The Spy I Loved (8 page)

The
bigger boat towing them could have gone a lot faster, but the
fishing was good. The lake was very busy today. There were wakes,
and waves criss-crossing every which way and it was best to go
slow. The tow rope looked like about a three-eighths-inch yellow
nylon, which was only going to take so much.

It was
quite choppy in places and the boat felt different when not under
its own power. Conrad was looking a bit green, focusing on the
floor of the boat and not looking out at the bobbing
horizon.

Oh, for fuck’s sakes.

Don’t tell me you’re sea-sick.

***

The water
would be very cold, only the shallows survivable for more than five
minutes without protection.

There was
a light rain, barely visible as little concentric circles appeared
all over the dead-smooth water. Low grey clouds sucked up all the
light and the temperature had dropped. It took less than a half an
hour for the weather to change completely. Liam pulled on his
dry-suit hood, finally snapping the gloves into place. He pulled on
his mask and snorkel, leaving them to ride high up on his forehead.
His combination bottle and regulator/mouthpiece was clipped to the
side of his hoodie. He put it into his mouth. Picking up his fins,
and breathing carefully around the mouthpiece pinched between his
teeth, he picked his way to the water.

The
apparatus was a simple rebreather system. The rig was only meant
for shallow waters.

He had
been promised a gill system in the very near future. He’d even been
involved in testing it.

That had
been tedious, exacting, and due to the weight and profile of the
rig, a huge pain in the neck after about three minutes of
swimming.

All part
of the job, really.

In order
to produce the gas pressure required for deep dives, the membranes
and pumps would have to be so much smaller than was presently
practicable, and for some applications, older methods worked best.
He had been assured that later generations of device would be much
better, and do away with the CO2 extraction and capture tank
entirely.

Sitting
on a convenient rock, out in the open, was his most vulnerable
moment. He slipped on the fins and then walked as carefully but as
quickly as he could backwards into the water. The adrenalin was
always a cheap little thrill. When he had a couple of feet of
water, he turned around and fell gently forwards, feeling for the
bottom and hoping that he wasn’t under observation. There was
always the shock of cold water at every constriction, every seam,
and the exposed part of the face.

It was
odd at first, how the beaches were often all sharp and craggy
boulders, broken off a cliff or hillside. Once away from shore, the
bottoms were flat, sand, silt and muck, leaf litter and relatively
boulder-free. Structures in deeper water were as often as not the
top of a submerged hill going back to glacial times. The flat,
swamp-ridden bottomlands were muck, pure and simple, but the muck
was filtered. When winter’s grime was washed away in springtime,
the sand fell to the bottom. It had taken eons, he reminded
himself. Half an eon, anyway.

His
present behaviour was curious indeed. Anyone who saw him as a
fisherman one minute and the high-tech frog-man the next would tend
to wonder. His rig would fit into the average lunch-bucket, and yet
it cost the taxpayers something like a hundred and fifty thousand
good old-fashioned pounds.

The
surface closed in behind him. The tinkle of bubbles escaping from
the rough fabric surface of his suit was close in his ears. Way off
in the distance but unnaturally loud, there was the thin high buzz
of an outboard motor. In this small inlet, he would know all too
well if they came close. He kicked smoothly and steadily,
conserving his energy. The bottom was still only about two or three
metres down. He was making barely a shadow, slowly crossing the bay
from one side to the other. The sun kept going in and out. There
was a submerged boulder ahead, coming up within two feet of the
surface. He swam above the seamount in miniature, and then gingerly
rotated, putting his bottom on it for a rest. He lifted his head
cautiously above the surface. Nothing. The sound of a single boat
motor dropped away and was gone, with his ears above the surface.
Above, a gull looked charcoal grey against the cloud base. Bird
calls and wind sounded in the greenery thirty metres
away.

He was
relatively warm in his dry-suit. Relative was a good word. Pulling
the mask down, he rolled off the rock and continued his survey.
He’d pulled up a few bits of aluminum, distinctively charred and
melted. Vaporized might be a better term. It was the first dive of
the season. Lately the opposition had been making it tough to get a
moment to himself.

The sound
of the boat dropped off but he could still hear it. He visualized
the map in his head. The boat, proceeding northeast, had gone
around the next corner. What was important was that they didn’t
come in here, not just now.

What he
was looking for, what they were all looking for, was the onboard
control module. The guidance system controlled the satellite, the
control module controlled the onboard systems. Then there was the
power module, another prize find. The maneuvering module, a cluster
of small motors, was the least technically sophisticated item on
the agenda. Pieces had already been recovered. It was still mostly
unaccounted for. Data and technology recovery was an advanced
science these days.

While the
major players had their own systems, probably just as good if not
better than EMERALD, there were smaller players. There were
rogue-states, plenty of wheeler-dealers and some just plain
opportunists—some of them quite heavy hitters, who would love to
get their hands on it.

It would
be worth quite a pretty penny if you could find a buyer.

There
were plenty of those these days. Not all prospective buyers had the
wherewithal to pull off a deal, and yet they would still try. They
would gather all possible intelligence and try, and if necessary,
to rip it off if they could. Even if they didn’t have the technical
capacity to actually employ it, EMERALD was nothing if not a
bargaining chip.

