River City (86 page)

Cinq-Mars waited.

“I didn’t think it was all that important, what I was doing. I thought I was mostly being a nuisance. I was an accountant. I stopped investigating the limos but I didn’t know—I never knew—if that’s what had pissed people off. I didn’t think I was getting anywhere. But if I was, it wasn’t worth my only son.”

Cinq-Mars nodded solemnly, grasping this. “So first they blew your car up, then they sent you a warning to go along with it.”

“Pretty effective threat, if you ask me. I’m just an accountant, really. I’m not like a real detective.”

Cinq-Mars stood and crossed to the door as if departing, but he had no intention of leaving yet. “Captain, I appreciate that we’re speaking in confidence, and that you’re a captain and I’m a uniform. But it makes me wonder. Why tell me this? Why me? Because I asked?”

Fleury uttered a short little laugh, as if to dismiss the gravity of the confession. “You’re a priest, Cinq-Mars—at least, you wanted to be. You’ve got it in you, anyway. I’m a Catholic who just went to confession.”

“You’re kidding me now? Why?”

The new head of the Department of Research and Strategic Planning sighed and squirmed around in his chair. He loved his new leather swivel seat. “That’s not it. What I told you has been on my conscience. I did confess it to my priest, but I received no relief from my remorse. I had to confess it to a cop, don’t you think? Or it would be meaningless. So now I’ve done that, I got a load off.” He leaned back in his chair, a man teaching himself to relax. “Like you said, you asked the question. Time’s gone by. I don’t feel like escaping the answer anymore. You’re onto me anyway, right? I don’t want to make things hard for you, Cinq-Mars. You think it’s strange that I confessed to someone below my rank? Think about it. If I confess to anyone, it won’t be to a colleague with higher rank than me. You young Turks, you presume we’re corrupt anyway—you think we’re a bunch of fuck-ups and has-beens. So maybe I’m proving that point. But see, there’s nothing you can do to hurt me. You won’t be on a promotions committee with my name in front of you. By the time you get that high up in rank, I’ll either be planting roses in front of my retirement home or fertilizing them from six feet down.”

Cinq-Mars suddenly felt strangely alert, his fingertips tingling. The captain had been wrong about one thing. He had never thought that Fleury was corrupt, a has-been or a fuck-up, despite the friction between them. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

“This helps me,” Cinq-Mars told him. “I’m discovering where gaps exist. It helps to know where to keep looking.”

“It won’t help you so much,” Fleury predicted.

“Why not?”

“Do you think the old man doesn’t know? That he didn’t know back then?” Fleury had a cocky look on his face again, as though he was glad to always be one step ahead of the keen young cop. “Come on, the old man’s been around the block. Maybe he didn’t want to put my son at risk, either. After that, he kept the investigation going without my input.”

Cinq-Mars nodded. Complications persisted in the world. Hitches inevitably derived from the interplay of people’s natures, their foibles and fears, flaws and strengths of character, and in particular their envy and greed. None of that had surprised him in his move to the big city, but still he had to learn that he could never underestimate the intricacy of human interplay. Life was not only about avarice and power. Life was also about striving, and the disappointments and quiet failures that attended to the realm. These daily turnings did much to help the world revolve, to cause it to circle on itself and revisit again seemingly innocuous social exchanges.

A detective with a big, black moustache who was not wearing his jacket, his holster and pistol showing, rudely reached his hand inside the open door and rapped it twice.

“FLQ,” he said. “The director is calling us in.”

“Him or me? Or both?” Fleury asked.

“Senior officers to his desk on the double.”

“A bombing?” Cinq-Mars inquired. He was being excluded from the session, and so tried to snatch information on the fly. “Kidnapping. A British diplomat, I heard.” That sent a chill.

Before dashing out, Fleury paused long enough to exchange a nod with the junior officer. Their pact was sealed. Cinq-Mars had information to go on, but he was not to reveal its source.

Tied to a chair, at times blindfolded, at other times wearing blinkers that restricted his peripheral vision, James “Jasper” Cross listened to the radio. Communiqués from the group holding him, calling itself the Liberation Cell, were being broadcast. If certain people the cell had deemed to be political prisoners were not released, and if other demands concerning the governance of the land were not conceded, he would be executed. A deadline was aired.

