Lovelace and Button (International Investigators) Inc. (28 page)

“Mister, you're making one hell of a big mistake,” he says. “Interfering with a CIA operation is a felony.”

“Not in Canada, it isn't,” says Phillips. “Now open the back doors for this officer, please.”

“You've no right to do this,” protests Buzzer. “This is government property. I demand you call the American consul. I know my rights.”

“You're kidding,” says Phillips. “Open the doors or we'll jimmy them open.”

“You're way out'a line, mister. I'm not entering the country — I'm leaving,” Buzzer is still ranting as Bliss steps forward and rips the vehicle's keys from his hand.

“Methinks he doth protest too much,” mutters the British officer as he leads Cranley to the rear and begins to unlock the door.

“You've no right to search my vehicle,” shouts Buzzer.

“That's where you're wrong,” says Phillips, still holding the men at gunpoint. “This vehicle isn't legally
registered. So we assume it's stolen — unless you can prove otherwise.”

“I told you. It's a government vehicle.”

“Not
our
government,” says Phillips, “and that's the only government I answer to, whether you like it or not.”

“Salmon,” muses Cranley, as the open doors expose a deep steel container filled with dead fish.

“Just salmon,” echoes Bliss disappointedly.

“Where did you get these from?” asks Cranley, calling to the driver and his mate, but neither man answers.

“They must have picked them up from another trawler in Vancouver,” suggests Bliss.

“No,” says Cranley. “You're missing the point. These are
Atlantic
salmon.”

“So?”

“Well, this is the Pacific coast. The only Atlantic salmon here are from the fish farms, not from a trawler. Anyway, they've been frozen. Look at their eyes.”

Bliss peers into the dull sunken eyes of the salmon and finds no memory of life. “Come on, give me a hand,” he says as he starts to scoop the slimy fish aside. “There should be two men in here somewhere.”

“So, Mister,” says Station Chief Montague, as if offering the junior man a choice, “are you ready to show me around this joint or what?”

“I'd better just check…” starts Dawson, reaching for the phone to contact Bumface.

Three days of disasters instigated by his subordinate have left Dawson wary of the man's competence in dealing with Spotty Dick, Trina and Daphne, and he desperately wants some reassurance before venturing forth. But Montague is in a hurry and is quick to his feet. “Okay, then. I'll find my own way around.”

Dawson drops the phone and is at the door in a flash, demanding a guarantee. “This is an order — right?”

“Yes, Mr. Dawson, this is an order. Now get out of the way.”

Allan Wallace is someone else on the move, but unlike Montague he has no option.

“You'll be safe enough here if you keep your mouth shut,” Bumface warns his erstwhile partner as he leads him into a dilapidated outhouse on the building's grounds and brings out a pair of handcuffs.

“Watch the wrist!” howls the injured man at the sight of the manacles. “What are you going to do with the women?” he demands as Bumface shackles him to a steel water pipe.

“You're too f'kin soft — that's your problem, you dick. You didn't really think you'd get ‘em out of here, did you?”

“If you touch —” starts Wallace, but Bumface stops him. “Don't worry, Allan,” he sneers. “John and me will take good care of them.”

“You still haven't told me what this place is all about,” Montague prods as Dawson tours him, together with his muscular mate, past operating and recovery rooms that wouldn't be out of place in a ritzy New York clinic.

“Like I said — I just handle security,” claims Dawson, steering well clear of areas occupied by patients. “All I know is that it's kind'a sensitive.”

“C'mon, Dawson. Have you got a nasty cold or something? I could smell this place all the way over in Seoul. My information is that people are lining up to get in here. What are you offering — immortality or something?”

“They don't tell me.”

“
They?
” questions Montague. “Maybe I'm talking to the wrong person. Maybe I should be talking to
them
— whoever
they
are.”

Dawson pulls up sharp and plays his trump. “Look, sir, I've already put my career on the line by letting you in. I'm doing my best here — I'm showing you around. I want
you to see for yourself that this isn't Roswell. You won't find any little green men or flying saucers. But if any of the staff knew I'd broken protocol…” he pauses to let his words settle, adding. “Well, I'm sure you understand.”

