Snow Job

by William Deverell

  Down to business. “Okay, Margaret, I don’t have to tell you these are difficult economic times, but here’s what’s on the table.” Clara went down the list, renewable energy, species at risk, five hundred thousand hectares of national park. No reaction, just that impenetrable steel-grey gaze.

  Clara wanted a refill but noticed Margaret’s wine was nearly untouched. She splashed a little in her own glass anyway. She was starting to understand why Finnerty became a drunk on this job.

  “Here’s my counter-offer,” Margaret said. “We’re committed to a carbon tax, one that is neither token nor symbolic. Fifty dollars per metric ton of non-renewables, doubling in ten years. Plus an end to all subsidies to oil and coal producers. Full compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. Those are fundamental.”

  Clara had intended Kyoto as a sweetener anyway if things got desperate, so she topped up her bid with a ten-year plan to comply. But a carbon tax — fifty a ton or ten, it didn’t matter — sent a chill down her spine. She’d crusaded against the concept as grossly unaffordable for a country struggling from recession. “Believe me, Margaret, a carbon tax won’t get past the cabinet. You don’t know what I’m dealing with.”

  “I know what you’re dealing with. A bunch of non-renewables.” It’s not the economy, stupid, she wanted to say. It’s planetary survival.

  “Take it to your people.” Clara couldn’t believe they were all as bullheaded as their parliamentary leader.

  Margaret was finding this ticklish. She didn’t want to be tarred as the rotten apple in the Opposition barrel, the M.P. who saved an unpopular government, but a hamper of rations had been offered, and she could be spanked for not snatching it. This was not her call to make alone.

  “Is anyone off limits? The press, I assume.”

  “I suppose they’ll find out eventually. Later the better. For now, can we keep this among friends?”

  “You’ll take my counter-offer to your people?”

  “Absolutely.” Clara had zero hope.

  Before escorting her guest to the front door, she showed her around a bit, talking about this and that: how Lafayette took a jump off the cliff, the Bhashyistan standoff, the alleged kidnapping of Abzal Erzhan, the clever job by Margaret’s husband in using a press conference to set up an alibi defence. They even shared a laugh over Charley Thiessen’s ham-handed performance at that event.

  Margaret took one last look about as an attendant bowed and scraped at the open door. All the hoary old paintings and urns and vases and bric-a-brac. She’d heard it cost sixty thousand a year to heat the joint.

  “Watch out,” said Clara. “The day may come when you’ll be sleeping in the main bedroom, having nightmares.”

  “Stranger things have happened,” said Margaret, setting off for the waiting limo.

  Clara felt a headache, the kind that came from banging your head against a wall.

  Nine o’clock Wednesday morning. In half an hour Thiessen would be joining the rest of the cabinet to debate a dying effort to stave off defeat the next day and an election that could send the Tories tumbling to a grab bag of seats. His was safe, maybe the safest in the country outside the Bible belt. Clara Gracey’s wasn’t, the Toronto burbs.

  He could live with the likely scenario, Clara slip-sliding back into academia, good old boy Charley Thiessen elected to succeed her, maybe by acclamation. A spell as Opposition leader, winning applause with his jabs and quips, galloping to an easy win in the next election. Prime Minister Thiessen. Call me Charley.

  He sat back, his sock feet up on his desk with its old framed photo of his younger mom, smiling down at little Charley in his Cub uniform. Who’d have known?

  He’d run that scenario past her last night. “That’s my Charley,” she’d told him. “You are the man.” She hadn’t said one mean word about how he’d wrong-footed himself in the National Press Theatre — though it had featured on the nightly newscasts, Charley in his juice-stained shirt, his mouth opening and closing like a fish freshly landed. Rick Mercer had done a prime-time skit on the CBC, in a dripping red shirt.

  He picked up the phone. “Send him in.” Crumwell, who’d called en route from Ogilvie Road with a promise of good news “that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.” Abzal Erzhan found hiding in the back room of a Montreal tenement? Arthur Beauchamp arrested smoking crack in a bordello? The consensus at CSIS was that Beauchamp’s kidnap scenario stank. Cooked up for a murder defence. That gasbag and his smirking put-down.

  Crumwell slipped in like a thief, quietly closed the door.

  “How’s that problem with your, uh, works, Anthony?”

