She held her glass before her, with both hands, staring down into it.
“Whatever it means, to either of us, I do truly love you, Dennis Tobias Showers. At first I thought I was just being a silly, infatuated girl and then that it was simply that you were so much more than the boys and men I’ve known before. But I know better now. I know I love you. I loved you when I was with that man and I loved you when Joyce found me even though I wanted to die and I loved you when I was in the shower realizing that I couldn’t go to bed with you. I know I love you because I can’t think of any way to stop loving you.”
“I feel the same about you, Alixe.”
“I think you probably do. You don’t say it well. You don’t say a lot of things well. But I think you do. And it’s all so sad.”
She put her hand in his again. “But I have to get away from this. I don’t know what’s going to happen to you. I pray to God nothing does and I know I may never see you again even if you get out of this alive. But I simply have to escape fast. I can’t hold myself together much longer. It’s like I fear the very next minute, all the time.”
“I’ll call Laidlaw. He gave me a number to call if I needed to.”
“Not yet,” she said, turning to press her head against his shoulder. “For now, just hold me.”
They were still sitting there in each other’s arms when Joyce returned. He said nothing, continuing on into the kitchen. When he came back with a Molson, Showers was standing by the window again.
“He’s gone,” Joyce said, seating himself in a chair, opposite. “I followed the trail out to an empty parking place. He got in his car and split.”
“Do you think he’s still alive?” Alixe asked. “Will he live?”
“Maybe so, Missy. Maybe you didn’t cut him too bad. There was less blood outside than in the stairway. Maybe he knows how to take care of himself. It could be he was in Nam or something. They taught us how to care for our own wounds pretty damn good. I took a round in the side once, and walked a mile back to the LZ.”
“I’m sending Alixe away, Mr. Joyce. Back to Washington and as soon as possible. Laidlaw will take care of it. He owes us that much.”
“Gonna miss you, princess. Say, my man, do you suppose Laidlaw owes us so much you can send me out of here, too? I’d give all the Molson in Canada to be back on Pennsylvania Avenue right now.”
Showers went to the telephone and began to dial. “Sorry, Mr. Joyce. I need you. Until I find Felicity Stuart.”
All at once he hung up, before the phone on the other end had a chance to ring. “Mr. Joyce, you were going to follow Laidlaw. What happened?”
“He gave me the slip.”
“And how is that?”
“You need two or three cars to do a tail right, you know, my man. I stuck with him best I could. He drove all over Old Ottawa on the other side of the canal and finally made a meet with a guy in another car. They talked through their windows for about a minute and then he took off, down to that expressway.”
“The Queensway.”
“Queensway. He went west on that about three exits …”
“To make sure who was behind him.”
“You got it, man, but that ain’t where he lost me. He turned off and went back downtown. He pulled into the underground garage by the Holiday Inn. That’s where he lost me.”
“In a garage?”
“It’s underground, man. It spreads out all over the place, for blocks. I drove all over looking for his car. Damn near racked up a couple of support beams. But he cleaned me off, like a dog scratching off a flea. The exit I ended up taking let me out way over by Wellington Street, three blocks away.”
“You said you were good.”
“I’m damn good. But that old man is the best.”
Showers picked up the telephone receiver. “I’m pleased to hear that,” he said, looking at Alixe. “I should like to be able to count on something.”
Paulette Arlon had been loitering around the old brick apartment building for more than an hour, though it was scarcely dawn. She had kept to the shadows, but moved constantly about, sometimes going up to the corner to make sure of police, once ducking into a gangway to relieve herself. All she knew was that the woman always left very early, and she did not want to take a chance on waiting another day. Do it and it would be done, for good. C’etait son avis. Kill the woman and the chain would be broken and everything would be broken and everything would fall apart. Paulette’s way would then be the only way. Absolument.
She smoked, hating the wait, but using the time to think again on how she would do this. She had a gun, a small automatic she carried in the pocket of her baggy sweater, but it made too much noise, and Paulette wasn’t sure of an easy escape. This wasn’t Montreal. It was alien ground, Ottawa, the Anglo capital, and she was doing this all on her own. Stupid Leon. She shouldn’t have to be doing this at all.
She would take the woman with the knife, from behind. She’d let her get a ways down the sidewalk and, if all was clear, she’d get her quick, in the chest or through the throat, and that would be that. Fini.
Paulette walked the block again, looking at the parked cars, lighting a cigarette. Hearing the door to the building open, she dropped it. Voilà. The woman was wearing a tan skirt, blue jacket, and a white blouse. Her hair was dark again, not blond, but it had to be her. Unfortunately, she turned in the opposite direction and began to walk quickly toward the corner. Paulette pulled out the knife and pushed the button that snapped the long blade into place, then began walking rapidly, almost running, her rubber-soled shoes making no sound. Her breathing was coming hard, though, making a rapid sniffing sound through her nose. She opened her mouth to breathe, and walked even faster. She had to get the woman before the corner. Fifteen feet more and she’d have her.
