by Winona Kent
“Hi,” said Robin, with a small wave.
She wasn’t really unattractive. Just a little…unusual. Colorful. She had black hair. And a purple sweater. A midnight-blue leather miniskirt and carmine fishnet tights. Red enameled earrings. She looked older than Anthony.
“You own this place, do you?” Robin inquired, facetiously. You had to be decent to your brother’s girlfriends. You never knew if they might end up being sisters-in-law. Decent. You didn’t have to like them very much.
“It belongs to my cousin,” Giselle replied in good English, but with a strong French Canadian accent. “A family concern.” She leaned on the counter. “Your fadder—he makes movies?”
“Sometimes,” Robin said. He liked the way she said “fadder,” her tongue balking at the “th.”
“I make movies too. But I shoot—I don’t act. I shoot, direct, produce. Antony acts.”
Antony, she said. Robin liked that, too. He looked sideways at his brother. “Clothes on or clothes off?”
“Pooh,” said Anthony.
“We make a very symbolic statement together,” Giselle said. “All gray and white and brown and black. The world is against us. We are going to self-destruct. Endless nuclear winter.”
“Gidget Goes To Greenland,” said Anthony. “Can we go through?” They’d phoned ahead; Giselle had been expecting them.
“Yes, sure.”
Robin followed his brother behind the counter and into the back of the shop.
Anthony was already kneeling on the floor, reaching into cupboards, shoving aside bottles and beakers.
“Look for D-76,” Robin suggested.
“Here.” Anthony dragged out a collapsible plastic gallon container with “D-76” scrawled across the front in black felt marking pen. Robin lugged this, and a similar jug of hypo, onto the countertop, found the black cannister used for developing negatives, and wound the exposed roll into the holder in the lid.
“Want to make prints?”
“Why don’t we see if there’s anything on the film first.” Robin poured the developer in, screwed the lid on tight, gave the cannister a shake, and sat up on the counter, legs dangling, to wait.
“You don’t suppose this is a case of mistaken identity, do you?”
“Anything’s possible, Pooh. Perhaps you’re just a middleman, and somebody’s going to intercept you later. They don’t want to do it too soon in case they’re being followed.”
“Perhaps I’m being followed,” Robin added gloomily. “Ever think of that?”
“Might be interesting,” Anthony considered. “Are you?”
“I’m not sure.”
Driving down Creekdene and Taylor Way, and across Lions Gate Bridge into Stanley Park, he had noticed a dark blue Buick in his rearview mirror, traveling three car-lengths behind him. The Buick had seemed to be tracking him. He hadn’t been absolutely certain until he’d tried detouring through the park, taking the road that looped around past Siwash Rock and Ferguson Point. The Buick had stuck with him, slowing when he slowed, stopping when he pulled over near the seawall, jockeying with the traffic to catch up as he rounded Lost Lagoon and headed into the West End. Whoever they were, they didn’t seem to care that they had been spotted, that the object of their pursuit knew they were there. Or else they were too stupid to notice.
The car had disappeared on Robson. Robin had gunned The Wreck’s engine and roared through a red light, narrowly missing a couple of gray old ladies in plastic raincoats who were tottering across to the Blue Horizon Hotel.
“Could be CSIS,” Anthony speculated.
“Wonderful. They think I’m into espionage. I’ll be arrested and tried for treason.”
“Mind you, if it was the Security Squad, they’d be too busy looking for Sikh separatists to go bothering with someone like you. You weren’t by any chance wearing a turban and a ceremonial dagger, were you?”
Robin shot him a look of disgust.
“Anyway,” Anthony said, “these things invariably sort themselves out—if not by the first commercial break, then almost always by the end of the episode.”
“Unless it’s a two-parter,” Robin answered unhappily. “Never forgetting, of course, that between the opening and closing credits a whole host of complications arise, not the least of which is the capture and interrogation of our favorite heroes. Are we looking forward to that, Anthony?”
“I am if you are.”
