Snow Job

by William Deverell

  With the mangai were three men in uniform, a general, two colonels, and two others in civilian clothes, and also a Russian interpreter. Globbo had a sickly smile, and was sweating, scared that if he didn’t tell them what they wanted they would take his hand too.

  He wondered how they had come by these detailed aerial photographs — satellites, drone aircraft? He could make out buses, fruit vendor stalls, even donkey carts on the streets of Igorgrad.

  But this is what they wanted to know about, the central prison, the three-storey rebuilt Mongol fortress on the banks of the Five-Year-Plan River. The overfed third son, on a computer site called YouTube, had shown the Canadians sulking in one of the big cells on the main floor.

  Globbo was surprised they weren’t being kept with the agitators and subversives crowded into the dungeons below. The ordinary criminals, thieves and homosexuals and other scum, were crammed into the second floor. The prostitutes and loose women who’d survived abortions were on the top floor, guarded by prison matrons. “Conditions are not too bad up there,” he said, “because they are only women.”

  Globbo was having trouble keeping up with the questions. How many guards outside? How many in? How were they armed? How well trained? Where stationed? Where is the nearest army base? Show us on the map. Describe the prison, cell blocks, stairs, doors, corridors, exterior accesses.

  Globbo continued to sweat as the mangai’s surviving fingers impatiently tapped the table. He thought of his wives and mistresses; he would miss them. But not as much as his occasional official visits to the delights that had awaited him on the third floor of the state prison.

  Gathered around Finnerty’s desk were the few and select who made up the Eager Beaver team, men he could count on, plus Lafayette and his pal Crumwell. The others were E.K. Boyes, Charley Thiessen, Dexter McPhee of Defence, forces chief Buster Buchanan, and a general from Air Command. Uncomfortably present also, in spirit only, Sir John A. Macdonald in a gilt frame on the carved oak wall, looking bemused at these lesser mortals, suppressing a smile.

  “Before we get into the gritty substance’s of today’s meeting …” Lafayette paused. “You two gentlemen from the services might wish to absent yourselves for the moment.” The two generals rose. “No offence, a slight detour into the arcane world of politics.”

  “No problem,” Buchanan said, and led his compatriot out to the waiting area in the Horseshoe.

  Finnerty wondered why Crumwell was not excused too. He wasn’t supposed to be political. “What’s this detour, Gerry?”

  “Huck, I have decided there are sound reasons why you ought to consider invoking the Emergencies Act. Let us remember that it was steamrollered through by a Liberal government, post—nine-eleven, so they’d be hard pressed to oppose. We might lose a few Quebec members — indeed, I might face a difficult situation in my own riding were my position known — but we could gain substantially elsewhere.”

  “Whoa, just pause there, pardner,” Charley Thiessen broke in. “You want Huck to take the rap for proclaiming emergency laws, and you’re going to say you were opposed?”

  “Of course not, Charley. Cabinet secrecy prevents me from saying anything.”

  “The civil libertarians will be screaming blue murder. I’m head honcho at Justice, the guy they’ll be nailing to the cross. Sorry, Gerry, no disrespect, but it’s too risky.”

  “Let’s hear him out,” Finnerty said. “Try to convince me, Gerry.”

  “Very well. The electorate, however fickle during tough economic times, rises as one to support a nation in peril. Declare an emergency, justify it, and what prudent voter would want a change of guard in the heat of a crisis? Call a snap election, and patriotism becomes the unbeatable theme.”

  “That come with a parts-and-labour warranty?” Thiessen said, back in good humour. “Sorry, Gerry.”

  Lafayette smiled right back at him, mending fences. “Charley, ask yourself: what honest, law-abiding Canadian would object to such reasonable measures as tapping terrorists’ phone lines and foraging through their computers?” His audience was attentive now. “The trick, however, is to find a target substantially more threatening to Canadians than a handful of Bhashyistan dissidents. We must up the ante on the eco-terrorist file with a warning about a cabal of violence-prone environmental hotheads. We’ll be perfectly justified in doing so. They’re out there, and we know who they are. D’accord, Anthony?”

  “We have names and résumés and last-known addresses,” Crumwell said.

  “I like it,” said McPhee. “Maybe this Erzhan fellow was in concert with them.”

