Rogue Elements (37 page)

It was agreed that Arkell would search alone. Siren and Klara were paired with CSIS officers, Felipe and Marcos with members of the RCMP, but Simon Arkell was given a tacit carte blanche to operate autonomously. He was also given a radio, a car and, unofficially, another Taurus.

He parked on a grass verge near the magnificent Praça dos Três Poderes – the Square of Three Powers. Much of it had been cordoned off for the ceremony, and a solid line of Federal District military police held back the mass of grieving citizens already thronging this nexus of Brazilian government. On one side of the square stood the Supremo Tribunal Federal, which housed the Judiciary, a glass-fronted building with an overhanging flat white roof supported on curved flying buttresses. Opposite it, a broad ramp led up to a wider building of similar design, the Palácio do Planalto, office of the president. And set back from the square, keeping its distance from the other two powers, was the iconic Congresso Nacional: twin skyscrapers poised between two flawless white hemispheres – the bowl-like Chamber of Deputies and the domed Senate.

Beyond the Praça, on a patch of congressional lawn through which the red Cerrado soil was clearly visible, Arkell knelt and pressed his fingers to the dirt. For a moment he tuned out the chatter and the police commands and the media helicopters, and settled his mind on the man who was somewhere in this city, readying himself to murder a prime minister. His tongue still throbbed, his jaw ached. And as he recalled Gavriel Yadin’s hands on Klara’s neck, he told himself that Wraye was right – the killer had to be killed.

It did not occur to him to think of Siren’s neck, although she was standing not far from him, beside the only entrance to the Praça’s restricted zone. She had not slept for the pain in her throat.

‘So what’s the deal with TARQUIN’s woman?’ asked the CSIS officer accompanying her. ‘Is she gonna face charges?’

Not looking away for a second from the line of faces queuing for admission, Siren replied, ‘I really have no idea.’

‘Couldn’t help noticing you’re both wearing scarves, even though it’s baking here.’

In answer, Siren pulled up the edge of hers. The officer whistled softly. ‘He’s not a nice man,’ she said, readjusting the scarf. ‘So when I spot the bastard, don’t feel bad if you need to shoot him.’

A short distance away, Marcos was walking with an RCMP officer and a federal police officer between two lines of soldiers from the Presidential Guard Battalion. They marked the route that the coffin – and Prime Minister Mayhew – would take from the Palácio do Planalto to the centre of the Praça. In their crisp white trousers, blue tunics and red-plumed, gilded shakos the soldiers looked like something out of the Napoleonic Wars. But Marcos was only interested in their faces.

Stiff-legged, leaning on a stick, Felipe was performing the same task within the restricted zone, searching among the mourners around the perimeter, the policemen lining the cordon and the international camera crews for the man who had left a knife in his thigh.

Klara Richter, in an embassy car three blocks away, felt nauseous with fear. The CSIS officer assigned to babysit her, a genial sandy-haired Vancouver man named Douglas Malloy, noticed her shaking hands and offered to pull over.

‘Some air?’ he suggested. ‘Would a walk help?’

‘I’m fine,’ she murmured.

‘This is a brutal gig for you, huh?’ Margrave had chosen him for this role on the strength of something he hadn’t done: there had been no judgement in his eyes when Klara’s history had emerged. He was known for – and, in CSIS, not universally trusted because of – his generous spirit.

‘You can say that.’

Malloy drove at a stately pace along Via Sul Dois, behind the southern row of ministries, then crossed the Monumental Axis by the sunken cathedral. On both sides of the great central avenue, mourners flowed in their thousands towards the Praça. Some had dressed entirely in black. Others wore black armbands. Many carried placards bearing Andrade’s portrait. Klara and her CSIS minder scanned every face in sight.

On Via Norte Dois, they ground to a halt behind a blockade of taxis and minibuses carrying mourners to the Praça. Malloy eyed the generous verge. ‘With diplomatic plates we could get away with a little cross-country, but it’s not very respectful.’

Klara slumped in her seat. ‘Whatever you want to do.’

‘I guess we’re unlikely to achieve much. Might as well watch the show from here.’

They gazed out at the crowded pavements. Brasilia was not normally a city of walkers; designed for cars, its small population and generously spaced layout made pedestrians a rarity. For once, however, those on foot had the advantage. Klara smiled, briefly forgetting her fear, at the sight of two little boys using their Andrade placards as swords.

Then, all of a sudden, she sat bolt upright.

