by Dan Latus
With me, on the other hand, an old pal from civvy street, Harry must have felt he’d be on safer ground. I would be less likely to abandon him and his lady friend to their fate when I learned about this personal dimension to the problem.
‘So, what are you thinking of doing, Harry? Trading the document you told me about for Johanne?’
‘It’s not that straightforward. Obviously I want Johanne released, but I don’t want to just give Petrov the document back. I risked my own life to secure it, and if I can’t get it to Henderson for him to use, a lot of other lives will be at risk in the very near future. Also, I want to bring the murdering bastard down, to make up for what he did in Slovakia. I haven’t forgotten that either. Right now, though, it’s stalemate. I’ve told Petrov I won’t pass on the document to Henderson’s people so long as Johanne is unharmed. I’ve also led him to believe I will trade it for Johanne, which — between you and me — I don’t want to do. As it happens, he refused the deal anyway. He knows I can’t release the document while he holds Johanne. Also, he believes he can find me, and then he’ll have both me and the document. And Johanne as well.’
The complications were doing my head in. No wonder Harry had been so overwrought when I caught up with him. He was trying to ride an awful lot of horses at the same time.
‘This Petrov guy knows where you are?’
He nodded. ‘He does now. I contacted him to offer a deal. And I did that because I needed to know if Johanne was alive still.’
‘By phone? You actually spoke to him?’
‘Yeah. I had to be sure it was him I was communicating with, and it had to be fast.’
I couldn’t fault his logic. I could see that there really had been no alternative, once he had decided what he wanted to do.
‘Using the phone meant they could trace you, which is what they seem to have done?’
Harry nodded again.
‘Henderson knows as well, by the way,’ I told him. ‘He warned me the opposition were closing in on you.’
‘He’ll have got GCHQ to track me down. Has he got people on the island?’
‘Only in Victoria, he said. He was worried about what you might do if they got too close.’
Harry gave a thin little smile. I couldn’t tell what he thought of that. Perhaps nothing at all. Victoria was a long way from here. It might as well have been another country.
‘So, you offered to trade with Petrov,’ I added. ‘What was his response?’
‘He just laughed and said no.’ Harry shrugged. ‘Keeping Johanne alive is his way of ensuring I don’t pass on the battle plan. Meanwhile, he’s got people out looking for me. If they manage that, and recover the plan, neither I nor Johanne will be alive much longer.’
‘So, what’s the answer?’
‘I haven’t got one at present,’ Harry said shortly. ‘Staying alive and keeping Johanne alive are my priorities. I just figured I would do what I could for as long as I could, and hopefully something would turn up.’
‘Well, what turned up was me,’ I said with a wry chuckle. ‘Let’s hope that’s enough.’
‘I’m sorry I’ve dragged you into this, Frank,’ Harry said. ‘I was desperate.’
He glanced at me. ‘Feel free to quit if you want, now you know the full story. I wouldn’t hold it against you. Just go home and get on with your life.’
‘Well, I must admit it’s tempting.’
‘I’ll drop you off in Port Hardy. You’ll be able to make your own way out from there.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m not going to quit. I want to see if we can get you out of this hole you’re in. It should be interesting. Besides, I’d like to meet this lady who seems to have captured your heart.’
Then we had a really good laugh together, just like we used to do in days gone by.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘How much further, Harry?’
‘Another hundred miles. A bit less, maybe.’
Then what? I wondered.
‘When we get there, we’ll rest up. Wait.’
‘Sounds like a plan.’
‘I don’t mean forever!’ Harry said quickly.
‘No?’
‘I want to talk to Petrov again. Try to get him to agree to an exchange.’
It was less of a plan, more of that wishful thinking again. As Harry had already said himself, all Petrov had to do to prevent the document being released was keep Johanne alive until the hitmen caught up with Harry. Then he would have everything he wanted. We couldn’t afford to let that happen. We needed to stop Petrov in his tracks, give Henderson the battle plan, save Harry’s life, and get Harry’s woman released. Then I would be able to go home, job done, count my fee and put in my expenses claim form.
