“She didn’t show, sir. We waited a full hour, and Corelli satin plain view on a park bench with the Sun open in front of him.”
“Maybe the surveillance was too obvious.”
“Maybe, sir, but not a single woman came near him. Or even seemed to be watching him.”
“She was probably just testing his interest. Tell Frank to be ready, because I think she may call again, demanding a higher price.”
“Either that or she has nothing to sell,” Gibbs said. He sounded frustrated. “It may all have been just a bid for attention. She tied up a lot of resources today.”
Green thought it over. He was in the incident room Inspector Norrich had provided for him, and the files still lay strewn around the table where McGrath and he had left them. McGrath was flipping through a box for her interviews with the witness who’d given her the false ID. Her eyes were narrowed with a focussed excitement he knew so well. The feeling you get when a crucial detail in the case breaks loose.
With an effort he forced his thoughts back to Gibbs’s problem. Gibbs could be right; the woman could simply be a media-hungry crank. But on the other hand, she had known about the body being moved after death. To know that, she had to be one of the investigating professionals, or she had to have seen it being moved.
“I think she’ll call again,” he said. “So make sure Corelli’s prepared.”
“Will you be back tomorrow, sir?”
“Yes. My flight gets in at noon, and I’ll grab a cab straight to the office. I have something else I want you to do in the meantime.” Quickly he filled Gibbs in on Ian MacDonald’s death and its possible connection to Daniel Oliver’s murder and to their time together in Yugoslavia. He gave him Captain Ulrich’s contact information at DND and asked him to try to track down as many of the soldiers in the peacekeeping unit as possible. “Starting with Major—or possibly a higher rank—Richard Hamm, who was their platoon commander. He maybe out at CFB Edmonton. And Sergeant Sawranchuk, who was their section leader.”
“Ask him to get photos too,” McGrath interjected, looking up from her files. “And have him fax everything down here tome as well.”
Once Green had hung up, he filled McGrath in on Patricia Ross’s journey to Petawawa. By the time he finished, McGrath’s eyes were stormy. “Patricia was tracking the same story we are. Goddamn it, if it was this simple, if we missed anobvious line of inquiry because of Norrich’s stupid, macho incompetence, then I’m going to have his fucking balls for fish bait!”
* * *
June 18, Sector West, Croatia.
Dear Kit... I had an amazing experience yesterday. Three of us were on a foot patrol, checking the back country paths to make sure no Serbs were sneaking weapons into the UNPA . The Serbs don’t like our foot patrols because apparently the UN battalion before us just sat at their checkpoints and if they wanted to patrol, they had to ask the Serbs’ permission. Permission, for fuck’s sake.
So when we arrived in Sector West, our CO said no, it’s not going to work like that. Our mandate is to enforce the weaponsban, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. This part of the country is loaded with little off-the-map trails that only the locals know about. So we set up observation posts to do footpatrols as well as the regular APC patrols on the main road. OP patrols are out for a week at a time, just a few guys against a mess of belligerents, and I know Sarge isn’t happy with the danger, but those were the orders.
So there we were, walking along, scanning the trail ahead for mines, when around the corner comes these four Serb guys, loaded to the gills— AK 47s, grenades, sniper rifles, claymore mines, the works. No hunting party for sure. We told them tohand over their weapons and instead they pointed their rifles at us. You have to show who’s boss with these guys or they’ll walk all over you. So we raised our rifles too. Now, our rules of engagement are drilled into us. You can’t initiate fire, and when fired upon you can only respond in kind. So we couldn’t do anything but stare at them and wait for them to shoot first. Like that makes any sense when you’re staring down the barrel of an AK 47.
Anyway, Danny mutters fuck this and he shoots over their heads. They shoot back and we take cover and everybody starts firing. After about thirty seconds the Serbs turn around and run away. I started to laugh, relief I guess, and Danny’s checking us out because the medic says sometimes when the adrenaline’s going, you don’t even know you’ve been hit. But none of us were hurt. I don’t know if we hit any Serbs.
I was proud of myself that day. You always wonder howyou’re going to hold up the first time you meet the real thing.You hope you’ll keep your cool and remember your training, but you don’t really know. Well, when it happened, I didn’thave time to be scared. I was pumped and I just acted oninstinct. And we got the job done. Afterwards my legs were like jelly and I downed two beers the minute I got back to camp, but it didn’t matter.
* * *
Green’s plans to hit the ground running in Ottawa by early afternoon were scuttled the moment he woke up the next morning to a fog so thick he couldn’t see the street from his second-storey window. As the taxi crept out to the airport, the cabbie kept shaking his head sagely.
“Waste of time, sir. The planes have been stacked up at the departure gates since six o’clock this morning. Not a thing flying in or out of this soup.”
“When is it likely to clear?” Green asked as they pulled up at the terminal, which was still cocooned in white.
“When it feels like it. You might get off today.” The cabbie’s laugh was the last thing Green heard before the cab was swallowed up by the fog. For a moment Green regretted declining Kate McGrath’s offer of a ride to the airport. He could have used the company, and they could have used the time to coordinate their plans of attack.
But the truth was, they had discussed everything to death already, and her company was proving a little too distracting for safety. And judging from the way her eyes had locked his when she’d dropped him off at the hotel the night before, the border into dangerous waters was very close indeed.
The airport was full of stranded passengers, but the pace of activity was leisurely. Who was going anywhere? He checked in and cleared security without difficulty. By ten o’clock he was settled at his departure gate with a coffee, trying to read the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. But thoughts of Kate McGrath kept drifting uninvited through his mind, crowding out the latest headlines. Her long legs, her smile that quivered ever so slightly at the edges when she’d said goodbye...
He pulled out his cellphone and called Sharon. She had the day off and sounded sleepy as she greeted him.
“Your son and I were sleeping in,” she said.
He glanced at his watch and did a quick calculation. Nine fifteen in Ottawa. “Sorry, honey, did I wake you?”
“Not really. I was just lying in bed thinking I should get up. I think the entire household is camped outside our bedroom door waiting for breakfast.” Her chuckle dissolved into a yawn. He pictured her in bed, her black curls tumbling in her eyes and her nightgown rumpled up around her thighs. He needed to get home.
“I don’t suppose you could hold that picture till I get home?”
“Which one? Me in bed, or the kids and the dog outside the door?” She chuckled again, this time with no trace of sleepiness. “You’d better hurry, baby. Neither one will keep.”
Mentally he checked off the “to-do” list ahead of him before he could cash in on the promise in her tone, but then he remembered it was Friday. “Damn, it’s Shabbat,” he said. He would have to pick up his father at his retirement home and bring him home again after dinner.
“Well, you know what the rabbis say. Even a quickie on the Sabbath is a mitzvah.”
“A quickie wasn’t what I had in mind,”