Kemp had been in the van too long, felt the migraine mix of adrenalin and airless interior, moving imagery and shifting conspiracies, tighten their hold on his brain. Had he considered the South African dimension? St Clair had asked in the hospital office. He would get to it, examine every angle, each permutation. There was still the American connection to follow, the parallels with Los Angeles, the intercontinental sources directing racist material and racially motivated assassins towards London. And here was his break, here was Mr Incognito exposed, detected with a little bit of techno-magic. Put it down to the man’s stupidity, over-confidence; put it down to fate. The tourist was programmed to torture and execute, activated by a higher command, motivated by the likes of Reverend Al Azania. He had felt compelled, inspired, to slice Sophie’s face to pieces with an improvised scalpel. Cold blood generating so much warm blood, spreading so much bad blood. Kemp studied him real-time, real close. Not-quite-so-much-fucking-safety-in-numbers.
He pinched his sinuses. ‘Where’s Clive?’
‘Sector Eleven. He’s got his squad spread over three other zones, covering exit points. I’ll bring him up.’
‘Vector them on until they’ve got a trigger.’
Clive was a Watcher, one of the best, a Caribbean ex-cop from St Lucia and London, an old pro with every trick, three sons, a useful right hook, and a black cab in which he would cruise the streets on MI5 surveillance jobs. God-fearing and life-loving, he had been married for forty years, lived in Wandsworth for thirty, played the cat-and-mouse game of the Watchers for twenty. In multicultural London, he was a godsend for tasks in areas to which white spotters could rarely venture without flagging themselves. As the Security Service broadened its remit in a post-Cold War scramble for employment, it took on roles in countering drugs and large-scale crime. Clive was there, blending, fading, loitering, following, disguised as an African businessman at a restaurant table or a Jamaican bum beneath a railway bridge. Old-fashioned, utterly professional, dedicated to detail, he managed his teams with a blend of charm and paternalistic discipline, was revered for it. Kemp suspected that even the most advanced recognition software would fail to pick him out from a street scene. MI5 needed him. Kemp needed him.
‘Let’s catch up with the Reverend.’ Kemp turned the volume switch.
‘ … They entice your brothers from Africa, then shoot them – trap and shoot them down like beasts … They cut off your heads and leave your corpses floating in the Thames … They murder your youngsters on the streets … They enter the homes of brothers and sisters made dependent by their system of inequality on crack cocaine and casually swap around their noses and ears.’ There was a mass groan, a hiss of rage. Azania slowed the tempo, built the pressure. ‘I say again. Swap … around … noses … and … ears …’ From his balcony, he looked around. ‘They wonder why we are angry, why we ask for justice. They wonder why they should be fearful.’
In the van, a technician shook his head. ‘Talk about hellfire.’
‘Exactly what he’d like to generate,’ Kemp replied.
The communications controller lifted the side of a headset and turned towards him. ‘Clive has him. Positive eyeball. He’s putting a box around the guy.’
‘Fine. I want all the back-up he wants. Get another helicopter up for the relay. It’s got to be seamless, not a single break in contact.’
‘Clive’s going in for CTR.’
‘Target might be carrying a short. Tell him to be careful.’ The message was transmitted, a rapid double-click sent back as response.
The team watched. ‘If our target pulls any counter-surveillance stunts, it proves he’s been trained.’
‘On current form, I’d say in a frigging butcher’s shop,’ the second visuals specialist added.
Kemp tapped a screen. ‘Sweep the crowd again, use your eyes, see if we can mop anything else up. He might have accomplices, hard-core dickers, in there.’
‘Clive’s units are scouting.’
‘So are we, so are we,’ came the reply as fingers worked a keyboard to slew the cameras. ‘Beats me what for.’
Kemp leant against a panel. ‘The next move.’
The next move. Reverend Al Azania balled his fist and punched the air. Vocabulary was civil rights, aim was civil war. ‘Tell me you are conscious, not unconscious.’ They told him. ‘Tell me you care.’ They did. ‘Tell me you’re prepared.’ They were. ‘Tell me you’ll fight.’ They roared. Tell me you’ll burn, loot, pillage. It was a straightforward equation: political demagogue plus prevailing demographics equals potential disaster. Somewhere below him was his Tiger, prowling this fertile plain, calculating and planning, looking up at the window, tuned to his master’s voice. The smattering of police would never get a fix, triangulate on the truth. For the truth was extraordinary and momentous; the truth was that he was glad to be far from Highway 80, Alabama, at this particular moment in time.
* * *
The USA
Deep South, deep conviction. Real significance. They had come from across America to show solidarity, to give thanks, pray, sing, light candles, hold hands, to set out eastwards from the central Alabama city of Selma for a Peace Walk to the state capital Montgomery. A time for reflection, for memories of historic victories and waypoints in the long march to civil rights, and for hope. Old and young mingled, black and white joined together, the veterans of the 1950s and 1960s meeting again to swap stories of struggle, tear gas and baton charges. They had won the vote, gained equality, consigned segregation to the trash. But you could never be sure, had to stay vigilant. Original signs declaring Whites Only and Colored Section in Rear, exhibited as historic artefacts in the National Voting Rights Museum, were only a few generations old. There were some bad attitudes out there, tension, shootings, enough people left who wanted to spill blood and break heads. The residue was always more bitter, the most stubborn.