  The defence minister was not among the best and brightest, but Finnerty didn’t weigh loyalty in terms of brainpower. Still, Lafayette’s approach had merit. Blame it on the crazies, the publicity-seeking idiot fringe in their Zodiacs, harassing the hardworking boys on the trawlers.

  “I buy it as an election strategy,” he said. “But I don’t know why we have to fiddle around with war measures. Too extreme.” Clara Gracey and her little troop of red Tories would have a fit.

  “The statute requires something like an insurrection,” E.K. said. “Rather difficult to manufacture. I’m not suggesting a snap election is a bad idea if we can show a plausible terrorist threat.”

  Crumwell said, “I might be able to deliver.”

  Finnerty would have liked some elaboration, but Crumwell’s hooded eyes discouraged inquiries, and meanwhile the two generals were being fetched by Lafayette. “Very well, gentlemen,” he said, “Operation Eager Beaver. Where are we with that?”

  “An elite unit is ready to roll, sir,” Buchanan said. “Aching for action. Anyone see that crap on YouTube, that goose-stepping parade of armed Bhashyistani might? What a joke.”

  “Our boys will be in and out faster than grease through a goose.” Dexter McPhee. He’d never risen above sergeant-major in the army, now owned a fleet of trucks, but Finnerty had needed a defence minister from Quebec, the land of peaceniks, even if he was un anglais.

  The Americans, with a timidity out of character, had to be coaxed but were finally on board — a costly payoff involving access to the Northwest Passage — so the starting point, Buchanan explained, would be their base in Kyrgyzstan, 480 kilometres to Igorgrad — just within turnaround range for Sikorsky Cyclones with accessory fuel tanks.

  There would be support from Air Command, a squad of CF-18s, a Hercules troop carrier. The state prison was at the western end of the city, the army base thirty kilometres to the south, beyond the airport. According to the defector Globbo, six men with Kalashnikovs regularly patrolled outside the prison when they weren’t lounging by the little tea room across the road.

  The two-pronged operation would take place in the dead of night. As a diversion, paratroopers would land near the airport and hold their ground while commandos descended from helicopters to the flat concrete roof above the prison’s third floor, others to the ground outside, “to disable any security elements,” as Buchanan put it.

  Photos from a surveillance drone were shown: the prison grounds surrounded by a razor-wire fence, the roof, its steel-barred entrance to a staircase and the cells. That door would be blown open. No guards were stationed on the roof, and since the upper floor was a women’s unit, little resistance was expected. The Calgary Five would be led from the ground floor to the roof and helicoptered out. Twenty minutes.

  “And are these soldiers as eager as beavers?” Finnerty asked.

  “They’re our finest, sir. Hardcore.”

  “We’ll show the world what Canucks can do.” Dexter McPhee beginning a rant. “Look at those canadiens, people will say. They’ll be remembering how the Americans botched their rescue of the Iranian hostages. Yes, sir, our boys have got the big testicles, just like that ace who brought in their Ilyushin.”

  “Okay, Dexter, calm down.” But McPhee’s enthusiasm was contagious, and Finnerty felt a welling of hope. The military seemed confident. It could work. The election writ would be on the governor general’s
desk within the hour. Forget the Emergencies Act, forget creating an eco-terrorist bogeyman. “Is this show good to go?”

  “Three days from now,” Buchanan said. “Monday. Fifteen hours EDT. We just need a green light, sir.”

  The stakes were high, but Finnerty was a gambling man. Coming up sevens meant four more years as prime minister, maybe with a plump majority. Boxcars meant it was back to beachcombing on the Bay of Fundy.

  “Good luck. God bless.”

  Lafayette emerged from the meeting smarting from the lukewarm reception for emergency measures. He carried on down to the second floor, paused under a portrait of Mackenzie King, the spirit-rapping P.M. who took Canada gloriously into the Second World War, pushing through every emergency measure one could imagine. No offer of guidance from his pursed, stern lips.

  Crumwell joined him, then Thiessen, ebullient, optimistic. “If this works, it wins us a quick winter election, and we won’t have to screw around with emergency laws.”

