Snow Job (41 page)

“The raid on Igorgrad.”

“Front of the class. We’re riding to victory on the coattails of our air force heroes. I told Clara to get that on the street, and I’m telling you, Charley. Here’s how we’re deep-thinking this thing — if silencing Mukhamet has clawed back eight points, three more shots like that will send us off the grid. We hit them again, and hit them hard. Affirmative, Charley? You with me? Hello? You zoning out on us again?”

“I was just wondering if I should say something about, you know, the environment, capping carbon emissions.”
Talk about what’s really important, Dad
. Joy had been all over him about Big Oil, the stripping of the boreal forest, drowning him in numbers, charts, graphs projecting climate catastrophe. She’d embarrassed him by signing on as a Greenpeace volunteer.

Hoffstutter finished his latte, wiped the foam from his manicured moustache. “Get me another of those, dear. Okay, Charley, you’re not going airy-fairy on us, I hope. That climate stuff only confuses people, scares them. No, you’re going to talk about our brave boys in uniform, and you’re going to talk about patriotism, national pride, heads held high. We’re not waiting for those chickenshits at the UN to step in, we’re not waiting for the rest of the world. We’re setting an example, we’re righteous warriors for democracy.” Applause. “The Grits, needless to say, are to come off as cowering pantywaists.
Capiche
, Charley?”

“Yeah, I guess, okay.”

“Remember Huck’s rallying cry. What was it, Jackie?”

“Canada first!”

“Canada first, Charley. You’re Captain Canada. Now you skedaddle out of here while we poop it up.”

That gave Thiessen a chance to get some air. He went down to Queen Street, buttoned his coat against the chill, took an aimless
walk, slowing as he passed a cocktail lounge, tempted but carrying on, knowing they’d smell it on his breath.

It was December 30, ten days after the debacle in the Château Laurier. Why wasn’t
that
on the street? It had been an unbearable time, like waiting for the other shoe to drop. On his head, like a hobnailed boot.

But the long silence was giving him hope — there was a credible reason for it, obvious even. Robert Stonewell was a dope dealer, he didn’t want to get involved, didn’t want the heat. He’d chucked the recorder, deep-sixed it in the Ottawa River, and gone back to his hot-air balloon business. He probably smuggled his dope that way, with air drops.

So maybe all was good, maybe it was time to come up for air. Maybe his dreams hadn’t been dashed — the big prize was still open, he could yet score the game-winning touchdown. The Tomato Juice Fiasco had finally slipped off YouTube’s most-watched list, it would soon be forgotten.
To the great, adversity is a welcome challenge
. His mom’s favourite fridge magnet.

He stopped at an array of newspaper boxes, bought the
National Post
, flipped through it. Only one reference to himself — which brought relief, not despair. Buried in a story headed
SIX ALTA BRASS REMANDED ON BAIL
, a mention of the fiat he’d signed, as attorney general, authorizing the bribery indictment.

Gracey and the PMO had pushed him hard to approve it — Quilter and his crew were probably as guilty as Judas, but the main idea was to get distance from Alta, to demonstrate that the rule of law prevailed without fear or favour — and, as a by-product, mollify the Bhashies. The Tories weren’t expecting any campaign donations from Alta anyway.

He headed back up to the ad agency to record his jingoistic spiel. How had he let himself be cowed by Hoffstutter? How was he going to look Joy in the face?

“I come armed with vital dispatches.” Percival Galbraith-Smythe, by Clara’s bed, lowering a tray with coffee and a bowl of tastelessly healthy bran cereal — he seemed determined to keep her alive until the election. “It seems you had a rare old time last night. Doesn’t hurt. Shows you’re not some pinch-faced academic but a fun person, vital, still attractive to the dominant sex — though you might consider taking a few centimetres off those thighs.”

She’d seen those thickening thighs on
Canada AM
, doing a kind of faux step dance on a Halifax stage at two in the morning, a New Year’s Eve campaign kickoff party. The press was to have left early, but someone must have hung around with a minicam.

“What time is it?”

“First of all, do you know the day?”

“Saturday. New Year’s Day.”

“Correct. It is half past eleven in the morning. You are at 24 Sussex Drive. You arrived here four hours ago after a three-hour nap on the Challenger jet. You are ready to roll.”

The iron lady found her gown and slippers. She’d pretty well blown
that
image, a stale, ill-fitting role foisted on her by Hoffstutter and the campaign team. Couldn’t they at least call her the iron maiden? But the wartime prime minister image seemed to work. The successful air raid had ended the cyber attacks on businesses and boosted Conservative numbers.

She couldn’t remember the name of that lovely young man from last night. Ralph something, a common surname, Harrison, Henderson. Campaign manager in Dartmouth. On waking at the call of her bladder, she’d been abashed to find, sleeping beside her, a man young enough to be her son. She’d fled for her plane at five a.m., abandoning him in her hotel suite. She hoped Percival wouldn’t hear about it — he was so censorious.

Coffee and a cigarette aided the recuperative process, and soon she was showered and dressed. When she returned, Percival was at his laptop.

“I do have some good news, but first the bad, something that will not soothe your hangover.”

On the YouTube screen, an entirely unwelcome face: Mukhamet Khan Ivanovich chortling: “He’s back!”

Clara groaned as the lens widened to show him behind the wheel of a yellow Hummer. “Surprise, not so easy to pull out thorn in side, eh, Canada? So guess what, this most-watched news host has
five
Hummers, all same colour, for to confuse assassins. Now only four, and also one less innocent underling who you murder. So once again so-called advanced country is outwitted by emerging nation.”

