The Spy I Loved (30 page)

“
Yep.”

Blyth
turned to talk to the driver as Freed, inscrutable behind those
tinted lenses, put his finger on the talk button of his ear-piece
to call up to the room.

The big
car was just turning into the plaza to drop them off. The whole
business hadn’t taken ten minutes.

Now it
was just a matter of ironing out the fine details. That could be
left to staff members. Ron and his party were flying out at
eleven-thirty-five anyways.

They
agreed to get moving on the details.

All in
all, it had been a productive day. It had also been a tiring,
jam-packed two-day trip. The irony was that Ron loved fishing. Liam
and some of the others had been having all the fun. By the time he
slept a few hours and then spent the afternoon and evening at the
office, his weekend would be well on the way to being shot. Over
the course of the summer he’d be lucky to get out with the boys for
a couple of hours one afternoon. Jeff was nine and Tyrell
twelve.

There were times when he envied his field agents. At least
they got to
do
something once in a while.

Blyth
grinned when he heard that one. They shook hands like the good guys
they were and then he and his companion were clambering out into
the evening air. The ride up in the elevator seemed to take
forever.

Dinner,
drink, shower, pack, limo ride, airplane, in that particular
order.

***

“
Emil said to have a little fun with it.”

Beryl
just growled. Her partner rearranged the girl’s legs and adjusted
the lens for a wider, more panoramic shot. They were using the car
headlights on high beam. The fog lamps were turned on
too.

After her
near-escape, Lindsey was tied with rope mostly. Emil had garnished
this with a couple of loops of soft iron baling wire, the
sharply-cut ends twisted in such a way as to gouge the flesh and
making struggle a painful and bloody proposition.

Taking a
picture of her, gagged, eyes wild with despair, bound hand and
foot, laying on the railroad tracks in the harsh glare of overhead
yellow sodium lights, plus his camera’s little flash, was a stroke
of pure genius. The highly-charged and frankly sexual overtones of
the pose would send a strong message to Kimball and others of his
kind.

“
Il maestro.”

“
Thank you, thank you.”

A train
was coming and they had better get going.

He zipped
the camera into an inner pocket. The pair of them hastened to lift
and drag the girl to the rear of the full sized van they were now
using. Working as a team, they lifted her in, dropped her with an
unceremonious thud, and slammed the door.

With a
little luck, they could be back at their cabin shortly before dawn,
arriving by foot after a quick drop-off up the road and around the
bend. The girl would be looked after by lesser mortals.

No one
needs be the wiser. Mister Bernstein had taken quite a number of
photos, including one where Lindsey was laying on a log in front of
some old abandoned sawmill. That one was pretty dark but it got the
point across. There was another one where she was laying on the
ground, there was a pale white curb of concrete, and barely visible
in the distance, black water going over a low-head dam or
weir.

If that
didn’t get the point across, you sort of had to wonder what
would.

***

They were
all sitting around Cabin Seven, the divers warming up with a stiff
drink and the others looking pleased.

When the computer went
bonk
and a red icon flashed on the toolbar, it took a
moment to sink in.

Jenkins,
clad in a thick fisherman’s knitted jersey, white, royal blue
bikini bottoms and black rubber beach slippers, eyed the screen.
Seated at the kitchen table, Jenkins lazily reached over and
touched the screen, raising glass to lips at the same
time.

Jenkins
almost choked on it.

“
Holy shit.” With everyone busy, engaged in various chores and
involved in their own conversations, they barely
noticed.

“
Hey!”

The room
went quiet and Ian came out of Liam’s bedroom, feeling quite warm
and toasty after a hot shower and fresh jeans.

“
What’s up?”

“
Team Three has found another part of EMERALD.”

“
Yay…” A brief smattering of applause went through the group,
some of whom were not field agents but technical people busily
cleaning up their prize at the kitchen sink.

This had
turned out to be a bit smaller than expected, but they had the
chunk sitting in the left hand side. Junior operatives were hosing
it down with the vegetable sprayer and poking around with various
soft brushes in an effort to remove mud and get a proper
look.

The
general consensus was that they could hardly damage the thing any
further.

Liam
looked up.

“
What?” There was this look of pleased disbelief on his
face.

Team
Three was working the big lake north of Espanola, almost an
afterthought. The land up there had been extensively searched and
it was thought to be a lighter part of the debris field. Much of
the debris up that way had been support systems, parts of the
recovery system and the outer protective shell assembly.

As far as
they had been able to determine, Team Three had attracted no notice
at all from the opposition.

There was
other news, as agents and staff people quickly read the
report.

“
Liam.” Ian’s face was carefully neutral. “Team Three is
small. They’re saying they’ve got another piece of the command and
control module.”

“
Yes?”

“
I’m thinking maybe some of us had better get up
there.”

Liam bit
his lip. The part they had was no great shakes—almost useless, and
yet to leave it in the custody of inexperienced people, civilians
in so many respects, was asking for trouble. A mental picture of a
disappointed Emil Borz was enough to make the point.

“
Okay. Take, ah, Bryan and Edward—”

“
Sounds good. Do us a favour and call in some police backup as
well.” Ian was already reaching for his worn and faded jean
jacket.

“
Right.” Liam nodded and one of the younger ones went to work
on the calls.

Putting
the jean jacket on took a few years off of Ian, setting him in an
entirely different social class as well.

A young
woman wearing a business skirt, white blouse, sensible shoes and a
shoulder holster waved Liam over.

