by Mark Aitken
Gallen swapped a look with Aaron as Flint cried softly. Across the huge concrete apron, trucks emitted their high-pitched beeps as they reversed into loading bays. The nocturnal mission of shifting stuff all over North America was going about its business, but Lars Flint wasn’t going anywhere.
‘Who made you do this, Lars?’
‘A man.’
‘What kind of man, Lars?’
Flint sniffed back his tears; his BO smelled of fear but at least he hadn’t peed himself. ‘Calls himself John Leonard, he’s been feeding me for years.’
‘Feeding?’
‘You know—twigging me to stories, pointing me in a direction?’
‘No,’ said Gallen. ‘I don’t know. Tell me.’
Flint sighed. ‘He’s a businessman, based in Vancouver. But he’s usually got a tan so I assume LA. He never denied it.’
‘So what does John do for you?’
‘He might bump into me in the street, take me to lunch, that sort of thing.’
‘What do you talk about?’
‘He usually has a snippet, an insider view, on something interesting.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, the Oasis connection with Russian oil was fairly interesting. Or Canadian government interests in the US defence industry, or details of a left-wing politician’s secret bank accounts, or a bureaucrat’s undeclared share trading. That sort of thing.’
‘The sort of thing that makes Canadians look bad?’
Flint fiddled his fingers. ‘Okay, so he’s probably a spook. Big deal. The stories are always true and that’s my job: to tell the truth.’
‘So you’re working on a piece about how a senior writer at the Herald is a cipher for US foreign policy? ‘
‘Fuck off.’
‘Perhaps a story on how a lifelong newspaper guy is buying a mansion in Pump Hill? How, in a row of million-dollar houses, he was offered one for four hundred thousand and all the paperwork and bank loans were all ready to sign? Just a fluke, really.’
Flint turned his sweatshirt-wrapped head towards Gallen. ‘You Greenpeace or Save the Whales? Something like that?’
‘I’m the guy who’s gonna make the pain go away, Lars,’ said Gallen.
‘Just like the others, right? You people are all so full of shit.’
‘Others?’ said Gallen. ‘What others, Lars?’
‘The ones who came into my house this morning,’ said Flint, exasperated. ‘Came downstairs for a cup of coffee and they’re standing there, in the damn kitchen, while Wendy’s at the supermarket.’
‘Who?’
‘Spooks, heavies. They didn’t have name tags.’
‘What did they want, Lars?’
‘The leader wanted to know what you want to know.’
‘About John Leonard?’
‘Yep, and I couldn’t help him any more than I can help you,’ said Flint. ‘I don’t have a number; he always contacts me.’
‘And that was it? ‘
‘No, this guy wanted to see the report.’
‘What report? ‘
Flint chuckled. ‘That’s what I told this guy, and he hit me.’
‘The report,’ said Gallen. ‘Does it have a name?’
‘No,’ said Flint. ‘But it has a colour. Red.’
‘What’s in it? ‘
‘He didn’t say. He just accused me of having been given the report before I wrote the story.’
‘Did you have a report about Russian oil interests and Oasis?’
‘No,’ said Flint, ‘I just took notes. When I said I’d have to see something, Leonard laughed and told me to ring Oasis and see what happened when I repeated the allegations.’
‘So who’s the guy?’
‘The leader?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Early forties, receding black hair,’ said Flint, with a reporter’s eye for detail. ‘About six-one and strong, but not athletic, if you see what I mean.’
Gallen saw exactly what he meant but refused to jump to that conclusion.
‘What did he sound like?’ said Gallen.
‘Like a businessman more than a heavy,’ said Flint. ‘And he had a weird way of addressing me.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah, he kept calling me “Ace”.’
~ * ~
CHAPTER 48
Dropping Flint gently to the ground behind a series of large headstones, Gallen checked the darkness of the Union Cemetery and jogged back to the van. They accelerated along one of the wide boulevards and swung into the sweep of traffic on 25th, before joining the Macleod Trail, which would take them north and back to downtown. It was four minutes before either Gallen or Aaron said a word.
Gallen lit a smoke, turned down the radio. ‘So, I guess this is the part where I demand an explanation or I’m taking my crew and going home.’
‘Shit, Gerry,’ said Aaron.
‘Shit yourself, Aaron Michaels. I signed on to this in good faith, but I ain’t putting my boys out there until someone fills me in.’
Aaron exhaled. ‘How do I make it good again?’
‘You can start by telling me why Harry cut Mulligan loose,’ said Gallen. ‘Then we can discuss what it is about this Nanook report that makes Mulligan want to double back and make life difficult. I have a CEO to protect, remember? And to do that I have to keep my team in one piece.’
‘Can we get a drink? ‘
‘We can get a haircut, if that’s what you want,’ said Gallen. ‘I just want answers.’
