Lee looked at the picture. “This is an ICBM launcher? And it’s at the bottom of a lake?”
“Can’t be.” John put his chair back and rubbed his eyes.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, the Navy put five launchers into the Great Lakes. And twenty fakes. Ten years ago the Navy took out the last of the them at night. All of them. That’s one thing.”
“And?” Lee watched his line move. A seagull landed on the cabin of the boat and watched them both.”
“This picture was taken on the Canadian side of Lake Ontario. The only one we put onto the Canadian side was one in Superior. Therefore, this can’t be one of our launchers.”
There was a silence filled with Lee pulling in a herring, then tossing it to the gull.
“You like gulls?” John asked.
“Just making sure it was a real bird,” Lee chuckled. “So give me a list of other things this bottom boat could be.” Lee looked at John.
“There are no other things it could be. Not that I can find. There’s a possibility that somebody on the Canadian side is faking this, just to see if we show up with a guilty look on our faces.”
“You think?”
“Not likely. The Canadians would just as soon not talk about items like that. They’ve got oil to sell. And, sooner or later, water.”
“How come it wasn’t hidden?”
“We scooped a bit of mud on them, but currents rearrange that mud, sometimes, in a bad winter,” John said. "And last winter might just have done the trick."
“You want me to find out?”
“If you would.”
"Can I get any help?" Lee asked. "I really don't know how to start this thing going."
"You've got a point there," John laughed. "Silly of me not to think of that right away. Getting senile, I guess." He thought a moment. "I'm going to put you in contact with Lester and Sammy, a couple of guys that used to be with the special forces. SEALs, actually, which might or might not come in handy, since this thing is in water." He scrawled numbers onto the bottom of an empty cardboard bait box. "Here are some phone numbers. The Canadian one is a woman who lives on an island in Toronto harbour."
"Why would we know anybody there?"
"Oh," John said, "there are ten or fifteen ex-spooks living on those islands. They even have a special guard unit just to watch them."
"To watch out for them?"
"And to watch them."
"Well.... Thanks."
"Get back to me, will you?"
"You can count on it."
"And keep it under your hat?"
"Your eyes only."
John went to the cabin and started the motor.
Lee watched him. Did John know about Lee's Canadian connection or not? Was that why he'd been chosen? The boat turned toward shore and Lee watched the gulls.
****
Chapter 3: September 15
This day is sunny but the first cool of autumn is creeping across the land, especially at night.
Two days before Button Day
Gosport Ontario
At the marina.
Jag Stone parked at the Harbourview Marina, Motel, and Café, and went around to the water side where the entrance to the café was. It was small, but adequate, and not crowded, since there were few boaters using the marina in the fall. There were only a half-dozen tables, and Laura Singer was having breakfast at one of them. She looked up briefly, obviously recognized him, then went back to reading her paper.
"Morning, Mary," Jag said to the waitress. "I'll have the usual."
Mary, who barely knew the policeman except through gossip, was confused for a minute, then got her wits about her, and got him a bagel in a bag and large coffee in a paper cup. "The usual," she said, and winked at Jag as he paid. He smiled, just a little nervously, and thanked her. When he turned to go, Laura was behind him, purse in hand.
"Ah," he started.
"Small town," Laura noted. "Not many people dropping by in the fall. Things get dull, I bet." She looked him in the eye.
""Not that dull," he said. There was a silence. "Gotta go, now." He banged into the door as he left, spilling a bit of coffee onto his hand and wincing.
"If I didn't know better," Laura said to Mary, "I'd swear he was following me around. Are things really that dull here, or is he just someone I should avoid?"
"Nothing wrong with Jagger," Mary laughed. "He's probably just getting interested in women again. His wife ran off with a lady rap singer in Toronto over a year ago, and he's been a bit girl-shy since he moved here." She took the money for the breakfast and added. "There are half a dozen women in this town keeping an eye on him. Meanwhile he arrests drunks and writes poetry for little literary magazines."
