The Burma Effect (3 page)

“On the weekend, OK? I've got to go up to Ottawa tomorrow.” “State secrets.”

“Right.”

“You are a devilishly handsome and interesting young man, you know that, Francis? What a life of intrigue we lead.”

“On the weekend, OK?”

“Yup.”

There was also a message from Kate, the woman who thought she was Delaney's girlfriend. She was a Mountie, RCMP, doing criminal analysis now in Montreal—a specialist in credit card fraud. She had even spent a couple of years on and off travelling the world on RCMP time researching a book on card fraud—now seemed to know everything there was to know about the subject.

About men, she seemed to know, or understand, far less. She could not fathom, for example, why Delaney was still refusing to fall in love with her, why he still seemed under the spell of Natalia, dead now almost five years.

She knew a little about that story, but far from all of it. She knew that Natalia had been murdered, but she did not know by whom. She knew that Delaney at the time had been working on something very secret and very dangerous, but she did not know that it was his first assignment as a CSIS spy. The phrase
investigative journalist
covers a multitude of sins.

She had strong views as to how much time a man needed to get over a loss, to move on, to get on with the next phase of his life. Sometimes Delaney seemed about ready to do that. Sometimes he moved in Kate's direction. Some-times they had good times together, or good sex, or both. But Kate still felt threatened by and jealous of a dead woman and this, more frequently now, made her angry. Her anger made Delaney want to go live on his boat.

Hi Frank, it's Kate. Not sure where you are. I'm thinking of going up to Sue's cottage this weekend the weather's so nice and I think you should come. Let's go up there and relax and see if the weather turns really warm, OK? Call me when you get this, all right? It's, um, threethirty on Wednesday. I'm at work. Bye.

Delaney listened to that message a second time, listening closely for tone, subtext, delivery. Nothing obviously amiss. A straightforward proposal, or so it seemed. Still, as always lately, Delaney was wary, particularly about excursions that required overnight stays. Things were at a delicate stage between Kate and himself and, as with everything else in his life, he preferred to avoid complications.

It was almost 7 p.m. He dialled Kate's mobile. She answered right away. Someplace noisy. “Hi Kate. It's Frank. Where are you?”

“Crescent Street. The Winston Churchill. Just moved in from the tables outside.They put them out this afternoon for the first time this year. It's getting a bit cold now. You want a drink?”

“I'm just back in. I was at the boat.”

“What else is new.”

Kate seemed as jealous of the boat as she was of a woman with the same name. “Spring spruce-up.”

“Come over,” Kate said. “I'll buy you a drink.”

“I better not,” Delaney said. “I'm behind on the column.”

“Too much time on the boat.”

“Yeah, maybe. I better finish it, though.”

“Your deadline's Wednesday afternoon, no?” Police. Observing everything, remembering every detail.

“I'm late again this week.” There was a silence. Delaney let her fill it; his strategy in such matters.

“You get that message about the weekend?” she said. “Yes.”

“What do you think? Could be nice. It's nice up there in the spring.”

“I'd better pass. I've got a lot to do.”

“The column's for Saturday's paper, Frank.”

Delaney let that go. Kate didn't.

“The column's for Saturday, no?” she said.

“The column is not all I do, Kate,” he said.

“Oh really? So what's to detain you this week? Sandpapering the boat or failing to write the book?”

Delaney did not want to let this go any further. It was all too familiar.

“Let's drop this, OK?” he said. “I can't make it this weekend. You go. Have a nice time and we'll get together next week sometime.”

“I'm tired of this, Frank,” Kate said. “I'm really tired.”

“You putting too much stock in this sort of thing, Kate. Don't worry about the small stuff. I've always told you that.”

The line went dead. Fuck, Delaney said out loud. Kate was still at the bar when Delaney got to Crescent Street about half an hour later. There was the usual Montreal hubbub of French and English, spoken interchangeably. She was handing a credit card to the waiter.Two glasses with beaten-up lemon slices sat on the smudged table along with Wednesday's
Tribune
.

“Don't let that card out of your sight,” Delaney said. “They have a way now of recording all the data on the magnetic strip.”

She looked over, surprised but obviously pleased. Her face was lovely when she was pleased—soft skin, not ruined by the sun, and green eyes that shone. Laugh lines around the mouth. Disappointment and resentment did not come naturally to her. It was something she was having to learn from him.

Her hair was expensively streaked in golds and bronze, but tied back tightly, so she would look more like a cop. It wasn't working tonight. “We're closing,” she said.

“They know me here,” Delaney said.

“It's a young crowd. No fortysomethings here, usually,” she said.

“Nasty.”

“You too.”

“Not always.”

“Usually. Lately.”

“Sorry.”

