The Burma Effect

by Michael E. Rose

  He hated the look of the place, except for the grand sweep of Parliament Hill itself, with the elegant sandstone Peace Tower and the neo-Gothic House of Commons high about the Ottawa River and directly across from Quebec. Except for that one landmark, he found the rest of Ottawa an uninviting hodgepodge of architectural styles, treeless malls, inward-looking neighbourhoods and dismal nearempty restaurants.

  He hated the chattering crowds of civil servants who poured out of buildings everywhere at lunchtime, parkaor anorakor sweater-clad, depending on the season, desperately seeking sandwiches and soup and takeaway coffees in oversized cardboard cups. He hated the vibrations they exuded, of job security and tidy lives and weekend yard work, and the odd frisson of disquiet about pension entitlements.

  He hated any city described as having good bicycle paths or as a good place to bring up kids.

  Delaney’s mood darkened as he approached Ottawa from Montreal that Thursday afternoon, the way it darkened anytime he was forced to make that drive. But he had left Montreal already well into a dark mood, generated by the combined effects of Kate, of alcohol abuse, of yet another editorial dispute and the inflexible rules at certain suburban sailing clubs.

  After he had eaten his Vietnamese dinner from its plastic container the night before and after he had finished the six beers he bought to go with it, Delaney was little inclined to complete any newspaper columns about the global terrorist threat. He drank some Jameson’s whiskey, too much, and some more beer and flicked through news channels and movie channels on the TV until sleep and the Natalia dream came.

  In the morning, his journalistic skills were not up to standard and the writing had gone badly, or so his editor had told him soon after he delivered the required eight hundred words. She must have read it seconds after it landed.

  “Frank, Patricia here,” she said when she called.

  Delaney’s heart sank. “What’s up?”

  “Quite a bit, actually. Sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to have another whack at this column. I just can’t see where it’s going, to be honest. What are you trying to say, actually, that Canada is a potential target or that it is not?”

  “I’m saying it is not clear at this point,” Delaney said wearily.

  “Well, that is what isn’t clear, in the column. It’s confusing. We’re not clear what stand you are taking.”

  “I am taking the stand that the next attack could be anywhere. New York, Washington, London, Paris, even Montreal or Toronto. That’s the point. Canada is no longer automatically exempt. No place is anymore.”

  “I think we already know that, Frank.”

  “Damn it, Patricia, people already know almost everything they read in the paper anyway these days, don’t they? Not every piece breaks new ground.”

  “It’s an opinion piece, Frank. It should try to break new ground. Give a new perspective.”

  “Every goddamn week.”

  “Yes. Ideally.”

  “Well, not this week, I’m afraid.”

  “Can you work on it?”

  “No. I’m on my way up to Ottawa to meet a contact. The paper’s going to have to live without a new perspective this week.”

  “I think I’ll show it to Harden, see what he thinks,” Patricia said.

  “Fine.”

  “It would be much better if you filed earlier in the week, Frank. We’d have more time for changes.”

  “We would. Yes.”

  “I’ll say that to Harden, too.”

  “Do that.”

  “I will.”

  Delaney tried to call Kate after that, on her mobile. There was no answer. He left no message. He called her office. A coplike male voice answered.

  “Kate Hunter’s phone.”

  “Is Kate around?” Delaney said.

  “Who’s calling?” the cop voice said.

  “It’s a personal call.”

  “Who’s calling, please?” the cop voice said, obviously a natural-born detective inspector type.

  “Frank Delaney. I’m a friend of hers.”

  “Right. OK. She’s not here at the moment.”

  “When is she coming back?”

  “Not sure, I’m afraid.”

  “Today?”

  “Not sure.”

  “Is she working today?”

  “That’s not something we usually tell people on the phone. Security reasons.” “Security reasons,” Delaney said.

  “That’s right, sir,” the Mountie said. “Can I take a message?”

  “Tell her lover boy called, OK?”

  There was a dignified coplike pause.

  “Will do. Have a good day.”

  In the lobby of Delaney’s apartment building, the doorman was back at his usual post.

  “The mailman’s been, Mr. Delaney,” he said.

  “Thanks, George.”

  “You got a lot.”

  “Right.”

  George spotted Delaney’s small overnight bag, as he usually did.

  “Away tonight? I’ll watch your place.”

  “Thanks, George. Ottawa for one night. Maybe.” Delaney always found himself feeding the doorman’s insatiable hunger for bits of news.

  “Right. I’ll watch your place. Better get that mail.”

  Delaney obediently opened the mailbox. Bills, lots of them, magazines, junk mail, and a letter from his publisher in Toronto, probably asking again for a delivery date for the overdue Vatican book. A postcard from his sister in Los Angeles. She was the only family Delaney had left. She sent two or three postcards a year.

  Hi Francis, really hope you’re well. Sorry I’m so bad at staying in touch. I will write a proper letter soon, or will call you, OK? The kids say hi and Justin says hi. When are you coming down to see us? Running out of space, got to go, bye for now. Helen. George watched him read the card.

  “Nice when people stay in touch,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Delaney said.

