The Spy I Loved (22 page)

It was a big job, like looking for a needle in a haystack.
People had rights, including the right to privacy. This sort of job
usually took a while. It’s what the police and more conventional
civil authorities were equipped for. Unless the divers had been
dropped in via some long-range transportation, they had to have
had
something
—a
base of operations, the boat of course, and other transportation.
Since nothing like a vehicle and trailer had been located anywhere
near the scene of the incident, they must spread their nets wider.
There was a distinct possibility that they had been dropped off at
a boat launch. Then a driver, a third party, took the vehicle and
trailer somewhere else. Vehicles and trailers parked by area boat
launches were being tallied, license plates run. They would be
watched if they sat for any real length of time. The small rubber
boat could have been trailered by a small car or minivan, so they
weren’t ruling anything out. Deflated, it could fit into the trunk
of a larger sedan, as they well knew. Liam had done it himself a
time or two.

Scuba divers, or any kind of mercenaries, were expendable,
assuming they didn’t accomplish their mission. All the bad-guy
driver had to do after launching the boat was to sit and wait for a
call. If no call came, the odds were that the trailer and vehicle
would be quickly abandoned. He would get out, open a door, and walk
away. He would get in a different vehicle and drive or be driven
away. That would be a possible
fourth
party.

They
could have hidden the vehicle in any one of a million
places.

This
opened up new areas of search, including a hundred ravines and
dead-end tracks within a quick drive from the drop point. The
foliage was fully out, the leaves small but green as hell.
Visibility in the ravines would be poor.

All they
had to do was drive into a big enough barn or shed and close the
door.

Shit.

There
were a fair number of boat launches and private docks within a few
kilometres of the point of the attack. The rubber boat and motor in
question might have been dragged overland from a logging road,
which seemed the most likely scenario. Four healthy people could
have done it in one go.

***

Just as
it became fully dark, a dusty maroon minivan entered the camp and
pulled up close in front of Cabin Seven.

The front
door of the cabin opened even before anyone got out. The locks
sounded as the driver sat there impassively. He was an anonymous
figure, and yet camera shutters were probably snapping.

It was
Jenkins who took the handle of the side door and pulled it open.
The three of them quickly unloaded the standard-issue blue canvas
kitbags, pulling them in through the gaping front door. Ian came
out and closed the van door. The locks clunked down.

Across
the road, there were two people sitting beside a campfire. There
were brown bottles of beer in evidence. They sat and roasted their
marshmallows, their faces ruddy with the glare, glints and
highlights framing their little round glasses.

The Bernsteins (according to the registration and the debit
cards used) were just another pair of happy anglers, enjoying the
peace and quiet of a warm night in early summer. Since credit card
transactions went through instantaneously, that tidbit of
information was relatively easy to get using the highest unofficial
channels. The Bernstein’s had been kind enough to sign the guest
book. The vehicle had license plates. It was almost too simple
sometimes. On the face of it, they lived in Guelph. People were
looking into it, but it had to be done with discretion or that part
of the operation would be blown. One must always assume the enemy
would assume some scrutiny, and would have planned accordingly. It
was always the way. The question was how
tight
it might be.

Once Ian
was inside again, the front door slammed shut. The minivan cranked
its front wheels hard to the right. The transmission clunked into
gear. Doing a tight U-turn, the vehicle drove out of the camp
again, its mysterious errand complete.

Inside
the cabin, Ian and Jenkins were suiting up as Liam opened the third
bag to reveal a matte-black inflatable canoe along with two-piece
plastic paddles and a handful of CO2 cylinders for inflation. He
installed the first one, carefully tightening the clamp until he
heard and felt it puncture the seal.

The suits
were black like the boat. The two pulled on thin neoprene hoods.
The booties were always too tight and Jenkins cussed like a
trooper, needing more talcum powder and not finding it immediately
to hand. Their survival suits were insulated with shiny Mylar
plastic on the inside layer. This was to trap and mask heat. They
strapped on the night-vision goggles, leaving them tilted up on
their forehead. They each had a bottle of ice water as the body’s
core temperature tended to mount alarmingly. It was already
uncomfortable and they would soon be sweating like pigs if they
didn’t get outside pretty damned quick.

“
Are we going to inflate that in here?”

“
Ah. If we can do it.” Liam eyed up the back door and the
kitchen table. “Let’s get this lot out of the way.”

The two
males moved the table as Jenkins grabbed loose chairs.

The boat
was wide, but low to the water. It was a question of length and to
some extent the rate of inflation. The stubby little boat wasn’t
meant for speed. It was only a little over five metres from stem to
stern. With the kitchen, the front hallway and the back door lined
up just so, there would be enough room.

The room
was full of that new-plastic smell and just a hint of
CO2.

Liam,
with help from Jenkins, unfolded the heavily-creased boat, nose
pointing to the rear door. Ian put the paddles together and then
put on his weapon and shoulder holster. He moved to the table,
checking for what else had to go. Jenkins pulled the red plastic
D-ring on the inflation valve. The canoe came alive on the
floor.

Liam stepped back. Jenkins did one last check on her suit
after hanging on the
iron
as she called it. Both were using an odd-ball
holster. Six millimetres thick, it was made of radar-absorbent
materials. The guns were the only hard metal objects besides the
goggles. These were ninety-eight percent plastic, due to weight
constraints. It was better not to be spotted on millimetric radar.
Their enemy might just have such devices in place.

