The man didn’t raise an objection, just did what he was told. Hicks pulled the door to. Lloyd stood up from his chair and walked like a tin man across the room to where a bottle of cheap whiskey waited. He placed the chihuahua down and took up the whiskey. He held up the bottle, saw Hicks jerk his head, then chugged a shot from the neck of the bottle. He wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve. He waggled the bottle at Hicks. ‘Where the muscle- rub fails, this always works.’
Without preamble Hicks asked, ‘You heard about your daughter?’
Lloyd’s jaw firmed a little, but that was all the sign he gave. ‘I always knew the crazy little bitch would get herself in trouble, just not on this trip. I thought that Gant would look after her better’n that.’
‘Gant isn’t responsible, Jim, it’s the prick that she hooked up with that’s to blame.’
‘Vince Everett.’ The way Lloyd breathed the name it was like a curse.
‘Right,’ Hicks said. ‘Except it turns out that isn’t his name at all.’
Lloyd took another shot of whiskey. This time he let the drips fall on his chest. ‘Undercover cop?’
‘FBI,’ Hicks corrected. ‘Special Agent Stephen Vincent was a plant assigned to find me.’
‘You kill that bastard for me, Cars?’
‘Not yet, but I will.’
‘I’d do it myself, but…’
As potent and disabling as his arthritis, agoraphobia had made a prisoner of Jim Lloyd years ago.
‘Leave it to me, Jim. I’ll make sure that Agent Vincent gets paid back everything he’s due.’
Lloyd nodded and then went back at the whiskey again. He finished it this time, but cradled the bottle in his arms like a baby, maybe thinking about what a poor father he’d turned out to be. Sonya Madden had been his only child, and Lloyd hadn’t even had the decency to marry her mother.
Lloyd moved back to his computer but he didn’t relinquish the bottle. He propped his hips against his desk, rocking back and forward, his curls swinging. ‘What about Don Griffiths?’
‘He’s momentarily out of our reach.’
‘Gant fucked that up too?’
‘You sound like you’ve got a hard-on for Gant.’
Lloyd sneered. ‘He’s an asshole. Always was, always will be. Thinks he’s some kind of tough guy; he wouldn’t have lasted two minutes in the jungle.’
Lloyd was full of stories about his days hunting the Viet Cong. In his estimation, anyone who was anything had shared the adventure with him. It was why he respected Hicks but hated his younger lieutenant, whose only experience of war was firing tank shells at pussy rag-heads a mile out in the desert. Hicks happened to know otherwise, but didn’t deem it necessary to put Lloyd straight on Gant’s military record.
Hicks studied his old comrade. Lloyd was a paradox. On the one hand he was a staunch patriot, but on the other he was as keen to disrupt his nation as Hicks was, primarily because he believed that the heroes returning from Vietnam had been fucked over by their own country. Lloyd’s argument: men just like the two of them had been reviled by the liberal fuck-wits who then abandoned them to some corner of history they’d prefer to forget. He pointed out that today’s fighting men were being held up as paragons of virtue, while their old buddies were sitting on street corners begging change for food. He had a point, Hicks agreed, but he didn’t give a damn. Hicks’ hatred of the government went much deeper than that.
‘Where is the goose-stepping little shit anyway?’ Lloyd went on. ‘I thought he’d have come with you.’
‘He’s busy,’ Hicks said.
‘I bet he is. What’s he doing, touching up those ridiculous tats he’s so fond of? Beats me why you let him hang around, Cars. You’ve gone to all this trouble to change your face and he’ll give you away in an instant.’
Hicks ignored the comment. Instead he said, ‘Don Griffiths had help. Gant’s trying to find out who it was.’
‘Probably another feebie,’ Lloyd said.
Shaking his head, Hicks said, ‘From what I hear the guy sounds more like one of our old team. Took out almost everyone Gant sent against him. He even wounded Gant.’
‘Shit, that wouldn’t take much. An eight-year-old girl would be trouble to the kind of assholes that Gant’s pulled around him.’ Lloyd went very quiet very quickly. He moved on. ‘Anyway, it’s probably best he stays out in Pennsylvania. I don’t think our contacts would appreciate him turning up at the meeting.’
‘It’s set up?’
‘Of course. All they need is paying and it’s a done deal.’
‘They’ve come through?’ Hicks couldn’t help glancing at the boxes stacked in the room.
Lloyd laughed. ‘Sure they’ve come through. But you don’t think I’m going to be as crazy as to store the goods here, do you? Are you insane, Cars? I’ve enough Agent Orange bubbling through my veins without exposing myself to any of that crap!’
Hicks shared the laugh, again unimpressed by Lloyd’s offhand insult.
‘When and where?’
Lloyd turned to his computer, placing down the empty whiskey bottle so he could jab at keys. He brought up an email account for which he and Hicks shared administration tasks. He opened a draft document and typed in the details. He didn’t send the message. Hicks could enter it from any console and read the draft, before deleting it. That way there was no record of the message and no chance of them being traced by it. It was the same method used to communicate by many terror cells, the way in which 9/11 and the London bombings were allegedly planned.
When Lloyd turned round again, he was surprised to find that Hicks had opened the door and that the minder was standing in the doorway. In his hand was a gun, a tubular suppressor screwed on to the barrel. Lloyd, a veteran of combat, couldn’t even get his feet to move, let alone reach for a weapon. ‘Cars? What the hell is this?’
Hicks smiled coldly. ‘Thanks for setting up the meeting with the Koreans, Jim. I couldn’t have done it without you.’
Lloyd eyed the gun pointing directly at his face. ‘This is some way to show your gratitude.’
‘Oh, no,’ Hicks said. ‘This is payback. I think you set us up, Jim. You were the one who introduced Vince Everett to your daughter, knowing full well he was FBI, and you’re the one who warned Don Griffiths that we were coming. And you know something, Jim, I think you were the one who tipped off Griffiths the first time round and had me jailed for more than nine years.’
Lloyd’s groan told Hicks that everything he’d just charged his old friend with was the truth. He jerked his chin and his minder fired in response. The bullet struck Lloyd’s forehead and he dropped to the floor with a flexibility that gallons of Tiger Balm would never give him. The little dog yelped in response, cowering in a corner of the room.
Hicks pulled on a pair of leather gloves, then accepted the gun from his minder’s hand. He went and stood over his old comrade. Looked down on him. Fired twice into his chest. This time the dog stayed quiet.
‘And just in case I was totally wrong about you, Jim, I’m sorry. But I had to kill you anyway. Seeing as you aren’t capable of leaving this dump, I wouldn’t want you to suffer through what I’ve planned for the Big Apple.’
When he’d read what Lloyd had written on the screen Hicks deleted the message. Then for good measure he shot Lloyd in the head a second time.
‘By the way, that’s for calling me a pig’s ear, Jim.’
Chapter 32
SAC Birnbaum’s helicopter transported me, Rink, and Agent Vincent to a clearing alongside a tumultuous river in the Adirondacks in New York State. On the opposite bank of the river the trees grew thick on the sloping hills, but on this side the ground had been cleared and made way for a two-storey wooden cabin and outbuildings. Cars parked at the rear of the buildings had been visible as the chopper descended. They were town cars, black with tinted widows, sitting low on their chassis due to the concealed armour plating. Hard-looking men in heavy overcoats stood ready by the cars. They weren’t an unusual addition, considering who we’d come here to meet, but the numbers didn’t seem to add up.
