Concert of Ghosts

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PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF CAMPBELL ARMSTRONG

“Campbell Armstrong is thriller writing's best-kept secret.” —
The Sunday Times

“Armstrong is among the most intriguing of blockbuster writers … near to unputdownable.” —
GQ

“While touching on suspense with a skill to please hard-core thriller addicts, he manages to please people who … warm to readable novels of substance.” —
Daily Mail

“Armstrong's skill is not just an eye for a criminally good tale but a passion for the people that will populate it.” —
The Scotsman

“Subtle and marvelous … This is a dazzling book.” —
The Daily Telegraph
on
Agents of Darkness

“A consummate psychological thriller … Without doubt, Armstrong is now in the front rank of thriller writers.” —
Books
on
Heat

“Armstrong has outdone both Frederick Forsyth and Ken Follett.” —James Patterson on
Jig

“A full throttle adventure thriller.” —
The Guardian
on
Mambo

“A wonderful puzzle that keeps us guessing right to the end.” —
Publishers Weekly
on
Mazurka

Concert of Ghosts

Campbell Armstrong

This book is for Rebecca
,

who found light in the darkness

Thanks to Marymarc Armstrong for

her generous assistance, and Noel Fray
,

lapsed hippy, for his contribution to

stalking ghosts in San Francisco

Most of the newcomers were less interested in gleaning philosophical or creative insight than in getting stoned as often as possible. They smoked or swallowed anything said to be psychedelic, and when the visions grew stale they turned to other drugs, especially amphetamines.… For these people Haight-Ashbury was the last hope. They had nowhere else to go. They were the casualties of the love generation. You could see them in the early morning fog, huddled in doorways, hungry, sick and numb from exposure, their eyes flirting with vacancy. They were Doomsday's children, strung out on no tomorrow, and their ghostlike features were eerie proof that a black hole was sucking at the heart of the American dynamo
.

—
Acid Dreams
, Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain

1

Daily, from first planting until final harvest, Harry Tennant attended his crop with the patient devotion of a man who has grown weary of society and wants nothing to do with the outside world. He'd go deep into the woods where the plants grew and with great care would pluck a leaf or bud, crushing it tenderly between thumb and forefinger to release the scent of resin. Eyes closed, he'd smell the liberated perfume of the plant. If he was pleased, he'd say something to Isadora, the Great Dane who always accompanied him. When he wasn't happy, he'd frown, and the dog, recognizing the expression, took to sulking among the trees.

The crop dominated Tennant's life. Whatever change in weather affected the plants affected him too. He was sensitive to frosts, to periods of extreme dryness, to the excessive rainfalls that came unfailingly to this part of upstate New York in late summer.

During one such monsoon he put on his mackinaw and an old Stetson and went down through the rattling trees to the crop. The Dane plowed after him with the kind of duty that transcends sodden discomfort.

When they reached the place where the crop grew, Tennant experienced an uneasiness he couldn't quite understand. Was it the way the dog, her snout quivering, had begun to scamper back and forth as if in pursuit of something unseen, a mystery? Or was it merely how the plants bent under the force of the rain? They looked fragile to him. In weather like this they could lose their potency, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do to save them. You had to recognize how powerless you were: The elements made you helpless in the end, as helpless as the plants themselves.

He walked back to his house in the clearing, pursued by echoes of the monsoon that crashed in a boisterous rage through the trees. At one point he stopped and wondered anxiously if he heard something other than the roar of rain, the muted engine of a small plane, say. He looked up into the dense clouds. He saw nothing. Perhaps the sound had been that of a tractor droning in a distant field.

He continued to walk. He thought:
Farmers don't plow fields in weather this savage
. When he reached his house, he went inside the kitchen and took off his hat and mackinaw and stood for a long time looking across the clearing at the woods. With wet fingers he lit a cigarette. The sky over the trees was gray and turbulent and finally mysterious, as if it concealed all manner of hidden menace. He wondered how many times he'd stood in this very place and observed the trees and the sky in the manner of a man assailed by the inexplicable instinct that something wasn't quite right with his life, that he stood on the edge of a revelation that, should it ever come, might emerge from an unlikely combination of leaf and cloud.

