Snow Job

by William Deverell

  “Our allies are awaiting the result of this initiative.”

  “And the Russians?”

  “I think they want things settled down. They’re hoping to get their grubby hands on the Bhashyistan oil fields, of course. Privately, they still see our Mr. Erzhan as the key. Find him, render him to Bhashyistan justice, and all will go swimmingly.”

  “Easy for them to say. The abduction business — anything to it?”

  “A clever ploy to set up an alibi. Arthur Beauchamp shouldn’t be underestimated.” He peered out the window. “Snow’s melting. They say we’re in for some relief, a warm spell.” Turning to her. “By the way, Clara, you’re looking exceedingly well. Your new role becomes you, and you embellish it as much as I’m sure you relish it.”

  That was pathetic. Clara fiddled with some papers, embarrassed for him.

  “Gerry, I’m afraid this whole foofaraw over Bhashyistan has stirred up separatist sentiment across the river. Rhetoric about how les québécois are ashamed to be part of Canada, that sort of nonsense. Remarks from the Alberta premier aren’t helping either, and the provinces are squabbling. We’re going to need someone to help keep this country together in tough times. A powerful, respected Quebec federalist. No one fits that bill like you.”

  Lafayette showed little expression, though his facial muscles tightened.

  “I want to move you to Interprovincial Affairs. I’m going to make it a front-bench job, and you’ll be chief Quebec spokesperson as well. I’ll be in your debt if you take this on.”

  “Interprovincial Affairs,” he repeated softly, then turned for the door. “Have a nice day, Prime Minister.”

  Half an hour later, one of Clara’s aides reported that Lafayette had resigned from the cabinet and the Conservative Party.

  19

  An interminable two-stop flight to Vancouver followed by a fitful night had Arthur in a sour mood as he huddled over his poached eggs in the Confederation Club dining room. He listened dully to the voices behind him, aging executives resigned to the predictable precipitous fall of the Tory government.

  “Proud to say I backed Lafayette for his run last year. The right choice, but the party made the wrong one.”

  “Liberal in sheep’s clothing, that’s what he called Gracey. Can’t say I disagree.”

  “Smart chap, Lafayette, good fundamentals. Has he got a name for his party?”

  “Progressive Reform.”

  It was Tuesday, December 14, eight days after Illustrious Victory Over Canada Day, five since Lafayette bolted from the Tories, taking two disciples with him, determined to bring down a government that Lafayette had excoriated as having tilted dangerously to the left. Even with full attendance, the Conservatives could count on only 152 votes for Thursday’s confidence motion. A united opposition had two more.

  An election was at the bottom of Arthur’s wish list. Working the main streets as the toy boy of the leader of the Parti Vert du Canada. Listening politely to foul-breathed supplicants. The sweaty backrooms, the speeches, the sniping, the attacks on probity, private lives bared.

  It was hard to conceive of an election going ahead while the standoff with Bhashyistan continued. The UN emissary had been thwarted by the stubbornness of Mad Igor, his fiefdom now isolated, in deepening penury, trade routes closed, only smugglers thriving.

  Arthur’s thoughts went to the women who’d landed in Igorgrad by happenstance. Jill Svetlikoff, mother of three young girls; her sister Maxine, single mom of twenty-year-old Ivy, a recently laid off lab technician. It seemed odd that during all his bombastic effluvia the third son hadn’t mentioned the capture of three more Canadians, given their value as bargaining chips. That might mean they were alive and hiding. Or dead and buried.

  From behind him: “Gracey’s bright enough, not hard to look at, but too soft. I’m not sexist, no one can accuse me of that — equal but different, I say. The little lady runs the kitchen staff and I pay the bills. But you don’t make them fleet commander.”

  “The Iron Lady won the Falklands War.”

  “Different. She had manly qualities.”

  When Arthur saw Bullingham enter he tried to hide behind a back section of the Sun, but the old boy was on him like a bird of prey, his spindly fingers peeling down a corner of the paper.

  “Reading the want ads, are we, Beauchamp?” He grunted into a chair beside him. “There’s plenty of work to be had at Tragger, Inglis. Forty million missing from the provincial public works budget. Minister’s aide one of the suspects. Wants you, no one else.”

