Gallen sipped on his beer and rolled to his side to check the time on the bedside table: 3.37 pm. Winter was seven minutes past the RV. Even though he was buying handguns, Gallen trusted him. He’d panic at nine o’clock.
Taking a bite from one of the perfect meatballs ordered in from Joey Tomato’s Grill across the road, he was about to check the news on Fox and MSNBC when the CNN story grabbed his attention. The ArcticWatch woman swept her hand to her side to indicate the Inuit and then called them the Transarctic Tribal Council.
Grabbing for the remote, he sat up and increased the volume in time to hear the journalist’s voiceover pick up the story.
‘It has been almost a decade since the United Nations oversaw the creation of the Inuit Circumpolar Council — or ICC — in response to Inuit complaints that decisions about their livelihood were being made thousands of miles from their homelands. Inuit argued that while their Arctic hunting grounds were under the technical sovereignty of nations such as Russia, Canada, the United States and Denmark, they were a distinct ethnic people who had interacted, intermarried and traded with one another for thousands of years. The Inuit put their case as an ethnic nation with their own territorial, economic and social interests, quite separate from the interests of their imperial masters in Washington, Ottawa, Moscow and Copenhagen.’
Gallen watched the Frenchwoman on the screen, the show using file shots of her protesting on the ice in Greenland, meeting with Vlad Putin in a Moscow drawing room and marching with Eskimos in Ottawa. Her name was Martina Du Bois, and apparently she was a Sorbonne-educated left-wing lawyer who came from a famous military family.
The reporter interviewed her and soon they were talking about the Transarctic Tribal Council — Reggie’s outfit. Gallen focused on the story, his heart rate lifting. She spoke about the TTC representing Inuit whereas the ICC represented the governments of the various Arctic nations. Apparently there was a difference.
It was the first Gallen had heard of the Transarctic Tribal Council being a new or rival organisation; especially that it rivalled the United Nations-sanctioned group.
The CNN report switched to voiceover again.
‘With the discovery of the world’s largest oil and gas deposits outside the Middle East on the floor of the Arctic Ocean, Du Bois’ ArcticWatch has become closely aligned with the Transarctic Tribal Council. The TTC was set up to counter what Du Bois sees as the increasing encroachment of government policy friendly to big oil and mining companies in the Arctic Circle.’
As the report broadened to describe how global warming was opening oil fields and sea lanes to the exploration companies, making the extraction of oil and minerals profitable, Gallen eased back on the pillows and wondered about what was not being said; what was the propaganda component?
The screen was now dominated by an aerial shot of a giant ship with two hulls, each the size of a container ship. This enormous catamaran was called the Fanny Blankes-Koen, and as the helicopter circled it the reporter’s voiceover explained that the ship was an Oasis Energy venture to test the Arctic Ocean floor. Sitting on the bow gantries of the dual-hull vessel was a shape that Gallen had seen as a model in Durville’s office. It was a large pod not unlike a flying saucer from a 1950s movie.
The reporter got to the heart of it.
‘This massive commitment from one of the world’s largest oil companies will seek to overcome the problems of drilling in arctic conditions by simply ducking most of the conditions altogether. The Oasis-led venture will bolt this oil rig to the sea bed and on top of it place a small town called Ariadne. In this, the largest saturation-diving platform ever built, up to one hundred oil workers will live and work around the clock for three months at a time before being replaced by a new crew. ArcticWatch has opposed the building of the Ariadne submerged oil rig, citing pollution and degradation of the Inuit’s hunting areas…’
The door’s electronic lock clicked and Kenny Winter was inside, throwing his backpack on the bed.
‘Go okay?’ said Gallen, watching the door until it shut itself and locked down.
‘Two SIGs, nine-mil,’ said Winter, pulling off his jacket and scooping a handful of fries off the Joey Tomato’s plate. ‘Not new but they’ve been maintained. Army surplus.’
Pulling one of the black SIG handguns from Winter’s pack, Gallen tore it down and laid the pieces on the bed cover. It was well used but seemed to have a new firing pin and newish spring on the slide. He didn’t care too much; the SIG P226 was a classic sidearm in special forces and he felt comfortable with the weapon’s strengths and limitations.
‘Let’s split up,’ he said. ‘You can make a friend at security, chat up one of those girls on the front desk. Let’s see if we can learn something about Mr Aaron Michaels.’
Gallen left the room first, hiding the SIG in his waistband and tucking it under his Carhartt jacket. He hailed a cab from the front of the Sheraton Suites, then waved it on. He took the third cab that stopped and directed the driver across the river and west, without stating a destination. Stopping two streets back from the river, Gallen got out and paid cash, then stood in the shadows of a tree until the taxi was out of sight.
He walked for three minutes north, through the leafy area of Westmount, an inner-city enclave of lawyers, doctors and well-to-do gays.
Turning onto Florita’s street, Gallen made a pass of her house, a ninety-year-old three-storey place with colonial features on the balconies. Her mailbox was devoid of a name and the front entrance was accessible.
Walking around the block, he strolled down the rear lane that separated the large houses. Stopping behind Florita’s, he pulled a garbage bin to the fence and climbed it. To his right was a double garage that opened onto the laneway and in front of him was a large garden, dominated by a lawn and then a swimming pool that ran up to an entertaining area at the rear of the house.
The nights were still cold, but Gallen could see what a mini country club this would be in the summer.
Leaping to the lawn beside the garage, Gallen listened for sounds and stayed in the shadows. Through the side window of the garage he could see a small silver BMW.
There was a light on in the second floor of the house, but not on the ground floor. Moving towards the house, he scanned for light beams or pressure pads, even though he knew there was no chance of seeing them in the dark. There were small solar lights planted in the shrubberies and flowerbeds and they shed a slight glow.
Pausing beside the kidney-shaped pool, Gallen saw leaves on the cover. Looking up, he looked at the light in the second-storey window and thought he saw movement. Freezing as he wondered if he’d stepped on a pressure pad, he reached for the SIG jammed in the small of his back. Easing it out, he became aware of a red dot in the darkness beside the pool. The dot enlarged and moved to one side.
‘The gun’s a bit much, isn’t it, Gerry?’
Dropping to a crouch, Gallen aimed at the dot in the dark, his night sight ruined by staring too long at the upstairs light.
‘Who’s that?’ he snarled, more surprised than scared. His pulse thumped in his temples and the burns on his left leg ached.
Slowly the shape of a man in a recliner revealed itself, then light was spilling onto the pool area and the French doors swung open.
‘Aaron,’ said the woman as she pulled her robe around her hips and leaned through the door, ‘you okay?’
They sat on opposite sides of the large kitchen island, Gallen feeling unwelcome. ‘After Aaron told me I’d been promoted, I was still being followed and I decided to avoid the offices, approach you directly.’