  “Much better. You wanted something on Arthur Beauchamp.”

  “All you got.”

  “I hope this isn’t too rich for your blood.” A rare, puckish smile. “He’s having an affair with a convicted felon.”

  Thiessen almost slipped off his chair as he sat upright. “Are you putting me on?”

  “Savannah Buckett, his farmhand. One presumes she’s progressed from raids on timber booms to a more intimate form of radical action.”

  “You got proof? Photos? Tapes?”

  “Nothing quite so graphic, but you can take it to the bank. God knows why our man on Garibaldi was so slow in forthcoming — Agent DiPalma is a bit reserved about such matters, a goody two-shoes — but it’s all over that island.”

  Thiessen didn’t know exactly where Garibaldi was. He tried to picture it, barren, windswept, the mail packet pulling in twice a week, tobacco-chewing fishermen in their Wellingtons, slatternly housewives at their clotheslines gossiping with neighbours.

  “Ms. Buckett is known to be publicly quarrelling with her partner, who is rarely seen on the island any more. But here’s the clincher: there’s an eyewitness to one of Beauchamp’s coital diversions with this young woman. One Robert Stonewell, a local businessman, caught them in bed.” An impish grin.

  Thiessen couldn’t suppress a whoop of triumph. Revenge was his, sweet, sweet revenge. That sneering bugger had been caught with his pants down — and not just with some run-of-the-mill tramp, but an eco-terrorist. The old wolf didn’t exactly look like a hotshot with the ladies. Maybe he used his smooth tongue to slick his way into her panties. A task eased by her being on his payroll — that added a scurrilous element.

  “Does his wife know?”

  “I’m given to understand there are no secrets on Garibaldi Island.”

  The possibilities were rich, an explosive scandal, a messy divorce in the middle of an election campaign. “How do we nail this down? Tell me about this Stonewell.”

  “An exemplar, an esteemed community leader. Owns multiple businesses, building trades, taxi service, full-service garage, car lot. A tourist venture too, a hot-air balloon concession, so he obviously has a commercial pilot’s licence. Agent DiPalma says he’s quite a go-getter, highly regarded by his peers.”

  “My kind of guy. Would he sign an affidavit?”

  “Can’t say. DiPalma isn’t sure how close he is to Beauchamp. But he believes Stonewell may be open to, shall we say, magnanimous gestures. Not out-and-out bribery, of course, that’s out of the picture.”

  “Oh, yeah, definitely. Politics?”

  “Well, he hardly sounds like a wild-eyed radical, does he?”

  Thiessen turned to the window, another demonstration out there, against animal testing. Someone in a monkey costume, another a dog, a big furry head with a jovial smile. It brought back Beauchamp grinning at Thiessen, asking for someone to bring a straw. Maybe a little human animal testing was in order.

  “Anthony, let’s say we were to bring Mr. Stonewell here on some pretext, a good citizenship award, something like that, show him a good time, get one of your guys to loosen him up over a few tots …”

  “With a hidden microphone, just in case.”

  “Brilliant. And we invite his wife too, or his lover or companion, whatever he has, fly them first class, put them up in the Château. I could meet him myself, buy him lunch or dinner, impress the
hell out of him.”

  Crumwell smiled his squinty smile. “You don’t think that would be pushing it?”

  “Naw, I’ve got a knack dealing with small-town, average-Joe businessmen.” He rehearsed, a jocular voice. “Robert, I guess you must know Arthur Beauchamp. Lovable old sod, but I hear he’s quite a scamp.”

  Crumwell nodded with approval. “There are rumours, Charley, that you may take a fling at the leadership.”

  Thiessen tried to look pained. “Yeah, there’s pressure, they’re coming at me from all sides. I’m resisting. We can’t look divided, we have to throw all our weight behind Clara.”

  “Of course.” Looking at him with his cold, pebbly pupils, seeing right through him.

  “Not that Clara has to know about Operation Stonewell.”

  “You understand, Charley, that this is, let’s say, a titch beyond our mandate.”

  “I’ll cover you.” Thiessen grabbed his jacket, he had to run. “This conversation never happened, okay?”

  “I’ll see what we can do. As a favour, Charley.”

  Thiessen got to the cabinet room a little late. Clara was reading out a shopping list from the Green leader that was being met with frowns and groans.