They looked at each other over the tabletop. The waiter looked over.

“Gin and tonic?” Delaney asked Kate.

“Depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“Are you my lover boy?”

They both laughed out loud. The hard thing about Kate was that no matter how much Delaney tried not to like her, he failed. “Drink?” he asked again.

“And afterward we go back to your place and fall hungrily into each other's arms? Have passionate sex. I drag myself to work at the last possible moment tomorrow, looking worn out, eliciting knowing glances from colleagues. I am distracted from my important police work. A whispering campaign starts. My reputation is ruined. Yours is ruined. It doesn't matter. We have each other. Like that?”

Delaney ordered a gin for Kate and a Molson for himself.

“Do you need a heart-to-heart talk or something?” he asked her. “We've had those.”

“Then you know what's what. A little.”

“I know what's what,” she said. “I've seen this all before. The man needs space, the man needs more time to get over her, the man is not sure what he wants. But the man is pushing fifty and he is shorter than I am, by almost two inches.”

She was trying hard not to smile or laugh. It was hard for her to be tough.

“I enjoy your company, Kate.”

“When you want company.”

“I'm here tonight.”

“I want to go back to your place tonight, Frank. I want to wake up in your bed. I want to drink the last of the skim milk in your fridge. I want to see what else is on the shelves. I want a normal, standard, passionate love affair with you. I will refrain from saying I love you. But I need you to fall for me, Frank. I can get company if I need it.”

Delaney rarely invited Kate, or anyone else, male or female, to his apartment. Before the events of five years ago, it had been an austere, ordered, almost antiseptic place. Now there was disorder, dissonance, which he did not like to share. Items brought from Natalia's apartment were now in his space. Her favourite reading chair and lamp were in his space. Most of her books. Some of the paintings that had been on her walls. Her diaries, full of Jungian thoughts and sketches. Not for sharing.

Delaney had no satisfactory reply to make to Kate tonight, or any other night. He sat in silence.

“Invite me back to your place, Frank,” she said. “Would you please do that? Let someone else in besides a woman's ghost?” “Don't do this tonight, Kate. OK?” She stood up and put her phone in her bag. Delaney could sense the eyes of other men in the bar locking onto her, as always.

“Call me when you've figured out what you want to be when you grow up, OK Frank?” she said. She did not even seem particularly angry. “Maybe get yourself some therapy. That's what Natalia would have suggested, isn't it? For an obsessional difficulty?”

Then she was gone.

Someone died because of me
, he wanted to say. He wanted to run after her and say:
Someone died because of me.

Of course, working on a newspaper column that night was no longer in the cards. But going over a couple of blocks to meet O'Keefe was a very dangerous idea. So Delaney went home with some takeaway Vietnamese and six bottles of beer. George, the omniscient doorman, was not at his post for some reason. No knowing looks to endure.

Delaney dreamed that night. It had been a while since he last had the classic Natalia dream. But the dream came again that night:

She is lying in the snow in the Laurentian woods, with the horrific bullet wounds to her head and to the fingers of her hands that she had used to cover her head before the gunshots came. It was snowing, as it was then, and always would be in that dream, and after a while the snow covered her up and all went peaceful, in a way. The dream then hovered like that, like it always did, for a very long time. Still. Quiet.The body in the woods, the snow falling steadily, silently down. Delaney watching, watching
.

D
elaney detested Ottawa with unusual ferocity.This was not entirely to do with the fact that his ex-wife lived there now with an ambulance driver. He had hated it even when he first worked in Canada's capital as a journalist in the parliamentary press gallery. He had hated the incestuous, parasitical nature of the work he had to do then, cultivating contacts among politicians and politicians' aides and their various consultants, hangers-on and flunkies in order to have anything to write about at all.

He hated the look of the place, except for the grand sweep of Parliament Hill itself, with the elegant sandstone Peace Tower and the neo-Gothic House of Commons high about the Ottawa River and directly across from Quebec. Except for that one landmark, he found the rest of Ottawa an uninviting hodgepodge of architectural styles, treeless malls, inward-looking neighbourhoods and dismal nearempty restaurants.

He hated the chattering crowds of civil servants who poured out of buildings everywhere at lunchtime, parkaor anorakor sweater-clad, depending on the season, desperately seeking sandwiches and soup and takeaway coffees in oversized cardboard cups. He hated the vibrations they exuded, of job security and tidy lives and weekend yard work, and the odd
frisson
of disquiet about pension entitlements.

He hated any city described as having good bicycle paths or as a good place to bring up kids.

Delaney's mood darkened as he approached Ottawa from Montreal that Thursday afternoon, the way it darkened anytime he was forced to make that drive. But he had left Montreal already well into a dark mood, generated by the combined effects of Kate, of alcohol abuse, of yet another editorial dispute and the inflexible rules at certain suburban sailing clubs.

