The Echo of the Whip (9 page)

The unofficial motto of the capital of Texas was:
Keep Austin Weird.

Eugene “Gene” Beck certainly did his part. Three days a week he laced up his running shoes with the intention of running a marathon distance: 26 miles, 385 yards. Didn’t matter what the weather was. The only thing that could stop him was … a woman, a bar, a broke-down car. Anything that might become the lyric for a country-and-western song.

Gene collaborated with a dozen musicians who called Austin home.

He didn’t read musical notation or play an instrument, but when he handed over a page of verses and a chorus he’d whistle the way he thought the tune might go. Sometimes his collaborators would confess they didn’t share his vision, and that was okay. But nobody ever tried to rip off one of his songs. Claim it as their own creative product.

The reason for hewing to straight deals with Gene was people invariably got the feeling he was the kind of guy, if you got him mad, he might take you out into the hills and grill your liver over a campfire. Eat it while you had just enough life left to watch him do it.

Not that he’d ever threatened such a thing. It was just a feeling people got, should they ever do anything to displace his usual genial nature. His normal good spirits were evinced by the way he’d whistle merrily as he strode mile after mile on Travis County blacktop.

Local motorists would wave to him as they passed by. They weren’t bothered by the sight of the gun holstered at the small of his back or the knife in the sheath on his right calf. That was just a man exercising his Second Amendment rights as well as his body. Nothing weird or scary about that for Texas.

In fact, more than a few women, young and old, blew him kisses as they motored by. He’d written a song about them. Called it “Highway Honeys.”

Beck was an Air Force vet, had planned to get trained in aircraft maintenance and take his skills into the private sector when his hitch was up. But that plan, while practical, failed to engage his imagination. He decided he wanted something with more sex appeal. Something you could tell the ladies and, eventually, your grandkids about and make them all say, “gee whiz.”

He applied for training as a Combat Controller, one of the USAF’s special ops positions.

Among other things, Combat Control Teams seized enemy airfields for use by American forces. They also pinpointed enemy targets for U.S. pilots and ground commanders. To achieve some of their goals they might become “bike chasers.” Airmen tossed dirt bikes out of cargo planes, and the combat control guys followed. Chutes popped for both the machines and the men and they hit the ground rolling.

How cool was that? Enough to fire Beck’s jets, that was for sure. He aced the FAST, fitness and stamina test. He was lean but strong as a “wild animal,” according to his evaluation. He could run forever and stay awake and functional for days on end. Better yet, he seemed to inspire other men to find unsuspected reserves of the mental toughness the job required.

Soon enough, Beck was pegged not just for his desired posting but also for an officer’s commission and a leadership role.

Until, that was, it was pointed out to him that in certain battlefield environments complete stealth was called for and the way he whistled while he worked would be a dead giveaway, death being the fate special ops warriors were tasked to deliver not absorb.

“Yes, sir,” Beck told his training instructor. “I’ll just switch the music to internal mode in those situations.”

“Come again,” the instructor ordered.

Hearing Beck’s explanation, the instructor sent him to visit a medical officer, in this case a psychologist. The doctor asked Beck, “You say you always hear music, actually
hear
it, and that’s why you frequently whistle?”

“Yes, sir. For a long time, I thought everyone was that way. I was halfway through elementary school before I learned different. Later on, I was told some people always hear a ringing in their ears.”

“Yes, that’s called tinnitus,” the doctor said.

“Must be awful, but me I hear music, and I love it.”

“The music never stops?”

“When I sleep, I suppose.”

“But when you’re awake?”

“It’s always there.”

“Is the music from songs you’ve heard on the radio or elsewhere?”

“Sure, that’s some of it, but I hear a lot of tunes that just come to me, too.”

“So you whistle along with what you hear?”

“Yes, sir. It makes me feel good.” Beck hesitated before adding, “Like I’m part of a big band.”

The psychologist paused to reflect. Then he asked, “Have you ever heard of an artist having a muse?”

At that point, Beck hadn’t, so the psychologist explained the idea.

There were nine Greek goddesses who ruled over the arts. They inspired poets, musicians and others. The muse of music was called Euterpe. Beck found the idea that he might be tuning into a goddess even cooler than chasing a dirt bike out of an airplane.

Unfortunately for reaching his goal as a combat controller, the psychologist also raised the possibility that Beck might be in an incipient stage of schizophrenia, a condition in which auditory hallucinations were common. He was washed out of special ops training and separated from the Air Force with a medical discharge.