  By the time Delaney got to the sailing club it was almost 3 p.m. The wind had come up and there were short bursts of cold rain. Stan was waiting for him at the dry dock in a filthy windbreaker.

  “Not much time for working left,” he said.

  “I know that, Stan,” Delaney said.

  “The next guy wants to put his boat up this afternoon, so he can get started right away.”

  “I’ve got till what time?” Delaney asked.

  “Till five, tops. That’s the rule.”

  “It’s only about three.”

  “The guy’s here already,” Stan said, pointing to the clubhouse. A young stockbroker type in a white V-neck tennis sweater was having a coffee and talking on his mobile phone. “Fuck,” said Delaney.

  “You going to try to get a little done?” Stan asked. “You need a hand, maybe?”

  “No. No thanks. I guess I’ll just tidy up and put some things away and let that guy get his damn boat in the berth. What’s he got anyway?”

  Stan pointed to a pristine 40-footer bobbing at the dock. It was called Overdraft. It made the Natalia look like a beginner’s boat, despite it being 30 feet.

  “That thing doesn’t need any work, Stan.”

  “He wants to examine the hull.” Delaney climbed onto his boat and started stowing paint cans and sandpaper and steel wool. He felt a strong urge to lie down in one of the bunks and sleep until five o’clock, but he knew Stan wouldn’t let him do that and he suspected the stockbroker would raise a fuss.

  He thought for a moment about how he could arrange things to live on the boat again, but knew this was impossible in Montreal. In the Caribbean climate, yes, but not in Montreal. He thought it might be about time for another long sabbatical. He could feel a change coming, something coming.

  As Stan was winching the Natalia back into the water, the stockbroke
r came out to watch.

  “Nice little boat,” he said, brushing a hand over his thick auburn hair to show Delaney the Rolex on his wrist.

  “What would you know about that?” Delaney said.

  “Hey,” said the broker.

  “Easy does it,” Stan said over the noise of the winch.

  Delaney arrived early at the press club, at ten minutes to seven. Rawson had said he’d be there between seven and seven-thirty. He was usually late for such meetings, so Delaney settled down at one end of the bar with a copy of the Globe and Mail, a draft beer and a bowl of the club’s world famous stale peanuts.

  There was only a small crowd. No one he knew from the old days was there and no one he cared to know from the current crop of press gallery types. Kenny the Indonesian barman was still there, still wearing the same tight royal blue vest and crooked glasses he used to wear when Delaney and a crowd of young reporters used the place just about every night. He probably recognized Delaney but didn’t bother to say.

  The same framed front pages of newspapers lined the narrow section opposite the bar. The wider main area of the club had tables and big ashtrays and low stuffed chairs. Usually, at this time of night, people preferred to sit or stand near the bar.The TV was on with the sound down. CNN faces mouthed journalistic wisdom.

  Delaney hadn’t given much thought to what Rawson had told him on the phone the day before about Kellner being missing. He considered that now as he waited at the bar for the CSIS man.

  He knew that Kellner, like himself, was an occasional operative, mostly overseas, for the Canadian security service types, or the ones who acknowledged that this sort of work was being done. On paper, CSIS was still forbidden to undertake foreign intelligence work overseas, but most people in the game knew, or suspected at least, that the CSIS mandate was being slowly but surely extended, in fact if not in law.

  Delaney himself had done four or five jobs for the spy service, and had taken to the work, just as Rawson predicted he would. Even in that first disastrous foray into the world of Polish and Vatican spies, Rawson had said Delaney was a natural. On subsequent assignments, in Sudan, Sierra Leone, Kashmir, Delaney was tougher, far more careful, far more professional.

  CSIS found his journalistic cover handy. The agency apparently found Kellner’s equally so. Delaney had gathered useful information for the Canadians about groups thought to be a threat to Canadian domestic security or to Canadian business interests abroad, or both. He occasionally did some investigative work closer to home and he assumed Kellner was doing the same from time to time, and for the same exceedingly high pay, from his base in Bangkok.

  The problem for Rawson and Company, Delaney suspected, was Kellner himself, or, rather, his personal lifestyle. He suspected that Kellner had got himself into some kind of jam, had gone to ground, and CSIS needed to know where and with whom. They would want to know how reliable Kellner could now be seen to be, if at all, and whether to sever their ties with him altogether.

  And that would be their biggest problem. Severing a mutually advantageous arrangement with, for example, Delaney, would be relatively simple and not terribly unpredictable. With a man like Kellner, one could never know. Presumably CSIS had bothered to find out all about Kellner’s weaknesses and appetites before they reeled him in, Delaney thought.

  Delaney had worked with Kellner for a time at the Tribune, and had contributed the odd piece to Kellner’s short-lived magazine before he headed to Asia a few steps ahead of his creditors. Even before Kellner hit Bangkok, however, he was known around the media hangouts in Montreal as a very loose cannon.

  He had been a good reporter once and an out standing political feature writer. As the dope and the booze addled his brain, his material became unfocused, less sharp. But even stoned or coming off a bender, Kellner could produce material that made people want to read on. Newspapers often put up with such behaviour because they need the highenergy jolt that characters like Kellner can bring to their pages.

