‘And you knew nothing about Congo’s escape plans?’
‘No, I knew about his plans for his funeral. And I had two million very good reasons for believing they were serious.’
‘So this all came as a total surprise to you?’
‘Yes, it did. I drove up to Huntsville, steeling myself for the experience of seeing a man die before my eyes – not something I’ve ever seen before, thank God. First I knew about any escape was a reporter sticking a mike in front of my face and asking me what I thought about it, live on TV. I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. Felt like a damn fool, if you really want to know.’
‘And none of that two million was used to buy the weapons, transportation or personnel used to free a convicted murderer and kill fifteen police officers and state officials?’
Brown looked Malinga straight in the eye. ‘No, absolutely not.’
‘Did Mr Weiss say anything to you that indicated the money should be used for such a purpose?’
‘What?’ For the first time Brown raised his voice. ‘Are you seriously suggesting that one of the state’s most respected criminal attorneys, together with a prominent businessman who is himself qualified to practise law, would have a conversation about the illegal seizure of a convicted killer?’
Malinga did not raise his. ‘I’m not making any suggestions, Mr Brown, I’m asking you a question.’
‘Well, the answer is an absolute, categorical “no”.’
‘OK then, here’s another. Did you have any communication with Johnny Congo, aside from what you heard from Mr Weiss?’
‘Again no. How could I have done? Prisoners awaiting execution have a very limited ability to communicate with anyone. And if Johnny had ever tried to speak or write to me, I imagine they’d have a record of it at the Polunsky Unit. Do they have such a record, Major Malinga?’
‘No.’
‘Well, there you go.’ Brown exhaled, letting the tension out. In his previously calm but authoritative style he said, ‘I think we’re done, don’t you? I appreciate that you’ve got a job to do, Major Malinga. So I’ll make this as simple and straightforward as I can. I had nothing whatever to do with Johnny Congo’s escape. I had no knowledge of any plans for such an escape. I was not involved in financing any illegal activities or purchases on Johnny Congo’s behalf. None of the money given to me to fund Johnny Congo’s funeral and memorial event has been used for anything other than the purpose for which it was intended. Are we clear on that?’
‘Guess so.’
‘Then I wish you good luck with your ongoing investigation. My assistant will show you out.’
Cross had a way of dealing with the pain that could hit a man when a woman had ripped his heart out through his chest, thrown it to the floor and then harpooned it with a single stab of her stiletto heel. First he sealed it up inside an imaginary thick lead box; then he dropped it, like radioactive waste, into the deepest, darkest recesses of his mind. Once that was done, he got back to work.
Cross was already bearing down hard on his emotions and turning his thoughts to the two issues that would be dominating his life for the foreseeable future: the security of Bannock Oil’s Angolan operations, and the hunt for Johnny Congo. Now that his arch-enemy was at large once again, Cross knew that he would have to go back to war. Sooner or later, Congo would come after him, and when he did, there could only be one winner, one survivor.
He called Agatha, the personal assistant who’d been a secretary, confidante and unfailing ally to Hazel for years before transferring her allegiance to him. ‘John Bigelow wants me to talk to some State Department official called Bobby Franklin, but he never gave me a contact number. Call John’s office to get it, then call Franklin to set up a Skype meeting in the next couple of days.’
‘Of course,’ Agatha replied with her usual unflappable efficiency.
‘Thanks. And then I need to talk to Imbiss and the O’Quinns, but in person. So please track them down and wherever they are in the world, tell them they need to be in London by lunchtime tomorrow.’
‘What if there aren’t any flights?’
‘Send a plane. Send one for each of them if you have to. But they have to be here.’
‘Don’t worry, sir, they will be.’
‘Thank you, Agatha. If anyone else said that, I’d think they were probably bluffing. But I can absolutely count on you getting my people here. None of them would dare say no to you.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
The thought of having his best people around him raised Cross’s spirits. Dave Imbiss didn’t look like a man you’d want beside you in the heat of battle. No matter how hard he worked at his fitness, he still had a plump, fresh-faced demeanour. But that appearance was deceptive. Imbiss’s bulk was all muscle, not fat. He’d been awarded a Bronze Star for heroism in combat when serving as a US Infantry captain in Afghanistan and he had brains as well as brawn. Imbiss was Cross Bow’s resident techie, a master in the dark arts of cyber-warfare, surveillance, hacking and all-purpose gadgetry. Paddy O’Quinn was leaner, edgier, a quick-witted, hot-tempered Irishman who’d served under Cross in the SAS until he’d punched a junior officer whose decisions under fire were threatening to cost his entire fifteen-man troop their lives. That mutinous blow saved those soldiers’ lives, cost O’Quinn his military career and made him the first name on Cross’s list when he began recruiting for Cross Bow.
Paddy O’Quinn was as tough as they came, but he had met his match – and more – in his wife. Anastasia Voronova O’Quinn was a beautiful blonde who looked like a supermodel, fought like a demon and could drink any man under the table. Nastiya, as her friends were allowed to call her, had been trained in the arts of subterfuge and deceit by the FSB, the Russian security agency that was the post-Communist successor to the KGB, while the Spetsnaz – Russian Special Forces – had taught her how to inflict pain and, if necessary, death in a myriad different ways. As good as his men were, Cross believed that he could still more than match them. But even he would think twice before picking a fight with Nastiya.
Together they had already beaten Johnny Congo once. Now they would do it a second time. And then they’d never have to do it again.
D’Shonn Brown had said nothing remotely incriminating. There was as yet no evidence whatever to suggest that he had done anything wrong. On that basis, any suggestion that he had been involved in Johnny Congo’s escape could reasonably be taken as unjustified and even racially biased. But Malinga couldn’t shake a feeling that hung around the back of his mind like an itch that needed scratching: a cop’s intuition that he had just witnessed a slick, proficient, shameless display of lying. He wasn’t going to voice that suspicion publicly just yet. He wasn’t that dumb. But still, it meant that he could approach his interview with Shelby Weiss primed for any hint that Johnny Congo’s attorney had something to hide.
If Brown’s working environment was an exercise in contemporary design, Weiss’s was far more traditional: wood panelling on the walls; bookshelves full of august legal tomes; all the vanity portraits that Brown had conspicuously avoided. The one thing they had in common was the framed diplomas. But whereas D’Shonn Brown’s education had been as close to Ivy League as you could get west of the Appalachians; Weiss took a perverse pride in the fact that he had studied his law in the relatively humble surroundings of the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University, a public college right in the heart of Houston on Cleburne Street. He wanted people to know that however slick he might look now, he’d started out as a blue-collar kid, working his way up from nothing by ability, determination and damned hard work. Juries lapped it up. Malinga had seen the Shelby Weiss Show enough times in enough