Borderless Deceit (6 page)

The girl struck me as a certain type, the way she laid on the gaiety. Some people rehearse that mood. And what about the rings, here and
there and everywhere, and the strange, discoloured strand of hair? She seemed to want to come across as punk, yet had stopped halfway.

The Czar turned serious. His voice dropped. But it wasn't long before his hyperbole seeped in. And so the watchers, like soldiers away at a war who are deprived of their loved ones, settled down to being entertained. As for me, as my contempt for the performance grew, I began to glower, kicking myself for having shown up. I should have concluded before I came in that it would waste my time.

That was because I knew Heywood personally. Our paths had crossed years before, in the days when he was doing global disarmament and I was an intelligence analyst studying the Warsaw Pact. When the Cold War ended Heywood switched to another part of the Service: personnel matters and overseas assignments. In his overbearing way he referred to it as Investitures and busied himself doling out ambassadorial positions to people who suddenly were his best friends. Some years later he moved up one rung higher still on the Service ladder and changed his style. Religious solemnity was gone. The metaphor became one of absolutism and of empire. Soon enough everyone referred to him as
Czar
.

And now with his great circumference and soft corpulence, he was telling us he had been entrusted with
full carte blanche
. He explained he was conferring with
key players
. The aim was
to coalesce strengths and integrate capabilities – to fuse technical excellence with powerful analysis – to put every Service shoulder to the wheel of comprehending why and how the plague set in
.

Heywood became expansive, palms opening, spreading, and rising. In the pose of an evangelist he informed us of his
policy
: the network would be rebuilt fast, but
the number one priority of all priorities
was to re-establish access for us, the watchers. We had to get back to taking the pulse of the world's depravity. He expected every individual in the little common room to sniff around cyberspace, to comb through global information dumps, probe for evidence, dig up and analyse debris, and come up with clues pertinent to the plague. A complete picture had to be assembled. And anything we found was to be shared with Jaime. Jaime would review the data and run corroborating tests. The breezy girl beside him would fashion a composite picture so as to furnish everyone with
new collective enlightenment
.

Groans filled the room. From where did the Czar get his jokes?

Heywood wouldn't be thrown off.
In her field she's tops…an Einstein…take my word for it
.

When it sunk in that he was serious, that he was handing power to his sunny young companion, alarm could be felt rippling through the room. The watchers were a guild; they had traditions; they had rights; never before had they reported to an outsider. One voice after another expressed concern that lines of authority were getting smudged.

Heywood backtracked smoothly. The young genius beside him would
arrange
the input, he insisted,
co-ordinate
the parts,
create a total picture
to spin a web…
so the turkeys that did it will get all tangled up
. She would
receive
information,
not
give orders. Orders would remain the prerogative of Francis Merrick. Still, the cascading restlessness was forcing the Czar to change tack and he resorted to an age-old imperial trick: he turned jingoist.

No one sullies the Service and gets away with it!

I recall, in the disarmament years, Heywood often was this way, making cheap appeals to chauvinism and other such instruments for manipulating mass opinion. He and I hadn't got along. I still tighten up when I think how in those days he would casually inform me that he wanted me to recast my intelligence analyses. He didn't care whether input from me, or anyone else, was accurate or distorted, or even entirely contrived, as long as it supported his viewpoint. His porous standards, the absence of rigour, the artful ploys – it would set my blood boiling. I refused to go along. Tersely I once said, “You may not agree, but that's my professional opinion and I'm not about to change one word.”

His reply? “In that case, we shall once again ignore it.”

Back then, he was merely stout, but now his girth took in the universe, and the dozen years since had thinned his hair to a few tufts. It was this unlikely czar, this caricature, this loose sail flapping in the wind, who was inviting us to join him in a flaky operation to root out the causes of the plague. It pained me.

