by Mark Aitken
He walked for three minutes north, through the leafy area of Westmount, an inner-city enclave of lawyers, doctors and well-to-do gays.
Turning onto Florita’s street, Gallen made a pass of her house, a ninety-year-old three-storey place with colonial features on the balconies. Her mailbox was devoid of a name and the front entrance was accessible.
Walking around the block, he strolled down the rear lane that separated the large houses. Stopping behind Florita’s, he pulled a garbage bin to the fence and climbed it. To his right was a double garage that opened onto the laneway and in front of him was a large garden, dominated by a lawn and then a swimming pool that ran up to an entertaining area at the rear of the house.
The nights were still cold, but Gallen could see what a mini country club this would be in the summer.
Leaping to the lawn beside the garage, Gallen listened for sounds and stayed in the shadows. Through the side window of the garage he could see a small silver BMW.
There was a light on in the second floor of the house, but not on the ground floor. Moving towards the house, he scanned for light beams or pressure pads, even though he knew there was no chance of seeing them in the dark. There were small solar lights planted in the shrubberies and flowerbeds and they shed a slight glow.
Pausing beside the kidney-shaped pool, Gallen saw leaves on the cover. Looking up, he looked at the light in the second-storey window and thought he saw movement. Freezing as he wondered if he’d stepped on a pressure pad, he reached for the SIG jammed in the small of his back. Easing it out, he became aware of a red dot in the darkness beside the pool. The dot enlarged and moved to one side.
‘The gun’s a bit much, isn’t it, Gerry?’
Dropping to a crouch, Gallen aimed at the dot in the dark, his night sight ruined by staring too long at the upstairs light.
‘Who’s that?’ he snarled, more surprised than scared. His pulse thumped in his temples and the burns on his left leg ached.
Slowly the shape of a man in a recliner revealed itself, then light was spilling onto the pool area and the French doors swung open.
‘Aaron,’ said the woman as she pulled her robe around her hips and leaned through the door, ‘you okay?’
~ * ~
They sat on opposite sides of the large kitchen island, Gallen feeling unwelcome. ‘After Aaron told me I’d been promoted, I was still being followed and I decided to avoid the offices, approach you directly.’
Florita handed him a bottle of European beer, swapped a look with Aaron and plunged her coffee. ‘So you crept into the backyard?’
‘I was going to knock on the back door, make it as non-scary as possible,’ said Gallen, smiling. ‘Whoever is watching me is probably watching you and I’d bet the phones are tapped. I needed a conversation, below the radar.’
‘What about?’
‘If we’re going to chase the bastards who bombed us, I need to start with everything you know.’
‘I think I told you,’ said Florita, clearly nervous. ‘I’ve got that new contract for you, by the way. It’s in the study.’
Aaron slugged at his beer as Florita left. ‘Could have called me, tough guy.’
‘You weren’t made CEO a few days after the old one was bombed out of the sky. I’m looking for a thread, and—no offence intended—I don’t think you’re in it.’
‘None taken, Gerry.’
‘What are you doing here, Aaron?’ said Gallen carefully. ‘Besides the obvious.’
Aaron laughed, throwing his head back and slamming his hand on the counter. ‘Shit, man. Rednecks! What would we do without ‘em?’
‘I mean it. You bodyguarding? Doing a bit of the Kevin Costner?’
Aaron shook his head slowly as Florita swept back into the room, throwing the blue-bound contract on the marble counter top.
‘Gerry thinks we’re girlfriend and boyfriend,’ said Aaron, still laughing.
‘Shit, so much for secrets,’ said Florita, slumping. ‘Christ, I need a drink.’
As Florita poured from a bottle of red wine, Gallen looked between the two. ‘She say secret?’
Aaron stretched and smiled at Florita. ‘Sure. Tell him.’
‘I was robbed tonight, Gerry,’ she said, sipping the wine as she leaned against the counter. ‘They went through the study but the only thing they took was a few files.’
‘Where were these files?’ said Gallen.
‘In the safe. That’s why Aaron’s here. I found out an hour ago, by accident. I’d just got out of the bath.’
Gallen looked at Aaron. ‘So they’re pros?’
Aaron nodded. ‘Looks like it. No damage, no explosive, no blunt screwdrivers—just put in the code and opened that thing.’
Gallen tried to slow his mind. These two would have kept the robbery from him unless he’d turned up. ‘So what’d they take?’
‘Handover documents, mainly,’ said Florita, relaxing with the wine. ‘Taking the CEO position has been a bit of a shock, so I stashed the confidential stuff from Harry in my safe, to read at home.’
Gerry finished the beer. ‘Forgive my ignorance, but handover documents?’
‘All the memos and contracts and relationships that aren’t necessarily in the public domain, but which you need to run a publicly listed oil company,’ said Florita. ‘And with Harry—because of the informal way he operated—there’s a ton of side agreements and handshake contracts that I needed to know about.’
