part0053

IN THE SILENCE that followed Crow’s story Evan would have sworn that he heard the sound of a helicopter retreating into the distance. It was only the beating of his heart, loud in his ears in the quiet of Crow’s back room that was as nothing compared to the lull that had filled the slick almost fifty years before.

‘Were you on that chopper?’

‘I was the door gunner. I’d have gotten the hell out of there the minute I heard Pentecost’s name.’

‘Did you ever see him again?’

Despite what Crow had already spoken of, he hesitated. Looked off into the distance. Evan reckoned about nine thousand miles into the distance.

‘Tell the truth and shame the devil.’

Crow gave him a soft smile.

‘I’ve never talked about any of this. Not to my wife’—he flicked his head up at the ceiling—‘or to my son.’

Neither man realized it but what he’d just said would give an insight into what later happened to Evan. For the present, Evan wasn’t going to let it go.

‘Maybe they never asked.’

Crow nodded, that must be it.

‘Seeing as you have asked, nobody actually ever saw him again. But men came back from patrol saying they thought they’d glimpsed, or felt like a sixth sense, somebody, something shadowing them. And they’d say they heard music. Always the same song. The end by The Doors. Sometimes they’d come across the body of Vietcong who’d been butchered. They looked like the animals had been tearing them apart.’

A shudder went through Evan, an image of a man with teeth filed to points filling his mind. At some point during Crow’s story his pet bird had settled on his shoulder. Now, two pairs of black beady eyes peered at Evan. If he put his own eyes out of focus they appeared to move together, merge into one, the bird’s beak seeming to come from the center of Crow’s face. The effect was unsettling after a tale of a man gone back to nature and its atavistic ways.

‘What happened to him?’

Crow shrugged, who knows?

‘Rumors are what happened to him. Some people said he died over there.’

Evan knew him well enough to know that in Crow-speak what isn’t said is often more important than what is.

‘And what do the others say?’

Crow smiled as if he’d just been given the opportunity to deliver the punch line to a joke.

‘That he didn’t.’

Again the shrug. It was one shrug too many for Evan, this pretence that Crow knew nothing about it, that he was as bewildered as the rest of them. Crow was good at a lot of things. Playing the part of a senile old fool wasn’t one of them.

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘It’s just rumors, remember.’

‘People say he didn’t come back, so much as he was brought back.’

Evan decided to mix a little naivety with a dollop of facetiousness, see what came out.

‘To face charges for his crimes?’

Crow smiled indulgently. Silly boy.

‘No. To take advantage of the skills he’d acquired in committing those crimes. You’ve heard of the Phoenix Program?’

His tone of voice implied that he expected a negative response. Evan didn’t disappoint.

‘It was a collaboration between the CIA, US special operations forces and military intelligence and the South Vietnamese, amongst others.’

Evan felt the first pangs of a faceless, nameless dread in his gut. It stemmed from his friendship with Crow. The knowledge that, stuffed full of information as he was, he rarely divulged any of it just for the sake of making conversation or filling the myriad holes in Evan’s education. When Crow gave you a history lesson it was because it was pertinent to the present. The future, too, and your continued participation in it. So Evan’s gut churned.

‘The CIA described it as a set of programs that were used to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Vietcong,’ Crow said, and laughed again, as he had about the irony of the house on Passover Lane. ‘You don’t need me to tell you what programs are.’ He made air quotes with his fingers as he said the word. ‘Most people who aren’t having to explain their activities to a government committee would just come out and say torture and interrogation. Some assassination too, of course. The torture was particularly barbaric. Look it up on the internet if you feel like making yourself feel ill. Or maybe if you want to find out the sort of things the people you vote for will do in the name of democracy.’

Now Evan understood Crow’s need to stand and pace while he talked. The vague sense of trepidation that had been growing inside him demanded movement. To be doing something, even if it was only pacing the floor like a man in a prison cell. He pushed himself to his feet, went to stand looking out of the window at Crow’s back yard.

‘That’s all well documented,’ Crow said.

Again, it was the unspoken words that mattered the most.

Then, as if to underline the veracity of what he was about to say next, Crow repeated his earlier caveat. That made Evan turn away from the window to look at him directly. Because Crow may as well have clapped his hands to get attention.

‘This is all rumors, remember. But I’ve heard it said that some people thought the Phoenix Program was such a rip-roaring success in Vietnam, why not bring it, or something like it, home with us.’

‘And that’s what Pentecost was brought back for?’

Crow nodded slowly, mechanically. His mind was elsewhere, thousands of miles away in the jungles and paddy fields of South East Asia. From the hollow blackness in his eyes Evan knew that he was re-living atrocities seen or even participated in.

‘Yes. To form and head-up a loose association of veterans with a diverse selection of skills.’

The word skills was a euphemism that might have been substituted directly for the phrase set of programs used to describe the capturing, torturing and killing of the Vietcong.

‘And then to put those skills to work. When a job needed doing that might not stand up to the scrutiny of the public at large.’

‘With no accountability.’

Crow smiled at him. The boy was learning at last.

‘You think that’s what’s going on here?’ Evan said, telling himself that if Crow shrugged in response to this one, he’d poke him in both eyes at once.

‘I don’t know anything about it. Was Lockhart in this group?’

‘There’s not a published list of members.’

