The Spy I Loved (18 page)

“
We’ve got the area blanketed with our own surveillance
aircraft. They will either move it by road, or just bury it and
come back later.”

Sooner or
later, the cops would have to go home. The inevitable prospect of
winter was there as well.

“
Of course. Hmn. Does the name Speck ring any
bells?”

“
Ah...it might if I had a little more information.”

“
Ask and you shall receive.” Frank pushed a button and sent
the file.

“
Send us a bill for that missing dive sled.” Marinaro laughed
and Frank nodded in all seriousness. “I’ll be keeping you posted.
Anyways, we have every cop in the country looking out for
suspicious vehicles. We’ve got some descriptions of people and what
they’re driving. If they’re seen, they’ll be pulled over. A routine
traffic stop, something like that. We’ll check their ID and see
what it says. Borz and Lom are still up there, checked into another
camp. By all appearances, they’re happily fishing and minding their
own business. They’ve changed their appearance, and their names,
but there are only so many places to go up there. So far we’re
leaving them in place. We’ve got a couple of new gomers watching
Liam for sure, and we have reports on other people of interest from
your people and our own.”

Bringing
in a few fresh faces had been very helpful. The bad guys had been
studying C.S.I.S. personnel for some time. It was a credible
insight. They were also using a lot of pawns, which was extremely
interesting.

“
And how’s my boy Liam doing?”

“
Very professional.” Now was not the time to bring up the
issue of the girl, but that part seemed a bit off to Marinaro.
“I’ve seen the bodies.”

Frank
laughed. He’d read the report.

Marinaro
was still thinking about the girl. What in the hell was Kimball
thinking.

“
I’m wondering if the missing members of the opposition, at
least the ones we’re interested in, have simply holed up in a
secure location. If they got the vehicles indoors for example, in a
rental space somewhere. They don’t have to sleep in the same
building.” Marinaro sighed, but it was simply one more item on the
list. “Sit on it for a while and see if anyone takes an
interest.”

Frank
nodded sagely. While they were glad to help out, this was a joint
venture.

C.S.I.S.
was on its own ground and they had to be given the lead.

Mister Lom and Mister Borz, as things turned out, were
identified as Canadian citizens by their driver’s license photos.
Their DLs were authentic, and so were the photos, taken at point of
sale. The analysts had the latest facial recognition software.
Using the pictures taken by Kimball, they had multiple views and
angles. Marinaro consulted his notes, quickly comparing their
pictures side by side. He sent them to his counterpart with a
couple of clicks of the mouse.
Essentially,
the same faces (or
their underlying structures, fingerprints, irises and so forth)
must grace other documents under other names, and sooner or later
the biometrics people would narrow it down. At that point they
would have a set of new names, new vehicle registrations and new
license plates to look out for. Somewhere on the books would be a
couple of secure private identities for when they weren’t
working.

Frank
looked at them, eyes going off for a moment.

“
Ah. Very nice.”

“
Okay. Mister Lom, completely unknown to police and
intelligence. If the machine is correct. Alleged real name, Andrew
Simpson. We’re terribly suspicious, of course, but we have people
digging through old hospital birth records, doctor’s records…we’ll
have them tramping cemeteries if we have to. He and his wife left
the country a couple of years ago.”

They had
visited the Middle East. It was their one and only trip, perhaps
the trip of the lifetime.

Frank
studied the face for a moment.

“
Andrew Simpson?”

“
Yes. My thinking is that we’ll find a small stone in a
cemetery somewhere, and a death certificate in that name. A
stillborn child, or someone who passed in the first few years of
life. Thankfully we have a name, passport and driver’s license to
work with. But people still get away with taking the name of
someone long since dead. I mean, it can be done.” So Lom had at
least two names.

Both were
highly suspicious.

This was
the amateur option.

Frank nodded. It was a bit of a process, right out of
Day of the Jackal.
The
most unlikely person could do it with a little thought, a little
research, some money and some patience. The only thing that
mattered was having a set of unknown fingerprints. This held true
for the identity you were stealing as well. More than one person
had been bitten because of lax research and taking the wrong
identity, that of someone with a different set of prints that were
on record. Either that or their own fingerprints were on record.
They got picked up and booked. A set of known fingerprints would
lead to photos on record somewhere. When faces didn’t match
official documents elsewhere, then someone was in trouble—they had
a little explaining to do. When applying for documents, you needed
a current address that matched all other documents. An experienced
agent would not live at the address—they’d just go back after six
weeks or so and see if anything had arrived. The address in
question was served by a neighbourhood postal box set-up. Marinaro
explained that dozens of people from four or five blocks around
would be showing up at all hours to check their mail. One more
vehicle, one more civilian coming and going. It would be easy
enough to send a pawn with the key. The operative (or more likely,
another pawn) would be nearby, watching to see if they were
followed or observed.

It didn’t
take that much brains. Big F nodded.

Modern
intelligence services had engraved plates for the documents from
many other countries, friendly and otherwise, for the creation of
false papers. False identities were more than just papers and
plastic laminated cards. The best false identities were fully
documented people going back thirty or forty years, all of it
fabricated and bogus. No such person had ever existed. In the event
of a thorough search of the home, there would be love letters,
monogrammed souvenirs from a wedding anniversary, the high school
diploma signed by the principal…everything.

“
So what we figure, at least as a working hypothesis, is that
someone did indeed go on vacation, taking the wife with
him…”

“
Yes, of course. And someone closely resembling the subject
comes home after vacationing with the little wifey-poo. Neither one
of whom has any sort of previous record, no official position or
standing, no previous hits or screenings. Hmn.”

