Snow Job

by William Deverell

  Stoney turned to the eager watchers, grinning. “Houston, do you read? All systems are go.” His own system, however, seemed less primed. Crawling over the basket’s guardrail, he floundered and fell, losing one of his untied sneakers. He brushed himself off, weaved over to the tether rope, slurring: “Ladies and genermen, you are about to observe hishtory in the making.”

  The Starkers event had clearly done him severe damage. Arthur could only hope that Dog wasn’t similarly challenged. His impulse was to demand a halt to this, but he hesitated, not wanting to act the wet blanket.

  “Turn up the burner, Dog!” Then: “We have liftoff!”

  As the balloon suddenly rose, Stoney followed. Somehow, in the process of untying the tether rope, he had looped it around his wrist. His ground crew, led by Hamish McCoy, led a dash to catch him by his remaining sneaker, but it came off in their hands. Stoney spiralled into the sky, clutching the rope, caterwauling: “Turn down the burner, Dog! Turn down that burner! Move! Open the vent!”

  The test pilot was immobile, staring down at him over the rim of the basket, but he finally came out of his fugue and set frantically to his task. By this time, they were floating above the Shewfelts’ roof. Sheep were stampeding in the pasture across the road.

  “Turn the burner down, I said! Not off!” This final instruction came too late: the balloon quickly went limp, and in seconds Stoney was entangled in plastic hooves and antlers, the entire rooftop display collapsing, with Rudolph going stiff-legged over the edge, plummeting to the Shewfelts’ walkway and shattering into shards of plastic. The gondola came to rest on Santa’s sleigh, Dog crawling from under the fabric of the balloon.

  Mrs. Shewfelt ran from the house screaming, and her husband came barrelling out after her, knocking over lawn elves like bowling pins as he bolted to the safety of the road.

  Everyone watched, stunned and silent, until Stoney rose in a tangle of Christmas lights, barefoot and dishevelled. Then they all whooped and cheered.

  37

  “You got troubles, partner?”

  Thiessen’s reddened eyes rose from contemplation of his pint of ale and sought focus on the weather-beaten face of the character on the adjoining barstool, a trapper maybe, or a prospector.

  “I got troubles,” Thiessen said.

  “Wife?”

  “Not yet. But those are coming.” The bar was called Gold Diggers, a log structure in Yellowknife’s Old Town, poorly lit, good for hiding in. His searchers hadn’t found him here, nor in his new digs at Captain Ron’s Bed and Breakfast. They’d finally given up, fled back to Ottawa.

  “With me, it was wife,” said the grizzled man. “Kicked me out on my patoot.” Late forties, fifties, it was hard to tell. Salt-and-pepper hair, a full set of whiskers, his nose and earlobes scarred from frostbite. “Things went downhill from there.”

  “With me …” Thiessen shrugged. “I just blew it.” He was sporting a five-day stubble. He’d put away his suits — he wasn’t Charley any more — and clad himself in newly bought work clothes, a floppy hat to shade his eyes. Longjohns. He was determined to survive up here.

  “You new in town?” the stranger asked.

  “Yeah. Getting my bearings.”

  “I just rode in myself. So what’s going on in the world? Haven’t seen a paper in months.”

  “Not much.”

  “You on the run?”

  “Guess you could say. Starting over.” Thiessen took a gulp from his pint, wiped his lips, saw that the other guy only had a coffee. “Buy you something stronger?”

  “Wouldn’t mind. I am currently resource depleted, as they say in the prospecting business.” He called the bartender. “Same as my buddy here.” To Thiessen: “Starting over? At what?”

  “Thought I might open a law practice.”

  The prospector grunted, a kind of laugh. “What’s the difference between a lawyer and a rooster?”

  Thiessen canvassed his wide inventory of lawyer jokes. No roosters. “I give up.”

  “When a rooster wakes up in the morning, its primal urge is to cluck defiance.”

  Thiessen laughed when he finally got it.

  “UBC, class of eighty-seven,” the prospector said.

  “You’re also a lawyer?”

  “Was. Where’d you practice? You look familiar.”

  “Ontario. Stint in Ottawa. Made the mistake of getting into politics.” Thiessen sensed he was getting a physical once-over, his broad shoulders, his thick, pink fingers.

