Sussex Drive: A Novel (7 page)

“Do you ever hear anything about Lieutenant-Colonel Aisha K.?” she asked. “Or is the case closed?”

“They don’t talk about her,” Shymanski said. “Not to me.”

“She was an extraordinary person. Look at the response to her here in Canada.”

“Yes, Your Excellency.” Shymanski nodded.

She sensed a well of deeper feeling—loss, bitterness—but he wasn’t going to spill. She also had a bad habit of projection; after all, it was
her
husband who’d left that day.

“She was like a rock star, wasn’t she?” he said.

“Oui,”
Lise said. “You knew her the best of all of us.”

“That’s true,” he said, then laughed. “Even though she could be hard to know. With the burka, you know.”

“For sure.”

“Your Excellency,” he said, “I know I probably shouldn’t ask.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “Go ahead.”

“Do you know why I was transferred from the PMO detail? Was there a reason?”

“Yes, there was a reason. Rideau Hall needed you. You and your skill set.”

“Merci,”
he said.
“Merci beaucoup.”

“
Il n’ya pas de quoi
. Should we head back?” Lise said. Niko became impatient whenever she was late.

That night Lise retired early, emotionally exhausted from the day and the prospect of meeting with the Prime Minister in the morning.

Lise couldn’t get Shymanski and Lieutenant-Colonel Aisha K. out of her head. The Corporal had seemed haunted.

The whole Lieutenant-Colonel Aisha (Arabic, meaning “alive”) K. phenomenon had begun with an enigmatic photo of her on the front page of the furthest left right-wing national newspaper, there being no left-wing national newspaper. It had been back in 2006, before Greg became Prime Minister. An above-the-fold, full-colour, full-length profile of Lieutenant-Colonel Aisha K., covered crown to toe in her blue burka, arm extended, and an elegantly manicured grip on Bulgaria’s very own Arcus 98 DA (Double Action) military pistol, pointed convincingly at the left margin.

Trop fou
, Lise had thought: you expected to see a camouflaged Afghan woman offering a platter of battered figs, or tossing a couple of underweight goats around her neck—anything but this
tableau noir
. The country learned how single mother Lieutenant-Colonel Aisha K. home-schooled her children and then was chauffeured to work at the ANP by RCMP counterparts (Shymanski) because Afghan women weren’t allowed by law to drive. And because of Taliban death threats.

It was catnip propaganda.

Nobody knew what she looked like. Nobody had seen her face; nobody in Canada or Afghanistan, not even border control, could talk about the insolent jut of a hip, a set jaw, a cast-downward glance, the rogue mole in an unforgettably delectable place.

Mansbridge fawned, Radio-Canada
s’est fendu en quatre aussi
, and Strombo cracked the audience up when he leaned over and said, “Seriously. Undercover?” and she threw her
long limber fingers, a festival of ornate rings, toward the boom mic and laughed rather mannishly. Then she was filmed at target practice competing against the hunkish rookie Shymanski, two-legged at the time. The Liberal PM commanded Lise to throw, ASAP, a reception.

Lise, the neophyte, complied,
tout de suite
. In a flash of populist genius, she wore her official military uniform to further the cause. Becky, then wife of the Leader of the Opposition, arrived in a lower-cut frock, white Colombian lace. Nobody cared about the redhead with the Conservative cleavage.

Lieutenant-Colonel Aisha K. was mobbed. Of course, there were finger foods, halal; Lise’s people had spoken with the guest of honour and she’d agreed to take sustenance before the function and nixed any liquor. All doable, and Lise was sailing along with full-hostess prowess until the non-Greg Prime Minister, juggling seven midget halal-burgers in one giant fist, spilled his cranberry juice down Aisha’s baby blue linen breast.

“Suivez moi,”
Lise signalled, and led Lieutenant-Colonel K. through the imposing double doors and upstairs to her serene private quarters.

Lise took Aisha right into her walk-in closet and unzipped a garment bag.
“Voici, madame,”
said Lise. She handed over her Afghan burka, a claret brocade, a
bonne chance
hand-me-down from the most recent ex–Governor General.

“Shukran,”
Lieutenant-Colonel K. said. She instantly cast her damp garment up into the air. In a rustling shimmer of fabric, she ducked out from under.

