Rain on the Dead (4 page)

He wandered through them, uncertain about what it was he was looking for. The Chechens fascinated him. Two real wild boys, and how had they got to Nantucket? Looking at the crowded harbor, he found a very possible answer. The sea, because that’s what he would have done.

He went up on the jetty and started to walk along past people working on the decks of the boats, others diving into the harbor and swimming. A young man with a money satchel around his neck and a register in his hands was working his way along the line of boats. The name tag on his shirt said “Henry.”

Dillon said, “Can you help me, have you ever seen these guys?”

He unfolded the sheet with both photos. Henry stopped smiling. “What have they done, are you a cop?”

“I work for a security firm,” Dillon said. “They’ve been leaving unpaid bills all over the place.”

“Sure, I’ve seen them. Yesterday evening, they were around here really high on something and drinking booze, and they had an argument with people on one of the boats. Went off making a hell of a row.”

“Show me the boat involved.”

“I saw it leave last night as it was getting dark, which was strange, because the mooring fee was paid until Friday. It was a sportfisherman, a rental from Quogue. Two guys on board named Jackson and Hawkins. I brought them passports. Maybe they’re just cruising about out there.”

“I don’t think so. Did you do any copying of their passport details, photos and so on?”

“No, that would be illegal. Anyway, the national agency just tells me either it’s okay or not okay.”

“It’s just that I’d been wondering whether you could use a fifty-dollar bill.”

Henry smiled. “Only if you’d be happy with a picture I took of them on my phone. They were chatting on deck.” He took the phone out of his pocket.

“Why did you take it?”

“Because jazz and swing are my thing, and Mr. Hawkins plays a great clarinet. He turned an old Irish folk song, ‘The Lark in the Clear Air,’ into pure Gershwin, special enough to bring tears to the eyes. That’s him with the white beard.”

The disguises, which in effect the bearded faces were, had succeeded brilliantly. Not for a moment had Dillon recognized them from the photo, but Henry’s musical anecdote was unique. It related to the deepest and most poignant moment in Dillon’s life, which meant the man in the white beard was Tim Kelly and the other was probably Tod Flynn.

“Does it ring any bells, sir?”

“Not really, it was a hell of a long time ago. I’d like to have a copy of the photo anyway, if that’s okay with you. Can you e-mail it to me?” Dillon held out the fifty and gave Henry his number.

“You’re more than welcome, sir.” Henry sent it and slipped the bill into his pocket. “Have a nice day.”

Dillon walked away, his mind in a turmoil, never so conflicted. It was obvious that he should tell Ferguson what he had discovered, but it was impossible to discuss why at the moment, and certainly not with Sara around. She served the Crown, wore the uniform. On the other hand, they were returning to Roper, the bomb-scarred hero trapped in his wheelchair. He nodded to himself. Roper would know what to do. He hurried along the beach.

—

At the end of the strand across from the house, a mobile beach concession had appeared, a sandwich and burger bar on wheels
with canvas chairs and fold-up tables, most of which were taken. Dillon stopped and ordered tea and an egg sandwich, sitting close to the bar.

The woman sympathetic to the Cause whom the Master had mentioned to Flynn sat not too far away, keeping an eye on the situation over the road where the helicopter had just drifted in behind the house. Her name was Lily Shah, and she worked in the dispensary at the Army of God headquarters in London.

She was quite small, wore sandals, a Panama pushed down over fair hair, her blue linen shirt loose over khaki shorts. She removed her Ray-Bans to scratch her nose, revealing a calm, sweet face. She was forty-five and looked younger. On seeing Dillon, she replaced her Ray-Bans, took a sound enhancer from her shirt pocket, slipped it into her right ear, and adjusted it as Sara Gideon crossed the road.

“Anything special happen while I’ve been out?” Dillon asked as he finished his tea.

Lily could hear perfectly as Sara answered. “The President wants Cazalet safe. The black team from last night is coming in tomorrow to start doing all sorts of security things to the house. Since it’s been in the family since before the Civil War, Cazalet is not pleased. Even more, the staff has been suspended. Dalton’s going to hang on to hand over to the team and Mrs. Boulder keeps Murchison, bless her. And I’m here to tell you to get a move on—we’re boarding the helicopter in minutes.”

They hurried across the road and entered the drive, cutting it very fine, for it seemed no more than five minutes later that the helicopter lifted above the trees and turned away, causing a certain excitement among the tourists.

—

Once things settled down, Lily wandered along the beach, turned across and down the side of the house, the marshy area with the reeds growing high. She stood looking at the place where the fencing gaped and, on impulse, scrambled through into the garden, and then ventured a little farther cautiously to where the carnage had taken place.

The windows on the terrace slipped open and Dalton walked through, comfortable in shirtsleeves, a can of beer in one hand, and sat down on the swing chair. He opened the newspaper, and she pointed her right index finger at him, thumb raised, then smiled, eased back through the jungle of the garden, and left.

Walking back to town, barefoot at the sea’s edge, she phoned the Master and told him what happened. “So Ferguson and company will be back to trouble you again very soon.”

“And trouble is the right word. He’s been a thorn in our side for much too long. I’m sure he was responsible for the disappearance of General Ali ben Levi. We know that he flew in here, to Northolt, in pursuit of the traitor Declan Rashid. This is a fact.”