Montague's raised eyebrows suggest otherwise, but he doesn't push the point. “Okay. But you'd better be levelling with me, Mister, ‘cos this place still stinks at the moment. And it sure as hell stinks to that cop who reckons you've got his women here.”

“I dunno what his problem is,” sneers Dawson as he continues the tour past laboratories and X-ray rooms. “What the hell would we do with them?”

“That's what I'd like to know,” complains Montague. “Exactly what would you do with women here?”

Bumface knows what he would do with Trina and Daphne, given a free hand, but he has been forced to put them back in the same room and promise them some undoped food. The reunification wasn't his idea. Trina yelling, “I'm gonna scream and keep screaming and screaming…” had left him little choice.

“And one more peep out of either of you…” he warns with a twitchy trigger finger as the two women joyfully embrace, but Daphne refuses to be browbeaten.

“And you'll do what?” she says, breaking away from Trina and using the strength of her voice to back him towards the door.

“Look, lady,” he tries with a forced smile, “we're doing our best to sort things out. Just behave, and who knows — another day or so and we should have you out of here. Aw'right?”

“Oh, listen to Pinocchio,” she laughs into his face, sensing that she has him on the run. “I seem to remember you saying that before.”

“Look,” he spits, “you just don't get it, do you? You're in America now — not some lefty, liberal, pot-smoking, pansy-loving democracy. We don't piss around here. So shut up.”

“Well,” says Daphne as the door closes behind him and the electronic lock clicks into place. “That's very interesting.”

“What?”

“According to Spotty Dick, they were going to rub us out… pull the plug… deep-six us, or whatever he called it in their language. But I think someone's persuaded them that it wasn't such a clever idea.”

“That's good —” starts Trina, but Daphne shushes her with a finger to her lips.

“I think the heat's on,” she whispers, sounding more like a hoodlum than a greying spinster as she ushers Trina away from the eye of the surveillance camera and into the bathroom. “Let's see how long it takes them to find us,” she adds, as she shuts the door and turns on the taps.

The next ten minutes pass with the slowness of a day on death row as the two women perch on the edge of the bath waiting for Dawson or Bumface to yell, “Come out of the bathroom, ladies.” However, Daphne is less surprised than Trina when nothing happens.

“I knew it. They've switched off the camera,” she says confidently, and she strolls into the bedroom to boldly confront the intrusive artefact.

Trina is more reticent. “What if they want us to try to escape so they can mow us down and claim they had no choice?”

“No,” says Daphne, pulling up a chair and staring straight into the lens. “They've had several chances to do that already. My guess is that David found my hanky and he's kicking up a storm. He might even be at the gates with a search warrant right now.”

Bliss isn't at the gates, nor does he have a warrant, but he is certainly planning on visiting the monastery in the very near future. Buzzer Busby and Reggie Jones, on the other hand, aren't going anywhere until they've explained the presence of a couple of confused Koreans in a concealed compartment under the fish tank in the back of their van. The attempted transportation of thirty-five thousand dollars in cash across the border is another matter they are being asked to explain.

“That's a crime, to start with,” says Roger Cranley, although no one in the vehicle is putting his hands up to owning the stuffed leather cash bag that had been stashed under the fish. In fact, neither of the low-level CIA men is talking, and neither are the Koreans, although an interpreter is on her way from Vancouver.

The most perplexing issue to Cranley is the fact that the Asians have valid U.S. passports. “Our immigration people say they look legit,” says Cranley. Then he flicks through the blank pages of the recently issued documents to make a point to Phillips and Bliss. “Look, no foreign stamps,” he says. “They can't use these to get into the States without someone wanting to know why they weren't stamped by a foreign agency.”

“But where have they been?” asks Bliss.

“I bet neither of them have ever been outside of Korea before,” says Cranley knowingly. “It's my guess that someone in the U.S. immigration office in Seoul is selling citizenships with a complete set of documents to match.”

