A Different War

by Craig Thomas

  "What do you know about the aircraft sabotage?"

  He looked at her as if she had asked the question in an unknown language.

  "I don't under—" She waved it dismissively away.

  "It doesn't matter. Tell me about the fraud with the regional redevelopment funds. Everything you know."

  "I know everything! he confessed mournfully.

  She removed a tiny recorder from her purse and switched it on.

  "Never mind, Ben," she sighed, exhausted.

  "Just talk. The fraud. Begin at the beginning…"

  It was probably because of his heightened, strained nerves, Winterborne decided.

  His mood lit his imagination like a succession of flares over a battlefield at night.

  He could not stop thinking about her. Marian kept coming out of the shadows of the large bedroom of the hotel suite, announcing in her careless way that he was wrong wrong to think, say, act as he did.

  There were new leasings, firming-up purchase enquiries, acres of beneficial newsprint and television reportage. Skyliner and Artemis

  Airways were in the process, like Hilary and Tensing, of planting the flag on the summit of the mountain they had had to climb. The banks were like eager children pursuing them, desperate to become part of the game with debt rescheduling and new loans alike. The European Commission was dining to bloating on the turnaround that he had achieved.

  And yet there she was, in his imagination, her expression quizzically mocking and long familiar.

  David Winterborne brushed his hair back with long fingers, then rested his hands once more on the duvet of the bed. He studied them, watching them curl involuntarily. They were like those end-of-pier machines, a pair of clawlike grabs which hovered over but hardly ever held small and useless presents. However many times you put pennies in the slot and the arms moved out and the claws grabbed, nothing ever seemed to be won, picked upHe smoothed the duvet with straightened fingers. That was an image Marian would have used and enjoyed. The cranes, the diggers and the grabs were working again on the Urban Regeneration Project sites. The parliamentary rumour machine was in high gear, whispering that no one was any longer making disapproving noises concerning Winterborne Holdings or European funds. Except Marian who would be warned off, told to keep her lips firmly together. The Whips' Office had promised-and if you could see your way to making a contribution to Party funds, with a General Election in the offing…?

  The knighthood remained unmentioned but palpable. Unless it came soon, of course, it would never come. American citizens did not qualify. He smiled, as if a bout of indigestion had passed. The last General Election had cost him a quarter of a million. It had bought him much gratitude, latitude and influence. This one might well cost him a half-million in contributions. More if he hedged his bets and contributed to the Opposition's campaign. The money would buy him immunity-there again. Like a tormenting ghost, walking towards him across the litter of faxes, newsprint and notes that were the confetti of celebration. He had dined Coulthard, Tim Burton and a dozen movers and shakers after the formal reception.

  It had gone well, spirits were high. It had been whispered to him that even the old irritant dear Kenneth had been warned off, his palm read for him by the Cabinet Secretary, no less… and at the Club, too. That news had especially delighted him. Aubrey, like some ancient Lear-figure, had been shown a kingdom of friends, influence and self-satisfaction in danger of forfeiture. He had been humbled — and yet Marian stood at the foot of the bed like one of Scrooge's ghosts, damn her, so palpable was the sense of what was to happen to her. Campbell had tried to thwart his intent, keeping her safely in public places. It had been wise to alter the strategy and include his demise. He glanced at his watch. Soon, very soon now The value of Winterborne Holdings had risen seven per cent in three days, and the conglomerate's worth was still climbing. And yet it was not that which ran through him like a sexual charge, it was what was imminent for Marian. The gold-strapped watch had been a crystal ball, showing the future, the point in time that was he looked again less than five minutes away. The smile she still smiled in his head would soon disappear for ever. Miss Priss the Puritan he had angrily called her when they had been children one summer afternoon of bickering and rain-clouds.

  "Why is it so difficult!" he breathed aloud, startling himself and looking quickly round as if he feared discovery.

