by Dan Latus
‘On the contrary! You certainly have advertised your presence in Canada, and Vancouver Island particularly. For one thing, you and your buddy here left a heap of bodies at a motel back near Parksville a couple of nights ago.’
Inwardly, I winced. Outwardly, I stared and tried to look puzzled by the claim. I was still troubled by her singling me out.
‘The eTA that is attached to passports these days comes in very useful at times,’ Ms Campbell added, ‘especially when a visitor to our country doesn’t want to be found.’
I grimaced at that. She just gave me a wintry smile. Harry snorted and turned away.
‘So how come you don’t know who he is?’ I asked, motioning towards Harry.
‘He has a different passport to you.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Oh, I’m sure he’s British too. But—’
‘It’s an older passport,’ Harry contributed, looking thoroughly disgusted. ‘It predates the technology.’
‘There we are then,’ the woman who claimed to be Greta Campbell said cheerfully. ‘One more little mystery solved. Now, I’ve come to talk to you two fellas about what happened the other night. Colleagues from the RCMP — Royal Canadian Mounted Police, that is — wanted to straight arrest you, and clap you both in irons. But I said no, no! Not yet, at least. I want to hear what they have to say first.’
‘Good to know,’ I murmured.
But it wasn’t looking good. The lady seemed to know far too much already, and no doubt had the power to really screw things up for us, if she was who she said she was. We still hadn’t seen any identification.
‘Of course,’ she added, ‘if you don’t want to talk to me, I can ask my colleagues waiting outside to come in and arrest you anyway. That might save us all a lot of time.’
Harry moved over to the window. ‘Two trucks,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I can see four guys hanging around.’
‘And two more round the back someplace,’ Greta Campbell said helpfully.
‘What do you want to know?’ I asked with a sigh. ‘First, though, how did you get hold of my name?’
‘From a man called Giles Henderson. I believe you know him?’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Understandably enough, Greta Campbell wanted to know what had happened at the Chipmunk Lounge & Resort, the motel near Parksville. She seemed singularly unimpressed when we told her we had been rudely awakened in the middle of the night by three men who had burst into our lodge intent on attacking us with hunting knives.
‘So you just shot them?’
‘Not all of them,’ I said. ‘I can recall hitting one of them with a poker from the fireplace.’
‘Would that be the poker one guy had rammed through his throat?’
‘If I’d had a gun,’ I said evenly, ‘I would have shot him instead. I had to use whatever weapon came to hand.’
‘Well, somebody shot at least one of them,’ she said, looking now with interest at Harry.
‘They were well-armed,’ Harry said shortly. ‘And at close quarters, people who want to fight with weapons can get injured.’
She made a couple of notes on a little writing pad she pulled out of her jacket pocket. I glanced at Harry, who shrugged. He didn’t know what to do about this intervention any more than I did, but one of us had to take the initiative and she already knew who I was.
‘The guys who attacked you weren’t Russians, or Ukrainians,’ she pointed out, as if she knew exactly what was going on with us.
‘No. We wondered about that,’ I admitted. ‘Asians, weren’t they?’
‘If you say so. Any thoughts about that?’ she asked, her gaze swivelling from me to Harry and back again.
‘Hired hands,’ Harry said.
‘Local hitmen,’ I added. ‘That was the best we could come up with.’
‘Local hitmen,’ she repeated, making another note in her little book, her tone indicating how unlikely she thought that. ‘Hitmen from Parksville?’
‘Well . . .’ I began.
‘Likely from Vancouver,’ Harry said. ‘Chinese, probably.’
‘Hitmen from Vancouver,’ Greta Campbell repeated, pen poised, ready to make another note. ‘Chinese.’
Somehow, she managed to make it obvious that she didn’t believe a word we were saying.
‘What did Giles Henderson tell you about me?’ I asked, eager to get onto safer ground.
‘Not much. He just gave me your name and said you might need help at some point.’
