Fanatics

by William Bell

  “That’s great, Mom. You can continue your research so you’ll be ready when you get the green light.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Will it go worldwide, d’you think?”

  “Probably. For which I have you to thank.”

  “True,” I replied, smiling.

  “Even though you bribed me.”

  “If you want to play in the big leagues, Mom, you gotta be tough.”

  She laughed. “Right. My son, the hard rock.”

  “Anyway, go on before Dad finishes.”

  “The phone was the key,” she continued. “By tracking down many of the numbers I’ve been able to identify some of the men. Most of them live in the Scarborough area. A lot of the calls were made to a particular mosque in the same locality. I’m beginning to piece together a scenario, but I have lots more research to do, including a trip to the city to confirm a lot of what I have.”

  “How does the drowned guy who was found up on Cumberland Beach fit into all this?”

  “I’m coming to that. You were right about the link between the cellphone, the GPS, and the drowned man. There’s been an information blackout on the corpse. Since the body was discovered there has been no further information about him-no name, no cause of death, no autopsy report. When I made enquiries I was stonewalled. The Mounties won’t confirm or deny that there was an autopsy.”

  I remembered one of Mom’s reporter’s maxims: if the authorities refused to tell you something, it was because they had something to hide. Which demanded the question…

  “Why?”

  “Good question. One of the first things I did was follow the links. The dead man owned the GPS you found. The GPS took you to the camp, where you came across the cellphone. The info on the phone’s memory card led me to the Scarborough mosque and the men I mentioned before. But there’s more. It turns out that whoever owned the cellphone made dozens of calls to a certain very interesting telephone number. I pulled in a few favours and discovered that telephone number belongs to a cop. A Mountie.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not kidding. The Mountie was the drowned man’s controller. The dead guy must have been undercover.”

  “Meaning he was also a cop.”

  “Or working for them as an informer. Feeding them intelligence. Or helping them to set up a sting. Everything you and I know-and more-the cops are also aware of.”

  “Meaning,” I added with a shudder, “there’s a good chance the undercover was found out by the gang and killed.”

  I recalled the night at the mansion, when I stood at the window and watched the thunderstorm tear up the sky. I had thought I heard a motorboat. Were the paintballers dumping the body of the murdered undercover man, not realizing that somehow his GPS had floated away?

  “I wonder what the paintballers are planning,” I muttered.

  “You should stop calling them that. It makes them seem like innocent sportsmen. These guys are serious characters. They’re in training. They were considered dangerous enough for the cops to infiltrate the group.”

  I thought of the paintball hits around the door and window of the cabin out at the camp, and of the leader, with his commanding air and the machine pistol hanging across his chest. But then I saw in my mind’s eye the so-called sentry I had come upon that very morning. He didn’t seem dangerous. He was a joke, playing at soldier with his music-player buds in his ears.

  “The Mounties still don’t know about the GPS and the cellphone,” Mom said. “That’s why I had you take the cell to your new workshop. It’s evidence. If the cops turn on me and get a search warrant for the house to take away my files and computer and so on-and they’ve done it before to other journalists with pretty flimsy cause-I need the cell to be off-site where the search warrant won’t apply.”

  “No worries on that score, Mom.”

  She pinned me with her eyes. “Why do I get the impression there’s something you’re not telling me?”

  “The GPS is gone, like I told you. The phone is back where I found it.”

  Mom’s pretty features clouded over. “That’s what you meant by ‘eventful’ when I asked you about your day. I thought I told you-”

  “Like I said, No worries.”

  “Please don’t go near that place again.”

  The sound of Dad’s hedge clippers died and we watched him trudge across the lawn, winding the extension cord into big loops on his way to the garage.

  “Anyway, Mom, you haven’t shared your theory. What are these guys planning?”

  Dad came out of the garage and walked down the flagstone path toward us.

  “Stay tuned,” Mom answered.

  III

  NEXT MORNING, Raphaella and I went through the familiar routine-taking compulsory tea with Mrs. Stoppini, anxiously opening the library doors, every nerve vibrating-releasing locks to get into the secret cupboard. But this time, the spectre didn’t appear. We left the mansion with the professor’s manuscript at the bottom of my backpack.

  With Raphaella riding pillion, I piloted the Hawk through the cool morning, turned in to the big mall, and parked near the front door of the office supply store. We walked inside, filled in an order form, then waited while a man wearing green braces with his purple trousers ran off a copy of the manuscript.

  While Raphaella was paying for the service I dropped a few dollar coins into the shrinkwrap machine and sealed up the original manuscript. I slid the photocopy into the professor’s file box. We left the store and rode to Mrs. Stoppini’s lawyer’s office on Colborne Street. We explained to the secretary who we were.

  “Ah, yes,” she said. “I was speaking to Mrs. Stoppini myself.”

  We handed over the package and made our way out the door-but not until we had watched the secretary put the package into the safe.

  The sun had climbed toward noon by the time we pulled through the mansion gates. Raphaella and I went directly to the library and put the photocopy where it belonged. We sat down in the chairs facing the fireplace.

  “One last duty,” I said with no confidence whatsoever.

  “Finding a way to make the spirit leave.”

