The Mazovia Legacy (31 page)

“Why would he do that?”

“Because I will ask him,” Father Lessard said. “I will tell him what needs to be done.”

“We must go today,” Natalia said.

“I will call him for you. He will be expecting you. But it is a long drive on poor roads.”

“And he will let us into his church, to search for something, and take it out with us?” Delaney asked again.

“Yes,” said Father Lessard. “Yes. Have faith, m
onsieur.
”

They wanted to leave immediately, but Father Lessard seemed unwilling to end his involvement in this great secret so quickly. He asked them about themselves, and more about Stanislaw and Zbigniew. They told him as little as they could. Delaney became very anxious to go, and eventually the old priest saw he could keep them no longer.

He walked with them back into the main church.

“Perhaps you could tell me what becomes of all this,” he said.

“Yes,” Natalia said.

“If we can,” Delaney said.

“It was something I kept with me for so many years, you see. And now there is a natural curiosity. To know that it has ended well.” Still the priest did not want to let them go.

“Are you married?” he asked them.

“No, Father,” Natalia said.

“Perhaps, if you marry, you could come here to do it. I could marry you as I did your uncle and his wife.”

“Perhaps,” Natalia said.

“Your uncle would have liked that, I think. He liked this church very much.”

“Yes,” Natalia said. Delaney said nothing. He very much doubted things would turn out just that way.

Father Lessard had shaken their hands gravely at the door to his church, before turning suddenly to walk back into the dimness. They waited in the chilly vestibule for a moment, adjusting gloves and scarves. Through the doors, Delaney suddenly saw an olive-green-and-yellow
Sûreté de Québec
police car parked not far from the Mercedes. A uniformed officer was peering inside. Then he went back to the police car and began to use the radio. “Police,” Delaney said. Natalia saw the car.

“Maybe it's not connected,” she said.

“Of course it's connected,” Delaney said. “We'll have to get out of here.”

“How?”

“We'll just go. Walk with me from the direction of those stores.”

They took a side path, and then walked along the slippery sidewalk in front of the church with the lunchtime crowd of skiers and shoppers. Delaney had keys at the ready. When they reached the car he quickly went to the driver's side and opened it. He pulled up the electric lock for Natalia's door and she got in.

He had the engine started and the Mercedes in reverse before the policeman had time to get out of his car. The cruiser was in the way of the heavy traffic and he had trouble getting out on the street side.

“
Hé, là, arrêtez! Arrêtez là, vous deux,
” the officer said in the
joual
accents of rural Quebec. “
Un instant, mes amis
.”

Delaney backed out fast. Cars slithered dangerously to a stop on the icy road. The policeman was shouting louder now, but Delaney was on the other side and roaring off in the opposite direction. The heavy old Mercedes was good on slippery roads. In the rear-view mirror he saw the policeman leaning into his car for the radio. A chase today was apparently not to this officer's taste. That was to be left for others, it seemed.

*

Father Lessard was still not convinced that he had made a mistake, but the worm of moral doubt had begun to eat away at his insides.

It had been a most intense day and it had left him morally and physically fatigued. Not long after the two young people had left, an hour afterward perhaps, the church secretary had rushed into his rooms with the news that the police were outside, that there was commotion. He had walked to the main doors and seen uniformed policemen arguing on the street with some other men in suits. Cars were blocking the way. A small crowd stood and watched, despite the cold.

Then the men and the police had come up the neatly shovelled pathway to the door of the church itself. They wished to speak to him urgently, they said. The Quebec police, and the men in suits, all of whom spoke French with accents not Quebecois. The anglophone, the leader of the group, was in a terrible rage. He had shouted at the uniformed police in the street and gestured wildly at them as he yelled. Father Lessard could not hear what the dispute was about. Now this same man was raising his voice to him, in his church, his own church. Who were the two people who had come out of the church when a policeman was looking at their car? Where had they come from? What had they wanted? Where were they now?

Father Lessard had had to warn this young anglophone — from Ottawa, or so he had said as he showed official identification of some sort — that, diplomats or not, if they were indeed what they all claimed to be, none of them would be allowed to shout in the church. The anglophone calmed himself. He said something was probably hidden in the church, that a search would have to be conducted immediately. But Father Lessard knew this should not be allowed to be done. This was still a Catholic church in Quebec, despite any changes over the years in the society outside, and he was not one who would allow secular people, particularly impolite anglophone Protestants from Ottawa, to do as they pleased. Even though he had nothing whatever to hide.

