“Premier Brewster knew the Supreme Court would rule in Ottawa’s favour. So now we take our argument directly to the people.”
“As a former member of the Prime Minister’s Office, couldn’t you have persuaded the prime minister to see Alberta’s viewpoint?”
“I chose to leave the Prime Minister’s Office at that time.”
“Weren’t you fired for publicly supporting the independence platform?”
How does she know that? Everyone agreed to keep the details confidential. “I decided to work for something I believed in.”
“Sources inside the Prime Minister’s Office say that you were given an ultimatum by the PM. Either support him or support the referendum.”
Bitch. “No comment.”
She shifted in her chair as she leafed through her notes then turned her gaze on him. “Let’s return, then, to what an independent Alberta would offer.”
“Our policy is really quite simple.”
“Not according to the latest polls. Voters are unclear about your true intentions.”
Garth put on a well-practised smile. Time to put her in her place. He wasn’t one of the good ol’ Brownshirt boys that populated the movement. He had an education, he was a rational thinker, and he had thought long and hard about how to argue for the cause. He had put together new facts to respond to the mounting criticism in the hostile, pro-Liberal media. He was sure the premier would approve.
Now it was time to reveal his sound bites that would overwhelm any opposition. “Number one, ‘Canada’ is really Ontario and Quebec. Together, with half of the country’s population, their political power is unbeatable. They will always stop any real attempt to improve Confederation.
“Number two. The Montana Pipeline, when completed, will create fifteen thousand jobs and seven billion in wealth, with another two billion per year in transport fees directly paid into the province’s coffers.
“Finally, number three. Alberta, as an independent nation, would be the thirty-fifth largest Western economy, slightly bigger than Finland’s. If Finland can do it, so can we.”
She looked at the camera operator behind him. “Unfortunately, that’s all the time we have for now. The premier is about to speak. Thank you for speaking with us, Mr. Haynes.”
That’s it? No response from her? He felt robbed. “Not a problem.”
Garth stood up and ripped off his microphone. He thought about the wasted personal opportunity with the reporter.
His iPhone began playing the Hockey Night in Canada theme song, which signalled a call from someone on a short and select list of contacts. He pulled it from his pocket and read the screen. Area code 208. Idaho.
“What?” he barked, holding the phone to his ear.
The call could be intercepted. He wanted no trail of evidence leading back to him if his plan failed. The loony left-wingers were listening for anything to use against him and the campaign. His special team used only the prepaid phones he had purchased. They used fake names. They used a short list of code words. And he used two phones, one for official campaign duties, and the other, clearly marked with a strip of blue tape, for unofficial business. That second phone would be smashed after the campaign was over.
“It’s me. Larch.”
Suddenly, Garth was no longer angry about the condescending tone of the interview. He felt serenity, hope, and sadness at the same time. He could anticipate the gravity of the news he was about to hear. He had waited so long for this moment. He hoped for some personal peace. But something gnawed at him that he couldn’t recognize or acknowledge. He paused. “So?”
“Mission complete.”
Garth let out a long, slow, tired breath. He stared at the distant podium where the premier had begun to speak.
Garth took a moment, trying to imagine the final, satisfying scene. “I’ll need confirmation before payment.”
“Of course. Check the local news sites in a few hours.”
“Payment will be delivered then.”
Silence lingered at both ends.
“Anything else?”
“There’s a problem.”
Garth said nothing.
“Potential witnesses,” continued Larch.
“And what are you doing about it?”
“I’m tracking them down.”
“Will this be a problem?”
There was a slight pause, a few seconds of static. “No.”
“You betcha. Call when you’re done.” Garth pressed end and put his phone in his pocket with his other secrets, leaving only one thought echoing in his mind: In seven days, I will be a hero to millions.
FIVE
DANIEL STARED LONGER than was probably polite at the silvery shield lying on the thin wooden table. “MacKinnon,” it read. The police detective leaned forward in his chair on the opposite side to continue what he had promised would be a friendly chat. “And you had no prior relationship with Mr. Forrestal before this meeting?”
Daniel tore his gaze from the shiny symbol of local authority. Power and authority were certainly what the Halifax Regional Police headquarters had put him in mind of when he had approached the building a half hour earlier. From the outside, it resembled a gigantic strongbox. But it was unclear whether the architects wanted to keep the criminals from escaping or keep the community from seeing what occurred deep in its bowels. He scanned the concrete walls of the office, seeing a framed degree hanging on a tilt and a faded family picture of the detective, flashing a confident smile, beside an athletic wife wrapping her arms around two teenaged sons.
He focused on the detective’s gruff face. “He only called me yesterday and asked to meet to discuss a business venture.”
“What sort of venture?” MacKinnon removed his glasses and placed them on the table.
“He never told me.”
“Any guesses?” He twiddled his pen.
“Something local, I suppose.”
MacKinnon consulted his notes. “And what relationship exists between Mr. Forrestal and Halifax?”
“Nothing that I know about. He’s a big fish.”
“What do you mean?”
