by Mark Aitken
‘Okay, but understand: we work dry, we get hammered later. That work for you, Liam?’
‘Like a dream, boss.’
~ * ~
Gallen dropped Ford and Tucker at Florita’s house as the sun set. It was Sunday night and the security detail was going to co-locate in the house with Florita, drive her to work each morning and act as a bodyguard shadow.
Gallen was nervous, eyes darting to parked cars and people in the street as Aaron opened the door to the large house and ushered in the two bodyguards.
‘I’ll hitch a ride with you,’ said Aaron. ‘Got an address for Mr Flint, our reporter.’
Lighting a smoke on the approach path while Aaron got Ford and Tucker settled, Gallen scanned the street for people in cars and unwelcome eyes. His vision was acute and scattered, zooming from one potential hide to another. The attack in the Britannia Oil yards had put him on edge in a way that the bombing of Durville’s jet had not. The crash in the snow and subsequent events were all reaction and counter-punching—just a blur of survival and necessity. This was stressful in a different way; it was like being a rat in a maze, someone waiting for him to take a wrong turn. Gallen wanted to get out of the maze for a while, have a chat with the watchers. His cell phone rang and Gallen mumbled his hellos on seeing the caller ID.
‘Gerry.’ It was Rob Stansfield, calling from Wyoming. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Sure,’ said Gallen, surprised the lawyer had returned his call. ‘I was remembering that night down Arvada, and after all that entertainment in the parking lot, you told me that if I ever needed a favour . . .’
‘Sure did,’ said Stansfield.
‘Tell you what—gimme an hour of your time gratis, and anything over that you can bill to the Sweet Clover trust account. Fair?’
‘Like I said, Gerry.’
‘I need a company search on a Royal Enterprises. That’s all I got, no location, no principals. It’s a name on a credit card.’
‘Okay. Royal Enterprises,’ said Stansfield. ‘You want the directors, right? ‘
‘I want it all, Rob,’ said Gallen. ‘And I have a Hail Mary, if you’re inclined.’
‘Like what?’
‘Colorado registration on a Cadillac Escalade,’ said Gallen, hoping he wasn’t pushing the friendship. ‘You have any contacts in law enforcement? ‘
‘I play golf with the sheriff on Sunday mornings. That count?’
‘I like the sound of it,’ said Gallen, then read out the rego. ‘By the way, you ever hear from Yvonne’s husband again?’
‘Heard from his lawyers.’
‘What they want?’
‘To give me an apology, wanting to know if I was going to sue.’
Gallen laughed. ‘She’s a nice woman, Rob. You look after her.’
‘About that,’ said Stansfield.
‘Yeah?’
‘You don’t know? ‘
‘Know what?’ said Gallen.
Stansfield sighed. ‘I made my play, Gerry, but honestly? She talks about you more than she talks about those damn horses.’
Gallen ended the call as Aaron emerged from Florita’s house, and they made for the van.
‘So,’ said Aaron as they sped back across the river to the Sheraton Suites, ‘that wasn’t you down at the Ogden yards this morning?’
‘No comment,’ said Gallen, eyeing the driver of an SUV beside them as they waited at a red light.
‘You want to tell me what’s going on?’
The light turned green, and Gallen let the SUV go in front. ‘Why don’t you start?’
‘On what? ‘ said Aaron.
‘You think our new CEO is telling us everything?’
‘She told us what she could.’
‘Could?’
‘She runs a public company,’ said Aaron. ‘Some of what she knows about Harry might not be for shareholder consumption. The New York Stock Exchange and the SEC may have something to say about it, see what I mean?’
‘Is the Oasis deal with Reggie Kransk legal? ‘
‘I don’t know,’ said Aaron. ‘But Florita’s a lawyer and if she’s nervous about the subject, then Harry Durville might have left a headache. So, the Britannia yards, huh? Cops talking about a shootout, a body found with bullet holes in it?’
‘Not now, Aaron.’
Aaron lit a smoke and gave a direction that would swing them south onto the Macleod Trail and down to Pump Hill. ‘Thought I might be able to help.’
‘Help with what?’
‘Any problems.’
‘I didn’t shoot anyone, Aaron,’ said Gallen.
‘I know.’
Gallen gripped the wheel and made to swing to the shoulder but in Alberta they didn’t put shoulders on their expressways. There was only concrete wall, and he straightened the van a few inches from the grey barrier and moved back to the speed of the traffic.
‘Whoa,’ said Aaron, legs stiff against the bulkhead.
‘You know what, Aaron?’ Gallen made himself breathe out. ‘The fuck do you know?’
‘One of the old crowd called me a few hours ago.’
‘What’d he want?’
‘Wanted to know the score.’
‘Why?’
