Tom Clancy's Power Plays 5 - 8

by Tom Clancy

  CB—Constance Burns, of course.

  It was all suspiciously easy, just like finding the truck with a spot of blood still on the fender.

  Gorrie hung up—then hit *69, which on their phone system redialed the number that had just been connected. On the third ring, a Yank picked up the phone.

  “UpLink International,” he said. “How can I direct your call?”

  “Is there a Mr. Hernandez who works there?”

  “Hold on and I’ll connect you.”

  “Thank you, but it won’t be necessary now,” Gorrie said, hanging up. He started a new folder for the UpLink information, then put it on top of the others at the side of his desk. The large clock on the wall read five minutes to eight.

  He must not show up at home too late, he decided. This new business would hold off the higher-ups for some days, perhaps even win him more men. Russell would bristle when he heard Scotland Yard had been contacted.

  Still, there was time to stop by Brown Glen Hall and see if he could find Christine Gibbon there.

  She was not there, which didn’t surprise him terribly. And no one remembered anyone odd hanging around who might have overheard her running her mouth.

  “Tourist types this time of year? Not many,” said the regular bar girl, Sallie, as she delivered a few Guinnesses to a pair of regulars near the dart board. “Haven’t had but a one these past few weeks. No monsters in our parking lot.”

  “We’ve got a ghost,” said the bartender, as if making a pitch. “Two.”

  “Aye, but you don’t advertise him, that’s your problem,” Sallie told him. “What we need is a good sighting or two.”

  “Nice American girl a week or so ago, about the time you’re talking,” said the bartender. “Good-lookin’, if she’d put on a little weight up top. Needs titties. Wouldn’t kick her outta bed, though.”

  “Nice arse, you ask me,” said an older man standing at the bar nearby.

  “Christine Gibbon bent her ear that one night,” said Sallie. “Maybe she’s the one you’re looking for, Inspector.”

  “I didnae say I’m looking for anyone,” said Gorrie.

  “I don’t know that Chrissie bent her ear,” said the bartender. “The Yank paid for the drinks.”

  “What’s happened to the wee boy, Inspector?” asked Sallie.

  “They’re hoping a sister will take him.”

  “Best thing for it.”

  “Did anyone else listen to Christine Gibbon?” Gorrie asked.

  “Only five of us ever here most nights, Frank,” Sallie said. “Until the winter ends.”

  “And school lets out,” added the bartender. “That’s when business picks up.”

  “You serving kiddies now?” said Gorrie.

  “What I mean is, that’s when the tourists come up,” said the bartender.

  “No one else unusual?” Gorrie asked Sallie.

  “We’re not unusual enough for you?”

  Gorrie hunched his shoulders and considered ordering a drink. But then he remembered his wife and her schoolteacher friend.

  A schoolteacher in Scotland in March, the middle of the school year.

  “Did Miss Gibbon mention a Cardha Duff?” he asked them.

  “She might have,” said Sallie. “One of the girlfriends?”

  “Describe the tourist, would you?” Gorrie said, instead of answering.

  “Five-eight, curly auburn hair not very long, no tits as I told you.”

  “Dark clothes, large purse. Has money, though she tries to hide it,” added Sallie.

  “How so?”

  “Leather bag, very nice shoes. Drove a common Ford, blue little thing, type anyone would rent.”

  “Did she use a credit card?” Gorrie asked.

  “Cash. No trouble with the money like some Yanks,” said Sallie.

  “Where was she staying?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  “Still around,” said the man who had spoken before. “Saw ’er at Grant’s using the telephone one day. Chemist’s the next.”

  “Couldn’t’ve been her,” said Sallie. “She had a mobile phone—I saw it poking from the top of the bag.”

  “I wouldn’t forget an arse like ’ers.” The man went back to his beer.

  Paranoia tickled Gorrie’s senses as he left the pub. The coincidence of the killer seeking out his wife was just too great—and yet, if someone had come to town so skilled as to make four related murders seem completely unrelated, wasn’t it just possible that he would seek out the one person trying to tie them together and prove they were murders, not accidents?