‘It’s all gone?’ said Gallen.
‘All of it. They left my gold bars.’
‘What could they do with the documents?’
Florita pointed at Aaron. ‘I’ve already been through this. There’s perhaps some material that could be used by blackmailers—’
‘Like?’
Florita shrugged. ‘Like what we had to do to get drilling leases in a certain national park, like what Harry promised to an EIS auditor if he just ticked the box on groundwater and aquifer degradation.’
‘EIS?’
‘Environmental Impact Study,’ said Aaron, with a big smirk. ‘Just learned that one myself.’
‘You think another oil company, or Greenpeace, waited for Harry to die so they could steal his secret papers from the new CEO?’ It didn’t stack up.
‘I don’t know,’ said Florita.
‘Well, what I know,’ said Gallen, ‘is that Harry Durville spent his entire career getting hammered drunk, getting into fights and threatening just about anyone who dared to stare him down. He left a trail a mile wide for anyone who wanted to get to him, extort money, embarrass him into paying up or changing his actions. But you’re telling me the blackmailer waited until he was dead before moving?’
Aaron spurted beer as he laughed.
Florita dropped her gaze. ‘Don’t you two laugh at me.’
‘So tell us what’s going on,’ said Gallen.
‘Okay.’ She exhaled. ‘But this conversation is never going to be repeated.’
‘You got it,’ said Aaron.
Gallen nodded.
‘Harry commissioned a report on something called Operation Nanook,’ said Florita. ‘Two copies were delivered, but when I cleared Harry’s safe there was only one. I assume the other was with him when we went down.’ She stood, grabbed two more beers from the stainless-steel fridge.
‘What were they?’ asked Aaron, flipping the bottle top.
‘I believe it’s a backgrounder on Reggie Kransk and the TTC. Mulligan commissioned the report to be clear on Oasis’s partners. Harry thought it was bullshit.’
‘Why did Harry think that?’ said Gallen.
‘The report was very negative about Kransk: who was controlling him and what those controllers wanted.’
Gallen drank, craving a cigarette. ‘Who wrote the report?’
‘A crowd called Newport Associates,’ said Florita.
‘Ex-DIA,’ said Aaron.
Gallen clicked. ‘Mulligan’s buddies?’
Florita nodded. ‘Harry thought th
at.’
Gallen looked at Florita. ‘You read it? ‘
‘No, I hadn’t got around to it,’ she said. ‘It came in about the time you were hired and I didn’t feel I needed to read it—Harry wasn’t talking about anything else right up until his death.’
‘What was Nanook?’ said Aaron.
‘I think Nanook was the Oasis strategy for securing the Arctic Ocean leases.’ Florita poured herself more wine. ‘Harry decided Mulligan was working for another oil company, against Oasis. They had a big fight and Mulligan was sacked the day before we flew up to the meeting in Kugaaruk.’
‘You think Mulligan bombed our plane?’ said Gallen.
‘She doesn’t know and neither do I,’ said Aaron. ‘That’s why you’re investigating.’
‘You said there were two reports,’ said Gallen. ‘There was one in your safe.’
‘I’m pretty sure Harry carried the other to Kugaaruk. I saw a red cover in his satchel.’
Gallen stopped speaking, silence descending.
‘What?’ said Florita, looking from man to man.
Aaron cleared his throat. ‘I think Gerry wants to know what’s really in that report from Newport Associates.’
‘I told you, Aaron, I didn’t read it.’
Aaron stood up, leaned into her. ‘Florita, what did Harry say was in it? It’s probably important.’
Looking into her glass, Florita swirled the wine before draining it in one gulp. ‘Okay, but this never goes beyond this room, okay?’
‘You’re the boss,’ said Gallen. ‘Shoot.’
‘Newport Associates thinks Reggie Kransk’s Transarctic Tribal Council is a front for several Russian oil and gas companies.’
~ * ~
CHAPTER 42
Gallen’s head spun as the cab pulled up to the Sheraton Suites. Asking the driver to keep going, he slipped down in the back seat, scanned for surveillance vehicles as they raced past the lit-up foyer.
Coming around the block again, Gallen had the cab stop short of the hotel and walked the rest of the way.
Gallen knew that he’d taken this gig too soon after coming back from Afghanistan. After drifting around the States for a few months, catching up with old Marines buddies, he’d hoped to lay low on the family farm for while. He’d needed it: just a period of normalcy, with nothing but horses and cattle, bank overdrafts and diesel bills to worry about. Now he realised he’d fallen into precisely the role he didn’t want to play back in civvie life: the messed-up, broken-down war vet who couldn’t let anything go.
Worse than that, some of his paranoia was proving justified. Florita knew more than she was saying about Mulligan and his investigation of Reggie Kransk. Perhaps she didn’t want too many people knowing where Kransk fitted in, but that still made her someone willing to lie to Gallen.