‘You OK?’ began Malloy.

‘That was him!’

She was out of the car and pushing into the crowd in the same instant. Malloy shouted after her but she was already lost in the mourners. Hurriedly, he navigated the car onto the kerb and leapt out after her.

The press of people all around him was disorienting. A placard caught him in the eye. Two sullen men knocked him back when he tried to push through. Brandishing his Canadian diplomatic credentials achieved nothing. Starting to panic at the thought of losing Richter, telling himself that the proximity of TARQUIN was sufficient grounds for extreme measures, Malloy whipped out his semi-automatic. He held it alongside his Foreign Affairs and International Trade ID, pointed skywards, as he bellowed at the mourners. The weapon had the desired effect, although Malloy felt sick to his stomach drawing it in the midst of all these people.

Dashing through the crowd, he finally caught sight of Klara.

She was halfway across a parking lot jammed with tour buses from distant cities. Cards revealing their origins – Fortaleza, Curitiba, Campo Grande, Porto Seguro – shared dashboards with black ribbons and framed portraits of the dead president. The coaches blocked Malloy’s view: he couldn’t see anyone resembling TARQUIN. Klara looked back and urgently beckoned him on.

Malloy hit the transmit button on his throat microphone. ‘Possible TARQUIN sighting north of Via Norte Dois. Pursuing on foot with Richter.’ He was extremely fit: talking while running was not a problem. Rushing after an unseen assassin through ranks of obscuring buses, on the other hand, was a very big problem. His training called for him to wait for back-up. But he couldn’t lose the German woman.

She was standing on a patch of waste ground just beyond the last tour bus. He came alongside her, breathing hard. ‘Where?’

She pointed to a large construction site of red earth, stacked girders and scattered PVC piping, on which an eight-storey building rose in unadorned concrete. Malloy saw him straightaway. The man was crossing the deserted site at a relaxed jog, a small black case in his hand. When he reached the steel fence surrounding the skeletal building, he paused at a gate and hunched over the lock. A moment later the gate was open and the man was inside the building.

‘TARQUIN sighting confirmed,’ said Malloy. ‘Construction site two blocks north of Palace of Justice.’ He looked round to the twin towers of the Congress, rising over the anonymous ministry annex buildings, and a hint of panic crept into his voice. ‘Be advised there is a probable line of sight from the top of the construction to the Praça.’

At the edge of the Praça dos Três Poderes, Simon Arkell turned and looked to the north-west. In the middle distance, he made out the top two floors of a dull grey building. No glint of glass in its windows and no aerials, aircon units or water tanks on its flat roof. A nearby crane confirmed the impression of a building under construction.

He turned up the volume on the CSIS radio and started running.

In the Palácio do Planalto, Shel Margrave was conferring with his ABIN opposite number, while keeping one eye on Terence Mayhew. The Canadian prime minister was at the other end of the reception suite, sharing a few words with the new president. A muted television showed the arrival of the military transport plane bearing the coffin and the Andrade family.

He excused himself at Malloy’s first report. When the second came, he asked tersely, ‘Did you see his face?’

‘Negative,’ responded Malloy.

Margrave made a swift assessment of Malloy’s account: it might be accurate, it might not. The prime minister was still indoors – they had time. ‘Soames, get over there. Malloy, I’m going to need facial confirmation before I divert any more officers away from the Praça.’

Gerard Soames was a capable officer and a good man to back up Malloy in a dangerous situation. But he was an unfortunate choice in one respect. At that moment, he was on the south side of the Praça, attempting to clear a piece of grit from his eye. It was too trivial an issue to mention, and he acknowledged and accepted the assignment without hesitation. But the grit was a problem, and he needed to deal with it before he could go into a hostile situation. It took him less than two minutes to remove his contact lens, sluice his eyeball with the solution he always carried, and replace the lens. And it was barely another three minutes before he’d worked his way through the crowd to the north side of the Praça. But those five minutes were critical. Because in that time, the few designated pedestrian routes across the cleared Via Norte Um had been sealed by grim-faced police officers ahead of the funeral cortège. These were Federal District military police, and they did not react constructively to Canadian diplomatic credentials. Where Arkell had been able to run straight across the great avenue, Soames was curtly told he would need to make his way at least half a kilometre to the east, through dense crowds, before he would have a hope of crossing to the north side.