And so they would tramp the distance, footsore but dedicated – rededicated – drive home the image and the point. They would not give up what they had gained, would not sit quiet while injustice and inter-racial stress survived. A just cause, an honourable intent. This was for those who went before and for those who came after; this was for the thousands who demonstrated here, strode out with Dr King in March ’65, for the Freedom Riders of May ’61 whipped and beaten by the KKK as they stepped from their buses in Montgomery. There was no going back. Except today. Once they reached the state capital, hundreds would board buses and begin the pilgrimage retracing and reversing the freedom route taken by the volunteer riders from Washington DC. Instead of firebombs, they would have petals thrown at them; in the place of certain arrest, they would be provided with police escorts and the cheers and well-wishes of onlookers. Others too would head slowly for Washington, converging over the coming month for the Million Clenched Fists march arranged and sponsored by Reverend Al Azania. Black consciousness, black power, had come of age.
A service of thanksgiving was held on Edmund Pettus Bridge, readings by a survivor of the original Bloody Sunday incident and by a member of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and flowers were laid in memoriam by children of a newer generation. It was a dignified and moving event. Heads were bowed, tears were shed. There were luminaries and functionaries, church ministers, senior representatives of numerous civil rights groups and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. A whole industry was represented, its stars on camera and on cue. Their words, their blessing, were broadcast to those waiting patiently in the heat along the length of Broad Street. Even Reverend Azania called in, whoops of joy greeting the live satellite transmission from London, his face projected on a giant screen, his speech stealing the show, creating a stir. Selma – Alabama River trading port, city of paper mills and Baptist churches, crucible for change. The Black Belt, of soil, of people. Descendants of slaves and cotton-pickers drank soda and shaded themselves from the sun, searched for friends, struck up discussions, idled. Ancestors had once passed through in leg-irons; they were in town as teachers, lawyers, executives, from all strata and every wage level, as free men.
Special Agents Althouse and Wood were also present. They had spent two days interviewing members of varied delegations, informally, off-the-record, talking to the foot-sloggers and foot soldiers milling around the waterfront, worshipping at the red-brick edifice of Brown Chapel AME Church, or populating the diners and fast-food emporia off Highland Avenue. It was a feel they sought, a weathervane mood that would indicate intent, discontent, might suggest names, point towards the next stage, the coming moves. Everyone spoke of Los Angeles, of rising intolerance, of the unfolding troubles; everyone carried the worry and the fear. Things were wrong, their brothers and sisters under threat. Theories abounded, views were swapped, debated, on cause and effect, on conspiracy, on the killing of cops, of white supremacists, on the internecine feuding between gangs, between communities. White-on-black, black-on-white. The result was grey, muddied. Good might yet come from the spirit of the march on Montgomery. They had believed it then and would believe it now. Anything was possible. Led by a gospel choir, the front of the column headed off.
Two hours into the journey. Krista glanced at Fletcher Wood walking beside her chilled and serene in dark regulation-blue suit and dark regulation-blue tie. It was his dress uniform, from jungle forest to Arctic ice-shelf. ‘Sure you wouldn’t prefer the rotorcraft option?’
‘I don’t do helicopters,’ he replied evenly. ‘Too many moving parts, too many things to break.’
‘Your risk-management’s commendable.’
‘Common sense. Those machines were never designed to leave Leonardo da Vinci’s doodle pad.’
‘My shoes weren’t designed to do this kind of walking.’
‘Must’ve been made in LA.’ He craned his neck to scan the forward ranks. ‘Like a lot of things.’
There was singing ahead, snatches of a slow chain-gang number. Sounds and sentiments from history. Krista thought of Mary, of her huge voice and quiet shyness, of her relived terror, the tale of her flight from Mississippi, her description of the Forresters and their hidden arsenal of weapons. The present day. Forresters. They were not average hoodlums with Remington pump-actions and TEC-9 machine-pistols; it was no average situation being created. There were individuals, groups, sewing seeds, spreading malevolence, operating on a massive scale. The whirlwind would come. It was in the air, a sense of foreboding close, the indications everywhere. A rider of that storm had served with 82nd Airborne, carrying its insignia tattooed on his shoulder. The demon had stared into Mary’s face, helped intimidate her into fleeing her home and state; another ex-paratrooper, held in San Quentin, had survived a cull of white supremacists by sitting it out in protective solitary confinement. Passover. His key to being spared was not a mark daubed in blood on the cell door, but the famed Airborne All American twinned-A on his flesh. Aryan Activist. The two FBI Special Agents had studied the files, read the reports on neo-Nazi skinhead cells within the military. Two had been uncovered at Fort Bragg, disbanded, several of their members discharged. But not before a soldier had executed a black couple out walking in a poor quarter of Fayetteville, North Carolina. Back at Airborne, remedial race-awareness training was introduced. All the better to spot a target. Former servicemen were out there, disciplined, trained, staying away from the gun clubs and the limelight, avoiding the militias, sects and klaverns penetrated by the Feds and the ATF. They were organized, directed. But the scent started with a short list of names, some-time paratroopers and Special Forces practitioners, known associates of the prisoner at San Quentin, reckoned to be alive, believed to have clean noses and cleaner records. Krista would run them to ground.
‘I don’t hear you singing, Fletch,’ she remarked.
‘And you don’t want to. My family lost its voice as soon as it migrated from the plantations.’ He took a helium-filled Peace Walk balloon proffered by a wayside vendor and handed it to her. ‘It’ll aid your cover.’
‘Like your suit has done for you.’
‘Hey. I blend in, lady.’
‘Sure. Everyone this year is wearing tie, waistcoat, dark suit and optional shoulder-holster.’
‘Jeez, you can be ungrateful.’ He adjusted the knot of his tie. ‘We ready for our schedule in Montgomery?’
‘Once we see the Freedom Riders off on their buses, it’s non-stop meetings. Latest is even the Louisiana chief is coming in for the conference.’