Cracking a beer from the minibar, he sat on the sofa, pulled off his boots.
‘Get anything?’ said Winter, wandering through, rubbing his eyes.
‘I got a headache,’ said Gallen, throwing his boots at the door.
‘See her?’
‘Drank beer with her. And Aaron.’
Winter grabbed a beer for himself. ‘Aaron? He screwing her?’
‘No. She had a robbery. Thieves took her Oasis files and papers. All of Harry’s secret papers.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yeah. There was one from a private intelligence firm in LA. They wrote a background report on our friend Reggie Kransk.’
‘So?’
‘So it’s very unflattering. It links Reggie’s little tribal council to Russian oil interests.’
‘They stole it? Wonder what else is in it.’
‘I wonder who feels implicated enough to steal it,’ said Gallen.
‘Any ideas?’
Gallen shrugged. ‘What’s important now is that we have some action here in Calgary. Whoever’s been stalking us is around, so why let that go to waste?’
‘You wanna bait them?’ said Winter. ‘If they’re watchers, that’s okay. If they’re shooters, that’s not so good.’
Gallen drained the beer and thought. ‘They wanted a document, and now they have it.’
‘So why would they stay around?’
Gallen let the facts fall into place. ‘Because they know Newport delivered two reports: one original and a copy.’
‘And they think we have the original?’
Gallen stood, walked to the curtained hotel window and stood at the side of it, peeking out through the gap. Traffic sped across the city, steam from exhaust pipes rising in the cold night air.
‘They know that we walked away from that plane crash, and that we worked personal security for Harry,’ said Gallen. ‘They haven’t struck us off the list yet.’
‘Shit, Gerry,’ said Winter, standing. ‘They’ll never stop looking.’
‘So let’s flush ‘em out,’ said Gallen. ‘I was gonna find a new hotel tomorrow, book it in my name, use the Oasis MasterCard, basically put up a flag for these bozos. Any ideas?’
‘We need a flat layout, front and rear exits,’ said Winter without hesitation. ‘Maybe an upmarket motel, with a forecourt. Use a room decoy and put someone in the car.’
‘Maybe make a new buddy in the front office?’
‘You’ve done this before, right?’ said Winter, cracking a smile.
‘Only twice.’
‘There’s something else,’ said the Canadian, having his own look from the side of the window.
‘Yep?’
‘We need Mike back.’
When Winter turned around, Gallen held the strip of paper up to his face.
‘Mike’s number?’ said Winter. ‘Aaron give you that?’
‘Yep,’ said Gallen. ‘Think it’s too late to call?’
‘He’s a fricking Australian,’ said Winter, grabbing his Nokia from the table. ‘It’s eight in the morning for him.’
~ * ~
CHAPTER 43
The first rays of warm spring sunshine fell on the twenty-ninth-floor window as Gallen watched the seven Oasis vice-presidents file out of the chief executive’s office. Kenny Winter had just updated him by phone: Ford had joined Winter at the motel suites. They were rented in their own names with the Oasis MasterCard. The trap had been laid.
Getting to his feet as Aaron beckoned him, Gallen smiled at the executive assistant and walked into the large office.
‘Everyone calm?’ he said, instinctively moving to the window and surveying the view. To his right, sitting on a sofa, he saw a businessman he hadn’t met.
‘No,’ said Florita, sliding into her leather chair as she breathed out. ‘There’s a feeling that we’re vulnerable, that we’re caught in something we don’t understand.’
‘That true?’ said Gallen.
‘The boss was appointed by the board last week,’ said Aaron, ‘but they want a plan at the extraordinary board meeting this Friday.’
‘So you need some answers?’
‘I need something,’ said Florita, throwing a folded copy of the Calgary Herald across the desk.
Picking it up, Gallen saw the front-page headline: oasis stock price
SET TO PLUMMET ON RUSSIAN RUMORS.
‘What the heck is this?’ said Gallen.
‘Third paragraph,’ said the man on the sofa. ‘It’s underlined.’
Looking at Aaron, Gallen raised an eyebrow.
‘Meet Dave Joyce,’ said Aaron. ‘Vice-president, corporate communications.’
‘PR guy?’ said Gallen as Joyce stood and offered his hand.
‘Something like that,’ said Joyce, his puffy eyes suggesting overwork and stress.
Glancing down past the byline of senior writer Lars Flint, Gallen found the highlighted section:
The spokesman for Oasis refused to comment on allegations that the late founder and CEO of Canada’s largest oil company, Harry Durville, was in secret negotiations with several Russian oil companies to control drilling leases in the Arctic Ocean.
Whe
n questioned specifically on Mr Durville’s involvement with an Inuit organisation called the Transarctic Tribal Council (TTC), the spokesman terminated the interview.
Tossing the newspaper on Florita’s desk, Gallen looked at Joyce and saw a man in his early forties who was finally being put under the kind of pressure he was paid so well to handle.