She
handed him a phone.

“
Marinaro.”

Liam
nodded.

Taking
the phone, he spoke, glancing at his watch as he did so. It was
two-thirty-seven a.m.

“
Sir. We have some good news.”

There was
a knock at the door. With a couple of people, hand on gun-butts,
standing on each side of the door, the female Canadian agent stood
to one side. She opened it cautiously, although other agents on
watch weren’t sounding any alarms…not yet.

It was
Dale, their host and the owner of The Pines.

He was
looking disturbed about something.

“
I—uh. So, is this where the party is?” His attempt at a smile
was ghastly, his face pale and washed out in the light from
within.

He’d
woken up in his chair, still half in the bag and with the
beginnings of one of his famous headaches.

The agent
was polite, gun hand out of sight behind the door.

“
Yes? Can I help you?”

“
Has anyone seen Lindsey? The truck’s there—and no one seems
to know where she’s gotten off to…”

The lady
at the door turned.

“
Any of us seen Lindsey tonight? She’s the little blonde girl
that runs the store?”

People
gave blank looks and shook their heads. The agent pulled back in
inside, ready to close the door.

From
where Liam was standing, he could see straight out the open door
and across the street to the Bernstein’s cabin. Their car sat out
front, there were lights on and probably the TV going inside. There
was something strange going on with those two—it wasn’t like them
not to put in an appearance.

There was
this horrible, sick feeling in the guts. He met Ian’s eyes, but
they all had their own jobs to do.

Uncle
Dale was staring at Liam, as if sensing this was the centre of
power in the room. All roads led to Liam Kimball. Liam’s mouth
opened, staring at the old man.

Lindsey.

Chapter Twenty-One

The big
lake was still. The quarter moon had gone down hours ago. It had
taken over an hour to drive there and coordinate with the shore
party. Ian and the newcomers had launched in inflatable boats
borrowed from a Canadian Forces Reserve unit who were ostensibly in
the area conducting night rescue exercises. They had directions to
the work scene via GPS. Even so, it took another hour of buzzing
down Agnew Lake to find them. More of a reservoir than a lake, it
was a lot deeper than the Spanish River. It was just as accessible
at multiple points around the periphery. The fact that no notice
had been taken of C.S.I.S. operations on the lake sort of implied
that it was the big guns—he, and to a greater extent Liam, who were
being watched. C.S.I.S. agents were known for keeping a low profile
and not engaging in conspicuous displays of personality. Either the
opposition hadn’t identified them or they weren’t taking them
nearly as seriously as Liam Kimball. Kimball had those indefinable
but stellar qualities.

There was
some element of showmanship in the man, who seemed, at least most
of the time, sublimely unaware of the animal magnetism that he
generated.

Team
Three had a big bass boat and a lower, fibreglass runabout. Each
was about six or seven metres in length. The boats were anchored
head-to-head, in about twenty metres of water according to the text
briefing Ian had read on the way over.

The
divers, four in all, were just bringing it up. According to the
photos and videos, it looked good. As muddy as the other piece,
they were saying it was definitely part of the computer system,
with all of its backups, all of its capacity, and its rather unique
software.

***

“
So, my pretty. Where’s your dashing hero now?” Beryl purred,
stroking her cheek with something that had a razor’s edge. “Ah,
yes. Mister Kimball is such a luscious hunk of man-flesh, isn’t he
my little precious?”

“
Go to hell!”

The slap
came out of nowhere, snapping her head around. This brought more
profanity, more tears and more humiliation.

More
pain.

More
rage.

More
frustration.

Lindsey,
after a brief scuffle and an unsuccessful escape attempt, was
firmly restrained by miles (or kilometres) of tape and rope. She
was on a hard wooden chair. She was in an underground room
somewhere, probably a basement or cellar. She could tell by the
smell of mildew and the absence of background noises.

Blindfolded and completely terrorized, Lindsey was
alternately crying and berating her captors.

Remembering what she had seen of the terrible scars on Liam’s
back, Lindsey trembled. She tried not to cry. She was twisting her
head and listening intently for some clue as to where she
was.

The
abominable Mister Bernstein—who had shamelessly mashed her breasts
and her buttocks as Beryl laughed and laughed, had gone off
somewhere. The floor was dirty concrete and he was wearing running
shoes.

She was
alone with Beryl.

“
There’s been a little change of plans, my little one—fishy,
fishy, fish.”

The woman
was clearly mad.

Lindsey
was cold, scared, tired and hungry. She had to pee and she wasn’t
going to get any mercy from these horrible people. If only she
could get out of this chair.

Beryl was
drinking, and while Lindsey was shaking from adrenalin, anger and
fear, sooner or later the bitch was going to nod off. Hopefully
that would happen before that other little bastard
returned.

The ropes
around her wrist were already stretching. Lindsey had clenched and
tensed up as much as she could when they tied her wrists. They had
used an old, tired manila of about a half-inch diameter. The wire,
put on top rather than under the rope, was turning out to be a bit
of a joke. Not that it wasn’t painful, but there was plenty of
blood in the human body.

She
wouldn’t need the half of it to take care of this bitch.

***

Liam had a sinking sensation every time Lindsey’s name was
mentioned. The fact
was
that she was young and single. Dale was
highly-suspicious. He was confused, distraught and slightly drunk.
He’d woken up in his lazy chair, shuffled off to the bathroom, and
noted his niece’s bedroom door open although the room was
dark.