by Mario Bolduc
“Is this your first time at the Falls, Sergeant Sasseville?”
“Call me André,” Max said. “No, my second time. The first was with my father and brother when I was ten.”
Tourigny smiled, put down her cellphone, then turned it off. This was a small tourist town with not much crime, so cops — especially perfumed ones — could permit themselves the luxury when dining with a colleague. Paradise.
“So you’re interested in Ahmed Zaheer?” She seemed genuinely amazed.
“Mysterious are the ways of the RCMP,” was Max’s answer. “A foreigner dying in strange circumstances, you understand.”
“Not really, I mean a run-of-the-mill accident. It happens more often than you think. I was talking to a colleague from the Grand Canyon, and you’d be amazed at the number of …”
“Where exactly did it happen?”
Joan Tourigny was taller than Max. She leaned over the rail that kept the reckless from breaking their necks or doing what couldn’t be undone out of desperation. Not Zaheer, though. He’d simply lost his footing and fractured his skull fifty metres below. Tourists made the macabre discovery the next morning and called the police. Next to the body were a camera and a laptop in a thousand pieces.
“Suicide maybe?” suggested Max.
She lifted her head. She’d had to yell above the noise of the Falls since they got there, and now, despite a clear sky, a mist of rain was wrecking her hair, but she gave no sign that it bothered her. Obviously, the young woman was used to life in Niagara.
“Depressives don’t usually jump with a camera round their necks and a laptop in their hands.”
“What if he were pushed?” yelled Max.
That surprised her. “What on earth for? If he had a record or was into organized crime, okay, maybe, but this isn’t that.”
On the way back to the car, she added, “His computer was finished, but by some miracle, the camera was practically intact. We developed the film — great pictures of Niagara. This guy had talent.”
“A photographer, then.”
“That’s what we thought at first till we got in touch with his paper in India.”
Tourigny and her team had found a hotel key on the body, so they went there to search for an address and phone number. What turned up was contact information for the Srinagar Reporter as well as drafts of articles on Niagara Falls as the new tourist hot-spot for Indians wanting a real change of scene. “It’s the Chinese thing all over again,” Tourigny continued, “all those years we thought they were starving and poor, then one day we woke to find they owned half the businesses in town.”
Max’s serious expression made her think she’d blundered, so she hastened to apologize. “Please understand. They’re fine people, and if they want to invest here, well, that’s just great!”
When they got back to town, her car slowed behind a dozen tourist buses and ground to a halt.
“Does the name David O’Brien ring any bells?” Max asked.
Tourigny’s mind was somewhere else, and she managed to slip between two huge trucks, then got back up to cruising speed.
“Yes?”
“O’Brien, David. He might have called you about Zaheer’s death.”
“Nope, the only person I talked to was his editor-in-chief.”
“Not family or friends, say, who might’ve come to claim the body?”
“No.”
A while later, Max asked, “Do you follow international politics?” — Tourigny registered surprise — “A car explosion in New Delhi last week with a Canadian diplomat in it?”
“Oh yeah, right, I heard about it.”
“That was David O’Brien. We found your name and number at his place.”
Now it was her turn to go quiet. “You think Ahmed Zaheer was involved?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
Jordan Harbour, about twenty-five kilometres from Niagara Falls. A motel was situated on the edge of the highway, the kind of place one picks on the fly with no reservation. There weren’t many customers. It probably only filled up at peak season in July and August. There was only one car parked out front. Max figured Zaheer would have chosen isolation over proximity to tourist attractions, but, in fact, the journalist had really made his life complicated. Jordan Harbour was practically an hour’s drive from the Falls, and Max remarked on several places with vacancies along the way, all of them just as cut off as this one, so was Zaheer just a solitary soul, or was he in hiding? If so, from whom or what?
His room didn’t yield any clues. It was simple, anonymous, and hadn’t been occupied since his death, though his personal effects had been removed by the police and shipped to Srinagar, according to the owner. He was perplexed to see Tourigny again and answered Max’s questions politely and precisely. Zaheer had not received any visits or made any outside calls.