~ * ~
Gallen finished a phone-in with Winter as Aaron arrived at the booth with two beers.
‘I was Mulligan’s 2IC,’ said Aaron, opening a bag of nuts and pouring them into a wooden bowl. ‘I was new, learning the ropes, realising that Harry was a bit of a handful.’
‘With the company he kept? ‘
‘Yeah, the drinking and fighting, the whoring. The whole nine yards. I’d been on the job ten, eleven days and Harry wanted to hit Vegas—it was two in the freaking morning. He was on the tables and drinking by five am and he went for fifteen hours straight.’
‘Really?’ said Gallen.
‘I swear to God. And I mean those were hard hours, man.’
‘Tough gig’
‘Shit, yeah,’ said Aaron, leaning back and sipping at the beer. ‘In my previous life I’d spent time in-country, running counter-intel around the consular community, so Mulligan thought I was the guy to create a perimeter on Harry.’
‘Get to the spies before they got to him? ‘
‘Precisely,’ said Aaron, casing the bar. ‘The job description was basic, but you try doing that with Harry Durville when he’s drunk and dragging a posse of hookers up to his suite. You can’t be with the man all the time, so we had Piers and the other Brits.’
‘What happened?’
‘We were starting to do these meetings up in the Arctic Circle with the Inuit and it became obvious these natives had some serious muscle and intel behind them.’
‘You knew this?’
‘No, Gerry,’ said Aaron. ‘I just knew, right? Just like you know there’s pros around when you walk into an airport concourse that’s under surveillance. You just know.’
Gallen nodded. ‘So what happened?’
‘I went to Mulligan and told him that I’d like to do a project on the natives and the TTC, the Transarctic Tribal Council.’
‘Just get the upper hand?’
‘Sure,’ said Aaron. ‘So Mulligan, who knew exactly what I was saying, ‘cos the asshole’s been a military spook in combat zones, he stonewalls me.’
‘How?’
‘Says he’s got it covered, says I’m imagining things, says he has total one hundred per cent faith in me and the Brits.’
‘Okay,’ said Gallen, chuckling at the fob-off.
‘It annoyed me but I decided to do it from the bottom up instead, and I briefed the Brits. Turns out Piers—the ex-Para—had been getting the bad vibe too. We’d been at a settlement in the Davi
s Strait, between Baffin and Greenland, and the Brits had been screwing around with their Harris, scanning channels while they waited for the meeting to end.’
‘And?’
‘And they picked up the kind of interference that one of them—a Royal Marines Commando—had been trained to detect during Operation Iraqi Freedom.’
‘What was it?’
‘Signal jammers.’ Aaron shrugged. ‘What are the chances that you fly to an isolated bunch of Nissen huts on an ice floe in the Davis Strait and Eskimo Nell is running a signal jam from her kayak?’
‘Chances are slim,’ said Gallen.
‘So I told Piers I’d been cut off from this subject by Mulligan, and Piers told me he’d take it up with Harry himself.’
‘He could do that?’
‘Yeah, Harry and Piers got along well. Couple tough guys with hard backgrounds. Shared the belief that just about everyone else was a complete fairy.’
‘So?’
‘I didn’t learn all this until the dust had settled,’ said Aaron, ‘but basically, Harry rings Newport Associates, who do a lot of private intel for the oil and gas industry.’
‘Tell me about Newport,’ said Gallen.
‘Newport is to private intel what Halliburton is to oil services or Blackwater is to private armies,’ said Aaron. ‘They used to run reports for foreign governments until 9/11 came along, and then Uncle Sam got the shits with that. So they reverted to their core business—doing intel and counter-intelligence for North America’s largest corporations.’
‘Never heard of them,’ said Gallen.
‘But they’ve heard of you, Marine.’
‘Okay, so Harry goes to Newport?’
‘But he does it without Mulligan knowing,’ said Aaron.
‘Ouch,’ said Gallen, smiling. ‘He cut out the main man?’
Aaron laughed. ‘Totally cut him out.’
‘So?’
‘So,’ said Aaron, ‘I’m working up a security schedule for Harry one morning, up in head office, and Mulligan storms in.’
‘Angry?’
‘Purple. Asks me what the fuck I know about the TTC and Reggie Kransk and why he’s been ant-fucked.’
Gallen drank the beer.
‘I knew nothing about it—then,’ said Aaron. ‘My ignorance must have been obvious. I didn’t even know who Reggie Kransk was. Mulligan left me alone after that, but that must have been the morning that Harry got the report from Newport and challenged Mulligan with it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the Brits were suddenly sacked, but Mulligan was telling Harry that they got a better offer in Iraq and just fucked off.’
‘So Mulligan was working for Reggie, keeping his agenda secret?’ said Gallen.
‘I assumed that—so did Harry,’ said Aaron.
‘And that’s where we come in?’