  “Those hands ever seen a pick and shovel?”

  “Not for a while.”

  “You look like you played a little football in your time.”

  “Winning tackle in the Vanier Cup, 1990.”

  “Shouldn’t take long to shape you up.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I’ve got rights to an assload of gold, a registered claim up by Nanacho Lake. The project needs a small cash infusion. I’m looking for the right kind of partner.”

  Maybe it was empty talk, but sometimes you stumble into things. Thiessen wasn’t going to hand over any blank cheques, but this could be the new life foretold by those dancing northern lights, God’s portent, a divination.

  His new friend stuck out his hand. “Brian Pomeroy.”

  “Call me Chuck.”

  After dinner, his blood still racing from the hot-air disaster movie, Arthur took to his club chair with a pile of unread magazines. But he couldn’t concentrate. Not because of the sniping from the living room over a game of Boggle, but a feeling, still plaguing him, that one of his regular, tedious duties had gone ignored since his return from Europe. Some odious task, like cleaning the toilet or disposing of dead mice …

  It came to him he hadn’t looked at his emails for almost three weeks; a prospect so dreadful he’d repressed it. In Arthur’s view, the world had been more civilized before electronic mail, less threatening — who knew when some clicking error would unleash a penis-enhancing deluge, or viruses or worms or adware or whatever they call those things that broadcast your every taste and inclination.

  Surely if something was important, the concerned party would phone.

  But to dampen the niggling worry that some message of worth was craving attention in his in-box, he rose with a sigh and slumped into his desk chair and turned on the computer and watched his creaky old monitor display a series of accusatory messages — impossible to get rid of — complaining of files not found.

  Finally, the computer let him open his mail program. He was dismayed by the flood pouring in, as if from a burst dam. Uncaught spam whirled by, news updates, notes from lawyers, friends, acquaintances barely remembered, plaintive pleas from Wentworth Chance.

  When the storm finally let up, he grappled with the thought of adjourning this task until the morning, when he’d have more vigour. But as he idly scrolled through the bulging account, a sender caught his eye: DiPalma078@hotmail.com. It rolled past, and he feared he’d lost it, but finally zeroed in on it. It had arrived two weeks ago, Sunday, January 2, at just after eight in the morning here. Five p.m. in Tirana. An hour before DiPalma was found hanging from a beam.

  Arthur felt a little wobbly, and before opening the message he went to the kitchen and poured himself a cup of the spicy herbal tea that Savannah kept in a thermos. On his return, as he passed by the living room, she and Zack looked up from their Boggle game. “You okay?” she asked.

  “Me? Oh, fine, yes. No problem.”

  He quietly shut the parlour door, and clicked on the wrong message, from Cinny who wanted to meet him. Finally, DiPalma’s letter came up on the screen. He printed out its several pages and retreated with his tea to his club chair, adjusted the lamp, and began reading …

  Yo, Arthur, I know you hardly ever check your mail, so by the time you get this I’ll be in heaven or hell or whatever is out there, and you’ll probably be on Garibaldi, just back from squeezing teats in the goat shed. I didn’t want to leave you confused and worried about whether I got snuffed. I on
ly have one real enemy who dislikes me enough to do that. Guy named Ray DiPalma.

  Remember that little Internet café around the corner from my hospice? Well, it’s not just a café — they also serve something to liven your spirits. Skënderbeu konjak, nectar of the gods. I was working on a jug of it in Gjirokaster, whatever happened to it? Goes pretty good with the Zykoril. Which they’re threatening to stop giving me, they don’t like my moods when it wears off. Man, when it does, you’re ready to kill for more.

  Latest medical news: they did a brain scan, and they won’t confirm or deny but — how did the neurosurgeon put it? The risk of permanent brain damage cannot be eliminated. Brain damage. Well, Ray DiPalma declines to spend the rest of his life on head meds. Not this shitty life.

  Remember that lecture you gave me in your Ottawa office? It’s stayed with me. Solicitor-client communications remain privileged, you said, even after the client pegs out. So it looks like you’re stuck to the end of time with keeping my secrets. Funny how that works. Privilege outlasts death. So it’s just you and me, Arthur, unless someone pirated your password and infiltrated your in-box — and if they have, well, fuck them. I bet you never thought that word was in my vocabulary. I actually had to bite my tongue a lot while I was hanging with you and Margaret. Appearances, appearances.

