by Dusty Miller
“She will be closely watched. We’re tapping phones and stuff, but she’s basically just a tool, possibly well-trained. She might also be totally oblivious to what her alleged husband is doing now.” The lady worked in building maintenance and the home was in Brampton.
They were getting the phone records and would check every name and number called, going back a couple of years for starters.
Mrs. Simpson, as it were. Marinaro cleared his throat.
It was a pretty good cover considering the community’s demographics.
“Possibly.”
“As for Mister Lom himself, he’s living under the Simpson identity. He’s on vacation, ostensibly for a month, and he hasn’t returned home. The family car, the only one we know about, is sitting in the driveway. We’re looking for vehicle rentals in his name.”
There were only so many rental places in the province, but the vehicle could have been rented or purchased by a third party, under a different name. They would use multiple vehicles most likely, all rented by shell companies or people who didn’t exist but for the moment and the purpose. Money didn’t appear to be a consideration for their subjects. This was always an interesting question. What they were doing wasn’t all that expensive, so far. It was out of the reach of the typical working class or middle class person. The theory so far was that these people were of professional or at least trained status. They had prior experience, and hopefully, they might have a prior history.
Like his partner Borz, (or Simpson) the police and the courts and intelligence sources had never heard of Lom. If the Simpson tax records had been hacked, on such a small scale, there was no real way of knowing except going by the date of entries. Yet it was possible to enter a false date, and as for hacking time and date imprints, their own services had been known to attempt it, even succeeding where weaknesses existed in systems. This might be true of their own tax record-keeping system. No social service agency had ever heard of him. His income tax returns showed continuous employment going back twenty-odd years. He’d either been here a long time or taken someone else’s name.
“And what about the other individual?”
“Mister Lom, going by the documents, is a Canadian citizen and was born here. He is apparently single, and according to all records, has never traveled abroad. We haven’t had any hits on that face as of yet.” The biometrics programs in their own computers were still chewing on it, but if they didn’t have something by now it seemed unlikely they would.
They’d sent the pictures to a few trusted allies and might get an answer, yes or no, within two days. It was the best they could expect.
Lom was completely unknown, although he had a bank account and credit cards. All of these were recent. By the records, he was employed as a cabinet-maker in the Toronto area.
“But we don’t believe that, do we?”
Marinaro shook his head. The employer appeared to be a small ad in the phone book and on the internet. The number was picked up by machine, a cheerful female voice instructing callers to leave a message. As to whether he’d ever worked or not, it would take a lot of time to find out, but there were employer names on the tax records. The thing was to find someone who knew him, over a period of years, day in and day out. Then pop the Lom photos on them and see if it was the same guy.
“Not really.” He was close to wrapping up the briefing. “So, hopefully, we’ll be putting some more names to those faces.”
“Give it a little time.” These guys had to buy milk, they had to buy gas and food.
They had been in-country for some time. They had to live somewhere, they had to have safe-houses somewhere. They had to meet or contact their controls from time to time. A house or apartment was a lot more anonymous than a hotel. This tended to leave a trail, physical and electronic. Bellboys and counter staff got to know you. They were also easily canvassed by investigators. It was a lot of legwork admittedly. Now they were looking for something specific.
“Very well. Thank you for the photos and keeping us up to date. We’ll run these through our own machine and see if anything pops up. That Borz character is interesting.”
“According to Liam, he was very much the senior man.”
Liam Kimball was an enigma to Marinaro. He had been a bit surprised by the assignment, but it showed the Brits were taking it seriously. His own service was surprisingly small. They had agents all over the world, but nothing like the bigger powers. His people were good. There just weren’t enough of them.
Ian and Liam. Liam and Ian.
He grinned. Two peas in a pod.
Sure.
Not that some of these guys weren’t oversexed in the extreme, but then they lived hard and often died very hard deaths. When they played, they played hard. It wasn’t just mystique, for the trade attracted the extremes of character. He understood that Liam was one of the special ones, not a bureaucratic type, not in it for the career or the gongs as the Brits called it when you pulled off a big one. He was special in more than one way, having survived torture and the subsequent breakout by special ops people who were understandably prone to shoot first and worry later.
The orders for that sort of mission were simple enough: shoot everyone who isn’t in a cage and covered in their own shit.
There were volumes that they weren’t telling him about Kimball. Marinaro took that as a given even among his own. He only needed to know so much. It wasn’t always all tall glasses of vodka and Gustav Mahler blaring out of the stereo, while you painstakingly pieced it together in some intuitive and laborious process. Not that there wasn’t a place for that kind of thing.
“Very well then. If there is anything you need, let us know. Check out this Speck character. He’s connected in some surprising places.”
There were more interesting details. A search of the shoreline where Liam’s plastic boat had been launched revealed no booby-traps. They had searched for a kilometre in each direction, although a couple of small-boat teams were still out there, cruising slowly along inshore. When Liam was out on the lake, they could put more boats on the water, looking for any similar type of installation. In the event of another attack, they might be able to intervene if they weren’t too far away. Plainclothes cops, or even agents in training would be fine for that assignment.