  He found a seat beside Jack Bodnarchuk, whose arms were folded in tight defiance. He grumbled to Thiessen: “This goes through, Alberta’s out of the confederation.”

  The resources minister was a key player in delegate-rich Alberta. “This goes through over my dead body,” Thiessen said. In truth, though, he worried that his party could be on the wrong track on energy issues. He’d been helping his oldest son, fifteen, on a climate change project — the schools pump kids full of that stuff these days. He’d had to sit through that depressing Al Gore documentary, had been forced to read a lot of alarming stuff from scientists. His daughter Joy was even worse, had practically joined the green camp. He’d told her to find balance, seek out opposing views. “From who?” she’d scornfully demanded. “Oil company apologists?”

  Anyway, the P.M. definitely wasn’t touting any deal with the Greens. She was going on about how she gave it her best shot, how Margaret Blake had blown her chance, how it would rebound against her party. Calls would now go out for a star candidate to bring home Cowichan and the Islands. Applause.

  Thiessen drifted away, half listening to the debate, which was one-sided anyway. A star candidate. Maybe that’s the pitch to give Mr. Stonewell. Robert, there’s another reason we’ve brought you and your good lady here. Our party is looking for a respected, business-oriented candidate …

  Margaret was hunched over her desk with Pierètte, in near fury as she read the PMO’s noon press release: the government had flatly rejected the Green Party’s costly, recession-deepening ultimatums. Its leader had spurned the government’s own generous bundle of initiatives for a healthier environment.

  “That fraudulent hypocrite!” Mocking Gracey’s sugary tone: “‘Can we keep this among friends?’”

  “Cool down,” Pierètte said. “The corrections we’re sending out are angry enough.”

  “Goddamnit, she begged me to sit down with her.”

  “Exactly what we’re telling the media. What did you do, critique her hairdo?”

  “I did not let my temper carry me away.”

  “Temper? You have a temper? Hey, you did great, you didn’t buy her girlie guff so she showed her claws. I’m proud of you.” She zipped up her jacket.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To McRory. I’m going to tell him you’re still straddling the fence and may grab Gracey’s offer as something that’s better than nothing. He’s hungry, he can taste it. Let’s see if he can swallow the fifty-buck carbon tax.”

  Alone, Margaret tried some yoga breathing. Still your anger, find peace …

  A staffer crept in, nervously dropped off a draft of Pierètte’s press release. Margaret scanned it. “Fine. Fax it around.”

  She turned up her TV — there it was, top of the news, her recession-aggravating, gun-to-the-head ultimatum. Just the tail end of that, then A.J. Quilter from Calgary, proposing to sue Ottawa for his lost profits from Bhashyistan. A mere two billion dollars.

  The third son, a clip from his latest infuriating YouTube dispatch. “From where Canada gets this dead leaf as symbol?” Displaying a ragged Canadian flag. “Turns red, falls from tree, decomposes. What else they have — loon, goose, old sailboat. We have snow leopard, Siberian tiger.” A shot of him standing under snarling head trophies. “Still some live in zoo. This is Mukhamet Khan Ivanovich, your unvarnished source of fast-breaking news. Tune in very soon for Operation Storming Ram.”

  Still no mention of those poor women from Saskatchewan. Margaret listened awhile to a pundits’ guessing game about Storming Ram, then clicked the set off. Question Period coming up. She might miss most of it while in the foyer with the press. She will control her temper. She will.

  Think love and peace.

  For the first time since his rise to stardom in this House, Gerard Lafayette found himself on the far back bench to the right of the Speaker. And for the first time in his life, he’d allowed pride — ignoble pride, his one damnable weakness — to provoke him into an act of measureless stupidity.

  Stunned by his demotion to the bowels of the Conservative cabinet, he’d reacted unthinkingly, in the heat of the moment, and was now in the throes of regret. He was being tainted as resentful and impetuous. The most savage swipe, from the NDP leader: he had deserted the sinking ship “not like a rat but a spoiled brat.”

  A major setback to his ambitions. A miscalculation. He’d expected at least a dozen core supporters to join him, but had commandeered only two, and with an election looming, he had no time to build a base. He could lose his own riding of Montréal Nord.

  He sat back, masking his pain, his self-inflicted wounds, as members lauded today’s lot of heroes: three Restigouche campgirls who saved a drowning friend, the winner of an oyster-eating contest, an armless Afghanistan veteran. Lafayette rose wearily to join in the applause.

