Snow Job (46 page)

“You’re buying out Alta International,” Clara said.

All three of them looked surprised. A good guess — their unexpected solicitude toward the Calgary Five had inspired it.

Their chairman, thick-necked Lord Stokely-Finn, harrumphed. “Quite. Indeed. And when the two companies are integrated, some sizable capital investments will follow. We see a robust future in Canada, and intend to become a much bigger player here. A petrol station network will soon be in place, as well as a refinery in Sascratchewan –”

“Saskatchewan, sir.” Their chief counsel. His Lordship went red, but, Clara suspected, more with annoyance than embarrassment.

He cleared his throat. “Let me assure you as well, Prime Minister, that we are solidly behind your party’s program for prosperity and are prepared to support it by any means you care to suggest.”

Clara was insulted, was tempted to tell them to stick their dirty money up their anus.

“All we ask is that your government take, shall we say, a fresh look at the criminal charges against Mr. Quilter and his associates.”

“When the moon turns blue,” Clara said. “This meeting is over.”

“If I may interrupt your pacing, the Wolverine team is assembling.” Percival shut the door of Clara’s office, handed her some briefing notes. “Minutes of our session with those cheeky fellows from Anglo. I have copies for distribution. I was able to corral a dozen cabinet ministers. We’re set up in the war room.”

Clara stared bleakly out the window at a lone scraggly griever, out of step with the trying times, vainly seeking signatures to legalize LSD. “Tune out, turn out, drop out,” said his hallucinogenically garbled placard.

Why hadn’t she had the gumption to call in the RCMP, bust those three hypocritical quislings from Anglo? She’d checked the Criminal Code, it was in plain language:
Everyone commits high treason who, in Canada, assists an enemy at war with Canada
. They’d be the heroes, though, if they sprang the five Albertans, and she’d have egg on her face. How pompous of them to set themselves up as the engineers of peace. But how clever — the world would no longer hold them in opprobrium. She stayed at the window, not wanting her executive assistant to see her unmanned, as it were, struggling.

“I don’t know what to do, Percival.” To no one else would she admit such doubt. Anglo-Atlantic’s unwelcome intervention
offered freedom for the Calgary Five without bloodshed. Operation Wolverine was set to go in two days, on Monday. If it turned ugly, Clara Gracey would become a political untouchable.

“You will do the right thing as always. Not counting, of course, the time you confused the German ambassador with his chauffeur.”

“Did you get hold of Commissioner Lessard?”

“He in turn seems more than eager to see you. I asked him to accompany you to the airport. He is on his way. Shall we invite him to join us in the war room?”

“Please.” She pulled herself together and followed him there. Her entrance prompted several to rise, but she waved them down. In addition to the cabinet members, ten top staff, and half as many military brass.

She took her station at the midpoint of the long oval table, thumped her gavel lightly, mostly to get the attention of Charley Thiessen, who was joking with the defence deputy. “Okay, somebody fill us in on the current situation in Bhashyistan.”

“There is fighting going on.” An analyst from Foreign Affairs. “No idea how extensive. In the countryside, mostly. Friendly embassies report that Igorgrad is quiet, but, the French tell us,
comme une poudrière
.” A powder keg.

An air force general amplified: “We have aerial surveillance of troop carriers and tanks moving north toward the steppes and the mountains bordering Russia, and west toward the desert.”

“Toward Özbeg?”

“In that direction, yes, ma’am. Three, maybe four companies.”

“That’s not good.” Clara had a fleeting premonition of disaster.

“They’re moving slowly, Prime Minister.” Buster Buchanan. “We think they’re getting sniper fire. They batten down each night, and that leaves them only eight daylight hours to work with. We don’t expect them to reach Özbeg before we do.”

“But you can’t be sure.”

“Our soldiers are ready to go, Prime Minister. At plus three hours Zulu time, in two days, six engineers will parachute to the
desert with their flares to set up a safe landing site. Two hours later, the Herc will put our forces on the ground. We’ll be in and out before the enemy can blink.”

“That’s the right stuff!” The recently demoted Dexter McPhee, pounding both fists on the table, none of his enthusiasm lost.

“Let’s all take a moment to read something.” Clara nodded to Percival, who rose and began passing out minutes of the Anglo-Atlantic meeting as she summarized: Anglo was claiming they could free the Calgarians within a week; if Wolverine were to backfire, Anglo would go public with its offer.

In the stillness that followed, she studied the TV monitors, the silent talking heads. She looked down to see an array of sour faces absorbing the implications of Anglo’s entry into the mix. Charley Thiessen looked up, grinning. “Sascratchewan? Is that near Brit-itch Columbia?”

He seemed back to his old corny self, after a bout of weirdness that Clara believed had been brought on by misgivings over letting Crumwell bug an M.P.’s home phone. Clara didn’t know why she abided Charley. His looks, his boyish, clumsy innocence maybe. But he’d been too chummy with Crumwell, too easily taken in.

Commissioner Lessard showed up just then, and Clara took a few minutes to fill him in, then said, “Okay, let’s bat this around. They’re offering to bring our people home without risk.”

The woman colonel seemed ready to lead an armed revolt were Clara to abort the mission. A force field emanated from the other veteran warriors, all scrutinizing her for backbone, maybe seeing her doubts behind her facade of barely maintained cool. But she was determined not to be cowed by them. She must do the right thing.

