Snow Job (49 page)
Unable to bear the sullen faces of her campaign staff, she had ordered them to stay in Vancouver. Nor had she wanted to rush back there by plane — she needed time with Percival, needed his solace, his assurance that she was not the paranoid target of a vast international conspiracy to drive her mad.
“Wonderful service,” said the wife of the local M.P. They were leading Clara to Percival’s rented sedan, manoeuvring through the crowds.
“Scintillating sermon,” said Clara. “We’re going to pull this one out, Ed. Give ’em hell.”
She scrambled in beside Percival, who closed up his phone, started the engine.
“Okay, how are we spinning it?” she asked.
“Total mental breakdown. A prominent head doctor has been retained. He will say Charley suffered a near psychotic episode that erupted as a response to an acute stress disorder with severe hypo-manic symptoms. But for this to wash, the shrink has actually got to meet and assess him. Charley’s up in Yellowknife — he’s speaking there tonight.”
“Don’t let him
near
a platform. I want him flown down here strapped to a gurney.”
“Senator DuWallup has confirmed he will take back the reins for the nonce. Tomorrow, he will appoint a commissioner to review the entire mess. It would be improper for you to comment until he or she reports, so you will be bound to silence.”
A rap on the window, a supporter. Clara opened it to greet a toddler held out for show. “Oh, aren’t you lovely in your Sunday dress. Thank you all, don’t forget to vote.” Window up, she said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
She was exhausted: two hoarse speeches the day before, two hours of sleep that night. A recurring migraine. She truly thought
she might crash under the pressure. After her defeat, a period of recovery, then back to writing equations on a chalkboard about aggregate demand for goods and services. She could hear the taunts:
Gracey just wasn’t the man for the job
.
She must suck it up and muddle through. She is the iron maiden.
“I don’t suppose we can cancel lunch.”
“It’s the women’s professional club, pet, you can’t afford to.” Percival pulled into the traffic, toward the Trans-Canada.
“Give me something for my head, for Christ’s sake.” She shook out a cigarette. “I’m sorry, I’m feeling very brittle.”
“Look in my bag. There’s Tylenol and some mild antidepressant.”
What she really wanted was hard drink, but she settled for two tabs of painkiller and the Sunday
Post
. The fiasco in the Château got second billing — under headlines from Macedonia — but featured Charley’s smiling mug and continued with a full page of interviews with hotel staff and Margaret Blake, plus a speculative sidebar about a mysterious government program to honour unknown entrepreneurs. Another item was about the no-comment stance of the P.M. and her cabinet, including Thiessen himself, playing hard to get in the Northwest Territories.
“What the latest from Lessard?”
“Erzhan has fingered a couple of CSIS agents. Moonlighting as mercenaries, a private-enterprise rendition. Sully Clugg, a thug — Blackwater Worldwide let him go over an issue involving dead Iraqi civilians. Rod Klein, a senior analyst, lost his shirt when the mortgage market collapsed. Whether they planted the IED remains moot, but Clugg had been trained in how to detect and dismantle them. They are under surveillance.”
“The third man?”
“Believed to be out of the jurisdiction. Likely ex-CIA or FBI, presumably a rendition expert, and with Albanian links.”
“And links to Anglo-Atlantic Energy.”
“One infers. I suspect we’ll never prove it.”
“I don’t care. I want those oily assholes brought before our
criminal courts.” Their CEO, Reaves, that priggish patronizer, and the flatulent Lord Blowhard.
The highway rose above the Fraser River, ponderous, grey, and thick with winter rains, a tree shorn at the trunk floating by. Her headache was finally lessening. “Operation Wolverine?”
“It hasn’t been disclosed to the Russians, but they must know something is up. Dip notes are bouncing back and forth like tennis balls. Moscow feels its southern border isn’t secure, but they assure us they have no plans to invade.”
“Set up a call to the Russian president.”
She had until maybe two the next afternoon, Pacific time, to pull the commandos back. Lives were at stake, her nation’s reputation, an election in the balance.
Percival, as usual, was reading her thoughts. “History either condemns or acquits, but the verdict often doesn’t come in for decades. I read that somewhere. It’s tempting to do the popular thing, Clara, braver to do the honourable thing.”
She realized she’d been thinking like a politician, not a leader. It would be wrong to gamble against harsh odds just to win an election. Obscenely wrong.
“Thank you, Percival.”
A full bladder aroused Charley Thiessen from his hotel bed on Sunday morning, and he padded off to the bathroom in the grip of a mighty hangover. His watch said half past ten, and he was pretty sure he was still in Yellowknife.
Sitting on the can, ignoring a ringing phone, clutching a head that felt as big as a basketball, he trawled for recent memory. There’d been an aboriginal ceremony in the afternoon, which went off okay, but then the Château tape was aired nationally, and everything fell apart. At the campaign rally, they’d sat on their hands, embarrassed for him. His lawyer jokes fell flat.