‘And that’s where you come in,’ said Aaron. ‘I’m sorry about the icy reception but you were a Mulligan hire, with Mulligan loyalties.’
‘You ever see the report?’
‘No, just what Florita told you, which is pretty much what she told me.’
‘Pretty much?’
Aaron sighed. ‘Okay—she told me no more details, just that the report could never see the light of day.’
‘Why not?’
Aaron ignored the question. ‘The point, Gerry, is that with Newport’s regular accounts, they offer a burn service.’
‘What’s a burn service?’
Aaron looked around. ‘Let’s say you’re a CEO of a big corporation, and you’re in discussions with new partners in . . . shit, I don’t know, Rwanda—but you want to know more about them.’
‘Okay,’ said Gallen. ‘I call Newport Associates, right?’
‘Sure,’ said Aaron. ‘But because you don’t want your company annoying a regulator, or the shareholders, you want to be sure that having been informed of something, you can turn around and disavow.’
‘Disavow? You mean, deny that I know anything?’
‘Yes.’ Aaron smiled. ‘Newport informs you that your new partner, the Minister for Resources, is also a trafficker in stolen children, or an opium grower. But you look at that information, and as repulsed as you are, you don’t see how that is going to mess with your intention to take as much copper ore out of there as possible.’
‘Jesus,’ said Gallen, shaking his head. ‘Newport tells me more than I want to know . . .’
‘So you pay an extra million for the burn service, and Newport will burn any evidence or paper trail that led to that report.’
‘Burn?’
‘Wipe, eradicate, burn,’ said Aaron. ‘The slate is clean—there’re no files slipped to journalists, no whistleblower sending copies to the SEC, no tree-hugger standing up at the AGM and waving a bunch of papers, asking embarrassing questions about what happened to a tribe in the Andes.’
‘So the only evidence that I know the truth about Reggie Kransk and the TTC is sitting in the actual report, which is in my possession?’
‘Hah!’ said Aaron, leaning back, slugging his beer.
Gallen was missing something. ‘What’s funny? ‘
‘Newport Associates’ burn service doesn’t come with one report,’ said Aaron. ‘It comes with two.’
‘So one report goes missing from Florita’s safe . . .’ said Gallen. ‘And the other?’
Aaron raised his glass. ‘The other, my captain, is a mystery.’
Gallen’s memory swirled in and out of focus, the days peeling back, the layers coming off, thinking. Thinking!
As he looked at Aaron, he remembered Harry Durville’s empty satchel, remembered wondering aloud why the managing director of a massive company would go all the way to a meeting and not carry any papers. He recalled a girl in Red Butte, drinking beer and telling him that Mulligan was cosy with Donny McCann.
‘You okay, Gerry?’ said Aaron. ‘Looks like you seen a ghost.’
‘I think I know where that second report is,’ said Gallen, finishing the beer in one draw.
‘Where?’ Aaron leaned forward.
‘Don’t worry about where,’ said Gallen. ‘Just get me a helo.’
‘No, Gerry. I have to know.’
‘This is a burn service.’ Gallen stood up. ‘You get to disavow.’
~ * ~
CHAPTER 49
‘This Martina Du Bois…’ said Kenny Winter, two hours into the flight to Baker Lake. ‘I don’t get where she fits in.’
Taking the Ariadne launch document that Winter had been reading, Gallen snapped out of his obsessive thinking about the hit teams.
‘Isn’t she that ArcticWatch activist?’ said Gallen, looking at the page of the document entitled Personnel. ‘I saw her on CNN.’
‘Yeah, so why’s she on the maiden dive of this Ariadne thing?’ said Winter. ‘I thought the green protestors were against drilling in the Arctic? ‘
Reading down the list of the vessel’s complement, Gallen saw Martina Du Bois’ name and three men from ArcticWatch.
‘It must be some publicity stunt.’ Gallen flipped through the file of backgrounders at the back of the press kit and found the one headed: Ariadne gets the thumbs-up from environmentalists. ‘There it is,’ he said, handing over the press release.
Reading from it, Winter raised an eyebrow. ‘Who’s this Dave Joyce, at the end here?’
‘Vice-president, corporate communications. The head PR guy for Oasis,’ said Gallen.
Winter smirked. ‘He sure writes a pile of shit for a veep. Listen to this: “ArcticWatch has awarded the Oasis Energy Ariadne Project five ‘Polar Bears’—the highest award ArcticWatch can bestow on a company for actions that support the environment and the indigenous concerns of the Arctic Ocean.” ‘
‘Five Polar Bears,’ said Gallen as the stewardess brought him a coffee from the kitchenette at the back of the Challenger jet. ‘That sounds important.’
‘Well it must be, because these ArcticWatch people are going down there wi
th the Oasis drilling crews and engineers.’
‘You sure?’ said Gallen.