Bullshit, he thought. My life is fine, just fine.

That night he awoke fully clothed. It was raining still, though the sound was softer now. He had a sense of the axis of darkness having shifted in a slight way, as if something in the woods had changed. The notion disturbed him. His bedroom was cold and damp, the window open. He'd had a dream filled with images of a city that might have been San Francisco; the architecture was strangely angled and dreadful, the streets depopulated. An eerie emptiness had prevailed.

He didn't move for many minutes. In the lower part of the house a board creaked, and he thought of Isadora turning in her sleep on the sheltered porch. Then there was the sound of the screen door flapping gently against its frame, and he pictured the dog entering the house the way she often did during the night.

He got up, looked down the staircase, saw nothing because the night was moonless and cloudy. The air still held the smell of the eggs he'd fried hours ago for supper. His heartbeat had a clock's certainty. He called out the dog's name. No response, no thump of tail upon wood. He put his palm on the handrail and began to descend.

The first flashlight went on at the bottom of the stairs. A second flicked on immediately after. Tennant stood very still as the disks of light played against his face. He saw a dark coat streaked with moisture, the gloss of two black shoes beneath the slick wet garment, and he had an impression of Isadora, barely touched by either light, lying in the hallway, eyes closed, her tongue hanging from her huge jaw.

“Harry Tennant,” somebody said, “you're under arrest.”

Hands cuffed behind his back, Tennant was dragged away from the motionless animal and led out onto the steps of the porch, where rainwater dripped from the roof into his hair. The two cops who cuffed him had shot the Great Dane with a tranq gun filled, so they jovially said, with enough dope to bring down a bull elephant.

The woods beyond the house were astonishingly transformed by lights. Lurid blue and red lamps of cop vehicles strobed the darkness, flashlights and lanterns created fantastic shadows. Tennant was blinded by the extravagance of it all. Voices echoed through the trees. How many guardians of law and order had come? The noise suggested fifty, sixty, a preposterous number for an operation as insignificant as his. No—the night magnified sounds, and the restless flashing lights gave the impression of frantic activity. Ten men, a dozen at most. Some from the county sheriff's office, a few from the state police, perhaps an agent or two from the Drug Enforcement Administration. The specific affiliations of law enforcement officers meant nothing to Tennant. They were all heat, no matter what their badges said.

He had a sense of inevitability. Luck was a string; his had broken. A major thrust of adrenaline was going, but he wasn't sure yet if it was fear. He was distanced from events, a dazed spectator.

“What's going to happen to my dog?” he asked.

“She'll have a mother of a hangover,” one of the cops said.

Tennant regarded this cop under the porch lamp. He was fiftyish and had sunken cheeks. He looked generally disappointed with life. Milky rings circled his dark pupils.

“If she wakes,” said the other cop.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Tennant asked.

“She took a fair dose.” The second cop was young, concave beneath his mackinaw. Tennant was sure he'd seen this one before—a local shop, a barn auction in Sterling Township. “She's a big un. Should be okay. Dog like that.”

“I fucking hope so,” Tennant said. “What happens next?”

The young cop said, “We wait for Sheriff Grabbe.”

“Yeah, that's what we do,” said the other. “Wait for the sheriff.”

Tennant thought he had a memory of seeing Jack Grabbe election posters nailed months ago to telephone poles in the district. He couldn't be sure because he rarely paid attention to political hucksters. Politics was for people who bought into the system. Let the people be heard. Let them choose between one nondescript candidate and another in secret ballot. Tennant lived in that fringe place where politics had no dominion.

“Here he is,” said the tall cop.

Sheriff Grabbe walked between the illuminated trees in the direction of the house. He had a small man's strut. He was wearing an ordinary raincoat and a dark suit. His thin hair was plastered by rain to his scalp in streaks so symmetrical they might have been drawn on his head by a finicky child with a black waterproof marker. When he came up on the porch, he squinted at Tennant.

“Harry Tennant?” he asked. “This your land?”

Tennant said it was. His voice wasn't quite right. He had to keep it lower. Firmer.