This swift reversal of fortune might have been crushing except for the immediate appearance of a man in civilian clothes who identified himself as Nicholas Wicklow and told Beck, “I’m from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the DIA. I’m told you could be a musical prodigy or a budding madman. Either way, I might have a job for you, if you’re interested.”

Having no other immediate prospects, Beck was.

He was taught a multitude of skills the Air Force hadn’t covered, including: how to speak Russian with a Swiss-German accent, how to alter his appearance to blend in with six different ethnic groups and fourteen ways to kill without using a firearm or edged weapon. In short, Beck became a bilingual, versatile, elusive assassin.

The really good part, from the DIA’s point of view, was that Beck worked off their books. If it ever became necessary to disavow a killing that went wrong, there’d be no documentary link between him and the Pentagon. Better yet, the jukebox in Beck’s head provided him with a mental condition that would make it child’s play to paint him as a delusional loon.

What Nicholas Wicklow and the boys at the DIA hadn’t counted on, though, was that even with his aberration Beck had his head screwed on straight. He realized his position was far from secure. So he gave himself the ultimate safeguard. He said no to any hit he didn’t like. What the hell could anyone do about that?

Zip was what. Wasn’t like he had a contract they could hold him to. They might have threatened him with physical harm or maybe even a fatal accident. Only they’d helped to make him harder to kill than Godzilla. In fact, Beck was about the biggest bad-ass in the DIA’s out of bounds playground. If you went after him and messed up, he was going to be vengeful.

He didn’t care much about money either, so threatening to cut off his monthly wire transfers didn’t carry any weight. Beck had told Wicklow if he ever needed another gig he’d head for Nashville and write songs. He suspected there were a lot of people there who always heard music in their heads.

On the other hand, if approached in a fair-minded way, he could be entirely reasonable. If you made an objective case that some foreign asshole represented a real threat to the country and the agency had a practical plan for disposing of said asshole, Beck would take the job. Assuming his payday was proportionate to the risk he’d have to take, of course. That wasn’t greed, just common sense.

His favorite role was playing a corrupt Russian ex-military man who was selling advanced hardware out the back door. None of his terrorist marks had any trouble believing that because it was really happening. You paid off the big wheels of the kleptocracy in the Kremlin, you were good to go.

Beck had promised to deliver artillery, armored vehicles, and anti-aircraft systems — and that was just the first letter of his imaginary inventory. He thought it might be pushing credulity to say he could put his hands on a nuclear sub, but he did sucker one wannabe jihadi with the irresistible idea that he could finagle cosmonaut training for the chump, get him a ride to the international space station and let him blow up outer-space infidels from around the world over the skies of the Great Satan.

The guy took it hard when Beck told him the truth and put a bullet between his eyes.

After a number of variations on that con, the real crooked Russian arms dealers caught on that some SOB was damaging their brand and dispiriting their customer base. They sent teams out to hunt him down and kill him in the most gruesome way possible. Tough as Beck was, he still thought it was time to beat a tactical retreat.

He relocated his money and himself, not bothering to notify Wicklow or anyone else at the DIA. He fetched up in Austin under a new name and started writing lyrics for the better songs in his head. He also took some private sector outlaw jobs to keep from getting bored.

He limited himself to property crimes. High-end theft. He didn’t want to leave a trail of blood that some smart tracker could follow back to him. More than that, he told himself the only bastards he’d killed had all been enemies of his country. In his heart, he still saw himself as a special ops guy.

If he started acing people for money, he’d become just another gun thug.

He didn’t want that. But murder was just what the guy who’d hired him to steal the frozen embryos requested. Not just kill any poor sap either. He wanted James J. McGill hit.

The president’s henchman, for Christ’s sake.

There was no way Beck was going to do that.

But it was kind of interesting to think about how he
might
do it.

As he ran down the road outside Austin whistling.

“How’s her majesty?” McGill asked, his phone on its speaker setting.

From London, Captain Welborn Yates replied, “Fit and chipper. Might be planning a
coup d’état.
Retake the throne. Maybe reclaim the colonies. She sends her regards.”

“Right back at her,” McGill said.

“She also told me she’s confident you’ll work something out to spare the president any embarrassment. She has great faith in you.”

“I’ll try not to let either her or Patti down.”

McGill sat on a silk sofa in what had formerly been the presidential suite of the five-star hotel tucked snugly into a cozy canyon in L.A.’s snootiest neighborhood. Taking everything in from an opposing armchair was John Tall Wolf.