  “I’m up to my eyeballs, Bully.”

  “Yes, representing an indigent terror suspect.”

  Arthur lowered his voice. “Bully, if I have a hand in bringing the government down, Tragger, Inglis could be back doing federal business. The deputy minister is small change.”

  A voice from behind: “I can live with McRory. Business background, not one of their tax-and-spenders.”

  “Full of blather.”

  Bully grimaced. “Can’t see how you expect to defeat the Tories by sitting around in this nest of thieves. But I will say you did a nice job on that nincompoop Thiessen.” Bully was an anomaly in this house of conservatism, a prominent Liberal bagman without liberal ideals — and therefore respected by all. “What brings you back?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. A possible break in the case.” A phone call from Augustina Sage had brought him west post-haste.

  “And your Mr. DiPalma — has he been vetted to your satisfaction?”

  “Not quite.” Early returns from the PI’s inquiries had ranged from equivocal to worrisome. He had an apartment in the Glebe, an upscale district, not far from a friendly neighbourhood pub, but no one there knew him. Acquaintances willing to talk didn’t view him as a heavy drinker — or particularly religious, certainly not a churchgoer. More unsettling: he’d been a fair hand at Ottawa amateur theatrics. I’m a fairly good actor, I play it cool, straight.

  DiPalma’s ex — Janice was indeed her name — was currently on a Caribbean holiday, but her best friend insisted DiPalma was the blameworthy party, accusing him of extramarital flings. The most torrid of which was, no surprise, with a woman named Janet. A neighbour believed Ray and Janice were equally adulterous — she’d often had male visitors while he was stationed overseas.

  A confusing marital history. In any event, Arthur would henceforth be more cautious in his dealings with this chameleon. Zack and Savannah must be warned away from him.

  “I know better than to pry,” Bully said. “Keep those expenses down.” He drifted off to join some lawyer cronies.

  Arthur had been pursued in his dreams by black, slick, oil-dripping colossi. Oil company giants? He’d been reading the material Pierètte Litvak had culled from the Web — business journals, oil industry newsletters, analysts’ websites — about the many suitors competing for Bhashyistan’s petrol riches.

  Gazprom, the muscular Russian monopoly, seemed to have an inside track until old national resentments surfaced. Others included China Petrochemical, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon-Mobil, Anglo-Atlantic Energy, and a clutch of smaller players, alone or in consortiums, with Alta International slipping through the middle of the pack.

  Alta had a stake in Kuwait, but few other international interests. Some lucrative oil and gas fields in Alberta, B.C., and the Grand Banks, a refinery, an interest in a chain of gas stations, but it was a middling operation, and experts were shocked by its successful bid. The word bribery rarely surfaced in the reports, but euphemisms abounded: “ex gratia payments,” “unanticipated extras,” “development bonuses.”

  It was unclear who was runner-up, but Arthur had reason to suspect it was Anglo-Atlantic. An umbrella corporation, sheltering several midsize hopefuls from the U.K., Texas, and Alaska, with backing from unnamed Saudi sources. Big names on its board, a former U.S. vice-president, a British chancellor of the exchequer who’d left office under a cloud.

  The clue had come by happenstance, from Irwin Godswill
, overheard in this very club two weeks earlier telling his broker to pull out of Alta and into Anglo-Atlantic. Sly Irwin, whose insider knowledge and uncanny instincts for the market were legendary. Arthur looked about, saw no sign of the old crapshooter.

  As he signed his chit for the maître d’ he asked, “Mr. Godswill — seen him about lately?”

  “I believe he’s in his Palm Springs residence this week, sir.”

  “Ah, well, next time.”

  An hour later he was in Gastown, outside the War Room, where a sign read, “Support Canada’s war effort.” He paused to watch a kick-boxer being helped off the mat, his nose bleeding, as the winner leaned nonchalantly on the ropes. Arthur shuddered, took the elevator up to Macarthur, Brovak, Sage and Chance, where the receptionist told him Augustina was finishing with a client.

  “And is Wentworth lurking about?”

  “I’ll ring his office.”

  “No!” More softly: “Please don’t disturb him.”