After he had eaten his Vietnamese dinner from its plastic container the night before and after he had finished the six beers he bought to go with it, Delaney was little inclined to complete any newspaper columns about the global terrorist threat. He drank some Jameson's whiskey, too much, and some more beer and flicked through news channels and movie channels on the TV until sleep and the Natalia dream came.

In the morning, his journalistic skills were not up to standard and the writing had gone badly, or so his editor had told him soon after he delivered the required eight hundred words. She must have read it seconds after it landed.

“Frank, Patricia here,” she said when she called.

Delaney's heart sank. “What's up?”

“Quite a bit, actually. Sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to have another whack at this column. I just can't see where it's going, to be honest. What are you trying to say, actually, that Canada is a potential target or that it is not?”

“I'm saying it is not clear at this point,” Delaney said wearily.

“Well, that is what isn't clear, in the column. It's confusing. We're not clear what stand you are taking.”

“I am taking the stand that the next attack could be anywhere. New York, Washington, London, Paris, even Montreal or Toronto. That's the point. Canada is no longer automatically exempt. No place is anymore.”

“I think we already know that, Frank.”

“Damn it, Patricia, people already know almost everything they read in the paper anyway these days, don't they? Not every piece breaks new ground.”

“It's an opinion piece, Frank. It should try to break new ground. Give a new perspective.”

“Every goddamn week.”

“Yes. Ideally.”

“Well, not this week, I'm afraid.”

“Can you work on it?”

“No. I'm on my way up to Ottawa to meet a contact. The paper's going to have to live without a new perspective this week.”

“I think I'll show it to Harden, see what he thinks,” Patricia said.

“Fine.”

“It would be much better if you filed earlier in the week, Frank. We'd have more time for changes.”

“We would. Yes.”

“I'll say that to Harden, too.”

“Do that.”

“I will.”

Delaney tried to call Kate after that, on her mobile. There was no answer. He left no message. He called her office. A coplike male voice answered.

“Kate Hunter's phone.”

“Is Kate around?” Delaney said.

“Who's calling?” the cop voice said.

“It's a personal call.”

“Who's calling, please?” the cop voice said, obviously a natural-born detective inspector type.

“Frank Delaney. I'm a friend of hers.”

“Right. OK. She's not here at the moment.”

“When is she coming back?”

“Not sure, I'm afraid.”

“Today?”

“Not sure.”

“Is she working today?”

“That's not something we usually tell people on the phone. Security reasons.” “Security reasons,” Delaney said.

“That's right, sir,” the Mountie said. “Can I take a message?”

“Tell her lover boy called, OK?”

There was a dignified coplike pause.

“Will do. Have a good day.”

In the lobby of Delaney's apartment building, the doorman was back at his usual post.

“The mailman's been, Mr. Delaney,” he said.

“Thanks, George.”

“You got a lot.”

“Right.”

George spotted Delaney's small overnight bag, as he usually did.

“Away tonight? I'll watch your place.”

“Thanks, George. Ottawa for one night. Maybe.” Delaney always found himself feeding the doorman's insatiable hunger for bits of news.

“Right. I'll watch your place. Better get that mail.”

Delaney obediently opened the mailbox. Bills, lots of them, magazines, junk mail, and a letter from his publisher in Toronto, probably asking again for a delivery date for the overdue Vatican book. A postcard from his sister in Los Angeles. She was the only family Delaney had left. She sent two or three postcards a year.

Hi Francis, really hope you're well. Sorry I'm so bad at staying in touch. I will write a proper letter soon, or will call you, OK? The kids say hi and Justin says hi. When are you coming down to see us? Running out of space, got to go, bye for now. Helen.
George watched him read the card.

“Nice when people stay in touch,” he said.

“Yeah,” Delaney said.

By the time Delaney got to the sailing club it was almost 3 p.m. The wind had come up and there were short bursts of cold rain. Stan was waiting for him at the dry dock in a filthy windbreaker.

“Not much time for working left,” he said.

“I know that, Stan,” Delaney said.

“The next guy wants to put his boat up this afternoon, so he can get started right away.”

“I've got till what time?” Delaney asked.

“Till five, tops. That's the rule.”

“It's only about three.”

“The guy's here already,” Stan said, pointing to the clubhouse. A young stockbroker type in a white V-neck tennis sweater was having a coffee and talking on his mobile phone. “Fuck,” said Delaney.

“You going to try to get a little done?” Stan asked. “You need a hand, maybe?”

“No. No thanks. I guess I'll just tidy up and put some things away and let that guy get his damn boat in the berth. What's he got anyway?”