In those three,
peut-être quatre, peut-être six secondes
, Lise had glimpsed the burka-liberated back of her head, an
au courant
shoulder-length pageboy crushed from crowd-pressing heat, slimmer shoulders than any Afghan sack suggested, and when she pirouetted with a smile, Lise saw Aisha full-on, all-face, with her intelligence, humility and luminous clarity, which made her,
magiquement
, extraordinarily beautiful. She also sensed a frighteningly hard edge. The closet exploded with the scent, the olfactory circus, of Aisha’s perfume—Hawaiian plumeria? Lise had wordlessly draped her in her own heavier duds.

Becky had met them at the bottom of the stairs. “I heard about a wardrobe malfunction,” she said, laughing.

The next day her quote had become a Life section headline across the country, with a photo of the new gal pals posing under a portrait of the Earl of Minto.

But the press hadn’t caught Becky’s pointed aside in Lise’s ear. “Did you see her face?” And Lise’s affirmative nod.

Lise’s private phone rang around midnight. She’d fallen asleep in a puddle of letters and papers, and it took her a minute to figure out where she was before she could search for the phone. She picked it up.

“Turn on Can Vox,” Becky said, and hung up.

Lise flicked the remote.

And there was René, much younger, giving a speech to a gathering of long-haired, bespectacled, semi-Orwellian ragamuffins about the sovereign nation of Quebec, and how he
would die fighting for its freedom from the English “master-bators.” Lise recognized this immediately. It was a clip from
Jeune Lévesque
, for which he’d been nominated for a Jutra, and which could sometimes be caught late at night on the cable dumping ground for young Canadian
auteurs
. Lise watched, entranced with his youth and verve, but she also found herself thinking about what had been happening in her life at the time this film was made. Niko had just been born, colicky, and she and Brett would have been taking turns walking him around the flat and singing with Youssou N’Dour CDs.

Journalist Lawrence Apoonatuk appeared following the clip and began his interrogation of a person Lise could only characterize as a Smirk.

“Can you identify the person in the clip?”

“René Claude, consort to the Governor General of Canada.”

“Where did this event take place?”

“In Quebec City. We found the tape in an apartment that was about to be demolished.”

Lise screamed.

“And do you think, potentially, that this is a grave embarrassment to the Office of the Governor General, Commander-in-Chief, and to Canada in general?”

“It would suggest that Madame Lavoie and Monsieur Claude were not sufficiently vetted by the former minority Liberal government who initiated the appointment.”

“But Monsieur Claude is the son of a former Member of Parliament.”

“In this case,” Smirk said, “all I can say is that this nut fell far from the tree.”

“My God,” Lise said.
“C’est un extrait!
A cleep!
C’est
Jeune Lévesque
!”

She phoned Becky back. She didn’t care if she woke Greg up, or whomever. This sort of slander was poisonous, malicious, and she would need the Prime Minister to denounce this immediately, publicly, now.

Becky’s cell rang and rang.

Talk about
une nuit blanche
. It took Lise the rest of the night to appreciate the tactical beauty of Greg’s move, for she assumed she saw his hand in it. A kerfuffle in the Governor General’s office, a radical separatist consort, and the citizen public would be attacking her and René, writing incendiary letters to the blogosphere, and the cartoonists would caricaturize her with a ring in her nose, while Greg quietly got his way about dissolving Parliament. Breaking the very law he had initiated.

In the shimmering morning, Lise looked out the windows of the viceregal bedroom toward
la Colline du Parlement
. She could see the Peace Tower and families at its foot in the early morning queue for the crooked little elevator to the top, seizing the last seconds of the Labour Day holiday. Education
and
fun. When she angled herself the other way, she could see the six limousines in the Prime Minister’s convoy, approaching Rideau Hall on the Prime Minister’s personal promenade, to park at the Prime Minister’s personal entrance, which was
logically positioned next to the Governor General’s study with its Napoleonic desk. Lise marvelled. Six cars.
Quelle production! Grosse Corvette, p’tite quéquette
.

She paced into and out of her closet. She was ready: in her Teenflo turmeric pantsuit with Hermès scarf and Comme-ci Comme-ça heels. Her hair was coiffed without a smidge of lacquer; anger locked every curl in place.

Let him cool his heels.
Attendez-moi, monsieur
.

