The Leaves in Winter (48 page)

“Just a minute.” She clutched her phone from lab coat pocket.

“I want to send Colin something. Maybe that asshole will figure it out.”

She gave the text one last look, selected message forwarding, and pressed send.

411 \\\ vac 4 3P exists! me 2 get & give 2 u asap 1 way or other ///

Chapter 46

Curtis Labon’s Estate

Quebec Province
,
Canada

The crunch of snow was underfoot but unheard beneath the noise of machinery. Curtis walked beside the job foreman and listened to a progress report. Around them stretched ten thousand acres of wilderness that encircled Labon’s private lake. His home property was a special refuge from the clamor and craziness of the world.

No more than today.

A skip loader carried dirt from a leveled-off area cleared of brush. Not far away, a newly-in-place pre-fabricated building received finishing touches. The impressive structure would soon function as a small warehouse. Its twin roll-up doors were open and forklifts shuttled in and out with goods being unloaded from the back of a semi-truck.

“Tomorrow we start on the fuel tanks.” The foreman motioned to a plot of land behind the building. “First the gasoline tank gets buried then the propane tank will be set up on that clearing. We widened the drive-up access like you said.”

“What about the perimeter fence?” asked Curtis.

“We got the one you wanted.” The foreman lifted a clipboard. “One other thing; it’s about this stock order. Are you sure these figures are right?”

Curtis gave a glance and walked on. “What’s the problem?”

“Oh, no problem. It’s just a hell of a lot of stuff. When it first got called in I thought someone in my office heard wrong. I mean, it’d take a couple of years and one hungry group to eat through all of this.”

Stopping at the door of his SUV, Curtis obliged with a condescending smile. “I like to have enough on hand. It cuts down on trips into town for supplies.”

The foreman backed away. “I guess it would. All right, I’ll get back at it.”

“You do that. Good job. Thank you.”

Curtis got behind the steering wheel and started the engine. A blast of air shot from heater vents and the center console television lit up with a CBC sports report. Despite the reporter’s impassioned account of last night’s game between the Vancouver Canucks and the San Jose Sharks, Curtis failed to take notice.

He sat as the car idled and watched the transformation – his idyllic estate was becoming a survivalist compound. To think that such a thing might be necessary was one thing. To watch it happen for real was sobering and put things in perspective. A world losing most of its people was horrendous enough. But not having the means to self-protect against what was killing them was unbearable.

And center to his thoughts.

He put the car in gear and started up the gravel path headed for the main house. The sports report ended and a recap of hourly headlines took its place. He half-listened until news of a jet crash in the Swiss Alps caught his attention. The mention of two names in particular caused him to step on the brake and watch intently.

“…Hasuru Tamasu, Heinrich Jaeger…”

He reached for his phone and dialed a number only recently put on speed dial.

“Hannah…it’s Labon. Have you seen the news?”

The woman’s voice was rushed and distracted.

“Ah, no, I’m in the middle of something.”

Curtis ignored her clear indication of being interrupted.

“Aren’t we all. I have another job for you.”

Reserved, Hannah’s tone became more focused with marginal interest.

“You have something else that needs to disappear?”

“No, at least not yet.” Forming a plan, Curtis watched the CBC broadcast showing brief bios of wealthy crash victims. “A private jet went down in the
Alps
. It left Lugano headed for
Basel
. Several important people were onboard. I need to know if it really was an accident.”

Hannah filled the pause on the line with a quizzical moan.

“…I don’t know. Where does one start with that?”

“That’s up to you. You can have whatever resources you need.”

“Oh, OK,” huffed Hannah. “Would that includes MI-6, the CIA and Mossad?”

“What are you saying? You can’t do it?”

“I’m saying it’s a tall order. If the crash was an accident, there’s nothing to find. How will I know when to stop looking? If it wasn’t an accident, it’s a sure bet someone’s working hard to make scarce any facts you want.”

Curtis hadn’t expected this resistance. It only highlighted his vulnerability. Forays into covert work had become necessary only in the past couple of years. What started with private investigations ultimately had led to Hannah’s operation to silence Oliver Ross. Her questions now pointed out how much his approach suffered from a lack of cohesiveness and sophistication.

“You’ll have all the intelligence at my disposal.”

“Can I hire other operatives?”

“Why? Can’t you go at this full time?”

“It’s not that. The scope of what you’re asking is beyond one person.”

A work truck came up the single-lane road behind the SUV.

Curtis glanced into the rear-view mirror and let the truck wait.

“As usual, I prefer those involved kept to a bare minimum.”

Hannah hardened with the prospect of taking on business set up to fail.

“And you need an answer as soon as possible…”

Curtis held back his angered impatience. He simply expected too much of a limited tool. Faced with that fact set him uneasy but the pressure of events demonstrated how ill-prepared he was in critical ways. He had called Hannah on impulse expecting to order up an answer as easily as he had ordered food for his survival stores. He saw the folly of that now and yet, the threat to his security was obvious. Options for a timely response were few.

He had no choice but to press her to take the case.

“I need an answer as soon as you get one. Give it whatever effort you can spare. I really need eyes on this. Are you willing to look into it or not?”

