A Different War

by Craig Thomas

  "Yes, yes, I must go to her. She is not strong she is often very depressed, you know—?" He feared an attempted suicide. Thank you, thank you!"

  He hurried away, scuttling rather than running. Moments after his stubby form disappeared from the hangar, Gant heard a car engine fire and then the noise of acceleration and the squeal of tyres. Then silence. He returned his attention to the Boeing, then-something… up above. He recalled an embryonic sensation of excitement, the moment before Halvesson distracted him. What—? He scanned the ribs and shoulder blades of the hangar for something that had moved but had not been a bird. A slow, mechanical, routine movement, something swinging from side to-camera. Security camera. Monitoring the hangar, its images projected on a screen in Halvesson's office, its images stored there. A second camera, then a third. Routine, the dead, forgettable routine of machines.

  Massey had walked into the hangar just as he had done. Into the camera's field of vision. Massey was stored, recorded, somewhere in Halvesson's office. Gant hurried.

  "OK, I'll ask him what he wants done. Good move, mon ami — ' It was not, on this occasion, meant to irritate Roussillon. Fraser rolled off the bed. Through the window, London's night-glow outlined Tower Bridge.

  "No, I approve. Gant must be after Strick-land. He knows it was sabotage he survived it." Fraser lit a cigarette, then blew smoke towards the open window. Two-thirty by the bedside clock. This was worth being woken for.

  "He could easily have worked out the same trick was used in Oslo as Phoenix. How long's he been there?… That long? Talked to Olssen, yes… What's he doing now? You can't see. OK, hang on — I'll get back to you. Neat, Michel, I like it. The old hospital call to remove the only witness. I think the man will go for it. Gant's disappearance won't cause a ripple. Call you back—" He switched off the cordless phone, then dialled the number of Winterborne's mobile, still smiling.

  Gant was a smart-arse, he needed taking out. He waited as the phone continued to ring. This was already turning into a tidying operation, its main phase already long completed his only involvement had been surveillance, a bit of frightening, hiring Strickland. At least this way they could turn Gant off, another of Aubrey's fond memories. Marian Pyott well, she was either dead, burned or terrified. Whichever would at least slow her down, probably stop her… and shitty little whingeing Banks was in for a surprise in the morning when his daughter walked to school.

  "Sir," without irony or insolence, "Fraser. Just had a call from Oslo.

  Can you talk freely?"

  "I've just got home. What is it?" The man's mood was easily identifiable; as satiated with self-admiration as if he had just come from a flattering mistress.

  "Gant, sir. Roussillon's opinion and I agree is that Gant could become a problem. He's after some trace of Strickland, without doubt."

  "You don't know where Strickland is, Fraser. How is Gant going to find him?"

  Fraser grimaced sourly and thrust the two fingers that held the cigarette savagely in the air.

  "Maybe not, sir. But he must know it was sabotage. And he knows Strickland knew him anyway. At least, Strickland knew Gant at one time."

  "Where is he?"

  The hangar at Oslo airport. Roussillon is on the spot, has him under close surveillance. He's even got the security guard out of the way.

  Gant is alone," he added seductively. He listened to the silence at the other end of the line.

  Eventually, Winterborne said, irritatedly:

  "What about Marian?"

  "Jessop and Cobb a petrol bomb through her kitchen window."

  "And?"

  They didn't remain at the scene. Her file suggested it as the best way to make the biggest impact. Some childhood accident—"

  "I know about her accident as a child!" Winterborne hissed.

  "I want to know what happened to her!"

  It was as if Winterborne was expressing regret for something he was certain had occurred. Mea culpa. All the guilt crap had infected him like a disease he had not expected to catch. He was afraid that the woman was dead; something was suddenly and surprisingly persuading him that he had never meant it to happen. Fraser mocked silently.

  Winterborne would get over it. It wasn't much more than a slight cold in his case, conscience — otherwise he would never have begun this, never have acquired Complete Security, staffed it with people like himself, gone as far as he had. In a couple of days, a week at most, he'd have persuaded himself of the necessity of the woman's removal. If it had already happened in the house fire, he'd soon see the sense of it.