‘He didn’t tell you what I was doing here?’
‘Something about helping a man who had done good things for NATO. That would be you, I take it,’ she added, looking at Harry.
He shrugged and gave her a stony stare. I worried that he might not realise how difficult she could make it for us if he kept up his hostile posture.
‘He’s an old friend,’ I said soothingly. ‘And he’s convalescing right now.’
‘Oh?’
‘I did work for NATO,’ Harry contributed reluctantly, ‘before I retired.’
‘That right? Where?’
‘Wherever they wanted to send me.’
‘You got wounded?’
‘Physically, not so much,’ he said with a shrug.
‘Oh?’ Greta Campbell said again.
‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,’ I said a little desperately.
‘Ah!’ She closed her notebook and nodded. ‘I understand.’
I wondered about that. I really did.
She continued, ‘Mr Giles Henderson told me . . . Forgive me. Sir Giles Henderson is it?’
‘Not yet,’ Harry said. ‘It takes a little time.’
‘You Brits!’ Greta Campbell said with a knowing little smile. ‘Well, Mr Henderson said he would be happy to visit Ottawa and tell us more about this NATO business, but he was tied up at the moment.’
I eagerly seized the lifeline she had thrown us. ‘That would be best,’ I assured her. ‘We’re pretty much out of the picture. All we are trying to do is stay safe for a little while longer, until things get sorted out back there in Europe.’
‘Europe,’ she repeated with a doleful smile, as if she doubted the possibility of it ever getting sorted out back there. ‘Ukraine, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s almost certainly above your pay grade,’ Harry snapped, making me shudder.
‘Well, I’ll go along with that for the moment,’ Greta Campbell said icily. ‘But I would remind you that Canada was a founding member of NATO. As a nation, we Canadians believe wholeheartedly in the Organisation’s values and purpose. And Canada is also part of the Five Eyes set-up, of which you may have heard?’
Even I had heard of that. The Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States treaty arrangement for sharing signals intelligence had become an important arm of national security for all the countries involved.
Greta Campbell stared from one to the other of us and added, ‘I want to be informed of anything else that happens to you, Mr Doy, or to you, Mr Stone. Clear?’
All I could do was nod. Somehow, I managed not to say, “Yes, Miss.” I didn’t dare look at Harry to see how he was taking it.
Greta Campbell pulled out her little notebook again and extracted a card from it. ‘Phone numbers and email address,’ she said, handing it to me. ‘You can get me day or night.’
She turned then and left, with no more than a curt final nod. We had offended her. At least, Harry had.
Harry stood by the window and watched her shoo the RCMP uniforms into the two trucks. Then they drove away, throwing out a lot of dust and gravel as they went.
‘She knew my name all along,’ Harry said, turning back to me.
I nodded. ‘Henderson.’
‘Henderson? Yes, probably.’
‘You know what annoyed me,’ I added, ‘is that she never thanked me for the coffee.’
Chapter Forty
Afterwards, after Greta Campbell had made her big departure, Harry and I
got back to business. The visit had complicated things, but it hadn’t really changed much. If anything, it had made us more determined than ever to ignore all the distractions, crack on and look for a way of getting Johanne released.
‘They can do nothing to help,’ Harry said, speaking of the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. ‘We might as well forget about them and keep out of their way.’
‘Yes and no,’ I told him. ‘Maybe they can’t do anything directly about Johanne, but they could certainly make things more difficult for us. The time may come when we need Ms Campbell as an ally.’
‘She’s not my kind of person.’
‘Not mine either, but she’s probably able to whistle up resources we might want at some point. She could also put a spoke in our wheel if she chose. So let’s not rubbish her altogether.’
Harry gave a wry smile and shook his head. ‘You always were a peace monger, Frank. Perhaps that’s why you’re good at what you do. OK. I agree with you. Now, let’s get back to business.’
We played around for a while with the news that Petrov was in Victoria. We looked at it from all sides, hoping to find a way of using his presence to unlock the problem.
