The High Road (34 page)

Angus was no longer smiling.

“Prime Minister, your direction is clear and has been for the last twenty minutes or so. It seems I’ve not been clear. The report you’re holding is the final report. We’ll not be altering it on anyone’s direction.”

Knowing that two stubborn men had painted one another into their respective corners, Bradley went for the save.

“No need to resolve this finally right now. Let’s get the Throne Speech and the Budget out there first and then we can hammer out what to include in the final version of the McLintock Report. There’s no rush,” Bradley soothed.

“Oh, but how wrong you are, Mr. Stanton,” Angus replied almost in a whisper. “We need not have offered you this early look at the report. You’ll recall that we agreed that Canadians would see it at the same time as we submitted the final draft to you. But we need you to alter the Throne Speech, and we require that Monsieur Coulombe alter his budget, to reflect this urgent public need. That’s why we’ve delivered an advance copy of the report. It’ll be too late if we wait until the Budget is unveiled. But I think you already know that, Mr. Stanton.”

“I’m sorry, Angus, but we’re already on a tight schedule and we can’t change course right now.”

“Very well, then we must change the course ourselves,” Angus replied. “Either you let us brief caucus and Cabinet early next week, or we’ll simply release the report publicly ourselves and let the chips fall. We need the Budget and Throne Speech to take this report seriously. I think you know I’ll do what I say I’ll do.”

There was silence, so we waited. And waited.

“We’ll call you back in five minutes,” said Bradley before the line died.

“We’ll be here,” Angus replied.

We just sat there without speaking. Angus went back to the paperwork he’d been toiling over prior to the call. I closed my eyes and tried to quell my abdominal lacrosse game. About ten minutes later my cellphone rang. I knew who it was.

“Hi Bradley.”

“Okay, you’ve got your fuckin’ caucus and Cabinet briefings. Monday morning, then Wednesday morning,” he hissed. I could tell he wanted to use my head as a piñata, and I don’t think he cared much about the loot inside. “But the timing of the report’s public release is still up in the air.”

“Not as far we’re concerned it isn’t,” I responded, trying to sound confident. Trying to sound like Angus.

“Yeah, well, fuck you and Angus too!”

He hung up, which seemed appropriate after delivering such a definitive epithet.

Angus looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “Well, we got the briefings, and Bradley sends his regards” was all I said.

Twenty minutes later, my 10:30 arrived. She was a rather studious-looking middle-aged mannish woman, dressed in a beige suit that I assumed looked much better on the mannequin in the thrift store window. She actually wore brown suede Wallabees on her feet. I could barely remember Wallabees. They’d been part of the standard uniform of the high school audio-visual club, along with flood pants belted just south of the rib cage and, in extreme cases, a plastic pen-packed pocket protector. The unfortunate students I occasionally found hanging helpless by their underwear waistbands on bathroom stall doors were also often sporting Wallabees. Notwithstanding this ignominious heritage, in this case, they were worn by one of the most respected contract translators ever to ply her trade on Parliament Hill. We simply could not release the McLintock Report until it was available in both official languages. Yes, women sometimes wore Wallabees too.

Jeanette Leforme crossed the floor to shake my extended hand.

“Daniel, how are you, my friend?” she asked in her distinct French accent.

“Jeanette, it’s great to see you,” I replied. “I’m just fine and trying to keep my head above water.”

“I find that when that’s not possible, a snorkel works quite well,” she joked.

Jeanette had that very literal sense of humour not uncommon to the translator set. We’d worked together for many years. Virtually every speech I churned out for the Leader, Jeanette had translated. She knew my writing, understood my sense of humour, and was skilled enough to mirror in the French translation the oral rhythms I had written in English. My French was passable but nowhere near advanced enough to support translation of speeches. The odd letter, perhaps, but not speeches. I
came to trust Jeanette to the point that I wouldn’t even review the French translation before releasing it to the media. Although she was a hired gun, a freelancing translator, I knew she was Liberal to the core. I couldn’t imagine her giving quite the same quality to her Tory clients.

We sat in front of my desk, and as she settled in her chair, I handed her the final draft of the McLintock Report.

“I suspected as much,” she said as she started reading.

“I’ll leave you to it. Do you want coffee?”

“Just cream, please.”