"What kind of poetry?" Laura tilted her head.
"Poetry poetry. Probably about how evil women are, if you could figure it out, I guess." She looked over her glasses. "He's a good guy. You staying here long? Not that I want to be nosy."
"Renting a cottage down by the park for a couple of months. A vacation, sort of. I get to move in today."
"Here? In fall?"
"I can use the peace and quiet."
****
Near Guelph, Ontario
A Tim Hortons Coffee place in Puslinch
Two days before Button Day
Clyde Books was waiting for another alien-hunter, John Altman, from Johnstown, in eastern Ontario. Altman had called about the Szczedziwoj lead and was coming to look into it.
The Tim Hortons was mostly empty at 11 in the morning, and Books was most of the way through his double-double and glazed donuts when Altman came into the lot on a Harley. Books watched him park the bike, knowing that noisy motorcycles were high on his list of things he disliked. On a summer Saturday afternoon he’d gladly have tasered every bike rider that dropped down a gear and hit the accelerator to get up the hill by his house. He’d tracked a few of them with the sniper scope.
Nonetheless, he stood and shook hands with Altman when the biker noted the red hat with the "BEM” logo on Books’ table, and came over. Altman smiled through his beard, a finger going to the red and black stripe on his helmet. “I’ll just get a coffee,” Altman said, and went to the counter. It took a little longer than planned, since the order space was occupied by an elderly woman with a granddaughter who was completely unable to make up her mind as to which cookie she wanted, and the grandmother was overly patient.
Eventually Altman returned to the table with a coffee and a muffin. Books decided that Altman sometimes had his own view of truth, and was a bit liberal with the word “just." But you got all kinds in this alien-hunting business, and sometimes things worked out anyway.
Altman looked at his white mug and Books’ paper cup and said, “Gotta ask for a ‘china mug’ or they stick you with a paper cup.” Altman was a thin guy, his white beard making him look like a biker Q-tip.
“You’re ecological.”
“Nah. I just prefer a bit of class.
After a couple of Canadian preliminaries about the weather and the routes taken to get to the donut shop, Books pulled out the printed copy of suspected aliens. Altman slurped his coffee a bit, then pulled his muffin to bits and stuffed it into the coffee. Taking out his spoon, he began to eat what was an approximation of caffeine and muffin stew. Books ignored him, other than to make another mental post-it note to ask someone, somewhere, if aliens could be running a double agent who passed as an alien hunter.
Books pointed at one picture. “Casey Szczedziwoj," he said, pronouncing the name as “S-che-gee-voy."
“I’ve looked at that one,” Altman said. “What we got on him?”
Books leaned back, and raised one finger. “First, our source said he traded about ten thousand in small, uncut diamonds, worth maybe twice that much.”
The link with diamonds had been almost accidental, and only the fact that a jeweller in Boise had confided to the wife of a friend that the guy who'd been tasered the other day had previ
ously sold him a bunch of uncut diamonds led to the clue. The tasered guy who died had been one from whose body an alien form had emerged, before disappearing. The cop hadn’t reported the strange event, but he’d told someone and a new conspiracy theory began.
When the alien-hunter movement started, there had been much discussion about diamonds, before most of them came to the conclusion that uncut diamonds were the ideal revenue source for space creatures. There were probably lots of places in space, the hunters decided, that diamonds were common as gravel. A physicist from Wilfred Laurier University had confirmed that to the group (via email), that diamonds appeared to be common outside the Earth.
“Can you tell a diamond from outer space from one made on earth?” a hunter had asked.
“Usually,” the physicist had replied, "since it’s become routine to check the spectrograph of a diamond to be sure it doesn’t come from a war zone. But,” he added, "some diamonds on earth got here by meteorite, so people find the odd one that doesn’t match any earthly source.”