Her heels clicking on the pavement, the woman in the blue jacket slowed, hesitating for perhaps a second, then hurried on, rounding the corner and vanishing from view. Sebastien’s men were so good that Paulette scarcely heard when two of them grabbed her from behind and dragged and carried her back to their car, a thick gag muffling what would have been screams and curses.
Sebastien disliked being awakened so early and said so.
“Monsieur,” said the caller, his voice familiar, “someone tried to jump Porique’s woman.”
“Who?”
“A Papineau Fils. A girl. We have her in the car. The woman saw and heard nothing. It was a clean snatch, though the fat bitch almost bit off Henri’s thumb. We had to hit her, hard.”
Sebastien grunted.
“Should we bring her back to the office, monsieur?”
“No. I think I know who she is, but I want to make certain. Drive out the River Parkway and meet me on the Champlain Bridge. There shouldn’t be much traffic about.”
Sebastien pulled his car up behind the other, turned off his engine, and took a long drink of whiskey from his flask, coughing and wheezing after. Then he got out and walked slowly to the drab sedan in front, looking within. “Oui,” he said, quietly. “Voici Paulette Arlon. Take her out and put her by the railing. Take off the gag and handcuffs.” He stood nearby as they did so, looking down at the wide sweep of dark, frothy, rushing water battling over the rocks below.
“Now go,” he said, when they were done. “Do not turn around, mademoiselle. If you move, I will shoot you.”
He waited until their car was gone and his was the only one on the long bridge. Then, with a loud grunt, he grabbed her thick thighs and sent her plummeting head first over the railing.
20
Guy Porique walked across his meadow for the last time until, what? He thought upon that incomplete proposition. “Until” was a term that lacked relevance. It was his last walk there “until” his return; nothing more exact than that.
He had decided he would go to Ottawa. He had, in fact, decided there was never any question about that. The question was what he would do there, and that he had at last decided, with great certainty and satisfa
ction.
He was wearing clothes suitable for the city, though not of any elegance. The gray pants, brown jacket, and purple tie were faded, threadbare, and rumpled. Burrs caught on the trousers as he walked through the meadow grass, but he paid them no mind. This might be as well dressed as he would ever be again, and it didn’t matter. That it ever had, amused and ashamed him.
He had no book with him. His need for that now was gone, fulfilled. He had found a passage in Camus’ essay “Helen’s Exile”:
Nature is still there, however. She contrasts her calm skies and her reasons with the madness of men. Until the atom too catches fire and history ends in the triumph of reason and the agony of the species. But the Greeks never said that the limit could not be overstepped. They said it existed and that whoever dared to exceed it was mercilessly struck down. Nothing in present history can contradict them.
Nothing in history. The madness of men. Mercilessly struck down.
Nature is still there.
He reached the stream and its magnificent view, standing by that place on the bank where he had last been with the woman he loved more than any other and all too well. She had asked to come back here. Whenever he returned to this place in his mind, she would be in it.
Her absence now troubled him deeply, more than he could possibly have anticipated. Without her near, he had been able to achieve his decision coldly, intellectually, dispassionately. The happiness her presence kindled in him was not there to distract him, to add its formidable weight to the measure. He had made his choice in the solitary confines of his reason. But the lack of her had quickly become a distraction of another kind, a hunger that increasingly became more difficult to ignore, a reminder of the heavy price he had condemned himself to pay.
Porique seated himself on the grassy bank, clasping his hands around his knees, drinking in this perfect surrounding one last time. His compulsion allowed him only a small sip. It would not let him linger. It turned his mind’s eye to the city of Ottawa to the south. A falcon, his favorite bird, swooped low in this fairest of summer skies; he saw it, but did not, his mind’s eye focused on the silhouette of the Parliament buildings, the Peace Tower, so called.
He got to his feet, looked back toward the cabin, then began walking quickly toward it. The falcon turned and flew into his field of vision again, snatching a small rodent from the grass. That rodent’s end was one of pain and shock and a splash of blood, the same end that doubtless awaited the falcon. Killing was the nature of living things. Porique knew that. He had never deluded himself on that, nor had Dennis Showers.
Reaching the house, Porique decided to take only the small bag he had left by the fireplace. Everything else, the books he had brought, his other clothing and hers, he would leave behind, to promise return.
He took the pistol, placing it on the passenger seat of the Volkswagen. He backed the car up, turning, then drove off at great speed. He would be in Ottawa by nightfall.
The twenty bombs stood on the cellar table like soldiers in file, each sewn into dark, olive drab canvas and each trailing an electrical lead. Rénard du Chien, who had served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and was the electrical expert in the Papineau Fils, was seated at one end of the table, finishing work on what looked like a string of Christmas tree lights without the bulbs.
“Explain this to me,” Macoutes said. He had positioned armed men at the front and rear doors to the old building and another by the street window on the top floor. Everyone else he had searching through Ottawa for Paulette, who was hours overdue. Macoutes was very nervous. He smoked cigarettes and scratched at himself interminably.
“It’s easy,” Rénard said. “Each lead plugs into one of these sockets. Both ends of the circuit plug into this receiver. This transmitter sets it all off.” He held up a small black box.