“Important and prominent, I mean. He invests in Toronto, London, Tokyo — New York, too. Big cities. I wouldn’t have thought Halifax was big enough for him.”
Forrestal would have found Halifax positively quaint, Daniel thought. Certainly an odd choice. It was a city some had accused of never quite living up to its potential. A military fortress that never fired a shot in anger. A major source of Allied military power in the First World War that was virtually obliterated when two ships collided in its harbour. Although once a commercial and financial boom town when Canada was a young country, it had long ago abdicated its crown to more dynamic cities farther west.
“But he contacted you,” MacKinnon pressed.
“I guess there was something here he was interested in.”
“Any ideas?”
“Most of his high-profile investments are — were — in real estate. He would always beat the market.”
“How did he do that?”
“Most analysts credited his unique mix of properties in his portfolios.”
“How did that work?”
“It’s all about risk balancing. If one property goes down in price, provided your portfolio is broad enough, there’s probably another one increasing in price somewhere.”
MacKinnon scribbled furiously then stopped. “Did he have investments beyond real estate?”
“Yes. He had the banks, of course, and some blue-chip stocks, companies that traditionally do well. And he also invested in high-growth high-technology companies. Computers. Telecommunications. Internet. That sort of thing. Those were the ones that made headlines. But those were a while ago.”
“Would you say investments are your expertise, Professor Ritter?”
“Sort of.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“I used to be a business consultant. If a company wanted to expand its business in
foreign countries, they called me in to advise.”
“What kind of advice did you give?”
Daniel waited two seconds longer than an innocent response would take. “I helped them assess the worth and the risks of the proposed country and target company.”
“How did you do that?”
“By getting to know the country and the people involved.”
“So it’s reasonable that Mr. Forrestal would seek your expertise?”
“Well, yes, assuming he wanted to buy a foreign company. But he could have asked any one of my colleagues or my professional competitors. They would be much more knowledgeable about the local opportunities. I only moved here at the end of last year.”
“I’m interested in why he chose you.”
“I don’t know why he chose me.” Daniel regretted his answer as soon as he said it. Repeating a question was a sure sign someone was on the defensive or looking for time to construct a plausible lie. He was sure that’s what MacKinnon was thinking.
MacKinnon stared at the floor for a few seconds then returned his gaze to Daniel. “You said that you’ve never done business with him before. How would he have known about you?”
“From TV perhaps. I have a weekly show on CBC about local business news.”
MacKinnon nodded slowly. “Yes, I remember seeing you on the news. Do you ever talk about businesses in Montreal on your show?”
“Not that I can recall.”
“And did you ever mention him or any of his businesses?”
Daniel shook his head.
MacKinnon scribbled more notes and then returned to look at Daniel. “And what did you do before you became an expert business consultant?”
Daniel had only a second to continue the smooth rhythm of the conversation. “I had many different jobs. I worked in a restaurant. I was a teacher. Tour guide, too, for a while.”
MacKinnon leaned closer. “And you left it all to return to school? Is that right?”
“It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
“And now you’re a professor. A teacher.”
“Scholar, yes.”
MacKinnon scribbled something on his pad then pulled from his pocket a clear Ziploc evidence bag containing a wallet-sized photograph. He slapped it onto the table in front of Daniel. White lines were slashed across the image at random angles where the photo had been digitally reassembled after having been ripped up into tiny pieces. The image was only three-quarters complete; there was a big bite out of the top left corner. It showed a man, a woman, and a boy standing together in front of an amusement park. Walt Disney World in Orlando, Daniel guessed. The top of the man’s face was missing. From its faded, orange-brown tinge, he guessed it had probably been taken with a cheap camera in the 1970s or 1980s.
“Let’s change the subject. We found this picture at the crime scene. We couldn’t find all of the pieces. Do you recognize any of these people?” MacKinnon pushed the photo forward. The man and the woman posed stiffly; the boy and the woman stood together on the right side of the image, and the man, standing apart on the left, held a briefcase and stared seriously into the camera. All looked a bit nervous. Nobody smiled.
Daniel knew that his immediate reaction was being judged. It’s what he would have done. “No, can’t say that I do.”
Why would a kid look sad at Walt Disney World? While the picture had faded, the tension on the faces of the three subjects was clear. Daniel guessed that maybe the parents’ relationship was on the rocks, and the trip was perhaps a last-ditch attempt to save a doomed marriage. Perhaps the son was desperately trying to keep them together, but his fatalism was clear in his expression.
“Who are they?”
“Are you sure you don’t recognize anyone?” asked MacKinnon.
“Is one of them Mr. Forrestal?”
“This photograph was found near the body.”
Daniel looked closer. The torn photo made recognizing the man difficult. Maybe there was a faint resemblance between the man in the picture and Forrestal, although he’d only ever seen his picture online. Trying to meet him in person hadn’t helped.
“Is that him?” He pointed to the man. He looked young, strong, tall. Different than the recent photos he’d seen of Forrestal.
MacKinnon said, “Do you know the woman and the boy?”
