Borderless Deceit (19 page)

According to Anne-Marie, the family mirrored the community in which it lived. Harry Dunn ran his farm machinery dealership. Rachel's brothers, from the eldest to the youngest, ended up as insurance broker, construction contractor, and grain elevator operator. Rising above the men was Nellie, wife and mother, a dominating figure, the family provider, not of money, but of standards, customs and morals.

Nellie had nearly finished raising her three boys when Rachel was born and her late-life, same-sex child, fourth generation Oak Lake (in the female line), came in the nick of time. The baby would allow the tradition of a matriarchal value-system to be kept alive. Rachel grew up in an atmosphere of precisely planned days, fixed habits and strict attitudes. Every Christian prairie virtue was drilled into the girl to mould her future with care. Rachel would study to become a teacher and then work locally. Her existence was to be a reproduction of her mother's, as her mother's had been a copy of her mother. This succession of sameness began with Grace, a pioneer from Scotland who had created the torch that was handed from daughter to daughter to daughter.

As a child Rachel already felt the ancestral force. She saw its grip on her mother and understood it was being injected into her. How could she escape it? Once she hinted:
If my great-grandmother could be a pioneer, why can't I go somewhere to be one too? Why do I have to stay here?
Rachel imagined a future that consisted mostly of questions, not answers.

Rachel left for Winnipeg to study. Once there, she dropped out of teacher training without much fanfare, but downplayed it.
International relations is better, Mummy. It's got history and geography in it. Good topics for kids to know
.

Three years later she announced she planned to join the foreign service.

That is not wise!
the mother erupted.
You belong here. Grandmother decided to come west. You can't go east. She went through hardship to get the family started
.

Great-grandmother went west because she was looking for change. I want that too
.

You don't understand. Grandmother left the east for a better life. If you go back, that's the same as saying the east is better. You'll stay here, Rachel, and be a teacher. A good one too
.

I'm not saying that one place is better or worse than any other. It's just that…I'll be happier not always living in the same one
.

The discussion lasted the weekend. It raged, died down, spread beneath the surface, found fresh fuel, and flared up again.

Anne-Marie paused. I was leaning forward, hanging on every word. “It's a marvel that Rachel held her own, that she didn't buckle,” Anne-Marie continued. “What a contest of wills. Think about it. Growing up in a family straitjacket and standing up against three generations. That's what she was doing. Rachel wrote her final exams and left directly for the east. Her conscience bothered her for years, a mortgage from her foremothers.”

“I didn't know,” I said. I thought back to the day I first met Rachel when already then she had that sovereign look. “Rachel gave the impression that everything was easy, that her whole upbringing was a rich preparation. With what she went through, how did she turn out so accomplished? I've never known anyone so much further ahead than everyone and yet so natural and immediately liked.”

Anne-Marie thought about this. “Perhaps Rachel is like Grace. Perhaps she is becoming what Grace would have been if family survival hadn't been all consuming.”

“And her elegance?” I asked, hungry for more insight. “What accounts for that?”

Anne-Marie thought about this too. In that quiet moment Rachel seemed to be with us, as in the early days. She was reaching through time and distance to join Anne-Marie and me in our little psychic bubble. Now, just as then, it shut out the cafeteria clatter. This bubble, for all I could tell, might have floated up and carried us away, so intense was the concentration on Rachel. Anne-Marie took her time and her expression shifted. Looking into her tea mug, staring at the leaves, she seemed to want to see the future. Finally she said: “What accounts for her elegance? Next time you see Rachel, Carson, ask her yourself.”

“Next time?” I shook my head. “Sorry. No chance. I'm sure it will be a long time before I see her again. Anyway, I'm not at ease asking her questions like that.”

“What's so difficult about picking up the phone?”

“She would misinterpret it.”

“Oh Carson, you're a block of ice. Warm up. Why is talking about private matters so difficult for you? I know you were married once. Have you ever told anyone what being married was like, why it started, why it ended? Have you told Rachel?”

“I…this…it's very personal.”

“Ten years ago you impressed Rachel with what you knew. Five years ago you won her respect when you showed her friendship. Some months ago you disappointed her because for three days you were correct, but distant.”

“In Berlin?”