Nor had he been there long, barely two nights, and then was hardly ever seen.
“Was he driving a car?” asked Max.
“Oh yes.”
“Niagara Rent-A-Car,” Tourigny filled in. “It was parked not far from the accident, and we returned it to the agency.”
“Nothing in it?” Max asked. Tourigny shook her head.
Nothing at all, except Tourigny’s name and phone number at David’s, no connection between Zaheer and the young diplomat. In fact, everything so far put distance between them, except India itself, of course, but there had to be something. What was it?
That night, after saying goodbye to Tourigny, Max left the Holiday Inn and checked into Zaheer’s motel. He asked to have the same room, though he didn’t really know what he expected to find. He took a long, hot shower that numbed him, sat on the bed, and dialled the phone.
32
A gay Muslim and compulsive gambler … in Niagara Falls, thought Juliette. Found dead at the bottom of the walkway. Was he a journalist following a hot tip? No, just a very straightfoward article on honeymoon vacations, Indian style. For the Indian Geographic Magazine.
“That would explain the cover story about a wedding in Sri Lanka,” Max offered. “He was supposed to be exclusive to The Srinagar Reporter, but he was topping up his salary with some freelance stuff for the competition in Mumbai.”
Nothing suspicious or unusual in that, thought Juliette. Zaheer was telling all kinds of stories to his various employers.
“Unless the idea was to hide something else,” wondered Max, “something illegal, but what?”
Juliette was more bothered by the name and number of Joan Tourigny in the vault. How had David got hold of them? Perhaps from the editor-in-chief of The Reporter, even though he denied knowing her husband. Weirder still was the fact that once he had them, he didn’t get in touch with her. Why was that?
“He might have used an assumed name, of course, but then Tourigny would remember.”
“Or she’s wrong.”
“Not likely,” mused Max. “Tourigny’s not overworked, more like the opposite. She probably knows all her files by heart. That’s her style, organized and everything …”
“David didn’t have time, so he put her info away, maybe to contact her once he got back to Canada.”
Max had the receiver in his hand for a while as he stared at the telephone plug over the baseboard and the wire running under the carpet to the phone on the bedside table. The plug intrigued him, though he had no idea why. First was its curious location in the room. The bed was pushed up against the far wall, so normally the plug would be behind one of the bedside tables; then the extension wire wouldn’t be needed. Was it bad planning? A lazy technician? Then something else puzzled him: how old it was. The wire came out of a small hole in the wall and had been painted over plenty of times, so this had to be a permanent installation and old-fashioned, something laptop users must have cursed. Say, for instance, Ahmed Zaheer.
So, we ha
d an Indian journalist washing up in an out-of-the-way motel in the heart of America, not at all surprised by modest accommodations but at least expecting them to be modern enough for a computer connection. No Internet meant no emails in or out.
“Juliette, I’ll call you back.”
Max slipped on his jeans and a T-shirt, then exited the room. It was dark, and the car belonging to the one customer he’d encountered was gone. Max went into the office. The owner had left, replaced by a young man called Steve, according to the card on the desk. He was long and gangly in a polo shirt that was too big for him. He got up to tell Max where the ice machine was, but Max cut him off: where and how could he get online?
“CopyKat in town or some Internet café … you could go there.” Steve fumbled through the display case for a leaflet, while Max flashed his fake RCMP badge.
The young man looked up, intrigued.
“The client who had my room before me, the Indian guy found dead at the foot of the Falls,” he said. “He asked about that, too, right?”
“I got nothing to do with this.”
“No one’s accusing anyone of anything. Besides, it was an accident.”
Steve looked very uncomfortable.
“So did he come for that, yes or no?”
“Well, not for the Internet, but he needed change.”
“Change?”
Steve pointed to the phone booth at the far end of the parking lot.
“What time was this?”
“About four. I had just come on.”
“Did he go back? Make other calls?”
