The Spy I Loved (16 page)

This was,
Liam suspected, the root cause of his current sabbatical, which was
meant to be a low-key operation. Keep him busy, but take off some
of the stress for a while. That was the idea.

They
simply didn’t believe it.

Liam says
he didn’t break.

We have
no evidence that he did break—quite the contrary.

The few remaining enemy combatants, extensively
debriefed,
some of whom
appeared to be cooperating fully, all said the same thing, and
marveled.

Liam
Kimball didn’t break.

The trouble was that the Ministry, the
Circus,
didn’t believe
it.

There was
a kind of psychopathy there, at least that was his impression—the
only thing that he was ever likely to have to go on.

An
impression.

Liam
Kimball didn’t break, therefore he must be a psychopath.
Psychopaths were dangerous to employ, and difficult to control.
They were glad enough to get him back. It sent a message to others
who might find themselves in similar circumstances. It was a
promise kept.

We won’t forget you.

We will come for you.

It was
like he was being tested again. This one was supposed to be a nice,
easy job.

They were keeping mum on any conclusions drawn. He had been
wondering if he would, or even
could
take a desk job. He was
wondering if anything like that would be offered. The Ministry was
watching him from afar. That was a foregone conclusion. The trouble
was that there was
nothing
that wasn’t sensitive and confidential in that
environment, and Liam was not well-suited to running errands and
filing minutiae.

He’d had
plenty of time to think, and thinking had probably saved his life
as much as his innate stubbornness. His career was definitely on
hold.

The box
still gave him nightmares.

Minutes,
hours, or days would pass. His prison was made out of shipping
pallets. The boards were maple, about an inch thick. They were
nailed on with a gun. They were wired and nailed together at the
sides, with two skids for the roof. They’d stapled a piece of clear
plastic sheeting on the top and that was his home. It was five and
half feet long, possibly four and a half high. It was shot and
clipped into a rough concrete pad with powder-driven nails. This
was so he and it could be hosed down once in a while. He was fed
and watered once a day, thin cold soup of some indeterminate kind
that tasted mostly of cabbage and maybe a bit of soap. It had that
grey-water look to it, and yet they wanted to keep him alive. A
couple of raw potatoes or carrots once a week were considered a
treat, and he couldn’t help but agree with his captors on that
one.

He’d lost
thirty pounds in a very short time, and yet they still kept him
alive.

That much
was clear, otherwise why not just do it?

They kept
him alive for some purpose. So he ate the soup and tried to live
on, one minute at a time. At the time, he had thought endlessly of
killing himself, but he was under constant watch.

It was
all he could do, to suffer, to live on, and ultimately, not go
mad.

That was
the sorriest of clichés—afterwards. Once he got home.

Once he’d
survived.

Once he’d
seen a few of them in the dock and one or two of them in
hell…

They
wanted the Apocalypse after all. Why not give it to
them.

And maybe
he really had gone mad. Was that what they were all
thinking?

If so,
why not just come out and say so?

They were
all standing around his bed, looking down on him with long
faces.

The faces
were fuzzy, the voices soft and indistinct. The cold hard board had
turned into a soft warm bed. It all faded away and he was awake.
Just like that, back in reality.

That was
all that Liam Kimball remembered of his dream. It was nothing but a
sick jumble of thoughts and fears. He was all twisted up in the
soggy wet blankets, streaming with sweat and shivering in the open
air. The bedroom window was open a crack and it was near
dawn.

He looked
at his watch.

Four-thirty-seven a.m.

He knew
he would be unable to sleep again. Tossing and turning until
morning would just be pointless.

The
dreams had some meaning, but they were an irritant as well. A man
had to have enough sleep. Promises to himself were very often lies
made up on the spur of the moment. He had to admit he’d been eating
better.

All that
fresh air, eh?

Last
night, he’d taken a couple of over-the-counter sleeping tabs, just
something mild. Going to bed early in the hopes of sleeping ten
hours straight had been his first mistake.

Damn.

He swung
his legs out of bed.

London
time was five hours ahead and he needed a quick consultation with
Frank.

Hopefully the little
effer
was in.

Chapter Eleven

“
God, it must be early over there.” Frank Steadman, his
control, sounded peevish. “What happened, did you shit the
bed?”

Steadman was Head of the North American section and
personally sitting at the Canada Desk, which could be a bit of a
sinecure at times. It was such an orderly place. It was not a
hotbed of espionage
per se.
This operation was an exception. This one went
back a ways.

As Frank
always said, the set-up takes forever but the spike is over in an
instant.

Frank
brushed a hand through nonexistent hair and looked up at the row of
clocks along the long south wall.

“
Sorry, but I didn’t much want to speak to the Old
Man.”

“
Watch it, Liam.” Big F’s voice came over the phone and Liam
winced.

Putting
him on speakerphone was one thing. Having the Old Man in the room
was another.

“
I’m going back. It took all day to get what was presented as
a search and rescue, ultimately the recovery, of some dead and
missing canoers. If that’s a word, sir. Sirs.”

“
Canoers or canoeists.” Big F, ever the stickler for detail.
“Either one is good.”

The
Ontario Provincial Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and
the Ministry of Defense, had all been involved in the recovery and
cover-up operation. All it took was a few calls back and forth,
back and forth between London and Ottawa. London to Espanola,
Ottawa to Espanola, Espanola to London, back and forth.

