Snow Job (9 page)

Lafayette led the commissioner to the door, effusive in his thanks: the RCMP was correct in everything it did, the government could be counted on to stand behind its fabled federal police.

Finnerty caught DuWallup’s eye, nodded. He would owe big time for this. An appeal court appointment. High commissioner to New Zealand.

The door secured, Lafayette said, “Awkward matter. The press are going to wonder why the public — and our important guests — weren’t warned.”

“Who’s to say they weren’t?” The PMO’s chief, gnomelike E.K. Boyes. “Given there were no survivors.” Finnerty’s brain they called him.

Finnerty recoiled a little from the gnome’s cold, deadpan logic, but after a moment’s hesitation told his staff: “See what you can come up with.” His publicity wonk took that to mean, rightly, that he was to get something on the drawing board fast, so he got up and left.

“Let’s get an update.” Finnerty, with teeth-gritting effort, was taking back the gavel. “Tell me, Gerry, is there anyone at risk in Bhashyistan if things go sour? Any Canadians there?”

“My people are looking into that.”

“Tell them to stop looking.” Thiessen indicated one of the TV screens. A press conference. In the background, the Alta International logo, in the foreground, its boss, A.J. Quilter, who, as the volume was raised, was sounding irritated, raw. “Vice-president for foreign development, two from our legal team, a geologist, and an accountant, a total complement of five men. I am not suggesting they’re in harm’s way. Our worry is that we haven’t been able to make contact since early this morning.”

A reporter: “How would you normally make contact?”

“Satellite phone.”

Another reporter: “Can you tell us how long they’ve been there, what they’re doing?”

“They’ve been there nearly a week. It’s not news that we’ve been in delicate negotiations with the Bhashyistan government.”

“Sir, have you enlisted the aid of the federal government?”

“I’m still waiting for the prime minister to return my call.”

M
argaret and Pierètte were donning their coats to leave for the Hill, but Arthur was slow to join them — it wasn’t easy to pull away from the set. He wondered at the presumption of this fellow Quilter — he was waiting for the P.M. to call. Prairie tan and jutting chin, the fearless look of the self-assured.

Arthur doubted if satellite phones could be jammed. Maybe the batteries had run down. Maybe these unfortunates — already dubbed by the press the Calgary Five — had been ordered to surrender their phones. They’d been staying at the Igorgrad Grand, the city’s one prestige hotel.

The news outlets didn’t have much recent footage from Bhashyistan. One of the networks had found a still of that hotel, a drab, square, fifteen-storey box on a riverbank. Some clips from a ten-year-old National Geographic travelogue of the mountains-markets-and-mules variety. Mad Igor presiding at a viewing stand: broad, bemedalled chest and flat, pocked, crabbed face.

Pierètte was holding his coat. “You coming, Counsellor?”

Arthur followed them to the elevator, shrugging into his coat, straightening his tie. A headache was creeping up on him, born of the strain of suppressing recent memory, the carnage, the horror, those ten blackened bodies — a scene that was bound to surface in dreams.

Pierètte pedalled off on her bicycle, blowing Margaret a kiss, calling to Arthur: “See you later, litigator.”

The weather was still crisp but kinder, and they decided to walk, they needed the air, the peace of this suddenly quiet city. As they strolled through the leaf-littered, church-thick streets below Wellington, Arthur brought out his new cellphone, with its alarming array of gimmickry. He dialed his travel agent one-handed, with his thumb (he had practised this), and put the phone to his ear, imagining himself as cool, modern, online.

“Sunday at noon is the best you can do? Well, fine, then, thank you, my good man.” To Margaret: “They’re reopening the airport. I’ll be staying at my club in Vancouver until I resolve this imbroglio over Zack. Probably drop in on Garibaldi for a couple of days.”

“Take a bunch, Arthur. December’s coming. I know how you suffer here.”

Did she seem almost eager to see him go? As they crossed a street she gripped his arm tight, leaned her head on his shoulder. “Arthur,” she whispered.

“Yes, my darling?” Expecting a soothing endearment.

“I have this weird sense he’s behind us.”

They were near St. Patrick’s Basilica, a grand, stone-walled cathedral set behind a fenced lawn. From within, choristers could be heard rehearsing. Arthur knelt to retie a shoelace, flicking a glance behind. The death angel in a leather jacket, brown hair tucked under a black toque, about fifty paces astern. “Let us take a walk around the church.”

They entered its parking lot, where the choir sounded louder, sweet hymnal harmony in defiance of the day’s barbarity. Near the rear of the church, they followed a long cement ramp leading to a gift shop and grotto hall, the entrance wedged open by the foot of a rotund priest sneaking a smoke.

“Aha, Father,” Arthur said, “caught sinning.”

A finger to his lips. “Don’t tell the Almighty.” He extended a hand to Margaret. “Though we don’t agree on all things, Ms. Blake,
I’m delighted to meet you.” Proving once again to Arthur that Ottawans knew their politicians as teenagers knew rock stars. Margaret graciously introduced him as her “life partner,” the ancient word
husband
apparently out of fashion.

