Paul Johnston - Maps of Hell

The door opened and the tall man walked in, followed by a thin-faced bodyguard wearing a well-cut suit. Burdett immediately stood up, disguising the pain in his knees. He smiled uncertainly.

“Larry, I’m very glad to-” He broke off as the bodyguard walked around the room. He moved a thin rod up and down, scanning for surveillance devices. After a nod from him, the tall man pointed to the door and waited till he and Burdett were alone.

“I’m sorry, Gavin,” he said, in a low, smooth voice. “We can’t be too careful. It appears that one of my confederates has been arrested.”

The Englishman was immediately apprehensive. “Really? How much does he know?”

Larry Thomson smiled. “About you? Absolutely nothing at all.”

“Thank God.” Burdett reached for the crystal glass containing fifteen-year-old malt whiskey.

“He does, however, know rather a lot about other aspects of our operations,” the tall man said, walking behind the desk and sitting down. He waved to Burdett to sit, too.

“Will he talk?”

“Almost undoubtedly.” Thomson took a cigarette from his silver case and lit it. “It’s very difficult to find completely loyal men these days. Particularly as regards what one might call dirty work.”

Gavin Burdett raised his hands. “I don’t want to know.”

Larry Thomson gave another tight smile. “I wasn’t going to tell you. What you know about our overseas interests is enough.” He filled a glass from a carafe of water. “Not that I’ve told you about all of those.”

The Englishman took a large sip of whiskey. “So, what now? Is the woman ready?”

Thomson looked at his guest with pale blue, unwavering eyes. “Apparently so.”

“And you’re going to go ahead with the plan?”

“Have you acquired cold feet?” The tall man’s tone was mocking. “I seem to remember that you were the one who wanted her…how shall I put? Removed from the equation?”

Burdett nodded. “Of course. She declared a personal crusade against me.”

Thomson swallowed water, his Adam’s apple becoming even more prominent. “Why so anxious, then?”

“Because…what if the process isn’t entirely successful? What if she remembers who she is?”

“That’s very unlikely. Our procedures are highly effective.”

Gavin Burdett dropped his gaze. “Not in Matt Wells’s case.”

“As you well know, his treatment was incomplete. Besides, he may still act as planned when the time comes.”

“And what about the occult killings?”

“What about them?” The tall man smiled. “If anything, they have added to the general state of panic in Washington. Our forthcoming operations will make the most of that.”

“What are you going to do about Wells?”

“He’ll be caught. The FBI is fully committed to that.”

The Englishman looked across the desk. “You’re sure?”

“I’ve told you before-we have friends in the Bureau.”

Gavin Burdett drained his glass. “You’d better be right. A lot of people in the City of London have invested deeply in Woodbridge Holdings.”

Thomson raised his eyebrows. “Have any of them lost money?” He got up and took the decanter round to his guest. “No, they haven’t. And that’s all they care about, isn’t it?”

Burdett watched as his glass was filled over half full. “Yes, Larry,” he said, with a widening smile. “Indeed it is.”

I was in the back of Clem Simmons’s car in southeast Washington, about fifty yards down the road from a large building that had originally been a warehouse. Now it was used by junkies and crackheads.

“We shouldn’t have let that little rat go in on his own,” Gerard Pinker said, looking through binoculars at the building’s entrance. The streetlamp near it gave off only a dull glow.

“He’ll come,” Clem said, stifling a yawn. “He’s told us too much. The shitheads at Woodbridge Holdings will crucify him if he goes back.”

“That’s if he told us the truth,” his partner said.

“It squares with what we already knew,” I said, leaning forward. “The camp, Woodbridge’s activities, the twins.”

Pinker shook his head. “It’s all just hearsay, man. Gordy hasn’t been to the camp. He doesn’t know anything about Larry Thomson’s past. All he’s admitted to is talking the dead Iowa farmer’s kids into coming back to D.C.”

“Let’s see what they say,” Clem said, eyeing him dubiously. “You ever have an optimistic thought, Vers?”

“Me? No way. Your problem is you’re far too charitable, big guy.” He raised the binoculars again. “Movement. Well, I’ll be damned. Gordy’s bringing out two kids, one male and the other not.”

We watched as the trio approached. The twins looked tired, their clothing dirty and crumpled. I wondered if Lister had told them about their father. For all we knew, the newspaperman was involved in Richard Bonhoff’s murder, though he had denied that strenuously. The same applied to Joe. I wasn’t happy about making deals with the guy who might have been behind my friend’s death.

Versace got out and opened the back door for the twins. I could now see that they looked very alike, apart from the boy’s longer hair. They were also attractive, despite their sunken cheeks and the heavy rings round their eyes. They were obviously junkies, their skin sallow and their fingers moving incessantly.

“There you go,” Lister said triumphantly. “So I can split now, yeah?”

“You keep your cell on at all times,” Pinker said, his tone harsh. “If we call, you do exactly what we say, got it?”

“Sure. I’ll be keeping my head down, anyway.”

“Gordy?” I said, leaning across. “I haven’t forgotten Joe Greenbaum. If anything ties you to that bomb, I will seek you out.”

He looked nervous for a moment, then bounced back. “I told you, Mr. Wells, I don’t do that kind of thing.”

“Yeah, I believe you,” Versace said, closing the door after the twins had got in beside me.

I watched as Lister walked swiftly into the darkness.

“Gordy’s okay,” the young man next to me said. “He looks after us.”

“Randy,” I said, extending a hand. “Gwen. I’m Matt Wells.”

“Oh, we know who you are,” the girl said, squeezing my hand gently. Her palm was damp, her smile slack. “Gordy said you’re a writer. You going to write about us?”

“Maybe. But we need to talk to you first.”

“You guys cops?” Randy said to the men in the front seats.

“Yup,” Clem replied.

“Thought as much,” the young man said. “We learned how to spot you the first week we were here.”

“Is that right?” Clem said, accelerating on to the freeway. “You want to tell us what you’ve been doing since you got here?”

I’d thought they might be reluctant to talk, but that wasn’t the case. Gordy had told them to answer all our questions, and they did. Before we reached the house over the Maryland state line that Versace had borrowed from his absent sister, they’d given us a full rundown.

Gwen and Randy had spent the first week in D.C. seeing the sights and being wined and dined. Then came the modeling work that Lister had arranged for them. There was nothing tasteless, just fashion shoots and the like. Then Gordy had told them about a residential course Woodbridge ran that would be useful in their future careers. The twins hadn’t given it a second thought, though they knew enough not to tell their parents. It struck me that they were as naive as five-year-olds and their permanent smiles began to grate. I wondered if they’d always been like that.

They didn’t know where they’d been driven as the van had darkened windows. Randy thought it was up north because of the cold. From the descriptions they gave of the barbed wire and low buildings, as well as the pine forests and snow-clad mountain ridges, I reckoned that it was the camp where I’d been held. The alternative, that there were several such installations, was too depressing to consider. You’d have thought the twins might have objected to being put into uniform-gray, with badges bearing the letters NANR-and taught how to handle rifles and pistols, but apparently not. I asked if they’d been given any drugs or if their memories had been affected, but they claimed not. They were vague about the timeline of all this, though, which made me suspicious. They claimed they’d been back in Washington for a couple of months, having escaped from the camp during a power failure.