  Lafayette was weary with such quailing approaches to high matters of state. Trudeau had proclaimed war measures, and he remained, unaccountably, a great Canadian hero.

  “Let us hope,” said Crumwell, “that the armed forces prove more competent than the RCMP, which seems uniquely incapable of sniffing out known terrorists like Erzhan.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid our internationally renowned force is letting us down again.” Lafayette understood Crumwell’s vanity, his need to be seen as running the more competent show. “Anthony, you’d mentioned an informal group in Montreal, Bhashie refugees. Uncommunicative, you said.”

  Crumwell looked for permission to Thiessen, under whose aegis CSIS functioned.

  “Fill him in, pal,” Thiessen said.

  “Language has proved a problem in getting inside. However, one of our people — she’s working under the standard cover, as a journalist — expects to find someone willing to accept an informant’s fee. Not unheard of in their culture.”

  “Who’s she supposedly working for?” Lafayette asked.

  “Online magazine. We crafted a backup website, CanadianFact Sheet.org.”

  “You’d better tell him about DiPalma,” said Thiessen.

  “Ray DiPalma, bright fellow, ran our Danube desk, was doing jolly well before a bit of a lapse with a lost computer — you might remember that — but he’s back at the top of his game. He’s in B.C. right now, playing a brilliant undercover role, cozying up to leaders of a known eco-terrorist group.”

  “Whom a member of Parliament is harbouring.” Thiessen was beaming. He shared the general view that Margaret Blake had been grossly naive in hiring and befriending two ex-jailbirds.

  “Utterly fascinating,” Lafayette said. “No chance your agent could be exposed?”

  A smile on Crumwell’s monkey face. “Oddly enough, he has been. Or to put it more accurately, he exposed himself.”

  “Hope he didn’t do it in public,” Thiessen said. “You can get busted for that.”

  Lafayette forced a laugh, pretending he found that funny. “Go on, Anthony.”

  “Agent DiPalma has convinced everyone he’s seen the light, the green light, as it were. Essentially, he’s posing as a quisling to the service that employs him. Quite a good actor, that fellow. Has some amateur theatre credits, actually.”

  “Sounds like quite the master spy.” Lafayette had to still his discomfort when he found himself grasping the two-fingered hand. “Good show.”

  He took his leave, remembering he had one more ticklish matter on the day’s agenda, those Saskatchewan women who’d vanished on their Central Asian tour. It hadn’t made the news yet, but the member for Yorkton—Duck Lake was dealing with some distressed constituents.

  Ralph Babchuk, a raspy-voiced cattle auctioneer, pounced on Lafayette as soon as he opened his office door, a grasping of flesh, a big arm around his shoulder, glad-handing him all the way into the inner office. Lafayette wanted to shrug free of this sweaty supplicant, but he wasn’t going to offend a man who’d delivered half of Saskatchewan at last year’s convention.

  “Gerry, I know you got the weight of the world on you, but this situation ain’t good.” The door was closed but Babchuk was still holding on to Lafayette, by the elbow. “I got a doctor in Canora waiting for my return call. He’s real insistent. When I explained, like you told me to, there may be security issues, he started shouting at me. We don’t come up with something, he’s gonna go to the press.”

  Lafayette broke free, picked up a report from his desk, did some speed-reading. “Okay, it seems they failed to reunite with their travel group in Kazakhstan. Unfortunately, their tour company — Exotic Asia, a Central Asian specialist, main branch in Moscow — stalled for several days before alerting our embassy in Almaty. It appears these three women didn’t get on the plane with the rest of the group and may still be in Tashkent. Not the first time they’d taken detours from the itinerary.”

  “Well, that’s what them Russians told Dr. Svetlikoff too, but he says those ladies aren’t idiots, they’d have contacted Exotic, or phoned home, made contact somehow instead of just wandering around lost. He’s worried they somehow ended up in Bhashyistan, which was a kind of optional add-on to the tour.”

  “Our information argues against that, Ralph, given they lacked visas and the border has been closed to tourist traffic. But give me the good doctor’s number.”

  Lafayette had his front desk dial the medical office of Miller, Svetlikoff, physicians and surgeons, in the doubtless homely town of Canora, Sask. He could imagine it, dust storms and wilting wheat fields and tradition-bound babas making perogies.