As they chatted about the day’s dire events, Arthur studied his phone, trying to remember from the manual how to work the camera. When the follower came into view, furtively walking by, Arthur called, “Good afternoon,” and the man turned, startled.

The camera flashed. The stalker froze in his tracks. He looked at each in turn, Arthur, Margaret, the puzzled priest, then proceeded on, with his odd shuffle, and seemed about to bolt into the parking lot. But he came to a tottering halt, turned slowly around. A long thin face, sans moustache today, sans sunglasses, the eyes green and haunted. After a few seconds, he came down the ramp. “Father, I’d like to do confession,” he said softly.

“Of course, my son.” The priest, obviously eager to hear his story, held the door for him.

The sad-eyed man paused by Arthur and Margaret, and whispered, “I shall need absolution from you as well, Ms. Blake.” And with that enigmatic declaration he followed the priest inside.

Margaret’s office was bustling as usual, but the energy had altered: a thick layer of tension where there’d been gaiety. The room’s focal point was a flat TV, high on a shelf, like an idol, its worshippers gathered below. The prime minister had been on, speaking of his government’s “measureless remorse” and issuing a plea to the Ultimate Leader to ring him at his office to discuss, among other things, the well-being of his five guests from Calgary.

A printout of Arthur’s photo of the confession-seeking ghoul was beside Pierètte’s computer screen. “I think I know who this guy is,” she said, furiously working at a keyboard. “Come on, come on, Google me, baby, beam me up.”

On the television, an attractive dark-eyed woman in a hijab was leaving the Erzhan duplex in Chambly, carrying a shopping bag, heading to a corner
dépanneur
. Vana was her name, Abzal’s wife. Their two children, eleven and seven, stared solemnly out a window, an older woman with them, presumably their grandmother. A woman officer bulldozed a path for Vana through the media swarm.

“I’m sorry, I have nothing to say.” To a thrusting microphone, a sad but not unmusical voice, accentless English — she’d emigrated from Afghanistan as a child. As reporters relentlessly followed her down the street she kept apologizing. “I’m sorry,
je regrette, pardon
.”

Arthur was perplexed at how badly the feds had bungled the Erzhan surveillance. Sirens should have wailed as soon as he vanished from the streets of Chambly. That had happened only twenty-six hours before the bombing, according to what the press pieced together. The government was silent, other than to say the matter was being looked into.

Pierètte called Margaret to join her, exultant. “He
is
a spook.”

Arthur looked over their shoulders at a photo accompanying a four-year-old story in the
Toronto Star
. The gawky spectre himself, his hair more blond than brown, looking despondent. Ray DiPalma, then thirty-nine, an agent of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. He’d been suspended for losing a laptop to a thief after leaving his car unlocked at a suburban Toronto mall. There’d been quite a foofaraw, Arthur recalled now, questions asked in Parliament, an inquiry urged. CSIS had had to change some of its codes.

The incomparable Ms. Litvak printed this out, along with follow-up articles and commentary. The computer had been recovered after three days — by means unknown, though a columnist speculated that Toronto police had warned known receivers of stolen goods that heads would be broken. CSIS claimed the hard drive hadn’t been accessed, and there were no state secrets in it anyway. The furor quickly died, and eventually DiPalma’s suspension was lifted.

Arthur wondered if it was for penance that this agent had been
assigned the profitless job of tracking such an unlikely subversive as Margaret Blake.
I shall need absolution from you as well, Ms. Blake
. What an odd comment to make to one being spied on. What was his game?

“Formal protest?” Pierètte asked. “Press conference?”

“What do you think, Arthur?” Margaret asked.

Had he heard correctly? Was his advice being sought? “I have a feeling you’ll find more profit in waiting. This fellow may be seeking to reach out to you.”

Pierètte looked at him wide-eyed, as if surprised he had anything useful to say on the matter. “Maybe Arthur’s right. Let’s keep this to our ménage à trois for now.”

He was pleased to be included. He was emerging from oblivion.

As of late afternoon, as Arthur and Margaret were readying to go home, there’d been no breaking developments, but it had been a pundits’ field day, with endless speculation about what was going on in Bhashyistan. All tourists had been bussed to the nearest border crossings, now sealed. All airports had been closed too, Air Bhashyistan’s fleet of twelve wheezing craft fetched home from Tashkent, Ulan Bator, and Lahore. Phone lines down. Power down through much of Igorgrad, according to Western embassies contacted by satellite phone. They weren’t saying much else other than that the city was calm.

They paused outside the monolithic front portal of the Confederation Building to find Wellington Street thronged with rush-hour traffic in the darkening twilight. They took a few steps and heard a softly voiced, “Good afternoon.” Ray DiPalma, lurking in the gloom beside the recessed entranceway.

Margaret hesitated, but Arthur was less wary.
Audentes fortuna juvat
— fortune favours the bold. From what he’d learned, this fellow was more sad sack than death angel.

DiPalma drew Arthur deeper into the shadows, looking about as if to ensure he himself were not being spied on. “Please meet me tonight at parking lot eight, Carleton University, outside the Loeb Building. I’ll be there at precisely eight. Trust me, I beg you.” He put his sunglasses on, almost tripped at the sidewalk’s edge, and disappeared among the press of home-going public servants.