Deadline (2 page)

Flanagan had run out of questions. He put his notebook away. “Can I have a look at him?”

She led him to the private room where Ed Sawatski lay underneath a white sheet and blanket. He was connected to a respirator, a heart monitor and an IV drip.

“I thought you said he was breathing on his own,” said Flanagan.

“Yes,” said the doctor, “he is, but we don’t want to take any chances so we’ll leave him on the respirator for now.”

Flanagan stared down at the thin, handsome, blank face. By looking through his wallet on the banks of the canal, he had learned that Sawatski was a 28-year-old staffer on Parliament Hill, but he didn’t know much more. The young man had close-cropped sandy hair and a little goatee. He was very pale. Flanagan peered at him but the face told him nothing. He took out his digital camera and took several pictures.

“Can I pull back the blankets for a moment, doctor?” he asked.

Dr. Singh walked over and felt her patient’s head with the back of her hand.

“Okay,” she said, “but please be quick. His temperature is still low.”

Flanagan pulled the blankets down carefully. Sawatski was wearing a hospital gown.

Flanagan took a picture, then lowered the camera.

“Tell me, doctor,” he said, pointing at Sawatski’s wrists, where there was a dull blue discoloration. “Did you notice those marks when you examined him?”

“No,” she said. “What is it?”

“I believe those are handcuff bruises,” he said. “Looks like we might have an attempted murder on our hands.”

Jack Macdonald awoke with a start and sat up straight in bed when he heard the first trill of his cell phone. He opened his eyes and in a flash felt the hangover: sandpaper mouth, throbbing head, cramped lungs. He blinked his sore, dry eyes to clear his fuzzy vision, and looked around in confusion at his room, strewn with dirty clothes. He squinted. The clock said 9:30 a.m. The phone rang again.

“Lord Jesus,” he croaked.

He looked down and noted with surprise that he had slept in his suit, on top of the blankets, on his back.

When the phone rang a third time, he turned his head and discovered he had a kink in his neck.

The BlackBerry was in the side pocket of his jacket. He grabbed it and cleared his throat but his voice still sounded hoarse and froggy: “Hello. Jack Macdonald.”

“Hello,” said a woman’s voice. “I’m calling for Ed Sawatski.”

“Well, you’ve got Jack Macdonald here,” he said.

The woman was silent for a moment.

“That’s odd,” she said. “He left me a message yesterday, said it was important that I call him at this number, and only at this number.”

Jack wanted desperately to end the conversation. His neck hurt, and he urgently needed to pee.

“I’m sorry, but he must have left you the wrong number,” he said. “We’re friends. Maybe he got mixed up, told you my number by mistake. Why don’t you leave me your name and number and I’ll get him to call you back.”

The woman paused before she spoke. “Mr. Sawatski’s message said that he works in the office of the justice minister, and that it was important that I call,” she said. “Do you work with him there? I’m trying to figure out why someone from the justice minister’s office would call me.”

Macdonald got out of bed and shuffled toward the bathroom. “No, ma’am,” he said. “I’m a reporter for the
Evening Telegram
. I have no idea why he would call you. He and I were out together last night. Perhaps he had my phone number on his mind. I’m sure he’ll get in touch, though, once I let him know.”

Macdonald stood in the bathroom, aching to get off the phone.

“Oh, you’re a Newfoundlander,” she said. “So am I. Is Mr. Sawatski also? It doesn’t sound like a Newfoundland name.”

“Yes,” he said. “He is a Newfoundlander. We went to Memorial University together. Want me to get him to call you?”

She paused again. “Very well. Tell him, please, that Ida Gushue returned his call. I’ll be out for a time this morning but I’ll be in this afternoon.”

“I’ll let him know right away. Thanks,” he said, and hung up before the conversation could drag on any longer.

He peed for a long time, drank some water from his cupped hands and swallowed three Tylenol. He barely recognized the face in the mirror, with its matted dark hair, deep bags under bloodshot eyes, its pale, blotchy, stubbly skin. He wanted nothing more than to get back in bed, but he was already a half-hour late for work and had to get moving.

He walked carefully to the kitchen, rinsed a dirty cup and filled it with yesterday’s cold coffee. He choked some of it down, fumbled in his suit jacket for his cigarettes, and lit one. The smoke hurt his lungs, but he needed the nicotine. He leaned on the sill of the grimy window and looked out at the snow falling on the parking lot. He drank coffee, smoked and tentatively moved his neck, trying to work out the kink. The cheap window rattled as the wind blew the snow against it, and he could feel the cold coming in.

After his coffee and cigarette, he went back to his bedroom, where he spent a few unpleasant minutes trying to find clean clothes, before concluding that the rumpled suit he was wearing was the cleanest thing he had, despite the wine stain on the left lapel. Back in the bathroom he undressed, hung the jacket on a hanger next to the shower so the steam would take out some of the wrinkles, and stood there for a long time, letting the hot water work on his neck. After he’d towelled off and dressed in his bedroom, moving carefully to protect his neck, he picked up the BlackBerry from the bedside table to call Sawatski. He punched in his password, but it didn’t work. He gaped at the screen:

Ed Sawatski


Property of:


Department of Justice, Office of the Minister


613 555-0139


Macdonald grabbed the holster on his belt and pulled out his own phone. In his foggy state, he hadn’t noticed that he was in possession of two BlackBerrys. He sat down on the edge of his bed and tried to work out why he had a cell phone in each hand.