  I didn’t need a high-powered receiver to pick up Margaret’s distrust. She suspected the klutzy thing was an act, didn’t she? The blatant following, the shuffling and stumbling. She was right. I think she’s got an innate sense about people. She always made me feel skittish around her, exposed. Not you, Arthur, not you, never you. You wanted me to be who I wasn’t, you wanted that badly.

  The Parkinson’s thing too, that was part of my legend. The greening of Ray DiPalma? That was a little harder, couldn’t get totally into character. But, hey, I’m green, you’re green, today we’re all green. The planet’s going to shit. Another good reason to attrit myself.

  The God thing was a problem too. I tried believing …

  The nervous breakdown? Probably real. Hard to tell, I’d never had one before. But, yeah, I was kind of screwed up. But I figure I deserved an Oscar as the neurotic spy. Hope you agree.

  Here’s what came naturally: nicotine and booze. I wish the lush thing had been a put-on, I wouldn’t have buggered up so many times. I get just one digit wrong, and suddenly Ledjina’s father is calling Moishe’s Bagel Bakery on Rue St. Laurent.

  You’re supposed to think with your cortex not your testosterone in this job, but I never figured out how to do that. Telling a girl from Gjirokaster you’re a multimillionaire developer and offering to take her to Canada, object matrimony — these are not the kind of mistakes that make you want to live.

  Wife-swapping, nudist clubs, sex with a slight freaky edge — all that would come out in the public hearings that are as sure to come as death and taxes. The open-marriage experiment never really worked for Janice, not in the end. Blame me, not the other woman. Janet, I mean. Anyway, I don’t intend to testify before some sneering commissioner about my sordid social life, okay? I don’t want to deal with it. I would die of embarrassment.

  I’m rambling. That’s another quirky thing about me, I’m the spy who can’t stop talking. Can’t stop acting.

  It’s funny how things worked out. Crumwell figured it would be a good test for me to target Margaret, a chance to show my stuff again after my marital trauma. I was supposed to do follows on her, tie her into a conspiracy with Zack and Savannah, that was the idea.

  I walked out of Crumwell’s office wondering if he’d flipped. After an hour of open-source intel I was sure he had — I came away from my research wanting to ask Margaret for her autograph. I think the old man has this paranoid thing about environmentalists. He wants all life on the planet to suffer the way he has.

  I had no idea our connection was going to play out the way it did. To my advantage. Well, sort of, because I was able to parlay my role as Margaret’s official follower into being friend and confidant to both of you. You particularly, Arthur. I was good, wasn’t I? “I shall need absolution from you. Trust me. I’m on your side.”

  You were the key to finding out what Vana Erzhan knew, what Iqbal Zandoo knew. The idea was to entice you to act for them, and the bait I set out was my good intel — alleged good intel — that Abzal had been snatched. The fact that Julien Chambleau was their M.P. smoothed the connection, but you’d have probably gone for it anyway — you were hungry, I could tell. Hungry to show you could still rock and roll.

  The other stuff I fed you, from Aretha-May, about Abzal being rendered … What can I say? There’s no Aretha-May. I wouldn’t be caught dead making out with someone called Aretha-May. Doesn’t change the fact that he was rendered. Never mind. Let me collect my thoughts …

  Pausing for a refill here. That’s got to be the one for the road, I don’t want the nuns to see me staggering back to my room. Excuse me for a moment while I cycle through the news sites. No flashes, nothing new on the bust of Clugg and Klein. Have they ratted on anyone yet? They will, to save their skins. I know those guys.

  I’ve got to remember to delete these musings from the sent box, we don’t want them floating around in the Internet cloud, do we? Because you know what, Arthur? I hate to say this, but you’re going to look like a donkey if this gets out. The tomato juice will be on your shirt, a stain upon your spotless career. Yes, sir, folks, the brilliant lawyer whose thrilling cross-examinations leap from the pages of A Thirst for Justice bought it hook, line, and sinker from a fucked-up spy.