  “But he asked me to let him know when you showed up.”

  “Let’s keep that a secret between you and me for now.”

  Just the day before, the author of A Thirst for Justice had slipped through caller ID by using a payphone, demanding more details for Part Two: “The Wet Years.” An hour taken up with a struggle to bring back misty memories best left buried.

  Augustina came out after a few minutes, leading a grieving young woman to the door. Arthur couldn’t imagine having the emotional strength for the family law she practised; cold-hearted murderers tended not to tug at the heartstrings.

  She embraced him, led him to her office, produced a ziplock bag enclosing a thin, unopened envelope.

  “I intercepted it before front desk could forward it to his mail drop. Haven’t touched it.”

  The addressee’s name was in pen, capital letters written in a hand unused to English, an awkward slant, misspellings: “BRIN POMOROY, LAYER.” The address was barely sufficient: no postal code but the right street number. No return address. An Albanian stamp.

  Arthur unsealed the plastic, lifted the envelope free by the corner, examining it but finding no smudges that might yield prints. “Any luck locating Brian?”

  “The woman who runs the trading post in Fort Malchance — that’s his mail drop — says he took off on a snowmobile over the Mackenzie Mountains to a ramshackle tourist lodge that’s closed all winter, i.e., nine months of the year, and he must have hid out there for a few weeks. Searchers went out in a ski plane, but no Pomeroy. He’d been there, though. A forgotten shaving kit. A few .30–30 cartridges on the porch. He’d been subsisting on ptarmigans and snowshoe rabbits.”

  “He has a rifle.”

  “So has everyone else up there. But I know, that’s not good.”

  Suicide was a real concern. Five hours of sunlight, if that, at this cruel time of year in the Subarctic. One didn’t need a gun to die there.

  “He’d left some scribbled notes that made no sense — something about a lost gold mine. That rang a bell. He recently beat some charges against a couple of hardrock miners over a stolen claim. I couldn’t find the file — he may have taken it with him. According to our ledger, those guys never paid a retainer. What does that suggest to you?”

  “That he’s not as mad as we think.” A gold mine could be a lucrative fee.

  Arthur held the envelope up to the light, but he lacked Abraham Makepeace’s gift of X-ray vision. He could make out a few lines written on a torn scrap of lined paper.

  He slit the envelope with a letter opener, pulled the note out. Fractured English. The name “Brin Pomoroy” again appeared, and the line below read: “Abzal Erzhan, he say pliss help.” Arthur swallowed hard. A name: “Hanife Bejko.” An address in a town called Gjirokaster. “No telfon here. Pliss you cum here.”

  Augustina went to her computer, searched for Gjirokaster, which a website proclaimed to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a historic Ottoman town built on five steep hills in southern Albania, not far from the Greek border. Birthplace of Enver Hoxha, Albania’s long-time Stalinist dictator who’d learned from the same manual as Boris Ivanovich.

  She went off to make several copies of the letter and to store the original in the office safe. Arthur sank into an armchair, tingling with the impact of this confirmation of an uncertain theory, and with relief that Erzhan was still alive, though God knew in what health. Especially if he’d been subjected to that monstrous euphemism for torture, enhanced interrogation techniques.

  Hanife Bejko — someone who’d shared a prison cell with him? Scared, presumably, and ultra-cautious. Albania had been newly born as a democracy after decades of Communist rule. Friendly to the West, but still unsteady on its feet.

  In his turmoil, Arthur hadn’t thought to close the door, and there was Wentworth Chance in the corridor, frowning at him. “I hope you can set the day aside, I have a million things to ask you.”

  “I meant to pop in, Wentworth. Today will be rather busy. I have a flight to Garibaldi at noon.”

  “I’ll go with you. There are lots of people I have to talk to for ‘The Garibaldi Years’ section. There’s so much going on in your life right now, I don’t know how to end the book.”

  “Maybe if I got driven over by a cement truck, that would solve the problem.” Wentworth looked shocked. “Sorry, that was dungeon humour. I do have private business on the island, Wentworth. Let’s set a date and meet elsewhere.”

  “I have a first-draft deadline in three weeks. I’m also kind of limited on the early years. Your press coverage was skimpier back then, a lot of transcripts are missing. Grant me an hour now, a simple, measly hour, please.”