Hannah relented. “I’ll do what I can. I can’t promise anything.”

“Keep me posted, even if nothing’s happening.”

As the line went dead, Curtis tossed the phone onto the passenger seat in frustration. He gunned the engine and spun wheels in the compacted snow and gravel. Shifting into four-wheel drive, he got the SUV moving up the road with the waiting truck tagging along behind.

The phone rang. He leaned over and grabbed it, expecting to hear Hannah with a question. Instead, it was a member of the household staff.

“Sir, just a reminder, your son Noah is expected to arrive in a few minutes.”

“Yes, of course. Don’t bother sending the car. I’ll pick him up.”

Curtis steered for the helipad weighed down with unexpected restlessness and anxiety. On the heels of disturbing news from
Switzerland
and Hannah’s reluctance to assist, the prospect of a reunion with his estranged son now seemed taxing. He never expected such a meeting to be easy but the way he felt promised to make it even more difficult.

At the helipad, Curtis waited as the helicopter flew in from the south, hovered to get orientated, then landed. As he watched, he reflected. Noah would graduate from college this year. The last time they saw each other, Noah had just become a teenager. The divorce came soon after. It was brutal in many ways but none crueler for Curtis than the loss of connection between father and son.

The intervening years had not been kind and the estrangement had only grown, not softened. Noah’s emotional resentments had found intellectual support when the lures of class warfare and environmental causes took hold of his idealism. Noah rejected family position and wealth. Instead, he embraced militant expressions of a rebellion that Curtis believed had roots far more personal than political.

The helicopter door opened and a young man hustled out from under the spinning blades. He hopped into the SUV’s passenger seat and avoided prolonged eye contact with the driver.

“I’m glad you could make it,” offered Curtis.

Properly antagonistic, Noah mumbled back, “Mom said it was important.”

Curtis was put on notice; Noah had only agreed to come because of his mother’s suggestion. That was quite all right with Curtis. He had worked long and hard to get her to intercede. It was unfortunate that it took dire innuendoes about global changes to persuade her to help.

The drive back to the house was short but long enough to establish how tense and awkward father and son felt in each other’s presence. Curtis noticed that Noah arrived without suitcase of any kind. No doubt it signaled he didn’t intend on staying. Curtis forged ahead anyway, requesting house staff to show him to his room.

Noah protested. “No one said anything about sleeping over. I’d rather get to the point of why I’m here.”

“Very well…” Curtis waved off the staff member with a forced smile. “We’ll be in the family room. We’ll need privacy.”

Curtis led Noah from the entrance hallway to the back of the house. They entered the expansive family room where on three sides windows looked out over the lake and wilderness beyond.

Noah stepped to a window. “How much of that out there is yours?”

“As much as you can see.” Curtis was in no mood to be apologetic about all his life’s labor had gotten him.

“I guess the helicopter too.”

Curtis fixed himself a drink. “It belongs to a company I own.”

Noah turned and stepped around the room inspecting the furnishings. “Why should any one person have so much when so many go without?”

“As a matter of fact, natural resources
are
limited but wealth isn’t. There’s no limit to how far the money supply can expand. One simply prints more dollars as new value is added to the marketplace.”

Noah chuckled. “The marketplace…nothing but a rigged game.”

“The problem with your way of thinking, you think wealth is a zero-sum pie with only so many pieces to go around. If that were true, then tell me – who had all the collective wealth that exists now a hundred years ago? The truth is, there’s more millionaires today than ever.”

“And they got that way by exploiting people.”

“I guess that includes your favorite music groups, sports stars, the princes of social networking, and the purveyors of
the inconvenient truth
. Wealth is all right in some hands but not others?”

“Some people don’t have to cheat, steal, and lie to get it.”

Curtis tired of the expected exchange. “I can hardly argue with someone who is only willing to parrot slogans and sound bites heard at the last rally they attended.”

“A slogan is more precise and relevant than the same old excuses…”

“So how much should one have? Where would
you
draw the line?”

Noah flopped down on a couch. “Equity.”

“You mean equally rich or equally poor?”

“You
would
put it that way, wouldn’t you.”

“I’ve thought it through.” Curtis sat at the wet bar. “You see, by the time you are my age there will be nine billion people on the planet requiring equity. I wonder if you’re really prepared to accept the standard of living true equity would entail.”

“Here we go. The same old scare tactics…”

Curtis drew a steady gaze on his boy. “As much as it may disappoint, I didn’t ask you to come here to debate macroeconomic theory.”

“That’s a relief.”

Curtis downed the rest of his drink. “Yes, well, there’s only so much either of us can bear when it comes to that.”

“What’s your point? You want to debate family history instead?”

Determined to get through this, Curtis set his mind on the task at hand.

“I know we haven’t been close the past few years. It’s obvious you disapprove of my work and lifestyle.”

Mention of it prompted Noah’s anger. “Yeah, are you still raping a whole province to get rich off oil sands?”

Curtis snapped back, “And are you still driving a car? Have you been using any one of millions of products produced with oil? Have you even bothered to find out which ones those are? Where’s your commitment to act locally, think globally?”