And so he had told them, all of them. Particularly, he had thought, as they made no mention of passwords. The Quebec police stood silently by, hoping not to be pulled into such a fundamental debate between an old priest in his church and the apparatus of various states.

But then the worm of doubt had been made to gnaw at Father Lessard's insides. The tall man who spoke French like a Parisian said nothing much at all. But the other two, dark heavy men who spoke yet another sort of French, seemed more menacing somehow, even though they spoke much more calmly and quietly than the young one.They did not look like diplomats, but they were, they insisted, Vatican envoys.They showed papers, they offered to call the Vatican right from his own church, there, that day, to prove to him how grave a matter he had become involved in.

Father Lessard's heart began to pound as he remembered it. Surely, he had not made a moral error? Surely, he had been correct to release his secret information to those two young people with the password? The anxiety of it began to make him sweat, made his face redden, and made him feel ill.

They had threatened him with grave consequences if he did not cooperate. The Bishop would be called, immediately. The Pope's own advisers. Anyone necessary would be called if he did not cooperate. And they wanted an answer immediately. He had searched all their faces, wanted a chance to ponder this alone, to pray for guidance, to be left alone. They would not grant him this, he knew.

So he had decided, eventually, that it was his duty, to the Vatican, to name the place where the two young people had gone. To say simply that they were looking for something there. Not to tell these diplomats about hidden goods, or locations. Not to tell them of passwords and Poles and Duplessis's man. Just to name the place where the two others had gone and hope that
bon Dieu seigneur
would intervene on the side of the just.

Father Daniel Emile Hippolyte Lessard had done his duty as best he could in uncertain times. He had betrayed no secrets. His church had not been violated, the rough men had gone, and only one policeman was now left inside. There was peace again, of a kind. He sat in one of the pews near the candles that flickered before statues of saints and rested himself after the trials of that day. He would discuss this, some of this, with the Bishop at the earliest possible moment.

He had done his duty as best be could. He had been relieved of one burden but now had quite another. The worm of moral doubt gnawed incessantly at his insides.

T
heir most immediate concern was to avoid being stopped by the provincial police before they made it to Saint-Jean-de-Mantha. Most of the way would be on back roads, probably snow covered and with little traffic. But to get to the right road they would have to take the Laurentian Autoroute for a short while, from Saint-Sauveur to Saint-Jérôme and then on through Saint-Félix-deValois. Most of the Laurentian towns were named after saints, Delaney thought ruefully as he drove south on the highway to the turnoff he needed, and today's route would take them through much of Quebec Catholicism's hagiography.

Natalia pored over maps from the glove compartment even though he had assured her he knew the way. She, like Delaney, often looked behind them and over to the lanes on the other side of the continuous mound of dirty snow that divided the highway. He was careful to keep to the speed limit, despite their desire to rush onward to the last stop on this journey and to complete this complex task of theirs. How exactly to end it, how it might be allowed to end, Delaney could not say.

“I hope Father Lessard calls the other priest for us like he said he would,” Natalia said.

“I think he will,” Delaney said.

“I hope the other priest will cooperate.”

“He should.”

“I hope we can find those things.”

“Me too. And find a way to get them out of there. Father Lessard said your uncle had some heavy work to do back then.”

This silenced her. She sat stiffly, nursing her various hopes until they reached Saint-Jérôme. Then she seemed to relax as they turned east onto Route 158. Delaney relaxed a little too. Now they were off the main highway used by Montrealers heading for the ski hills and on a secondary road used mainly by the farmers who had neither the taste nor the time for skiing. The white fields were featureless except for the odd stretch of wood-and-wire fence, greyblack against the whiteness, or the leafless maple trees, or the aging farm buildings that stood like islands in a sea of snow.

The car was warm, running well. It felt safe inside. Natalia looked out the window for a long time, saying nothing. Then she said suddenly: “I realize now that I haven't been dreaming at all lately. It has only just occurred to me now.”

“Neither have I,” Delaney said.

He had started to enjoy, in Europe, playing her therapist games with a morning's stock of dreams. Now there were none.

“We have been completely extraverted since we left Como,” she said. “Completely outer-directed.”

“Does that always have to be quite such a bad thing?”

“Yes, I think so,” she said.

“Where's the harm?”

“Things can creep up on you,” she said. “From the unconscious. If you don't pay attention.”

Delaney was someone whose energies for years had been neither innernor outer-directed. He had simply been a paid observer of the directed energies of others, writing down observations from the sidelines in his reporter's notebook. This had all changed, of course, after he met Natalia. But for today he thought it wise to remain very much outerdirected. He left Natalia to her introversion, and drove.