She knew that Margaret Lee, Henchwoman and Crony, would be extending her chilled hand in greeting, slightly dismissive of valiant old Clark the Privy Clerk (arriving in the last car, complaining of construction near the Langevin Block and some fuss at the U.S. embassy), and ushering King Greg into the Governor General’s study as if she herself were the GG. And who knew? She might very well be on the short list of future Excellencies.

Let King F—ing Tut rest his royal butt.

Her reverie was broken by her personal phone emitting urgent heart monitor soundings. She knew who it was.
“Bonjour.”

“Excellency, the Prime Minister is here with the Privy Clerk.” So smug, so full of her Margaret Lee-ness and sanctity.

“I’m unavoidably delayed, Margaret Lee.”

“I believe the honourable gentlemen have busy schedules today.”

“I repeat: unavoidably delayed.”

“Very well.” Perfunctory.

Lise had time to check her laptop for the weather in Bucharest.

They half rose, the two of them, when she entered her study. Even that irritated her. Margaret Lee had ushered the Prime Minister and Clark into the study before she’d authorized it. The protocol was such that even if the Prime Minister utilized his private entrance, he should collect his blazing thoughts in the Victorian waiting room until she was ready for him.

“Excellency,” said Greg. She honed in for the double cheek-peck. Today’s aftershave was reminiscent of a homeopathic remedy and Niko’s Axe.

She smiled professionally.
Sans la cordialité
.

She moved to Clark and did the same again. As the highest-ranking non-political official, his main chore was to ensure continuity of government.

“It’s lovely to see you both,” she said. “I understand there’s a request.”

Clark bowed his head.

“Please.” She indicated the seating opportunities.

“Before we get into the specifics, Lise, I wanted to brief you on the very recent business with René,” Greg said.

“Yes. I was going to mention that.”

“Please don’t worry about it. Doc’s going to address the problem at a press conference today. As a tag. He’ll confirm that it was an audition tape for a Quebec movie of the week—”

“A feature,” said Lise.

“Okay, a feature movie.”

“It was not an audition tape. René was actually cast as René. It was a
cleep
.”

“Too many Renés,” said Greg. “It doesn’t matter if he was in it or not, actually. It becomes too confusing for the public if we give them details.”

“He was nominated for a Jutra.”

“We don’t want to go there, Lise. Let’s focus on it being an audition tape, because if we get into the casting and the award, then the press will think he was sympathetic to Lévesque. So, René auditioned, blah-blah, and His Selfless is out of the country, unavailable for comment. Should blow over in a week—tops. The country’s getting back to school and has other fish to fry. Half the journos are cruising the Mediterranean anyway. The Toronto
Blob
types.”

“Not Lawrence Apoonatuk.”

“Maybe not him. But everybody else. We’re trying to figure out who sent this to Larry. Does René have any ideas?”

“I haven’t told him.”

“Oh,” said Greg. “I see.”

A silence in the room.

Clark, privately designated Corporate Puppet by René, simply stared at her, his briefcase hidden behind his calves.

Lise couldn’t breathe. Out in the corridor, Corporal Shymanski answered questions from the PM’s security team in a low tone. Then a knock at the door. “Ah,” said Lise, as coffee and tea were delivered with rosemary-scented
cookies from a biscuit boutique in the By Ward Market. Clark was all over those.

Greg cleared his throat. “Now, Lise, as you know, I’m steering a minority government in the House of Commons with an Opposition majority in the Senate. I have laws pending that I can’t get passed in committee.”

“Primarily Senate.”

Margaret Lee tapped into her netbook, propped on her lap, with her tiny fingers bulleting.

“Yes, but I’m sensing that everyday Canadians are growing restless. They’ve elected us to see some action and I suspect we’ll only be able to effect change if we go back to the citizens and ask for more support for our progressive agenda. Further, the Opposition has finally laid out an environmental plan, which doesn’t make any sense, and the shit is hitting the fan.”

“Their kind of wind power,” Margaret Lee said.

Greg chuckled.

Lise said, “I have a concern and would like to discuss this with my constitutional adviser.”

“Oh, but she’s away until next week,” Margaret Lee piped up again.

“Why wasn’t I informed?”

“You were.”

“Then I would like to consult with the alternate.”