The Borrowman Cell

by Ingrid Betz

  “Better?” She adopted an aggressive male stance—legs wide, arms akimbo, chin thrust forward—as St. Denis turned to look.

  “Makes no difference.” He handed her the Henry in its leather case. “You’re still going to end up the way the other two did.”

  His green eyes mocked her and she thought how much she disliked him, in spite of what he’d sacrificed for a dog. “I’m not like the others,” she said. She slung the rifle case over her shoulder and let herself out, closing the screen door noiselessly behind her.

  St. Denis didn’t follow to see her off, but then she didn’t expect him to. Five minutes out on the water, she’d forgotten he existed.

  21.

  SHE STILL SOMETIMES THOUGHT she’d be able to do it with Asher. Verena lay on her back on top of the granite bluff with her hands clasped under her head and the sun warm on her face. Mares’ tails of white cloud flared across the fading blue sky of late afternoon. At the edge of her vision, a spider swayed on a thread tethered to a stunted spruce. She imagined Asher’s eyes gazing down into hers with a certain light in them.

  The float plane was late.

  It could be late for any number of reasons. The flight from Toronto to Bracebridge might have been delayed, or there’d been a change of plan and Li Chen wasn’t coming back till tomorrow. If he was still coming today, he’d have to get here soon for her to succeed with the Henry. Before the sun sank behind the treetops and the light started to wane.

  His eyes were the first thing she had noticed about Asher Curran. She’d been a member of the Cell for about a month when Borrowman asked her to the house to discuss an upcoming rally. It was after supper on a rainy evening in March. Elaine had answered the doorbell, smiling and glittering in a new sequined sweater. Asher was back. He’d flown in unexpectedly earlier that day from Alberta, where he’d been teaching a group of gas pipeline protesters how to set explosives for maximum effect. Donny and Raymond were running down the hall, giddy with excitement, and Elaine had greeted her with unaccustomed friendliness. “Dad’s in the study. Go on in.”

  The two men were behind the desk, bending over the computer. Borrowman made the introductions; afterward she couldn’t remember what he’d said. Imprinted on her brain was the way Asher’s pupils, swimming in whites pure as a child’s, bloomed in the light when he glanced up. Like violets in the snow, she’d thought with a queer catch under her ribs. They’d been made to memorize Shelley in English class in Salem and now and then a stray line came back to her. She had looked away at the time, embarrassed that a man’s eyes could strike her as so beautiful. Later she was to learn how his eyes narrowed when he reached for her, and that his chin had a trick of dimpling when he lowered his head to kiss her. Kisses that she actually enjoyed to some extent, because they were not part of what the soldiers had done to her mother. Not that Asher had kissed her very often. A couple of times when they were on an assignment together and mostly, she suspected, because he was bored.

  Water lapped steadily at the foot of the bluff.

  Penned in its narrow bed, the river murmured in endless complaint, punctuated now and then by a splash. Trout, Verena supposed, leaping after flies. She and her father had always fished on camping trips. They’d been too poor to afford freeze-dried food. They lived on what Canadians called flapjacks, on blueberries when they could find them, and trout fried in an old black iron frying pan. The delicate flaking meat of the fish was tinged with the taste of wood-smoke in a way no restaurant could ever duplicate. Lyrical words of her own had come to her one evening on their last trip. Scribbled by the light of the campfire on the margin of a topographical map, she could still read them. The simple lines expressed a sadness she hadn’t known she felt.

  Days travel into night, the Earth turns, turns.

  So dear, so fair, it will not come round again.

  A poem, her father had called it and for him, although neither of them knew it at the time, the words proved to be prophetic.

  She wondered, now that Elaine was about to lose her claim on Asher, would he pursue her more vigorously, and would she find it easier to submit to him?

  She became aware of the mosquito whine of an approaching plane.

  Verena drew her hands from under head, tensing and relaxing the muscles. She’d taken up her position on the bluff at three-forty; it was now just after five. From her pocket she drew the watch cap and pulled it down over her head. Asher had been the one who taught her the importance of covering her hair. Rolling over on her stomach, she reached for the Henry lying assembled before her. Fingers of shadow were spreading across the river to the opposite bank, but on the higher ground between the trees the mine buildings still gleamed white in the sun.