“Yes, in Berlin. You've known Rachel for more than a decade and how far have you got? Are you planning to start living after you turn ninety?”

“I…I don't know what to say.”

“Don't say. Do. Make something happen.”

I recall, what Anne-Marie said confused me and I had difficulty absorbing it. When she then placed her hand on mine and squeezed, I shrugged as if to indicate I would try. The psychic bubble burst then. She got up and took her tray and I followed her out the cafeteria. Wordlessly we slipped past St. Radu's little shrine. Then, just before Anne-Marie parted for her tower, she touched my elbow. “Think about it, Carson. Let's talk some more. Next week?” Still dazed I nodded.

Through the foyer throng I headed for my cell. It may have seemed that I had purpose in my stride, but really I was fleeing from my thoughts. They came at me haphazardly. Why was Rachel unhappy? And why did Anne-Marie nudge me so consistently into her direction? But mostly, why was all this so ambiguous? Suppose I took her advice and called Rachel – to tell her about myself. Suppose I found the courage to be honest about what, over the years, I had done. Surely she would react with disgust. Thoughts such as these were arriving, fragmenting, receding, leading nowhere and creating discord in my head.

Behind the sliding doors in the common area the watchers were ending their lunch. I picked up bits of their banter. It sounded agreeable enough, mostly about the fine spring day and the promise of good times to come: weekends at lakeside cottages, wilderness camping, canoeing on the untamed rivers to the north. But my severity – my fear dressed up as bitterness – was at odds with the warm weather leisure they were planning. I didn't want to spoil their party mood and, anyway, they ignored me too. Behind the locked door of my cell I took time to collect myself, to digest Anne-Marie's hints and sift through the implications. Anne-Marie's advice –
Pick up the phone and call her!
– suggested Rachel was willing to hear from me. It was a ray of light and pointed at a potential, yet perversely for years I had been creating conditions which – were they to be known – would instantly obliterate that potential. A grotesque irony. How was it that I was always engaged in the destruction of the very thing I so urgently desired? I buried my face in my hands and for perhaps a quarter of an hour agonised…

…until relief seeped in. It always did. The familiar energy welled up and I gave in. Every addict knows the compulsive reach for the narcotic, the erasure of the obsession by yielding to it.

And so I pushed the button that booted my computer. Logged in, morally numb, hurrying, eager for information, I raced straight for the great global databases (neglecting in my haste to take certain precautions). Pre-set search procedures for Rachel's comings and goings were activated with one click. Strange how that world of weird omniscience always provided a nearness to Rachel without posing a threat.

The computer whirred and pinged and it wasn't long before I saw she was travelling again. She'd left Bucharest for Egypt. It excited me and spurred a need to know still more. I became more methodical now, following the minutiae of secure access to Hugh-S's collection of recorded electronic communications. I punched in a few dozen search strings and sent them into the query queue. This would take time. Next, entirely rational now, and determined too, I initiated a detailed sifting through the sources of telemetric data that would reveal whether Morsi Abou-Ghazi's yacht, in sync with Rachel's arrival, was steaming towards Alexandria.

The compilation of this data would take some hours and I attended to my normal work, reviewing updates on ongoing files, one dealing with shipments of Russian-made arms to the Tamil Tigers, financed by certain Sri Lankans in Toronto with good access to laundered money. The circumstantial evidence was promising and I set out to deepen it, digging through layers of depravity spread over three continents. It had a settling down effect. Late that afternoon I looked in on my bigger search. Transcripts of telephone conversations continued to be lifted and details of Abou-Ghazi's yacht's movements were forming…

It is easy now to look back to that day and see clearly what had happened. I had been emotionally drained after lunch and wasn't myself when I logged on, at least that became my excuse. At the time, I suspected nothing. I was ignorant that the slips I made set distant wheels in motion and was unaware when I logged out that Jaime in her lab had been observing a good part of what I did that afternoon. I immediately suspected something had happened when
Zadokite Port
flashed briefly on my screen, but for weeks was unable to figure out what it was. In the end, Jaime herself, for her own reasons, confided
everything to me. She told me that the day before, just after the High Council session, Heywood had come to her and issued an order. Henceforth all her computing might was to be focussed solely on me.