Stevens paused when they reached the last of the agenda items for the day. He looked down at his notes, and then around at the twenty-eight faces at the long oak table – twenty-seven cabinet ministers and his chief of staff. They were seated around the huge, wooden table in the cabinet room of the Centre Block on Parliament Hill, one floor above the foyer of the House of Commons.

“There’s one piece of new business,” he said as he looked around the table. “This morning I told Karen that I’ve decided not to lead the party into the next election.”

For a moment all twenty-eight sat in stunned silence. He watched their expressions change from blank to surprise.

“I want to thank all of you for your work with me over the months and years,” he said, raising his voice as an excited murmur spread around the table.

“Mais, c’est pas possible!”

He had been interrupted – a first in all the cabinet meetings he had chaired – by Geneviève Beauregard, the minister of heritage. She was a lightweight who had to be heavily coached by her staff for even the simplest speech or debate, but she was well-liked by her cabinet colleagues, in part because of her honesty and emotion when she was away from the microphones.

“Pas maintenant,” she said, her voice pleading now, her eyes near tears. “Monsieur le premier ministre, pas maintenant. Pas déjà. Non.”

Stevens smiled at the interruption and looked at Beauregard with real warmth in his eyes.

“Désolé, Geneviève,” he said. “J’ai décidé. It’s time to pass the torch.”

The finance minister, stodgy, grey-haired Prentice Staunton, a former banker from Vancouver, interrupted him next.

“Forgive me, Prime Minister,” he said. “But for the sake of the party, for the sake of the country, I think you should reconsider.”

“Thank you, Prentice,” said Stevens. “But no. My decision is made.”

He smiled and looked around the table.

“I expect some of you have more mixed feelings than Prentice and Geneviève,” he said, and he winked. “And, in truth, my feelings are mixed. There are more things I would like to have done. And it’s never easy for a governing party to go through a leadership campaign. But the timing isn’t going to be any better in six months, or a year, and I am convinced that we need new leadership before the next election.”

He looked down and straightened the already tidy pile of papers in front of him.

“I’ve led the Conservatives through three elections, and we’ve won all three, thank goodness,” he said. “And I’m pretty sure I could lead us to another election victory, even if the Liberals come to their senses and get rid of Pinsent before then.”

Everyone at the table laughed, a welcome relief of tension in the room. He allowed himself another of his tiny smiles.

“But I promised Karen before the last election that this would be the last one. I was hoping she would change her mind, but she hasn’t. If I’m going to go before the next election, I think now is the time to announce it,” he said. “I propose stepping down at the beginning of March break. That will give us time to pass our legislative agenda – and I want all of you to push hard to get these bills through. The new leader can take over then, which will give him time --” He stopped himself. “That would give her, or him, time to reorganize the government and shuffle the cabinet before the second winter session begins. It will be up to the next leader, of course, to decide on this, but I think a new prime minister could bring in a new budget, and then campaign on it in the spring.

“This means a three-month leadership campaign, which is on the short side, but I don’t think a governing party can afford a longer one. And I can’t afford to lose any of you right now.”

He looked around the table, making eye contact with one minister after another.

“I suspect the next prime minister is sitting at this table,” he said. “It’s not up to me, but I’d be surprised if anyone else can get organized in time to take the leadership, not with a three-month campaign. They’re welcome to try – and anything can happen in a campaign – but I think one of you will be the next prime minister, I hope a better prime minister than I’ve been. But I can’t afford to let any of you resign from cabinet. I want all of you to stay where you are until the end of the session.”

He looked out the window at the grey sky and the broad lawn, covered with a thin blanket of fresh snow. “That’s not going to be easy to balance. It’s not easy to run a federal department and a leadership campaign, but then it’s not as hard as it is to be prime minister.”

Stevens was determined to keep his usual tight rein on his cabinet in his last months as prime minister. If his ministers had to stay at the table, they could hardly afford to defy him during the leadership race.

“If I get the sense, at any time, that any of you are neglecting your ministerial duties, I will ask for your resignation,” he said, looking around the table, eyes hard now. “I have no intention of being a lame duck.”

He smiled, his face suddenly softening.

“I’m sure it won’t be necessary to remind any of you of that,” he said. “And I don’t want to discourage any of you from running. We need a good race. I intend to stay out of it, absolutely neutral, at least until I mark my ballot at the leadership convention. That goes for my staff as well.

“I’m planning on holding a news conference after Question Period, at the National Press Theatre, to tell Canadians that they won’t have Bruce Stevens to kick around much longer.”

They laughed again.

“Until then,” he said, “I’d like you to keep this news to yourselves. All right?”

He looked around the table as they all nodded.

“Okay then,” he said, and stood up. “Back to work.”