And pink pigs might fly past the window!
‘We’re here,’ Harry announced an hour or two later, taking his foot off the gas.
‘Where’s here?’ I leaned forward to peer through the windscreen. All I could see were walls of dark greenery on either side of the road.
‘Home,’ Harry said.
He turned off the road onto a narrow track I hadn’t even noticed that ran through a tiny gap between the trees. We rumbled along the track for a few minutes before emerging into a clearing in the forest, in the middle of which stood a log cabin. Harry stopped the truck, switched off the engine, threw open his door, and leaped out, obviously deliriously happy to be here.
At a more sedate pace and somewhat aghast, I followed. I couldn’t believe this was where Harry had chosen to live. Apart from anything else, there was nothing here but trees — great, towering conifers clad in their standard uniform of dark green. You couldn’t see more than twenty yards in any direction. How the hell would we see anyone coming to attack us?
‘Nice, eh?’ Harry said with a big smile.
‘Very nice,’ I said, swallowing my misgivings.
‘Very different to Redcar.’
‘Very. One or two more trees.’
Harry laughed.
There never had been much in the way of trees in our old hometown. What trees had been planted, in Lock Park say, were not much more than shrubs and bushes fifteen or twenty feet high at most. The winds off the North Sea had a lot to do with that — enforced dwarfism, essentially. Mind you, even bushes and shrubs can’t get much of a hold anywhere around my new home Risky Point.
‘Come on!’ Harry said, proudly. ‘I’ll show you around.’
There wasn’t much to see outside, discounting the trees. The cabin stood on a patch of ground that had been roughly cleared of forest. No attempt had been made to create a garden out of it. Mostly it was covered by tall grass and what you could, if you were being charitable, call a tangle of weeds and wildflowers. All that was interspersed with tree stumps and a few piles of rotting tree trunks and branches. The boundary of the plot was forest, a thick wall of trees well over a hundred feet high and dripping with rainwater and slimy moss.
‘Douglas Fir, Western Red Cedar and Hemlock mostly,’ Harry said with satisfaction when I asked him what the tree species were.
Not an oak or a beech in sight. Just a solid mass of drab, dark, coniferous green. Nothing to hear either. I was used to hearing gulls and the murmur of the sea, and at times the crashing of storm waves. This was different, and I didn’t care for it.
‘It’s really quiet here,’ I couldn’t help but remark. ‘The trees seem to absorb all sound.’
Life, too, I thought. I couldn’t see a bird, never mind a bear or a moose. Jimmy Mack was going to be disappointed when I told him about it.
‘You’re right. I just love it here,’ Harry confided with a big smile. ‘The peace and quiet. Heaven on earth for me.’
It made me wonder what kind of hell holes Harry had worked in during his career.
‘Let’s go inside,’ he said, turning to lead the way to the front door. ‘I don’t know about you, but I could do with a cup of coffee.’
It was a simple, single-storey cabin. There was one big living r
oom, with a galley kitchen on one side, four smaller rooms off a short corridor that served as bedrooms, an office and storage places. In all, it was warm and homely seeming. I liked it. The interior, that is. I would just have to forget about the outside.
‘Nice. You’ve got everything you need here, Harry.’
‘Haven’t we?’ he agreed cheerfully. ‘It’ll do for me, anyway. Sit yourself down, Frank. I’ll put the kettle on.’
While Harry was engaged in playing host, I let my eyes wander over the furnishings and the accumulated domestic bits and pieces that spoke of a home life being lived here. Only sometimes, though. It was somewhere to return to when body and mind tired of life in the bad places, and the spirit needed refreshing. As for permanent habitation, definitely not for me.