  I'll find out, sir," he replied obsequiously.

  "But, Gant I think I must emphasise that he poses the more immediate danger. A risk that is unacceptably high." He added the last in deference to the evident self-satisfaction that seeped down the line.

  "Agreed, then. Get rid of Gant. And do it quietly, with no traces.

  Tell Roussillon. Good night, Fraser."

  The connection was severed.

  "And good night to you sir." Fraser scowled at the receiver. He switched it off and threw it on the bed.

  One down for certain. There'd be tantrums if the woman was already dead, or lying in an emergency bed, roasted to a crisp that much was obvious. But none over Gant's demise. That was death at a safe distance… Made you sick, the ease with which they could order the disposal of human beings. Look, my hands are clean. Businessmen and politicos took to that easy kind of gangsterism with alacrity. The end of the Cold War had left people like himself lying around like weapons, ready to be acquired, ready to go off. The likes of Winterborne enjoyed an arm's-length relationship with people like him, it gave them a buzz. It provided them with simple solutions to problems. It was easier than most other ways of doing business.

  He picked up the telephone and dialled Roussillon's number. As he had remarked to the Frog, his lot had always been up for the kind of thing the Brits were just learning… that you can run a conglomerate with the same methods and means as an intelligence operation.

  So, good night, Mr. Gant and I mean good night.

  It was a half-assed security firm. He'd known that after ten minutes of fastforwarding the videotapes from the security cameras in

  Halvesson's cramped, dusty, somehow deliberately littered office. The tapes weren't labelled or dated.

  There appeared to be gaps in the recording, by the light and dark spilling through the open doors, by the identities of the airliners being serviced and their carriers' blazons. A heap of cassettes had fallen like a joke from a metal cupboard as he had tugged open the door.

  It was three-fifteen in the morning and the bright inspiration of checking the security camera videotapes had evaporated like water in the desert sun. Gant rubbed his hands tiredly through his hair as the manic jerks and rushes of overalled men — like figures in a cartoon which no longer amused passed on the television screen. There were four cameras covering the hangar, one of which he had already realised was unserviceable. Of the other three, Halvesson seemed to operate them more by whim than routine. Maybe he watched hired movies on his little bank of four screens, rather than the hangar. Maybe he was just a dead-end in a dead-end job. There was a bitter kind of life, or at least its after-images, in the airless office; photographs of a younger Halvesson wearing the kind of well-cut suit he couldn't afford on a security man's pay, beside an elegant wife. Children, too a series of snapshots either framed or pinned to the wall which measured the ordinary suburban changes of any family anywhere. The measure of disillusion, loss of prospects. Children growing sullen and apart, the houses in front of which they were captured becoming smaller, less well tended. Scrubby lawns.

  Halvesson didn't care any longer, maybe not about anything except the wife whose illness had caused him to panic.

  Gant yawned. Halvesson's failed life was like a grubbiness on his clothing and skin. He rubbed his arms. He wasn't going to find anything, except by luck.

  Olssen's figure dashed dementedly across another unlabelled videotape
, gesticulating like a puppet in conversation with Jorgensen and another man. Often, Halvesson didn't switch on the timer and the recordings didn't always carry a date or time. Daylight became darkness once again, as on a speeded-up film of clouds or plants growing. A Boeing became, almost suddenly, a McDonnell Douglas, then an Airbus. The timer came back into operation and Gant slowed the replay.

  The day before yesterday, darkness-something alerted him, a noise beyond the airless cubbyhole of the office. The skittering of something. A rat, probably. Two nights ago, and the Vance 494 was at the corner of the screen, undergoing its service. His finger paused at the buttons of the video machine. Too early, too late…? The camera swung robotically and the airplane was displayed. He stopped the tape. Jorgensen climbing into the electrics bay. The gantry hugging the 494's waist like an old-fashioned corset. The time in the bottom corner of the screen read a little after eleven. Olssen walked out of view, towards his office. Gant's chair squeaked as he became more tensely interested in the silent movie of the recording. Outside the office somewhere, he heard rat noises again.

