath. He looked at the clock again. The second hand had moved, after all.

  Peter Henderson took his time. It was a weekday night, and Washington went to bed early. All the bureaucrats and aides and special-assistants-to rose early and had to have their rest so that they’d be alert in the management of their country’s affairs. It made for empty sidewalks in Georgetown, where the roots of trees heaved up the concrete slabs of sidewalk. He saw two elderly folk walking their little dog, but only one other, on Wally’s block. Just a man about his age, fifty yards away, getting into a car whose lawnmower sound marked it as a Beetle, probably an older one. Damned ugly things lasted forever if you wanted them to. A few seconds later he knocked on Wally’s door. It wasn’t fully closed. Wally was sloppy about some things. He’d never make it as a spy. Henderson pushed the door open, ready to reprove his friend, until he saw him there, sitting in the chair.

  Hicks had his left sleeve rolled up. His right hand had caught on his collar, as though to help himself breathe, but the real reason was on the inside of his left elbow. Peter didn’t approach the body. For a moment, he didn’t do anything. Then he knew he had to get out of here.

  He removed a handkerchief and wiped the doorknob, closed the door, and walked away, trying to keep his stomach under control.

  Damn you, Wally! Henderson raged. I needed you. And to die like this—from a drug overdose. The finality of death was as clear to him as it was unexpected. But there remained his beliefs, Henderson thought as he walked home. At least those hadn’t died. He would see to that.

  The trip took all night. Every time the truck hit a bump, bones and muscles screamed their protest. Three of the men were hurt worse than he was, two of them unconscious on the floor, and there wasn’t a thing he could do for them with his hands and legs bound up. Yet there was satisfaction of a sort. Every destroyed bridge they had to drive around was a victory for them. Someone was fighting back; someone was hurting these bastards. A few men whispered things that the guard at the back of the truck didn’t hear over the engine noise. Robin wondered where they were going. The cloudy sky denied him the reference of stars, but with dawn came an indication of where east was, and it was plain that they were heading northwest. Their true destination was too much to hope for, Robin told himself, but then he decided that hope really was something without limit.

  Kelly was relieved it was over. There was no satisfaction in the death of Walter Hicks. He’d been a traitor and coward, but there ought to have been a better way. He was glad that Hicks had decided to take his own life, for he wasn’t at all sure that he could have killed him with a knife—or any other way. But Hicks had deserved his fate, of that one thing he had no doubts. But don’t we all, Kelly thought.

  Kelly packed his clothing into the suitcase, which was large enough to contain it all, and carried it out to the rented car, and with that his residence in the apartment ended. It was after midnight when he drove south again, into the center of the danger zone, ready to act one last time.

  Things had settled down for Chuck Monroe. He still responded to break-ins and all manner of other crimes, but the slaughter of pushers in his district had ended. Part of him thought it was too bad, and he admitted as much to other patrolmen over lunch—in his case, the mercifully unnamed three-in-the-morning meal.

  Monroe drove his radio car in his almost-regular patrol pattern, still looking for things out of the ordinary. He noted that two new people had taken Ju-Ju’s place. He’d have to learn their street names, maybe have an informant check them out. Maybe the narcs from downtown could start making a few things happen out here. Someone had, however briefly, Monroe admitted, heading west towards the edge of his patrol area. Whoever the hell it was. A street bum. That made him smile in the darkness. The informal name applied to the case seemed so appropriate. The Invisible Man. Amazing that the papers hadn’t picked that one up. A dull night made for such thoughts. He was thankful for it. People had stayed up late to watch the Orioles sock it to the Yankees. He had learned that you could often track street crime by sports teams and their activities. The O’s were in a pennant race and were looking to go all the way on the strength of Frank Robinson’s bat and Brooks Robinson’s glove. Even hoods liked baseball, Monroe thought, perplexed by the incongruity but accepting it for the fact it was. It made for a boring night, and he didn’t mind. It gave him a chance to cruise and observe and learn, and to think. He knew all the regulars on the stree
t now, and was now learning to spot what was different, to eyeball it as a seasoned cop could, to decide what to check out and what to let slide. In learning that he would come to prevent some crimes, not merely respond to them. It was a skill that could not come too quickly, Monroe thought to himself.

  The very western border of his area was a north-south street. One side was his, the other that of another officer. He was about to turn onto it when he saw another street bum. Somehow the person looked familiar, though he was not one Monroe had shaken down several weeks earlier. Tired of sitting in his car, and bored with not having had anything more than a single traffic citation tonight, he pulled over.

  “Yo, hold up there, sport.” The figure kept moving, slowly, unevenly. Maybe a public-drunkenness arrest in the making, more likely a street person whose brain was permanently impaired by long nights of guzzling the cheap stuff. Monroe slid his baton into the ring holder and walked quickly to catch up. It was only a fifty-foot walk, but it was like the poor old bastard was deaf or something, he didn’t even hear the click of his leather heels on the sidewalk. His hand came down on the bum’s shoulder. “I said hold up, now.”

  Physical contact changed everything. This shoulder was firm and strong—and tense. Monroe simply wasn’t ready for it, too tired, too bored, too comfortable, too sure of what he’d seen, and though his brain immediately shouted The Invisible Man, his body was not ready for action. That wasn’t true of the bum. Almost before his hand came down, he saw the world rotate wildly from low-right to high-left, showing him a sky and then the sidewalk and then the sky again, but this time his view of the stars was interrupted by a pistol.

  “Why couldn’t you have just stayed in your fuckin’ car?” the man asked angrily.