Giles Blunt - The Delicate Storm

‘I’ll let him tell you.’

Squier opened his briefcase and set a silvery laptop on the desk. He unfolded it so that the screen was visible to all of them and pushed a button; it sprang to life with a chime. He pulled a small object the size of a lipstick from his pocket and pointed. A graphic appeared, showing the command structure of NORAD – North American Aerospace Defence.

‘As you may know,’ Squier said, ‘NORAD is a joint operation of the U.S. and Canada that was developed during the Cold War to keep us safe from Russian invaders.’ He clicked his remote and the graphic changed to Joint Command Installations. ‘Each country built what they called a ground environment – basically a three-storey office building inside a mountain. The Americans have theirs at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. We have ours in Algonquin Bay, out by Trout Lake.’

‘I grew up here,’ Cardinal said. ‘You really don’t need to be telling me this.’

‘I’d like to do this right, if you’ll just be patient,’ Squier said. ‘Besides, Sergeant Musgrave didn’t grow up here.’

‘Sergeant Musgrave would like to get on with it,’ Musgrave said. ‘Assume we know about the CADS base.’

‘Okay. The Cold War may be over, but the Canadian Air Defence System is still in place. There are still a hundred and fifty people inside that mountain. They still have their eyes on radar screens. And those radar screens still light up with any object coming into Canadian airspace.’

‘They’re closing the place down, I heard,’ Cardinal put in. ‘Algonquin Bay doesn’t even have an air base any more.’

‘They may move it. But it’s not going to close, believe me.’ A muffled twitter interrupted them. ‘Sorry,’ Squier said, and reached into his jacket pocket. ‘Forgot to turn it off.’

He aimed the remote at the screen again and it changed to a radar readout. White objects shaped like planes throbbed in the upper right corner. ‘CADS monitors all incoming traffic. This is just a simulation, of course, showing regular commercial traffic. With the end of the Cold War, the CADS base has found new things to do. They keep an eye out for drug flights, for example. Recently they were instrumental in stopping twenty million dollars’ worth of heroin, simply by relaying data on a suspicious Cessna to an RCMP drug squad.’

A click of the remote and the screen changed again. An object that did not look like a plane entered the screen from the upper left side. It glowed red and began to flash with a throaty beep. ‘Post-September 11, the most important part of the CADS mandate – at least as far as my outfit is concerned – is anti-terrorism. This could be anything from a hijacked aircraft to a rogue missile. That’s what we have on the screen now.’

‘Simulated, of course,’ Musgrave said pointedly.

‘Oh, yes,’ Squier said. ‘There’s no way on God’s green earth I could be walking around with a real CADS readout. Now, I know you’re wondering why I’m here, so I’ll get right to it. Friday morning CSIS got a call from the CADS base. Their security unit caught a man with a pair of binoculars up on the hill. Apparently, he didn’t seem to be doing anything much. They questioned him, and he said he was a tourist, a birdwatcher. It’s not like he’s wearing a turban. They didn’t have enough to hold him or even to call in you guys.’ He nodded at Cardinal. ‘So they checked his ID and told him to vamoose, basically.

‘They phoned the info down to us. Completely routine procedure. We run a check on Howard Matlock. Nothing against. Then – and this is the same day I’m talking about – the guy turns up again in the middle of the night. Night-shift security catches him on the perimeter, with those binoculars practically glued to his face.’

‘On the perimeter,’ Cardinal said. ‘If he was a spy, he must be the most inept spy the world has ever seen. I’ve been up to that base, and there’s absolutely nothing to see until you get two miles inside the mountain. It’s trees and rock. Period.’

‘True enough. But his objective may not have been the installation hardware – it may have been the security itself. The whole point may have been to check out their strength by getting himself caught. We just don’t know. The worst thing is, security screwed up. Screwed up big time. They neglected to check the day ledger when they caught the guy, so they didn’t know he’d already been nicked earlier. Unbelievable as it seems, they let him go. By the time security realized their mistake, it was too late. That’s when they called us for the second time. There were some red faces up there.’

Squier clicked his remote and the laptop went dark. He folded it up with a snap. ‘My superior called me at six in the morning. Told me to be on the seven o’clock flight to Algonquin Bay. Security had taken down Matlock’s licence plate number – a rental car from Toronto airport – and the Loon Lodge address. But I got here too late. I never even caught sight of him, and then suddenly you guys were all over his cabin.’

‘What would you have done if you had found him?’

‘Followed him, of course. Not me personally – we use surveillants for that sort of thing.’

‘Really,’ Musgrave said. ‘We use cops.’

‘It’s unfortunate I didn’t catch up with this individual before he got killed. Personally, I suspect he isn’t anything to worry about. No links to al-Qaeda or anyone like that. But not having cleared him, and him being dead after two hits on CADS security – well, let’s just say it raises red flags. And that’s what puts us in the ball game.’

‘Well, maybe we could get the OPP in on this too,’ Cardinal said.

‘Oh, I don’t think the provincial police have any jurisdiction here.’

‘He was joking,’ Musgrave said.

‘We could get the Knights of Columbus and the Ladies’ Auxiliary,’ Cardinal went on. ‘And the Elks might be interested too. I mean, we’ve practically got enough for a curling team already.’

‘Yes, I thought you might not be pleased,’ Squier said. ‘Home turf and all that. I just want you to know that I’m here – and CSIS is here – to give you every possible assistance. You’ll probably want to see my ID.’ He pulled out an embossed employment card with his picture on it. ‘You can call that number for confirmation of everything I’ve said.’

‘Believe me,’ Musgrave said to Cardinal, ‘I’ve done that. He’s for real, and so is CSIS, and that’s just the way things are. Make whatever calls you have to make, and then why don’t you bring us up to date on where you’re at with the investigation?’

Cardinal considered calling Chouinard and raising bloody hell, but he had a strong sense that it would get him nowhere. He was also grateful that Squier was pretending they’d never met.

‘Basically, there’s nothing to tell,’ he began. ‘Forensics doesn’t have a lot to work with – an arm, an ear, pieces of leg, scalp, bits of pelvis. The guy was killed, then he was hacked up, then he was fed to the bears. The story Matlock gave the owner of Loon Lodge is that he was here to check out the ice fishing. There were no other guests, and so far the only lead we have is a paint scraping taken from where the body was chopped up. We’re looking for a late-model Ford Explorer, walnut brown. We’ve got an ad coming out in tonight’s Lode asking for help from anyone who may have talked to Matlock.’

‘Tell me if I’m being rude,’ Musgrave said, ‘but have you examined his car? CSIS here says he rented a red Escort.’

‘We’re looking for the car. Are we done here? I’d like to get on with it.’

‘What about the American end?’ Squier asked. ‘What’s first on the agenda down there?’