Sussex Drive: A Novel (18 page)

That was when she opened the portfolio, read the document and then put it back in its case.

A triggered memory from the Throne Speech: Margaret Lee thrusting the classified document into her hands and then dispatching the page to steal it. The PM had insisted the delay of the Speech had to do with a comma.

From 35,000 feet they started the steep corkscrew descent into Kandahar Airfield; she’d done this before and it didn’t get easier. No prefrontal gymnastics or spiritual kinesiology prepared her for this counterintuitive and topsy-turvy plunge toward a thin rib of cement in the Kalashnikov-cultivated desert. She heard a woman crooning the soothing “La Vie en Rose.” It was her own sweet voice. When they’d been civilians, the song was René’s go- to ring tone.

When she finally stepped out into the cold, brilliant, judgmental sunlight and the intoxicating reek of diesel, surrounded by planes, soldiers, trucks, ammo, weapons and
military
merde
from 118 countries, and onto the jet-juddering and emasculated groin of the fifth-poorest country in the world, Jabar Khan even hit the ground; the soles of the ambassador’s Mephistos shone.

She hoisted herself into the rear of an armoured Toyota for the drive to Canadian HQ, where she could look forward to a brief shower and a quicker meal amidst
HESCO
architecture. Unlike her other sorties, this time there was no heraldry, pageantry, flag-raising, speech-making, oath-taking, wreath-laying, puck-throwing, medal-pinning, chai-sipping,
shura-
squatting, no meet-and-greet along the KAF boardwalk.

She’d read the mission plan, twice, so wasn’t surprised to see Shymanski riding shotgun in her vehicle. In profile, he was still the on-duty RCMP she’d last high-fived at the Gory Horror, spooking the entitled
enfants
of Rockcliffe Park on Halloween, but she realized that he was
sans
his signature seventies
Canadiens
sideburns. He wore a Jarhead buzz cut and seemed hardened, older than she remembered, and she was glad Niko couldn’t see him.

“
Bonjour
, Taylor.” Her hand waited.

He clasped it. “
Bonjour
, Excellency.” His pupils were pinpricks in the violent sunlight. His eyes moistened.

The Brigadier General overseeing CAF in Kandahar did not suffer Defence or women or other fools gladly, but Lise had outdrunk him in Prague and he’d never forgotten.

“We have less than two hours,” he huffed as Lise and Corporal Shymanski settled into standard-issue conference
chairs in front of a naked whiteboard. He shut the door on the inquisitive snoot of Margaret Lee and then cut to the chase. “Operation Fatima commences at 1300. I will be plain-spoken as a Winnipegger because time is short.”

In late 2007, he told them, allegations arose regarding Afghan National Police aiding and abetting a prostitution ring exploiting underage girls in and around Kandahar. These ANP protected a certain drug lord’s operation, accepted bribes and also took payment in sessions with the girls—who were under the influence of substances, often coerced, and who should have been in the fricking schools Canadians were dying to build for them. The ANP, with RCMP support, had even conducted an investigation, which was when Lieutenant-Colonel Aisha K. became involved. She’d infiltrated the ring, worked undercover with the prostitutes, earned their confidence, and when she blew the whistle on the operation—essentially revealing to a sketchy superior that recruits she’d trained and worked with had been corrupted—the drug lord was tipped off, and he told the Taliban, who were recipients of tidy kickbacks, and the RCMP convoy was duly bombed.

The Brigadier General nodded toward Shymanski. “That part you knew.”

Lieutenant-Colonel Aisha K. was abducted, and assumed murdered somewhere west in Panjwai, far east in Spin or north in Shah Wali Kot—who the fuck knew. She’d never been found, nor had her remains been recovered, and she hadn’t ever contacted home. However, information had come to light that she wasn’t abducted by the Talib at all, but
detained by Afghan government security. Her Excellency had already been apprised of this.

The Brigadier General waited for Shymanski to process.

“My God.” He sank into his chair. “Aisha’s alive.”

“That’s what they claim.”

“They?” said Lise.

“Our friends in Kabul.”

Lise spoke flatly, unemotional. “So Karzai
is
involved.”

“No, Your Excellency—”

Lise felt punched in the gut. “I held Hamid’s twins when they were seven days old. Meena, Hamid’s wife, phoned me after their births. I held Zahra and Babur in my arms in a suite at the Serena Hotel.” She looked away.