The government, Cross’s captors believed, was doomed to negotiate. He was baffled by their optimism. He had once read, with only passing interest,
that the FLQ had distributed a leaflet titled
The FLQ Will Kill!
He wished now that he’d never seen the article. He might die in this still, airless room. He felt bloated by impotence, and in his worst moments he panicked under the blindfold, desperate for light, air, release. He suffered imagining the pain inflicted upon his family. He could forgive his captors many things, but not the affliction they had brought to bear upon his loved ones.

“I’ve never harmed you.” He spoke to a mute presence he detected in his room in the morning.

A woman answered. She seemed to him the most callous among them. “You’re English. What harm could we inflict on you to pay us back for the conquest?”

“Actually,” he noted quietly, “I’m Irish.”

He could sense, or perhaps was hoping, that he had touched a nerve. The French had long had good relations with the Irish. Down through the centuries, the French had invited forsaken Irish into their homes and adopted orphaned Irish children as their own. Irish surnames had become prominent in Quebec society, and the Irish were generally viewed as confederates, having shared the experience of being colonized by the British.

“Then you’re a collaborator,” the woman declared. “You work for London. You’ve betrayed our people and your own.”

The admonishment felt severe, yet Jasper Cross was heartened. They had made a mistake! They’d snatched an Irishman. That slight sliver of a doubt might hold him in good stead if ever the value of his life was weighed, if a choice had to be made to determine whether he was to go free or die.

Over the radio from the other room, he learned that the government had declined to negotiate. He also learned that he was still alive. The hostage-takers, it was reported, had postponed their most recent deadline to kill him.

They had set another.

The radio in the other room informed him that he had eleven hours to live.

“Where’s Bourassa?”

A shrug. “New York.”

“Still? What’s he doing there anyway?”

Another shrug. “Farting around. He’s reachable. He sent a number.” “Big of him.”

The prime minister had pulled his most trusted colleagues together: Marc Lalonde, his finance minister; Gérard Pelletier, his secretary of state; and his labour minister, Jean Marchand. Lalonde had not spoken, but addressed the prime minister now. “Pierre, we’ve learned of a meeting.”

“Tell me.”

“Ad hoc, in Montreal, of interested people to discuss the situation. It’s taking place at Ryan’s office.” Claude Ryan, the editor of
Le Devoir.
A leading intellectual and moral figure in the community. “Parizeau’s going.” A separatist politician of influence, and president of the executive council of the Parti Québécois.

“Not Lévesque?” Trudeau asked.

“Apparently not. It’s safe to assume that he’s an informed party.” “How do we know this? I take it we’re not invited.” “Someone on the guest list is keeping me apprised.” “So we’re also an informed party at the meeting?”

Lalonde shook his head. “Our friend would be tossed out on his ear if anyone found out he was talking to us.”

Trudeau nodded, getting it. “Lévesque has representatives who keep him informed. We have a spy. I appreciate the dynamic. What’s the meeting about?”

“That’s not fully understood. Ryan is animating the talk, which is all right, but the list of those attending worries me.” Financiers, politicians, academics, journalists, businessmen—a gathering that cross-pollinated the powerful and the merely influential. “It’s been suggested,” Lalonde went on, “that the agenda will include a discussion on what to do.”

“Do?”

Lalonde was austere and cerebral. “If they conclude that Bourassa is unfit to govern, they may choose to govern on their own. It’s in the air. Everyone’s convinced he’s inept. Those who know him don’t believe he can handle this crisis.”

“Now it’s a ‘crisis.’ I thought it was a kidnapping.”

“Prime Minister—”

“I know what you’re saying.”

Trudeau took a moment to process what was being illustrated. “A palace coup? Already the FLQ has set itself up as a parallel government, presuming to dictate policy. Do these people at the meeting intend to do the same thing? How many governments can there be in Quebec at one time?”

“They haven’t met yet,” Lalonde pointed out to him.

“They might decide to become the government,” Pelletier considered. “It’s not out of the question. Fear that Bourassa can’t handle this mess is widespread.”