Referring to Ali ben Levi as flying “in here, to Northolt” Airport had been an unfortunate slip, for his choice of words had indicated that the Master was speaking in London. Come to that, Lily was sure she’d once heard Big Ben chiming in the background of one of his calls. Lily was intrigued, but concentrated on the matter at hand.

“The Russians tried to eradicate Ferguson and his prime minister’s private army some years ago. All they got was a bloody nose,” she said.

“Who told you that?”

“Dr. Ali Saif, when he was head of education at the Army of God.”

“What a damn traitor he turned out to be. Another turncoat.”

“But not to Ferguson. As far as I know, MI5 claimed him. Perhaps he found it preferable to facing twenty-five years in Belmarsh under antiterrorism laws,” Lily said.

“A traitor is a traitor. And as far as Ferguson goes, I’ve received an order from the Grand Council. They want revenge for ben Levi. Nothing less than assassination. Bullet or bomb, I’m open to either.” He laughed. “I suppose I could put it to Tod Flynn.”

Lily was shocked at the implication. “The political upheaval would be enormous.”

“And so it should be. That would be the point. That no one is safe, not even those working at the highest level for the Prime Minister himself, and
there’s
a thought.”

Lily tried to sound enthused, but managed only a muted “I hear what you say.”

“Good. With luck, you should be back in London tomorrow. Give my sincere thanks to Hamid Bey for allowing you the few days’ leave to assist me as you have. He has been a revelation once he took over as imam. AQ acknowledges its debt.”

“I’ll speak to him as soon as I get back. Is there anything more I can do for you?”

“Yes, I’d like you to look up Tod Flynn’s niece at the Royal College of Music. She interests me. It seems that when she was fourteen, she lost her parents to a car bomb on a trip to Ulster and was crippled.”

“Dear God,” Lily said, genuinely shocked.

“Her father was Flynn’s elder brother, Peter. Flynn became her legal guardian, and she’s been raised by him and her great-aunt. I want to know more about her. Something tells me it’ll come in handy for keeping Mr. Flynn in hand.”

“The usual file?”

“Exactly, now be on your way. God go with you.”

—

She continued to walk at the water’s edge, thinking of Pound Street Methodist Chapel, now converted to the mosque and the headquarters of the Army of God charity. She was a cockney girl who from childhood had only wanted to be a nurse, had qualified against the odds and then joined the Army Medical Corps. In the seven years that followed, one war after another had given her an unrivaled experience of the barbarism, the butchery, that people could inflict on one another.

In Bosnia, she’d seen open graves with hundreds of Muslim bodies tumbled into them, as if the Nazis had returned to haunt Europe. In Kosovo, you had to get out of the ambulances to pull the corpses of mothers and their children to one side of the road so you could continue. In northern Lebanon, she had served with the Red Cross and UN with only a handful of soldiers to try to control the rape and pillage outside the mission hospital.

It was the only time she’d fought, and that was in desperation, picking up a dead soldier’s Browning pistol and emptying it into savage faces one after another, and then the trucks had roared up with the men and rifles. Al-Qaeda, ruthlessly shooting wrongdoers, bringing order where there was none.

Two years later and out of the army, a nursing sister at the
Cromwell Hospital in London, she’d met the love of her life, Khalid Shah, a handsome Algerian charge nurse, married him, and they’d moved to the dispensary at Pound Street, where it became clear that he was a follower of Osama bin Laden.

It was a year later that the cruelty of life took him away from her, when al-Qaeda called him in for service in Gaza, an Israeli air strike a month later ensuring his stay was permanent. She couldn’t hate Jews because of what had happened, for her dark secret, even from Khalid, was that she was only a Christian through her father, because her mother was a Jew and had married out. Hamid Bey, the imam at Pound Street Mosque, seemed a reasonable man, and as the dispensary was multifaith, Lily’s Christianity caused no problem. The fact that he also looked the other way where al-Qaeda was concerned was understandable, when one considered that the greater part of his congregation supported it. She had yet to realize that she was entirely wrong in her assessment of Hamid, a savage zealot, who supported the Cause as much as the Master.

As her husband, Khalid, had been very open about his dedication to al-Qaeda, Lily had, to a certain extent, been drawn in. After all, it was the ruthless actions of al-Qaeda in Lebanon, saving many lives, including her own, which had made it possible for the most important relationship of her life to take place. And when that had ended, the telephone call from the Master to commiserate, had opened a door into what followed. When General Ali ben Levi had been killed, she had not wondered why the Master’s voice had suddenly become different, for it was her place to serve without question.

But what had taken place here in Nantucket was like a bad dream that wouldn’t go away and not like anything that had
happened before. Not even like Lebanon and the massacre and the intervention of al-Qaeda, which had saved so many lives.

She glanced at her watch and saw the time. If she was going to catch the ferry, she’d have to run. She slung her beach bag over her shoulder and started to do just that.

The helicopter was comfortable enough, three tables with bench seats around the windows and a room in the back for privacy, into which Cazalet and Ferguson vanished on boarding. A young man and woman were in attendance, wearing identical dark blue suits and ties, and they ushered Dillon and Sara to one of the tables, belted themselves up for takeoff, and afterward indicated that coffee or tea and a selection of sandwiches were available.

“Would there be anything stronger?” Dillon asked the woman, her colleague having gone off to serve the back room. “Like Bushmills, or would that be too much to ask?”

“Of course not, sir, we keep a full range of spirits. And you, Captain?”