“Your Excellency—”

“This young man’s leg.”

“Excellency—”

“Aisha, mother of four—”

“Excellency … No, no, no, not the President, definitely not,” the Brigadier General said.

Lise glanced at Shymanski but couldn’t read his eyes. His silence spooked her. “Perhaps detention was a form of protection for the Lieutenant-Colonel,” she said.

“As I’ve said, Your Excellency, we have no squeaky clean intelligence implicating President Karzai. We were briefed by an ally as to Lieutenant-Colonel K.’s status and approached Kabul about her release.”

“It’s still possible Kabul executed the IED,” Shymanski said. “Planted the explosives.”

“Negative. Forensics pointed to the usual suspect.”

“She can never return to Kandahar,” Lise said. “The Taliban are everywhere.”

“No way, nohow,” the BG said.

“So?” Lise said.

“Saskatchewan.”

“An empty province,” declared Lise. “Oil.”

“You can say that again,” said the BG.

“And her children?” Lise asked.

“Part of Operation Fatima. She’ll connect with them at Ramstein at 0100 tomorrow.”

Lise absorbed this. “Why now? Is this housekeeping before President-elect Obama’s inauguration? Rallying the troops back in Canada for Obama’s anticipated surge?” Lise tried to control her anger. “Or Hamid’s doing whatever it takes to please the Western masters because he seeks more
NATO
troops? What do you think, BG?”

He shrugged. “They don’t tell me nothing, GG.”

“Canadians already know that the country is ‘cutting and running’ from Afghanistan on whatever date Greg has devised.” Lise couldn’t stop herself. “It stinks of the photo op, sir.”

“There will be none of that nonsense on my watch.” The Brigadier General banged the desk. “Zippo.” He pointed at the clock.

Lise wasn’t finished. “Also, it hasn’t been fully explained why the Corporal and I are needed here. This is a transfer with friendlies,
oui
?”

“At the discretion of Defence. Corporal Shymanski here worked with Lieutenant-Colonel K. They trained recruits together, toured Canada, and he was travelling with her as a bodyguard on the day they were attacked at the governor’s palace. He lost his leg and almost sacrificed his own life. It’s about her comfort in coming to Canada.” The Brigadier General paused. “And the Lieutenant-Colonel personally asked for him.”

Shymanski betrayed no response.

“
En effet
, Corporal Shymanski was seconded from my service without any notice. In the middle of a public event. Snatched, according to my son, against his will.”

Lise noticed that Shymanski stayed absolutely still.

“Defence.”

Lise said, “
Et moi
. The Commander-in-Chief, representative of the King, here in the AO, heading with Special Forces and JTF2 into a shooting gallery.
Vraiment, c’est un cauchemar
.”

“The PMO believes you can identify the high-value asset.”

“Sure, but send me a photo from your phone already. I’m not the only person who has seen her face. Corporal, you’ve seen her?”

Shymanski shook his head.

“You are the one the PMO trusts to verify her identity.
Aujourd’hui
,” said the Brigadier General. “
Maintenant. Ici
. Period.”

Corporal Shymanski said, “May I ask which ally reported that Lieutenant-Colonel K. was in Afghan detention?”

The Brigadier General said, “A certain drug lord.”

A silence of ironic befuddlement.

“Fatima’s already in play. Our turf, our terms. Lieutenant-Colonel K. is en route as we speak. It’s a very tight window. There’ll be two Chinooks, fully loaded, a flock of Black Hawks with Special Forces and our own JTF2. We’re ten clicks off Ambush Alley, in territory that has been recced up its asshole so many times it’s sweeter than my armpit, courtesy of our Forward Operating Bases. Any final questions?”

“Is the PM going to tell the media what really happened to her?”

The Brigadier General was already out the door.

Lise and Margaret Lee were the last to board the Chinook, sardined with soldiers, RCMP, CSE, Defence and
DFAIT
personnel, some female, and even a rep from the UN Agency for Women, who happened to be male. All the young men reminded her of Niko. They were damp and emotionally flattened from the ramp ceremony for a beloved medic, aged twenty-seven, a Pac-Man fanatic with a fiancée vying for the Canadian Olympic speed-skating relay team. Lise sat in her designated spot, one of thirty red, tongue-like seats pinned to the interior wall, and strapped in next to Shymanski. Margaret Lee slotted herself in nearby. Lise inhaled the frigid urine-tinged air.