  “For good.”

  We threw a few ideas around, including Raphaella’s joking suggestion to hire a priest to conduct an exorcism. She was laughing when she said it.

  “I don’t think you can hire a priest, anyway. Besides, you’re not Catholic.”

  No matter how many scenarios we spun, we ended up with the same problem-the gold cross.

  “How about we separate the relic from the cross?” I suggested.

  “Thereby accomplishing what?”

  “Did you just say ‘thereby’?”

  “Sorry. Must have been the influence of the lawyer’s office. But answer my question anyway.”

  “If we remove the atlas we dissolve the cult. No reliquary, no secret movement.”

  “But they don’t actually need the reliquary. They can still hold meetings and worship the friar and hatch their plans. And really, none of that is our business. They have a right to believe what they want.”

  “True. Okay, why don’t we post the atlas on an online auction. ‘One fanatical monk’s atlas bone. Previously owned. Slightly marked by events.’ ”

  “ ‘Be the first kid on your block to have your very own holy relic,’ ” Raphaella added, and began to giggle. “If we separate the relic from the cross, what do we do with the atlas?” she asked, suddenly serious again. “I don’t believe it’s holy, but it is part of a human being, however evil he was sometimes.”

  “Could we bury it?”

  “Where?”

  “A Catholic cemetery?”

  “But would that solve anything?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Me either.”

  “So,” I summed up, “we’re agreed.”

  “Yeah. We don’t have a clue what to do.”

  “Exactly.”

  Five

  I

  OVER TH
E NEXT WEEK a lot happened in the part of my life that had nothing to do with the Corbizzi estate or the Renaissance ghost that had taken up residence there.

  Raphaella was in constant demand. MOO was gearing up for opening night, with a full rehearsal schedule. The show was coming together well, she told me. It was looking and sounding good. Mr. and Mrs. Director were getting along. Between MOO and her responsibilities at the Demeter, Raphaella was run ragged.

  I was bouncing down the stairs from my room one morning when my cell rang. A man introduced himself as Derek and said he and his wife had been looking at the walnut cabinet I had made and put on display in the Olde Gold showroom. My father had given him my cell number. Would I be able to come to their house and discuss a commission?

  I rode out to their century home on Maple Drive, where we sat by the lake in wicker patio chairs and worked out a deal for the cabinet and three more custom-designed pieces-two chests of drawers and a bookcase with glass doors. I agreed to come back with an estimate and preliminary drawings in a couple of weeks-they weren’t in a hurry, they said-and left the patio with a deposit cheque in my wallet.

  I practically sang out loud as I rode home. Finally, a real customer-and some cash flow. Finally, I could realistically hope that not too far in the future Raphaella and I would be able to find a place of our own and move in together. We had talked about getting married. The conversation lasted about five seconds, as I had expected. Raphaella thought marriage was an outmoded institution based on the idea that women were property or second-class citizens. “We don’t need a piece of paper,” she had said. “We know how we feel about each other.” I didn’t care one way or the other, as long as I was with her.

  I came back into the house to hear a strange sound coming from the living room. Our TV set never saw action until at least six o’clock. I walked down the hall and got my second shock. My mother was watching TV. In the middle of the day.

  Before I could say, “What’s wrong?” she asked, “Heard the news?”

  At the bottom of the screen a white banner crawled, almost shouting “Breaking News,” while an overly made-up woman sitting behind a huge kidney-shaped desk was talking.

  “… confirmed that at least six men, including the imam of the Scarborough mosque all the suspects attended, were arrested early this morning in a coordinated series of raids in Scarborough and Mississauga involving security services and two police forces. The men, all Pakistani-Canadians, ranging in age from juveniles to mid-twenties, have been detained in connection with possible terrorist activities. More on this after the break.”

  Mom hit the Mute button on the remote.

  “It’s started,” she said.

  “Did you know it was coming?”

  “I knew it would be soon. That’s why I went to the city and checked out the mosque and some of the addresses I had acquired by using the phone numbers on the cell you found. I just drove by and took pictures. I already had their names.”

  “So you’re all set to go?”

  The sparkle in her eyes said yes. “I think so. There might even be a book in this.”

  On the TV screen, where the news reader had just been talking about suspected terrorists, a woman was earnestly demonstrating the wonders of a new brand of paper towel to her husband. The “more after the break” claim turned out to be a repeat of the announcement. Additional information was promised.

  By the time the six o’clock news came on the kitchen radio, the arrest count had risen and the media had already dubbed the detainees “The Severn Ten,” continually referring to them as Muslim men. The training camp had been discovered, thanks to an anonymous source, near Orillia.

  “That’s us, Mom,” I exclaimed, earning a scowl from her and a confused glance from my father. He put down his knife and fork and calmly aligned them beside his plate of fish and chips.

  “Why do I have the feeling I’m the last one to get the joke?” Dad asked.

  Mom took a sip of her white wine and began to explain. She emphasized the reasons why she couldn’t tell Dad what she had been working on. Now that the story was out, she could. Our plates were empty by the time she finished.

  Dad looked at me, then at Mom, then he smiled.

  “So you’re not going to Herat, then,” he said.