  Campbell had to be got rid of. He would be just another accident victim to be added to the list of names that had appeared in the press when the two Vance 494s went down. Yet something in him kept reciting, like a prayer without content, but this is Marian… Roussillon had telephoned only minutes before. She and Campbell were in the car, heading towards the port and the Laeken park. Campbell, so the Frenchman seemed certain, was in poor shape. Winterborne looked at his watch again.

  In two minutes, give or take, a truck would plough into Campbell's BMW while a van sandwiched it, providing the anvil against which the hammer would strike.

  There would be few witnesses Campbell's delay had been both futile and helpful — but two people in a car would pull over and dash to assist… and ensure there were no survivors in the BMW.

  Simplicity itself, the soul of efficiency.

  He felt the dampness along his hairline, as if the pressure of the impact he envisaged so vividly had squeezed the cold droplets through the pores of his skin.

  The seconds ticked precisely, steadily in his mind. In one minute, metal would tear, cry out and then crumple, glass would shatter, leather rip. The BMW would implode like a squashed beer can between the truck and the van.

  He listened to his slow, deep breathing and felt his shoulders relax.

  Kismet. It could not be undone, it was already almost accomplished, the vehicle's shrinkage to the proportions of a coffin-sized box. A road accident, a statistic this is Marian… It possessed a great deal less force. Her features had all but faded from his mind.

  He looked at the gold watch.

  Now She glanced out of the passenger window. A white anonymous van was beside them as the BMW crossed the Rue Marie-Christine, beyond which rose the Gothic Eglise Notre-Dame. They crossed the sea canal and she glimpsed long, dark barges as lifeless as oil spill ages on the flat black mirror of the water. Ahead of them were the beaded lights along the Avenue du Pare Royal.

  Campbell's monotone had hardly varied or diverged, except to react to other vehicles or his own fears. The traffic was heavier, with trucks making for the port and its ocean-going ships. What she was recording seemed no more real, and offered no more excitement, than a description of a book he had read. Somehow, they were not things that had actually happened, his dead voice insinuated.

  Perhaps he could only deal with it by making the whole account sound like a police statement in a courtroom; dry, matter-of-fact, uninflected, monotonous' Look out!" she cried, her throat tight, eyes wide.

  "Ben, for God's sake, look out-!"

  She heard the metal of the car begin to scream. Saw Campbell's terrified, betrayed face turn to her as the shadow of the truck blotted out all light, all other movement.

  She felt the passenger door torn off and the impact of her body with There what did I tell you?" Blakey breathed, as if he had been present at the birth of his first child.

  After a moment, Gant murmured: "Surf's up." Blakey chuckled in his beard.

  The relief map that Blakey had produced on the computer, the guess worked map of the snapshot's scenery, had been transferred to a transparency. It lay over the printout from the CD-ROM atlas that

  Blakey had chosen. Layers of geological strata, pages of a book. The relief map was almost a perfect twin of the atlas layout… the Three Sisters Wilderness Area, Oregon.

  This lake's called' — Blakey raised his glasses away from his eyes

  "Bonner Lake.

  A couple of miles south of South Sister, right between that peak and Mount Bachelor." He let his breath whistle out between his teeth, as if someone else had performed the magic
al trick that had made the guess and the atlas match. Gant gripped Blakey's shoulder, the tremor of his hand displaying his excitement.

  The snapshot is looking north, so…" Gant said, studying the map by peeling away the transparency,"… this place is Squaw Camp."

  Tourist season place. Just a collection of necessary stores and accommodation.

  Strickland if he's there probably has a lodge somewhere in the woods."

  "It would suit him." Gant remembered the farmhouse in the Dordogne, its isolation, the sufficient proximity of the small village. Another tourist area. Strickland would be away off the backroads somewhere, a couple of miles or more from Squaw Camp-telephone. He needed a telephone, fax, computer link. To run his business.

  "Ron, you got the telephone directory on computer?"

  Blakey grinned.

  "You'd better believe it. Oregon, right? Coming right up, sir!" He almost ran towards the keyboard.

  Barbara came back into the room, carrying a tray with three coffee mugs on it, sugar and milk.

  "What is it?" Her features struggled with disbelief, as if ashamed of her conscious choice of scepticism.

