Salvation Row - John Milton #6 (John Milton Thrillers) Read online

Milton turned back to the window and saw the lights of a taxi as it turned around the corner of Ursulines and rolled up to the door of the bar. The rain was smeared across the glass, so it was difficult to identify the passenger, but Milton could see money exchanged. The door of the cab opened, and Peter McCluskey hurried across the sidewalk and into the bar that bore his name.

  “You got him?”

  “Affirmative.”

  McCluskey was in his late seventies, but you would never have guessed. He was tall and well built, and he moved with an easy gait that belied his years. His hair had retreated to the back of his head, wisps of white that had been flattened down against his scalp by the rain. He had a large nose and cautious, suspicious eyes. He came inside, took off his jacket and hung it on a hook behind the bar. Then, complaining loudly that the room was stuffy, he opened the door and stubbed a wedge beneath it. The atmosphere was disturbed by a gust of damp wind, and, once again, Milton could smell the briny sea.

  Milton watched as McCluskey turned to scout the room. His eyes flicked over him, but didn’t stop. There was no reason why they would; he had never seen Milton before.

  He went to the bar and rapped his knuckles against it. The musicians stopped playing and the conversation petered out.

  “Good to see you all tonight,” he called out in a strong voice. “A little bit of weather isn’t going to stop the craíc now, is it?” There was loud agreement. “Now then, because I’m grateful you’ve made your way through this filthy storm to my little bar, what do you say we all raise a glass to this fine city and tell Katrina that she’s not gonna go and disturb our fun? On the house.”

  He raised his hand to the manager behind the bar and went over to an empty table.

  “Six, Watcher.”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Get ready to party. Here comes Maguire.”

  Get ready to party? Milton sighed. Ziggy was taking this too flippantly, as if they had been caught up in a Fleming novel.

  He turned back to the window. A man was running down the sidewalk with a leather briefcase held above his head as an utterly ineffective umbrella. He passed beneath a street lamp that was swaying in the wind and hurried into the bar. Milton turned to the door and clocked him: early forties, big and strong. A nasty, brutal face. He had two large earrings in his right ear and a scar across his cheek. Jimmy Maguire had been a professional wrestler in his younger years, but now he was the liaison between the Provos and their American boosters.

  He had led them to McCluskey.

  And now he had been marked for death.

  Maguire took a seat at an empty table, and McCluskey went over to him. He had collected a satchel from the bar and, as he sat at the table, he dropped it at his feet.

  “The meet is on,” Milton said quietly.

  Milton sat, watching them as discreetly as he could. He finished his beer and went over to the bar for another, waiting there and sipping it so that he could change his vantage point.

  The two men were close together, conversing with concentrated, serious looks upon their faces. A combination of the background noise, the music and the howls of the wind outside meant that it was impossible for him to hear anything they said, but that wasn’t necessary. The cellphones of both men had been tapped for the last month, and Milton had read the transcripts. McCluskey had decided to sell three of his establishments, including this one, and he was intent upon donating the million dollars that he stood to make to the Cause. Maguire had been dispatched to thank him, and to sketch out the best way to transmit the money without arousing the suspicion of the authorities.

  As Milton watched, he noticed McCluskey nudge the satchel across the floor to Maguire. That was one way, he concluded. Provide Maguire with hard currency and let him worry about laundering it.

  Milton returned to his table.

  Maguire raised his hand a moment, stalling the conversation, his other hand taking his cellphone from his pocket and pressing it to his ear.

  “Are you getting this?”

  “Hold on,” Ziggy said.

  Milton’s fingers fretted with the coaster on the table, his eyes on Maguire’s face.

  “Shit, Six. They’ve made you.”

  Milton turned his head back to the window. “Say again.”

  “The call. It’s from McGinn. He said he’s just heard from Dublin, there’s a British agent after him. They know.”

  “Dammit. How?”

  The Irishman looked up, turned to the room, and before Milton could look away, he found and held his gaze. Maguire turned to McCluskey, said something, and nodded in Milton’s direction.