There were several pictures on the walls, paintings of what would be local scenes: harbours, mountains, fishing villages and forest. Quite a few ornaments scattered about. Examples of native craft work. First Nation artwork, I corrected myself. I would have to get used to the cumbersome language required by political correctness. No doubt it was a good thing.
On a bureau there was a framed photograph of Harry with a tall woman, and nearby a larger, head and shoulders portrait of the same woman. She would be in her late thirties, I guessed. Tall and blonde, and with a lovely smile, she looked as if she was enjoying being with Harry.
When my host returned with a couple of steaming mugs, he saw me inspecting the photos. ‘That’s Johanne,’ he said.
‘I guessed. Is she Canadian?’
‘Danish. She’s why we’re here, and I’m not speaking of her abduction.’
Harry picked up the framed photograph and stared wistfully at it. ‘The love of my life, Frank, that’s what she is.’
After a few moments of silence, I said, ‘If you don’t want to talk about her, Harry, that’s fine. I’m not going to press you. It’s your personal business.’
He spun round and gave me a rueful smile. ‘It’s not that, Frank. I just don’t know where to start.’
The atmosphere had somehow become a little strained. I had no idea why. I took a sip of my coffee and tried not to shudder at the strength of it. ‘Jesus, Harry! I know we have to stay awake, but coffee like this would kill a grizzly bear.’
‘Add more milk.’
‘Would that reduce the caffeine level?’
‘Probably not, no. Tip some out and add water.’
At least he was talking sensibly again.
A couple of minutes later he pulled a couple of bottles of beer out of the fridge and planted them on the big, old, kitchen table. ‘Forget the coffee,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk. What else do you want to know?’
‘Tell me a bit about Johanne, for a start. I know nothing, remember.’
‘Well, she’s Danish. Johanne Erickson. Comes from Copenhagen, like most Danes. It’s not a big country Denmark, as I’m sure you know. I’ve known her a few years now. We set this place up here as our secret retreat, and for when I quit what I do for HMG and she does the same at her end.’ He shrugged and gave me a sheepish smile. ‘I don’t know if Petrov realises how much she means to me, but he’s certainly hit my weak spot.’
‘What does she do?’
‘Works for NATO, in a civilian capacity at the moment. For the past couple of years, she’s been with the commission set up to advance NATO-Ukraine relations. Vague stuff like that,’ he added with a shrug.
Vague it might be, but that hadn’t stopped her being dragged into the firing line. Perhaps it could have been the same for any other, random NATO employee in Ukraine, but I didn’t think so. I assumed she had been targeted because of her link to Harry. It would be stupid to imagine otherwise, whatever Harry thought.
‘Well, that’s the answer to one question,’ I said. ‘Another one I have is: how on earth did you end up here?’
He laughed. ‘In the back of beyond?’
‘Something like that. I can understand how attractive somewhere so remote and quiet might have seemed, but still . . . How did you even find this part of the Earth’s surface?’
‘Go ahead!’ he urged, chuckling. ‘Feel free to insult this beautiful island all you like.’
‘It’s a good thing you like fishing — and trees!’
‘Like I said, it’s down to Johanne. A little way north of here, just before the land runs out and the Pacific Ocean starts, a boatload of settlers from Denmark decided to set up home in the 1890s. They thought they would farm and do whatever else it took to get established. So, they built a little town called Holberg — named after a famous playwright and author nobody but a Dane has ever heard of — and they opened a copper mine. Johanne’s great-grandparents were two of those settlers. Johanne used to dream of that town when she was a little girl, and one time she told me how she had always wanted to see it. So, when we both had free time, I said, Let’s go! And we did. Spent a month there on holiday, enjoyed it and got to thinking maybe this would suit us long-term. So, we set up a base for when we wanted to retire from the world. Not in Holberg itself, though. It’s too small. Just a couple of hundred people, and I didn’t care for the town anyway. Port Hardy seemed a much better option. It’s only twenty miles away, and it’s much bigger. More convenient to get to and from, more facilities, and so on. So, we bought a house there, which we still own, actually. And that’s the story,’ he concluded, opening his arms wide as if to try to persuade me he hadn’t missed anything out.