He’d fled into the night, into the bitter cold, by a back door, avoiding a small hunting pack of reporters. Hiding his face in the fur cowl of his parka, he’d found his way into Old Town, into a tavern full of boisterous hardrock miners, nobody giving him a hoot, nobody caring about the city dude slouched in a corner, ordering doubles.
And as he stumbled out at closing … yes, that’s when he saw the aurora borealis dancing like God’s fingers in the sky. That’s when he’d made a major life-changing resolution … but what was it? Not simply to escape the political life, though that was now a given. Something more all-encompassing. Starting over. Never going back home. Never having to look them in the eye. His mom.
He could open a practice here in Yellowknife, do good things, defend the poor on legal aid. Start a new life in the coldest city in Canada, median winter temperature thirty below. There was a masochistic feel of penance to that, somehow satisfying.
He surrendered to the persistent phone. “I think you’ve missed your flight, sir.”
Thiessen almost said, “Call me Charley,” but realized that’s not who he was any more. Not the same old Charley. Different.
Dear Dr. Hank
,
Colonel Letvinov says we’ll have access to a telephone and fax when we get to Omsk, so I will have talked to you by now and sent this off. (Am I making sense?) I know I’m going to sound garbled on the phone, and it will take hours to explain everything, so that’s why I need to fax, it’ll fill in some of the details
.
So what you are reading is a short letter with an appendix (it’s inflamed but don’t remove it!). The appendix consists of copies of entries from a journal I was half-heartedly keeping. You should read them first, so the rest of this makes sense. (Did you get
any
of my letters?)
Driving to Omsk may take a few days, because traffic is going only one way, trucks pulling in full of soldiers, they’re setting up for God knows what, maybe an invasion, a war, and we can’t contact the Canadian embassy because there’s a communications blackout, except for military radio
.
Colonel Letvinov doesn’t seem to know what to do with us, Maxine, Ivy, and yours truly. I don’t think we were in his plans, whatever they are. So he’s keeping us “sequestered” until he gets permission to pack us off to Omsk and civilization
.
But we’re safe, and unless I sounded incoherently hysterical with relief on the phone call we haven’t yet had, you know how that came about. I’m still pinching myself. Delirious at the thought I’ll soon be with you and Katie and Cassie and Jessie. I feel conflicted, though, as I fret about the safety of my many friends here, my comrades and saviours. More on that coming up …
The weird thing was how easy it was to get to the Russian side. We just dashed across the border (no fence, no guard posts, just rolling steppes), Ruslan and Atun in the lead, our company of resisters behind them — they’ve grown to about four hundred men and fifty women — plus Maxine, Ivy, and me (hearts in throat). Right into the arms of the Russian army. They’d been waiting for us, watching our progress, I guess, from one of those aircraft that had been dipping their wings at us and dropping supplies, food, gear
.
Colonel Letvinov, their commander, greeted Ruslan with a bear hug, like an old friend. (Turns out he
is
an old friend. That big old red-bearded pirate has been keeping secrets from us — now we have serious doubts about who he was really working for all this time.)
Anyway, we’ve been transported to a Siberian border town whose main feature is a restored wooden fort, once a fur-trading post, and that’s where we’re barracked, the three of us, a heavy-timbered suite with a stinky bear rug. Atun is here too, so protective, he sleeps just outside the door. I’ll tell you about him and Ivy on the phone, it’s unbelievable. He proposed! They’re engaged! (She didn’t mull long over it.) After overthrowing the Ultimate
Cockroach he’s going to fetch Ivy to be his Canadian princess and they will live happily ever after
.
Right now I’m at the window looking down at some of our Revolutionary Front irregulars behind the palisade walls. They’re getting basic training from a Russian drill major who spends most of his time shouting and stamping his feet with exasperation. It would be comical if we weren’t afraid Russia has plans to use them somehow. As sacrificial lambs, maybe, to foment a terrible, full-scale civil war
.
When we warned Atun he should not trust the Russians, he shrugged. “They are generous. Every fighter will have a Kalashnikov.” That’s what’s making us nervous, talk like that
.
Our fort is on a rise five hundred metres from a village on the Bhashyistan side that’s even smaller than Canora, but a lot scarier. There are a couple of customs buildings at the border, which has a swing gate but no fence unless you count a few useless strands of barbed wire. But you can’t say it’s undefended. Brown-uniformed soldiers have been pulling in since dawn, in trucks or on foot, looking bedraggled when you see them through Atun’s binocs. There have to be a thousand of them over there. I don’t know much about military strategy, but it doesn’t make much sense for them to be digging trenches in the desert
.
Beyond the border, in the distance, are some deserted oil derricks, and farther away, clinging to the horizon, is a commercial centre called Özbeg. Atun says it’s a strategic target, they’re going to liberate it first
.
Above, I see three unbroken contrails in the still afternoon sky. Russian MiGs
.
My nightmares have stopped, Hank. Now I only dream of you and the girls. Love to all, and Mom, and all our friends
.
XOXO, Jill
