by Gregg Loomis
Lang had joined the Agency fresh out of college, uncertain of career choices. The prospect of a James Bond-like life was more than appealing to the twenty-two year old liberal arts graduate. Instead of world travel, he was stationed in a grimy building cross the street from the rail station. He was issued a code book instead of a Walther. Rather than tracking down enemies of his country, he received crash courses in German and Russian. In place of high-tech surveillance, he read newspapers and watched television from the other side of the Iron Curtain, a less-than-thrilling experience where the governments not only controlled the media but were the media.
Llywen had been ostensibly the assistant commercial attaché at Frankfurt’s British consulate while MI6 had him make a number of crossings into the German Democratic Republic, as communist East Germany called itself. Why the names of repressive regimes always included words like “democratic” was one of the mysteries of life, which Lang discussed with Llywen as their friendship began. Their agreement on the subject was strengthened by unnumbered overflowing liter steins of Henninger followed by an overabundance of schnapps.
With the end of the Evil Empire, Lang had sensed that chances for adventure or advancement for mere Intel (as opposed to Ops) agents were dwindling from unlikely to nil. He resigned from the Agency, got married, and went to law school.
At that point, contact with Llywen became sporadic. He retired to Shropshire. Why he had not gone a few miles west to his native Wales was unclear. What was certain were Christmas cards (the only thing resembling regular communications) consistently extended an invitation, an invitation Lang had finally accepted.
A few years Lang’s senior, Llywen’s snow white beard and weathered face were those of a much older man. The Indiana Jones hat, much patched anorak and Wellingtons added to the impression of a man who spent a lot of time outdoors.
Llywen lived alone in a small cottage, the starkness of which suggested that if there had been a woman in his life, she had long departed. Lang didn’t ask.
Daisy’s joyful barks interrupted a silence previously broken only by the sigh of a fitful breeze among the rocks of a mountainous cairn, a pile of rocks Llywen had claimed was a remnant of one of the last Celtic forts to fall to Rome’s might. Celt, Saxon, Norman: a number of conquerors and defenders had passed this way in millennia past.
Daisy was indifferent to all of them.
She was digging, scratching really, in a futile effort to get her head into a small hole.
“Ready, lad?” Llywen asked, the first words he had spoken in over an hour.
Sensing what was about to happen, Victoria was virtually dancing along the limits of her jesses.
Llywen’s hand emerged from his pouch and touched the ground. A silver streak that was Elmer disappeared into the hole.
“Hare’s got more ways out’n that burrow ‘n you can count,” Llywen said. “Keep a sharp eye out.”
The warning was hardly complete when a brown ball of fur blurred down the cairn.
Lang let go of the jesses and Victoria became airborne on silent wings.
The contest was hardly fair but heart-stopping nonetheless.
A brown feathered, winged missile, wings spread, almost lazily coasting down the cairn. A brown streak raggedly dodging with a skill that would put a NFL punt returner to shame.
Lang imagined he could hear the impact of talons in flesh.
Victoria rose in a lazy, tightening spiral, a struggling lump of fur in her claws.
“Now, lad, ‘ere’s where the real talent is. You’ve got to convince her what you ‘ave is better than what she ‘as.”
As instructed, Lang reached into his jacket’s pouch, producing a hunk of raw meat. He held in over his gauntleted arm, hoping the damn bird wasn’t too hungry. Otherwise, she would devour her prey before returning.
Not likely an experienced falconer would under feed his bird.
Victoria seemed to halt in mid circle and fluttered to Lang’s glove. In a single movement, she dropped the hare and snatched the meat he tossed to her.
No chance he would risk fingers by feeding it to the bird.
The sound of hands clapping came from behind him. “Well done, lad!”
Lang was fixated on the still brown form the hawk had dropped. He had never been a hunter, not because he disapproved. Only a vegetarian could morally oppose the killing of game with intellectual honesty. The hollow argument about killing “innocent” animals was less than persuasive--was this rabbit more “innocent” than a cow lead to slaughter? No, his reservations, if there were any, had little to do with what others might think.