‘Now we have all this crap to contend with,’ he added, bringing us back down to earth with a thud.
‘What about this place?’ I asked.
‘Well, then I found this old logger’s cabin not far away, and it seemed just perfect. I got permission from the logging company that owns the lease on the land around here to do the place up. Most of the time, this is where I am these days. Alone, unfortunately.’
‘We’ll get her back, Harry.’
‘You think?’
I nodded. ‘Count on it.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Early that evening, just after we had finished a makeshift supper, Harry’s phone buzzed. It was obviously as much of a surprise to him as to me. It seemed an unlikely sound to hear in a place like this.
Harry picked the phone up, glanced at it and took the call. He had activated the loudspeaker button, which meant I heard every word of the conversation — such as it was.
‘We are coming for you, Harry,’ said a deep, throaty voice with a thick accent I took to be Russian.
‘What about our deal?’ Harry said. ‘The package I have in exchange for the woman you hold?’
His question prompted laughter, and a threat. ‘She dies if you hand over the package. You know that, Harry.’
That seemed to be it. Call over. Harry stared at the screen for a moment.
‘Petrov?’
He nodded. ‘The man himself.’
‘So, he’s coming for you, is he?’
Harry shook his head. ‘I very much doubt it. Personally, I mean. He’s a General Staff type, not a foot soldier.’
‘Still . . .’
‘Still,’ he agreed. ‘Somebody probably is.’
‘Will they know about this place?’
‘I don’t see how they could. All they have is my cell phone number.’ He held it up for emphasis.
‘You can get an address from that, you just work backwards.’
‘All they can get from this phone is an address in Kiev, where I used to have a place.’
‘Still,’ I said, ‘we’d better get ready, just in case.’
I was sure Harry was wrong. Provided you have the technology and the skill set, you can find where a call is made from, and even where a silent phone is located. The only question in my mind was whether or not Petrov had that capability, or access to it. How far back into Moscow could he reach, I wondered?
‘You don’t want to just cut and run?’ Harry asked.
I shook my head. ‘I told you. Not when I’ve come all this way. We’ve s
een them off once, Harry. We can do it again if needs be.’
Troubled as he was, his face lit up with a big grin. ‘Now you’re talking!’ he said.
So, there we were. There was obviously a threat, but how urgent was it? I had no way of really knowing. My guess was not very. I thought the phone call was probably tactical, made to keep Harry unsettled and stop him handing over the battle plan. They would still be hunting him though. Of that, I had no doubt.
I told Harry that although we had to accept that an attack was possible, and might even be imminent, we shouldn’t take the message at face value. It might just be noise. Even so, in light of the previous night’s experience, we ought to make some contingency plans.
I felt, as well, that we needed a better coping strategy. I wanted Harry to stop running. That was all he’d been able to do when he was alone, but there were two of us now. Together, we could do better than that.
‘It’s not good enough just to respond to whatever they throw at us, Harry. We need to find a way to take the fight to them.’
‘Easy to say,’ he said, ‘but bloody hard to do. Any ideas?’ He looked at me hopefully.
‘Working on it,’ I told him with all the confidence I could muster, which wasn’t a lot at that point. ‘First, though, I suggest we check out our defences.’
Chapter Thirty
I’ve had a lot of experience of developing and improving site security, at both residential and commercial properties. The process starts with understanding the local environment. What I wanted to do now was get outside the cabin and develop a better feel for where and how we were situated. There wouldn’t be much I could do physically to improve security. There wasn’t time. But I wanted to see how well we could defend the cabin against attack.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Harry said. ‘Just give me a minute to go for a pee.’
I shook my head. ‘You stay here, Harry. This is my game. I know what I’m doing, and I’ll be better off without you to distract me. It won’t take me long. We can talk about it afterwards.’