  Ziggy’s voice was fraught with anxiety. “What do we do?”

  Milton bit the inside of his lip as he thought about that. There was no point in trying to continue. If Maguire had made him, there was nothing more to be done. He turned his head away and said, low and fast, “We abort.”

  “After all this preparation?”

  “No choice. Stand down.”

  Maguire collected the satchel and set off for the door. McCluskey stood and started over in Milton’s direction. He glanced over at the bar and gestured with his finger that the barman should follow him.

  “Number Six?”

  Milton didn’t respond. He took a sip of his beer.

  McCluskey reached the table. The barman was close behind.

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  “Number Six?”

  Milton ignored Ziggy and turned to McCluskey. “Yes?”

  “I wonder, you mind if I have a quick word with you?”

  McCluskey had a solidity about him, a presence. Milton could smell the drink on his breath, the smell of stale cigarette smoke, and the rotten food that had clustered between his crooked teeth. He decided to play stupid and drunk. “What about?”

  “Just a quick word. In the office, back behind the bar. Would you come with me, please?”

  Milton assessed the second man: younger, heavyset, thick knuckles that were marked with a tattoo that he couldn’t read, sleeves of ink up both arms, a T-shirt that had been cut at the shoulders.

  “Maguire’s leaving. I’m going after him.”

  Milton gritted his teeth in frustration. He wanted to say no, to order Ziggy to stand down, but he couldn’t very well do that now.

  “Sir?”

  “I don’t know what you want—”

  “See, I ain’t in the business of asking politely.” McCluskey pulled up his shirt tails to reveal the butt of a Glock. “And we know what you are. I’m telling you, get in the back. Why don’t we try to keep it civil?”

  Chapter Three

  JIMMY MAGUIRE walked right past the rental without giving it a second look. Ziggy Penn watched as he crossed the road and got into a mauve Nissan. The courtesy light flicked on and then off, the rear lights flashed red and the headlamps glowed. The car pulled away into the empty road.

  Ziggy gave him a head start of a hundred yards before he started the Chevy’s engine and set off after him. He had left the radio on, the volume down low, so that he could keep on top of what was happening with the storm. He turned it up as the announcer repeated the warning that everyone needed to find shelter. He said that anyone without anywhere else to go should go to the Superdome, but that there were already long lines of people who were trying to get inside. The governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, interrupted the broadcast to plead to anyone still left in the city to get to the dome or get out. She said that the storm was enormous, a monster. The words of another official were replayed, the man sounding like he was on the edge of mania, practically yelling out that it didn’t matter that landfall had shifted a few miles to the west. A dead hit wasn’t necessary for a hurricane as big as this. A glancing blow would still kill thousands.

  He switched the radio off.

  The last streaks of light overhead had been extinguished now. The black clouds were piling overhead, hundreds of feet high. Ziggy could feel the air pressure plunging. The smell in the air, the salt from t
he sea, now seemed to be mixed with something sulphurous.

  Ziggy didn’t notice the Dodge with the blown-out muffler that pulled out and rolled after him.

  #

  MILTON FEIGNED drunkenness as he allowed himself to be hauled from his chair. McCluskey had his hands beneath his armpits and the second man, the younger guy, tugged at his shoulders.

  “What’ve I done?” Milton stammered out with a mixture of faked bewilderment and fear. His act would confuse them, and it allowed him a moment to make his assessments. They couldn’t be sure that he was the man who had been sent for Maguire. Milton was concerned that the mission had been leaked, but he doubted that he had been compromised beyond that. Very few photographs existed of him. And no one, save Control and Ziggy, knew that he had been assigned this job. That particular inquest could wait.

  The bar was still busy, maybe busier than it had been when he had arrived, and the patrons had dispensed with any pretence towards moderation and were plunging headlong into proper drunkenness. The band were playing loud, a series of vigorous folk songs that blended one into the other in a seamless barrage of notes and rhythm. The drinkers at the bar had glasses lined up like dead soldiers, their faces oily and slick. Two stranded Japanese tourists sat at one of the tables, the only people not already two sheets to the wind, sipping decorously at glasses of Scotch.