Beausejour had been switching his weight impatiently from one foot to the other trying to interrupt. But! he would begin, or, Wait! and, Can I ask?… But Heywood's loping oratory couldn't be stopped. He made a show of looking us in the eye, one by one, following which
he engineered a majestic half-turn to gaze past the struggling geraniums to the wintry happenings outside. The snow was blowing around on violent gusts of arctic wind. The chaos seemed to inspire him. Eventually his eyes came to mine and rested a moment before continuing their sweep. To this day I can't say what exactly transpired. He appeared to be sending me some kind of thunderbolt. Was it to renew our mutual aversion? Did he wish to confirm that bad memories still lingered? Or was it suspicion? Was he guessing that, just as in former times, I knew more than he about the things of which he spoke?

Arthur's opportunity came. He described how for months he had been on the trail of a gang of pseudo-Mennonites controlled from Hamburg which operated mission schools on every continent. In Latin America bogus pastors had swarmed out to little, start-up congregations. They supported cottage industries in the countryside and helped small companies with micro-financing to allow their products to enter the global marketplace. The gang's tentacles reached deep into coca country. A firm on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, owned by an outwardly devout member of that religious conviction, specialized in cut flowers imported from a cooperative in Uruguay. With the fresh flowers came little packets of preservatives for adding to water to keep the bouquets looking vigorous longer. But the little packets contained substituted substances and in this way the syndicate was flooding the Toronto market not only with spectacular carnations, stunning lilies and marvellous birds of paradise, but plenty of good cocaine alongside. Beausejour had figured out the links. He had assembled the full picture: names, telephone intercepts, copies of bills of landing, flight data, the comings and goings of containers, everything. Except, the evidence was digital, had sat on a server; and that server had gone to hell. Where, Beausejour asked, were the back-up tapes? When would they be copied back into a new network?

The Czar gave a polite political reply, answering without saying anything. Beside him, his vixen produced an enigmatic, knowing smile.

That look – an invitation to share life's mysteries – it pierced me. Never mind that it took place in public, or that it was directed at nobody, and had nothing to do with me. The smile with its comprehending quality
jolted me because it was Rachel's smile. For an instant Rachel seemed to be standing by the Czar. There was no other resemblance, of course. This girl was slight, half trendy and half punk. Rachel was refined and elegant and tall. In every respect they were miles apart. Yet, the abrupt flash of similarity filled me with a feeling of defilement. It seemed that a place where I was accustomed to roaming alone, where I found peace contemplating Rachel, had been infiltrated, and it infuriated me. How dare this Jaime From-Up-North violate my privacy?

Recovering, annoyed at the disorientation, I studied her a bit. She was playing with her hair, constantly sweeping it out of her face and back over her head, or fixing it behind her ears. And why that one strand coloured in platinum? To be unique, or appear glamorous? And there was the metal too, the nostril ring, earrings long as braids, bracelets weighing down her wrists and eyebrow loops which looked like barnyard tethering things. What was she saying with all that? Mostly, though, I wondered why she flogged the world with such excessive cheerfulness.

As I peered at her, my hostility deepened. Was this a knee-jerk reaction, a sign of mind-blindness? Months later, I saw it was. But how could I have known that moment that she was not what she seemed to be – a piece of fluff drifting in from somewhere up the valley? How could I have predicted that a day would come when she, having thoroughly outwitted me, would be dangling the keys to my demise before my eyes? How could I have anticipated that Jaime, who may not have been nearly as young as she appeared, would throw those keys away and, as agent for my enlightenment, treat me with generosity and grace?

But all that was to come. For the moment, on that wintry day in the common room, the transient smile from Jaime cheapened a memory I held dear.

We were in the grip of winter then too; for weeks the city had been mired in a record-breaking deep freeze. Rachel had joined the Service a year before, had just finished as trainee and was assigned to a group which, after the demise of the Soviet Empire, was working to put Russia on its feet. I had done an analysis of the financial system of that
sad country, answering practical questions about the former communist party apparatchiks who had grabbed ownership of the banks and were advancing the interests of the post-Soviet mafiosi. There was a planning meeting for a delegation going to Moscow. Rachel would be a junior member. The meeting was long. My turn came. I delivered facts. I mentioned names, described secret loans and kick-back schemes, produced statistics on illegal international financial flows, and set out reasons why nothing in Russia would work, how all money – ours too – would get siphoned off, or be otherwise appropriated.