Fade to a country scene, a barn, livestock. “Just in, spontaneous demonstration by agricultural workers and wives.” A throng of peasants, some holding farm and household items, pitchforks and rolling pins, chanting, in rehearsed English: “Death to Canada, death to Abzal Erzhan!” A horse reared as they set a maple leaf flag alight.

Fade back to Mukhamet, starting the Hummer’s engine. “Stay tuned for more hot news. This is your roving reporter Mukhamet Khan Ivanovich signing off.” He accepted the video camera from whoever was holding it, and his chubby face again filled the screen. “Canada goose, hah! We give
you
the goose.”

Clara chained a cigarette. Her hangover was compounded by a migraine — they’d been coming more frequently. So much for the jump in the polls. “For God’s sake, tell me the good news.”

“Not yet. More bad. Bit of a row in Kyrgyzstan about our use of the American base. The Yanks want us to back off. They could lose their lease.”

“Those faithless fucking faint-hearts, always looking out for number one –”

“Whoa … Listen up, my sweet.” He wagged a finger to still her rant. “Last night, our embassy in Kazakhstan received a call by sat-phone from a partisan of the Bhashyistan Democratic Revolutionary
Front. Didn’t leave a number. Announced himself in English as ‘a friend to Canada.’ The rest was in Russian.” He passed her a memo with the translation.

“A dissident? Some are still on the loose?”

“Well, we did empty the jail, Clara. They seem to have developed an effective underground grapevine.”

Clara put on her glasses. According to this informant, the Calgary Five were in the cells of a police station in a town called Özbeg, in the northern desert, near the Russian border. A company of Bhashyistan regulars was barracked there, protecting the nearby oil fields. “Very dangerous, but you will squash them like cockroaches. Good luck. God save the Queen.”

Percival opened a file. “Özbeg, population twenty thousand. Aerial images place it approximately in the middle of nowhere. Hometown of one of the defectors from the Ilyushin crew, he helped the DoD pinpoint the police station. Buster Buchanan has a plan to pull the hostages out of there, fly them to our base in Kandahar. Total Canadian show, avoiding Kyrgyzstan.”

“What if it’s a trick, Percival?”

“Buster Buchanan is willing to gamble. What do we have to lose?”

“Lives. The election.”

“It’s also ours to win, pet.” He looked at his watch. “High command will be here for lunch at twelve-thirty to seek milady’s blessings. No time to brief the cabinet. They’re spread all over the country anyway. It’ll be your call.”

This is what it was all about. This is what killed Huck Finnerty. Clara stared at her wan, haunted face in the dressing table mirror. Eyeshadow seemed well advised. “What else?”

“A.J. Quilter filed suit yesterday against Her Majesty for two billion dollars.”

Clara snorted derisively. “Oh, dear, he must be smarting.” The week before, Quilter and five executives had spent a night in the pokey while the RCMP took twenty boxes of paper from their offices. The PMO, meanwhile, had issued a press handout saying
the government remained fully dedicated to the safe return of the Calgary Five.

“Will Mr. Crumwell also be joining us for lunch?”

“I expect so. He has rallied from his intestinal problems.”

“Don’t let him get away.” He’d been avoiding her.

The testosterone was so thick in 24 Sussex’s boardroom that Clara instructed an aide to open some windows, letting in a draft. Crumwell looked grumpy back there, bundled into a coat and scarf.

Everyone had seen Mukhamet’s video, his triumphant return from the supposed dead. The mood was angry, vengeful.

Clara was also picking up a sense of suppressed disdain from the high commanders, with their military jargon, their assumptions she had no clue what they were talking about. Even their one woman officer, a colonel, had a contemptuous smile, a reverse sexist.

“Nothing handles unprepared runways like a Herc,” an air force general was saying. “Exceptional STOL ability, she’s the vehicle of choice.”

STOL, Clara knew, meant short takeoff and landing. She also understood the Hercules turboprop was the force’s workhorse. But she kept silent, reluctant to ask questions that might indeed show her up as a military naïf.

Buchanan raised a pointer at an aerial image of Özbeg, a cross-hatching of streets in the desert, the police station circled in red, a few scratchy lines depicting highways. “We could risk a run for the Russian border. But we’ve no idea what might welcome us there.”

“We wouldn’t want to rile the Russians.” A Central Asian expert from Foreign Affairs. “But what if we simply have our commandos surrender to them? Make them look good.” He began to wilt under Buchanan’s fierce scowl, but struggled on. “Surely they’d simply deport our people to Canada.”

“Surrender.” Buchanan was having trouble digesting the word, he croaked it, struggling, his face red.

Clara finally spoke. “The concept offends me too. Summarize for us, Buster.”

“Operation Wolverine. Named after the commando group that’s going in, the Wolverine unit. Pound for pound, the toughest animal in the world, by the way.”

“Okay, a step up from a beaver.”

“Stage one, we airdrop a few personnel in the flat desert south of this burg, in darkness. They’ll scout and prep a landing site, and do some snow clearing so we don’t face an evac impediment. They’ll set up flares, landing lights. Stage two, another Herc will nestle down two hours later, at five a.m., with the troops and three Humvees. A pre-dawn raid on Özbeg’s police station. There may be a firefight, but we expect the hostiles will prove too cowardly and disorganized to engage effectively. Stage three, back to the C-130, and non-stop to home plate, Kandahar Airfield. We’re at maximum turnaround range, that means in-flight tanking.”

Aerial refuelling, Clara decided. “The timeline?”

“Target day is January tenth.”

“Can’t be sooner?”