  He, not she. A woman couldn’t have committed these crimes, or wouldn’t.

  Why not? Held down Cardha Duff while she injected her? Duff was a wee lass, and if sleeping, might have been easily overwhelmed. The small chest bruise at her ribs might have come from a knee or an arm.

  Losh, as Nan would say. You’ll be seeing pipers in the mist next, and soldiers manning castles that haven’t existed in five hundred years.

  A schoolteacher in March. Two schoolteachers in Inverness.

  Maybe the Yanks all had mid-winter holiday.

  Gorrie saw the blue Ford in his driveway and kept going, continuing down the block to Peterson’s house. He put the car in their driveway, then got out and walked back, feeling foolish. A small lorry approached from the opposite direction; he tensed as it slowed, then saw it was only the local gas service.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said the driver, leaning out the window. “We’ve had some phone calls of gas smell in the neighborhood this afternoon and evening. Have you smelled anything?”

  “No,” said Gorrie.

  The man nodded solemnly. “Probably a disturbed person but we’re required to check it out. Missed my dinner over this.”

  The man drove on. Gorrie crossed the street and stopped in the front yard next to his house, trying to see past the curtains into the sitting room. He could just make out Nan on the couch. Her visitor sat in the armchair at the corner, back to him.

  Nan rose and went to the kitchen. The visitor got up as well, took a look after her, then went to the window. She had short, curly hair and a thin, attractive face.

  Why would she look out the window?

  Any of a million reasons, Gorrie thought.

  Nan returned to the room with a fresh pot of tea. The visitor turned back, gesturing out at the window. They began laughing.

  What a fool I’m being, Gorrie told himself. He went back to Peterson’s, got his car, and went around the block as if just coming in.

  “Hello there,” he said, stomping his feet at the front door. “Good evening, miss.”

  “Hello,” said the Yank, rising as Nan came and took his coat. The visitor held out her hand. “Stephanie Plower.”

  “A pleasure,” he said, shaking her hand and looking into her face. She was of the right height to match the lass Sallie and the others had described; her hair was right as well. But she seemed heavier than their description, a bulky, loose-knit sweater camouflaging what he imagined was a fullish top.

  A sweater that hid a bullet-proof vest?

  He wasn’t merely paranoid but delusional, he thought to himself.

  “You’re a schoolteacher?” said Gorrie, taking a cup from his wife.

  “Oh yes. In the States. I was just telling your wife, we’re on vacation. Holiday, I think you would say.”

  “You’ve seen Loch Ness, I expect.”

  “Of course—but no monster, I’m sorry to say.” Miss Plower rattled off a full itinerary. She had been to the ruins of Fortrose Cathedral, Chanory Point, Fair Glen (though the cherry trees were dormant), and two dozen other local highlights.

  A lot of time in Inverness, Gorrie thought. And a lot of visiting in the area where Cameron was found.

  “Have you tried our pubs?” he asked.

  “Doesn’t drink,” said Nan, with a hint that perhaps others might take the example.

  “A visit to Scotland without stopping in a pub?�
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  “I expect I’ll visit one soon,” answered Miss Plower. “Your wife said you were a detective.”

  “An inspector, yes.”

  “You must have interesting cases.”

  “The odd sort, now and again.”

  She smiled. Gorrie noticed that her bag wasn’t nearby—Nan would have put it in the closet straightaway.

  If she had a gun, she’d have it there, he thought. And if she was a killer, she would have a gun.

  A simple thing to make an excuse, get up, and check.

  “Frank has been with the police twenty-five years,” said Nan. “Tell her the story of the boat rescue. That’s a favorite.”

  “Wasn’t much.”

  “A boat rescue on land,” Nan told Miss Powers. “Some wee lads were havin’ a bit of fun—”

  “I saw some police up on the highway near Rosmarkie yesterday afternoon,” said Miss Powers. “Must have been an accident.”