When I returned fifteen minutes later, she’d already finished her scan and sat with the report resting in her lap.

“Cream only,” I said as I handed her a bright red Liberal mug from four campaigns ago. I sipped a glass of water.

“So the PM is actually going to release this publicly?” she asked.

“Nope. We are. And it may not be sanctioned by the centre, but we’ll see.”

“It’s well-written, but not exactly in your style,” she observed.

“Yes, well, I had a co-writer. Angus McLintock himself penned several major sections. His natural style is spare and elegant while I still hail from the ‘why use three words when six will do’ school,” I explained. “So when I did the final edit, I kind of turned it into a hybrid of our two styles.”

“It works. It works very well. I think Canadians are going to be shocked,” she said.

“Well, that’s the intention. They’ll need to be shocked if they’re going to support such a hefty infrastructure investment.”

“I lose track of the years, but do you not lay the blame for starting the whole mess at the feet of a Liberal government two decades ago?” she asked.

“And there lies the rub.”

“I’ve not heard that expression. What does it mean?”

“It’s a lift from Hamlet and simply means ‘and there’s the problem.’”

“But still it will be released?”

“Yes, but unless there’s a radical shift in our relationship with the PMO, we’ll be doing the releasing ourselves, and paying the political price,” I noted.

“You must be filled with faith in Mr. McLintock?”

“Well, I think that what I’m filled with changes from day to day, but in general, I know we’re on the right track with this,” I replied. “But this job really has to be done on the down-low, Jeanette, or we’re history.”

“If you mean that you’re depending on my absolute discretion, you have always been able to count on me for that.”

“I know, but I needed to say it out loud,” I said as I handed her a slip of paper. “Don’t email it to me here at the office. Send it only to the email address on that slip. Then eat the paper please. I’ll need the final translation, formatted just as the English one currently is, by Tuesday at the latest. Does that work?”

I handed her a flash drive with the English final report as Jeanette stood and pulled her parka back on.

“I’m aiming for Monday,” she concluded, before heading out the door.

I picked up the phone and called the National Press Building.

“Natalie, it’s Daniel Addison. How are you?”

“Hi Danny, you’ve been busy. I keep reading about your man. You’re doing some good stuff.”

“Feel free to pass that on to Bradley Stanton. He’s about ready to disembowel me.”

“Don’t worry, this too shall pass,” she replied.

“Well, if I’m disembowelled, I don’t think I’ll be passing anything, but that’s really not why I’m calling,” I said. “I need you to put the media studio on hold for me next Wednesday from noon to about two. We’ll probably need it for about thirty minutes some time in that window.”

“Right now it’s free at that time, so I’ll put you down.”

“Can you do me a favour and not hold it in my name?” I asked. “I don’t want the world knowing – well, I don’t want the PMO
knowing – that we might be holding a newser then.”

“No problem. I’ll hold it for the Azerbaijani ambassador.”

“Do we have an Azerbaijani embassy in Ottawa?” I inquired.

“I don’t really know.”

I stroked a line through one more item on my lengthy To Do list. Next, I drafted the news release to accompany the release of the McLintock Report. Because I’d been immersed in writing the final draft of the report, the news release pretty well wrote itself. Although when quoting Angus in this news release, I did take special care to spell his name and not an orifice. Finally, I reached for the digital recorder in my top drawer. I spent the next half-hour or so with Angus, recording his responses to seven or eight questions he would surely get from journalists when the report went public. I thought we’d issue a radio news release and make audio files of Angus in full rhetorical flight available for radio stations across the country to download. I edited the MP3 files myself and consigned the following pearls of Angus to the virtual cutting-room floor:

“Only a brainless jackass would ask such a question.”

“I expect the Prime Minister would like to ram a red hot poker up my hindquarters so I’ll not be turning my back on him for the foreseeable future.”

“That young Mr. Stanton is greasier than a skid of bacon, but lacks the intoxicating aroma when in the fire.”

“Oops. I’m sorry about that one. I blame the cabbage soup I had last night.”

“The Liberals and Tories hold equal shares in the collapse of the bridge and the sorry state of our national infrastructure. The Liberals for starting the ball down the hill, and then the Tories for getting out of the way and letting it roll.”