‘The obvious possibility,’ I suggested, ‘would be to just offer to meet him. Talk to him face to face and offer to trade. The battle plan for Johanne.’
‘Tried that. It didn’t work.’
‘Supposing I met him. You wouldn’t have to be involved.’
‘You wouldn’t get anywhere near him. Besides, what could you say that I couldn’t?’
‘I’m not sure.’ I shrugged. ‘But what I could do is play the honest broker, the guy in the middle, looking to see if there’s any possibility of negotiating a deal. I’ve done that a few times.’
Harry didn’t bother responding. I couldn’t really blame him. I was just trying to generate a discussion, get the creative juices flowing. We needed some ideas on the table.
‘He won’t be alone in Victoria,’ Harry said reflectively. ‘He’ll have a bunch of his people with him.’
‘Minus the three we encountered the other night.’
‘That’s a point. He won’t have had a chance to talk to the survivor yet, either,’ Harry said thoughtfully. ‘The RCMP, or somebody else — that woman’s outfit, perhaps — will have him under tight control and in seclusion, while they wait to question him. So, Petrov may not know what went wrong the other night.’
‘Or about me,’ I pointed out.
‘Probably not, no.’
‘That gives us a small advantage.’
But what could we do with it? That was the question.
‘He won’t trade,’ Harry said with a sigh. ‘So far as he’s concerned, I’ve got nothing to offer.’
‘Except the battle plan.’
‘Yeah. But he thinks he can get that anyway by finding me.’
We had been here before. In a way, Harry was right. He had nothing to bargain with. He did have the blueprint, it was true, but he could do nothing with it. Handing it over to NATO, via Giles Henderson, would be like signing Johanne’s death warrant. Petrov would soon know that had happened. Meanwhile, he could continue hunting for Harry. If he found him, he would be able to retrieve what he wanted. The nice, modern, liberal idea that torture never works was naïve, romantic nonsense.
No, Petrov would get what he wanted from Harry eventually. And then both Harry and Johanne would be a thing of the past, and nothing to worry about. No wonder he was putting a lot of resources into the search for Harry, and no wonder he was here himself to direct operations.
‘It is possible,’ I suggested tentatively, ‘that Moscow could find out that he’s lost the battle plan and dump him anyway.’
‘That would be nice. But it wouldn’t help Johanne, would it?’
‘Probably not, no,’ I admitted.
‘Let’s give it a rest,’ Harry said with a yawn. ‘We’re just going round in circles here.’
I couldn’t disagree with that.
‘Fancy another walk?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘I’ve got a bit of a migraine coming on. I need to lie down. You go, though.’
I went, needing to get back outside, into the fresh air. I walked back down to the marina and strode along the jetty again. It was made of solid, heavy-duty timber planks supported by massive timber piling, and looked well capable of withstanding currents, winds and any other kind of pressure from whatever direction it might come. I had to admire the work that had gone into it. The materials too.
A shipload of Canadian timber like this would come in very handy for Jimmy Mack and me at Risky Point. We might even be able to shore the cliffs up with it, and force coastal erosion into retreat. I’d have to look into it when I won the lottery.
The crews of the fishing boats had now all finished clearing up and doing their maintenance chores. It was quiet and peaceful at the end of the jetty. I just stood there, gazing out across Quatsino Sound. Well, not the whole thing. Just part of it. What I was looking at was a small bay off a massive fjord that ran many miles out to the Pacific Ocean. Quite a waterway — or highway even.
And if you nosed out of the entrance to this bay, here, and turned right, instead of left, it was just as far to the head of the fjord near Holberg, the town that Johanne’s ancestors had helped to build.
I smiled at the thought. It was mindboggling that people had come all the way from Denmark, and then found their way up fifty miles of fjord before they decided to dig a mine and build a town. How had that happened? What had been in their heads?