“Here’s another one that seems very interesting.” Marinaro clicked on an icon, and Frank took a look at a simple device.
It was a camera, complete with swiveling head, zoom and focus, which required a two-way signal. Since such signals were directional, sometimes going straight up, they were notoriously hard to detect. The device had been picked off by sharp eyes on the ground. The camera itself was stapled to a tree using a plastic tab. It had been discovered a few feet off the ground on a tree trunk. Once activated, the lens was adjusted by remote control and the camera head was swiveled around to the desired view.
Men and women in a control room would sit and watch.
“How much did that cost to build?” Frank was shaking his head. “Crikey.”
“Near as we can make out, about four bucks.”
It wasn’t just superpowers now. It wasn’t just rogue states, with a tax base of millions in terms of population. It wasn’t just the international terror groups, funded by oil, anti-Semitism and hatred for America.
“We’ll be looking for them now. Even so, they could have put hundreds out—even last year, and then just sat back and waited.”
Like the boat and its launch system, this one had an uplink. Battery-powered, it had a remote solar cell for recharging. The wires were camouflaged, grey, moss-green and brown. Stapled to the tree, the coloured staples quickly rusting, the solar cell’s lower or visible side was also camouflaged.
It was draped over a heavy spruce bough a couple of metres up and held in place with plastic ties. A couple of boaters, or a small party of hikers, could put out a dozen of them in an hour.
“It’s elegant.”
Little F was forced to agree, and at that price,
they could afford to scatter them all over hell’s half-acre.
Marinaro had a thought. It wouldn’t take long to whip out a few of these little babies for their own use. Frank’s eyes gleamed at him from the screen, a sly grin tracing across his bland features.
“Right, then.”
The men rang off, each intent on their own business, which was extensive enough outside of this particular file.
Marinaro had one more call to make. This one would be to his counterpart at the Department of Homeland Security. He had good relations with the C.I.A. as well. And they were as interested as all hell.
***
When Lindsey knocked at his door, his dinner sizzling on the grille out back, Liam hesitated to answer. All she had to do was walk around to the back and wait a few minutes. He would hardly let the steak burn. Knowing Lindsey, she would just pick up a fork and turn it over anyways
Sighing, he bowed to the inevitable Fates.
She came in, looking nervous but determined. At first she had trouble meeting his eyes, and then her face came up. There was that cold rush of adrenalin again.
He wished she would stop doing that. She wanted him real bad and he just couldn’t do it.
“Who are you?”
“Er…Lindsey?”
“Those men. You sabotaged their boat.”
He couldn’t help the guilty smirk, but desperately tried to cover.
“What—what are you talking about?”
She’d seen the gun of course. He’d had about three stiff whiskeys and let her in on some mad impulse that had quickly come back to haunt him. She knew he had it with him on the island, at the campfire.
“I saw you that morning. I was opening up. Most of the die-hards had gone off at dawn, but you were futzing around down there in good light. They couldn’t see you—you’re down the bank a ways and the angle’s all wrong. They were across the road and there are trees. A man like you would have known that.” They had come down with their tackle and cooler just about the time Liam fired up. “It’s not that hard to figure out, Liam Kimball.”
They were timing it just as much as he was. They’d been watching each other. They were the only people in the camp not intent having a good time and minding their own business, first and foremost.
She was convinced she’d seen him do something to their boat. Although, at the time, she didn’t think much of it, now she was sure. She’d had a little time to think. Now there were all these goings-on. Helicopters, people talking about explosions upriver, strange men coming and going…and Liam, imperturbable, clearly not really belonging there no matter how well he could cast a line.
Liam, who had people sneaking around his back door late at night.
“Lindsey. Why would I ever want to do such a thing? Uh, whatever you think it was?”
“You mean like pulling the baler plug and giving it a good yank? Or maybe loosening up the spark-plug connector with a bit of a hard side-ways pull on the wire? Pull the spark-plug cap and spit in it when it’s another man’s boat? Don’t forget, we have our little fishing tournaments around here and there are some real big-money prizes. Yeah, eh. Some real professionals, too—and some real cheats. Yes, Liam Kimball. That is what I would very much like to find out.”
“Honestly, Lindsey. I have no idea what you are talking about.”
She stared for a moment. She bit back tears. Then she turned around and walked out the door, leaving him with a terrible sinking sensation.
This definitely wasn’t over.
She was so beautiful when she was angry.
Chapter Thirteen
Liam thought an apology might be in order. He went to the store and picked up a bag of chips and one or two other small items. They had little wire baskets, and Liam had always enjoyed a good mosh-down on junky foods. The place was typical of many small town and village grocery stores and it was almost impressive when he realized that this was private enterprise—good people making a real go of it.
She was alone behind the counter. His luck was in.