He had killed men without a scintilla of regret, almost all in self-defense or at least presenting an immediate danger. But this rabbit had been fleeing for its life.
Llywen smacked him on the back, scattering Lang’s uncertain feelings, before stooping to snatch the hare out of reach of Daisy’s exuberant jumps. “Down girl!”
The Brittany reluctantly obeyed, wiggling and whining with excitement.
Llywen rolled the inert creature over in his gloved hands. Lang was surprised at how little blood flecked the soft pelt. “Not the biggest but enough for a rabbit pie.”
Lang had only heard of the English concoction: chopped meat cooked in cider with apples, onions and bacon before being baked in a flour dough covered pie tin. Already dubious of English cuisine, he was unsure how he felt about eating something he had participated in killing.
“I’ll show you how to skin and gut it.”
Definitely less than enthusiastic.
Beatrix Potter would be appalled.
4.
Shropshire, England
That Evening
Lang wondered if the wood-burning oven in which the rabbit pie had been cooked added to the taste or if the exercise of the hunt had given him extra appetite. Either way, he pushed back from the rough wooden table with contentment. Draining the last of his Welsh ale, a malty Breconshire, from a pewter mug, he glanced around the single room that was the downstairs of Llywen’s cottage.
The rustic setting, he supposed, added to the feeling of accomplishment in feasting on the day’s game, contrary to the reservations he had felt at the scene of the kill. The wood stove provided the only source of heat and the bulk of the light. The only other illumination came from two stand lamps fitted with those super low wattage bulbs the English seemed to favor. On her perch, Vitoria’s yellow eyes were brighter.
Daisy was gently snoring in front of the stove. Elmer was restlessly pacing his cage, a wire enclosure not so much confinement but fortress against any change in temperament Victoria might undergo. The only other sounds were the squeak of the hand pump as his host drew water to wash the dishes and twigs of a towering ash scraping against the cottage’s half timbering as though seeking admission. Sepulchral silence compared to the hum of passing traffic, distant (or not so distant) sirens or the rumble of arriving or departing aircraft that punctuated Lang’s nights at home, sounds that had become unnoticed white noise, until, here, they were absent.
Lang wondered if he was going to be able to sleep.
Llywen turned from the stone sink and counter where he had stacked the chipped and mismatched dinner dishes, brandishing a bottle whose ruby contents were unmistakable. “Warre’s vintage ’94. Should be just about drinkable by now.”
“Drinkable” was a major understatement.
Lang sniffed the fruity aroma and let the first raspberry-cherry-nutty Port burn its way down his throat before he reached into his jacket pocket.
“Bought a couple of Montecristo number twos in Edinburgh just in case I ran across a bottle of vintage port.”
At Gurt’s insistence, he had given up the Cuban cigars he had so cherished rather than set a bad example for his young son, Manfred. But neither mother nor son were here tonight.
So why did he feel like he was cheating on both of them as he clipped the pyramido top, held a wooden match under the tip, and sent fragrant blue smoke puffing to
ward the ceiling?
The two sat in lumpy horse-hair stuffed chairs, facing each other on either side of the stove. Neither man spoke, the fortified wine and cigars being more than ample company. All he needed now to be a proper English squire, Lang thought, was to have half a dozen fox hounds sleeping at his feet.
The spell was broken by the first two bars of Glen Miller’s Chattanooga Choo-Choo, the ring tone of his iPhone. The screen showed a familiar number in the States.
“Hi Gurt! Checking up on me?”
“Manfred wants to know when you’re coming home. He has festered me all day to call.”
Gurt’s English, near perfect, occasionally lapsed.
“ You mean ‘pestered,’ don’t you? ‘Fester’ means to irritate or inflame.”