  Ignored them… The camera's perspective included the entrance to the hangar.

  Through those doors… "What's he doing now?" Roussillon whispered.

  Behind him, Oslo airport was silent, lit like a deserted sports stadium. He waited, then heard:

  "Security office. He's watching the security screens. Could be replaying the tapes—?"

  "Keep secure. Wait for my order."

  Roussillon switched off the RT. He had two men already inside the hangar.

  Gant was alone. He brushed his long hair away from his forehead. The night was pleasantly cool, outside. He turned and leaned his elbows on the high bonnet of the four-wheel-drive hydraulic platform, a Land Rover with a bent arm ending in the fist of the cage behind the driver's cabin. Through the night glasses, the hangar doors, wide open, were sheened with light.

  Then he murmured to the remaining two members of the team: "OK move in.

  No noise. Kill him in there if you must and bring the body out."

  The two men slipped away, their dark overalls like assault garb in the night, their faces newly smeared with black. Roussillon watched them, as if they were moving across a monochrome television screen, dodging and scuttling towards the hangar. In another minute, they had disappeared inside. Was Gant armed?

  Unlikely. Roussillon smiled. There was something pleasurable, something one could taste on one's tongue, about the known identity of the target that it was familiar by name, by repute, within the shadow pool of the intelligence community. Something satisfying, too, in that the body would be weighted and dropped into the Oslofjord as perfunctorily as they would have done any anonymous victim.

  His own service, DST, had given him carte blanche. He could concur with instructions from Fraser, from Winterborne. That was the nature of his freedom, that his actions could always be denied with utter conviction by his superiors, by the minister, the Elysee. The business of the state in this matter lay solely in preventing revelation.

  Balzac-Stendhal's dealings with Aerospace UK, the subornation of EU Commissioners, one of whom was a Frenchman and a possible future Prime Minister of France, the diversion of EU funds, must not be allowed to become public. There was no question of the moral rectitude or otherwise of the actions of a French conglomerate or a French politician.

  Roussillon lit a cigarette and savoured the acrid smoke, sweet-smelling on the faint night wind.

  A figure in the hangar doorway, his shadow falling darkly behind him as the lights caught him. Tall, broad-shouldered, a heavy face thickly moustached. The man was wearing a leather jacket, a check shirt and denims above high-heeled boots.

  He was evidently, somehow theatrically, American. What would be expected, looked for.

  Gant watched the man move in slow-motion, watched Olssen approach him.

  Eleven-twenty, two nights ago. Olssen and the American-dressed figure spoke to one another. Gant leaned forward until the figures became grainy and unfocused as they slipped to one corner of the screen and then regained its centre as the camera followed its arc. Halvesson hadn't bothered with a close-up, maybe he hadn't even been watching the monitor. Gant pressed the button to halt the tape.

  American…? An easy walk, the man's bag swinging loosely at his side. A confident actor already commanding his stage. Gant continued to stare at the screen for perhaps two minutes.

  That was the saboteur, the man who called himself Massey. The frozen image caught him in half-profile an anonymous grey face above a well-muscled body.

  He didn't know the man. He knew of maybe three or four people who had the skill to bring down the 494s in the way this stranger had, but he had no idea how many there really were. How many had been shown the door by the Company or the Bureau and who were out there, working for private companies and corporations, Vice-Presidents in charge of Industrial Espionage, V-Ps for Sabotaging Rivals.

  That was this guy's game.

  Angry that the elation of discovering the right stretch of videotape had so easily vanished into the sand of the man's anonymity, Gant stood up and stretched. He'd have to take the tape with him who'd miss it? and watch it over and over, ask around, get still shots printed off it.

  His hand gripped the back of Halvesson's swivel chair and he leaned towards the screen, letting the images move in slow motion once more, then in real time, then slow motion… He caught, like the trace of cigarette smoke in an empty room, something familiar about the man's posture, his movements, but it was just like trying to grab at the dissipating smoke. He turned away from the screen as he returned the tape to real time, and looked at his watch. Three-forty. He was bushed, his body leadenly remembering that he had slept little or not at all for forty-eight hours. The littered office, the photographic measurement of Halvesson's subsidence into failure, the TV screen, all irritated him.

