The Spy I Loved (24 page)

Unfortunately, someone had to be the guinea pig—

Jenkins
watched the log-like contraption bob gently in the swell. The
device apparently found a suitable soft spot and rammed its pointed
rear end ashore, coming in on an acute angle. That was probably due
to the limits of camera panning. She turned her attention back to
the forest.

A
pleasure boat pulling a pair of water-skiers had gone by a few
minutes before, and the ripples were still coming and
going.

The
camera, pointing out to sea so to speak, whirred in short little
bursts as it compensated. Curtis froze in place, four metres from
the water’s edge. Sweat trickled down his forehead.

Flies
buzzed in front of Jenkins’ nose, going about their business just
above the forest floor. Her partner’s approach would be silent.
Although there was no audio pickup on the device, the possibility
of someone else being out there was reason for stealth.

They were
in luck. Like the first device they had located, this one was
placed under overhanging branches, taking advantage of the shadows
and ever-changing, dappled light to good effect. If they didn’t
know it was there, they probably would have walked or boated right
on past without a second thought. The camera steadied up, keeping
its aim at a point on the other side of the lake. Downstream and
around the corner, the Espanola River issued forth on its
downstream run. The thing knew where the camp was.

Curtis
took a breath and slowly straightened. He opened up his soft bag,
bulky but not all that heavy.

Keeping
an eye and an ear open, he slipped the tree-climbing apparatus onto
his muddy green combat boots. The damned suit was hot and bulky. It
would, no doubt, snag and tangle on every little branch. On that
thought, he reached up and broke off a few dead sticks. They poked
straight out at eye level and were sure to cause a problem as soon
as he began. The sound was loud enough, but nothing else
happened.

The
sensor he was deploying was light and simple. Hopefully it had
enough power and sensitivity to intercept a signal. Hopefully it
was undetectable to anything save physical, on the spot,
eyeball-type detection. A thin fibreglass ring and a screen of the
finest monofilament wires, thinner than spider-silk, all he had to
do was to get it up the tree and above the device. By twisting the
rim he had turned it into a figure-eight, and then bent that over
to get a double loop with the net carefully wrapped around it. It
all fit into a small day pack, with room left over for other items,
like water, a bit of food, extra ammo.

“
Curtis.”

He
responded in a low but natural tone.

“
Yes?”

“
I have an idea.”

“
Uh, huh.”

“
Find four sticks with notches at the ends.”

“
What?” They had orders, and ignoring the technical people was
done at one’s own peril.

There was
no doubt about getting up the tree. The question was how far he
could get out on what looked like some slender branches. The limbs
were also five or six metres up.

“
Stick them in the mud—if you can. Prop them up with rocks and
stuff. It sure beats climbing around like a monkey, eight or ten
metres up that tree.” Now that Jenkins saw the problem, it looked
like putting their antenna in exactly the right place was going to
be a real son of a bitch.

Curtis looked up the trunk. His partner was right. There were
any number of smaller branches. They weren’t quite strong enough
for a foothold, but a pain in neck to climb through or around.
There was just no way he was going
out
on them.

“
I’m listening.”

“
What you do is to set your ring in the forked sticks—that’s
what I meant. Keep it a foot or so off the antenna. That’s all we
have to do.”

Curtis
nodded.

“
What if somebody comes along to check on the
thing?”

“
Not after we blow the other two.”

Curtis thought about it. They probably
wouldn’t
come back. That would be
real bad policy.

He had no
idea of whether the devices would all be commonly linked.
Considering the digital nature of the system, it was a distinct
probability. There was nothing out there but water and the hills on
the far side. The thing would be in standby mode, waiting for a
major motion-detection to disturb its equilibrium. Only then would
it begin transmitting again—if their technical analysis was
correct.

“
Call it in.” Curtis looked up the tree again.

He was
prepared to wait.

“
Ah, shit.” Curtis put the rig down, looking around for forked
sticks and keeping a watch up the hill.

Invisible
from where he was, Jenkins was presumably texting the query. Curtis
didn’t have too long to wait. Jenkins got right back to
him.

“
We have a go-ahead.” Jenkins seemed confident.

“
Okay.”

That was
good enough for Curtis. He could practically feel the cross-hairs
on his neck at this point in time. The woods were peaceful and all
the birds and bugs were behaving normally. He’d been hearing one
particular call for some time, for whatever reason he’d been
wondering if that was an osprey. There was no real reason to think
it was. He didn’t know much about birds but had read something
recently.

Keeping
to a crouch, he entered the thicker underbrush.

It took a
couple of minutes of rummaging around, but he finally had the four
sticks propped up in the shallows, straddling the boat-launcher
device.

The
machine bobbed steadily, its inexorable eye still staring off at
the southwestern horizon. The camera was well away from his end,
where the uplink antenna was according to the techs.

Curtis
had a thought. If there wasn’t a signals burst immediately
following the detonation of the other launchers, they could always
get Jenkins to wear Liam’s hat and sweater and go for a boat
ride.

He told
Jenkins that as he carefully set the interception antenna in
place.

As
quietly as he could, he waded up out of the water. He recovered all
equipment and settled the bag back on his shoulders.

At
last.

Pulling
out the little black pistol and holding it in a calm but ready
position, he made his way upslope to a position ten metres to the
right of Jenkins.