“I dunno.”
Max went out of the office and across the parking lot to the phone booth. There was just a phone, nothing else, not even a directory. Kids must have ripped it out long ago. So why would Zaheer use this instead of his own cellphone? Maybe it wasn’t a satellite phone like Max’s. You can’t use them in North America, so why not call direct from his room?
Max jotted down the number there and contacted Joan Tourigny at home. “Look, I’m sorry to bother you …”
“No problem, André.”
“Ahmed Zaheer made a call from the phone booth in front of the motel. Could you trace the number he called?”
Child’s play, Tourigny told him, but they wouldn’t have an answer till next morning. They’d just have to wait till then.
In the dining room, Max was just finishing breakfast served by Karen the receptionist, when his cellphone rang, and he heard Tourigny’s voice: “Stewart-Cooper International, an engineering firm in Hamilton.”
There was no way to tell what was actually said, of course, but Max was more intrigued than ever. Stewart-Cooper?
He thanked Tourigny and hung up. Next, he approached Karen, who was flipping through a magazine in the empty dining-room.
“Can you do me a favour?”
Their computer was used mostly to pay bills and contact the accountant, or to receive and confirm reservations. Judging by the parking lot, that wasn’t a particularly heavy job. Karen searched Google for Stewart-Cooper International. A long list of links showed up. Karen clicked on the first one, and soon they saw pictures of a number of factories: steel works, an aluminum smelter, and a hydroelectric plant. SCI had major installations all over the globe, run from the headquarters in Hamilton, where two engineers began operations in 1954. A stylized map showed various sites under construction and others already in use. SCI was active in Asia, notably, India. Max asked Karen to click on that one, and a factory and a hydroelectric dam on the Jhelum River both appeared in a place called Rashidabad.
In the heart of Kashmir.
33
Philippe could have ended up anywhere, even Paris. Along with London and Washington, it was one of those prize postings for older and ambitious diplomats. That’s what he’d become overnight. Old. The once-fine bird had lost the majesty of its plumage upon contact with politics. It was a physical and emotional shock he had only just got over when the new minister of foreign affairs offered him Singapore. Back to Asia, where he’d previously shone — a hard-working, calm, and uncomplicated city far away enough for him to wind down his career in relative peace. The new minister was assured the political agenda for Singapore and the Malaysian Peninsula was not all that important, nor was it likely to become so. Soon, this “ghost” would no longer be around to embarrass the prime minister and his government.
Philippe preferred to go to El Salvador, where perhaps he’d reclaim the energy and enthusiasm of his youth, everyone thought. But Philippe’s intention was self-sacrifice. He wasn’t yet conscious of it, of course, though he did feel an impulse to do something surprising and spectacular.
He was going to be a “disrupter of exploitation” as he liked to say. Max knew enough to bet Philippe was going to outstrip his role and mandate, even if at first he had no idea how.
David didn’t follow his parents to El Salvador, but stayed in Montreal to start his studies at Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf. This was the family’s first time apart, and for reasons yet unknown to Max, Philippe brought him up to date during a secret meeting in a park in Boston. When Max mentioned the business of the election campaign, Philippe cut him off.
“That’s ancient history. What’s done is done.”
“Why El Salvador?”
Philippe shrugged: he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Why bother getting together just to avoid all the subjects they had in common? Philippe knew what his brother was thinking.
“I want you to look out for David … at arm’s length. I don’t want him to know.”
This came as a surprise to Max. He’d rightly guessed since the election catastrophe that his nephew hated him.
“Please do it for me,” Philippe insisted.
Max agreed. He couldn’t say no to his brother, could he?
Philippe’s face darkened. “If anything happens to me down there, if I don’t make it back, promise me you’ll always keep an eye on him.”
“What do you think could happen to you? Diplomats usually die in their beds, don’t they?”
Philippe smiled. “Just promise me.”
Max agreed once more. “I’ll be there always.”