“
Yes, our Canadian friends are all very impressed with you,
young man.” Big F again.

Liam sat
there shaking his head. It was very early, and if he could only get
going. A text message from Ian indicated that he had eluded ambush.
He had hitchhiked back without incident. Ian was holed up awaiting
instructions. Or helpful suggestions, Liam wasn’t quite clear
which. The message might have been garbled. Ian was simply being
rude, or he had been wounded and was in shock or something.
Jenkins, with an Airstream trailer parked a few miles away, at
least had a buddy. The pair of them might be in danger, or they
might still be unremarked. He needed to talk to them as
well.

“
I’m going to need a replacement sled.” A quick and dirty
search had revealed the enemy’s boat, an inflatable with a hundred
and fifty horse motor.

There was
nothing cheap about it, all top of the line equipment.

Their
street clothes, shoes, wallets and money were recovered, along with
phones but no computers. All of it would be examined by the
technical branch.

His own
boat was become a thing of mystery, off to join the ghost fleet
somewhere. He could almost see it, cruising the planet’s oceans and
providing a living to the ancient mystery broadcasters and perhaps
even a few pulp writers of this world.

They’d
stashed theirs in dense brush pretty much the way he had done with
his own boat. They might have been (must have been) waiting for the
perfect opportunity. They might have been (probably were) changing
positions as required, hoping to catch him with his pants down. It
was difficult to see it as anything other than an out-and-out hit.
Their boat had carried submarine sandwiches for lunch, a cooler,
beer, water, and all the essential items for their cover. Two guns
and spare clips were found carefully hidden ten metres from the
boat. They had been stuffed down a crack in between boulders and
covered with twigs, dead leaves and a bit of moss.

Two big
strong boys would have been enough to lift their object.

“
Your new sled’s on the way.” Little F. “What with all the
helicopters, rescue boats, men in big boots and heavy slickers
tromping about, we can just drop that out of a chopper anywhere you
want. It should be there within a couple of hours.”

The
tourists would find it entertaining, and the local newspapers, one
or two regional radio stations, would have something to talk about
in two official languages. It would be a nine-day wonder, the
drowning of two tourists from some place no one had ever heard of.
It might not even exist, thought Liam. Just a name on a map, and
the more remote, the better.

“
That’s the best we can hope for.”

Liam
agreed. It was just icing on the cake at this point. He needed
coffee, he wanted to talk to Ian and there was still all the usual
stuff in the daily intelligence packet. The sooner he got something
to eat and the sooner he got out the door, the sooner it would be
over.

If only
life were that simple, he thought.

The
trouble is that it never was—or should he say the trouble was that
it never is?

Either
way, he’d better get going.

He rang
off, and punched in the next number.

Ian
answered in seconds from his base at Jacksons’ Cove Resort. He and
the side-kick had a trailer parked there.

“
What the hell happened to you?”

“
I could ask you the same question.” Liam pulled back the
curtains, not seeing too many people about but that was no
guarantee.

He could
have sworn they still had a bug in his eaves-trough, for example.
The phones were pretty secure in and of themselves, being in
good-guy territory. That’s not to say someone couldn’t be bought
somewhere.

“
Just the highlights, Ian.”

“
I’ll zip that over as soon as I’ve got it written up.” The
encryption was good, with the same proviso, in that there was
always that human element.

“
Other than that.”

“
I’m available. I have the GPS, all I need is a time of
rendezvous. I will bring a friend.”

“
That’s very wise. Let me talk to my buddies and I’ll get back
to you. We can do lunch.”

Liam went
on to talk to Jenkins. Again the conversation was short and
cryptic.

Jenkins
and her partner would watch their backsides and try and keep up
with their own search. Like him, they were wondering about more
manpower.

At this
point in time, they must assume that everyone was a
target.

His next
step was to open up the files and see what they were presenting him
with.

Jenkins
felt she and her partner might have been observed. The people
paying interest fit a certain profile, but at this point they would
need to watch them a little more (and they them) to confirm this.
It was a question of how and whether they might give it away in a
positive fashion. She had some ideas on that but it could wait.
They could always leave a laptop lying around, was Liam’s initial
thought.

The next
thing was to read Ian’s text and look at his pictures.

The text
described the incident with the Land Rover. The fact that he had
either been followed or predicted, his pattern known, was
significant. The vehicle was swept for bugs and transponders
regularly. He hadn’t done it that morning when he set out with the
equipment. If someone had stuck a transponder on the car during the
brief window of opportunity between one sweep and the next, they
had taken it off again when wrecking the vehicle. He hadn’t noticed
any tails, but that wasn’t to say that it couldn’t be done. Either
way, they knew him and took their shot at an opportune moment. Far
from town, no witnesses, and a dead-end logging road that might not
see another vehicle for days or even weeks.

He was of the opinion that he had not surprised them in the
act. He would have heard them, smashing windows and tearing off
mirrors. No, they were lying in wait—and
removing
the transponder (if such
was the case) showed some planning. They had put some thought into
it. Like Liam, it was a hit, and a fairly professional one. As to
other methods of tracking him, perhaps London and other centres
might work on the question. His vehicle would be closely examined,
but he doubted if they would find much. In his assessment they were
professionals. With lead scattered all over the forest, but no
shell casings on the scene, they might get something from the
chemical composition of the slugs. They were using brass-catcher
attachments on the weapons, otherwise there’s no way they could
have recovered them all in that brush, that terrain.