by Rana Bose
That was not normal. This was not Nat. And then his face changed.
“And I tell ya. The shit in Montreal is all insipid. I’m done with that. I’m done with all the petty tribal warfare. You think these guys are tribes? Hell no! Here the shit is real. Nasty! Anglos, Francos, Allos . . . what the fuck is that?”
“You happy?”
“Here, I’m happy. Some of these guys I met in a soccer game. They’re cool. Nationalists, that’s all. Some college kids. Some even studied in the States. They just don’t want any fuckin’ foreigners telling them what’s good for them. And they want to have nothing to do with the Taliban shit, either. They have women fighters amongst them.”
“Will they be able to overrun the Taliban?”
“I dunno! You need money to expand. And the warlords are always bringing in more from poppy. You know! So the young folks who wanna fight are going where the numbers are larger and the weapons coming in easier. But let’s put it this way—these ISAF troops they call the International Security Assistance Force are going to get hit every day, troop surge or no troop surge. Then the drones retaliate and take out a family. What good is that? You just make more jihadis. When you lose a brother or a sister or a father, you think you’re going to sit still and not pick up a Kalash? So we’re fighting the Taliban and the ISAF, because the ISAF is busy creating the radicals they want to kill. You get?” He said “we.”
I wasn’t going to try to persuade him to come back. He had chosen. Like RK had said. It wasn’t just good versus bad. Nat understood the complexity, but in his own way.
He had connected the dots and decided he was more useful where he was than back in Montreal.
How would I explain this transformation to Mrs. Meeropol? Where would I begin? I felt that RK had played some kind of role, but I would never really know. I felt both inspired and angry. We chatted for another hour and there was more bread and tea to dip it into.
He wouldn’t become the dust that RK had warned about.
“Nat, there is so much you can do by talking about all this in Montreal. I know it sounds irrelevant out here, but this is a time when people back home want to know the facts.”
“Me? No! You’re the writer. Not me. I’m not a talker, either. What I know is inside. You write about it. If it needs to be written, you do it. Finish your story. You think we’re a peace-keeping force? Big fucking myth! A big fucking lie! Canada is here only to show the Americans that we’re man enough to dip our hands in Afghan blood. And construction, roads, airports, offices, hospitals, bridges, pipelines, gas storage. That’s why we’re here.”
Eventually the man in black appeared on the doorstep and I heard the van with its engine running. Nat got up first and I followed. He jabbed me lightly on my chest. “You’ll be on my mind, man! Yesterday was history, tomorrow is a mystery.”
We embraced for a long time. A smile broke through his thick brown beard. The sun moved away from behind a branch in a small tree on top of the hill and appeared like a fugitive, playing games. “See what I mean?” He pointed at the sky. There were no tears. He swung out a short, no-stock Kalash from somewhere behind him and tucked it away under his arms, beneath his shawl. There was a click.
Then suddenly, “You know how RK got his face burnt?” I turned around surprised.
“You know?” I asked.
“Yeah, he told me. He saved a woman in his old country. She had been set on fire by in-laws. He forced her down, rolled her on the floor and put the fire out, but her nylon clothes had attached to his face.”
My return plane took off from Kabul on a clear day. The now greenish-blue range was magnificent in the sunlight. One single cloud, small and independent, hovered over a far mountain, its shadow falling on the slope below. There were no other clouds anywhere to be seen. It appeared as if unmoving, stationary. I was convinced it was fated to be there.
Chapter Twenty-Five
You Only Live . . . Once
RK’s empty urn was in my hands when I arrived at the Montreal International Airport, the ceramic lid taped shut. I placed it on the counter in front of the immigration officer. He asked, in an off-hand manner, what was in the pot. I informed him, with appropriate gravitas, that it was where my grandfather’s ashes last resided before I poured them into the River Hooghly in Kolkata. To my surprise he simply waved me on, not even bothering to look for the Afghanistan stamps at the back of my passport.