  But no one, in the months before Kellner quit Canada for good, wanted to drink with him anymore.

  His idea of a night’s entertainment in that period was to drink as much vodka and smoke as much Lebanese hashish as he possibly could, and then to roam wild-eyed around downtown Montreal literally howling at the moon and accosting locals and tourists alike. Often he would then head into the newspaper office to hang around with the printers as they put the paper to bed and drink beer with them till daybreak in late-closing workman’s bars in the East End.

  His former girlfriends, and there were many of these, told harrowing tales of his mood changes, his violent outbursts, his utter unpredictability. The only time he seemed to settle down was on frequent visits to his aging mother in lower Westmount. Kellner adored her, spoiled her, could never do enough for her. She was old when Delaney had met her and must be ancient now, he thought, if she was alive at all.

  Delaney hadn’t seen Kellner for years. He’d stopped in once to visit on the way through Bangkok just after Kellner had set up shop there. But that had been it. Kellner must have developed some exceptionally valuable contacts in Asia in the years since then for CSIS to take a chance on using someone like that, Delaney thought.

  When Rawson entered a room, impeccably dressed as he always was and with his salt-and-pepper hair impeccably close-cropped, people never failed to look up. They all apparently assumed he was someone important or powerful or a carrier of secrets of state.

  He was in top shape, a fitness man. Tall, straight, about ten years or so older than Delaney but wearing it well. Delaney wasn’t sure he himself would be able to look that good as he pushed 60.

  “Whiskey one ice cube, thanks, Kenny, and another draft for my friend Delaney,” Rawson said. He wasn’t a journalist, wasn’t a member, but he made the club his own. He folded his navy cashmere topcoat carefully inside out, perched it on a bar stool and sat down next to Delaney.

  “Sorry I’m late, Francis,” he said.

  The barman brought over a fresh bowl of nuts. “Not for me, Kenny, thanks very much,” Rawson said. “I stay away from those.”

  He looked over at Delaney, who had helped himself to another handful.

  “You should too,” he said.

  “Why?” Delaney said.

  “They’ll kill you eventually. All fat, cholesterol, just junk, nothing else in there.”

  “Spare me, OK, Jon? And please don’t tell me how many kilometres you ran this morning.” “Twelve. All along the canal and back.”

  “Congratulations. Can we talk about something else?”

  “How have you been?”

  “OK. Hassles with the paper, as always.”

  “Keeps you out of trouble, that paper, no? What would you do without that? Except work for me occasionally.”

  “I’m starting to think that would do me fine.”

  “You can’t live on what we pay you, Francis.” Rawson usually took on the father figure role in any meeting.

  “I could manage. My Cuba book’s still selling OK. I got another one on the go.”

  “You almost done with that one? You still want to go ahead with that?” Rawson had never liked the idea of Delaney writing about Vatican matters. CSIS was no promoter of spy service exposes.

  “It’s coming along.”

  “Too bad,” Rawson said with a half-smile. “You know my feelings on that, Francis.”

  “It’s not about CSIS, Jon. It won’t be. You know that.”

  “Try to spell my name right, all right?” Rawson said.

  Rawson never got directly to the matter at hand without at least a little of what he considered light, polite conversation. Delaney knew the rhythm, expected the chit-chat was about over. He ordered another beer. Rawson declined another whiskey, took a Perrier instead.

  “Kellner,” Rawson said.

  “Ah, yes. Kellner,” Delaney said.

>   “This could be a little tricky.”

  “I expect it will be. Because it involves Kellner.”

  “Yes.” Rawson looked around the bar to see who was standing near.

  “What’s he got himself into this time?” Delaney said.

  “That’s what we want to know. He’s just dropped out of sight.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time. I told you that on the phone. He used to do that here in the old days.”

  “I know that, Francis. This one has a different feel.”

  “How would you know that, I wonder? You wouldn’t be watching your part-timers when they’re off shift, would you?”

  “Guys like that, yes.”

  “Guys like me?”

  “No comment,” Rawson said with a smile. He raised his glass of Perrier in a toast.

  “I never figured out why you would use a guy like Kellner anyway, Jon. Not worth the grief to use a guy like that, in my view.”

  “Sometimes he has been very much worth the grief for us, Francis. He’s absolutely plugged in over there. Knows an awful lot, really an awful lot. Knows where to find out what he doesn’t know. Gets stuff we can’t get and gets it for us very discreetly.”

  “I find it hard to imagine using the words Kellner and discreet in the same sentence,” Delaney said.

  “Oh you would be surprised, Francis. The guy knows when to play it close to the chest.”

  “When he’s not under the influence, maybe.”

  “That’s a risk we have been willing to take. The very fact that he is, what would I say, a bit of a bohemian in fact makes him an unlikely person for people to think of as an operative, no?”

  “I’ll need to ponder that logic for a bit, Jon.”

  “Well, the fact of the matter is that he has been useful for us. And now he’s dropped out of sight and we need to know why.” “What was he working on?”