Trudeau made a few faces, mulling things over, then opined, “Give him time. He might rise to the challenge if he ever comes home. I think it’s possible.”

“Do you know what he’s doing in New York?” Pelletier asked. If Trudeau had a weakness, he valued ineffectual adversaries. Men who could not perform brilliantly in debate or before a scrum of reporters were his pawns, for he could manipulate them from dawn to dusk. Bourassa was neither a natural adversary nor an ally, but in this circumstance they would have to work in unison, as partners, though not as equals. Trudeau might miss the opportunity to guide the other man where he should be led, and do so through positive encouragement, rather than mockery or intellectual slight. “He’s hiding,” Pelletier said. “He’s in denial.”

“Shit.”

The news was all bad. If the powerful citizens of Quebec were discussing an overthrow of their own government to fill the vacuum left by a young, timid, and, for the time being, absent premier, then the political authority in Quebec really had become a vacuum. That gave the FLQ infinitely more power with their broadcast manifestos, their bombings, and now, a kidnapping.

“Banana-republic politics,” he muttered in disgust. “Gérard, what do we do?”

Pelletier stretched out his long legs. A person entered government for moments such as these, to make decisions that determined the viability of a nation. When they had first come to Ottawa, Trudeau had wanted to delay
assuming responsibility until he learned the ropes. Pelletier and Marchand counselled him differently, reminding him that they had not fought an election to sit on their posteriors. Now, a short time later, they were in a political maelstrom beyond their imagining. Yet, this is what they had come here for, and this is how history would judge them—by how they handled pressure.

“When Bourassa calls, Prime Minister, befriend him. He lacks resolve. Show him your own. Permit him to lean on you. Coax him along. Offer comfort.”

“Jean?” Trudeau asked of Marchand.

“Sentiment is running against us. Further demonstrations in support of the FLQ are being organized. Public support gives those bastards their courage.” “Who cares about their courage?” Lalonde asked.

Pelletier chose to answer. “The demonstrations are exhausting the police. They’re taken away from their primary task, which is to find the kidnappers. If this keeps up, the mayor and probably Bourassa will be asking for the army again.”

Trudeau had sent troops a year earlier, to defuse bombs in mailboxes and patrol streets. “If Bourassa asks, I’ll have no choice. I’ll have to accept the request. It’s the law.”

“Bourassa will ask,” Pelletier said. “Once he flies back from New York and realizes that he can’t avoid this, he’ll ask. In a crisis, a weak man loves an army.”

“As for what we do,” Marchand stated, finishing up, “we wait. See what develops. We can’t allow ourselves to be caught off-guard again. This is not merely a criminal act, a kidnapping. We have a developing crisis that involves a significant portion of the population.”

“Marc?” The prime minister polled the minister of finance a final time.

“Monitor what the people do and say after these power meetings. If they communicate with the outside world, we’ll closely examine the language. Their choice of words will show us the nature of their debates. They may have to debate whose side they’re on.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Prime Minister, I could not be more serious.”

Trudeau acknowledged the sentiment with a nod. The quality of leaders attending the meeting in Montreal promised a lively discussion. He was almost sorry to miss it.

“All right,” he summed up, and in so doing excused his counsellors for now, “we’ll carry on.”

Anik Clément lay in the arms of her lover. She could feel the tension rising through his bloodstream again, the strain of these dire days returning.

The telephone rang and his body jerked spasmodically, a compressed spring suddenly released.

“Easy,” she said.

Lévesque reached across and picked up the receiver. “Yeah?” Only one man had this number, and he wouldn’t be wasting his time with trivia. He listened, then said, “My God,” his voice grave.

Placing a hand on his back, Anik could feel adrenaline inflating him.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

He yanked his trousers on so quickly, he forgot he hadn’t yet donned his underwear, forcing him to start again.

“What’s happened?” Anik asked quietly. “They’ve taken Laporte.”

“Who?”

“Laporte! Pierre Laporte! The minister of labour. They’ve taken him.” “Taken? Kidnapped?”

“Right off his front lawn. On the South Shore.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Bourassa will want the army now. We’ve got to stop him.”

“How?”

“Political pressure. Public and private. You’ll see. He’ll bow. He better. I have to persuade the others. There’s to be a meeting.”