“
She will be closely watched. We’re tapping phones and stuff,
but she’s basically just a tool, possibly well-trained. She might
also be totally oblivious to what her alleged husband is doing
now.” The lady worked in building maintenance and the home was in
Brampton.

They were
getting the phone records and would check every name and number
called, going back a couple of years for starters.

Mrs.
Simpson, as it were. Marinaro cleared his throat.

It was a
pretty good cover considering the community’s
demographics.

“
Possibly.”

“
As for Mister Lom himself, he’s
living
under the Simpson identity.
He’s on vacation, ostensibly for a month, and he hasn’t returned
home. The family car, the only one we know about, is sitting in the
driveway. We’re looking for vehicle rentals in his
name.”

There were only so many rental places in the province, but
the vehicle could have been rented or purchased by a third party,
under a different name. They would use multiple vehicles most
likely, all rented by shell companies or people who didn’t exist
but for the moment and the purpose. Money didn’t appear to be a
consideration for their subjects. This was always an interesting
question. What they were doing wasn’t all that expensive,
so far.
It was out of
the reach of the typical working class or middle class person. The
theory so far was that these people were of professional or at
least trained status. They had prior experience, and hopefully,
they might have a prior history.

Like his
partner Borz, (or Simpson) the police and the courts and
intelligence sources had never heard of Lom. If the Simpson tax
records had been hacked, on such a small scale, there was no real
way of knowing except going by the date of entries. Yet it was
possible to enter a false date, and as for hacking time and date
imprints, their own services had been known to attempt it, even
succeeding where weaknesses existed in systems. This might be true
of their own tax record-keeping system. No social service agency
had ever heard of him. His income tax returns showed continuous
employment going back twenty-odd years. He’d either been here a
long time or taken someone else’s name.

“
And what about the other individual?”

“
Mister Lom, going by the documents, is a Canadian citizen and
was born here. He is apparently single, and according to all
records, has never traveled abroad. We haven’t had any hits on that
face as of yet.” The biometrics programs in their own computers
were still chewing on it, but if they didn’t have something by now
it seemed unlikely they would.

They’d
sent the pictures to a few trusted allies and might get an answer,
yes or no, within two days. It was the best they could
expect.

Lom was
completely unknown, although he had a bank account and credit
cards. All of these were recent. By the records, he was employed as
a cabinet-maker in the Toronto area.

“
But we don’t believe that, do we?”

Marinaro
shook his head. The employer appeared to be a small ad in the phone
book and on the internet. The number was picked up by machine, a
cheerful female voice instructing callers to leave a message. As to
whether he’d ever worked or not, it would take a lot of time to
find out, but there were employer names on the tax records. The
thing was to find someone who knew him, over a period of years, day
in and day out. Then pop the Lom photos on them and see if it was
the same guy.

“
Not really.” He was close to wrapping up the briefing. “So,
hopefully, we’ll be putting some more names to those
faces.”

“
Give it a little time.” These guys had to buy milk, they had
to buy gas and food.

They had
been in-country for some time. They had to live somewhere, they had
to have safe-houses somewhere. They had to meet or contact their
controls from time to time. A house or apartment was a lot more
anonymous than a hotel. This tended to leave a trail, physical and
electronic. Bellboys and counter staff got to know you. They were
also easily canvassed by investigators. It was a lot of legwork
admittedly. Now they were looking for something
specific.

“
Very well. Thank you for the photos and keeping us up to
date. We’ll run these through our own machine and see if anything
pops up. That Borz character is interesting.”

“
According to Liam, he was very much the senior
man.”

Liam
Kimball was an enigma to Marinaro. He had been a bit surprised by
the assignment, but it showed the Brits were taking it seriously.
His own service was surprisingly small. They had agents all over
the world, but nothing like the bigger powers. His people were
good. There just weren’t enough of them.

Ian and
Liam. Liam and Ian.

He
grinned. Two peas in a pod.

Sure.

Not that some of these guys weren’t oversexed in the extreme,
but then they lived hard and often died very hard deaths. When they
played, they played hard. It wasn’t just mystique, for the trade
attracted the extremes of character. He understood that Liam was
one of the special ones, not a bureaucratic type, not in it for the
career or the
gongs
as the Brits called it when you pulled off a big one. He was
special in more than one way, having survived torture and the
subsequent breakout by special ops people who were understandably
prone to shoot first and worry later.

The
orders for that sort of mission were simple enough: shoot everyone
who isn’t in a cage and covered in their own shit.

There
were volumes that they weren’t telling him about Kimball. Marinaro
took that as a given even among his own. He only needed to know so
much. It wasn’t always all tall glasses of vodka and Gustav Mahler
blaring out of the stereo, while you painstakingly pieced it
together in some intuitive and laborious process. Not that there
wasn’t a place for that kind of thing.

“
Very well then. If there is anything you need, let us know.
Check out this Speck character. He’s connected in some surprising
places.”

There
were more interesting details. A search of the shoreline where
Liam’s plastic boat had been launched revealed no booby-traps. They
had searched for a kilometre in each direction, although a couple
of small-boat teams were still out there, cruising slowly along
inshore. When Liam was out on the lake, they could put more boats
on the water, looking for any similar type of installation. In the
event of another attack, they might be able to intervene if they
weren’t too far away. Plainclothes cops, or even agents in training
would be fine for that assignment.