Fanatics (7 page)

It was slow tedious work as the lathe did all the thinking and cutting while I fed it blanks when the time came, but in less than an hour and a half the job was done. At the workbench I laid out the mantel top, the fence rail, and the spindles, then glued and clamped them, careful to keep the fence spindles perpendicular to the top. Then I made the decorative fences for the side panels. I was hanging up my apron when my cell rang. As usual, Mrs. Stoppini got right to the point.

“I shall be serving lunch on the patio in twelve minutes, if you’d care to join me.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Stoppini. Perfect timing, as always.”

“Indeed.”

After eating a plate of cold pasta salad with sparkling
mineral water—a few notches up from the peanut butter sandwiches I had brought with me—I told Mrs. Stoppini I’d be working in the library for the afternoon.

“Splendid,” she commented, and began to clear the dishes.

I looked up into a perfect summer sky whose blue deepened as my eyes moved up from the horizon. There was a cool breeze off the lake, just enough to turn the leaves on the maples in the yard to show their pale undersides. I would have preferred to go swimming with Raphaella at Moose Park or lie on a blanket on the grassy shore and read—or doze off to the sound of kids playing in the sand at the edge of the water. I was beginning to feel the loss of sleep the night before, and the prospect of spending time in that unwelcoming room full of old books wasn’t exactly inspiring.

But about an hour later I banged the top back onto a paint can and surveyed the newly painted wall above the fireplace. Satisfied, I gathered the roller and brushes, folded the dropcloths, and took the stuff to the workshop. I decided to take a break and go for a ride on the Hawk while the paint in the library dried and the fumes cleared away. It was a soft summer day, and a motorcycle ride along quiet roads outside of town sounded like a good way to relax.

Then I noticed the broken
GPS
I had found on the shore lying on the workbench, pushed to the side. I had planned to try new batteries in the hope the unit hadn’t been destroyed in the lake. I might be able to find the owner’s house and return the device—giving me a destination for my ride.

I inserted the fresh batteries and pressed the Power button. Nothing.

“Oh, well,” I muttered.

Then a thought sparked. I powered up my laptop, connected the
GPS
to it, and launched the
GPS
software.

“Searching for devices” appeared on the laptop screen. “Device found” was my reward.

Because my own
GPS
was the same brand, my software could talk to the camo
GPS
and read its files. I searched around for information on the owner but came up empty. Not to worry. I might find his home by deduction.

A
GPS
like the camo one was pretty basic but powerful. It could memorize positions—longitude and latitude references—called waypoints, create a route linking selected waypoints, lead you to a specific waypoint using a compass rose, and record tracks. A track was a trip memorized and stored by the
GPS
. The tracks were usually filed in the unit’s memory by date, unless the user had given them titles. This unit was useless because the screen was broken, but I could read its files. And copy them.

The software displayed all the waypoints on a map. After a quick search, I found that almost all the activity was in an area northwest of town, and one spot in particular had a lot of tracks leading to and from it. I deduced that this place was the owner’s residence.

On my laptop I created a folder, naming it “Found Unit,” then uploaded the contents of the camo
GPS
into the folder. I slipped outside and removed my
GPS
from the motorcycle’s handlebars. I downloaded “Found Unit” into my
GPS
. I had now duplicated the contents of the camo
GPS
on my own.

I threw on my leather jacket and pocketed the camo
GPS
and my cell. I clipped my
GPS
back onto the Hawk’s handlebars and turned it on. Before long I was on Burnside Line at the edge of town. The houses lining the road fell away behind
me as I rode away from town and into flat green farmland dotted with cattle and a few small stands of trees.

Motoring along under the speed limit—which was rare for me—I glided past an abandoned limestone quarry, a small herd of horses standing drowsily in the shade of an elm, a field striped with huge rolls of hay lined up under white plastic tarps. The new-mowed hay filled the air with a clean summery scent. The North River meandered lazily across the landscape, making its way to nowhere in particular. The tension from the last couple of days dissolved in the brilliant air.