I, too, had assumed there was nothing inside the pot, but in Amsterdam I had thought to look. Grey ash covered the bottom of the vessel. Apparently not all of RK had been released into the Hooghly. To be frank, I was happy that a part of him preferred to return with me to Canada.
I came out of the sliding doors bearing the urn in my arms, the backpack on a trolley in front. My mother smiled broadly when she saw me. Myra also smiled, more tentatively, then shivered a little and heaved a sigh. When I was closer she put her head on my shoulder, wrapped her arms around me and trembled. Then my mother hugged me. I suppose they really had doubted my return.
Gerry, as usual, had a curt message. “We’ve got a whole lot to share with you, buddy!”
I wanted to see my grandmother, so we agreed to go there first. Gerry had gotten rid of the Dodge van and replaced it with a Japanese SUV. I shared the back seat with my mother. Myra sat up front with her dad. As we eased out of the airport, I noticed a taxi alongside of us with Nat sitting in the back of it.
I knew I was in Montreal, and he was not. But describing his presence with words like uncanny, magical, or haunting would mean very little; I knew I had left him behind, only to linger on, at his own choice, to make appearances as he wished. From lamppost to street corner, from bars and pubs to culverts along rock-strewn highways, in the mountains and in the shapes of clouds, in the sounds of high heels shuffling along Boulevard St-Laurent and the mortar thump in the green-blue hills, where no one would pass. The Pass. The pass that RK delivered his sermon on. I wasn’t so sure who I’d left behind and who had left.
Here there was no blue sky, only grey clouds stretched across the celestial dome. Myra kept looking back at me from the front passenger seat. She finally put out her hand and I held it. I listened carefully but could no longer hear the dull thump of mortars. I looked out as we skimmed along Highway 20. Nothing had changed in the weeks I’d been away: the acoustic baffle walls with their tangle of sculpted inserts and angles, designed to deflect and protect the townhouses from the roar of Highway 20 were intact. Doing their job. Protecting the ears of the gentle residents and still covered with the same colourful, curvaceous graffiti, designed to baffle the mind. Everything was covered up. Everything was packaged and rebranded. Sold as something else. Or simply, the voices that mattered were muffled. Facts were twisted around and the resulting description was presented as truth.
My grandmother made Darjeeling tea and offered sweets. I was very happy to see her. She looked well. Almost a year had gone by since the death of RK and she seemed to have recovered remarkably. I described in detail how the boat had veered into the river, exactly as RK had described it happening fifty years earlier, and how the ashes poured into its churning womb had swiftly begun their voyage to the Bay of Bengal. She listened and smiled.
That night Myra curled up next to me and we stayed in physical contact all night. I barely slept. At one point I turned my back to her and she made me turn around and lay wrapped in each other’s embrace. She looked straight into my eyes. “Whut? Whut are you looking at? What’s happening, baby? Are you scared? What is it? Dis-moi?”
I didn’t tell her that Nat was standing by the foot of the bed, smiling.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Quels Diables!
Myra looked from the kitchen window to see if anyone was watching at the back parking lot. Then she went to the front balcony windows and did the same. There were no cars anywhere in the next hundred yards or so, engine running or otherwis
e, with a solitary person in the driver’s seat. Then she left through the rear door of the complex wearing a blond wig and a large trench coat. She got into the car in a neighbour’s parking lot half a block away and pulled up next to the back entrance in the small rear driveway. I popped into the car as fast as my legs allowed. We pulled away immediately and both of us checked the rear-view mirrors until we reached the main street. She then removed her wig, tossed it into the back and cut loose with a sideways glance at me before punching the air.
How long could we sustain this?
Linda St-Onge’s sister allowed us into her life. In the beginning, after Gerry had tracked her down, she’d been leery. She wasn’t keen to share the details of her sister’s life and death with us, but eventually he convinced her.
We’d arrived the night before, logging several hours past Quebec City before arriving at her modest cottage in Trois-Pistoles. It was near the Batture sur Plage Morency, muddy brown flats interspersed with mini lakes that slowly emptied into the large river, whose far shore you couldn’t see.