“Is the same. Anyway, I thought I might come and join you in London.”
“ London? I didn’t intend . . .”
“You have an email from that man at Christie’s.”
Lang realized he had not checked his electronic messages since arriving at Llewyn’s cottage. Then he had to search his memory. “Brame or Brom . . .?
“Eustis Bromley. He said an Elizabethan linenfold paneled coffer was coming up for auction next week.”
“Oh yeah. I saw one last time I was in London. Thought it would look great in our bedroom.”
“There is something wrong with what we have?”
Gurt saw little value in what she described as ”old used furniture,“ preferring the practical. Conversely, Lang had acquired a taste and some knowledge of antiques after losing everything he had owned when there had been an attempt to kill him by blowing up the condominium in which he then lived. His pieces were a combination of the flamboyant Louis XIV style and the more staid, Georgian, mahogany. There was something about the sturdy oak of the Elizabethans, the functionality of joined, rather than nailed parts that had appealed to him.
That, plus owning a piece dating back four centuries to the time when a small island was becoming a world super power was a bit of a kick, too.
“Lang?”
“Er, yeah?”
“Manfred wants to speak to you.”
“Hi, daddy!”
“Hi, Manfred. What did you and Grumps do today? Did you learn anything in school?”
Childish laugh. “You know Grumps doesn’t go to school. He’s a dog.”
A recitation of the little boy’s day so far followed by, “Momma says it’s night where you are. What did you do today?”
Lang swallowed, unsure how spending the better part of a day in the killing of a bunny rabbit would be viewed by an eight year old. Certainly nothing laudable, even if the instrument had been an evil-eyed, winged assassin. “Business, just dull old business. And I’m having after-dinner drinks with an old friend.”
He sure wasn’t going to mention the cigar.
“Now put your mother on, will you?”
Which, after ”I love you, daddy,“ Manfred did.
He and Gurt discussed arrangements for the trip to Christie’s.
“I should be home before then. We can come over together.”
If the damnably suspicious Scotts can be persuaded by then.
5.
71o 17’44”N, 156o 45’59”W
200 Miles off Barrow, Alaska, Arctic Ocean
At Approximately the Same Time
Captain First Rank Igor Samanov was understandably proud of the Borei Class nuclear submarine Yuri Dolgoruky. Armed with the new Bulava missiles, she and her one-hundred-nine man crew were more than a match for anything America had afloat, or more accurately, submerged.
She had been under sixty meters of ice since leaving the Northern Fleet’s base at Severomorsk three weeks ago, two-and-a-half weeks of stealthily patrolling just outside the exclusive economic zone set by both the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea and the 1996 Ottawa Declaration creating the eight member Arctic Council.
Originally the Council had been an association of the countries bordering the Arctic Ocean. Its sole function had been debating the supposed effects of global warming on indigenous humans and animals. All of that had changed once the scope of the deposits of oil and natural gas had been discovered and receding ice had raised the possibility of accessibility. Then the Council had become an economic organization. Since, like the United Nations, its actions were subject to veto, it could do little more than bewail the despoliation of the very region it was created to preserve.
That was the real reason the Yuri Dolgoruky was conducting what would appear to be a routine military patrol here at the top of the world, cruising between those sea-floor features oceanographers called the Canada Basin and the Chukchi Plateau. The area was suspected of containing the largest single natural gas deposit ever known.
When and if the Canadians or Americans started to exploit what could be the greatest national windfall ever, Russia wanted to be the first to know. Once oil rigs were in place, Russia would complain to the Council of the likely adverse environmental impact: Damage to the habitat of bowhead, beluga and narwhales, walruses, seals, the native Inupiat people, and the entire American population of polar bears.
Not that environmental preservation was Russian policy, far from it. Crippling the economy of its greatest rival, the United States, was.