  "Oregon. Strickland's in Oregon," Gant said, taking a coffee, sipping at it.

  "Where? Three Sisters…" She sounded as if she had become lost in the Wilderness Area, plunged into some forest.

  "What is it?"

  "I went there once, on summer camp. I was just a kid. Alan sent me there when Momma died—" Her hand flailed at his movement of sympathy, and he retreated carefully. She shook her head violently.

  "I'm sorry. Just surprised me the name, the place." She sniffed and looked up, brightly dry-eyed.

  "Is he there — really there?

  Now?"

  "I think so—"

  "You could be wrong, Mitchell. There's no Strickland listed," Blakey called out.

  "It's no surprise," Gant murmured, apparently without any real sense of disappointment.

  "But it was worth trying. His number's unlisted."

  Blakey tugged at his beard.

  "If it is, then no one's going to give it out."

  Then I'll have to go up there and find him, won't I?"

  To Barbara, he seemed suddenly filled with a nervous energy he could not expel.

  Then his demanding eyes turned to her.

  "You must have something on the plant that I can fly up to Oregon? To save time?"

  There's…? Ron?" His demand angered her.

  "For Christ's sake, Mitchell, we're bankrupt and now you want an air-taxi?"

  There's the Vance Executive you used to fly the chief around in,"

  Blakey offered apologetically. He was, Barbara realised, apologising for his continued enthusiasm.

  Then call in a crew and get it ready, Barbara." It sounded like a threat.

  ' Your priorities-!"

  "Look, Barbara it might take me days, a whole week, to locate this guy." His attempt at mollification was amateurish, unpractised.

  "I need to get up there by the quickest means. I don't think I should take too many more civilian flights. Do you?" His features and his voice had altered. Reflection had shown him his own danger, flagged the FBI wanted posters in front of his eyes.

  "OK, OK," she grumblingly agreed, as if they were enacting yet another of their interminable domestic squabbles. She brushed her hair away from her face. I'll get to it. Take care of the airplane!"

  She moved away from them towards a telephone. Blakey shrugged conspiratorially with Gant, who waggled his hand.

  Then he rubbed at his worn eyes. It would take a week, maybe more, combing the Three Sisters area, all of it wilderness, sparsely populated, poor roads, mountainous… Even then, he might never find Strickland, especially if the guy was living there under another name

  … "Aliases," he said. Barbara was speaking into the telephone, obsessively businesslike, demanding in her own way.

  "Strickland had aliases, maybe four or five…" He held his temples in his hands, applying pressure.

  "When I ran into him he was called…?"

  Barbara watched him retreat into an intense abstraction, trying to remember. All too often during their brief marriage when he had employed the same posture it had seemed more like absenting himself from their situation, a protective, defensive stance.

  "Yes, Bill," she said into the telephone.

  "It is urgent yes, the men will be paid a bonus… Thanks, Bill. A half-hour? Good." She put down the telephone and turned again to watch Gant. His face was chalky with the effort of recollection.

  "He had various Op Names like Preacherman, Mechanic — Fireball was another one—" He clicked his fingers impatiently, as at some invisible waiter.

  "His code names…" He reached for a notepad, scrabbled for a pencil.

  Scribbled furiously, shaking his head, roughly scrubbing out whatever he was writing.

  Barbara wandered towards Blakey, as if choosing his more comfortable, bearlike appearance. She stared casually at the printout of the Oregon map, and at the hugely enlarged sky and the man's forehead and eyes beneath it. Strickland seemed as distant as any stranger in other people's snapshots.

  Try this-!" Gant offered urgently.

  "It's one of his names, I'm sure… then this one."

  The pencil tapped on the pad like insistent morse.

  "Christianson," Blakey murmured.

  "Ford—" They're based around Preacherman and Mechanic."

  "OK-let's see."

  At the command of Blakey's blunt, quick fingers, the telephone directory for Central Oregon scrolled up the computer's screen, the Cs flicking past as casually as an eye might glance across the columns of names of some war memorial… The Christiansons, dozens of them. Blakey slowed the movement to the speed of movie credits.