  Not here. Too many witnesses.

  The barman came up close behind him and started to pat him down. The P226 was impossible to miss. Milton felt the man’s hand as it closed around the grip, and then the metal, warm now from being pressed against his skin, as it was pulled out from the back of his trousers. Milton was facing McCluskey as the barman revealed the weapon. He saw the older man’s face change from uncertainty to anger.

  “Let’s go.”

  McCluskey squeezed his elbow and led him into the back. Milton permitted it. The second man followed close behind.

  #

  ZIGGY PICKED up the car and kept it within easy sight.

  “Six, Watcher,” he said into his throat mic.

  There was no response.

  “Six, Watcher. Come in, Six.”

  Nothing.

  “Come on, Six. Acknowledge!”

  He felt the damp sweat as it gathered in his palms. His hands slipped on the wheel as he turned it. What had happened to Milton? This was bad.

  He wondered whether he should abort. He could easily turn around and go back to the hotel. He would be safe there. He could wait the storm out and work out what to do next. Milton would return there, presuming that he was still alive. And, if he didn’t—if he wasn’t—Ziggy would be able to call London for directions. They would send backup. There were other agents, ready to be activated, who would be able to come and clean up the aborted mess of the operation.

  He gripped the wheel tighter.

  No.

  What if Milton had left in time? He might not want to abort. If Ziggy kept a tail on Maguire, he could find him and finish what they had started.

  Ziggy had been anxious about the operation. Shot up with adrenaline, but nervous, too. There had been too many times during his life where he had allowed his nerves to betray him. Too many times when he had thought twice and taken the safer, easier option. He had been lobbying for fieldwork for months. Damned if he was going to let his apprehensiveness get in the way of him improving his reputation.

  No.

  He was going to see this through.

  He gritted his teeth, rubbed his palms against his trousers to wipe away the sweat, and kept driving.

  #

  THEY TOOK Milton into the room behind the bar. It was a storeroom. There were trays of beers, bottles of wine and spirits. A desk was in the corner with a computer and a pile of paper arranged across it.

  “You want to tell me who you are now?” McCluskey asked him.

  The younger man had looped his arms beneath Milton’s shoulders, his hands clasped behind Milton’s neck. Milton’s stomach was exposed and McCluskey punched him there as hard as he could. He had some power in his fists, and Milton gasped as the air was blown out of his lungs. McCluskey hit him again with a left and then another right and then nodded to the man who was holding Milton up. His arms were released and he was allowed to fall to the floor, crashing heavily onto his knees. He bent double and retched, spitting phlegm onto the wooden floor.

  “What about now? A little more talkative?”

  Milton coughed.

  “Let me tell you something, buddy, you’re about up to your nose in pig shit. You got to decide which one of two things is gonna happen next. One, you tell me who you are and who you work for, and we give you a little working over and toss you outside with the trash or, two, you don’t and I put a bullet in your thick skull. What’s it gonna be?”

  Milton coughed again, loud and long. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  McCluskey looked up at the other guy, raised his eyebrows and said, “Number two, then.”

  The hideaway .25 NAA Guardian was Velcro-strapped to Milton’s ankle. The barman had stopped his search as soon as he had discovered the Sig. That was an amateur move that Milton would never have made in a million years. You finished the job, always, or you ended up with your ticket punched. That was just the way it was.

  Milton tore the little pistol out of the strap. He was so close that it would have been impossible to miss. The first round took McCluskey in the gut. The younger man was still fumbling his finger through the trigger guard of Milton’s P226 when the second round struck him. The Sig dropped from his fingers as he took a step backwards, looking down with bafflement at the blood that was leaking out of the hole in his chest. Milton quickly turned back to McCluskey. The old man was on his knees, one hand reaching for his Glock and the other trying to staunch the blood from the wound. Milton stepped right up close, pressed the .25 against the back of his head and squeezed the trigger. He dropped flat to the floor, twitched once, and was still. Milton turned back to the barman. He was still alive. Milton went across to him, held the gun against his temple, and fired a fourth, and final, time.