  The plane materialized on the horizon, a silver glitter that grew steadily larger until it assumed the familiar cruciform shape of a single-engine Cessna. From her vantage point, Verena watched it aim low over the trees and land where the river widened. Engine roaring and pontoons ploughing water, it taxied downstream and swung towards the wharf jutting out from the mine site.

  Verena inched forward, careful to keep her head below the level of the weedy grass. A scent of crushed moss mingled with the smell of earth. Moving down the path from the mine were a handful of workers, the ones in the lead running. She counted five men and three women; a couple of them in white lab coats.

  The plane juddered to a stop beside the wharf and was made fast by one of the men. The hatch opened and a man in a black windbreaker emerged. He carried a small case and stepped nimbly over the gap. His greeters clustered and milled around him. Most of the men were taller than he was and his round face, topped by thinning grey hair lifting momentarily in the breeze, appeared and disappeared behind them in the lens. Verena didn’t need to check the photograph to know it was Li Chen.

  Raising her rifle, she peered through the crosshairs of the sights.

  Her index finger caressed the trigger. The feel of the stock, sun-warmed and silky against her cheek, was making her eager. Not yet, not yet. She might have only one chance to get it right. The range was a hundred metres, give or take, and she needed to factor in wind direction and the dazzle of the low sun on the water, as well as the slanting angle of the shot.

  “For God’s sake, only Li Chen. Nobody else.” If Borrowman had said it once, he’d said it five times. “This is supposed to be a targeted…” He’d hesitated, unable to bring himself to use the word killing. “Take-out,” he said instead, as though Li Chen were some kind of fast food, and she’d had to keep from giggling. “Not a slaughter. Understood?”

  The chatter of voices drifting across the river was swallowed up by the rising pitch of the plane’s engine. The Cessna was taxiing back out into the current, gathering speed. The group on the wharf broke up and began to move single file up the rocky bank. A clear view of Li Chen from the back presented itself. Now, thought Verena, focusing on his head just above the nape of his neck where it emerged from the black collar. Her finger curled around the trigger. With exquisite slowness, she squeezed.

  He took another step and she thought she’d missed. Until abruptly, he pitched face down on the ground. The others froze, staring in confusion. The man closest to him reached down as if to help. He let out a yell. It was the signal for the entire group to surge forward and swarm around the prone figure.

  A woman started screaming and had to be pulled away. Somebody shouted orders and the rest glanced wildly about. They realized Li Chen had been shot, but had no idea where the shot came from. The roar of the Cessna’s engine had blanked out the sound of the rifle.

  Perfect timing, thought Verena.

  She removed the spent cartridge and slipped it into her pocket. Unscrewing the barrel, she inserted it into the stock and thrust the dismantled rifle into its case. Even from this distance she could see blood spreading in a dark stain over the rocks as two of the men turned the body over on its back. His shattered g
lasses gazed upward from what was left of his face. A clean death, efficient. Her father would have approved.

  Unaware of the drama playing itself out below, the Cessna climbed the treetops and headed for the horizon.

  Verena slipped the strap of the case over her shoulder and eased herself backwards on hands and knees. Once past a thicket of willow bushes, she got to her feet. Still crouching, she wheeled and broke into a run. Down the spruce-clad slope she’d climbed earlier, she half slid from tree to tree, dodging boulders and fallen logs while a carpet of orange needles muffled the thud of her boots.

  The canoe was packed and ready where she’d left it, hidden in the reeds of the swampy inlet. She slid her rifle case under the tarp, climbed in and threw herself on the stern seat. The paddle all but leaped into her hands. By the time she’d maneuvered the canoe to where the inlet emptied into the river, her heart had stopped rocketing around her rib cage, and she felt in control again. She waited in the lee of the bluff for the plane’s wake to subside against the shore. Farther out, a tossing island of emerald green indicated water lilies, although it was too late in the season for blooms.

