The Company of the Dead (41 page)

She said, “I thought it was fifteen minutes from the airport.”

“Been like this since I arrived,” Reid replied. “I’m going to try and turn off onto Park Avenue and see if it’s any faster along Broad. We’re not far away now.”

That’s it
, she thought. Apart from the steady rumble of the cars, there was no other sound. Where were the car horns, the shouts of frustrated drivers?

“What’s going on? What’s causing the backup?”

“It’ll be a troop convoy,” Reid replied. “They’ve been shipping army from Louisiana and Florida since this whole thing started. There’s a military aerodrome out near Fort Stewart and another by Hunter Field. Everyone seems to think that if push comes to shove, it’s going to happen here.”

“So no one’s complaining.”

“Let’s just say no one here plans on giving Lincoln another Christmas present.”

A gap had opened up and Reid swung the Hotspur onto Park. The surreal experience of the silent street and Reid’s strange words set her wondering.

“Christmas present?”

“Back in the Civil War, General Sherman was marching toward the sea. He burnt Atlanta to the ground and everything else that stood in his path. When he seized Fort McAllister, the locals decided to evacuate Savannah. It saved the city. Just before Christmas, Sherman wired Lincoln a telegram offering Savannah as his gift.”

Malcolm nodded.

“That’s Forsythe Park coming up on the left.”

She looked out at the lush green border of the park. The bronze statue of a soldier gazed confidently past her, facing the south.

“Is he from the war?” she asked distantly.

“Spanish–American War. He’s post-bellum.” Reid shook his head. “Last time North fought South, we had Carolina between us. This time, we’re right on the firing line.”

“It may not come to that,” Malcolm offered.

“I ain’t takin’ bets.”

The field office was on East Bryan Street. The occasional call of a ferry’s horn reminded her that only a couple of blocks separated them from the bank of the Savannah River. The local Evidence Response Team was still going through the wreckage. Close proximity to Union waters had prevented any major dives around the site. The team leader told her that they’d just managed to get in and back out with a small amount of material. It might be a while before they had anything for her, he said apologetically.

The prisoner hadn’t been brought in yet and, with both of them at a loss, Reid brought her to the roof of the building, at least affording a decent view of the city and the riverfront.

He leaned against the roof’s balustrade with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and told her about the Bravo compound in Louisiana. There’d been a firefight, short and sweet. He described Kennedy’s men as being a scary bunch of fuckers and she could tell he was watching her face for a response. He spoke about the weapons they had seized, and how the prisoners had walked onto the trucks wearing the stony expressions of the dead. His cigarette bobbed in animated counterpoint to his cold recollections.

The prisoners were being sent to Alamogordo, New Mexico, as the director had suggested. The border. There they would be issued different weapons and expected to mount an early defence against the inevitable Mexican incursion. First at bat, first to go down.

“What’s happening in Nevada?”

“Carter found the place half-empty. I heard his tac squads managed to round up a bunch of them in the desert last night. They’re contained. Demobbing them might take a little longer, but they’re getting the same deal.” He almost sounded sad.

“Some of them fought Mexico before, though,” Malcolm ventured. “Some of them were at Mazatlan.”

“They had tanks then.” A thoughtful pause. “They had Kennedy.”

“You make that sound like it’s a good thing.” A nudge on Malcolm’s part.

“Believe me, fuckhead that he’s become, all he has to do is raise his standard against the North. God knows how many soldiers would still follow him.”

“You served in the army...” It wasn’t a question.

“My dad was a Ranger.” Reid lit another cigarette. “Those poor fucks. If the Mexicans don’t get them, the japs will.”

The brief silence that followed might have been shared mourning in advance.

Reid asked, “Come up with anything interesting in your travels?”

It was back to shop talk, born of melancholy and boredom and not really expectant of a meaningful reply.

“Maybe,” Malcolm said. She thought about the camps and what she’d found in Archives on the day of her interview with Webster. “Do you have a database here? The only decent one I’ve seen is back in Houston.”

“You can access Houston from here. They’ll flash up what you need in a jiffy.”