They reached the steel fence and Malloy said, ‘Wait here. There’ll be more officers along shortly to take good care of you.’ With his weapon cradled in both hands, he nudged open the gate.

Klara caught his arm. ‘Don’t you want him alive?’

‘If possible, ma’am.’

‘Then I have to come with you. He’ll listen to me.’

‘I can’t risk you in there.’

‘Why not?’ she said fiercely. ‘I was only important to identify Gavriel. I’ve done that.’

‘You’re a civilian. I can’t involve you in a firefight.’

‘There won’t be one if I’m there!’

Malloy hesitated. He was not the kind of officer who actively sought the chance to put his weapons training to the test. The idea of confronting a Mossad assassin was not something he relished. The possibility of a negotiated surrender was appealing.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘But stay behind me at all times.’

Inside the steel fence, tools and materials lay where the construction workers had left them the previous evening. Two forklift trucks stood abandoned beside a concrete-lined pit. Malloy picked his way through the debris and entered the skeletal building via a makeshift bridge of rough planks over the drainage ditch that ran around the foundations. He heard the woman follow, her clumsy footsteps too loud on the planks. Ahead, a rough concrete doorway opened onto a dark passage littered with lengths of timber and reinforced steel. Removing his sunglasses, Malloy edged forward, advancing with careful steps through the construction wreckage.

Klara whispered, ‘Can I call to him?’

He looked back. ‘We need to establish whether –’ He broke off. She was staring past him, open-mouthed.

Swivelling round, he had time only to see a dark figure at the end of the passage, legs apart, hands clasped together at eye level. ‘Oh,’ he said reflexively, as two bullets tore into his throat.

He died on his back, vaguely aware of the Richter woman crouched over him, wishing he’d found time that morning to call home.

Simon Arkell heard the gunshots, despite the roar of helicopters overhead and the distant rumble of a million voices. He leapt a ditch and sprinted to the perimeter of the building site, scrambling over the steel fence rather than wasting seconds searching for a gate. Through a congregation of inert diggers and trucks, he spotted the plank bridge leading into the building. Fresh clods of dirt clung to the dusty wood. He slowed only to steady his breathing and adjust his eyes to the gloom inside, then launched himself into the dank passageway.

Klara was huddled on the ground next to Malloy’s body. His radio was in pieces, his weapon nowhere to be seen. Arkell crouched beside her.

‘Dead,’ she sobbed.

‘Are you hurt?’

She looked at him as if he was insane. ‘That man is
dead
! Gavriel
murdered
him!’

He took her hand, felt it trembling. ‘I know,’ he said softly.

‘He shot him right in front of me. His . . .’ She couldn’t finish the sentence. ‘Simon, he was right in front of me.’

‘It’s OK. We’ll get you out of here. Come on . . .’ He helped her up. ‘What did Gavriel say to you?’

She staggered slightly. ‘He said . . .’ Her brow creased. ‘God, he said . . .’

He helped her across the plank bridge. ‘Did he go upstairs? To the roof?’

Flinching at the bright sunlight, she looked at him in alarm. ‘You’re not going up there?’

‘Sit here,’ he said, guiding her towards a broad girder. ‘More officers are on their way.’

‘So wait for them,’ she said, newly frantic. ‘Don’t go up there. He’ll kill you too.’ All of a sudden her arms were around him and her shivering body was pressed against him. ‘Simon,
please
!’

It almost would be possible, he felt, to do nothing more – to settle into this moment and forget the rest. Forget Yadin and Wraye and Tony Watchman, and the bombing of Dault Street that killed Emily. This was enough.
She
was enough. He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her. ‘I’ll be all right,’ he promised. ‘I’ve got a reason to come down in one piece, haven’t I?’

‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘Yes.’

At the very edge of the flat concrete slab that, for the time being, formed the top of the building, Gavriel Yadin set up his tripod. Made of carbon fibre, it rose just sixty centimetres high and weighed less than half a kilogram. The kit it supported did not weigh much more, although it had cost several thousand dollars. Kneeling behind it, Yadin closed his right eye and put his left to the rubber eyepiece extender. The image through the powerful lens was sharp and vivid. Nudging it across the Brasilia skyline, Yadin found the Congress and, beyond it, the Praça dos Três Poderes.

It fascinated him to see the sheer number of people who had gathered to observe a wooden box and listen to a speech in a language most of them would not understand. The power of death.

So frequent and so ordinary.