  When the doctors’ receptionist tried to put him off, he said, “I’ll be pleased to wait until he’s done with his patient, but you might tell him this is Foreign Affairs Minister Gerard Lafayette.”

  That, not surprisingly, brought him quickly to the phone from his obstetric examination, or whatever the task. Lafayette started off with an uplifting assurance that the federal government was doing its utmost to guarantee the safety of his wife, widowed sister-in-law, and niece. A foreign affairs officer was, as they spoke, winging his way to Tashkent to coordinate efforts to locate the women. It could work against everybody’s interests, given the current complex situation, if theories were noised about that they’d found their way to Bhashyistan.

  “Mr. Lafayette, that rings of typical bureaucratic bullshit. I want answers, I want action, and I’m not going to be sluffed off. You have one day to come up with some results or this becomes tomorrow’s headline.”

  “All I can pray for is patience, Mr. …” Sacre bleu, he couldn’t remember that impenetrable surname.

  “Svetlikoff,” Babchuk said.

  “Mr. Svetlikoff. Dr. Svetlikoff. I can assure you we have the deepest concern for your wife and loved ones.”

  “I want to believe that, Mr. Lafayette. If you had any wife or loved ones, you’d believe it too. Twenty-four hours, then I go public.” With that, he hung up.

  Lafayette found himself shaking as he placed the phone in the cradle. “Is this doctor, uh, generally onside, Ralph?”

  “The Svetlikoffs? New Democrats mostly. But I got to look after everybody, right?”

  “Of course.” Lafayette picked up the phone again. “Tell our embassy in Kazakhstan I want someone in Tashkent by sundown. No excuses. And get somebody face to face with a mulish doctor in Saskatchewan. Beg him, stall him, at least until late Monday, or heads will roll.”

  15

  Arthur was in agony, desperately seeking the right moment to brief Margaret on the Episode, as he preferred to label it, the bed-sharing that morning with Savannah Buckett. It hadn’t seemed decent to mention it right off the bat when she picked him up at Dorval, or during the drive into Old Montreal, and somehow it felt highly improper to do so while treating her to a fine dinner in a stylish restaurant.

  Anyway, there was too much on her agenda.

  She fumed over salad and entree over a leaked government poll, a testin
g of the waters about the Emergencies Act. “A police state, that’s what they want. This country’s losing its democratic soul, we’re engulfed in paranoia, we’ll soon be a First World version of North Korea.” She was practically the only M.P. complaining about the jingoistic talk in the House, much of it from the official opposition, too quick to swing in line behind the Tories over Bhashyistan.

  As to DiPalma, she was aghast that he’d appeared on Arthur’s doorstep. He was either a faker or a fool, and either way he could cause disaster. Arthur said he’d received a reassuring report about him — but didn’t mention his athletic prowess; that would only get her going again. He insisted DiPalma could be a valuable asset, and if not could easily be unmasked and the government shamed for spying on an M.P. What did they have to lose?

  “How is Blunder Bay surviving?” With this, Margaret finally gave him an opening. Which he didn’t take.

  “Splendidly. Not much to report. Oh, the poker game.” That took up ten minutes of avoidance time, and Stoney and his hot-air balloon another ten.

  “No gossip? No monkeyshines, nasty rumours?” He nibbled his poached trout, finding refuge in Talleyrand’s sardonic aphorism: speech is a faculty given to man to conceal his thoughts.

  “You haven’t mentioned Savannah. How is she?” Words continued to fail him. He had to clear his throat to unblock them. “Fine. Constantly on the go.” He felt a flush of embarrassment, hoped it didn’t show across the candlelit table. He ought to have phoned Savannah, begged her to give witness to his innocence. But she’d not remember, she’d slept through the Episode, and something, maybe a warped sense of propriety, continued to hold him hostage to inaction and silence.

  “Wipe that grumpy look off your face.” Margaret glared at Arthur across a table set for four. He was looking morosely at the concoction in his cereal bowl. It resembled birdseed.

  Their hostess, Jo Rosenstein, swept in from the kitchen with another jug of a beverage with carrots and something else, maybe beets — it had the colour and consistency of blood. “Fill up, you two. What do you think of the granola muffins?”