“That would be pricey,” mutters Phillips.

“You bet it would,” agrees Cranley. “Of course, I may be wrong, but I'll get the Americans to run the reference numbers through their systems. They should be able to give us an answer straight away —”

“Wait a minute,” cuts in Phillips. “What if Busby and Jones are genuine CIA, and these documents are
straight? The monastery could be some kind of bona fide government operation.”

“Finally, Mike!” exclaims Bliss, throwing his hands in the air in the background. “I've been trying to tell you that for the last three days.”

“Then why smuggle people in via Canada?”

“Don't ask me,” shrugs Bliss.

“And why risk exposing it by kidnapping the women?”

“Ditto.”

“Okay,” says Phillips. “So, where to now?”

The name LeBlanc means nothing to the American border officer as he checks Daisy's passport and visitor's visa thirty minutes later.

“May I ask the purpose of your visit to the United States, ma'am?” asks the unsuspecting man.

“
Oui
. I have to fly home from Seattle tomorrow morning,” she says, flourishing her return ticket, and within seconds she is headed south towards Seattle. Behind her, Mike Phillips keeps his head down at the wheel of Buzzer's Ford van, and is relieved when the officer simply glances at the vehicle's registration plate and waves him through.

“Ah, the power of the CIA,” muses Phillips.

“I really have to stop travelling this way,” Bliss says ten minutes later, once the van has pulled off the highway and he has been hauled out of the hidden compartment by Phillips and Daisy. “I'll travel with you,” he carries on, taking the Frenchwoman's hand and leading her towards her car. “It's our last day together.”

“
Daavid?
” questions Daisy. “Don't you mean zhat it is our
first
day together?”

Bliss stops thoughtfully. “I am so sorry,” he begins as he takes her in his arms and tries to kiss her, but she backs off with a grimace.

“Ugh,
Daavid,
” she cuts in, turning up her nose at his jacket. “I zhink zhat I prefer zhe bananas.”

“Oh. Fish!” he mutters, now wishing that he had slipped across the border in the trunk of Daisy's car as he'd originally planned. He is still trying to brush off salmon scales and slime when she hops into the rented car and locks the doors.

“I zhink maybe you should stay in zhe van,” she laughs through a crack in the window, adding cheekily, “Unless you want me to take all of your clothes off.”

“Now
that
sounds like an interesting proposition,” sniggers Phillips as they get into the van, though Bliss is less sure.

“I'm beginning to wonder if it'll ever happen,” he sighs dejectedly, realizing that he's hardly been out of his clothes all week. “She goes home tomorrow morning.”

“Let's hope we get lucky today, then,” says Phillips as they drive off, although he still has reservations about their plan, and it certainly wasn't an idea popular with Cranley.

“I can't let you do this,” the Canadian customs officer had protested with a grave face when Phillips had outlined his intention to use the CIA vehicle to smuggle Bliss into the States and gatecrash the monastery. “That vehicle is evidence in a criminal case.”

“Don't worry, Roger,” Philips had replied. “I'll give you my personal guarantee that we'll bring it back in one piece.”

“I don't know…” Cranley had wavered.

“Okay,” Bliss had said, apparently giving in. “As long as you can live with the blood of two women on your hands.”

“We could get twenty years apiece for doing this,” Phillips continues as they head south with Daisy tailing them in the rented Toyota.

“Stop worrying, Mike. It's an unregistered vehicle,” Bliss reminds him. “Anyway, think of the press coverage we'd get: two foreign cops riding to the rescue of a couple of defenceless women being held prisoner by the U.S. government.”

“
If
they are…” says Phillips, still not completely convinced.

While “prisoners” may correctly describe the women's status, “defenceless” is an epithet that could get Bliss into a lot of trouble were he to repeat it in their presence. And now that they are refreshed and reunited, it is a state of affairs Daphne and Trina are working to rectify.

“Maybe we should do an experiment,” suggests Daphne, still with her eyes on the surveillance camera, and Trina jumps in enthusiastically.