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

  “What is that? A lifestyle choice?”

  “Something like that.”

  Boon looked at him and saw the eyes of a drunk. “No way. You got a problem with it? You serious?”

  Milton paused and didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Boon could see it.

  He laughed. “That’s good. How long?”

  “Long enough.”

  “Why? Drinking to get away from it all? The memories? Nightmares.”

  “You’re not my counsellor, Bachman.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I felt the same after the first few. I got over it, though.”

  “Good for you, Bachman.”

  Boon ordered a bottle of beer. The bartender brought it over and he took a sip, assessing Milton as he did. He hadn’t changed much. A little more ragged around the edges, the expensive clothes he had worn before were replaced by cheap department store jeans and an unironed shirt. Grime beneath his nails. Hair that hadn’t been cut professionally for a while. He still radiated the same air of extreme competence that Boon remembered.

  “You got out, then?” Boon said.

  “Eventually.”

  “How’d they take that?”

  “About as well as you’d expect.”

  “Yeah. I know that feeling. I thought about leaving, once or twice, but they would have put a bullet in my head.”

  “But you’re still out.”

  “Didn’t give them a choice in the end.”

  “We heard about that. Big explosion.”

  “Wasn’t what it seemed.”

  “Clearly. What happened after that?”

  “I actually tried to go straight.” He laughed at the thought of it. “Funny, right? I tried to do something else. But I still thought about it. What I did. The men and women I killed.”

  “Then stop taking people out.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not that, Milton. I’m not complaining. It doesn’t bother me. I do what I do best. I take people out. I enjoy the work. And I don’t know how to do anything else.” Milton shifted, a little uncomfortably, and Boon took another sip of his beer. “And this thing we do,” he continued, “the skills we have, they’re not what you’d call transferable. I can’t, you know, take what I’m good at and waltz into another job. Can you imagine working in an office? How’s that gonna play, Milton?”

  “It’s not the thing we do, Bachman. Speak for yourself. I don’t know anything else, either, but that doesn’t mean I still do it. I’m out. I’ve been out for months.”

  He chuckled. “So, what are you saying, you want a normal life? A woman, kids, a house? Trips to the beach? Take the kids to ballgames?”

  “No. I’m not a fool. We don’t get to have those things.”

  “So what is it now, then? You come down to this fucking shit-hole of a town, help out hard-luck cases, build houses for people who are too lazy to pick themselves up? What? You saying you’ve turned into some kind of saint?”

  Milton laughed bitterly. “I’m not a saint.”

  “What is it, then? Redemption? Atonement?”

  “I can’t get redeemed, Bachman. You can’t get redeemed. We can’t make up for the things that we’ve done. But maybe I can start paying back, even if it’s only a little. Maybe I can do that.”

  Milton took out a pack of cigarettes, put one in his mouth and lit it.

  “Look at the two of us,” Boon said. “Sitting in a bar, shooting the breeze as if we’re best buddies, haven’t seen each other for years, catching up on old times. What a fucking joke, right? What a fucking joke.”

  Milton pushed the pack across the bar. But Boon rejected it, holding up a hand.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m sorry about before. The motel. Nothing personal.”

  “Just business?”

  “Exactly. Just business.”

  Milton had the dead-eyed, ice-blue stare that Boon remembered from before. “People who come to take me out don’t usually have the liberty to sit next to me, have a drink, pretend like it didn’t happen.”

  “Why’s that? They’re all dead?”

  “Exactly.”

  Boon raised his glass in a mock salute. “Same here.”

  Milton took a deep drag on the cigarette, the smoke going all the way down into his lungs. He angled his head and blew it out, up to the ceiling. He balanced the half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray.

  “Don’t get the wrong idea. We’re not friends. We never were friends, and we never will be. The only reason you’re still breathing the same air as me is because you’ve got Alexander Bartholomew.”

  “I know. And the only reason you’re still standing is because you’ve got Babineaux.”