  The sound of voices had faded from the direction of the wharf; they’d have carried the body up to the buildings by now. Borrowman had been reasonably certain the Chinese would believe the shooter had arrived by road, and that’s where they’d look first. Eventually of course, the search would broaden. Dipping her paddle and rotating the blade, Verena sent the canoe shooting forward. The more distance she was able to put between herself and the mine site in the next few hours, the better. Every few strokes she glanced over her shoulder. Just in case Borrowman was mistaken and some of them might have already launched a boat. The mine must have had boats at one time; one or two might be left and even still be watertight.

  She waited until she was past the third bend in the river, then she shipped her paddle, drew out Li Chen’s photograph and tore it into small pieces. Scattered on the water, they floated for a few seconds and then sank below the surface, taking the dead man’s face with them.

  She made the first portage by sunset.

  It was a long one, connecting the river to the first of a series of lakes, and she was relieved to manage it by daylight. Even so, the going was tough, with the pack topped by her sleeping bag strapped to her back, and the canoe balanced on her shoulders like a giant turtle shell. On the way to the mine, with time to spare, she’d travelled a longer, easier route. Now, on her return, she was taking a shortcut that had the additional advantage of being little used. An obstacle course, St. Denis had gleefully called it, full of rocks and treacherous dips and climbs and no doubt clogged with fallen branches.

  “If it rains,” he’d said with a grin, “you’ll be up to your ankles in mud.”

  She was lucky, it hadn’t rained and it wasn’t blackfly season. They’d been such innocents, she and her father, going camping that first time in May when no Canadian in his right mind ventured into the bush. But there’d been other trips as well, in the green abundance of summer and the blazing beauty of autumn, trips which had filled them with exhilaration—they who had left and lost everything they owned, her father said, to come upon such riches in their new country.

  Darkness fell early under the trees. Her foot caught in exposed roots. Every time she stumbled, the weight of the canoe shifted, and it took all her strength to stay upright. Her muscles groaned in protest as she negotiated the final stony descent to the lake. Lowering the canoe into the water, she swung her pack aboard and fell in after it, breathing hard.

  Streaks of mauve and gold painted the western sky as she nudged the canoe away from shore. The still surface of the lake was like a mirror, reflecting the last of the day’s light upward, while all around, the horizon bristled with the black serrated tips of spruce trees. Cold shivers ran down her spine after the exertion of the portage. She would have to stop soon and eat. Rest. But not yet. The fear in her of being hunted was still too strong.

  The silence of early autumn lay in the air. The only sounds were the gurgle of water around the stem of her paddle, the spatter of drops from the blade, and the rhythmic whisper of water against the prow as the canoe advanced. She remembered how in summer the lakes had echoed with the calling of loons. Borrowman’s loons, as she’d come to know them.

  “A twenty million-year-old species in danger of extinction from pesticide and acid rain and all the relentless depredations of ever-inventive modern man,” he’d written in one of his nature blogs. She hadn’t understood all the words but the over-the-top description had stuck in her brain.

  With the lake behind her, she stopped at a chain of small islands working their way up-river like rungs on a ladder. Some were no more than boulders; others held colonies of spruce large enough to provide cover. She picked an island with a sandbar out of sight of the main channel and beached the canoe. A waxing crescent of moon fingered its way over the treetops, shedding just enough light by which to see. She gathered a few pieces of driftwood, and minutes later she had a fire going that burned clear and smokeless. Scooping a pan of water from the river, she wedged it between rocks over the flames. When the water boiled, she used a portion of it to make tea, and stirred a packet of powdered eggs into the rest. The busy crackling of the fire was company of sorts, and the last tremors of nervous dread subsided as she ate.

  Borrowman would be sitting on the leather sofa in the den, watching The News Network. He’d be waiting to hear that Li Chen was dead: “Manager of the Happy Long-Life Mushroom Company shot by sniper.” Even though it was early yet for the company to have reported it and there was no guarantee they were going to. From almost any other location in Canada, she would have been able to phone Borrowman and tell him herself. She ate an oat cake with her tea. As the fire died out, she leaned forward, hands cupped around the tin mug, absorbing the last of the heat.