“I’m terribly sorry if I have offended you, Lindsey.”
“Oh, no. Not at all. It’s just that this is my home.” Her face worked. “It’s just that we’d kind of like to know what’s going on.”
She glared at him in real anger.
He hung his head and shuffled his feet, trying to think of what to say.
There are so many things you can’t know.
“Lindsey—”
At that point their awkward little conversation was cut short by the ringing of the door-bell on the front of the store, and Liam handed over a ten-dollar bill. A mother and three young daughters crossed the intervening space, the girls’ faces intent on the candy in the racks.
Taking his cold cans of Coke and a handful of chocolate bars, he shoved them into his shoulder bag. She was so angry even the kids noticed it, and he was the only one there. The gun was still tucked into his pocket too. There were times when you walked and your head sort of pounded, squish, squish, squish…
He really had been working too hard.
A thoughtful, perhaps even slightly abashed Liam Kimball left the store and headed for the docks. The motor fired on first pull, drowning out one of their resident gulls, who seemed a friendly sort.
At last.
Something that makes sense.
Yon seagull still loves me.
It’s better than nothing.
Liam headed straight for the farthest end of the lake where there were extensive areas still not surveyed, the hard pounding roar of the motor at his back not interfering with thought but aiding it instead.
Slowing down well away from the dock, he took a moment to turn on and calibrate the scanners. He dropped the metal fishy over the gunwale. He was looking for aluminum, high-temperature alloys, looking for traces of radioactivity of a certain type at a certain level (and hopefully, no more) above the background count. He was looking for hard metallic sonar reflections, using the full suite of underwater electronic detection measures. Luckily the average mass of individual beer cans, soup cans, pop and juice cans was known. Those hits could be held within parameters and filtered out. But the bottom was an extensive bed of all kinds of metallic objects.
His best cruising speed with the paravanes out was about two-thirds throttle. Shoving it wide open did nothing but burn fuel faster. Once she was warmed up, the automatic choke came off. The thin puffs of blue smoke cleared and she was heading up the river with a bone in her teeth as the real sailors liked to say.
This was no time for gut instinct or trying to throw off the enemy. He would sweep his areas systematically, without motoring long distances between grid-sections. The footprint of his sensors was a hundred metre radius, no more. This necessitated going up and down, back and forth. With substantial overlap, this would take time. Off in the east, a dark, dragonfly shape flew low over the hills. His heart picked up a beat or two, but settled quickly. The Canadian military was taking the request for some presence seriously.
There was still a chance of some other operative finding something somewhere else.
I’m in no danger. There’s nothing here anyways.
He had always admired clear thinking.
He was right in the middle of Goddawannapiss Lake, a good eight or ten kilometres from the camp. Liam decided to check the level in the fuel tank. The nearest shore was a half a kilometre to the northeast, the calm surface and balmy air presaging another fine morning and a hot, humid afternoon. There might be thunderstorms later, going by the bank of cumulus down low on the southwestern horizon.
With the motor switched off, he unscrewed the lid on the boat tank and had a quick look. There was still a good one-third left, sloshing around in aromatic wetness. He pulled out a twenty-five litre red plastic Jerry-can of petrol. Liam topped it up, cursing when it overflowed.
He put the petrol back in its snug berth, no sense in having it bouncing around too much, and screwed the cap back on the fuel tank. He mopped up a little
fuel with a rag. Liam was just easing himself back into a comfortable seat, the boat gently rising and falling under him. He became aware of a persistent buzz from off to his left.
Looking up, he smiled at first to see a white radio control model speed boat, racing out from shore, front end bobbing up and down with its progress. It was weaving back and forth. The steering was very responsive on those little babies. One of his adolescent nephews had one.
Shading his eyes, he looked for kids or somebody on shore with a radio control box. There should be at least one boy and his dad.
It was a good long ways off, and he hit the starter. The motor burst into life. Steering again on his original course, Liam kept watching the thing. There was a shot of adrenalin when he saw it was heading straight for him. As he watched, it didn’t deviate. It was definitely headed this way.
Shit.
Opening up the throttle, he kept to his course, reaching for his bag on the floor beside him. He pulled out the small but powerful binoculars, quickly taking a look at the toy boat. It was closing fast. His guts turned to ice. He was in trouble again. He rammed the throttle full open, scanning the shoreline. He swept back and forth, seeing nothing that corresponded to a human being. There was nothing light or colourful, nothing moving, no sign of camps or docks, no buoys, boathouses or other signs of human habitation.
This was definitely a bad scene.
Liam was going top speed at full throttle, leaning forward as far as he could to help trim the boat for speed. He grabbed all loose stuff from around his feet and tossed it forward. It didn’t make much difference. The machine was catching him from behind although there was time yet. It was three hundred metres back. He was surprised. They were usually much faster, although rough water would be the thing’s downfall. Liam focused on the end of the lake where it narrowed. It was coming up fast.