  Claude McRory hurried in late, half shaved, his furred eyebrows screaming for manicure scissors, a bull-faced expression. He beckoned his shadow cabinet to huddle. Lafayette had a sense of what this was about — the parliamentary aide to the Green leader had been observed courting audience with McRory, presumably to barter Margaret Blake’s vote in exchange for an extortionate carbon tax.

  He could see heads nodding. The message was clear: Blake’s blackmail had succeeded, she had bound the Liberals to a recession-worsening tax as the price of bringing the government down. The huddle quickly dispersed as Gracey came waltzing in for Question Period.

  McRory scrambled to his chair ready to fire one of his wild salvos, but Gracey got the Speaker’s nod.

  “Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure of informing this House that I have just met with the governor general, who has proclaimed that this Parliament is to be dissolved forthwith and a general election to be held on Monday, January twenty-fourth. On that date, the people of Canada will decide whether they want their nation to be run by those who seek to represent them truly and honourably or by the tax-and-spenders who in their thirst for power would leave our economy in ruins. Season’s greetings to all. Enjoy the holiday.”

  McRory began spouting, but couldn’t be heard over the brave shouts and loud shuffling of government members as their benches emptied. Lafayette saw Margaret Blake enter, looking confused, unaware this Parliament was at an end — probably her political career too, now that she’d failed to enforce her dictates. Le Parti Vert est en ruine.

  If I hadn’t found a calendar page in the back of this journal I wouldn’t have even thought of Christmas. A week away. It’s a jolt, and it sent me spinning back to Canora, to home, to merry Christmases past. Being with my husband, my darlings. I’m in trouble …

  Get it together.

  Okay, just a little crying jag, I’ll start this again, a fresh, dry page.

  I lost track of the days because
I’ve been on Igor Time. Officially, this is called Death to Soviet Empire month, and today, if I’ve got it right, is Izbar, named after Igor’s eldest son.

  Nobody around here takes all that stuff seriously, the renaming of all the days, and stars and rivers. They make jokes about the Ultimate Leader. They name toilet paper after him, and horse droppings. “Don’t step on the Ivanovich,” someone will say.

  They call the dictator the Cockroach for Life. “God be praised, it will be a short one,” Aisulu said. She only just found her way here, one of the dissidents who escaped from jail when our soldiers freed everyone. I love her, she is so brave. She had a chance to jump on one of the helicopters but chose to stay and fight. She’d been beaten and raped many times in there, and she can still laugh at Ruslan’s tall stories. She has that tough old bullshitter wrapped around her finger. Redbeard the pirate, we all call him.

  Where we are is in the Altay Mountains, which look huge for a girl from Saskatchewan, maybe not as high as the Rockies but close. We’re in a well-guarded valley, with outlooks and snipers up on the rocky ledges, and there are no roads, we had to hike in because the horses were too laden. However, this is as close to paradise as winter permits. It’s one of Igor’s private reserves and no one is allowed in but his park maintenance crew, three guys stationed in a yurt at the end of the road. It had the biggest “No Trespassing” you’ve ever seen, a billboard.

  The three of them awoke at dawn and found themselves staring at Atun’s Kalashnikov. After a long talk over a samovar they decided to join us, but maybe out of fear, I don’t know. So we (the rebels, I mean) now have two snowmobiles, three more rifles, extra food. Skis, snowshoes. We’d have had a working satellite phone if the battery hadn’t run out. One of our guys took off with it yesterday, and he’s going to try to buy a battery from a smuggler.

  So now we’re squatting the Ultimate Cockroach’s lodge, which he only uses in summer. Massive wooden beams, ten rooms (a den full of animal heads, ibex, bear, lynx, deer, snow leopard), three baths, and hot water. This is because of the hotsprings just a three-minute walk up stone steps to where a bathing pool has been blasted into the rock. The overflow keeps the lodge warm, though it’s dark in here. Ruslan doesn’t want to start up the diesel generator, it makes too much noise. Maxine, Ivy, and I have candles, which I’m using now to write. Maxine is asleep and I suspect Ivy is downstairs with Atun. Doing whatever they do in the darkness. Maxine is resigned to it, sort of, preferring a gun-toting revolutionary to a dope-dealing dropout.