“Any idea when we get to see the prisoner?” Malcolm asked. She felt the haze of the city upon her. She needed a shower.

“They’re bringing him over from the infirmary any day now.” Reid snorted.

“And he hasn’t talked to anyone yet?”

“Hasn’t talked, period.”

In the distance, heat curled the skyline into a dream of cement and metal. Reid told her that heavy cloud cover and smoke from the smelters working overtime put a lid on the city. She let her thoughts roam in the warmth’s narcotic mantle. Half an hour may have passed before Reid reached for the pager at his belt.

“Looks like my guest has arrived.” He dealt her a look that was part invitation and part challenge.

“Point me in the right direction and I’ll check out the database.”

Reid smiled. “No problem.”

The database was an ENIAC 12. Being a fairly advanced model, it only took up two rooms rather than the entire floor. She produced her ID and, after receiving the standard double-take, was pointed in the direction of an available terminal. She was told it would be free for the next hour or so.

She opened her bag and placed an envelope on the table before her. Within were a series of notes she’d used to outline her hypothesis—nothing she would dare commit to the database herself. Director Webster’s watchword gave him access to all of Camelot’s files, and it was a safe assumption that he could view any information she cared to place on tape.

She’d left a copy of the notes with her sister for safekeeping.

She removed the punch cards she’d brought with her from Houston and looked over them one by one, calculating the algorithm she planned on assigning the ENIAC. Once she was satisfied, she punched the cards into the back of the terminal and waited. The screen flashed a working message. Behind the screen, along the back wall of the room, the tapes spooled on their racks and the ENIAC hummed a new cadence.

She had some time to kill so she picked up the phone and dialled the Houston office. She asked for the evidence lab and was put through to a tech she’d worked with previously. He confirmed that all her open cases had been doled out to the appropriate staff.

It was a secure line and he was in a talkative mood. He told her that the last word they’d received from the Kempei-Tai in New York, prior to the German occupation, was that the ballistics report on the Osakatown murders was on its way south. Forensics, however, already had a match on two sets of prints from the Mauser they’d recovered: Joseph Kennedy and Darren Morgan. A partial print, lifted from the barrel, was pending. The serial numbers on the pistol corresponded to one of the German firearms that Kennedy’s men used instead of the standard Bureau Colts and Dillingers. The Kempei-Tai were sending the gun down as well.

Open and shut case.

She asked him why the Japanese Special Police had been so obliging with the evidence and he told her that the Japanese wanted Kennedy as badly as the Confederacy did. It looked as if Kennedy might have soured a deal with the Shogun prior to the fall of New York.

She asked him to flash her a copy of the ballistics report. She replaced the phone with a clatter that drew the eyes of the Bureau staff at the neighbouring terminals. She felt the threat of angry tears and held them off with gritted teeth. She glowered her neighbours down and returned to the computer screen.

Malcolm could buy a conspiracy theory or two, but wholesale murder? It seemed gauche. Just not his style, if such a word could be used to describe the man she once thought she’d known so well. On one hand there was the subtlety of Camelot, and on the other a series of bloody, undisguised slayings. Different departments had been assigned to separate aspects of the case but who was seeking the connection?

The screen flickered and then began to flash up a series of numbers. The funds allocated to Camelot. She went over the figures and checked them against her notes.

The cash discrepancy could be explained away, at least partially, by Japanese pay-offs. She checked out Joseph’s business portfolios. Hughes Aeronautics hadn’t made any money in two years. At least he wasn’t guilty of embezzlement. He’d siphoned off at least two-hundred-thousand Confederate dollars into registered charities and only two of them were Bureau fronts.

She supposed that cash always moved sideways when it came to Bureau activities—par for the course. It was the men she couldn’t account for. More than a thousand names, somehow lost within the folds of Camelot, somewhere between the camps that had been designated Alpha and Bravo.

Mindful of the fact that her data time was subject to the director’s scrutiny, she pulled up a name. Roberts, G; negro, ex-engineer with the Tulsa Third Air Arm. Two consecutive five-year terms for arson and armed robbery. Sentence suspended 2010.