The woman in the office seemed happy to see me again, and to talk a little. She told me there wasn’t much other settlement in the area, just a handful of tiny fishing villages at places like Winter Cove. That was about it. The land hadn’t changed much in the past ten thousand years, not since her ancestors had arrived here from Siberia, via the Aleutian crossing.
Yes, it was peaceful, she agreed. Now, at least. But long ago there would have been fighting between the different bands along the coast. The usual. Feuds. Vendettas. Hostages taken. New blood brought into the villages. Less, perhaps, than across the prairies, let alone across Europe, but it would have happened here, just as it had everywhere else. The way of the world.
Then there would have been disasters to contend with. Men lost at sea. Canoes wrecked in storms. Harsh winters. Famine. Disease. Again, just like everywhere else. It wouldn’t always have been so peaceful.
I would have liked to find out a lot more about the area, but I didn’t have the time to stay and listen. Nor did the woman in the marina office really. She had phone calls to answer and paperwork to do. I thanked her and left.
It was on the way back to the house that the idea came to me. My pace quickened and I smiled. Why not? It wasn’t only the First Nation people of long ago who could do that sort of thing. All that was needed was desperation and determination, in equal measure. Surely, between us, Harry and I could find both?
Chapter Forty-One
Kiev, Ukraine. September 2018.
She had been right. They had kept her in the basement of a big apartment block built in the late 1960s for heroic Soviet workers, named after an early Soviet cosmonaut.
Climbing the stairs from the basement wasn’t easy after her ordeal but she was damned if she was going to use the wire-cage lift. Exchanging one sort of prison for another wasn’t on her agenda.
She feared there would be guards somewhere in the building, but she encountered none at all. At ground level the place seemed empty. She could hear sounds that indicated the building was occupied, though. One or two doors banged shut. The elevator was being summoned. A dog barked somewhere upstairs. She heard all that but saw no one. And the entrance hall was empty.
Heart racing, she let herself out into the street and walked quickly away, hoping never to see that place again.
Chapter Forty-Two
Coal Harbour, September 2018.
‘How’s the migraine coming alo
ng?’ I asked, opening the door to Harry’s room.
‘Just fine.’
He was laid flat on his back on the bed, with a pillow over his face.
‘I’ve had an idea.’
‘Go away. I’m busy.’
‘I may have the answer. Let’s talk when you’ve stopped being so busy.’
I closed the door and returned to the kitchen. I put the kettle on and waited. It wasn’t long before I heard the door to Harry’s room open and slam against the wall. His feet pounded along the corridor.
‘What have you got?’ he demanded, bursting into the kitchen.
‘Coffee?’
‘Never mind that! What have you got?’
I grinned and said, ‘It was after I’d been talking to the Indian woman in the marina office—’
‘First Nation woman. Better yet, Frank, just say “woman.”’
‘Right. I will. It’s a lot less cumbersome. You’ll have to excuse my infelicities with the language, Harry. I’ve watched far too many Western movies in my life.’
‘For chrissake, Frank! You’ve got me up with a fucking steaming migraine. What do you want to say?’
‘Sorry about that.’ I poured hot water into two mugs containing instant coffee granules. ‘Why don’t we abduct Petrov?’
‘What?’
‘Kidnap him. Then we trade him for Johanne.’
He glared at me. ‘I’m not in the mood for jokes, Frank. Cut it out!’
‘I’m not joking,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I mean it. The woman in the office said it used to happen amongst her ancestors, back in the day. Kidnap, abduction, ransom. All of that. Then I thought, well, why don’t we do it?’
‘Of all the stupid . . . Fuck you!’ he snapped. Then he turned round and marched back along the corridor to his bed.
I shrugged and drank my coffee. Then I went out for another walk.
When I returned, Harry was sitting in the kitchen nursing an empty coffee mug. He looked up at me and said, ‘How would it work?’
I took a deep breath and started.
‘There’s probably nothing more important to Petrov than Petrov. So, if we got him, we could trade him for Johanne.’