Matt Hilton - Blood and Ashes

‘He deserved exactly what he got,’ I said. ‘He’s as responsible for the bombing as anyone, and do you think Hicks will be treated any differently when we find him?’

Vince jammed his hands in his suit pockets, staring down at the dead Korean. Kwon’s features had relaxed in death, his eyes rolling up as though trying to see the bullet hole in his forehead. ‘We could have learned much more from him. We could have traced the consignment of plutonium back to its source, found who was behind this.’

‘And then what? Declare war on North Korea? Seems to me like Rink just did the world a real service.’

Vince wasn’t swayed, he just shook his head. ‘From what I gather, we won’t let this rest. Walter will have a team on this already, plotting the Koreans’ movements. We’ll get to the bottom of it sooner or later.’

‘It’ll be a dark day if you do.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. Those freaking Koreans have been given too much slack. Diplomacy isn’t going to make them disarm; maybe it’s time we showed them they can’t fuck with the US any longer.’ The agent turned and walked away, indicating to a couple of his FBI colleagues to take over. Feeling redundant now, I followed, going back down the stairs to the ground floor.

The Red Moon Bar looked like an NYPD convention. Interspersed among the officers were plain-clothed FBI agents, as well as others in black windcheaters and ball caps. The semi-naked dancers and the bar staff were all sitting along one wall while officers took their details and statements. The FBI people followed along debriefing them, maybe with warnings of what might happen if any of them blabbed about this to the press. The girls were the real victims here, not the terrorist scum that we had put down. A crew from the Medical Examiner’s office had arrived and it was annoying to see that the Koreans were afforded the same respect as the dead doorman as they were bagged and transported away.

Vince wandered away to confer with some of his government pals, and I scanned the bar area for Rink. The big guy was sitting on a stool, sipping water from a tall glass, as morose as hell.

‘You OK, Rink?’

Rink wore a dazed expression. He was a veteran of as many battles as I was, but where we differed was in our capacity for compartmentalising the delivery of cold-blooded death. In the heat of battle, Rink was as frighteningly effective as any warrior, but never at the expense of his morals or sense of honour. He was suffering from his split-second decision to shoot Kwon. I kneaded Rink’s muscular shoulder.

‘I’m OK, brother,’ he said.

He wasn’t, he was sickened that he’d fallen below the line he’d always set for himself.

‘Desperate times, Rink…’

Rink shook his head. He couldn’t help thinking that the measures he’d employed were anything but desperate: they’d been delivered with cool and deliberate calculation.

Rink lifted his chin like it was a dowsing tool, and pointed it across the room at nothing in particular. ‘You haven’t heard the good news, yet?’

From his deadpan delivery, I guessed there was nothing good about it. I looked at him, then over at the plasma screen. Someone had turned it off. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The bombing at Lincoln Square.’ Rink studied his glass as though seeking out impurities. ‘It was just that: an ordinary, everyday bomb. There’s no trace of any radioactive particles.’

I felt weightless, like a giant hand had lifted me off the floor and suspended me bodily in mid-air, the burden of millions of dead bodies plucked from my shoulders.

‘Thank God for that.’

Rink swirled the water in the glass, and continued to stare at it. ‘Don’t you see, Hunter? I executed that man upstairs because I thought he’d been pivotal in murdering thousands of people. I was wrong.’

‘Whether Hicks’ bomb failed to discharge the plutonium or not, Kwon was still responsible for supplying it. He deserved to die.’

‘Did he?’ Rink asked. ‘Go get Vince over here, get him to explain to you how the flasks of plutonium held nothing more dangerous than this water.’

Inhaling deeply, I looked for Vince, but the agent had moved elsewhere. ‘What are you saying, Rink?’

‘Don’t know. There are only two things I can come up with, and I don’t like either of them.’ Rink stood up, took my elbow and led me towards the exit door. ‘C’mon, I gotta get outa this place.’

There was no argument from me. The stink of death was in the Red Moon, more pungent than the spilled liquor and sweat that permeated the place. Outside, we stood on Delancey out of earshot of any of the gathered law-enforcement officers. The rain that had pounded Pennsylvania had found its way to New York, and the streets glittered under the downpour. Neither of us gave it any mind. I, for one, felt that some of the associated dirt of our actions was being washed away.

Rink rubbed his chin, his fingertips playing distractedly with the scar he’d picked up while we’d fought for our lives with Tubal Cain, the Harvestman. The scar was a reminder of his mortality. My take on the scar was something different: it was a mark of how I’d torn Rink from a happy retirement and dragged him into the nightmare that dogged me everywhere. A little over a year ago Rink had been our voice of reason, reminding us that we no longer had a licence to kill: now Rink had committed the ultimate sin, reverting to the level of the executioner he’d striven so hard to leave behind.

‘Two things,’ Rink said, resuming his train of thought from inside the Red Moon. ‘Two things, and I don’t like the way my mind’s working.’

I could guess where Rink was going with this, but allowed him to continue.

‘I overheard a couple of those FBI guys talking. They were saying that the bomb that went off was more flash than substance. A number of people were hurt, but it was mainly minor burns or scrapes. When the car exploded it was rigged so that the trunk blew off and most of the flames went into the sky. To me it sounds like the blast was channelled to cause as little damage as possible.’

I hadn’t taken much notice of the images on the TV screen at the time but when I thought back there had been very little structural damage. Plenty of paper and trash lay scattered around the site, some shattered windows, but none of the usual smoking debris and tumbled masonry. Now Rink was telling me that the supposed plutonium flasks contained nothing more dangerous than water. What did that mean: that Hicks had been bluffed into buying the bogus isotope or had been party to the sham? The fact that Hicks’ bomb had gone off like nothing but a large firework gave credence to the latter scenario.

‘What are you thinking, Rink?’

‘I’m thinking I may have murdered the one man who could have given us all the answers we need.’

‘Wasn’t murder, Rink. Way I see it, it was justified.’

Rink snorted. He pushed back his hair, and droplets of rain spattered all around his shoulders. ‘OK. There are two ways of looking at this, like I said. Either Kwon supplied the real thing, or he set Hicks up. Either way it doesn’t make him a good man. But I still have a problem with that. Why would he set Hicks up? Makes me think he had no intention of hurting anyone, like maybe he wanted to save lives?’

‘I doubt that. Maybe Kwon didn’t know that the flasks were fakes.’

‘Maybe not.’

‘For someone who didn’t want anyone hurt, he put up quite a fight,’ I reminded him. ‘If he was a good guy, why didn’t he just put up his hands and surrender when the first cops got there? Why’d he let his friends die?’

‘Maybe he had to put on a good show. He said we didn’t understand. Understand what, Hunter? And why’d he say he wanted to speak to the CIA? Plea bargain? I don’t think so.’