We travel through life never thinking about death, and then it happens – someone important dies, and we are outraged, horrified, paralysed with shock! But an emperor died of a scratch from his own comb and a young man in Dordogne was killed by a tennis ball.

It does no good to go on living. It will do nothing to shorten the time you are dead.

He turned his attention to the device beside the tripod. Already powered up and ready to operate. He need only connect it.

Then, a voice somewhere behind him: ‘You know, I really hoped I might find you here.’

Terence Mayhew’s eyes were glazing over. He could not concentrate on the pages before him. It didn’t matter – he knew the speech by heart. This last review was really just to reassure his aides, and to avoid the need for further idle chatter with his Brazilian hosts about their pensions predicament.

He was not distracted by the prospect of assassination out there in the Praça dos Três Poderes. He had long reconciled himself to that possibility. In fact he was not thinking about Yadin, or the Andrade family, or his security team, or anything to do with this whole damn tragic business. His mind was instead wrestling with the dilemma presented by his youngest cousin.

Mikey.

He had never liked Mikey.

He pulled out his phone and looked again at the text. Simple blackmail, that’s what it was. The timing could not be coincidental. He wanted $20,000. The demand was couched in sugary family language of course.
Got no one else to turn to. If you can’t help me, I just don’t know what I’ll do . . .
Except that Mayhew feared his sly little cousin knew exactly what he’d do, exactly where he could obtain a comparable sum of money if only he were prepared to tell his story. What a headline:

DRUG-PUSHING PM PILFERS POLICE STASH FOR JUNKIE CUZ

A victimless crime, but he had been the ranking police officer in the station, trusted by his superiors and his community to uphold the law. He would never have considered it if his mother and aunt hadn’t come to him together, two tearful matrons, begging for his help. Mikey’s ripping the house apart, they said. He’s going to set fire to something. He’s going to hurt himself, they said.

He needs his fix.

It was so easy, that was the problem. Grass, pills, powder, junk – they had it all in the station. And if a little went missing, it was easy enough to make up the recorded quantities at the next crack house raid.

Hard to refuse the second time.
But Terry, if it was OK last week . . .
And the third, and the fourth, until Mayhew had found the balls to do what he should have done in the first place. Mikey had been ‘discovered’ by some brother officers in possession of crystal meth, and had been forced into a treatment programme. Mayhew made sure the charges ultimately went away.

Unfortunately, Mikey’s problem did not go away. He was clean for just over a year, employed in a hardware store for very nearly four months. Then he fell apart.

Mayhew had moved on to a new policy role in Edmonton, and was able to say with clear conscience that he no longer had access to drugs. Never again did he pass illegal substances to his deteriorating cousin. Instead he propped him up with money. Minimal sums. Cash that was, all agreed, only to be spent on food and rent. When he stood for parliament, and Mikey happened to show up in his riding, the remittances increased slightly. When he rose to ministerial rank and started appearing regularly on television, there was another bout of inflation. But the financial burden was manageable, and Mayhew was able to tell himself that it was nothing more than a bit of charity, a tithe to support a less fortunate member of his family.

Not now. Not twenty thousand. This was naked extortion. And if he paid, there would be more demands, greater still. Mikey might be living in the gutter, irretrievably hooked on a multiplicity of substances, but his brain still functioned lucidly enough to keep the texts coming. What would happen when Mayhew could no longer afford to pay? He was not a rich man, and there is a limit to the credit a bank will extend even to a prime minister. When the money ran out, would Mikey graciously accept the fact and go quietly in search of other funding sources? If he did not – and Mayhew was certain he would not – then everything was in jeopardy. Not just his career but the government, Think Again and the entire legalization movement.
Drug-pushing PM pilfers police stash . . .

For the first time in his life, Terence Mayhew asked himself whether it might not be better for everyone if Mikey was dead.

Three years in office had changed the policeman from Alberta. He had been required to make decisions, and as a result of those decisions men had been killed – for the greater good. He was, he felt now, capable of making an equivalent decision about Mikey, if he could persuade himself that his analysis of the threat was robust and his motives were pure. A junkie’s wretched life balanced against vitally important social reform. Or was he just trying to save his own political skin? Keep himself out of jail? Such was the issue: he had to be absolutely sure why he was doing this.

Well, he
was
sure. That was the phenomenal truth of the matter. It seemed to Mayhew in a moment of revelation that he was able to think more clearly, even dispassionately, about the question of his cousin’s fate – now that he himself was faced with the imminent possibility of assassination.