“Cal Rogan, what were you thinking?” I can’t tell if she’s amused, angry or afraid. “You just stole a document from a CSIS intelligence officer.”
“He’s the guy from the conference call.”
“Well, duh! I guessed that but you can’t just take it like that.”
“I know, it was probably stupid.”
“Probably?! I think you should turn around right now, give it back and tell Jen who he is. We’re dealing with a huge government conspiracy here. It may even involve this guy being complicit in staging a false-flag terrorist bombing. You cannot go it alone.”
I think over her words and a feeling rises from deep in my gut. “I don’t really trust Jen anymore. I don’t really know why.”
“You think she’s involved in the conspiracy?”
“No. No. Not directly.” The feeling gets stronger. “It’s just that she seems very keen to get us off the case; to get us to go back to Vancouver.” I can feel a raw anger shooting skyward. “If some government cabal, as she called it, is doing arms deals with Iranians and staging terrorist attacks on Canadian soil for God’s sake, and having innocent, homeless people beaten to death, I’m not just going to stand by and do nothing.” I can feel tears of anger in my eyes. “I’m Canadian damn it! No one fucks with innocent lives on my watch. I’m going to get to the bottom of this if it kills me.”
“But how?”
“Like a cop, not like a CSIS intelligence officer.”
Lieutenant-General Richard Matherson, lives in an elegant house in the Hunt Club Woods area of Ottawa. Tina’s research skills have produced a wealth of information about the man whose face I saw for an instant on Neil Harris’ computer. He’s a hawkish, decorated officer, known for his outspoken views, and is one of the most senior officers in the Canadian Armed Forces. A widower, he lives alone and seems to have no social life at all; I was hoping this would equate to arriving home early but Tina and I have been camped out in our rental Chevy across the street from his house for the last three hours and it’s now seven-thirty. As soon as we start to freeze to death, we crank up the engine for a while to warm us up. And we do what cops always do on stakeouts: we chat.
I have learned all about her childhood growing up as the oldest child of immigrant parents in Belleville, Ontario and she has learned about my dysfunctional childhood moving from district to district in Vancouver. We have had the former spouse/lover chat. She was never married but lived with someone for five years. I have waxed eloquent on the subject of Ellie and she has reciprocated with stories of her baby brother who was born on the same date as Ellie but five years before.
I can feel my feet starting to freeze again. I reach for the ignition key but Tina grabs my hand and signals with her head. A black Jaguar is pulling into the driveway of the house opposite. The garage door glides up and swallows the car. In the harsh, neon light of the garage’s interior, I see Matherson get out of the car before the door slides fully down.
“Game on!” I say.
We get out of the car together and walk across the snowy street in step.
I rap the ornate, lion-head knocker on the front door and it is opened almost immediately.
The elderly woman who opens the door peers myopically at us. “Can I help you?” she asks.
Without missing a beat, Tina says, “Yes, we have an appointment with General Matherson.”
“Well you’re lucky dear, he just arrived home. Won’t you come in?”
She holds the door open for us to enter. This is easier than I expected. Too easy in fact. We find ourselves in a spacious entranceway with a curving staircase leading up to a minstrel gallery. The house is larger than it looks from the street. But I don’t have time to admire the architecture as the sound of shoes on hardwood announces the arrival of the master of the house.
He is shorter than I was expecting but looks squat and strong. Potentially a formidable opponent. He shows less surprise than on our previous, electronic encounter. “Thank you Martha,” he says and without a word she gives an odd smile in our direction and disappears into the rear of the house.
He looks at Tina. “And you are…?”
“Tina Johal of the Daily News Hound dot com,” she says, smiling and offering her hand, which he ignores.
“You had better come in,” he says.
He strides across the hallway and opens a door, indicating that we should enter. Tina starts through the doorway but I grab her arm. “A study,” I say, “with the possibility, even the likelihood, of a concealed weapon and with a lockable door. I don’t think so, General. The living room would be a preferable meeting place.”
He sighs. “As you will, Mr. Rogan.” He turns and leads us across the entranceway into a stereotypically masculine-style living room: all wood panelling, oak furniture, vanity photos and the faintest trace of pipe smoke. “Sit,” he says indicating the couch.
Tina looks at me. I nod. We sit. He doesn’t. I smile at his power ploy.
Tina takes out her notepad and pen and starts scribbling: a ploy of our own.
“Sit down General,” I say. “I don’t think you’re in a position to control the conversation, just by standing up.” There’s enough of a hint of mockery in my tone to make his gambit feel foolish.
He sits down opposite us.
I go for the jugular. “General, you were conspiring with Neil Harris to sell armaments to our country’s enemies.” I detect the slightest of flinches.
“That’s ridiculous,” he says. “Apart from the fact that you have no idea who our country’s enemies are, why would I conspire to sell anything to them?”
He looks nervously at Tina as she writes down what he says.
“The very fact that you were in a conference group named 'The Ruling Group’ with Harris and General McNeil would indicate otherwise.”