The rebuke was very different, the sharpness and force of it, to when Evan had asked if Pentecost had been brought back to face charges for his crimes. It made him feel as if he’d just asked Crow if he was a member himself. He turned quickly back to the window, stared out at the yard, for fear that Crow would see on his face the epiphany he’d just experienced.

It might have taken a while to get there, but once it was there, the thought wasn’t going away. So Evan decided to ask him. Because he deserved to know. Crow had sent him on a seemingly simple errand to check on an old friend. And this is where it had led. That begged a question that he wasn’t prepared to ask—did you know or suspect all this from the beginning? He asked the easier one instead.

‘Are you a member of this group?’

He made the same promise to himself if Crow dared shrug.

‘It’s not a difficult question, Elwood.’

‘I have known people who are.’

The words had a finality to them. Matter closed. And not just the question of whether Crow was or had been a member of the group of veteran assassins and practitioners of other black arts. It felt like the end of the whole affair. Crow had the answers he’d been after—his friend George Winter was dead and he knew who was responsible.

‘Is that it?’ Evan said.

‘The end of the line. George is dead, no need to send a Christmas card this year. Pentecost did it. Move on.’

Crow studied him for a long while. Whereas it usually made Evan feel like a laboratory rat about to be dissected, it didn’t do so today. He returned the stare in spades.

‘What exactly are you proposing?’ Crow said.

‘You don’t want to do anything about it?’

Evan put his finger to his lips, pretended to give it some thought.

‘Go after Pentecost.’

Crow nodded, sounds reasonable. Until you take the facts into consideration.

‘To what end?’ He held up a bony finger. ‘And don’t give me any claptrap about justice.’

‘You don’t care about your friend George?’

‘I can’t bring him back. And if I want to bang my head against a brick wall, I’ve got plenty of them right here.’

Evan considered doing it for him, see if he could knock any sense into him.

‘They almost killed me.’

‘Be happy they didn’t.’

Evan had an answer for that. On balance, he’d rather have not had one and the situation not exist.

‘Ah. You think you’re next.’

‘I am the only one still alive who knows anything about it.’

‘Nonsense. I know about it.’

‘Yes, but they don’t know about you.’

Crow nodded happily, always a silver lining.

‘You’re right.’

Again the conversation had the feeling of being at a natural end, all outstanding matters satisfactorily dealt with. Except Crow had some more advice for Evan, even if it wasn’t worth the breath expended.

‘You can’t fight these people, Evan. They’re everywhere. Cut off one limb and two more grow back in its place. Even if they haven’t got official sanction, nothing will ever be done to them. You could spend your life gathering evidence of their activities—’

‘Yes, crimes. Only to have it lost in the system. You saw how your friend Cortez’s investigation was closed down before it even got started. You think that wouldn’t happen again? Every step of the way. Until one day they decide, enough of this irritation and stomp on you like a giant cockroach. Splat . End of problem.’

It seemed to Evan that Crow was being deliberately obtuse.

‘And if that foot is already raised to stomp me?’

Crow had the appearance of a man taking one last look at the crossword puzzle before throwing the newspaper away, the last clue unanswered. Evan wanted to point out that, unlike the crossword, there wouldn’t be another one of him along tomorrow if he couldn’t figure it out.

‘What if I could make that go away?’ Crow said.

Evan stared at him for a long time before answering.

‘Would that be anything to do with talking to people you might have known in the organization in the past?’

Crow smiled, clever boy. He looked as if he was about to reach for his phone then and there.

‘No,’ Evan said.

‘No, it’s not enough. They’ve killed five people—’

‘They’ve killed a lot more than that.’

‘—and tried to kill me. And if they can’t be touched officially, that only leaves the unofficial option.’

‘Let me ask you a question.’

Evan told him to ask away.

‘Let’s suppose that the man who killed the girl in the house was the President.’

‘Now assume Pentecost is the Director of the CIA.’

‘Would you still want to take up your personal crusade to bring them down? You. Evan Buckley, avenging angel extraordinaire. Fighting the good fight. Against all of that power and influence and money. I can hear the music playing now.’ His voice took on the tone and fervor of a rousing call to action. ‘Justice at all costs! Make the bastards pay!’

Evan fought hard to control the smile that threatened to break out and ruin his argument. Because it did sound ridiculous when put like that.

‘You’re saying that’s what we’re up against?’

Crow held up a hand, his head shaking fit to fall off.

‘ You . Not us . And even if it’s not the President and the CIA, that doesn’t mean it’s nothing at all. They’re still a lot bigger than you. Remember the last person who tried to win a fight like that?’

It was a dirty trick.

Because that person had been Evan’s wife Sarah, incarcerated in a state asylum ostensibly for her own good after she lost her memory. In reality because she asked too many awkward questions, pushed the wrong people too hard.

Immediately Crow regretted saying it, saw the impact of his words on Evan’s face. He moved on quickly, tried a different tack.

‘What would it take to make you drop it? To make you swallow your pride. Because that’s what it is at the end of the day—’

‘And principles.’

‘—swallow your pride and accept that there are some things you cannot change, some fights that you just can’t win. And which aren’t worth dying for in the trying.’

That was when Evan’s phone rang, before he could think of an answer. At that point, there was no answer, however long he thought about it. What he didn’t know was that he’d have one by the end of the call.

‘That’ll be Kate,’ Crow said brightly.

If Evan had been listening to him, he’d have realized that the answer was right there in his words. But he wasn’t. Because Crow was wrong. It wasn’t Guillory.