‘Pentagon’s been following an ex-spook’s movements, Gerry, and the trail ended with a Calgary police report of a helicopter, gunshots and a former US Marine lying dead in a property belonging to Oasis Energy. As far as these things go, it was a courtesy call, see what’s up.’
Gallen cheered up slightly. ‘They said ex-spook?’
‘What my man said.’
They drove in silence, the buzz of adrenaline filling up the car.
‘So who’s the ex-spy?’ said Gallen. ‘You get a name?’
‘No. What’s your involvement?’
‘We abducted a team that infiltrated my father’s house. They’d been tailing us since we met Mulligan in Del Rey. You wouldn’t judge me for that.’
‘No judgment,’ said Aaron. ‘But tell me you didn’t kill the Marine.’
‘It wasn’t me,’ said Gallen, watching the lights flickering on over the expressway.
‘Who? Winter? Ford?’
‘This going back to your buddy?’
Aaron snorted. ‘I don’t have a choice, Gerry. Don’t play naive with me.’
‘Okay,’ said Gallen. ‘We set a trap in a motel up near the university—’
‘U of C?’
‘Yep,’ said Gallen. ‘I got the call during that morning meeting with the PR guy. My team was holding them at the Britannia yards.’
‘So?’
‘So I go down there and discover that one of the team is my old gunnie, Bren Dale.’
Aaron’s forehead creased. ‘The guy who was suddenly unavailable for this gig?’
‘That’s him.’
‘Who killed him? ‘
‘I don’t know,’ said Gallen, shaking his head.
‘So there was a helo?’
‘I was about to let Bren go,’ said Gallen. ‘He would have backed off. He had a bullet hole in the leg and his heart wasn’t in it, anyway.’
‘So?’
‘So I wanted to know why he’s following me and suddenly there’s shooters bursting into the room. They’re firing at me, but when it’s over there’s a hole in Bren’s chest.’
‘What about the other guy?’
‘The small white guy? We think he’s working as Simon Smith—he didn’t kill Bren, if that’s what you’re asking,’ said Gallen. ‘So, can we still operate?’
‘I assume so, but we won’t be welcome south of the border. Unless—’
Gallen looked sideways. ‘Yes?’
‘Unless we can give them a name.’
‘The shooter?’
‘The thought had occurred.’
‘Shit,’ said Gallen. ‘What are we getting into?’
‘We’re in it already,’ said Aaron, chaining a fresh smoke. ‘Take this exit.’
~ * ~
CHAPTER 46
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They watched the street from the van, the large houses of Pump Hill looking like mini-mansions in the dusk light. Gallen wasn’t up-to-date on what print journalists earned, but this street seemed a long way above what most of them could afford.
Reaching between his feet, Aaron pulled up a black laptop bag and opened it.
‘What’s the plan?’ said Gallen, lighting a smoke and letting his eyes wander along the street. A woman walked a dog, a man swept a driveway.
‘Thought I’d return Mr Flint’s laptop,’ said Aaron, opening the laptop and booting up a blank MS Word document. Pulling down one of the menu bars, he selected ‘record’ and a red dot glowed at the bottom of the document.
Carefully closing it, he slid the computer into the bag and opened his door. For as long as the battery held out the laptop was now a voice-activated recording device networked to the other laptop in the van; whatever was recorded on the Word document’s sound file was accessible on Aaron’s computer.
‘I’ll give you fifteen minutes, then I’m coming in,’ said Gallen, reflexively checking his SIG.
Aaron smiled. ‘I’m gonna do this the subtle way, if you don’t mind.’
Watching Aaron walk up the cobbled driveway, Gallen thought he saw a movement at a curtain upstairs.
The front door opened and a sensibly dressed woman made an inquiring face at Aaron, who went into his song-and-dance act.
Ninety seconds later, he was back in the van.
‘How’d that go?’ asked Gallen.
‘Just Barry Long, from the subs desk at the Herald, returning Lars’s laptop,’ said Aaron.
‘She say where he is?’
‘Called away on assignment,’ said Aaron, looking at the house. ‘Urgent matter, had to go last night. Hush-hush.’
‘Believe her?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because Lars and Wendy don’t have kids living at home. It’s just them.’
‘So?’
‘So why does a housewife need two BlackBerries charging on the hall table?’
~ * ~
Aaron had barely clicked on the cellular networking icon when the MS Word document started transmitting.
‘The fuck was that?’ came the grumpy voice of a stressed man.
‘Barry,’ said Wendy. ‘Barry Long? From a desk at work. Submissions?’
‘Subs desk,’ said Lars, anxiety in his voice. ‘Barry? The fuck he want, this time of night?’
‘Dropped off your laptop, darling. It’s right there.’