Robin looked at his brother. “You wouldn’t be so flippant if you were being followed all over the city by a couple of mysterious men in a suspicious-looking car.”
“Ready?” Robin pulled the strip of film out of the water and held it, streaked and dripping, up to the overhead light.
The majority of the frames were not, as he had predicted, all black; they were perfectly clear. All, that is, except the first one. Across the middle of the first frame there appeared one narrow gray strip, about a tenth of a millimeter wide, speckled with tiny black dots. Robin peered at it, steadying his right hand with his left.
“How did that happen?” he said, confused. “I had the whole roll out in the light.”
Anthony was silent for a moment. “What does it mean when it’s all clear like that?”
“It means that part of the negative was never exposed. It’s like developing a brand new blank roll.”
“But somebody took a picture of something here.” He tapped the narrow gray strip.
“Exactly. They took one picture. But I still exposed the whole film to daylight. It should be all black.”
“If you had some film, Pooh…and you’d taken a very important photograph…and it was the only photograph you wanted…and you had to make sure the film wasn’t accidentally exposed while it was in transit from Point A to Point B…what would you do?”
“Develop it,” Robin shrugged.
“There’s your answer.”
“You think this film was processed before?”
Anthony nodded.
“What about the emulsion?”
“Fake,” Anthony said.
Robin looked at the nine clear frames. “Of course,” he said, with total rationality. “We’re dealing with spies here. Why not?” He ran his finger over the gray band at the start of the roll. “What do you suppose this is then, Ant?”
“I think it’s a strip of microfilm, Pooh. Look closely—it’s glued on. I think somebody shot it and developed it, then stuck it on this strip of already processed film and covered it with a new layer of emulsion. I think we should try to enlarge it and see what we’ve got.”
Robin glanced around the darkroom, then clambered onto the counter and raised the black-and-white enlarger to its maximum clearance. He switched on the lamp and slid the film into the holder between the condenser lens and the bellows. An image appeared on the white easel beneath, blurred, gray, and distorted. “Turn off that overhead light,” he said, jumping back to the floor.
Anthony reached for the switch by the door, and, except for the faintly illuminated square underneath the enlarger, the room was cloaked in a shadowy, close blackness. Robin leaned over the easel, adjusting the focus. The image began to take on definition and form; the fuzzy, patchy streaks became lines and diagrams; typewritten words evolved from the smudged black dots.
“I’m impressed,” Anthony said.
His brother stared at the pictures, pulling them slowly through the negative holder. There were twenty tiny frames: reproductions of pages from typewritten documents, a map of the Lower Mainland, and what looked like specification drawings and instructions for the assembly and installation of satellite TV dishes. With the exception of the instruction sheet, which was in English, the documents had all been prepared in a foreign language.
“It looks Russian.”
“I know,” said Anthony.
Robin leaned his chin on his fist and glanced humorously at his brother. “You think there’s some secret Soviet plot afoot to intercept HBO?”
“Robin.”
“Joke, Ant. Joke. No
thing here looks very sensitive to me. The care and building of cut-price earth stations. We should show this to Ian—he’s got some South Koreans on hold.”
“There has to be something more to this.”
Robin stared at the map of the Lower Mainland. There were dots all over it, marking, he supposed, a series of strategic locations. Representing what? The addresses of the owners of the dishes?
“There has to be something more,” Anthony said, again. “A girl died trying to protect this film.” He, too, studied the frames. “It’s got to be in there.” He indicated the pages that had been typed in Russian.
“Maybe we could get that translated. You know—by somebody in Slavonic Studies or Comparative Lit?”
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea.” Anthony looked at his brother in the eerie lamplight.
Robin thought for a moment. “I guess not,” he said.
“Giselle’s grandfather teaches conversational Russian to West End seniors…”
Robin looked at him. “That’s handy.”
“Also conversational Mandarin, Greek, German, and, of course, French.”
“Of course,” said Robin. “Can we trust him?”