Stan pointed to a pristine 40-footer bobbing at the dock. It was called
Overdraft
. It made the
Natalia
look like a beginner's boat, despite it being 30 feet.

“That thing doesn't need any work, Stan.”

“He wants to examine the hull.” Delaney climbed onto his boat and started stowing paint cans and sandpaper and steel wool. He felt a strong urge to lie down in one of the bunks and sleep until five o'clock, but he knew Stan wouldn't let him do that and he suspected the stockbroker would raise a fuss.

He thought for a moment about how he could arrange things to live on the boat again, but knew this was impossible in Montreal. In the Caribbean climate, yes, but not in Montreal. He thought it might be about time for another long sabbatical. He could feel a change coming, something coming.

As Stan was winching the
Natalia
back into the water, the stockbroker came out to watch.

“Nice little boat,” he said, brushing a hand over his thick auburn hair to show Delaney the Rolex on his wrist.

“What would you know about that?” Delaney said.

“Hey,” said the broker.

“Easy does it,” Stan said over the noise of the winch.

Delaney arrived early at the press club, at ten minutes to seven. Rawson had said he'd be there between seven and seven-thirty. He was usually late for such meetings, so Delaney settled down at one end of the bar with a copy of the
Globe and Mail
, a draft beer and a bowl of the club's world famous stale peanuts.

There was only a small crowd. No one he knew from the old days was there and no one he cared to know from the current crop of press gallery types. Kenny the Indonesian barman was still there, still wearing the same tight royal blue vest and crooked glasses he used to wear when Delaney and a crowd of young reporters used the place just about every night. He probably recognized Delaney but didn't bother to say.

The same framed front pages of newspapers lined the narrow section opposite the bar. The wider main area of the club had tables and big ashtrays and low stuffed chairs. Usually, at this time of night, people preferred to sit or stand near the bar.The TV was on with the sound down. CNN faces mouthed journalistic wisdom.

Delaney hadn't given much thought to what Rawson had told him on the phone the day before about Kellner being missing. He considered that now as he waited at the bar for the CSIS man.

He knew that Kellner, like himself, was an occasional operative, mostly overseas, for the Canadian security service types, or the ones who acknowledged that this sort of work was being done. On paper, CSIS was still forbidden to undertake foreign intelligence work overseas, but most people in the game knew, or suspected at least, that the CSIS mandate was being slowly but surely extended, in fact if not in law.

Delaney himself had done four or five jobs for the spy service, and had taken to the work, just as Rawson predicted he would. Even in that first disastrous foray into the world of Polish and Vatican spies, Rawson had said Delaney was a natural. On subsequent assignments, in Sudan, Sierra Leone, Kashmir, Delaney was tougher, far more careful, far more professional.

CSIS found his journalistic cover handy. The agency apparently found Kellner's equally so. Delaney had gathered useful information for the Canadians about groups thought to be a threat to Canadian domestic security or to Canadian business interests abroad, or both. He occasionally did some investigative work closer to home and he assumed Kellner was doing the same from time to time, and for the same exceedingly high pay, from his base in Bangkok.

The problem for Rawson and Company, Delaney suspected, was Kellner himself, or, rather, his personal lifestyle. He suspected that Kellner had got himself into some kind of jam, had gone to ground, and CSIS needed to know where and with whom. They would want to know how reliable Kellner could now be seen to be, if at all, and whether to sever their ties with him altogether.

And that would be their biggest problem. Severing a mutually advantageous arrangement with, for example, Delaney, would be relatively simple and not terribly unpredictable. With a man like Kellner, one could never know. Presumably CSIS had bothered to find out all about Kellner's weaknesses and appetites before they reeled him in, Delaney thought.

Delaney had worked with Kellner for a time at the
Tribune
, and had contributed the odd piece to Kellner's short-lived magazine before he headed to Asia a few steps ahead of his creditors. Even before Kellner hit Bangkok, however, he was known around the media hangouts in Montreal as a very loose cannon.

He had been a good reporter once and an out standing political feature writer. As the dope and the booze addled his brain, his material became unfocused, less sharp. But even stoned or coming off a bender, Kellner could produce material that made people want to read on. Newspapers often put up with such behaviour because they need the highenergy jolt that characters like Kellner can bring to their pages.

But no one, in the months before Kellner quit Canada for good, wanted to drink with him anymore.

His idea of a night's entertainment in that period was to drink as much vodka and smoke as much Lebanese hashish as he possibly could, and then to roam wild-eyed around downtown Montreal literally howling at the moon and accosting locals and tourists alike. Often he would then head into the newspaper office to hang around with the printers as they put the paper to bed and drink beer with them till daybreak in late-closing workman's bars in the East End.