*

Hilferty no longer knew where to direct his mounting anxiety. He was sick to death of this whole disastrous operation. He really was. It had been a disaster from start to finish. He was trying, as he drove fast down the Autoroute in his oversized government automobile, to understand just where it had started to go so badly off the rails.

You could pick any number of points on this one, he realized. Not watching those first two Polish agents closely enough after they hit Montreal, for example. That was probably the first mistake in the series. That gave them an opening to go after the old man, and then the shit had very quickly started to hit the fan.Then they had stupidly let those same two guys take out the old priest in Lachine. Asleep at the switch again. And the next mistake, maybe the biggest, though God knows he would never admit this to Smithson and Rawson, was probably approaching Delaney in Montreal. Getting him involved at all. That had also been a very, very bad move. In retrospect.

Hilferty looked over to where Stoufflet was sitting on the passenger side of the car. This guy was another mistake. How did CSIS allow itself to always get saddled with all of this inter-agency bullshit anyway? The diplomatic niceties, the giveand-take for services rendered overseas. First the French, in this one anyway. Now the fucking Vatican. God knows who else he'd have to shepherd around this godforsaken province next.

He looked in the rear-view mirror. The Vatican bastards were keeping up all right. He resisted the urge to speed up, to lose them on the slippery highway, and to finish this up the way he wanted to finish it up. But they were along for this ride and there was not a damn thing he could do about it. For services rendered. He did not at all buy into the argument that when a friendly security service helped CSIS out in an operation they should then be allowed to land right in the thick of it when things went back over to home turf. They were now on his ass, breathing down his goddamn neck, and everything was going to hell.

He did not like their style, any of these Vatican guys. He had not liked it when their crowd sidelined him in Rome, allowed the Poles to get heavy, way too heavy, with the girl. He had wanted to step in, but it was not his turf, they said they wanted to wait and watch, and they sidelined him. That could have turned very bad. They could quite easily have had two dead Canadians on their hands back there, rather than two dead Poles. Things could have gone much worse. But then he had owed them. They had cleaned up the little mess that Delaney left them, and CSIS owed them.

So here were these Vatican guys with him right now, riding around Quebec like tourists. Observers. Diplomatic niceties for him to worry about as this thing slid further and further off the rails. In his most paranoid moments, Hilferty wondered if they were really Vatican at all or just another couple of freelancers who had somehow gotten wind of this thing. Their credentials looked to be in order, but credentials weren't worth a pinch of shit these days anyway.

This whole mess comes from having a goddamned Polish Pope, he thought suddenly. His people then feel impelled to watch over their boy in Warsaw, watch his every goddamn move. And that's what comes from having a former electrician, for Christ's sake, running the show in Warsaw in the first place. When a country bumpkin Polish electrician surrounds himself with thugs and carpetbaggers and spooks and then figures out he's got to start playing hardball to win the next election. When someone starts to get interested in some far-fetched story an old guy has to tell in Montreal and then figures there might be something in it for their side.

But then it's impossible for the dumb bastards to tell who's on first anymore, with spooks and crooks falling over themselves in Warsaw at the moment, so Walesa, or somebody else over there, goes crying to Rome for help. That's when things start to get ugly, Hilferty thought. When you lose control of these situations — allow yourself to lose control. It's impossible to tell who the good guys are after that. Who's working for whom. Who's doing what on whose behalf. In Warsaw, or Rome, or, for that matter, Montreal.

It would be hard to convince anyone that the good guys in this thing would have wanted, for example, to take out that crazy reporter O'Keefe back down in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, as the two Vatican guys had obviously wanted to do. They could barely hold themselves back. Smithson and Rawson had both sounded like they were going to have strokes when he tried to tell them how it had unfolded at the farmhouse. Rawson was so steamed that he was on his way to meet them at the church in Saint-Jean-de-Mantha at this very minute. And our man Rawson did not like straying very far from Ottawa anymore unless he absolutely had to. Especially in winter. Taking over the operation from here on in, he had said. Bringing in back-up, he said. And handling the recalcitrant Delaney himself.

The Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu incident had been, Hilferty admitted this, a very bad fuck-up indeed.

He could see why his masters in Ottawa were scrambling. But who would have guessed that this guy O'Keefe, a reporter, not an agent, would be armed to the teeth in there and start blasting away at them with a shotgun? With his wife and kid around, for Christ's sake. And now jumping up and down in custody somewhere, making all sorts of threats and allegations. That's not how these things were supposed to work. Especially in Canada. And especially, these days, on Quebec turf. Smithson and Rawson were going to have to do some very fancy explaining to those separatist bastards down in Quebec City.