‘My laptop’s upstairs. What the—’
In the van they could hear the sounds of a bag being unzipped and the shuffles and scrapes of the laptop being picked up.
‘This Barry—what’d he look like?’
‘Tall, well-dressed. Quite stylish.’
‘On all counts, that wouldn’t be a sub-editor,’ said Lars, snarling. ‘And if it was Barry, he’d be half in the bag by now. Was this guy drunk?’
‘No. Very sober, very charming.’
‘Shit!’
‘What’s wrong, darling?’
The voices became more faint until they were mumbles. Then a door slammed and the muffled conservation ceased.
‘Lars has left the building,’ said Aaron.
‘Backyard?’
‘Probably,’ said Aaron.
‘You stay here, I’m going for a stroll down the alley.’
Gallen walked around the block, turned into the back lane behind the house and felt his phone buzzing against his leg.
‘Yep.’
‘The garage door is going up,’ said Aaron. ‘Lars is moving.’
Gallen jogged around the block, wondering how he got here, in the middle of Calgary suburbia. When he was in the jungles of the Philippines and then the hills of Afghanistan, it used to suddenly occur to him that the life he’d chosen always seemed to drop him someplace he didn’t belong, to wander through someone else’s life. To operate in a place you knew nothing about, amid people you didn’t understand, you had to burn at a high adrenaline rate, had to maintain hyper-vigilance and observation until it became automatic. And once you lived your life in that way, long-term paranoia was the inevitable result.
He felt that now, breath coming fast, heart banging in his temples, total, full-body alertness—a two-legged wolf padding across the concrete, eyes scanning, ears straining, and pity the poor motherfucker who threatened him now, ‘cos he’d draw down the SIG and drop ‘em where they stood. And he’d do it like he was in a trance.
First the tyres screeched with the over-revved engine and then came the sickening crunch of steel on steel, shattering the serenity of the evening.
Picking up the pace, Gallen rounded the corner and saw a blue Nissan Maxima buried in the front of their white van.
Drawing his handgun, he approached the crash site at a fast jog as the driver of the Maxima got to the passenger window of the van and started screaming.
Gallen saw Aaron’s hands held up in surrender and a man—Lars Flint—shouting at him. ‘I told you fuckers, I’m not doing it anymore. I’m not playing this game no more!’
Lars was purple in the face with rage. Porch lights came on along the street and Gallen stowed his weapon as he closed on the man.
‘Lars?’ he said, as the newspaper man kicked at the front tyre of the van.
‘I want them out of my life,’ screamed the journalist. ‘Okay? This ain’t 1992 no more, okay? I’m fucking sick of this shit.’
Looking at Aaron, Gallen mouthed the word ‘drive’.
As his partner jumped across to the driver’s side, Gallen had a quick look around and decided he was well situated in the darkness afforded by the van.
Slapping the reporter hard on the face, he walked around the stunned man and put a fast carotid hold on him, cradling his fall as he fainted.
Dragging him backwards across the pavement, Gallen saw the van door slide back and Aaron’s hands reach out for the limp journalist, pulling him in as Gallen shut the sliding door.
Leaping into the passenger seat, Gallen put his hand over his face as Aaron backed away from the smashed Maxima and then gunned the van’s engine as they raced down the street, right front fender scraping on the tyre.
‘Fuck,’ Gallen panted as they took a left and then right and got onto Southland, aiming for the rush-hour crowds on the Macleod Trail.
‘You got a plan for Lars?’ said Aaron, eyes in the rear-view mirror as much as they were on the road in front.
‘Plan was to shut him up, get him off the street.’
‘Like they say in the classics,’ said Aaron, sweat on his forehead, ‘you break it, you own it.’
‘Find us a quiet spot,’ said Gallen. ‘It’s time for a chat.’
~ * ~
CHAPTER 47
At the dark edges of a trucking hub beside Union Cemetery, Aaron stopped the van and turned in his seat.
Gallen sat on the bench seat beside Lars Flint, whom he’d handcuffed with duct tape and blindfolded with a sweatshirt tied around his face.
‘You know who I am?’ said Gallen, soft and friendly.
‘No,’ said Flint, a quaver in his voice. ‘I don’t even know where I am.’
‘Are you Lars Flint?’
Flint’s throat bobbed. ‘Yes. Are you going to kill me?’
‘Are you a journalist?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you a senior writer on the Calgary Herald?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Have you recently written about Russian oil companies?’
‘Shit,’ said Flint, hysteria in his voice. ‘You’re the Russians? Oh, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Who told you to write the story?’ said Gallen, maintaining calm, just like they taught you in special forces.
‘Fuck!’ said Flint, back heaving. ‘I’m so sick of this.’
‘Who gave you the information, Lars?’ prompted Gallen. ‘You help me with this and I’ll help you with your problem.
That fair?’
