Another shouted command from their officer and they backed off. In Robin’s case there was one last, final kick. He was bleeding, one eye almost shut, and his chest was racked with pain and coughs, but he was still alive, still an American, and he had survived one more trial. He looked over at the Captain commanding the detail. There was fury in his face, unlike that of the soldier who’d taken a few steps back. Robin wondered why.
‘Stand them up!’ the Captain screamed. Two of the Americans were unconscious, it turned out, and required two men each to lift them. It was the best he could do for his men. Better to kill them, but the order in his pocket prohibited that, and his army didn’t tolerate the violation of orders.
Robin was now looking in the eyes of the boy who’d attacked him. Close, not six inches away. There was no emotion there, but he kept staring, and there was no emotion in his eyes either. It was a small and very private test of wills. Not a word was spoken, though both men were breathing irregularly, one from exertion, the other from pain.
Care to try it again someday? Man to man. Think you can hack that, sonny? Do you feel shame for what you did? Was it worth it? Are you more of a man now, kid? I don’t think so, and you might cover it up as best you can, but we both know who won this round, don’t we? The soldier stepped to Robin’s side, his eyes having revealed nothing, but the grip on the American’s arm was very tight, the better to keep him under control, and Robin took that as his victory. The kid was still afraid of him, despite everything. He was one of those who roamed the sky – hated, perhaps, but feared too. Abuse was the weapon of the coward, after all, and those who applied it knew the fact as well as those who had to accept it.
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.
CHAPTER 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.