Hilferty turned onto Route 158. No idea, really, how far ahead Delaney and the girl might be and still a long cold drive ahead. He looked in his rearview mirror. These guys, on the other hand, were still all too close. Ferramo driving; looking jetlagged, in need of a shave, grim. And Tremonti, the really rough one, with the dead eyes. He was the problem, Hilferty knew. He'd be the one to watch from here on in. He had been the one to seriously want to take out that crazy reporter bastard back in Saint-Jean.Too quick to go for his weapon. No worries about turf, about who'd clean up after him. Just wanted to blow the guy away and worry about the consequences later. Lucky things didn't turn out worse than they had.

He'd bear more watching, that one would, Hilferty thought. Both of them would.Thugs. With Vatican authority. Maybe.

Stoufflet was complaining again about how much he wanted
un petit café
. The fucking French simply cannot function without their coffee, Hilferty thought. But there was no way he was going to stop for coffee just when this thing was coming to a head. No way in the world. Anyway, they were in the middle of nowhere now. Rural Quebec at its windswept best. Fields for miles on either side and not a house or a restaurant in sight. Hardly the place to stop for a coffee.

He simply could not believe it when the Italians suddenly flashed the lights on their big rented Ford, flashed them and flashed them and motioned for Hilferty to pull over. He shook his head at them in the rear-view mirror, but they flashed their lights again and honked the horn. Surely they weren't desperate for coffee too.

He pulled over. It was very quiet, and cold.

“
Qu'est-ce qui ce passe?
” Stoufflet asked.

“I don't fucking know,” Hilferty said. “They want us to pull over.”

“
Mais, merde. Il y a rien ici. Rien
. Why do they stop here?”

Things became clearer as Hilferty rolled down his window, letting in a great gasp of freezing air. Ferramo and Tremonti were walking toward his car.

They both had their guns out. Glocks. Wickedlooking guns, Glocks were. Hilferty had never liked them. But by the time he had fully understood why they had their guns out it was too late, far too late. The operation was as far off the rails for Hilferty as it was ever going to be.

Ferramo came around to the passenger door, and fired three fast shots into Stoufflet through the window. Shards of glass exploded over everything. The Frenchman's body shuddered and he was suddenly very bloody and very dead. Hilferty let out a yell and tried to get out of the car on his side. Tremonti kicked the door shut again, and killed him with two shots to the head. The noise died away quickly. There was nowhere for it to go.

*

It had started to snow gently when Delaney pulled up to the church. There was already a white dusting on surfaces previously cleared. The sun was a bright grey circle through leaden clouds. There were no other cars in the parking lot and the church was on a quiet curved wooded road a long way outside the village they had driven through. A small frozen lake lay smooth and white behind the churchyard. There was no one to be seen or heard.

Delaney wanted to leave the car on the road somewhere away from the church so they wouldn't draw attention to themselves. But he suspected they would need the car close by to load things into if they were lucky enough to find whatever it was that had driven them this far. Or perhaps to get away quickly if necessary. He hoped it wouldn't be necessary. Natalia stood quietly beside him while he chose a few items from the trunk. He knew her well enough by now to understand that the more anxious and frightened she became, the deeper and longer were her silences. Snow began to gather steadily on her hair and shoulders.

He resisted the urge to bring in the shotgun.The Browning was already in his parka, had been there all day. But he did take the shotgun out of its case and lean down to load three shells into the chamber. This appeared to have no effect on Natalia: she apparently expected this behaviour now from the people around her. He put O'Keefe's flashlight in his parka as well. The Bushmills and the Gideon Bible he left where they were, for emergencies of another kind. As he walked with Natalia up to the front doors of yet another Quebec Catholic church, his coat pockets felt suitably laden down with equipment for this last, possibly dangerous excursion.

This afternoon's priest was not at all cut from the same cloth as Father Lessard. Father Carpentier was young, perhaps the same age as Lessard would have been when he was marrying Polish expatriates back in the 1950s. And Father Carpentier was an exceedingly frail, nervous young man. He seemed to shiver in his black priest's suit — no clerical robes for this generation of priests, at least not on a weekday afternoon — and he peered at them through a tiny pair of round spectacles. His head was already balding badly, and the entire effect was of some underfed and highly strung domestic animal. Still, he did not turn them away.