She had a single-storey red clapboard house with a white picket fence all around it. Her cottage perched on a hill that sloped to the shore. A boat, with its blue sail rolled tightly against the boom, moored next to a small jetty.
Aurelle St-Onge was drinking coffee and reading a newspaper in the kitchen. She saw me from there and greeted me. “Bonjour! Avez-vous bien dormi?”
“Oui, très bien. Merci!” I sat down at the table and she promptly pushed a cup of coffee in front of me with a small jug of milk and a bowl of brown sugar. Myra followed me and very soon all three of us were having pancakes and coffee. Although we all knew there was work ahead, a comfortable weekend feeling enveloped us. For the first time we revealed to someone outside our tight circle what we were trying to do.
Aurelle St-Onge probed with questions and asked what I remembered of having been tossed down three flights of stairs. She asked in a hesitant, sympathetic manner, understanding it might reopen the trauma. I explained to her that I had vague recollections of being clobbered with a padded baseball bat, as well as of a flight path from the third floor, which included my jaws and ribs hitting the railings with sharp clanging sounds before I blacked out completely.
“Quels diables! Je ne peux pas imaginer que les gens puissent en arriver là juste pour obtenir ce qu’ils veulent dans la vie.” She was incensed. She shook her head in dismay and then repeated to herself, “Quels diables!” The intensity of her feelings was understandable: they had murdered her sister. Although I had not lost anyone close to me, I had been tossed with the clear intent of physical elimination. I have given a lot of thought to this, as you might well understand, and have discussed the issue with Myra, but the intensity that I witnessed in Aurelle that morning was something I won’t forget. It dawned on me that it’s one thing to be angry at a single act of crime; it’s quite another to be angry that people can get away with that crime and then close the case.
“It’s not about a single incident,” Gerry had insisted, matter of fact. “It’s not about getting even or unravelling a cold case for the adventure of it. The crime of passion is only a small aspect of a major cover-up, one thread within a growing web of deceit.”
Aurelle was moved that I had dared to take a job in the Gabriel-Jacops Enterprise, risking my neck to track her sister’s killer. I explained it was not our plan to go down without a fight, that we had a journalist on board who had screened the confessional video of Mr. Lips (Mathieu) several times and thought it clear who had contracted the hit men. He was waiting for the final go-ahead to make the big splash. One task remained: securing convincing proof that the plane had been sabotaged.
I sipped my coffee with satisfaction. Unlike in my teenage years, it now had a welcome flavour in my mouth, even though my jaws were not so well aligned. Aurelle had made a delightful pot.
Nat stood by with a shawl around him and the muzzle of his short stock AK just sticking out a wee bit under the shawl. He was chewing on a flower stalk and smiling.
She had also prepared a map, notes, and pictures to show to us. She started as soon as Myra and I finished the last piece of pancake between us. She said, “I thank you for taking an interest in the unsolved murder of my sister. Rivière-du-Loup airport is located 46 kilometres from Trois-Pistoles, ici. That is where Linda’s plane was supposed to land, you know.” She showed us the exact coordinates as 48° 7' 0" N, 69° 10' 0" W. And then she showed us another map with a circle around all the areas where parts of the plane had landed, most prominently over the seaway, the reason given for why so much of the plane hadn’t been recovered. She then pulled out several documents from a large binder with newspaper clippings in both French and English. Nat leaned over and looked carefully at the map. I looked back at him and Myra caught my eye and put her arm on my shoulder. She knew.
“But after nearly five years since the crash, a local pêcheur, Rejean Bolduc, living near l’Isle Verte had found something which he thought was part of the plane. So, he went to discuss with the priest, you know, in our église. Now we shall go to see the piece, because I think it’s important. There was a—how you say in English?—a cover-up. That chienne Corinthe was powerful and she want to take my Linda’s husband away and he was crooked too. He was complice, you know.” She trembled as she said this.
We took our car to the priest’s house a few kilometres away. I had the email that Jacques Belanger had sent me long ago.
