Hobbling to the window, he looked out on a plutey Calgary golf club from the third floor of Rockyview Hospital. His face had taken two stitches, and he was being driven to a dental surgeon in half an hour to have his broken teeth fixed. Running his tongue over the jagged stumps of the teeth he lost when the Challenger went down, he let his eyes scan the grounds of the enormous hospital, looking for people sitting in cars, watchers on park benches and white vans with too many aerials.
‘Sign the damn thing and let’s get out of here,’ came the man’s voice, and Gallen turned quickly to see Aaron crossing the floor to join him at the window.
‘I was about to,’ said Gallen, eyeing the insurer’s death and disability forms sitting on the table. ‘Just wanted to make sure Donny’s payout goes to his mom. He asked me specifically.’
Picking up the form with the McCann stickie on it, Aaron flipped through. ‘In the beneficiary box, it says “next of kin”. There a problem?’
‘No,’ said Gallen, looking at the green of the golf club’s fairways trying to poke through the patchy spring snow. ‘But he was married twice and he’s got a sister he don’t like. I wanted his momma’s name, so we can name her in the payout.’
Aaron lifted his phone from his pocket and turned away, issuing a command to an assistant to get the name of Donny McCann’s mother. He was tanned for Calgary in March and Gallen noticed he’d dropped his business shirt and suit in favour of jeans and a leather jacket.
‘How’re the legs?’ said Aaron, eyes scanning the hospital campus as instinctively as Gallen’s.
Sitting on the bed, Gallen stretched them in front of him. ‘Took the shrapnel out of my calf and the doctors are happy with it. The burns are going to heal, but they’ll always be ugly.’
‘Pity. Those were some gorgeous legs,’ said Aaron.
‘They were my best feature.’
Silence sat between them like a canyon as their smiles faded. Aaron’s face sagged, the real man glimpsing through. ‘I did what I could, Gerry.’
‘Maybe,’ said Gallen, keeping it light. ‘But someone didn’t.’
Aaron nodded, stepped back from the window. ‘When I saw you, I just happened to be standing by the fire blanket box. It was luck.’
Gallen was confused. ‘What?’
‘But shit, that thirty yards to get to you,’ said Aaron, shaking his head. ‘That was the longest thirty yards of my life. I couldn’t go any faster through that snow, honest to God.’
‘That was you?’
Aaron shrugged. ‘No one told you?’
‘I thought that was search-and-rescue.’
Gallen thought back to that night in the snow, looking down at his burning legs as the man in red leapt on them with the fire blanket, the flames taking ten seconds to smother, a bat of an eye in real life, but a marathon when your body’s going up in flames.
‘I was in Baker Lake when the call came through,’ said Aaron. ‘I’d been hassling them, ordering them to fly grids, and then Mike comes on the emergency channel and I suited up, went with them.’
‘Thanks,’ said Gallen. ‘You trained for that?’
‘I was in the Navy,’ said Aaron. ‘Bunker drills, fire blanket training. Years ago now, but the training stuck I guess.’
‘So,’ said Gallen, finally getting somewhere with Aaron. ‘You ONI?’
They stared at each other for several seconds. ‘We need to talk, Gerry, but not here.’
‘I’m due at the dentist soon.’
‘I’ll ride with you.’
The dentist mapped the molars on the other side of Gallen’s mouth, fed the information into a machine, and they talked while replacement teeth were machined out of a ceramic composite material. After two hours in the surgery, Gallen emerged into the cold sunlight with two new crowns.
‘Feel like a drink?’ said Aaron.
‘Four or five should do it.’
Gallen ate soup and drank cold beer at the bistro that was set back from the street. He was half in the bag by the time they cut the small talk.
‘My nurses and doctors call me Mr Brown,’ he said, raising his finger at the waitress for another Bud. ‘And I can’t find my team. Where’s Kenny and Mike?’
‘We’re in a security situation right now,’ said Aaron. ‘Our CEO’s plane is bombed, and his bodyguard hunted down.’
‘I noticed.’
‘So I had everyone in different hospitals, under assumed names.’
Gallen looked at him. ‘Thanks.’
‘You’re wondering about Ford? ‘
‘What happened to him?’
‘He’s okay but I sent him on leave for a while.’
‘Where?’
‘Can’t say, Gerry,’ said the spook. ‘But he didn’t want to go and he wanted to see you and Winter.’
‘What about Florita?’
‘Her frostbite was contained and she’s back at work. I asked her to stay away from here, for her security and yours.’
‘We still employed?’ said Gallen as more beer arrived.
‘Of course,’ said Aaron. ‘You did your job.’
‘So you read the RCMP interviews?’
‘I spoke with Clancy,’ said Aaron, meaning Detective Inspector Charles Clancy, who’d interviewed Gallen at his hospital bed as soon as he was conscious. ‘Given that Harry brought a gift on board, I don’t see the crime. I would have missed that too.’
‘Yeah, but I missed it.’
‘Like I said, you still got a job,’ said Aaron. ‘Take a few days off and I’ll see you back here Monday. I’d like a full report on all this, by the way. You can email it.’
‘So I don’t have a few days off?’
‘You can drive a laptop?’
‘Sure.’
‘Then gimme a report, Gerry. Do it from the farm and when you get back Monday, we’ll talk about the gig.’
‘Who would I bodyguard?’ said Gallen.
‘You haven’t read the papers?’
Gallen shrugged.
‘Florita Mendes was named the acting CEO yesterday.’
‘Shit,’ said Gallen, surprised.
‘I’m now the VP security.’
‘What happened to Mulligan?’ said Gallen.
‘He’s not around.’
They looked at one another, deadpanning.
‘He resigned?’
‘Harry sacked him the day before he flew to Kugaaruk,’ said Aaron. ‘He left and hasn’t been seen since.’
Gallen drank deeply. ‘That’s not like Paul Mulligan, walk away from a trough when his snout was just getting wet.’
‘You can sort that out, and while you’re at it, you can launch an investigation into who bombed our plane.’
‘You want me to head an investigation?’ said Gallen. ‘What happened to bodyguarding?’
‘You’re taking my job, should you want it,’ said Aaron. ‘Almost twice the pay and you won’t need snowshoes. That MasterCard of yours is now unlimited. Well, almost. Just make sure you can justify the expenses — the accountants are tough at Oasis.’
‘Thanks,’ said Gallen.
‘Not me, the new CEO demanded it.’
Gallen smiled. ‘Okay, we’ll investigate. But I’m not a spook or a cop.’
‘I’ve seen your file and you were always half-spook.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Gallen.
‘Pretending to be a logging contractor in Mindanao, collecting better intel on the Moros than we got through NICA or the Agency— if that ain’t spooking, what is?’
Gallen laughed. ‘That was a frustrated first lieutenant who talked his CO into getting some first-hand intel.’
‘I asked around, you were pegged for DIA, but you said no. Twice.’
Gallen looked out at the street. ‘Not everyone wants to jump head-first onto an av-gas fire. So thanks, man. I owe ya.’