Matt Hilton - Blood and Ashes

Walter came out from behind the desk, shaking each of our hands in turn like a politician on the campaign trail. ‘Sit down, sit down,’ he said, indicating leather chairs arranged along the wall.

Neither Rink nor I took him up on the offer, but Vince followed the order without comment. A few seconds later he must have felt a bit hemmed in because he shifted uncomfortably. He sat side-on, perched on the edge of the chair so he could see between our shoulders.

‘Anything to report?’ Walter’s expression said that he didn’t expect so.

‘Jim Lloyd was a dead end,’ I said. The corresponding grimace was for my choice of words. ‘If he was using the same draft facility as he did with Don Griffiths, then his computer will be clean, no way of tracing anything back to Hicks. We don’t have any other leads.’

Walter waved his cigar while he propped himself against the edge of his desk. ‘Then we have to concentrate on what we do know. We know what Hicks is planning and that it is going to happen very soon, the main difficulty is that we have no idea where.’

‘Don said it would be here. Manhattan.’

‘Manhattan is a big island,’ said Walter. ‘With a population of more than one and a half million people spread over twenty-three square miles, it would be almost impossible to find him in time to stop him.’

‘Sounds defeatist,’ I said.

‘Just being realistic, son.’

I snorted at Walter’s use of the term of endearment, hearing for the first time how empty it sounded. Walter didn’t catch the reason for my cynicism, maybe assuming that he hadn’t made himself clear. ‘Hicks won’t be acting alone. He’ll have his team working with him. Our emphasis is on finding them, and they’ll lead us to their boss.’

‘Vince tried that already,’ I said.

Vince got up from his chair, muscling between us to stand alongside Walter. ‘I have inside knowledge on their hangouts, it’s worth a try.’

‘What’s the likelihood of any of them being there, seeing as Hicks now realises you were a plant? They’ll have abandoned all the places that you were familiar with. Moved on.’

‘Not so many places a gang of skinheads can congregate without someone noticing,’ Rink offered.

‘I already thought of that and have the NYPD keeping a lookout.’ Walter glanced over his shoulder as one of his computers chimed the signal for an incoming message. He ignored it. ‘We’ve also coordinated with the Anti-Defamation League to see if they can give us any up-to-date information on the racist skinhead movement. SHARP is helping us too.’

‘Sharp?’

Vince offered an explanation. ‘Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice. Anti-racist skins, if you can believe such a thing exists?’

‘I can believe it,’ I said. The skinhead movement began back in the UK. Originally it had nothing at all to do with racism and hatred; it was a working-class social commentary, all about pride and respect. As a youth, I’d even dabbled in the scene before the National Front and BNP subverted the movement to their blinkered way of thinking. Here in the US, the neo-Nazi organisations had taken on the uniform of shaven head and braces, the Doc Marten boots, and had twisted it until anyone with less than flowing locks was now looked on as a thug. As a Para, there had been times when I was on the wrong end of abuse, simply because I had a military haircut. I didn’t react to the baiting, because my accusers spoke from ignorance. Even now, most people didn’t know that there were skins out there who held to the original values: decent, law-abiding people who hated their bonehead contemporaries.

‘What about Homeland Security?’

‘They’re concentrating on the other angle,’ Walter said.

‘Any proof in it yet?’

‘They tracked an incoming Russian freighter. Preliminary tests on board the ship have proved negative, but they can’t be sure. The captain swore ignorance but did admit to having brought a small group of passengers from Vladivostok. They jumped ship to a private vessel thirty miles offshore at Montauk, Long Island. Homeland and the CIA are currently studying satellite imagery to validate and track the trajectory of this phantom boat. We should have the results through soon.’ Walter studied the tip of his cigar like it was a divining tool that would offer up all the answers. ‘They’re treating this as serious, Hunter. The passengers were all North Korean and they made no secret of their hatred of the USA. They were carrying a “very heavy” box between them when they disembarked at Montauk.’

‘It’s a lead-lined box?’ I asked. ‘Then the probability is that they have supplied Hicks just as Lloyd warned.’

Walter nodded glumly. ‘That’s the problem with allowing the Koreans to continue running their nuclear programme. We can never be sure that their due diligence process will be as stringent as ours. If Lloyd was right and there is a black market trade in by-products, well, I hate to think what that means.’

‘Lloyd was more specific than that. He said that Hicks wanted a plutonium isotope. If they’ve got their hands on the makings of an atomic bomb… Jesus.’

Walter’s eyes clouded as though searching distant memories and finding nothing he liked. ‘You ask me, Hicks doesn’t have the technology or expertise for that. But it doesn’t really matter.’

‘Not when they have the makings of a dirty bomb,’ I finished for him. ‘Can you imagine the devastation that could cause on this island?’

‘If we don’t find him soon, we won’t have to imagine anything.’

Back in my days with Arrowsake I’d been put through an ABC warfare survival training programme. It comprised a number of technical sessions, interminable hours of videotaped instructions delivered by a morose voice-over. By the time it was finished I’d gained a multitude of injections jabbed into my veins and the knowledge that without the full protection of a hazmat suit I’d be fucked whether in the blast zone or not. If Hicks’ plan came to fruition, Manhattan wasn’t going to be the place to be for decades to come.

A few days ago, running through the woods and cutting down my enemies, now that was my idea of combat, not being torn apart from within by a creeping isotope infecting my cells with cancer. I stole a glance at Rink. My friend shouldn’t have been here, he should’ve been back in the relative safety of Florida, but I wouldn’t say as much; Rink would be offended, and stick around out of sheer stubbornness.

‘We’d best get looking,’ I said.

‘There’s a place on Forty-Third Street I’d like to check, where some of Sam Gant’s buddies used to hang out,’ Vince said. ‘Maybe we can squeeze a location out of them that we aren’t already aware of.’

‘I’m all for squeezing,’ Rink said. ‘Lead the way, Special Agent.’

I was all for getting moving. The longer we dallied here the easier it was for Hicks to put his plan into motion. But bashing in the door of a skinhead clubhouse wasn’t the way. Anyone who was important to Hicks’ plan would be working from a strict set of instructions, primarily one that demanded total secrecy. Smacking heads would alleviate some of our frustration, but that would be all. Time was too short for that. Maybe even too short for me to make a phone call.

My relationship with Imogen Ballard was one we both recognised as being a shared convenience of comfort and friendship. When we first made love, I had wondered if she thought of her lost lover the way I did of her sister, Kate. But had her memory faded, and when we were together, did she now lose herself totally in me the way I’d reciprocated of late? I knew that I loved her, not with the full-on passion I’d found with Kate, or the lifetime devotion I felt for my ex-wife, Diane, but I loved her nonetheless. The least she deserved was a goodbye.