  “Wouldn’t know,” said Gorrie. “Traffic constables, I expect.”

  The American sipped her tea.

  “She’s heard about that business on Eriskay,” said Nan.

  “Terrible,” said the American.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Jealous wife? That’s what the paper said.”

  Gorrie got up. “I’ve forgotten to put out the garbage. Let me take care of that before it slips my mind again.”

  “Frank,” hissed his wife. “The garbage now? Manners,” she added in a stage whisper.

  He ignored her, walking quickly to the closet. He reached inside, past his jacket, looking toward the floor for the American’s bag.

  “Now, Inspector, do you think I would be so foolish as to leave my weapon in the bag?” said the American behind him. “Back out now, with the pocketbook please, and keep your hands high. Stay where you are, Nan.”

  Gorrie thought of taking the umbrella near the corner of the closet and smashing her with it, but he couldn’t tell how far she was away from him. There was also Nan to consider. So he complied slowly.

  “What sort of accident will you dress this up as?” he asked, still facing away from her.

  “Something will occur to me, I’m sure,” she said. “Slide the bag on the floor.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  Instead of answering, she reached forward and grabbed it from his hand.

  His chance—he’d missed it.

  “There have been reports of gas in the neighborhood,” she said, sliding something from the bag and placing it on the floor. “I don’t suppose they’ve found the leak yet.”

  “They’ve already checked here,” said Nan.

  “Incompetence is rife,” said the American.

  “I wouldn’t think even my detective constable would accept the coincidence of six accidents so close together,” said Gorrie. He turned halfway toward her, about six feet away in the small room.

  Not quite enough for a lunge.

  “Into the kitchen now, both of you.”

  Gorrie glanced toward his wife. The teapot was near her; if she could just pick it up, it might catch the American off guard.

  Surely the woman’s reflexes were quick enough to kill both of them before the water even scalded her.

  She’d kill them soon anyway.

  But she wouldn’t shoot them if she didn’t have to. She wanted this to look like an accident, and the bullets might be found.

  “The kitchen, Inspector,” said the American, sidling past him toward the door.

  She wanted to lock it. She could just barely reach it and still cover them.

  Not both at the same time. He had to do something quickly.

  “Nan, the kitchen!” he shouted.

  As the killer jerked her head toward his wife, Gorrie twisted around and sprung at Plower. The gun went off near his face, but he heard it as if from a vast distance away, muffled by his surging adrenaline. She was stronger than he’d guessed, far stronger, and the bulk at her chest had come from a special vest; he felt the hard panel with the first punch. He slammed his skull against her chin, felt a sharp pang at the back of his neck, pushed himself against her with everything he had, hoping Nan had the sense to run and save herself.

  She didn’t. But it was quite likely the smash she gave the American with the hammer from their tool drawer was the blow that rendered her unconscious.

  TWELVE

  ROSS DEPENDENCY, SOUTHERN OCEAN (66°25’ S, 162°50’ E)

  MARCH 13, 2002

  A STORM WAS COMING, AND THE PETRELS AND SKUAS were its outriders, brawling up from the bare sea cliffs in wild sprays of gray-white wings.

  Above their Bellany Island rock colonies a moist, restless warm front from New Zealand had bumped against the outer bounds of an Antarctic air mass. Cold and dry, heavy as the breath of a slumbering frost giant, it presented a resistant barrier.

  In collision, the two fronts took on a clockwise rotation, generating great eddies of wind around a central area of low pressure. Rising above the dense mass of cold air, the buoyant warm flow pulled its moisture higher into the atmosphere to be cooled and condensed into radiating bands of clouds.

  As the fronts continued to spin in conflict, their winds gained speed and intensity, sucking up more water vapor from the low-pressure trough, pushing the clouds further toward its edges, evolving into a potent cyclonic cell that whirled southward across the Antarctic Circle, racing over archipelagoes, open sea, and pack ice toward the continental landmass.

  A storm was coming.

  Streaming from their bleak slopes, the rousted seabirds were first to know its aggressive force.

