Florita handed him a bottle of European beer, swapped a look with Aaron and plunged her coffee. ‘So you crept into the backyard?’
‘I was going to knock on the back door, make it as non-scary as possible,’ said Gallen, smiling. ‘Whoever is watching me is probably watching you and I’d bet the phones are tapped. I needed a conversation, below the radar.’
‘What about?’
‘If we’re going to chase the bastards who bombed us, I need to start with everything you know.’
‘I think I told you,’ said Florita, clearly nervous. ‘I’ve got that new contract for you, by the way. It’s in the study.’
Aaron slugged at his beer as Florita left. ‘Could have called me, tough guy.’
‘You weren’t made CEO a few days after the old one was bombed out of the sky. I’m looking for a thread, and — no offence intended — I don’t think you’re in it.’
‘None taken, Gerry.’
‘What are you doing here, Aaron?’ said Gallen carefully. ‘Besides the obvious.’
Aaron laughed, throwing his head back and slamming his hand on the counter. ‘Shit, man. Rednecks! What would we do without ‘em?’
‘I mean it. You bodyguarding? Doing a bit of the Kevin Costner?’
Aaron shook his head slowly as Florita swept back into the room, throwing the blue-bound contract on the marble counter top.
‘Gerry thinks we’re girlfriend and boyfriend,’ said Aaron, still laughing.
‘Shit, so much for secrets,’ said Florita, slumping. ‘Christ, I need a drink.’
As Florita poured from a bottle of red wine, Gallen looked between the two. ‘She say secret?’
Aaron stretched and smiled at Florita. ‘Sure. Tell him.’
‘I was robbed tonight, Gerry,’ she said, sipping the wine as she leaned against the counter. ‘They went through the study but the only thing they took was a few files.’
‘Where were these files?’ said Gallen.
‘In the safe. That’s why Aaron’s here. I found out an hour ago, by accident. I’d just got out of the bath.’
Gallen looked at Aaron. ‘So they’re pros?’
Aaron nodded. ‘Looks like it. No damage, no explosive, no blunt screwdrivers — just put in the code and opened that thing.’
Gallen tried to slow his mind. These two would have kept the robbery from him unless he’d turned up. ‘So what’d they take?’
‘Handover documents, mainly,’ said Florita, relaxing with the wine. ‘Taking the CEO position has been a bit of a shock, so I stashed the confidential stuff from Harry in my safe, to read at home.’
Gerry finished the beer. ‘Forgive my ignorance, but handover documents?’
‘All the memos and contracts and relationships that aren’t necessarily in the public domain, but which you need to run a publicly listed oil company,’ said Florita. ‘And with Harry — because of the informal way he operated — there’s a ton of side agreements and handshake contracts that I needed to know about.’
‘It’s all gone?’ said Gallen.
‘All of it. They left my gold bars.’
‘What could they do with the documents?’
Florita pointed at Aaron. ‘I’ve already been through this. There’s perhaps some material that could be used by blackmailers—’
‘Like?’
Florita shrugged. ‘Like what we had to do to get drilling leases in a certain national park, like what Harry promised to an EIS auditor if he just ticked the box on groundwater and aquifer degradation.’
‘EIS?’
‘Environmental Impact Study,’ said Aaron, with a big smirk. ‘Just learned that one myself.’
‘You think another oil company, or Greenpeace, waited for Harry to die so they could steal his secret papers from the new CEO?’ It didn’t stack up.
‘I don’t know,’ said Florita.
‘Well, what I know,’ said Gallen, ‘is that Harry Durville spent his entire career getting hammered drunk, getting into fights and threatening just about anyone who dared to stare him down. He left a trail a mile wide for anyone who wanted to get to him, extort money, embarrass him into paying up or changing his actions. But you’re telling me the blackmailer waited until he was dead before moving?’
Aaron spurted beer as he laughed.
Florita dropped her gaze. ‘Don’t you two laugh at me.’
‘So tell us what’s going on,’ said Gallen.
‘Okay.’ She exhaled. ‘But this conversation is never going to be repeated.’
‘You got it,’ said Aaron.
Gallen nodded.
‘Harry commissioned a report on something called Operation Nanook,’ said Florita. ‘Two copies were delivered, but when I cleared Harry’s safe there was only one. I assume the other was with him when we went down.’ She stood, grabbed two more beers from the stainless-steel fridge.
‘What were they?’ asked Aaron, flipping the bottle top.
‘I believe it’s a backgrounder on Reggie Kransk and the TTC. Mulligan commissioned the report to be clear on Oasis’s partners. Harry thought it was bullshit.’
‘Why did Harry think that?’ said Gallen.
‘The report was very negative about Kransk: who was controlling him and what those controllers wanted.’
Gallen drank, craving a cigarette. ‘Who wrote the report?’
‘A crowd called Newport Associates,’ said Florita.
‘Ex-DIA,’ said Aaron.
Gallen clicked. ‘Mulligan’s buddies?’
Florita nodded. ‘Harry thought that.’
Gallen looked at Florita. ‘You read it? ‘
‘No, I hadn’t got around to it,’ she said. ‘It came in about the time you were hired and I didn’t feel I needed to read it — Harry wasn’t talking about anything else right up until his death.’
‘What was Nanook?’ said Aaron.
‘I think Nanook was the Oasis strategy for securing the Arctic Ocean leases.’ Florita poured herself more wine. ‘Harry decided Mulligan was working for another oil company, against Oasis. They had a big fight and Mulligan was sacked the day before we flew up to the meeting in Kugaaruk.’
‘You think Mulligan bombed our plane?’ said Gallen.
‘She doesn’t know and neither do I,’ said Aaron. ‘That’s why you’re investigating.’
‘You said there were two reports,’ said Gallen. ‘There was one in your safe.’
‘I’m pretty sure Harry carried the other to Kugaaruk. I saw a red cover in his satchel.’
Gallen stopped speaking, silence descending.
‘What?’ said Florita, looking from man to man.
Aaron cleared his throat. ‘I think Gerry wants to know what’s really in that report from Newport Associates.’
‘I told you, Aaron, I didn’t read it.’
Aaron stood up, leaned into her. ‘Florita, what did Harry say was in it? It’s probably important.’
Looking into her glass, Florita swirled the wine before draining it in one gulp. ‘Okay, but this never goes beyond this room, okay?’
‘You’re the boss,’ said Gallen. ‘Shoot.’
‘Newport Associates thinks Reggie Kransk’s Transarctic Tribal Council is a front for several Russian oil and gas companies.’
CHAPTER 42
Gallen’s head spun as the cab pulled up to the Sheraton Suites. Asking the driver to keep going, he slipped down in the back seat, scanned for surveillance vehicles as they raced past the lit-up foyer.
Coming around the block again, Gallen had the cab stop short of the hotel and walked the rest of the way.
Gallen knew that he’d taken this gig too soon after coming back from Afghanistan. After drifting around the States for a few months, catching up with old Marines buddies, he’d hoped to lay low on the family farm for while. He’d needed it: just a period of normalcy, with nothing but horses and cattle, bank overdrafts and diesel bills to worry about. Now he realised he’d fallen into precisely the role he didn’t want to play back in civvie life: the messed-up, broken-down war vet who couldn’t let anything go.