The ride was short, which Lise expected as they were travelling as far as she could spit, at 150 clicks per hour, twenty-five feet above Afghan World. She looked out the gaping rear of the two-rotor, where the machine gunners
crouched, as they flew over razor wire, a hodgepodge of checkpoints and
HESCO
bastions, camel breath, a traffic circle in lockdown, brief clotheslines, poppy palace satellite dishes, frozen pomegranate and wheat fields, and wadis and more wadis, as well as invisible rocket launchers, of course, with the snow-spritzed mountain range like an inspirational mental handrail in the distance.

The rotors: cacophonous, duelling lawn mowers that cut down every thought sticking up in her brain. Her nervous system synchronized itself to the rhythmic roar. This was her opportunity; this was the only chance she’d have before they took their separate paths and possibly never connected again. She nudged Shymanski and bellowed in his ear,
“Qu’est-ce qui t’est arrivé?”
At that point, everything had become so bizarre, with colour bleeding beyond the lines, that she didn’t care who saw.

He just looked at her.

“
Tabarnac!
Niko saw what happened to you!”

But he behaved as if he’d been waterboarded, psy-opped and had the shit beaten out of him.

She actually seized his pointy chin and jerked his face toward her.

He still didn’t respond, just looked around at the faces gazing at them and stared at the floor again.

The Chinook decelerated and the noise emulated a shrieking dental implement. Hovered, hovered, and landed beside its twin in the desert, not far from what was obviously Highway 1. Through the opposite window, Lise spotted
Black Hawks circling the perimeter like an NHL team warming up on the visitor’s rink, and she heard more of them buzzing above. They were out in the wide wide open.

Everybody but Lise and Margaret Lee, who had been instructed to remain with the Chinook, along with a few security, debarked. Corporal Shymanski bent to her shoulder. “The Prime Minister plans—”

“Quoi, Taylor?”

But he was gone—shoved by that
CSIS
agent?—and filed out the side door.

“Taylor!” The agent stared back at her, but Shymanski strode ahead with the inimitable hitch and then climbed into the G-Wagen, which had been disembowelled from the other Chinook. It sped away.

Lise moved up to the cockpit, where the pilot and copilot listened to militaristic babble.

“
CENTCOM
?” she asked.

“Affirmative,” the pilot said. “Stand by.” U.S. Central Command in Florida ran the whole show, with even
NATO
reporting to them.

In the distance, up the highway, three standard-issue white Toyota SUVs appeared on the horizon, followed by a rickety, weaving helicopter, which seemed attached to the vehicles like an orphan kite. They braked a kilometre from a checkpoint manned by a platoon. The Toyotas shut down, and a slight goatherd, for that’s what he looked like, climbed uncertainly from the back of the middle SUV. He wore Pashtun peasant gear, his hair in a bowl cut, and shuffled in
flip-flops toward the ad hoc utility tent, literally in the middle of nowhere. The Toyotas backed up another kilometre, cut tight and synchronized U-turns, and bombed back toward the north.

“Are we looking at the asset?” the pilot said almost to himself. “Or the asset’s goatherd?”

Lise asked herself the same question.

The welcoming committee of EOD and haz-mat teams approached her. The asset waved eagerly. She was not waving at
them
, the EOD crew, Lise saw that; Shymanski was right behind them and held his hand up at her. Then the asset politely greeted the invasive procedures crew and was swept into the tent with them. Shymanski waited with his handlers.

The Black Hawks vigilantly circled.
CENTCOM
was quiet.

Then an order came for Corporal Shymanski to enter the tent. Lise watched him almost run—his one-legged lope. Margaret Lee excused herself to take a message on her satphone.

“We’re getting the all-clear,”
CENTCOM
said. “Stand by.”

It was Lise’s turn, and she followed the combo pack of RCMP, CSE,
CSIS
, Defence and
DFAIT
minions to the caboose of the Chinook. The G-Wagen sped from the utility tent toward the two Chinooks and parked between them. Lise stepped out into the still clear and cold afternoon sun onto the unrolled woven Afghan carpet that had mysteriously appeared. She watched the person she prayed was Lieutenant-Colonel Aisha K. walk toward her. For some
reason she thought of
Mulan
, the Disney feature in which the heroine disguised herself as a boy to go to war.

“Lieutenant-Colonel K.,” Lise said, but she wasn’t sure. Oddly, it was harder to tell if it was Aisha because Lise could actually see her face.