She picked three more names at random: Barrett, Davis and Stone. Stat rape, homicide, armed robbery. All were black, all had criminal records and all had their sentences suspended sometime in 2010. While they had all previously served under Major Kennedy’s command, none had received the specialised training afforded to the men in Nevada or Louisiana. They were cut from a different cloth.

She ran off copies for her files.

If she could put aside all the emotional baggage associated with Joseph, she might be left with a believable theory that tied both of these bastards together. If she could just put it all aside...

She was struck by a thought. She drew a deep breath and called for one of the ENIAC operators.

“Do you have an Atlas program?”

He nodded, and disappeared through a doorway. Moments later he returned with a new set of punch cards, asking, “What can I rack up for you? Need a CSA search?”

“World-wide.”

“Agent Malcolm, I’m sorry, but you only have half an hour left on this terminal.”

“It shouldn’t take that long—I think I know what I’m looking for.” She looked at him, capitalising on the lustre anger had left in her eyes, urging him on with the curve of her smile. “I’m sorry to trouble you. I’m not very good at this, you know. My watchword is playing up. Would you mind logging on for me? I promise I won’t be more than twenty minutes.”

He hesitated for a moment, then leaned over her keyboard. “No problems,” he said.

He tapped in his code while Malcolm made a show of looking away. He said, “I’ve timed you in, so you behave yourself.”

“Operator, did you just wink at me?”

“Got something in my eye, is all.”

She held the smile till he walked away.

“Let’s see now,” she murmured to herself. “Lost boys go to Never Never Land.”

It had been Joseph’s way of sweet-talking her when he had to leave town for a few days, for when he disappeared. Briefly, she’d considered the possibility of another woman. She almost smiled to herself, thinking,
He could barely handle me
. Then she thought,
I could give a damn.

She tapped an entry on the keyboard. “Never Never Land” produced no results. She thought about it and typed in “Never Land”.

Three results. Never in Amur, Siberia; Never Delay, Belize, in Mexico; and the Never Sumner Mountains in Colorado. Siberia was right out. Mexico and Colorado were possibilities, but only if he’d been double-dealing back then, and she found it hard enough to accept that he was double-dealing now.

She searched her memory for the reference. Peter Pan. Never Never Land was supposed to be an island of some sort anyway.

She checked her watch, ten minutes left on the terminal.

“Second star on the right...” Staring at the watch’s face till the hands blurred before her eyes. “And straight on till morning.”

She typed in another entry and got a Peter Pan Park in Emporia, Kansas.

I’m going insane. Comet tails...

A smile dawned on her face and she typed in one last name.

“Morning Star” yielded nine results: one in Western Cape, South Afrika; the rest on American soil. There were two Morning Stars in North Carolina and another in Virginia and Mississippi. Four in Arkansas... She did a county search and came up with Garland, Greene, Phillips and Searcy. She wrote the names down in her notes. She looked up to see the operator beaming down at her.

“Found what you were after?”

The interrogation room, aka “the Box”, took up a small corner of the floor. The rest of the room was partitioned off with low felt-lined dividers that might occasionally provide an agent with the illusion of privacy. A red light above the Box’s door indicated that the room was in use. Malcolm made her way to the observation room next door.

“’Scuse me, sister. You lost?” An agent stepped up and took her arm firmly at the elbow. His jacket was off and his Colt slapped against his shirt within its holster.

She freed her arm with a deft motion and flashed her badge. She gave him her sweetest smile. “Get me a coffee, black and strong. One sugar. If anyone has updates on the wreck, I’ll be in the obs room or the Box.”

There was a murmur of laughter from the adjacent cubicles and the agent moved off sheepishly.

There were two more agents in the obs room. She showed them her badge before either could open his mouth and waited for them to leave.

On the other side of the two-way mirror, a man sat in the facing chair with his head slumped to the table on folded arms. His head was heavily bandaged. Tufts of singed brown hair protruded from gaps where the dressing had come loose. She watched as one of his hands snaked across the table to a bottle. He poured into a glass with shaking hands, downed the shot, and let his head fall back on his arms.