  Arthur must pay for the hurt he caused. He followed Wentworth to his office, a poorly soundproofed space looking over a fire escape. Through the floorboards could be heard thumps and yells and curses.

  He looked balefully at the overflowing boxes of transcripts, letters, clippings, photos. Arthur’s many triumphs were stored here, some bitter losses, but there was nothing to reveal the insecurity, the constant sense of impending failure that horse-whipped him to excel. Nothing to tell of the price the law demanded, or why he’d struggled in vain to escape into retirement. Unable to win a divorce from the law, that soul-destroying bitch, he was now representing the most wanted man in Canada, in Bhashyistan, and maybe the world.

  Syd-Air ran an erratic and perilous service from Vancouver’s Coal Harbour to the Gulf Islands with its one ill-maintained seaplane, but despite Syd’s unwitting propensity for scooping up crab traps with his floats, his trips took only twenty minutes. Arthur always felt guilty about these eco-unfriendly flights, but he was in no mood to spend half a day on the ferry.

  As the aircraft dipped below a sodden mass of cloud toward Blunder Bay, he saw that his dock was in total disarray. Planks missing, bumper floats missing, tools all over, beer cans, the Blunderer at anchor nearby, too close for comfort. As Syd made a flypast, Stoney and Dog scrambled to shore as if fearing an aerial attack.

  Arthur took what comfort he could from the fact that they were already working and it was only half past twelve. He might have waded to shore, but he was in a suit, carrying his briefcase with a copy of the letter from Hanife Bejko. “Hopeless Bay, then,” he told Syd. He could get a ride from the General Store. As they gained altitude, he saw Zack setting fence posts — and being aided, inevitably somehow, inescapably — by Ray DiPalma.

  He was in a dilemma whether to show Hanife Bejko’s note to him, to seek his advice — who would better know the ins and outs of Albania than the man who’d run the Balkan desk for CSIS? But if DiPalma were to leak the note to Crumwell — and through him to Abzal Erzhan’s renderers — not only would Abzal be in deeper danger but Bejko’s life might also be at risk. And Arthur would bear the burden of that.

  As the plane settled in near the Hopeless wharf with a spume of spray, it barely missed Gomer Goulet’s crab boat, just pulling in. Safely ashore, Arthur deflected Gomer’s ire by buying a few Dungeness f
or dinner, enough to finance the old crabber’s habit of a bottle of rum a day, and they walked together to the store.

  Gomer nudged him slyly. “You came back for a little more, eh?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The babe with the high-beam headlights. Your caretaker. She been taking pretty good care of you, eh?”

  Fama volat. The rumour has wings. “I’ll not dignify that crude suggestion with a single word in response.” Instead, he’d used about a dozen.

  Gomer nodded, unfazed. “Don’t worry about Gomer Goulet. He knows when to keep his mouth shut. In fact I been telling people it ain’t true.”

  No one will believe it, Margaret had said. She’d been away from Garibaldi too long, lost touch.

  On the porch, several locals were taking an extended noon break, with junk food, cigarettes, and the house special, well-fortified coffees that had a couple of the boys already tipsy. The poker game had finally petered out, but a checkerboard was in play.

  All eyes were on Arthur as he walked in, greeting everyone by name. “Ain’t he looking all la-di-da in his city duds.” Baldy Johansson, the electrician — oddly spiteful, though Arthur couldn’t remember injuring him in any way. Ernie Priposki, who had recently retired — though from what work no one knew — was glowering at him from the checkerboard, but, oddly, the women were almost unctuous in their welcome.

  “I think he looks gorgeous in that suit,” said Tabatha Jones, bussing him on the cheek. “You bad boy,” she whispered. Arthur went red.

  Voracious Emily LeMay leaped up to fill his coffee mug. Peach brandy on her breath as she patted his rear. “You’ve lost weight, you sly old devil. Doing lots of push-ups?”

  As he carried on to pick up his mail, the island seamstress, Thelma O’Dell, brushed by, so close he almost spilled his coffee. “Oh, sorry, Arthur.”

  “Not at all. You look lovely in that dress.”