  “No,” Milton said. “There’s a difference. You had your shot and you missed. I won’t miss when it’s your turn to go.”

  Boon pushed out a grin, bravado, but Milton was as cold as steel. Most people would’ve shown some nerves, just a little, but Milton was sitting there with his hands folded on the bar as if they were shooting the breeze about the Saints’ chances at the weekend. “Let’s not get into a dick-waving contest,” he said. “You’re tough, I know that. I know your reputation. I know the way you look at people like that, your eyes all cold. I know how that makes people feel. But I’m not just somebody, Milton.”

  “I know.”

  “And we both have something the other wants. What do you say we swap them? I’ll give you the junkie, you give me Babineaux.”

  “And then what?”

  “We find another way to fix it. This situation with the houses you’re helping them build, I’m told that they’re in the way of a development. Maybe, you and me, maybe we can help get that squared away.”

  “So we’re mediators now? Maybe it can’t get sorted. What then? You take another shot at me?”

  “Wouldn’t necessarily be you next time.”

  It was an obvious threat, and Boon could see that it registered. Milton unfolded his arms and, with slow deliberation, laid his right hand on the bar. “Listen to me, Avi. If anything happens to her or to her family, all bets are off. I’ll kill you, then I’ll kill Dubois, then I’ll kill Babineaux. You know that’s not a bluff.”

  Boon eyed him. “Isadora Bartholomew will be crushed in the end. We both know it. It might take a few months and a few million dollars, but doesn’t it make more sense for that money to go straight to her rather than making rich lawyers even richer?”

  Milton nodded. “Maybe we can agree on that.”

  “They’ll negotiate?”

  Milton spoke calmly. “How’s this, I’ll talk to Babineaux and make him realise that it’s going to take a lot more money than he’s offering. If he agrees, I’ll talk to the charity. If I can get them to agree, we can move on to what comes next. You give me the kid, I give you him.”

  “And I’ll speak to my side. Make them see sense. That might work.”

  Milton stood. “We good?”

  Boon reached out and took Milton’s wrist, anchoring it. “Hold on. We do what we gotta do, right? I’ve been retained by Babineaux. I only get work if people know I can do what I tell them I can do. Maybe this time, the problem gets solved another way, no need to spill blood over it. But, let me tell you something, Milton, and this is no word of a lie. If we can’t get this sorted, if we can’t get them to agree on a price, then, odds are, we go back to where we were before. Now that we’ve had this nice chat, this chance to reminisce, I can’t say that I’m gonna get any pleasure from taking you out. But, Milton, don’t mistake me, if it’s between you and my reputation, I’m taking you out.”

  Milton nodded his understanding. “That cuts both ways. Like I said, you only get one shot at me. The way I see it now, you are owed. If this isn’t settled, and I have to come after you—you, Babineaux, and anyone else who gets in my way—you are done for. I don’t want any more blood on my conscience, but you need to know that I’ve killed since I left the service. And I’ll kill again if you make me. Between you and me, Bachman, I’ve tried to bury
the monster so deep that I could never find it again. But I can’t. It’s there, right beneath the surface. Ready.” He held his eye and clicked his fingers. “That’s all it takes to switch all that back on again. Now—take your hand off my arm before I break your wrist.”

  Boon left it there for a moment and then lifted it clear.

  “We both understand each other, then.”

  “We do.”

  “Maybe it comes to that, maybe it doesn’t.”

  “Or maybe we’ll never see each other again.”

  They held each other’s gaze for a long moment, neither of them prepared to blink first. Then Boon took out his wallet and left a ten on the bar, standing his empty bottle over one corner of the note. He stood, gave Milton a nod of his head, and left the bar.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  THE MAN who Milton had identified as Avi Bachman was driving a scruffy Ford, dust slathered around the wheel arches. Ziggy watched him from his own car parked a hundred yards away on the opposite side of the road. Bachman paused for five minutes, long enough for Milton to come out of the bar and get into his Corolla and drive away. Bachman stepped outside then, with a small handheld device in his hand. Ziggy recognised it. He was checking for the traces of a signal that would give away the presence of a tracker. When he was satisfied that the car was clean, he went back inside and pulled away.