  Soon many others would as well.

  South Victoria Land, Antarctica (Approx: 74°50’ S, 164°00’ E)

  They tramped over the snow berm ferrying a pair of cargo-laden banana sleds toward the first of their widely separated destinations.

  The team consisted of ten men. Their parkas, wind pants, and duffels were white. White too were the ski bags they carried over their shoulders on padded nylon web slings, their lightweight fiberglass sleds, and the canvas tarpaulins over the large, sealed crates that had been left at the drop-off point some three quarters of a mile back. This was a heavily crevassed area, and Granger had refused to land his helicopter any closer to the depot.

  At the rear of the small column, two men hauled their freight of equipment on sturdy polyfiber tow cords, harnesses buckled around their chests and waists.

  They marched along the north side of the trench with a kind of slow wariness, the lead walker probing the un-tracked snow ahead with a telescopic avalanche pole, its shaft locked at its maximum six-foot extension. Far from any known camp, their chances of being detected by ground or aerial recon were slight. Their clothes and equipment were furthermore designed to blend with the terrain, and the sun’s prolonged descent toward austral winter had butted it increasingly low toward the horizon, leaving no appreciable shadows to betray their movement.

  The wind blew hard and cold. They moved on toward their goal, their leader repeatedly thrusting his probe into the rumpled snow, locating a masked drop, and then steering them around it. The depot’s location had been programmed into their GPS units, and they would reach it soon enough if they stuck close to the berm line. Their main interest right now was getting safely past the crevasse field, past those fissures waiting beneath the snow, their open, icy mouths filled with darkness. Often hidden under fragile snow bridges—corniced drifts that sweep across their openings and become obliterated from sight as surrounding accumulations overspread their peaks—they might be a few feet in depth, or two hundred feet. One did not learn which until the misstep was already taken and the bottom fell out from underfoot.

  After a while the lead man stopped, planted his avalanche pole in the snow, and slipped his binoculars from their case. Beside him along the slope, the others stood with the crampons of their mountaineer boots biting into the hardpack. The dry wind nagged at them, flapping the ruffs of their parkas, clotting the fibers o
f their balaclavas with their own frozen breath. Out beyond the opposite embankment, sastrugi flowed away northward in wild, swirling patterns.

  Glasses held up to his eyes, the team leader looked carefully down into the trench. The entrance hatch was buried in snow, but he could see the reflective strip at the top of its marker wand projecting above a nearby drift.

  He signaled to his men, and all but the load carriers began preparing for their run. They zipped open their ski bags, extracted their boards and poles, mounted rigid alpine touring bindings onto the skis, and slipped their booted feet into them.

  The leader moved to the edge of the depression on his skis. Behind him, the carriers unharnessed. There would be no need for their assistance below; better they rested here and stayed with the sleds and crates.

  “Gehen Meir!” he ordered in throaty Schwyzerdüsch. Then he leaned into the fall line, bent low at the knees, pushed off with his sticks, and went slicing downhill.

  The rest whipped after him, poles swung out and back, powder flying from the tails of their skis in wide sweeping sprays. The floor of the trench came upon them in a rush, and they wedged their tips and edges to check their descent, turning parallel to the grade, plowing snow into the air as they braked.

  Near the marker wand down at the base of the slope, the leader inspected a high undulation in the surface cover, gave his men a confirmatory nod, and crouched to remove his skis. They quickly followed suit, then got to work digging at the mound with foldable snow shovels from their duffels.

  Soon they had exposed most of a circular stainless-steel hatch, its frame almost flush with the rock of the hillside. There was no lock. Intruder prevention depended on effective concealment rather than access control, for mechanical rods and electromagnetics were prone to climatic damage and might very well fail to release.

  It took fifteen minutes before the manhole-sized entry hatch was completely dug out. The leader stood to one side and waved for a couple of the men to pull it open. Then he took an electric krypton lantern out of his bag and strode through the passageway, the lantern held forward, the rest of the group filing in at his heels.