A scorpion, Jaime, that's what he is. Flush him out so that once and for all time I can squash the beast
.

Actually, the previous day when Heywood knocked on Jaime's door with news of his High Council victory (and triggered off the chain reaction which drove me on the run), scorpion was not his first descriptive. There was that other poisonous creature that had tried to sting him.

“A serpent?” Jaime squealed, her hands rising in delight. “In silk?”

They were sitting on office chairs with backs that gave way. The sole source of light in the room was a dozen screensavers, each dancing out weird, repeating patterns in strong colours. The reflections from the ceiling and the walls gave the effect of a primitive lingering in a cave with the embers of a fire still glowing. In this elemental intimacy, the burly Czar and petite hacker rocked lightly back and forth, gossiping and sniggering, like two children playing. The crescendo of hilarity came when he described how Claire Desmarais had slithered off. Jaime watched the Czar's bulbous frame quiver with convulsive laughter. When it became too much he began to wheeze and that ended with a stream of tears dribbling down his cheeks. A shirt sleeve turned into a temporary napkin which he used to wipe his face.

What a transformation.

When the Czar arrived his teeth were gnashing and his eyes blazed with fury. It took a while for the ill temper to subside. First, Jaime invited him to sit. She pointed at her latest toys, some cases full of
miracle equipment – new brain-imitating micro-electronic devices operating near the speed of light. Then she announced there was good news. “Got some dynamite stuff for you, Irv. You'll love it. First things first though. How was the High Council? Kick butt?”

The Czar's jaws relaxed a little. “Guess so,” he said, not minding the imagery.

His account started slow, but warmed up with the telling: the meddling report from the Yanks, Claire's snobbish-screechy voice, her sad attempt to be a warring heavyweight which floundered when the fickle barons declined her support on the flanks. “Yes,” the Czar sighed, turning mellow, “it went fine. Thanks to you, Jaime. The network's restored. The files are back. You figured out the virus got in through the pipeline. That trashy report from the Yanks, not much in it we didn't know already. You figured it all out weeks ago and I told them that. But Claire wanted to strike. She reared up to throw her venom. Too bad she got trampled and had to creep out. Back to the snake pit, I guess, or some infected swamp.” He chuckled. “I'll say this, Jaime, you and I, we might be hicks from nowhere, but when we see spoor we read it. We know what it's like to survive in the wild.” In the feeble light, Jaime watched him restart his slow and peaceful rocking, hands interlaced over the abundant gut, looking satisfied, reliving a heroic past. “Speaking of survival,” he said in a gravelly voice which arose from deep inside where memories reside, “was it hard for you, Jaime, growing up? I mean, not knowing your father.”

Jaime didn't answer. The Czar came to her place about once a week and the visits had a pattern. Initially there would a feeble excuse for barging in.
Thought you should know what Ranjit Singh just told me
. Or,
Claude's had this clever new idea and I'd like to know what you think
. The kinds of things you'd say to a neighbour to start a conversation on a lazy summer afternoon. Next, there would be some sort of account, pompous and virile, about bizarre vendettas which only the highly experienced – such as himself – could survive. Then, a little homily, a lesson drawn from the struggle, a link perhaps to some grand romantic value, such as a childhood spent close to nature. Often that would be followed by an update on his private life. And in this way Jaime learned that Hannah was finally on the mend, getting stronger by the week, and Irving was planning to surprise her with a two-week vacation in an
RV.
Lake of the Woods, I think. Just the two of us, cooped up like doves in our little house on wheels
. She also listened to expressions of affection for his sons. Frequently those ended with the observation that the unpredictable swirl of procreation had denied him a daughter, which he saw as a source for regret. Finally, there was the suggestion that she and he were similar, and that led to an invitation that she become personal as well.
How was that for you, Jaime, when you grew up? Tell me
. Or,
Ever had those kinds of thoughts, I mean, about your childhood up north?
Jaime didn't mind listening, though she didn't answer the questions. She didn't see the point to that. When this time Heywood again took that direction, asking if growing up had been difficult for her, she took a moment to collect her thoughts. Why talk about a father who drifted into town, stayed some years, then left in the middle of the night, or about a mother who had a problem with the bottle? Why not set all that aside and focus on good fortune?