A puzzled look traverses his face before he responds. “I have responsibilities in DND which require that I frequently communicate with the Minister. Why wouldn’t I be in a group with him?”
“In a group called 'The Ruling Group’?”
He shrugs. “Harris had a penchant for fanciful names.”
I smile. “Talking of names, how do you know my name, General?”
“What?”
“You used my name a moment ago. How did you know who I was?”
There is a soupçon of panic in his eyes as he searches for an answer. I supply it for him. “Someone told you I was the annoying private detective from Vancouver who discovered that Denis Lamarche was killed on the same day as his sister, who unearthed the End User Certificates that Neil Harris signed, who discovered the details of shipment number seventeen to Lebanon, who tracked down Majid Zarin and Hamza Kashif’s brother.”
He can’t keep the shock out of his face; he didn’t know this last bit of information. His agitation is doubled by the scratching of Tina’s pen.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It’s almost a shout.
Now for the well prepared lie. “There’s no use denying it, we have been monitoring your communications. We know every call you make, every text, every email, every conference call.”
His face has gone white. “I think you had better leave, both of you.”
I get up and Tina follows suit. We have achieved our objectives of chaos and fear. As we walk to the front door, I have just one question. My voice is casual as I ask, “Who did tell you my name General?”
“Get out!” he snaps.
And in a flash, I know the answer.
We have driven away from the General’s house and completed a circuit around the block. We are parked in a different spot but still with a view of the house.
“Do you think it worked?” Tina asks.
“We’ll see. I’m pretty sure that we shook him up; great work with the note taking by the way. That really rattled him. If he believes that we are monitoring his communications, he’s going to leave the house and hopefully he’ll lead us to the next member of this cabal.”
“Well, that was the plan.” She reaches over and squeezes my hand.
And we wait.
The temperature has dropped. Big flakes of snow are drifting lazily downward. I leave the engine running.
Our eyes are drilled in on the house. He has to make a move soon. Come on General. As if on cue, the front door opens. It’s the housekeeper. She closes the door behind her and walks down the garden path, crosses the street and gets into a car that was old when I was young. It starts after a couple of tries, pulls away from the curb and meanders down the street. The only possible witness to him leaving the house again tonight is gone. Any minute that garage door will open and his Jaguar is going to—
I hear a metallic click and, too late, I see the movement in the side mirror. Tina screams at the twin bangs as our side windows explode. I feel the gun against my head. “Get out of the car!” The man’s voice is used to giving orders. But I’m not used to taking them. I slam the car into drive and floor the gas pedal. The car leaps forward, the side pillar pushing his gun arm out of line with my head. “Get down!” I tell Tina. I doubt that they’re going to fire their weapons in the street but you can’t be too careful.
A glimpse in the mirror shows two men running to a car. As they get in, we reach the end of the road and I hang a left as fast as I dare on the slippery road surface. We don’t get a lot of the white stuff in Vancouver, so confidence in my snow-driving skills is not high. We need to get to a major road with a lot of traffic. I check the mirror. No one seems to be following us. Odd. I ease back the speed. More by luck than judgement, we hit Highway 19, which will take us back to downtown and our hotel. There is still no sign of pursuit. “It’s OK to sit up now.” I tell Tina.
With adrenaline levels dropping, I become aware of the cold air streaming through the shattered windows as I accelerate up the ramp onto the highway.
“Who the hell was that?” Tina asks. She turns and looks through the back window. “Are they following us?”
“I don’t know,” I say, firing up the heating to it’s highest setting.
“If they’re not following us, why not?” She asks.
It’s a good question. “They know who we are; maybe they know where we’re staying,” I say.
“Maybe we should check into a different hotel,” she says.
“Good idea. Except these guys are pros. They know there’s the possibility we’d do that.”
“Maybe they just wanted to scare us off.”
“No, they told us to get out of the car.”
I run through the sequence of events in my mind. One thing stands out.
“Grab your phone and find us the nearest gas station,” I say. She hears the urgency in my voice. After a few taps, she says, “There’s a Shell station just off the highway about a kilometre or so ahead.”
“Good, it should be busy.”
“Are we low on gas?” she adds.
“No. I need to check something.”
She gives me directions and I pull into the gas station and up to a pump. There are three other vehicles filling up. Good. “Just put some gas in, please,” I ask her.
I turn off the engine, take out the key, pull the lever to open the gas cap and get out of the car.
I check the roof first. Clear. I step back and scan the side of the car. Also clear. Then I see it. On the trunk, snug up against the back window. I pull it off and scan the other vehicles, ahhh: a big, black Ford pickup, perfect. I walk over to the driver; he’s an older guy with long grey hair cascading out from underneath his stetson. He’s just finished filling up and is putting the pump nozzle back. “Excuse me,” I say, “do you know if there’s a hotel or motel around here?”
“Sorry, can’t help you, I’m from Alberta.”
“You’re a long way from home,” I say.
“Yep, the wife and I are doing the whole cross country thing. We’re heading off to Montreal now.”