They left the park and walked into town without saying anything. Much later on, Max was to remember this day as especially radiant. Workers from nearby offices were out having their lunch, but paying no attention to the two brothers strolling side by side. Then they crossed Quincy Market, went under the John F. Fitzgerald Expressway, and took Atlantic Avenue near the docks.
For no particular reason, Philippe turned to his brother and held him tight, which Max found surprising. They didn’t normally do this kind of thing, especially given the practically illicit meetings they were forced to have. Philippe drew back and looked Max straight in the eye.
“Thanks, Max, for David.”
Then he left before his brother had time to answer. A car awaited Philippe not far off. Max could have kicked himself for not noticing it before this. It had followed them discreetly the whole time. Max watched it disappear with a feeling of infinite sadness. The solemnity, the silences, the show of affection, the bizarre thanks, none of it customary, gave him the feeling of having unwillingly taken part in a farewell ceremony.
And it was. Max would never see his brother alive again.
“Jayesh Srinivasan speaking. Mercedes, Lexus, Alfa Romeo … what will it be, sir?
“Very funny, Jayesh, very funny.” Max’s partner had stayed in the heart of the turbulence in Srinagar. He’d spent the time since Max had left going through the files belonging to Ahmed Zaheer at The Srinagar Reporter, looking for a trail or at least a hint of a clue, something that could tie the journalist to the murdered diplomat.
“It’s chaos here,” he continued. “It’s all going to hell: Kashmir, Punjab, the north … and the Line of Control isn’t controlled at all.”
/> “What about Rashidabad?”
“Eh?”
Max explained what he’d found out. Any mention of Stewart-Cooper in Zaheer’s old files? Jayesh hadn’t seen any, but he’d look again.
The Queen Elizabeth Way, then an industrial zone that went on forever, with fields of factories bounded on one side by Lake Ontario and the first suburbs of Hamilton on the other. Chimneys, cranes, a grey haze. Leaving Jordan Harbour minutes earlier, Max was now driving through a lifeless zone straight out of a documentary about the delinquency of heavy industry. The choice of motel seemed to make more sense in light of all this. Zaheer had chosen it not for the isolated location. He could reach the industrial zone, and thus the headquarters of SCI, in mere minutes. What, though, was the connection with the attack on David? Max hadn’t the slightest idea, but before leaving the motel, he’d called Juliette in Montreal to tell her what he’d found out, and also to ask her to check the archives.
“Esplanade Avenue, corner of Mount Royal, a branch of the National Library, where they keep the old newspapers, like the last five years’ of the Globe and Mail. You need to search for Stewart-Cooper and India.”
Then he set out.
Terry Hoberman, wearing a dark blue suit with the SCI logo on his lapel, held out his hand to Max, who got up and gave him his business card, freshly made that morning at CopyKat. “Thanks for seeing me so quickly. I don’t normally just arrive unannounced in a company’s offices like this.”
Hoberman cut him off: “You know, I just love your articles, but I had no idea you were in Toronto. Otherwise, I’d have …”
“Oh well, I’m afraid BusinessWeek is a circus. Things get decided as you’re walking down the hall. On Monday, I hardly know where I’ll be on Friday.”
Hoberman laughed. “Same here, don’t worry!” He led Max to the elevator, and the communications director at SCI was still laughing when they got out a few seconds later. Max realized right away the kind of dipstick he was dealing with and how to handle him. Tanned and probably just back from vacation, in his fifties, thought Max, trying to look younger with a discreet dye job in his curly hair. Hoberman was a bit chubby, the jovial type who could have a laugh even reading a press release. His department had been functioning on auto-pilot for ages. With rising profits, sustained growth, and steady development, Stewart-Cooper International was one of those massive but reliable ocean liners that sloughed off minor turbulence. It was immense, profitable, and worry-free, so hardly known to the media, and this in turn made Hoberman’s job a breeze. Max figured he probably spent the day leafing through trade magazines and planning his weekend golf tournament. Actually, no, he enjoyed sailing, hence the deep tan.