  "No initial, given name?" he asked.

  Gant shook his head, as if to loosen the tension that Barbara was feeling as they pressed at Blakey's shoulders, staring at the screen.

  "I don't recall—" Blakey glanced quickly, repeatedly between map and screen, checking unfamiliar names, ignoring the towns like Bend, Redmond Oakwood… Eventually, shaking his head, he set the screen in flickering motion once more.

  Then slowed it as Ford appeared. The list moved as sluggishly as diesel in the Arctic. A. Ford… Arthur J. Ford… Bob Ford.

  Eventually, the screen became still, frozen. Peter Ford, Sun Bear Lodge, Squaw Camp, Three Sisters… "Well?" Blakey asked very softly.

  Barbara listened to Gant's breathing. It was like that of a tense, roused animal.

  Blakey's face expressed the pain he must have been experiencing from the ferocity of Gant's grip on his shoulder as he stared at the screen.

  Blakey had isolated the name and address, so that it sat enlarged in the dead centre of the otherwise empty screen.

  Eventually, Gant nodded.

  "It's him. Hello, Strickland hello."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Flight and Rest He sat in the swivel chair that had been Vance's, his back to the large desk, watching the dawn begin to leak into the desert sky and dim the stars. The scratch ground crew that Barbara had gotten out of bed were almost finished now. He was just waiting for the ground engineer to call him down to the hangar. The ship was fuelled and had the range to reach Bend, Oregon, without landing. His flight plan had been filed in the name of the pilot who had taken over his job after he resigned; the guy who had flown Barbara back from Oslo after Alan died.

  When the phone on the desk rang, he swivelled round in the chair and picked up the receiver.

  "Mitchell? We're through down here. You want to take our baby for a drive? We can talk about the monthly repayment plan and the insurance

  …?" The humour was tired but refreshing.

  "OK, Bill just give me a minute." Barbara had been at the edge of eyesight when he picked up the phone. She was still there as he replaced the receiver. He shrugged at her in a way that he hoped would discourage talk.

  "They're ready…"

>   She was poised like a rain cloud near the door of the executive suite.

  Time to go," she replied. He felt her press against his temples like an ache.

  She seemed reluctant to let him go, not out of anything that resembled affection, but as if she would be adrift once they parted.

  Try to bring my airplane back in one piece, uh?"

  He sensed a twisted well-wishing beneath the bluntness.

  "OK. You need it to fly to DC next week." He grinned. She was subpoenaed to appear before the Senate Committee that was continuing its investigation of the affairs of Vance Aircraft, despite Alan's death and the company's collapse.

  Whatever scams and frauds he had perpetrated weren't going to be allowed to die with him. There seemed a Federal vengefulness towards Vance much like that of Mclntyre towards himself. You stepped out of line, now you take the consequences, that kind of thing. Just one of the recurrent bouts of malarial righteousness they suffered on Capitol Hill. Screw them. It was all mostly irrelevant now, as far as Vance Aircraft was concerned just another shovelful of earth on the company's coffin.

  He turned away to stare out of the windows. The dawn was purple along the horizon, the first crags and outcrops coming back to silhouetted life.

  "Will you be able to find him? If you find him, can you—" Looking at the back of his head, his set shoulders, she remembered that he meant only to kill Strickland, not bring him back.

  "For God's sake, Mitchell-!" she was impelled by desperation to shout at his back. His shoulders flinched.

  "Help me! God, I need the sympathy vote his confession would give me!"

  She could say no more. It hurt so much to have uttered the words at all.

  Gant remained watching the slow seepage of the day, the first faint outlining of a small cloud with pink against a blue-black sky. He could begin to pick out the hanged-men silhouettes of cactuses beyond the perimeter fence. The taxiways and the main runway were the slightest difference of shading from the desert sand. He imagined a flicker of light for an instant, out beyond a clump of rocks. His chest felt tight, his shoulders cramped with too many muscles. Then he exhaled noisily.