The BIA man had arched his eyebrows at the mention of royalty.

Shifting the discussion to business, McGill mentioned that he had company in the room and introduced Tall Wolf. “Kira and the girls aren’t in the room with you, are they?”

“Aria and Callista are tucked in for the night. Kira put them to bed and has yet to return to me. She’s probably trying to accommodate herself to the idea that we can’t afford our own palace on an Air Force officer’s salary.”

McGill laughed and Tall Wolf grinned.

“Yeah, let’s hope she can dispel that sorrow,” McGill said. “Listen, is your schedule over there tied down tight? If you’ve got any free time, I could use some help scaring a little cooperation out of the brass hats at the Pentagon.”

“I’d be working under presidential authority?”

“Unofficially. It’d be better if you could create that impression without coming right out and saying so.”

“But if I were to find myself in a corner?” Welborn asked.

McGill thought about that. “Give them Galia’s name.”

“Oh … kay.”

The note of doubt in Welborn’s assent was unmissable. In most cases, short of acts of war, the White House chief of staff’s backing would have prompted swift Pentagon compliance. With the president about to go on trial in the Senate, though, the top brass and civilian leadership at the Department of Defense might want to hedge their bets.

“You’re right,” McGill said, agreeing with Welborn’s unspoken misgiving. “What I’ll do is call Jean Morrissey, see if I can get her in on the act.”

That would still give Patti some cover, McGill thought, and the woman who might well be the next commander-in-chief would get compliance from any officer or bureaucrat who valued his job.

“I think that would do it,” Welborn agreed. “Getting back to your question, we’ve met all the high-and-mighty on our schedule over here. All that’s left is the shopping. I can tear myself away from that, and gladly. What do you need from me?”

McGill told Welborn about the stolen embryo caper.

“So what I’d like,” he said, “is for you to look for a connection between Edmond Whelan, the chief of staff to the House Majority whip, and anyone in the military possessing burglary skills and a willingness to misapply them.”

A moment of silence followed, long enough for McGill to ask, “You still there, Welborn?”

“Yes, I was just thinking. If things go very badly for me, I might be given political asylum over here. The queen is very fond of my girls.”

After McGill ended the call, John Tall Wolf told him, “I could probably hide out with the Tarahumara tribe down in Mexico, my mother’s relatives, if things come to that.”

“I thought you said you were getting married to a Mountie.”

The BIA man shrugged. “Never met a Canadian who didn’t appreciate a winter getaway.”

McGill grinned. “I really don’t think any of us will have to flee the country.”

“Not until Whelan’s crew takes complete control,” Tall Wolf said deadpan.

“Yeah, well, if it comes to that, I’ve heard good things about New Zealand. Meanwhile, I was wondering whether you think we’ve got Detectives Zapata and MacDuff sufficiently grounded in the political realities of this case.”

Tall Wolf gave McGill a look. “You mean do I think they won’t try to lean on you if I’m not around? I wouldn’t count on it.”

“Me either, but I’m going to chance it.”

“My services are no longer required?” Tall Wolf couldn’t remember the last time he’d been booted off a case. Truth was, it had never happened.

McGill wasn’t about to change that. He had another idea.

“Oh, I still want your help, no question about that. But you and Welborn both raise a good point. There could be political fallout from this case, the extent of which I can’t even guess. I’ve got two solid pensions, an expanding business and a rich wife. I’ll be okay whatever happens. But I can’t make that promise to anyone else. If you want to bow out, I’ll understand.”

Tall Wolf shook his head.

“Not a quitter, huh?” McGill asked.

“Never.”

“Good. So what I’m thinking is this: You look at the list of people Mira Kersten gave you, the ones she said she’d have turned to if she had wanted to subvert Whelan, and see what they might have to tell you.”

“Sure, I can do that. What about the ‘handful of peculiar paparazzi’ who might have video clips of Ms. Kersten? That tidbit struck me as a bit odd. Almost a throwaway line, but who knows?”

McGill agreed. “That ’s worth a look, too. Your choice whether to look at the names on the list or the unspecified tabloid people first.”

“Probably won’t take long to run down the list.”

“You think Ms. Kersten gave us those names just for appearance’s sake, Mr. Co-director?”

“That idea did occur to me. With your friend Captain Yates searching for military malefactors, what will you be doing?” Tall Wolf asked.

“I’m going to take a closer look at my client,” McGill said.

Talk with the security guard at the fertility clinic, too.

But he kept that to himself.