“An explosive is a substance that does not require oxygen to deflagrate. It ignites on its own.” The priest walked around the large oak wood desk to stand closer to us. “One key thing to understand is that explosions liberate a tremendous amount of energy, emit acoustic waves and hot gases, and also shockwaves. So adjacent structures must be able to withstand the shockwave. It is a very rapid oxidation reaction and so it immediately creates a fireball. Therefore, knowledge of explosives and their characteristics is paramount for a forensic scientist involved in such criminal investigations. No explosives expert was called up, no such examinations were carried out, and yet the postman in our village had heard the tremendous sound in the sky. Where had it come from?”
Aurelle must have sensed the questioning in our minds and interjected. “Father Gagnon was an engineer in the Army building bridges, wharfs, and other structures and knows a lot about such things. He was an ingénieur civil.”
He continued slowly and clearly. “The explosive used in this case is categorized as C-4. It is a high explosive that creates a supersonic pressure wave travelling at more than 340 metres per second. That is the thunder clap the postman heard. C-4 is a plasticized composition of RDX. In my time, these explosives did not exist. In my time we used much simpler explosives, like black gunpowder, ammonium nitrate, or 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene powder. This is a more complex compound—cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine, also known as RDX. Its shockwave could easily put a small plane into a tailspin. It is plasticized, so it can be inserted into fine cracks or small cavities for blasting operations. It is a secondary and quite stable explosive which will not explode on impact. You can stomp on it and nothing will happen. In fact, it requires a primary detonation technique.”
“Ah! That’s what I wanted to know,” I interjected, “because the package the lady gave to me was a simple cardboard box, but very compact, heavy and tight. There didn’t seem to be any loose parts in it. Do you think there was a timer in it?” I asked.
“Yes, of course,” he continued, undisturbed. “We shall come to that. What is important to know is that in any explosive residue examination, one must build a profile of the explosive used. It is not enough to identify the actual explosive, there’s a need to identify the detonation technique, the plasticizer, the binder, as well as other chemical traces like boosters or the taggant, which is an odorizer which enables you to trace the date and point of manufacture. Interesting, is it not? I sent the piece and the report to the National Research
Council in Boucherville where I have an old friend, because the university lab in Chicoutimi was inadequate to build a complete profile. Here is that report.”
He pulled out an impressive-looking binder. “And if you look at page seven, you’ll see that the taggant traces the source of manufacture and, more importantly, the actual buyer of the C-4!”
The three of us craned over and saw a complicated set of addresses, purchase orders, and delivery notices. Nat leaned against the wall. The final destination was a diamond mining company in the Congo. Aurelle stood and quietly went into the parish kitchen to prepare more tea.
The report asserted that the explosive was the C-4 variety which had a detonation velocity of 8,040 m/s—or as I calculated later, 26,400 ft/s; 28,900 km/h; and 18,000 mph. Obviously, the debris perimeter selected by the investigators was terribly underestimated. Linda St-Onge and five others, including the pilot, had been blown to bits and spread over Trois-Pistoles in a circle that was at least five kilometres in radius, given the height of the plane when it exploded. Nat now stood at another corner of the room, one eyebrow raised. Then he stepped away and I never saw him again.
The Reverend cradled his second cup of tea and restarted the discussion. “Here is a list of the fifty or so pieces that were recovered over a period of time by the salvage crew. You will see that amongst the list is what is described as the back plate of an altimeter dial on the pilot’s control panel. Not actually! This is a small section of the folding rest of a Swiss military alarm clock. Pretty much the same as what I have there at the end of the table.” Saying that, he went over and picked up the handsome black and grey alarm clock, about two inches in diameter, which had an international calendar clock on its front face. The base was a folding anodized plate and it looked exactly like the picture of the segment shown in the photograph. He had done his homework with astounding precision. It was a simple clock, battery powered with a hand-adjusted timer mechanism. All that was needed was a battery that worked and a couple of lead wires connected to a primary detonator, made of a small amount of not-so- high-tech gunpowder or TNT.