“And the explosive will be enough?”
“Leon. One of these little packages could kill half the people in the chamber. The explosion is very violent; it compresses the air.”
“I would like to kill them all.”
“We are giving her nine of these. It’s enough to bring down the chamber. Leon, think! It might bring down the Peace Tower.”
“What are these little things you have stuck all along the cord?”
“Resistors. They slow the current.”
“What?”
“You don’t want the current to set off the first bomb before the others can go off. You might have only one detonation. So you slow the current with resistors in the right places to make certain it reaches all the terminals at the same time.”
“Je comprends,” said Macoutes, lying.
“Don’t worry. This is very good stuff. Bien fort plastique.”
“Why does he only want nine, when we could give him twenty?”
“As I say, Leon. It’s more than enough. If he had time to place these charges separately, in the right locations, he surely could take down the Peace Tower.”
“So we have eleven left for the bridges.”
“More than enough. Five bridges. A charge on each end. Bango!”
“And then Ottawa is separated from Quebec.”
“It’s a good idea, Leon.”
“My idea.”
“Paulette will like it.”
“I don’t care if she does or doesn’t.”
Macoutes picked up one of the bombs. “Si petite.”
“One pound each. If she wraps them in foil, they could look like sandwiches.”
There was a commotion upstairs at the door. Macoutes set the bomb down carefully, then hurried up to the entrance, where he was given the news that Paulette’s body had been found in the river. He began screaming and shouting, as much in fear as in anger.
Harry York, at his own vehement urging, had been released from the hospital and returned to 24 Sussex, placed under the care of an aging blond nymphet of a nurse, who changed his dressings and administered antibiotics and pain killers with chirping regularity. Adding to his irritation was a small army of uniformed and plainclothes RCMP, who had stationed themselves inside and outside of the house in such profusion York had muttered to his secretary about the Canadian government having come to resemble Pancho Villa’s.
Reclining painfully on the leather couch in his study, wearing a robe and pajamas with the right pants leg slit to accommodate the bandages around his thigh, York muttered the same thing to his minister of external affairs.
“These are serious times, Harry. At any rate, you’ll be safer here than in hospital.”
“I’m not angry about the security, George, but the goddamn need for it. This is not a country with a violent tradition.”
“You yourself once wrote that, given its proximity to the United States, the fact that Canada did not have such a tradition was amazing.”
“Stop reading my old books. How was question period in the Commons today.”
“Mayhem, but nothing worse than we expected.”
“Did you make the two announcements?”
“Aye. All Canada now knows that Her Majesty the Queen will visit British Columbia in the fall and that the president of France will be coming to Montreal, ‘to honor the French-speaking Canadians who contributed so much to the greatness of a free and united Canada.’”
“What was the reaction?”
“More mayhem. The announcement about the queen brought hisses from the Quebeckers, even when I stressed that Her Majesty was coming in her constitutional role as queen of Canada, not Britain. I could barely finish the announcement about the French president. Those Alberta guys hooted and hollered for five minutes. I think the Speaker would have cleared the chamber if he hadn’t been quickly told the consequences of that.”
“Who got to him?”
“Gateaux, of all people.”
“Well, the newspapers will at least credit me with trying to restore calm. Her Majesty and the head Frog are coming to remind everyone they’re Canadians. I’m amazed they’ll do it.”
“Your idea of going
straight to the palace through the governor-general, and treating the invitation as an internal Canadian matter, PM to monarch; it was a good one, Harry.”
“Your earlier objections notwithstanding.”
“One learns. I still don’t understand the French. They treated me like some idiot at first, especially that arrogant ambassador. But within twenty-four hours, there was a complete reversal. They agreed to do anything we asked.”
“They just don’t want to be blamed in case there’s trouble. George, do you think there’s going to be trouble, the kind the generals keep warning me about?”
“Nothing we can’t handle, Prime Minister.”
“Right. I want the debate on the amendments to open tomorrow, as scheduled.”
“As you wish. Is there any chance you might make an appearance?”
“Stand on the battlements to rally the troops?”
“At least at the beginning.”
York sat up and, wincing, swung his injured leg onto the floor. “I’d like to. I have an obstinate fool for a doctor, but maybe I can persuade him. I can stagger about somewhat with a crutch, and the pain’s not too bad.”
The view from his nearest window was through the entrance gate out to Sussex Drive. There was considerable traffic.
“What about the Americans, George?”
“Still nothing. Their CIA are all over the place, but then, so are everybody else’s spies. I sent our ambassador in Washington over to the secretary of state this morning to complain, ostensibly, about that foreign investment matter, but he drew a blank. Not one word about our constitutional crisis. Our own agents have bought drinks for half the White House …”
“I know.”
“… Same result.”
“I would have thought I’d have their president up here begging me to put things off.”
“The last president, maybe. Not this one. It must be that we don’t have any communists involved.”
“I sometimes toy with the idea of announcing that I’ve become a Red just to give that dumb son of a bitch a bad day,” York said, grinning. “Now, let me see if I can at least hobble. Maybe I will show up tomorrow.”
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