For years, the American media had trumpeted every oil or chemical spill, every drought, every flood, and any other natural or man-made disaster it could find and no small number it created. If one believed what was on the television screen every night, only a fool would drink the water, breath the unfiltered air, or expose a square inch of skin to carcinogenic sunlight. Revelation that the much-vilified oil and gas companies were about to send the polar bear to join the passenger pigeon into extinction would, the theory went, cause the politicians, always more sensitive to the wind direction than a weather vane, to put a stop to any drilling.
If not, the Council would readily pass a resolution condemning the United States’ disregard of the delicate ecosystem. The small Scandinavian members outnumbered the United States and its ally, Canada. The American people, or a significant number of them, believed debating societies like the United Nations or the Arctic Council actually mattered and would be more concerned about the country’s “image” than its national interest.
Americans were strange people.
His thoughts were interrupted by Chief Ship Petty Officer Karov. “Sir?”
“Yes?”
“The navigation systems are not functioning.”
Not surprising. Ionospheric effects frequently rendered both GPS and GNSS navigational satellite signals useless in the polar region because of the relatively low elevation of those satellites to the pole. Complicating matters was the relative uselessness of a compass here. Since true north and magnetic north were not the same, complicated calculations were necessary to reconcile the two, which could be as much as seventy-five degrees apart. And that was if the compass was not subject to spinning or wobbling as was common in these latitudes.
Captain Samanov sighed. Although the ship’s sophisticated sonar would prevent it from smashing into any underwater peaks, it could not guarantee the ship would not wander inside the two hundred mile limit. With satellites that could guide a submarine across an ocean without surfacing, take a photograph of something as small as an automobile tag and photograph solar systems invisible to the largest earth-bound telescopes, surely someone could come up with a navigational device that worked in the polar regions.
It couldn’t happen soon enough for Captain First Rank Igor. The last thing he wanted was a repetition of the 1981 incident in which the Soviet U137 ran aground only two kilometers from a Swedish Naval base. The captain had claimed navigational error to a more than skeptical world. He had been a school boy at the time but he still remembered the unfortunate commander’s disgrace.
He, and Russia, would do whatever had to be done to prevent a reoccurrence of that humiliation.
6.
Christie’s, Londo
n
8 King Street, St. James
19:20 British Summertime
Three Days Later
An unseasonable thunderstorm was rumbling its way across the city when the cab stopped to let Lang and Gurt out in front of the four-story town house that had been the London home to the world’s largest auction house of luxury items since 1823. Inventory went from fine art to jewelry to fine wines. In the twentieth century real estate from chateaux on the Loire to plantations on the bayou were added to lots up for bid. The house’s first auction had been held in 1766 when John Christie had held a sale of the effects of an estate.
Lang paid the cabbie before stepping out into the downpour. He clutched the auction catalogue in one hand, trying to keep it reasonably dry. Ostensibly merely a listing of the lots to be auctioned off tonight, its artful color photography and descriptions made the book a treasure in itself. Worldwide, these catalogues had an audience, the vast majority of whom would never set foot in any of the house’s fifty-seven offices in thirty-two countries. Even at over fifty dollars each, Christie’s catalogues had a subscription rate any number of magazines might envy.
With his other hand, Lang hoisted an umbrella, thankful its spring loading required only the touch of a button. There was a click and the umbrella opened as anticipated. The surprise came when a gust of cold and very wet wind snapped the cloth inside out, leaving Lang holding what, in the blurred light of the street, could have been mistaken for a dead sapling.
His reaction was a string of expletives best lost in the wind.
Gurt, raincoat forming a canopy over her head, exited the cab as it pulled away. She stopped long enough to share her covering with Lang before they both made a dash for the shelter of Christie’s open door.
The lobby was tall, crowded, and illuminated by a line of huge crystal chandeliers. It smelled of money. Rarely do ordinary folk attend an auction where only an occasional item goes for as low as a thousand dollars. In an effort at egalitarianism, Christie’s also maintained an auction house in Kensington for the “middle market.”