After a bit of discussion among the members of the group, they decided that anybody who offered a jeweler uncut diamonds at a big discount would ensure the jeweler's silence, and probably get a faked certificate of origin. So the hunters had started inquiries into any uncut diamonds being sold to jewelers. Jewelers are reluctant to disclose the sources of their stock, so it was a slow process, but a few leads had drifted in. One small diamond, said to be from such a transaction, had been acquired, and was tested to determine its origin. The lab was unable to determine the source, so the hunter group had a celebration.
Another clue came from the other alien sighting. The host had recovered consciousness and eventually told part of his story. The creature in him (the victim had told an alien hunter) seemed to have control of the host’s body, including hormone levels and speech, but couldn’t read the host’s mind. If the creature (which became known as a "rider” in hunter circles) needed to ask a question of the host, the host would hear a small voice in his ear, but would have to answer aloud for the rider to hear it.
“If someone asked me what kindergarten I went to, the host wouldn’t know,” the victim said. “The creature would make me answer the question out loud, like, “Let me see – oh, yes, ‘I went to Maple Avenue Kindergarten.’ Sometimes when people heard me explaining human behaviour, people thought I was talking to myself. Eventually, I bought a cell phone and talked into it without turning it on.” The victim had become agitated. “All my friends just left me. Nobody tried to understand!”
“So this Szczedziwoj fellow meets the criteria?” Altman asked Books.
“According to the rap sheet here, someone by that name traded in a bunch of uncuts in Buffalo.”
Altman pondered this awhile. There were, according to some hunters, dozens of likely indications, but the diamonds were the surest. “And there aren’t too many people by that name, I suppose.”
“We found only this guy, but our methods are a bit limited. We haven’t got a complete data base yet, but we’re working with a guy from Homeland Security.” Books paused. “We met a guy who gave us a picture of the only guy with that name, and he says this guy doesn’t have a cell phone, but he mumbles to himself a lot.”
“So what do we do now?”
“I've put a tracker on his car, and he likes to drive around on Sundays, so we find him. I’ll bump his car, and when he stops, we’ll take him down and taser him a few times. You can follow me on the bike.”
Altman looked a bit dubious, but nodded. "What are you carrying?"
"Pardon?"
"I've got a High Standard with me. A Sport King. With the bike."
"Takes .22 long rifle, doesn't it?"
"Clip of ten."
Books looked at the ceiling. "Good for home defence, that size, I guess, but a bit hard to conceal when travelling."
"In this country you take what you can get. I would have preferred something smaller, like a Walther PPKs .380 ACP or a Colt Detective Special. I've got a line on a Glock, too, if you want to go in with me."
"Neither registered, I presume."
"That's the way it goes."
"Why would you bring a pistol to this," Books said, looking around the room.
"Well, you never know what might happen. Might have to kill that rider, once we get it out of the human."
"There's not much indication that you can."
"You don't have a pistol with you? Just the taser."
"And a cattle prod."
"Suit yourself." Altman got up. "But I think it's always wise to bring something with you if you're dealing with space aliens.
"Maybe." Books thought it would be like bringing a stone tomahawk to deal with a JTF2 commando squad, but he didn't say anything. Hidden and suspicious his rifle might be, but it wouldn't land him in jail. That's why he didn't have a handgun; those things had to be registered.
Less than an hour later, Books’ Buick and Altman’s Harley were closing in on Casey’s old Volvo. Casey was taking it slowly, having rescued the car from a scrapyard and repaired it, more or less. The back seat contained tools, wiring diagrams, and repair manuals. Even then, the car shook strangely every now and again.
Just north of St. Jacobs, on a country road, Casey saw a small Honda on the shoulder, its trunk and hood up and a thin young woman in a short skirt peering into the engine. He pulled off the road to see if he could help.
Behind him, Books watched as some of the shoulder of the road collapsed under the Volvo's right front tire. The Volvo left the road abruptly, going into the pine forest and stopping against a tree. Both Books and Altman parked in front of the Honda, then went running to see what happened to their quarry. The woman at the Honda stood there dumfounded.