The
hissing sound was loudest at first, and the boat stretched and
lifted, twisting and writhing as the various segments filled in
sequence. As the canoe firmed up, taking its proper shape, the
hissing diminished until it was almost indistinguishable. Ian bent
down and put his ear beside the cylinder and valve
assembly.

“
Still going.” Protocols called for full discharge, and then
installing a new cylinder before setting out.

There was
a top-up button on the valve and it had come in handy
before.

They
wouldn’t be out there twenty minutes. Even so, each agent took an
additional cylinder and stuck it in an upper chest
pocket.

Jenkins
gave it a kick.

“
Okay.”

“
The apparatus,
mes amis.”
It was a devious device, sending out a beam of
light invisible to the naked eye.

The set
of frequencies and power levels were carefully chosen in order to
avoid counter-detection.

However,
it would reveal coated optics. The drone boat-launchers were using
state of the art military optics—which all major intelligence
services knew quite a lot about as they and their own military used
them to detect enemy surveillance. This included snipers, for
example IRA snipers hiding in culverts waiting for the Royal Army
to drive past. It was so much better to see them first.

Liam
nodded, and they looked at the back door.

Jenkins
stood there..

“
Any last thoughts?” There was no guarantee the enemy wouldn’t
fire on them.

It was
anyone’s guess if they could be identified or even observed using
this particular equipment. There were other boats on the lake, the
coloured lights visible out the dining room window.

Ian
grinned.

“
It never costs nothing to put on a show.” He was thinking of
their minders, sitting across the street and blinded by their own
fire.

His eyes
turned to Liam, who for some odd reason was thinking of bottle
rockets—better yet, a light anti-tank rocket,
shoulder-fired.

“
How come you get all the good jobs?”

“
Ours is not to reason why, my friends—ours is but to do, or
die.” If the Bernsteins showed signs of restiveness, he could
always grab a couple of cold beers for them and go out
there.

What in
the hell were they going to do then? He was almost looking forward
to it.

His finger hit the button on the
fruit machine,
turning it off for
the moment.

They had
been turning it on and off all day in a kind of spontaneity. This
allowed the enemy across the way to hear selected snippets of
useless information, bad jokes, gossip and even a particularly loud
and odoriferous flatus produced by a proud and expectant Jenkins to
much fanfare and mutual disgust. No doubt they would be cussing
their defective bug and hoping to sneak in a replacement during the
hours of darkness.

Next Liam
hit the button on the stereo system. He switched off the bossa nova
music favoured by Ian. They had a disc provided by Q-Branch for
their little ploy. Cued up and ready to go was the sound of Liam,
Ian and Jenkins, drinking, telling stories, and carousing in an
otherwise alcoholic haze. The background music was some sort of
medley put together by the techs.

Ian set a
long, triangular piece of three-quarter inch plywood,
black-painted, in the front foot-well and then went to the back of
the canoe.

Jenkins
turned off their solitary light, opened the door and then bent to
pick up her end.

The pair
of them stepped quietly out the back door, holding it sideways and
trying not to scrape the doorjamb. The plywood fell out with a soft
clatter. Liam hastily stuck it back in once they got
outside.

The pair
shuffled down the bank, screened by trees and the cabin
itself.

Liam went
back inside. Pulling the curtain back, he had a look out the small
panel of glass in the front door.

Their two
gomers were right where they ought to be, eyeglasses reflecting the
fire and watching the front of Cabin Seven.

There
might be other observers. Psychologically, those other observers
would be relying on those closest to the target. The enemy would be
shorthanded, and in the case of non-state actors, which was the
prevailing suspicion, they would be even more so.

He turned
and picked up the detector and followed them out. They were sitting
in the boat, a couple of feet of the back end sitting on
sand.

Barefoot
for the occasion, Liam waded carefully out and put the machine down
in between Jenkins’s knees. Jenkins steadied it on its tripod.
Patting them both on the shoulder, Liam went to the back end.
Giving them a long, slow shove, he watched them disappear from the
pallid illumination of the docks. They put out their paddles and
moved off with slow, careful little noises coming from the
blades.

He went
up to the cabin on silent feet, went inside, and closed the back
door. It was nothing but stillness out there. It was a chilly night
but crystal clear and moonless.

Such a
night should be appreciated. The mental picture of Lindsey, no
doubt sitting quietly at home with her uncle, briefly occupied his
mind. The thoughts of her in town, perhaps on a date with some
lucky young bugger, or better yet, parked at the local Lover’s
Lane, (and all towns had their parking spots), were tackily
disturbing. He batted away a mental picture of Lindsey mostly
naked, clad in red stockings, rubbing herself all over some greaser
with a twelve-pack, a gram of coke and a lot of
attitude.

These are
bad thoughts, my boy.

Very bad
indeed.

This sort
of thing wasn’t helping at all.

The
sortie wouldn’t take long and he was pretty sure it would
work.

As for
the danger, that was why they were there.

Better me
than somebody else. It’s what they were trained for.

***

The water
was dead calm, showing a light swell. They paddled through bits and
streamers of foam from all of the soap and phosphates in the lake.
It had been a fairly breezy day, with long ridges of soap suds
surging against the stony beaches on the downwind shore.

It was
very quiet. The sounds of the camp and its small traffic quickly
dropped away.

The only
sound was from the dripping of their ultra-stealthy paddles. It
took a couple of minutes and then they were well away from land.
They went up the inlet and then there was the channel proper,
widening into the reservoir above Espanola.