Beyond the Maple Valley Crossroad the blacktop narrowed, the farmhouses took on a tired defeated look, the fields were blistered by protruding rocks. The road grew even more restricted, then played out completely. I turned onto a gravel side road, following the compass rose on the
GPS
with growing doubt that I was being taken to the owner’s residence. The gravel soon disappeared and I found myself bumping along a dirt track twisting its way over stony, rolling ground toward a forest in the northwest. A couple of pickup trucks hitched to flatbed trailers were parked along the verge.
ATV
ers, I figured.

I stopped. I thought I knew where the track led, but I wanted to be sure. I pressed the zoom-out button on the
GPS
until the map showed a much wider area. The almost-road twisted and looped for miles and ended at Swift Rapids, a lock on the four-hundred-kilometre Trent canal system linking Lake Ontario to Georgian Bay by connecting dozens of rivers and lakes using humanmade canals and locks.

Did the owner of the camo
GPS
live around here? It seemed unlikely. And how far did my obligation to return
the
GPS
to him go? I decided to poke along the rocky trail until the Hawk objected—it wasn’t a trail bike, and although the clearance was pretty good for a touring motorcycle, it was too unwieldy to handle rough travel.

Within fifteen minutes I had reached the forest, and soon after that the pointer on the compass rose indicated I should leave the track and take one that branched to the right. This one was narrower—but still wide enough for me to ride—fairly flat and covered with leaves that showed few signs of disturbance. I tooled along for a couple of klicks. The trees on either side of the path gradually squeezed in until the track ended.

Now what? I had not reached the destination I had been making for. I looked at my watch, deciding to walk for another few minutes, then give up on what was looking more and more like a wild goose chase. As a precaution, I entered a waypoint into the
GPS
and labelled it “mc.” If I got lost, I’d be able to find the Hawk.

I gulped down half a bottle of juice, then followed the footpath into a thickening forest of second-growth hardwoods. A couple of hundred metres farther, where it seemed that the trail was about to peter out, I found myself at the edge of a clearing.

T
HE OPEN SPACE
was half the size of a football field, sunlit and quiet. A small clapboard cabin sat off to one side, a
stovepipe poking at an angle through the tarpapered roof. No doors or windows—I was looking at the back of the place. I watched for a while, standing motionless inside the treeline, but saw no activity beyond a pair of blue jays darting around and a black squirrel that seemed unable to make up its mind where it wanted to go.

I crossed the clearing. Shallow trenches and tent-peg holes made a pattern indicating that a few tents had been pitched opposite the cabin not so long ago. The building itself was a simple structure with one cracked window, a padlocked door, and a roofless verandah across the front. The shiny padlock looked new.

All around the window and door, yellow, red, and blue splotches streaked by rain marbled the bare wood, as if a half-dozen demented kindergarten children had been let loose with brushes and cans of paint. They were paintball hits. I stepped onto the creaking porch and peered through the window, letting my eyes adjust to the dark interior. I saw two bare bunks against the far wall, a wooden table, a few broken rail-back chairs, a small wood stove. Nothing else. No sign—a hat on a peg, a few dishes—that anyone used the place.

But outside, along the east wall, was a metre-high stack of firewood. The ground around the cabin was a mess of boot prints and
ATV
tracks leading to a trail heading northeast through the dense bush. If the direction held, the track would meet the Trent canal system near Morrison Landing.

I sat on the porch. Whoever used the place had left nothing behind that would identify them. It seemed clear that I had stumbled onto a paintball camp. I knew people in town who enjoyed an afternoon out in the woods, fighting a mock battle using paintball guns rather than the real thing.
War games—and not for kids, either. The broken
GPS
in my pocket probably belonged to someone who had been out here, likely with a bunch of guys, probably more than once. He had lost the unit on Lake Couchiching—maybe last night, when I had heard a boat—and it had floated to the shore of the Corbizzi estate.