Anthony shrugged. “Well, at least I know him better than some anonymous prof from Comparative Literature.”
There was a moment of silence.
“What do you think we’re dealing with here, Ant? Industrial espionage?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it worth killing somebody over?”
Anthony didn’t say anything. He was thinking of the dead girl, lying crumpled in the plaza in front of the Gage Residences, legs skewed, arms flopped at crazy angles. She’d given the robot to Robin for a reason, and she’d been dispatched to the glorious hereafter a short while later. Why? Was she killed because of what she did—or what she knew? It really wasn’t looking very much like suicide anymore.
Chapter Four
Monday
It was raining. And only one of The Wreck’s windshield wipers was working. The one on the passenger side had given up the ghost on South Granville and was now flip-flopping uselessly on a disconnected spring.
Robin pulled into the long-term parking lot of the airport and waited just beyond the swing-up arm of the entrance, watching the road through his rearview mirror. The dark blue Buick slowed at the turnoff, hesitated, and then angled out onto the road again, heading toward the short-term meters by the car rental returns.
Who were they trying to fool, anyway? It was almost as though they wanted him to see them—an intimidation tactic. We know you’ve got the robot. We’re just waiting to see what you do with it.
He cruised through the lot, looking for a vacant space. Well, they could have the stupid thing. All they had to do was ask. Over the weekend, he’d reassembled the insides of the toy—sort of. He’d poked the film back through the tube in the top of the head and stuck the head on top of the neck. He’d screwed in all the screws and replaced the batteries. It no longer clicked and whirred and made clever beeping noises—that was too much to hope for—but at least it was in one piece again. It now graced his dashboard, sitting squarely in the ashtray, one bubble eye permanently chipped as a result of the indiscriminate application of Mrs. Peel’s teeth.
All they had to do was ask.
Leaving the driver’s door unlocked, and making sure the toy was prominently displayed, he zipped up his windbreaker and trudged off across the blacktop, stepping around the oil-scummed puddles and rut-holes in an absurd attempt to keep his feet dry.
Had there been any fans of Evan Harris on hand at the airport to greet him, it was doubtful they would have recognized their hero. Discreet camera angles and a careful matching of acting partners over the years had resulted in the on-screen Evan appearing to be at least four inches taller than the off-screen Evan. Over the years, too, he had disguised his appearance in many weird and wonderful ways. He’d done Spy Squad with dark wavy hair and fuzzy sideburns; a guest shot on Mary Tyler Moore as a balding reporter who wore rimless glasses; an entire Canadian series about a very old man with white hair and great bushy Santa Claus eyebrows; and, of course, Snake Dance, where he’d more or less looked like his redheaded self, except for the black patch over the eye and the grotesque hearing aid.
Today he was pretending to be an excursion-fare tourist, dressed in a navy blue duffel coat and scruffy corduroys, and sporting a three-day growth of stubble. Getting into his next role, Robin supposed. His brother did it by lying for hours on end in a steaming tub of hot water; he’d go in as Anthony and emerge as some deranged lunatic from a Harold Pinter production, muttering absurdities in a very strange accent that was supposed to be East End London.
Robin scrutinized his father for a few minutes from the safety of a large pillar. Was there going to be a personality change to go along with the exterior trappings? He hoped not.
The luggage was beginning to arrive, sliding down the conveyor belt and landing with a thud against the rubber fender of the retaining wall. Evan looked lost. Snake Psychiatrist. Big City Cop, who went berserk in the Toronto subway system. Hobo with Lobotomy Scar, in that epic about Newfoundland. Robin pushed off from the pillar and sauntered up to his father’s side, a mischievous grin on his face.
“Ssssss,” he whispered.
Evan grimaced. “Hullo, Robin,” he said, without turning around. “You’re more damning than Leonard Maltin. At least he liked the snakes.”
Robin walked around so he could see his father’s face. “So did I,” he said, “but I thought the rabid bats were a bit much.”