“I want an honest appraisal of our chances, General. Unqualified, unambiguous. Don’t put a shine on it.” Looking right into Buchanan’s eyes, until he gave way, looked down at his hands.

“Nothing is guaranteed in the field of combat, Prime Minister. We may have losses. Light losses. Theirs will be twentyfold higher.”

“How would you feel if we postponed this for a week?”

“I would not say betrayed, ma’am, but pretty close to it.”

“That is much too harshly put.” E.K., fiercely. “We are dealing with human lives. A brief delay while we assess alternative possibilities may waste time but won’t cost lives.”

“A brief delay, sir, means we may be confronting four additional companies of enemy troops in Özbeg.”

“Let’s go around the table.” Enervated by her dilemma, Clara fiddled with the gavel while people talked over each other, pros and cons, options, the best and worst scenarios. Denunciations of Anglo-Atlantic, doubts about their probity, about whether they could deliver. Dexter McPhee was in full-throated support of “our boys over there,” proclaiming himself ready, by God, to put on his uniform and join them.

Lessard sat intently but quietly through all this, impeccably attired in his civvies, a lean man with a high-domed forehead. Clara had seen his calm nod of satisfaction on observing that his rival, Crumwell, was no longer in the inner circle.

She had to swallow hard to admit it, but she wished Gerard Lafayette was here. His crafty mind, his eloquence, his occasional brilliance. She played with the thought of seeking his counsel, then almost gagged.

Opinion was divided equally, a failure of consensus. “At what point will it be too late to call back the Hercs, General?”

“Zulu minus seven.”

“Give that to me in English.”

“Almost exactly two days from now, five o’clock in the afternoon of Monday, January tenth, Ottawa time. Three a.m. the next day in Bhashyistan. Tuesday.”

E.K., one of his rare smiles. “I don’t believe they have a Tuesday. It’s called Timur. Monday is called Genghis.”

“We’ll make a final decision on Genghis afternoon,” Clara said.

Clara felt the coming of another migraine as she digested the proofs of CSIS incompetence served up by Luc Lessard, beside her in the limo. RCMP analysts had laughed off the tar sands plot; the spy agency had been buffaloed by eco-schemers.

Lessard had expressed these views to Crumwell only a few days before. “I assumed he would pass word to you through appropriate channels.” Meaning, obviously, Security Minister Thiessen, the broken link in the chain of command.

Percival was also in the limo, facing them, making notes, dead-pan. He’d urged her to back-bench Thiessen. She hadn’t listened.

She wiped the condensation from the window. Snowplows were hard at work on the Airport Parkway, but barely making headway against the thick spew from the cloud-black sky. Clara’s driver hewed to a narrow traffic lane, manoeuvring around stuck or abandoned vehicles.

Flights were still being cleared, and with God’s blessing she wouldn’t be late for her Vancouver event. Photo ops all next day, trawling among ethnic communities. On Sunday, a hopscotch tour of Vancouver Island, its scheduled low point a clasping of the muscle bound hand of the Viking, her throwaway candidate in Cow Islands.

“I regret to burden you further, Prime Minister,” Lessard said, “but one of our members has learned of an unusual visit last month by M. Thiessen to a suite in the Château Laurier.”

Clara tightened with dread as Lessard explained that a hotel security officer, despite orders by management to still his tongue, had spilled everything but the beer he was sharing with an RCMP pal. Sex scandal, that was Clara’s first thought.

The truth was more bizarre. For a quarter of an hour, Thiessen had crawled about that suite in apparent pursuit of a lost cufflink. The room appeared to have hosted a rowdy, lewd party, was littered with its detritus and reeked of marijuana. The minister of justice had been seen pawing at a hookah pipe.

Percival uttered a squeal of horror, his eyes wide with incredulity. Clara’s brain whirled as she assessed the awful implications. Disaster loomed if this blew up before January 24.

Lessard wasn’t through. “The registered guests of that suite have been determined to be two young gentlemen from British Columbia. They gave their address as Rural Route One, Garibaldi Island.”

Margaret Blake’s home base. What in bloody hell had Thiessen been up to? Clara shakily lit a cigarette, looked out again at the relentlessly falling snow. Maybe she would be lucky, spin off the road and die. Or go down in flames on Air Cleavage.

Using all the might she could muster, she affected an insouciance: did not a search for a cufflink seem innocent enough on the surface? Might Lessard agree that this silly-seeming business really didn’t warrant any further inquiries?

Lessard wasn’t buying that but offered a salve. “I assure you matters will remain confidential while we make such inquiries.”

“And you’ll have my government’s complete cooperation. A sensitive matter. I’d imagine your investigation will take a while.” Eighteen days, make it eighteen days.

“I can assure you, madam, that we have no wish to be accused of influencing the election’s outcome.”

She took relief from that offer of breathing room. A glance at Percival. His surreptitious nod. He will get on it, gag Charley, scrabble together an innocent-seeming scenario.

“Thank you for being so forthcoming, Commissioner.”

“It’s not the main reason I wished to see you, Prime Minister.”

Now what? Clara closed her eyes.

“Abzal Erzhan has surfaced.”