  She wondered what the name Li Chen stood for in Chinese. He had a family, she supposed, people close to him who might even care for him, but to imagine that she felt remorse would be sentimental pretense. She didn’t know him and from what she’d heard, she would have disliked him if she had. She could count on the fingers of one hand the people she liked: Borrowman, who’d taken the place of her father. Francine most of the time, although not always. Mrs. Ivanovich because they shared Eastern Europe and understood each other without words. Asher Curran. Or maybe she only liked the illusion of Asher that she nurtured in her mind. The reality, as she’d discovered that evening in Port Stanley, was something quite different. Rinsing her pan and the mug, she returned them to her pack. She kicked dirt onto the embers, waited to make sure they were extinguished, and slid the canoe back into the water.

  Around two o’clock, she realized she couldn’t go on for much longer without sleep.

  She kept dozing off over the paddle, waking with a start to find the canoe drifting downstream or scraping rocks near shore. She started losing time, rather than making it. Buckskin-clad figures of Cree and Ojibway materialized from between the trees and as quickly melted away. On the portages, she heard the moccasined footfalls of French-Canadian voyageurs loping behind her. She remembered from a book her father had read aloud to her on one of their trips, that for years this route served as the only way west, for settlers and commerce alike. Trunks, livestock—in one case even a grand piano—everything families possessed and merchants traded, was hauled by river and through the bush. Their cries and snatches of speech mingled with the murmur of the rapids she passed.

  Swept away by the current was a cow, head flung back and eyes rolling in terror. The moon had set and the light of the stars was too feeble to penetrate the trees. On the last portage she lost the path and stumbled headlong, with the gunwhale coming down hard on her spine. She could feel the bruise, raw and sticky with blood.

  Steering ashore to a spruce-lined bank, she hauled the canoe up under the boughs. Branches clawed at her face. Deep in the gloom, some anim
al or bird started up out of the underbrush with the force of an explosion. Her heart lurched and her hand flew to her mouth to muffle a scream. There was a subsiding rustle, then nothing. Only the grieving of the river, which had begun to sound like the silence itself.

  She heaved the canoe over on its side. Scooping a small hollow free of stones and twigs, she laid down the tarp and on top of it, her sleeping bag. Last night she’d slept on a bed of spruce boughs, stems woven under in the way her father had taught her. Tonight it was all she could do to remove her boots before she eased herself into her bag. Her hip found the hollow, and relief flooded her aching body at the opportunity to lie flat.

  Three hours she’d give herself, no more. Verena set the alarm in her head; it had never failed her yet. She needed to arrive at St. Denis’s early, before a lot of other possibly curious eyes. Her eyelids fell shut and the sensation of paddling overtook her. Arms working in rhythm, plunge and thrust, plunge and thrust, the motion propelled her forward until she passed into sleep.

  22.

  VERENA CAME AWAKE TO THE SOUND of a helicopter engine. Which could mean either an air ambulance, or the police. Her eyes flew open and she realized with a shock that it was daylight. Six-thirty, according to her watch. She had slept for four hours. The helicopter lumbered into view above the serried ranks of spruce, and she recognized the white and black colours of the OPP. She waited until it had passed before she pulled on her boots and got up to relieve herself. Rolling up her sleeping bag and the tarp, she fastened them to her backpack and then stowed them in the canoe. The air was sharp as cut glass in her nostrils. There’d been a frost.

  Tiny grey lichen growing in the crevices of the rocks were rimmed with delicate white crystals. The stuttering drone of the helicopter receded, following the course of the river. Verena stooped to drink and splash cold water on her face; there’d be no tea this morning. She dragged the canoe out from under the trees, scratching the paint as the keel dragged over stones and branches. St. Denis would likely give her a disgusted look and charge for damages. She knocked the paddle into the water, scrambling aboard, and nearly tipped the canoe over reaching to retrieve it.