  Ziggy waited for thirty seconds and then followed.

  The road was quiet and Ziggy drove a little closer to Bachman’s car. He was driving slowly and carefully.

  Ziggy had been busy. Milton had taken a laptop from Babineaux’s house. It had reasonably robust encryption, but that didn’t delay him for very long. Once he was past the protection, he had extracted all of the data and then analysed it. Babineaux was no fool. There were no smoking guns to be found, but there were plenty of clues to follow to secondary sources of information. His lawyer. His accountant. Neither with particularly secure servers. Once he was done, he could demonstrate clear links between Babineaux Properties and the mayor’s office, including instructions to a bank in the Caymans to transfer a series of large payments to an account that he was confident he would be able to link to the mayor’s wife. That evidence had been collected in just a few hours. There were over ninety gigabytes of emails and other data for him to investigate. He was sure that, with a little extra time, he would be able to tie Babineaux up in a bow and deliver him to Izzy.

  His phone vibrated. He took the call on the speaker.

  “You got him?” Milton asked.

  “I got him.”

  “Stay back. He’s very careful.”

  “Don’t worry, Milton.”

  “And dangerous.”

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Stay on the line.”

  He reached down and powered up the StingRay. It was a rectangular box, twenty inches wide, six inches high and six inches deep. The fascia was furnished with a power switch, DC input and a number of jacks for TX, RX, DF, and GPS antennas. The box was an IMSI catcher. Every device that communicated with a cell tower—mobile phone, smartphone or tablet—had an IMSI chip. The StingRay broadcasted a pilot signal that was stronger than the signals from legitimate cell sites operating in the vicinity. It drew the unique IMSI signals into its grasp and, when it had achieved that, once it was locked onto the signal, then the magic started. The box could siphon data from the phone, block it from working, or, best of all, it could track it.

  Ziggy had known about the technology for months. Military police had discovered Russian-made catchers attached to light poles in the Pentagon parking lot. Others had been found near defense contractors and in the parking lots of tech firms in Palo Alto. There were rumours that the FBI attached StingRay-like devices called Dirtboxes to the undersides of helicopters and flew them over foreign embassies in Washington. This one had been sourced from a tech start-up in Brazil. It was small enough to fit inside a suitcase. A hacker who offered illicit goods on the Silk Road, a woman he had IMed and trusted—insofar as trust was a legitimate concept on a site like that—had couriered it to him. It had cost ten grand. Ziggy would normally have added that as an expense, but he was going to let it slide this time. It didn’t seem like the right thing to do in the circumstances and, besides, it was a funky toy. He had wanted one for months.

  Ziggy let Bachman drift out again. He was still within range of the unit, he just needed to maintain line of sight. Ziggy was concentrating hard. He felt the prickle of adrenaline and saw that the hairs on the backs of his arms were standing up. This was what he had always imagined fieldwork would be like: clandestine, furtive, on the edge of things. He had long harboured an interest in the history of espionage. He knew about the Nazi radio trucks that had cruised the streets of Paris, looking for signals sent by Resistance agents. Wasn’t this just the same, albeit light years more advanced?

  “Has he called out?” Milton said.

  “Not yet.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Kenner. Headed west. Just coming up to the airport.”

  “He’s going out of town.”

  “I know.”

  “If he gets out of the city, it’ll be quieter. You won’t be able to follow him. He’s too good, Ziggy.”

  “Jesus, I know that, Milton. Stop telling me my job. We’re not there yet. He’s not going to be able to make me yet.”

  “You need to get a fix on him before that happens.”

  “That’s on him. I can’t make him call.”

  “I know. I’m just on the 610. Ten minutes behind you.”