  By eleven o’clock the training camp was being called “jihadist” and the men “Islamists.” They had been plotting, the police said, to attack one or more targets in the city, including Union Station and CSIS headquarters. A huge cache of firearms, ammunition, and explosives had been captured during the raids. In addition, each of the detained men carried a copy of a manifesto calling for the establishment of an Islamist state and strict rule according to Sharia law.

  “In other words, a theocracy,” I murmured. “There’s not much news left for you to break, is there, Mom?” I asked.

  “Oh, we’ll see,” she said mysteriously.

  II

  AFTER DINNER I FLOPPED in front of the TV and flipped through channels mindlessly, unable to give my attention to anything on offer. I tossed the remote aside without turning off the set. On the screen two ego-warriors in black jumpsuits and watch caps were going through the classic Hollywood “suiting up” scene-buckling buckles, zipping zippers, cinching drawstrings, slamming ammo clips into wicked-looking weapons, eager to shoot or blow up anything that got in their way-all this as uptempo music pounded in the background. It wasn’t clear to me what they were fighting for, other than their own egos. As sparks flew and mangled bodies fell, my mind was constantly drawn back to reality and the radio newscast at dinner.

  I was relieved that the whole issue had been resolved. The bad guys had been rounded up and Mom was staying put-for the time being, anyway.

  Raphaella hadn’t taken the camo-boys seriously, but now she’d have to. Mom had it right. There was nothing funny about them. I figured some of them-like the one I had seen taking a leak at the camp-were losers, but even losers can be dangerous. An explosion in an enclosed underground train depot like Union Station, with thousands of commuters packed onto the platforms or streaming up and down the stairways, would be a bloodbath, ripping countless bodies to shreds. If the terrorists had been able to carry out their missions there would have been blood on the walls in other parts of the city, too.

  And all for what? An Islamist state based on Sharia law? In North America? How realistic was that? The camo-boys must have left their sanity out in the bush somewhere.

  Of all the revolting, cowardly acts humans were capable of, planting a bomb and walking away to safety had to be one of the most despicable. Killing was bad enough. Murdering without even knowing or caring whose blood you spilled was worse. And suicide bombers? A bunch of cowards brainwashed by soul-dead manipulators. They boarded a bus or walked into a crowded market and thumbed a button, vaporizing themselves and tearing dozens of strangers to bloody fragments. They didn’t even have the guts to stay around and witness the carnage.

  Guys like the Severn Ten were not freedom fighters or soldiers of God. They were vermin who crawled out of the woodwork when the sun went down. They wanted a theocracy. Professor Corbizzi had warned that Savonarola had wanted a theocracy, too. Government according to the will of God. Different religion, same objective. As far as I knew, Savonarola had never planted a bomb and beetled home to wait for the body parts to fly, but he had called for the death of his political enemies, and the burning of “sinners” and their “vanities.”

  I picked up the remote and shut off the TV, recalling Raphaella’s question in Professor Corbizzi’s library not long ago. Was it the religion that was to blame or the people who practised it-the songbook or the singers? She had wondered if evil people used their religion as a cover for their own immorality, an excuse to kill and maim. The pope who signed the order to torture and hang and burn Savonarola would have said he was doing the will of God. He was also snuffing out a personal enemy who had urged reform of the Church and removal of corrupt men like him. If the camo-boys had su
cceeded in bombing Union Station they’d likely have shouted, “God is great!” but they would have meant “Aren’t we wonderful!”

  The news reports had harped on about the Severn Ten being Muslims, as if every Muslim in the country was a terrorist. It wasn’t religion or holy texts that killed. It was people who read the books and used bits of what they picked off the pages to justify their deeds, the way the ancient Greeks in the old blue book of myths on my bookshelf had used the Fates.

  “God made me do it” or “God wanted me to do it” was a lie.

  III

  FOR THE TIME BEING, MOO had taken over Raphaella’s life. As stage manager she had to be on hand for each full rehearsal and every performance-a responsibility I’d have run from but Raphaella enjoyed. The show had a three-night run. Opening night found me backstage, sitting on a chair out of everyone’s way. Although I hated musicals, I was energized by the performers in early-twentieth-century costumes who entered and exited according to Raphaella’s cues and sang their comical songs with more enthusiasm than skill. In her all-black outfit and wire-thin headset, holding a clipboard in one hand and a mechanical pencil in another, she reminded me of the day soon after we had met. Frustrated by her ignoring me, I marched across Mississauga Street, bashed through the backstage door, found her working a rehearsal of the Sound of Music, and declared that I had loved her since the moment I first saw her. Amazed at myself for blurting out such a terrifying admission, I was even more thunderstruck when she dropped her clipboard and kissed me on the mouth in a way I’d never been kissed before.

  MOO’s opening night was a smash. The following shows sold out. As the cast and directors had hoped, they were invited to give a benefit performance for the World Youth Congress at Geneva Park, the conference centre on the east shore of Lake Couchiching. The producer consulted the two directors and the cast, who all agreed, and after a day’s rest, Raphaella, the directors, and the musicians went out to Geneva Park in the morning to set up and do a thorough sound check.