I can’t suppress a huge grin. “Well, you have a great trip,” I say as he gets back into the cab. I take my hand off the side of his truck as he pulls away, and walk back to the Chevy. Tina has finished topping up the tank.
“You look like the Cheshire cat,” she smiles at me. “What was that all about?”
We get in the car and I pull away from the pump.
“Those guys were pros,” I say. “A second before they smashed the windows, I heard a metallic click. They knew there was a chance we might make a run for it, so they put a homing device on the car. They didn’t have time to conceal it so they just slapped it down on the trunk.” I start to laugh, “In about fifteen minutes, they’ll be wondering why the heck we’re heading down Highway 417 bound for Montreal.”
Tina’s laugh joins mine as I pull back onto the highway.
I think the Uber driver and Tina are laughing at me but have no way of knowing. They immediately hit it off when she discovered that he is from the same state in India as her parents. They have been chatting away, in what I assume is Hindi, for the last fifteen minutes. Yet another grey car pulls into the parking lot. In the dark it is next to impossible to see the driver. I wait until it has parked. The driver gets out. She stands beside the car, as ordered. “Alright,” I grunt.
“This is soooo exciting,” the driver says. “I’ve never been in a stakeout before.” He drives over to where she’s parked.
I slide down the window. “Get in please, Jen.” I ask her.
She does as asked. I hope she is as cooperative for the next stage.
“What’s going on Cal?” she asks.
“All will be explained later,” I say.
“But—ˮ
“Later.” My tone brooks no protest.
We sit in silence for the ten minutes it takes to get to the Travelodge. “Go with Tina,” I say.
“You have to tell me what’s going on,” she objects.
“Later. Just do what I say.”
She shrugs and gets out of the car. She and Tina disappear inside the hotel.
“Where are they going?” the driver asks.
“I can’t tell you on grounds of national security,” I say to him. I’ve always wanted to say that.
We sit in silence for ten minutes. I don’t know what he’s thinking but I know I’m worrying about all the things that could go wrong.
They come out. Jen is wearing some of Tina’s clothes. Tina is a bit taller than Jen but the latter looks OK.
When they get into the car, Jen glares at me but doesn’t speak.
“Next stop,” I tell the driver.
He drops us at the Riverside Pub fifteen minutes later. Fifteen minutes during which I have done everything I can to see if we are being tailed and even now I can’t be a hundred percent sure. I hand him the second two-hundred-and fifty-dollar envelope and he and Tina say fond farewells. At least I guess that’s what they’re saying.
He was right; the Riverside is perfect. It’s loud enough that we won’t be overheard but not so loud that we can’t hear ourselves speak.
We choose a booth and order food and drink; I only just realized that I’m starving. After the waitress leaves, Jen leans forward. “What is going on, Cal?” she asks.
“We needed to be sure that you weren’t carrying any form of recorder or homing device. We’ll give you the key to the hotel room and pay for another Uber to take you back there so you can retrieve your clothes and your stuff.”
“Yes but why?”
“When we were in your conference room,” I say. “I kind of stole the picture of the general I saw on Neil Harris’ conference call.”
“You took General McNeil’s picture?” she asks.
“No it was General Matherson.”
“Matherson? He’s one of the most senior generals in the Forces. Maybe he was just calling Harris to—ˮ
I cut her off. “We just went to see him.” I tell her about the meeting with Matherson at his house.
“Did he admit to anything?” she asks.
“He didn’t have to. Right after the
meeting, he had a couple of guys show up and try to arrest us.” I tell her of our escape from the general’s men and the episode with the homing device. I finish with, “Would an innocent man order that?”
She thinks it over for a few seconds. “But why did you put me through changing my clothes and leaving all my stuff in that hotel room?”
“I told you. In case you were wearing any sort of surveillance electronics.”
“Why would I do that,” Jen asks.
“Because General Matherson knew my name. How did he know it? The only government people who know my name are you, your boss and maybe his boss.”
“You think I’m involved in this conspiracy?” she asks.
“I don’t know, are you?”
“Of course not.” Her denial seems genuine but she has been trained in both sides of interrogation. “What about Harvey, the RCMP guy back in Vancouver? He knew who you were didn’t he? He made me tell him your’s and Nick’s names. As I told you, there’s a senior RCMP guy involved. Harvey would have told him and he would have told the general.”
She’s right. My suspicion of her and her bosses is unwarranted. For nothing I’ve put her through the humiliation of removing her clothes and possessions and leaving them at a strange hotel. I hear Nick’s voice in my head; it’s his best sarcastic voice: Well done, Rogan.
“I am so sorry Jen,” I say.
“No prob. You were just being cautious.” She is a whole lot more forgiving than I would have been.
The waitress brings our order. My liver, bacon and onions, with mashed potatoes and gravy, smells wonderful. I take a long swallow of my IPA and ask, “Why do you think General McNeil is involved?”
She tells us about her discovery that the Special Ops guys took a military flight from Vancouver, authorized by McNeil.
Cal Rogan Mysteries, Books 4, 5 & 6 (Box Set) Page 45