  The junction ahead went to red. Bachman’s car slowed and drew to a stop. Ziggy pulled up four cars back, in the lane directly to Bachman’s left. He could see across the road, through the window of the car directly behind him, and see Bachman. He watched as he reached into his pocket, took out a cellphone and put it to his ear. He held his breath. This was it. Bachman started to talk. Ziggy double-checked that the StingRay was powered, watching the readout as it corralled all of the signals in the area. There were several thousand phones within range. The StingRay would force all of them to connect to it, and then it would store their identifiers.

  The lights changed to green and the snake of traffic slithered on.

  Bachman removed the phone from his ear and replaced it in his pocket.

  Ziggy needed to keep following. As long as he was able to stay unobserved, he would narrow the area that they would subsequently have to quarter and search. Milton had suggested that Bachman would have taken Bartholomew to a quiet area, probably somewhere out of town. He would have chosen somewhere deserted, difficult to find, and, if it was compromised, easier to defend. The quieter it was, the less traffic there would be, and the sooner Bachman would make Ziggy. If that happened, it would be game over. But if he broke off the pursuit too soon, the area that they would be left with would be too broad to search. He had to play it just right.

  “Ziggy?”

  “He called out. Thirty seconds, no more.”

  “That’s enough?”

  “Should be.”

  “Where are you now?”

  Ziggy looked at the satnav stuck to the inside of the windshield.

  “Just coming up to the edge of town. He’s going west.”

  “Into the bayou.”

  “There’s still a lot of traffic. I’m still on him.”

  “Be careful. We don’t want to spook him.”

  “Affirmative. Where are you?”

  “Metairie.”

  “Stay back. I’ve got this.”

  Ziggy drifted out to a hundred feet behind Bachman. The Ford was doing a steady sixty, careful to stay under the limit, careful not to attract attention. Ziggy started to speculate where he might be headed when he saw the right blinker on Bachman’s car flashing. He indicated, too, following Bachman off the interstate and onto the slip road. The road continued down to a junction. There was no other traffic, just the two of them as Bachman slowed at the stop sign and Ziggy drew in
behind him. There were two: one to the northwest, the other to the northeast.

  “Ziggy?”

  The roads ahead were empty. Ziggy knew he could go no farther. Bachman pulled away and took the first exit. Ziggy followed after him, taking the second exit. The road Bachman had chosen was empty and desolate, a sign up ahead suggesting that it would lead into the swamp around Lake Maurepas.

  “Ziggy?”

  “I’ve let him go.”

  “Where?”

  “Junction of the 10 and the 55.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t stop. Keep driving. If he’s made you, he’ll come back. You don’t want to be there if he does.”

  “He didn’t make me.”

  “Like the Irish didn’t make you?”

  Ziggy felt a flash of hot humiliation. “It’s not—”

  “You can’t say for sure.” Milton spoke over him. “No chances. Keep driving.”

  Ziggy did as he was told. He didn’t know much about Bachman. But if Milton was concerned about what he was capable of doing, that was good enough for him. He looked down at the StingRay. He thought that he had enough data now. Bachman just needed enough time to get back to wherever it was that he was hiding. Ziggy would wait for Milton, then follow Bachman’s route to the northwest and have the StingRay force connections from all compatible devices in the area. Eventually, they would find the identifier of the phone that Bachman had used at the lights. Once they had that, they could triangulate the signal and trace him.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  MILTON DROVE as fast as he dared. He knew that Ziggy was careful. And he knew that his experience the last time he had visited New Orleans would, most likely, inure him to the temptation of trying to be a hero. But he also knew that Avi Bachman was a dangerous operator, with a résumé that would match his own for prolificacy. He was smart and savvy, with the kind of instincts that were developed in the brutal crucible of the field, when a mistake would end with a bullet in your head or a knife between the shoulder blades. But Ziggy was proud, too, and Milton had not completely dismissed the possibility that he would try to do something to impress him to make up for his failures from nine years earlier.