“Write all that down in a brief, won't you, Carson,” said Yablonski. He was running the meeting. He would be responsible for negotiating an assistance package for the Russians. “I'll review it on the plane.” I said I couldn't do that and he ought to know that. Highly classified information can't just be taken anywhere, most certainly not to Russia. I was unable to keep my voice from being prickly. Yablonski responded. “For crying out loud. You guys in Analysis, always thinking you've got the inside dope when the stuff's in all the papers anyway.” I stuck to my guns. Yablonski complained he'd be prevented from doing his job. The standoff didn't last.

“That's the way it is,” I ruled. “All I can do is give you a more detailed verbal briefing.” Yablonski snarled that he'd see about that and moved on. Rachel was keeping the notes. When the meeting ended the participants scattered, but she remained. She was interested to know more about Russia-behind-the-scenes.

I knew her slightly. A year earlier when she had just joined the Service she had been a trainee observer in another meeting. Heywood had chaired that one and there had been a terrific standoff then too, between him and me. It got so bad that he had asked me to leave. I hadn't run into him since. Rachel's friendliness now, her fascination with my work, her bright mind and convivial presence affected me. In the deserted meeting room my explanations flowed, but bit by bit the conversation moved beyond the hopelessness of Russia. We reached another level, unusual for me; Rachel and I began to talk as easily as backpackers out on the trail. Rachel was from Oak Lake.
Wherever is that?
It turned out to be a hamlet in southern Manitoba. It had a farm machinery dealership whose owner had three sons and one daughter, and the daughter decided when she was young that she would grow up
to be a diplomat and live in the great capitals of the world.

That was the first time Rachel sent me
her
invitation to complicity,
her
fleeting smile,
her
deep comprehension of what I was thinking. It set my pulse racing. Some days that look is all that is in my brain.

Well, why not?
was my reply to Rachel's desire to live on a vast scale. She then said that when she was little she used to turn the Oak Lake house into a continent, each room was a different country, and she went from room to room giving speeches to local audiences about Canada's greatness.

Once more that look of intimate alliance. It made her more beautiful still. I desired to say nothing, to study the fine proportions of her face for an hour, but all I dared was to send her a few furtive glances.

The conversation wandered. No, she didn't think the Ottawa winter was that cold; relative to Oak Lake it was balmy. And Rachel liked the canal where she could be found on the weekends skating. And she loved cross-country skiing too, the colder the better. It wasn't the talk of winter that warmed me; it was her openness to ideas and to doing things. As we parted – she going back to a bureaucratic cubicle to render service to Yablonski, and I, beguiled, to a world behind sliding doors devoid of passion – I felt light and buoyant.

Back at my desk I stared at the ceiling. What had I seen in Rachel? Quickness and eagerness. A readiness to know. An acceptance of others. A desire to experience. And beyond her sublime features and shining ash-blond hair, a beauty I found difficult to pin down. The more I pondered her, the more an idealisation set in. Sitting in my cell, I began to see her qualities before me as a work of art suspended in mid-air. It was so fine that my breathing turned irregular. I struggled to grasp the artwork, to seize and hold it, to turn the essence of the hour we spent chatting into an object I might press against me. The impossibility of it only gave me a deep ache which has been with me since.

Of course, I had seen an absence of innocence as well. Which is another way of saying I saw eroticism ready to break out. Already then, that winter day, having barely met her, I saw Rachel's future in her eyes: the parade of lovers in Vienna, the affair in Geneva with the Berlin banker, and, once she had been named ambassador, the weekends of
luxury on the Egyptian's yacht. I became addicted to understanding, even pursuing, that absence of innocence. I fell under its spell, its compelling humanity, its determination to live life fully and its insistence not to repress inner forces. I became incapable of breaking out of that addiction. Then when the opportunity came along to know more about Rachel, to search out things I had no right to know, I gave in. I lacked the moral strength not to.