Daniel wondered whether Forrestal was killed because of what he did to the boy or what he did to the woman. He looked again but found nothing else familiar. He shook his head.
MacKinnon scribbled more notes and switched off the recorder.
Daniel was only partly content. Yes, he had stick-handled most of MacKinnon’s questions, answering clearly without revealing too much. But he had also felt surprising pressure from a skilled interrogator. He smiled.
“You get the answers you were looking for?”
MacKinnon said nothing for a moment. “Perhaps, but I’m more interested in what you’re not telling me, professor.”
Shit.
SIX
TWO MEN WATCHED the port gate from their white cube van on Avenue Pierre-Dupuy, across from the cubist architectural curiosity of Habitat 67. With the engine off, the February cold started to seep through the cracks until they could see their breath. The driver rolled his window down now that there was no real difference in temperature inside and out.
“So?” Zeke said and then puffed after a brief bright glow lit the tip of his cigarette.
“We’ll wait another fifteen minutes.” Each syllable condensed into a small cloud. Gus leaned his elbow through the open window and stared toward the gate. He was tired of talking. It was better if only the bare essentials were said after the last screw-up.
“I just wanted a fuckin’ Big Mac.” Zeke couldn’t shut up.
“The Papa Burger not good enough for you, kid?”
“I like the special sauce.”
“You know, it’s just mayonnaise and stuff. Nothing special about it.”
“The cop didn’t spot us.”
“You don’t know that.”
“But we were almost at the drive-thru —”
“That would have boxed us in. No escape if they made us.”
“They were just going in to get a coffee or something.”
“You don’t take chances with the cops, kid.”
Zeke looked at his boots. He tried and failed to say nothing for a moment. He smiled faintly. “Then we’ll call it in?”
Gus sighed, weary of life and its complications. He had longed for a simpler life when he joined the Alberta Independence Movement, punching out of a career dead end in the army. You did what you were told, you got rewarded. Money. Girls. A car. Even a house. What he liked most, of course, was power. He soon discovered, however, that with power came complications. At first, he tried to will away his problems using his new-found power to get others to clean up his messes. But he learned something only a more experienced person would know: Even the boss has a boss. And Gus’s voracious appetite for young prostitutes resulted in one emaciated redhead dying in a dank, plywood-walled motel outside Red Deer. Even the other white power affiliates noticed. The leader sent two enforcers. They used two-by-fours to express his disapproval. They took his girls and his house away. He knew what they would take away next. He had followed the rules since, and he was following them now.
Call when the package arrives. Call if the package does not arrive. Do not open the package.
“Yes, we’ll call it in,” he said.
Zeke’s face twisted into what normally would be called a smile for the first time since they had parked. “Then can we get a Big Mac?”
Gus looked at the younger man sitting in the passenger seat. It was like gazing at himself a decade ago. Zeke was looking for purpose, wanting to make a difference to their noble cause. And keen to follow orders, with the expectation that someday it would be his orders that others would follow. Then he saw himself in the rear-view mirror. Only half of his face showed. He still looked handsome for
a thirty-five-year-old. Brown eyes, hair neatly shaved. A bit of stubble hardened his face, the effect he wanted. He kept in shape and he could still bench press three hundred pounds. But he knew his days of high status within AIM were numbered. In a few years he would be unable to stand up to the young pups like Zeke.
“Fuck, sure,” he said.
Across the street, a steel fence held a scuffed sign: “Port de Montréal. Entrée Interdite.” The sight of another French sign made Gus spit through the van’s open window. The spit froze before it hit the ground. Why couldn’t Quebec speak English like everyone else? Passing the border from Ontario, the sudden change of language complicated navigating in ways that his handler had forgotten or chose not to mention. He got that Sud meant South, and Nord, North. But he would have saved at least an hour in gridlock if he had understood Voies fermées on the Trans-Canada coming into the city.
He accepted that this assignment, which had taken him and a junior member from their homes north of Calgary to the far east of the country, was but another test of his loyalty. He was one of the older members of the group, and his loyalty was occasionally questioned. Maybe he was just too old to stay with the group. Maybe he was having thoughts of going out on his own. Better to keep him busy and far away, the leadership probably concluded.
So he and the new recruit were waiting for a shipment three thousand kilometres from home, surrounded by those goddamned frog signs that he barely understood. Like being in a foreign country. He knew biker gangs at the top of the unwritten hierarchy, several notches above AIM, controlled the Montreal port. It made smuggling a bit easier than trying to move across a guarded land border. But he didn’t know what lurked in the container they waited for. Only that it was in several large boxes, was very heavy, required a cube van to transport back, and had to be at the chapter house outside of Airdrie by Sunday afternoon at four.
He sighed as he scanned the scene on the other side of the port fence once again. Beyond the sign stood row upon row of stacked rectangular metal boxes. Long black, brown, and white ones, each with mysterious contents that someone valued. A lone forklift puttered between the rows, searching for the right container to bring down.
True Patriots Page 3