He looked
over and nodded.

“
Might as well give them the word.” He stuck the gun, safety
on, in his side pocket and pulled the phone out.

Watching
the water side as Jenkins focused on the land side, he sent a quick
text message to waiting parties elsewhere.

They
could go ahead and destroy the other pair of launchers any time
they liked.

Approximately two minutes later came a couple of sharp
cracks, one from fairly near and one from two kilometres upriver.
That was number three, located at the forks. The drumming echoes
went up and down the valley, then finally subsided.

Two
minutes after that, Jenkins’ phone buzzed in her pocket.

Taking it
out, she quickly read the text.

Success. Destroy the target.

She
looked over at Curtis.

“
Gotcha, Baby.” She gave him the thumbs-up.

“
All right. Here we go.”

Leaving
his bag on the ground, Curtis again cautiously approached the
launcher. Half expecting the device to self-destruct at that exact
moment, he lifted the sensor off the forked sticks. It was still
attached to a solar collector via about thirty feet of wire. He
took a look at the slack in the wire, and then tossed it up as
close as he could get.

Snagging
on some brush, it hung there three metres up the bank as he pulled
the pin from a grenade.

“
Shit.”

He eyed
the bank carefully, finding the low spot and the gap in the brush
where he had come from.

Seven seconds.

That’s all you got.

I pull the pin, drop it
here,
and on my way up the bank, take a quick grab at
the sensor on the way past…

There is
no time like the present. He pulled the pin and dropped it,
sprinting up out of the mud.

He
grabbed the sensor on the way by.

Curtis
dove behind a boulder sticking out of the pine needles and humus
that made for a soft landing. The sound of the explosion was partly
muted by soft muck and a foot of water, although the breath was
knocked out of him. A third mysterious explosion now echoed along
the Espanola River, coming just minutes after the first two. Curtis
got up and dusted himself off, picking away some of the larger
sticks. Looking back, the device seemed to have been blown out of
existence, although trees in the immediate vicinity had been
damaged.

It was too bad,
but.

Sacrifices must be made, thought Curtis.

“
Right. Let’s go.” Their position had just become a thing of
interest to anyone within hearing distance.

That
would be an irregular pattern going out a couple of kilometres at
least.

Number
one priority was to clear the immediate area. Three minutes, time
well spent. Next they laid up in their own ambush position for a
half-hour looking for signs of pursuit. This was right out of the
book. Sweat trickled, insects bit and buzzed. It was all they could
do not to fall asleep after a pre-dawn start and a long walk. After
a while, the forest, shocked into stillness by the loud report,
came back to life and the birds started to sing again.

Nothing.

Time to start walking.

Six
kilometres out, over hill and over dale.

The things we do for love.

I will
definitely sleep well tonight, thought Curtis as he followed
Jenkins, the two flitting from tree to tree and shadow to shadow.
They were following elevation lines rather than any perceptible
trail. In a valley, you could be observed from above. On a barren
ridgeline, you could be seen for kilometres as any little movement
gave you away. The best way to avoid detection was to avoid
anything that looked like a trail or easy ground.

***

With only
the four of them fully in the loop, they were sticking together in
pairs. Team Three, their reserve, was also sticking together but
keeping a low profile. As far as could be determined, Team Three
still had no appreciable interest from the opposition. It was never
wise to trust the opposition, but there was a distinct lack of
information on that subject.

Liam and
Ian Spencer were seated on the living room couch in Cabin Seven.
Their laptops were lined up on the coffee table, and they had
coffees and an ashtray.

The
speaker of his machine sounded.

Bonk.

“
Bingo.” Liam straightened, eyes lighting up.

He opened
it and had a look.

“
Hmn. Nice.” Ian leaned forward, peering at the screen. “Well.
Let’s hope the lab boys and girls can make something of
it.”

The
launchers were linked by radio. When one blew, it fell off the net
and that fact had been noted by the nearby launchers. All the
information was listed in sequence down the screen. The time of
transmission, frequency, and its signal strength. Geographic
location and other information including a commercial account
number.

He
snorted lightly. The signal had been routed through an everyday
communications satellite, just like any other phone call. It didn’t
prove they were privateers. Various powers did the same thing, when
they didn’t have their own satellite, when they were making
low-priority calls, and the like. Typically, bureaucrats used free
commercial email accounts, as often as not preferring them over
expensive, custom-built in-house versions created at a cost running
into the hundreds of millions. There was another government email
scandal every day, or so it seemed.

The
signal was encrypted, and it was routed to an unlisted number in
Geneva. It wouldn’t take long to get a name. That’s not to say the
signal wouldn’t be bounced from one place to another, using proxy
servers and call-forwarding. The Tor network, alleged to be run for
benevolent reasons, was like that, and there were other networks
known and unknown. Another good setup. You could almost put money
on it. There would be an address, a mailbox, a name, an internet
connection, a simple program, a router bouncing calls and emails to
yet another dummy identity—and not much more.

And yet they
were
making progress.

“
Very, very nice.”

Liam got
up to get himself some fresh coffee, noting the fruit machine was
still humming away.

The phone
buzzed in his pocket.

“
Hello?”

“
Dipthong, arbalest.” This was their little joke, a kind of
game.