  He turned towards the windowed wall of the office that overlooked the hangar-movement. A flicker as if someone's shadow had entered the edge of eyesight so that he wasn't certain he'd seen anything.

  He had. A darkly dressed figure hurrying, bent almost double like someone ill or wounded, vanishing beyond the Boeing. Rat noises…

  He'd heard, hadn't listened.

  He turned accusingly to stare at the screen and at Massey and Olssen walking side by side, slipping away and back through the camera's arc.

  Massey… Who the hell was he?

  He shook the puzzle of the man's identity away like heavy, dragging bedclothes.

  Stared out across the hangar, tensed against sudden darkness or the glimpse of others. He heard his own breathing, then the quick patter of what had to be rubber soled boots, but saw nothing. Two, at least.

  Massey… was being protected, the tidy-crew had come to make certain there was nothing left lying around-himself.

  Lights… He stared wildly around the grubby, cramped space, aware of himself framed in the windows, backlit as if on a screen. Switch darkness for an instant, "then the hangar lights came flowing in as if on a breeze. Cord in his left hand. He jerked it and the dusty blinds rattled down across the scene. He stifled a cough as he crouched with his back to Halvesson's desk, seemingly mesmerised by the TV screen and the images of Massey, moving in real time, walking away from the camera — stopping. Gant listened intently, as if he expected Massey to whisper, expected he might just catch his words as his lips moved.

  Olssen must have called out to him. The office was hotter. He embraced his knees as he sat, his back pressed against the desk, the shirt dampening.

  Rat noises again… Yes. His breath was loud as he exhaled. They knew where he was… Lights? The office was illuminated from outside, but the images on the screen shone out more vividly, in an etched, outlined way. He had to move. Take the videotape out of the machine, damn you, and move… Massey, facing the camera, Gant's heartbeat raised, senses heightened, sweat on his forehead in a narrow, cold line Strickland. Behind the moustache, the greyed hair, the l
eather jacket and the boots. Something in the smile, the angle of the head as he paused, the whole posture. The Preacherman had been his code name, his soubriquet, his means of being known and insulted. The psychopath with the gentle voice and manners of a pastor… Strickland. He knew him, knew what he was Gant turned his head as the window-wall shattered and the blinds swelled inwards for a moment to allow something to roll across the floor, something that smoked comically like a bomb in a cartoon. It burst even as he turned his gaze from the blinding flash. The smoke was suddenly everywhere in the room and he was coughing. He lurched forward and on to his knees, head bent to the floor.

  He rolled away from the shattered window towards the door. He crouched behind it, the videotape images still flickering, shining in his head.

  Strickland. They were here to protect Strickland. The smoke from the grenade obliterated the TV screen.

  His eyes watered, blinding him, and he could not stop coughing.

  Door…? His back was against the door. Other door through…? He scrabbled across the floor towards the door which led into the next office. He opened it and blundered against heaped boxes which smelt of metal and protective grease. He slammed the door to the storeroom. An identical windowed wall with a blind, a desk, filing cabinets… He had left the videotape behind. He glanced wildly back but it was already too late. He heard a voice shouting.

  AII the rooms were connected… He couldn't open the door to the third of the offices. Something was stacked against it. He realised it was blocked by the filing cabinet in Olssen's office… The smoke had followed him into the second office, slipping beneath the door. His throat rasped with it.

  He gripped the handle of the door out into the hangar. They'd be watching the other door only feet away only chance.

  He ran, crouching, hearing a shout and a reply. He hunched his body against the first shot.

  "No! Do not open fire under no circumstances!" Roussillon shouted into the RT, his whole body tensed as if he were on the point of running wildly towards the hangar. The grenade was unnecessary, Lucien who fired it?" They had wanted to make a game of it, startle him out of the security man's office like a rabbit blinking in the light. The grenade must be recovered, every fragment — no shooting!" Gant must simply disappear, there must be no sense in which his death was declared or his vanishing a police matter. Gunshot scars would be like fingerprints.