I searched the waypoint file again and displayed them on the map. Sure enough, there were points marked along the Trent waterway toward Lake Couchiching, proving that the owner accessed the camp by water. That explained both the
ATV
tracks and the fact that the way I had come in had shown no sign of human traffic.

I brought up the waypoint I had been seeking. A lot of tracks led to that spot from different directions. It was off to my right.

I got to my feet, hit the Go button, and followed the compass into the bush, away from the cabin and the
ATV
trail. The forest was thick, and pushing through it was hard work. After ten minutes of slogging I came upon a huge granite outcropping, like a stone kneecap protruding half a metre above the leaf-mantled ground. A fissure cut across the rock at a jagged angle.

I looked around and saw only the rock surrounded by a wall of trees. Why would the guy come here so often? I wondered. To be alone? Was this a hiding spot during the war games? A place to ambush “enemies” and shoot them with a ball of paint that would explode on impact and mark them as dead?

I circled the granite kneecap, thinking. This was no hiding place. Here, you’d be out in the open, an easy target. My eyes were drawn to the fissure snaking through the rock. Near the crest, juniper branches poked out. I carefully pushed
the prickly boughs aside. Something down in the hole reflected the light. I reached deep under the shrub. My hand closed on a plastic bag.

Sealed inside it was a cellphone.

B
EFORE
I
COULD OPEN
the bag I heard the wavering rumble of small engines in the distance. The noise swelled gradually until I could distinguish four or five motors, their individual rackets rising and falling as the drivers worked the throttles. The clamour seemed to converge on the cabin.

I scrambled off the rock, skinning my palms, and darted into the trees, my heart leaping around behind my ribs. Instinctively I crept deeper into the forest. I called up “mc” on my
GPS
, punched Go, and began to walk as quietly as I could—the
GPS
only worked when it was moving. The compass rose appeared on the screen, rotated casually, and pointed toward the Hawk.

As I walked, placing every step cautiously, pushing branches carefully aside and releasing them slowly as I passed, I heard voices in the distance, laughter, and the commotion of a group of men out for sport. Then the motors fell silent. Someone barked an order and the horseplay ceased.

I made my way through the trees as quickly as I could without snapping twigs underfoot or breaking off branches. After what seemed like an hour of fighting the urge to run,
I spotted the glint of sunlight on the polished aluminum frame of my motorcycle through the branches. My knees wobbled with relief.

Then I realized I still held the bagged cellphone in my hand.

I unlocked the saddlebag and tossed the cell inside and swung my leg over the bike, snapping the
GPS
into its cradle and pulling on my helmet. A few centimetres from the ignition, my hand, holding the key, stopped. Now that I felt safe, my curiosity began to get the better of me. I could sneak back and take a quick peek, I told myself.

“Don’t be an idiot,” cautioned my logical angel. “A gang of strangers finds you spying on them? Is this a pretty picture?” But I got off the bike, pocketed the key, perched my helmet on the saddle, took the
GPS
out of its holder, and headed toward the clearing, following the line I’d travelled earlier.

Once I’d made about half the distance I slowed and sneaked, eyes peeled for movement, ears alert for the slightest noise. I stopped when I spied shapes through the screen of leaves, gliding back and forth. Voices in a strange language floated in the warm air. No laughter now. The talk seemed serious and purpose-driven. I peered through the thick foliage. A droplet of sweat trickled down my rib cage.

I bent into a half crouch and crept forward until I reached a spruce tree a couple of metres from the edge of the clearing. Through the fragrant boughs I could make out the cabin and, nearer to me, nine men dressed in camo, right down to the caps and boots. They were erecting tents, also with a camo design, in the same place I had seen the trenches and peg holes. They spoke occasionally but didn’t waste words. I couldn’t place the language.

A tall man came around the corner of the cabin, a gun slung diagonally across his chest. He snapped off a couple of commands. The men speeded up their movements. Sunlight detailed the tall man’s gun, the canteen on his belt, the long knife in a calf-scabbard, his thick moustache. Like all the others he had brown skin, and the black hair under his cap was cut short.