“The entire film was a bit much,” Evan answered. “Where’s Ian?”
“Having ‘lunch.’” Robin made quotation marks in the air.
Evan noted the contempt in Robin’s voice. He recalled an earlier Ian, knapsacking his way around Europe with two pairs of grubby jeans, a holey old T-shirt, and seventy-five dollars to his name. They’d met up in London; Evan had bought him some new clothes and a couple of nights at the Charing Cross Hotel. He remembered asking Ian why he didn’t wire home for more money. And receiving the rather disdainful answer that he wanted nothing to do with either Rolf’s fortune or the savings account that had been set up in his name at the bank. Seven years could certainly change a lot in a person’s outlook.
“How’s your mother?”
“She’s fine.”
“Rolf?”
Robin’s hesitation perversely lifted his spirits. “Quietly going about his business?” he guessed.
“Except when he’s harassing Ant about still being in school. Anyway, we hardly ever see Rolf anymore. He spends most of his time wrapped up in the radio station.”
Evan thought of Gwennie, and his mood deflated somewhat.
“How is Anthony?”
“Playing A Tree.”
Evan laughed. “In what?”
“Waiting for Godot.”
Evan thought for a moment. “The Tree isn’t a character in Godot, is it?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Does he have any dialogue to go with the part? I mean, if you’re going to mess with Beckett, you may as well go all out.”
“I think he’s basically just going to stand onstage and creak a lot.”
Evan laughed again, and spotted his two large, familiarly battered bags coming down the conveyor. They landed with a clunk, and Robin grabbed them one at a time.
“I’ll go get the car,” he told his father. He jingled his car keys. “The Rolls?” he inquired. “Or the Lincoln?”
The robot, alas, was exactly where he had left it, wheels rutted in the ashtray underneath the radio.
Robin kicked his door. How stupid could those guys in the blue Buick be?
He threw the toy onto the floor, pulled out of the parking lot, and circled around the airport property, driving up the arrivals ramp at the north end of the terminal. There it was, engine idling in the space reserved for taxicabs. Only one person was inside the Buick, sitting beh
ind the wheel. He wore aviator sunglasses, in spite of the rain, and had a shock of gray-and-white hair, which had sprung out slightly in the West Coast humidity.
Robin drove up beside the big blue car, set the brake, and glared at the man who had been following him around Vancouver for five days. He looked to be about forty. And he wasn’t comfortable with the fact that Robin was eye-balling him with all the insolence he could muster.
As he watched, the second man came out of the building and climbed in the passenger side. He was younger, blond, and moustached, the type of guy who spent his free hours down at the gym, pumping the Nautilus. His neck was thicker than Robin’s thigh. He glanced up as he closed the door.
There was an annoyed honk behind The Wreck, and the commissioner at the crosswalk beckoned him forward. Robin released the parking brake and screeched off down the ramp, where Evan was waiting in the shelter of the terminal’s overhanging roof. He popped the hatch on the back of the car.
“Something wrong?” his father asked from the back.
“Nothing I can’t handle. I’m being followed.” Robin pounded on the inside of the passenger door; it sprang open.
Evan slammed the hatch down and got in the front seat. “By who?”
“I’m not quite sure.”
“Why?” Evan tried.
“I’m not quite sure about that, either.” He pulled away from the terminal slowly, and the Buick slid out behind him, a shadow. Evan turned partway around in his seat.
“You must have some idea.”
“Well, yes.” Robin reached down to the floor and produced the robot, handing it over to his father. “I think they want that. It’s a fairly intriguing situation. Would you like to hear about it?”
“Perhaps I should.”
“A woman gave it to me last Wednesday. Out at UBC. And then, that night, she was found dead on the ground outside one of the residence towers. That’s when Anthony said, ‘Why don’t you look inside the robot, Robin? She might have been a spy.’”
Evan smiled. His middle son’s obsessions were fairly well known to him. “What did you do?”
“I took the stupid thing apart.”