I very nearly included that last sound bite. It summed up the story quite nicely. But I feared it might push Bradley either into a straitjacket, or worse, to Googling “contract killers for hire in the National Capital Region.”

I stacked the digital audio clips in a single MP3 file and used
two of Angus’s quotations in the news release. I’d distribute the audio file to reporters when the news release hit the wire. After Angus signed off on the release, which he did with only a few esoteric grammatical refinements, I loaded it onto a second flash drive so Lindsay could email it to Jeanette from her computer. I know. I was veering close to paranoia, but covering my tracks and taking no risks with only a few days to go just seemed the sensible approach. At least I’d learned something from Bradley Stanton. We were almost ready.

I’d seen very little of Lindsay in the previous few days and it was taking its toll on me. With all the pieces in place for the caucus and Cabinet briefings the following week and the report already in translation, I figured I’d earned an afternoon off. I met Lindsay at Starbucks. We lucked out and landed the two dark brown easy chairs right by the window. I set my backpack and its awkward load down on the floor beside hers. The sun was so bright it made the ice and snow of the river seem like a light source. The chairs were positioned in just such a way that we could hold hands. So we did.

“Guard this with your life,” I said as I pressed the flash drive into her palm.

With a furtive and over-the-top look in all directions, she shoved it into her zippered coat pocket.

“What am I guarding with my life?”

“You’re now in possession of the final, final version of the McLintock Report,” I explained. “The complete French translation will be arriving in your email box sometime on Monday, Tuesday at the latest, from someone name Jeanette.”

“Is that her real name?” she teased. “Should I be wearing gloves or dark glasses or something?”

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but we are not on the same page with the PMO. I think we’re going to end up freelancing this ourselves just so we can get it out there.”

I spent the next twenty minutes or so outlining our plan for
next week. We’d need Muriel’s help, too. I doubted we could keep her out of it anyway. Lindsay got into the spirit, or more accurately, the conspiracy of it all as she sipped her latte, and I, my hot chocolate. Angus and I no longer had the support of the centre. We’d decided jointly to stick to our guns on the report, even at the risk of being kicked out of the caucus. I thought it a long shot that the PM and Bradley would ever excommunicate Angus. Without even trying, the MP for Cumberland-Prescott had endeared himself to enough locals to win the election, and to a growing number of Canadians who seemed fascinated by this political anomaly. He was a hero to many. For this reason alone, it would be folly for them to make Angus sit as an independent and cause them to lose the reflected glow of his popularity. Or so I thought. Muriel and Lindsay agreed with me. Angus didn’t really care. In the Liberal tent or out of it, he’d still be the Member of Parliament for Cumberland-Prescott. A fine line separated maverick and mutineer, and Angus was brushing up against it.

Even against the distraction of the afternoon rush and the stunning sun-soaked river view, I had a very hard time keeping my eyes off Lindsay. Other than the romantic dinner Muriel and Angus had arranged, we’d had very little meaningful time with one another, even though we actually lived together. With both of us working so hard, living together really meant we were just sleeping together. And by sleeping together, I really mean sleeping together, in the strictest sense of the term. But that didn’t seem to matter. We both still seemed giddy at having found one another.

An older couple arrived, made it through the lineup, doctored their coffees, and then stood in the middle of the room, slowly rotating in a futile search for two empty chairs. Lindsay and I looked at one another and agreed in a glance. We both stood up and waved the couple over. They were relieved and grateful. After all, these were the best seats in the house. They were about to place their coffees on the small table when I grabbed my
backpack. Somehow one strap snared the table leg. So in one motion I swung both the backpack and the table up onto my shoulder. Nice.

When I realized what I’d done and looked back, the old man looked flushed as he still held his coffee in one hand but used his other to massage his upper shin. His wife looked concerned. I fell over myself in apology. I mean “fell over myself” in the figurative sense, though I accept the need to clarify. They were very good about it. The fact that we had surrendered our plush chairs in their moment of need helped to soften the blow – the one I’d delivered to his leg with a hardwood Starbucks table. I was actually quite pleased that I’d timed it so that they hadn’t yet set down their boiling hot beverages before my deft manoeuvre. Third-degree burns on top of the swelling contusion would not have helped. Lindsay watched it all with some amusement. I watched in hapless embarrassment.