‘Kenny.’ Gallen looked up. ‘What’s nine-oh-seven?’
‘Alaska, ain’t it?’ said Winter. ‘Not Anchorage. Probably Barrow.’
The date for the phone call was the day after the Kugaaruk meeting. It meant nothing to Gallen, but he decided to keep the diary anyway.
The rest of the documents were backgrounds on Gallen, Winter, McCann and Ford. They seemed to have got Gallen’s details correct and he smirked at the mention of the Silver Star, a medal for gallantry in action. It distinguished the combat Marine from the pen-pusher but the clipboards had been trying to erode that over the years, awarding themselves Silver Stars for the most tenuous connections to combat. The enlisted men called them Fobbers — a reference to the heavily fortified Forward Operating Bases, or FOBs, and the fact that many of the military careerists went to Afghanistan to have ‘combat’ stamped on their CV without ever leaving the safety of the FOB.
Winter’s sheet showed entries for Royal Canadian Infantry Corps, JTF2 Assaulters with specialties in marksmanship, field survival and hand-to-hand combat. Then there was a long period seconded to NATO’s intel command in Afghanistan. Ford, meanwhile, had taught comms and fieldcraft to other Navy combat divers. McCann’s Silver Star wasn’t news to Gallen; he’d earned it in the same action as Gallen himself.
Sifting through the papers again, Gallen looked for the sheet on Bren Dale, the person who was supposed to be on the detail. It wasn’t there. Gallen wondered about it: given that Dale had pulled out at the last minute, shouldn’t the brief still be in there?
There was something strange about the briefcase, and he had another look, opening all the inside pockets. ‘This is it?’ he asked the other men. ‘Nothing fell out?’
‘Didn’t even look in it,’ said Winter. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’ll be happier if we can access that BlackBerry, see who Harry was talking to. But for now, I dunno. Would have expected more in a billionaire’s briefcase.’
‘Like?’ said Winter.
‘Like draft agreements, MOUs, maps, proposals. He’s an oil and gas guy who’s travelling with his top legal person to meet with a Russian to discuss some of the biggest untouched oil deposits on earth,’ said Gallen, lifting the foolscap pages. ‘But all he has is a BlackBerry and intel notes on his bodyguard?’
‘What’re you saying, boss?’ asked Ford.
‘I’m confused, is all,’ said Gallen. ‘Either the meeting was very informal — just getting to know you — or he brought some documents that were handed over to Reggie.’
‘With no copies?’ said Ford. ‘And no documents handed to him?’
‘Precisely,’ said Gallen. ‘Or…’
‘What?’ said Winter.
‘Harry was hugging that briefcase because there was a document, and he didn’t want anyone to see it.’
Ford gulped his coffee. ‘So where is it?’
‘It was taken, I suppose,’ said Gallen. ‘From when he packed at the hotel to when he died in the fuselage, he thought he had something in that case worth holding on to.’
‘That’s about two days, boss,’ said Winter. ‘You can search my stuff. I ain’t got it.’
‘Neither have I,’ said Ford.
Turning as one, they looked at Florita.
‘I’ll talk to her when she comes around,’ said Gallen. ‘For now, let’s talk about another shot at Baker Lake. I’ll take the trip this time.’
‘You look like shit, boss,’ said Winter. ‘It’s cold out there and that snowmobile ain’t the Orient Express.’
‘I can’t ask you guys to take all the pain.’
Winter gave him a look. ‘We’re beyond that, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t—’
‘You got pleurisy, boss — you’d be a liability,’ said Winter. ‘Besides, her toes are no good. She needs a hospital. If there’s a third person on the sled, it’s Florita.’
‘Frostbite?’
Winter shrugged. ‘Why Mike was rubbing on her feet all night.’
Looking over, Gallen saw the Australian rubbing Florita’s feet through the foil bag.
‘We have to talk,’ said Gallen.
‘Don’t worry. I don’t want to eat you, boss.’ Ford smiled.
‘Look,’ said Gallen, glad someone had come out with it, ‘we’re low on wood, low on diesel and now we have four mouths to feed. So our food supply just shrank to three days.’
‘We’ll try again,’ said Winter. ‘But we’ll need food.’
‘What we really need,’ said Gallen, ‘is comms.’
‘No luck,’ said Ford.
‘Well,’ said Gallen casually, ‘there’s a Harris at the bottom of that lake.’
The conversation halted like someone had lifted the needle off an LP. Ford grabbed a Camel and avoided Gallen’s eyes.
Then the sceptical Aussie drawl started up. ‘Between lake and bottom you missed the part about freezing.’
‘I saw the suits in the garage,’ said Gallen, as softly as he could. ‘Hanging on the wall.’
‘I told you.’ Ford pointed at Winter. ‘Told you he wouldn’t miss that.’
Winter slowly fixed Gallen with a look, not of hostility, but certainly that of a man who’d told a few COs to go fuck themselves in his time. ‘Boss, I know what you’re thinking, but that diving gear is, what, thirty, forty years old?’
Gallen shrugged. ‘Looks okay.’
Winter raised the intensity slightly. ‘That’s a freezing lake and we don’t know how deep the wreck is sitting. What we do know is that exposure is our big enemy. It’s already given you the pleurisy.’
‘Can we do it? ‘ Gallen looked at Ford.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ said the Aussie, leaning back on his chair legs, his blue eyes crackling through blistered cheekbones. ‘You think because I’m a clearance diver I’m crazy?’
‘No,’ said Gallen, keeping his voice soft. ‘I thought because you’re a Navy commando that something this impossible might be possible.’
Winter slowly shook his head.
‘It’ll feel warmer under the water, right?’ said Gallen.
Ford’s eyes widened. ‘You’re nuts.’
‘Let’s check the gear,’ said Gallen, standing.
‘No, I mean it, mate. You’re a fucking lunatic.’
CHAPTER 28
They watched Mike Ford as he sorted and arranged each dive rig, separating and checking every moving part. It was like watching a sniper take apart his rifle, except that Ford seemed to feel the need to blow on every piece, screw it, shake it, bang it and hold it to the light, squinting.
‘What’s that?’ asked Gallen, noticing that Ford was particularly fixated on a valve system.
‘That’s your basic sealed diaphragm,’ said Ford, smiling as he held it in his fingers. ‘Environmentally sealed, to be precise. Supposed to trick the regulators into thinking they’re in normal water.’
‘What happens otherwise?’ said Winter.
‘The water would freeze the air-mix so the regulator would seize, and then your lungs would really have something to complain about.’
‘I see,’ said Gallen, secretly glad that he wasn’t going in that lake.
‘It’s natural to worry about your dry suit in arctic diving, that’s what everyone is concerned about,’ said Ford, replacing the diaphragm. ‘But you have to start with the breathing apparatus. If that doesn’t work then we’re not going far.’
‘The seals and connectors working?’ said Gallen.