  Six seconds.

  No witnesses.

  There was a doorway in the back of the room. Milton covered his hand with his shirt tail, turned the handle and opened the door. There was a narrow alley between the bar and the adjacent building, the wind squalling along it. Milton replaced the Guardian in the ankle strap, collected the P226, and stepped outside.

  Chapter Four

  ZIGGY PENN kept a safe distance between his Chevy and Maguire’s Nissan, but he was aware that there was very little traffic on the roads and that he couldn’t hope that Maguire wouldn’t notice that he was being tailed. He didn’t know what he would do when that happened. He’d just deal with it when it did, he guessed.

  They crossed the bridge over the Industrial Canal and turned into the grid of streets that made up the Lower Ninth Ward.

  His earbud crackled.

  “Watcher, Six.”

  “Six, Watcher. I’m here.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Just off North Claiborne Avenue. I’m following.”

  “Negative, Watcher. Stand down. Repeat, Watcher, stand down.”

  The Nissan reached an intersection. The traffic lights were suspended above the junction on a long arm fixed to a metal post. The wind was toying with it, blowing the lights back and forth, the post creaking as it was slowly teased out of the concrete baulk that fastened it to the sidewalk. Ziggy rolled up behind the car, putting the engine into neutral and letting it idle.

  He heard the sound of the Dodge from the road to his left. He looked out and saw it, a hundred feet away, picking up speed rather than slowing down. He knew, too late, that he had been made and that what was about to happen was the price of his mistake. The engine of the Dodge roared louder and he looked back, seeing two white men in the front seats. Then the fender slammed into the side of the rental, blasting the door inwards, detonating the glass in the window. The
car was tipped up onto its two right-side wheels and then, overbalancing, it toppled down and slammed against the asphalt. The Dodge was thrown into reverse, metal shrieking as the mashed fender was yanked away from the torn remains of the door.

  “Watcher, report.”

  Ziggy coughed, blood in his throat.

  “Watcher? Come in, Penn.”

  He coughed again, trying to clear his throat so that he might speak. His vision seemed to dim; an envelope of darkness closed in from the edges.

  “Help,” he croaked.

  Outside, the wind started to wail.

  #

  MILTON BROKE into a car, hot-wired the ignition, and hit sixty as he headed out of the city and into the Lower Ninth. The radio had been left on by the car’s owner, and the newscaster was reporting that the storm had dropped from a category five hurricane to a category three and then changed direction and hit Gulfport instead of New Orleans. He ducked his head and looked up through the windshield into the tempestuous sky as if to confirm the information. It had weakened? That wasn’t obvious. It was still ferocious. The air pressure was still dropping, and Milton had to swallow to stop the popping in his ears.

  He raced to the east, over the Claiborne Avenue Bridge and into the Lower Ninth. Most of the houses had had their shingles lifted clean off their roofs. Telephone poles had been torn out of the ground and snapped in two like matchsticks. Billboards had been ripped down the middle. The windows of strip malls had been punched in, and their roofs had been peeled off like the lids of tin cans.

  Milton had heard the crash over the open channel. He tried to reach Ziggy, but there was nothing. Something had happened. The hurricane, perhaps, the car slapped by the wind and tossed onto its side? Or it was Maguire, ensuring that he was not followed, making his escape? Whatever it was, it was bad.

  Ziggy was in trouble.

  A convoy of police department vehicles flashed by in the opposite lane. Their flashers rippled blue and red but their sirens were muffled by the deafening roar of the wind. The road rose up on an elevated section, and Milton looked down to the left just as veins of lightning spread out across the sky. He saw a blue Chevy at an intersection, flipped up onto its side. It looked like Ziggy’s rental. He stomped on the brakes, feeding the wheel quickly through his hands as the stolen car slid around. He bumped across the median and took the opposite exit ramp. He drove down in the wrong direction, but figured it would be safe on a night like this. He looped around, speeding beneath the flyover, and drove to the intersection that he had noticed from above.