As the Challenger jet stopped at its refuelling berth, a large golf cart rode out to the starboard side of the craft. Standing beside the co-pilot as he opened the cabin door, Gallen felt the blast of cold rush into the cabin and he touched the SIG in his holster.
‘It’s airport services,’ said Florita, standing behind Gallen, pulling on a thick down-filled jacket. ‘They’re here to take us to the washroom.’
‘Go on,’ yelled Durville from the rear of the aircraft. ‘I’ll catch up.’
Gallen issued the order to rug up in the arctic kit and, pulling on his own goose-down windbreaker, followed Florita to the golf cart.
The private lounge was large and filled with natural light and Gallen sat on a sofa, cleared his voicemail as he waited for Florita to return. He wanted a further chat about these Eskimos.
On a kitchenette table there were donuts and coffee and he helped himself as the Canadian Border Services and Customs officers spoke with the maitre d’. Gallen pulled out his passport, happy that he’d already put the SIG and its holster under the sofa cushion.
The Customs officer approached him and Gallen stood, offered the passport.
‘In from Los Angeles, sir?’ said the officer. ‘Direct flight was it?’ ‘Yessir,’ said Gallen.
‘Carrying any explosives, chemicals, munitions, firearms or prohibited substances, Mr Gallen?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Any alcohol or tobacco over the permitted quantity? ‘
‘No, sir.’
‘You travelling alone, sir?’
‘No, my employer, Harry Durville, is in the plane.’
The officer looked out at the Challenger sitting on the tarmac. ‘Harry Durville, eh? What do you do for him?’
‘Security consultant.’
‘Carrying no weapons?’
‘In the plane, yes,’ said Gallen, wishing Florita would get back to the damn lounge.
‘Declared?’
‘I’m doing that now.’
The officer looked at him. ‘I’m waiting.’
Gallen breathed out. ‘Nine-mil handguns and spare clips. We’re a personal bodyguard.’
‘I see — and you have the permits, I suppose.’
‘Sure,’ said Gallen, at least confident that Aaron had logged and declared all the firearms under the special security permits between the US and Canada.
The officer slowly pulled a black hand-held scanner from his utility belt and ran it across the information strip of the passport. ‘Can you show me your orders?’ he asked as he looked at his tiny screen, annoyingly poker-faced.
Gallen was confused. He hadn’t carried orders since leaving the Corps.
The officer continued. ‘You’re in Canada for military purposes?’
‘No.’
‘So why are you travelling on a no-fee passport?’ said the officer.
‘Shit.’ Gallen slumped. He’d been so focused on this new gig that he’d forgotten to get himself a standard tourist passport. His no-fee version labelled him as an American soldier on active duty, and if he couldn’t produce orders, foreign officials could treat him as an unfriendly.
Florita had him out of the lock-up before Durville even made it to the terminal.
‘Thanks,’ said Gallen, emerging from the small holding room and retrieving his personal effects from the Customs officer. As they moved back to the lounge, he tried to work it out. ‘So that was your voice? You were the one telling them off?’
‘Wouldn’t say I was telling them off,’ said Florita, who’d obviously taken a shower in the washroom of the private lounge. ‘I said they could stop being so unreasonable or we could wait for Senor Durville to arrive.’
Gallen chuckled. ‘Resolve it with an oil billionaire who’s been drinking all morning.’
Florita smiled. ‘They know him. But you’ll still have to have a tourist passport for the next time you enter Canada. You can use the computer at this business centre.’
Through the glass, they watched the golf cart making a return, this time with Durville on board.
‘I wanted to talk,’ said Gallen.
‘We’ve got two minutes, then I’m the nursemaid again.’
‘I’m uncomfortable with this meeting. I like to take away the ifs and the buts, and I can’t do that when all I know is that one of the people he’s meeting is called Reggie.’
Florita led him to the sofas beside the windows. ‘Okay, Gerry, but none of this is in writing. There’s no paper trail for these meetings.’
Gallen felt the old nightmares of the intel briefers and their little secrets coming back to him. ‘Okay.’
‘The TTC is a council of Eskimo or Inuit tribes from the Arctic Circle. They don’t recognise national boundaries, so they’re from Canada, the US and Russia, mostly, with some belonging to Denmark and Finland.’
‘Any names?’
‘I think you’ll find they’re mostly represented by their lawyers, Gerry,’ said Florita as the door burst open and Harry Durville marched over to the food like he was looking to kick in someone’s teeth.
Rising to fix Durville’s coffee, Florita stopped and looked back at Gallen. ‘Oh, I suppose the thing I should mention…’
‘Yep?’
Florita lowered her voice. ‘These TTC reps? Their countries and their tribes don’t necessarily know that this meeting is happening.’
Gallen tried to get more, but Florita had moved to her boss, who wanted a donut without icing.
CHAPTER 16
The Challenger came in low over the white peninsula on the edge of the Gulf of Boothia after four hours of flying. As they straightened for the runway, Gallen looked down and saw a white wilderness that seemed to blend into the sea with different gradations and shades of ice floe. On both sides of the plane were thousands of miles of ice and snow, contrasting with the darkness of the choppy ocean.
Captain Martin’s voice came over the speaker, informing the passengers that the plane would be ready to deboard at 12.50 local time and to rug up because the early spring meant a temperate midday high of minus twenty-five degrees Celsius, or minus thirteen in Fahrenheit.
Gallen watched his men check balaclavas and gloves as they rustled into their arctic jackets and pants, covering two layers of thermal underwear.
‘Minus twenty-five,’ said McCann, shaking his head. ‘Shit, I woke up one morning in Ghor Province and promised myself no more of that shit.’
‘Fucking Ghor,’ said Winter, pulling his balaclava down so it looked like a neck warmer. ‘The only thing I remember about that hellhole is you take a crap, it bounces.’
‘Okay, guys,’ said Gallen, smiling at the recollections of Afghanistan’s coldest regions. ‘Let’s focus. I want to run a check on the meet site, so I’ll go ahead with Donny and Florita, make sure we get the seating organised.’
Winter let the slide go on his SIG and put it on his lap. ‘I take Durville, with Mike?’
‘That’s it,’ said Gallen. ‘You check the hotel.’
Florita had booked out the Inukshuk Inns North, part of a hotel chain in Canada’s far north.
Winter looked at him. ‘What are we expecting?’
‘Oil people who can’t mind their goddamn business,’ said Gallen. ‘So, if there’s any stray vehicles or peeping Toms around the hotel, check ‘em out. There’s seven or eight people meeting with Durville today, and if I don’t like the look of them, I’ll be searching them before they enter the building.’
‘They gonna buy that?’ said McCann.
‘Depends who they are,’ said Gallen.
He bundled Florita and McCann into the first cab while the Durville party waited in the tiny terminal. The air was cold and still as Gallen made to get in beside the driver, but a gust of wind caught him in the kidneys as he bent to enter the taxi, and the cold whistled into his ribs as though he wasn’t wearing a stitch.