Books got there first, and assured himself that the car wasn't on fire. Szczedziwoj was pressed against the steering wheel, apparently unconscious, so Books pressed the taser against his neck. Szczedziwoj neither jerked at the voltage nor regained consciousness, and no creature emerged from him. Altman reached over and tried the cattle prod. There was a snap, and the smell of burning hairs, but Szczedziwoj didn't move. Altman pressed his fingers against Szczedziwoj's neck. "No pulse," he said, in a high voice.
The two looked at each other, and went back up the hill. "He's dead," Books told the young woman, who had a cell phone to her ear.
"I called the police," she said.
"Gotta go," Altman said, and the two ran for their vehicles.
Two hours later the two met in a quiet coffee shop. Altman was shaking a bit. "He was going to die anyway," he whispered. "I'm sure of that. He was probably dead when we got there. We didn't check, did we?"
"I wonder if we missed something," Books said. "Or if somebody got something wrong. Can't imagine it; there's only one Casey Szczedziwoj in North America. I know; I did a thorough search." He got some more chocolate in the form of a double chocolate cookie to help him think. "Maybe we should have given the body a bit more electricity."
****
In North Tonawanda, just outside Buffalo, Katherine Camille Szczedziwoj, known to her friends as "Casey," was reading the daily paper to her rider when she sat up abruptly. A loud rattling was coming from a cookie tin. She walked over to the tin, and took out what looked like a vibrating rock. "Holy crap!" she said. "Holy crap. I'm going home."
****
That night Books didn't get much sleep. He was still trying to convince himself Szczedziwoj was dead when he was hit with the electricity. Hell, he thought; we might even have restarted his heart for a moment.
In Johnstown, Altman was concealing his pistols out behind the church.
****
Toronto
On the Mainland and on the Islands
Two days before Button Day
Lester the ex-SEAL read the sign outside the Piazza Manna Bar and watched the traffic on the street, a habit left over from his time in Iraq. The traffic, though, was free of suicide bombers. They were inside a commercial building
, with the restaurant through a further set of glass doors.
"Special on spring rolls. I think spring rolls would be fine, though I wouldn't mind a roll or two in fall, either, especially with the waitress there." Sammy had a tendency to ramble, even if it meant pointing out the obvious. He didn't ramble, Lester knew, on a beach landing at night in Honduras, or in a centipede-infested hole in Nigeria. Not even on a hillside in Afghanistan, hidden behind a boulder. But back here in civilization, or as close to it as Toronto represented, the younger man seemed to like to keep sounds coming out of his mouth. Lester had long ago flipped a coin to decide whether to shoot him or ignore him. Someday he'd let Sammy know how the coin toss went.
They'd talked about eating at the Captain John's Restaurant, floating at dock across Queen's Quai, but they'd both had enough of boats before they retired, and even if their current mission was in Canada, both preferred too be in some place where there was more than one door out.
"Spring rolls," Lester agreed, still looking outside the window. The street was busy with people, most of them, in Lester's opinion, a little too easy on terrorists, like most Canadians. "Sounds fine to me." He watched the ferry come in from Ward's Island, across the harbor. He didn't like ferries especially, having taken one out in his younger years. They were just too vulnerable and full of strangers. "Let's do it," he said, holding the door open for Sammy. Spring rolls for lunch, and maybe a chocolate donut for Sammy for dessert.
"Glad to be back in Canada?" Sammy asked, when they were seated. "I rather prefer this to a lot of other places, even if we hardly ever get to shoot anybody here. Spies for spooks, that's what we've come to, isn't it? Spies for spies."
Lester grunted. Being an ex-SEAL got one odd jobs, if one went looking for them, and even if one ended up in Canada it was still better than fishing in Chesapeake Bay, which was where the Old Man spent his retirement. This job was going to pay a few bills, and he was glad to get it – after the Americans pulled out of Iraq there were too many trained (and half-trained) people looking to do "security work" anywhere in the world.
This was their fourth time in Canada, supposedly making sure certain Canadians were doing what they were supposed to do, even if international law said the two had no business doing just that.