  I’m sorry about that because something touched me, Arthur, something about you. You’re a sweet guy, kind of stuffy yet lovable, like an old teddy bear. But full of some weird residual guilt. I’ll bet you had lousy parenting too. So full of self-doubt that I started doubting you too, to the point I underestimated you. I’m still not clear how you sneaked Abzal out of that jail. I’m sorry I missed him.

  Moving right along. The Zandoo connection. It was like a purgative, sort of like having your first bowel movement in five days, when you confirmed that Zandoo never saw the driver. So that left Abzal …

  Arthur sped to the washroom off the back veranda, thinking he was going to puke. But slowly the nausea dissipated, until he could perch on the toilet seat, his head in his hands, and conquer his shakes. An image intruded: the bottle of rum his housemates kept on the upper shelf, second to the right, next to the dishwasher. Half-full, last time it encountered his eye.

  “You all right, Arthur?” Savannah, at the door.

  “Splendid. Reading a copy of the Anarchist News someone left here.”

  You’ve figured it out by now, right? Yeah, I’m the third man, the wheel man. I actually played with confessing to that priest, it was one of those impulses that hit you when you’re screwed up on booze and coke. Mostly coke that day, I don’t think I’d had a drink yet.

  A lot of this came about from too much of the white stuff. We had our own Operation Snow Job going. Rod Klein was the blow-meister, he had a Colombian girlfriend. Sully liked to get shit-faced liquidly too, like me — he didn’t need so much coke, he already came pre-packaged as a dominant, a doer, an ego-fucking-maniac. He was a prick, still is. But you can’t repeat that, Arthur, your tongue is tied.

  Did Abzal ever ID me back on Nov. 26? I never got that straight. I was doing lookout, not watching him. But he must’ve ogled Sully and Klein pretty good, given only a couple of hours ago they got busted in the security line for a Transat flight to Mexico. Their next stop would’ve been Panama, but how they expected to access the account without my signature, yo no entiendo.

  Pause for a peek at Google News, at Reuters, to see if they’ve ratted on the wheel man yet … If they have, the horsemen ain’t saying. But they wouldn’t grass on their old pal Ray, would they? There’s a code of honour among spies, isn’t there?

  Not.

  Like I say, I know those guys. They’ve already rolled over on me, haven’t they? That’s why those two RCMP brass
are on their way here, isn’t it? I’ve got no place to hide. I’m maxed on my cards and so broke I can’t afford a bus out of town. But the main reason I want to join the eternal chorus is they don’t prescribe Zykoril to lifers in the Kingston Pen.

  E.O., Arthur, as we say in the service. Eyes only. Here’s where I foist everything on you, make you haul around my sack of woe and guilt for the rest of your life. Because I have to unload. I can’t bear taking it to the grave.

  The story thus far: Klein had a friend in Dallas who’d learned that Alta International had Mad Igor in their hip pocket. This friend visited Klein in October, after learning some of Igor’s cronies were to be red-carpeted in Ottawa. Klein spoke to Clugg. They spoke to me. The three musketeers. Okay, the three greedy, fucked-up malcontents. The London security company with the ex-KGBers? Created from the same raw materials, booze and blow.

  Klein worked with the customers, the guys in Dallas (they kill presidents, don’t they?), and made arrangements for the Lear. I had the Albanian contacts, so I took a break from tailing Margaret for a week in early November to go to Tirana to set up Abzal’s reception centre. Clugg did the easy part (easy for him). After a final double-check of the Bhashie cavalcade’s exit route, he stuck his IED in the skate shack at four a.m. and triggered it six hours later from fifty metres away with a modified garage-door remote.

  Albania. I never dreamed you’d agree to go with me. I was heading back there anyway, to make sure my acquaintances in the Security Ministry followed through on their commitments before I paid the final instalment. Enter Hanife Bejko with his, “Abzal Erzhan, he say pliss help.” That’s when I burned my finger, reading that note. Those assholes had stiffed me. Stiffed our customers, anyway. My idea was to wander away from you at some point, come up here to Tirana, and tell them to finish the job. Never thought I’d be going by ambulance with busted ribs and possible perpetual brain damage. Never thought I’d die here. That wasn’t part of the master plan.