Fortified with these and other thoughts, Liam kept an eye on
his wrist-display. The device was attuned to fine changes in water
chemistry and at short range, PH balance, plus changes in
electrical conductivity. He swam up and down, back and forth. There
was no way to use electromagnetic detection. It was more or less
impossible anyways in mining country, with every second rock
outcropping red with iron oxides. The beaches were littered with
fool’s gold, iron pyrites. Geiger counters had their uses, but even
so they hadn’t found the power module. Satellites were mostly
aluminum and other alloys, with nothing ferrous whatsoever in their
makeup, and so finding one that had burned its way down and then
crashed, was always going to be a problem. They had located three
major impact points, the thing taking a bad bounce off the last one
and most likely ending up…somewhere around
here,
with thousands of lakes,
rivers, streams and bogs, all within an hour’s driving
distance.

Chapter Six

“
Just get it fixed, then.” Emil had run out of
patience.

The man
was telling him all available boats had been rented.

“
Ah, yes, sir.” Mark tried again. “But, ah, honestly, sir,
this sort of thing happens all the time. No big deal. It’s a good
thing you didn’t try to go on, you might have run into some real
trouble. I can give you a gift certificate for fifty free litres of
gasoline…”

“
Argh.”

“
Don’t you guys go away—I’ll get you one straight
away.”

Mark
hastily nipped back into the kiosk and pulled one out from the
drawer. He stamped the thing with THE PINES in stinking blue ink
just as quickly as he could.

He
proffered it with a smile, and Mister Lom, the one known as Conrad,
accepted it with thanks, although the older one was still
steaming.

After
giving the dock boy, Mark, proper shit for the condition of the
boat and the ruination of their day’s fishing, a coldly furious
Emil stormed back up to the cabin. It wasn’t an act,
either.

“
Argh.” He stepped inside and dropped his equipment bag and
fishing tackle on the floor just inside the door.

It was a
little too convenient. First the motor, then the plug. On a busy
day when all the boats were out on the water. There was one little
inflatable, looking about nine feet long, with a three-horse motor
on the back. Emil had turned away angrily, as it was just too small
to talk about. It was too small to be useful. Since he couldn’t
explain why, it was better to feign anger, which wasn’t that hard,
and stomp off, no matter how churlish it might look.

Emil ran
a hand over his forehead, lifting the hat with the other and
staring at the sheen of moisture on his palm. The desert was
hotter, but it was a dry heat. What they said about the humidity
killing you was all too true in this heathen country.

His mood
must have been infectious. Conrad, coming in the door right behind
him and laden with as much if not more gear, cursed in no uncertain
terms.

The man
had the nerve to nudge him, even. Emil brightened slightly, he’d
been hoping for some sign, a smidgeon of spirit or
something.

He
stepped aside, nodding genially as he took in the room. Emil pulled
his cell-phone out of his buttoned-down shirt pocket.

“
Get the laptop.” He began punching in numbers on the face of
the phone as Conrad stooped to get their machine out of the bag.
“See where the hell he is.”

As the
younger operative set it down on the kitchen table and lifted the
top, Emil stepped into the bedroom. He closed the door, as he
wanted a quick word before hooking up and transmitting data. While
the satellite link was secure, there were always concerns. His
perfectly normal-looking uPhone would pass the average Customs and
Immigration inspection. It was a simple, two-level system. What you
did was give up the password to level one. They had a look at your
recent calls, all of them innocent.

After a
while, they gave your phone back, and welcomed you into the
country.

There
were a few things that Conrad didn’t necessarily need to know.
Conrad’s device was similar. The devices would be used to upload
data from the laptops and the other machines they were equipped
with. Communicating was always going to be weak point. The only
solution was to go without electronic communication
altogether.

Conrad
hit the button, warming it up. He cursed as he had a typo and it
wouldn’t go.

Passwords
were a bitch sometimes.

There
were times when you really had to think about it. First thing in
the morning, Conrad suffered from a bit of brain-fog, and he
usually made his coffee and lit up a cigarette before attempting to
remember which day it was and what the bloody password should
be…

What
next, thought Conrad?

Sooner or
later, someone around here’s going to have to start thinking about
some lunch.

Most
likely that would be me.

Emil
stood looking out the bedroom window.

A little
privacy and the ability to speak freely, more or less, and within
the bounds of small-talk as camouflage, was a prerogative of
rank…it could also be tremendously reassuring.

There was
one final ring and then someone picked up.

“
Ah! Hello.” Emil always spoke very loudly during these calls.
“Uncle Speck?”

He spoke
Greek, that most musical of languages, as a matter of course. It
wasn’t his native tongue, and he doubted if it was the other
individual’s either.

Nothing
you could really put your finger on, really, it was just a little
feeling he had.

***

It was
Sunday night, about ten p.m. At this time of year, full darkness
came late. When Lindsey stepped out of the store, finally, after a
very long day, her body vibrated in physical and emotional
exhaustion.

She
shivered in the sudden chill, but when she tipped her head back
under the wan light of a half a dozen sodium bulbs on their tall
standards, her jaw dropped.

The
northern lights were going nuts.

“
Oh!” She looked around, but there was no one
there.

That was
always the way, wasn’t it?

It was
just her and the crickets.

She stood
hugging herself for warmth.

No one
there.

Off to
her right, voices and the snapping of the flames came from a dozen
different campfires scattered up and down the hill. People partied,
drank, talked or just stared mindlessly into the flames. Their
bonfires, rarely small, were a source of endless fascination to
young and old alike. People dreamt by the fires, she being reminded
of something Dale had once said. The old guy could be profound
enough when he wanted to be. It just took a couple of stiff
ones.