October 1970

by Louis Hamelin

  The previous night he’d gone into the city, hidden communiqué number five in the pages of a phone book in a phone booth and went to sleep over at a friend’s house.

  He led his two new friends around the South Shore for part of the day, taking buses and taxis, before hiding out at the house of a few sovereignist sympathizers he knew. His two tails kept guard in a Volkswagen parked on the street corner.

  “Do they actually think I’ll lead them to Lavoie?” he thought, incredulous.

  He shut himself in the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror with a metal coat hanger, a pair of pliers, and a brick wrapped in a wet towel. Then, after repeatedly smashing the brick into his face and forehead, he did his make-up. Opening the cabinet, he found a bottle of aspirin and swallowed half a dozen with a glass of water.

  Then he cut the hanger in half and bent the two pieces, which he slid into his mouth. He examined his newly reconfigured jawline in the mirror. His face was like raw steak and his jaw gave him a crooked smile. Not the subtlest facelift, maybe, but much cheaper than going under the doctor’s knife.

  An umbrella makes a good cane for an old man. His metamorphosis is complete. Proof of the success of his disguise: his Montrealer girlfriend doesn’t recognize him at first. Jean-Paul tells himself it’ll do for the cops, as well.

  After all that, his guardian angels seem to have flown away.

  STRATEGY

  “NOT TRAVERS.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Travers is nothing but a symbol. Goddamn it, it’s not as if he’s got blood on his hands!”

  “So you should’ve chosen somebody else.”

  Justin Francoeur nervously twirled the end of his moustache. Having come to the brother cell that afternoon to hear the news, he’d been surprised to meet the elder Lafleur in the apartment that served as a communication point between both cells.

  “Our position,” Justin announced after a pause, “is that we’re going to keep him as long as we have to. But killing him? No, no way.”

  “Your ‘position,’ as you call it, hasn’t changed since the beginning: retreat until the final victory! Don’t you think they’ve already figured out, when you were reading your communiqués that sounded like a syllabus for Sociology 101, that you aren’t prepared to go as far as you need to?”

  “And yours sound like some low-level Mafia scum’s ransom demands.”

  “Which will be taken seriously, do you think?”

  The swelling in Jean-Paul’s face was beginning to go down — even though he’d quickly tossed aside the ice pack the hostess had given him — but he still had a truly sinister appearance.

  “Now listen up to what we’re going to do,” he continued. “You can delay Travers’s execution until hell freezes over if that’s what you want. But at our end, if the authorities sign Lavoie’s death warrant, we’re not going to fight it …”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means what it means.”

  “You’re gonna piss away all the sympathy we gained with the Manifesto.”

  “If you absolutely want to be nice guys, that’s your fucking business. But you’ve got to understand, we’re up against the wall. We can’t retreat without losing face,” Jean-Paul concluded, fingering his destroyed cheekbone.

  “I thought they’d negotiate. I was sure they’d negotiate!”

  “If Brien can’t revive the process, all that’s left for us to do is make them pay the price.”

  “You remember our trip to Percé?”

  “Sure.”

  “I never understood where the money came from.”

  “The money …”

  “You know, the envelope Mario Brien passed you, at that place, the truck stop parking lot.”

  “It came from the holdup at the university.”

  “I thought it’d been seized at Saint-Colomban!”

  “Old Brien took care of it. He got it back for us …”

  “How’d he do that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we’ve got friends in the police department. As sovereignist as you or me.”

  “Are you telling me the antiterrorist squad bankrolled the kidnappings?”

  “Are you crazy? I don’t know all the details, but you’ve got to know that Brien knows what he’s doing. He’s a smart man …”

  “And how’d it go with the Americans?”

  Jean-Paul made a hand gesture that might have meant comme ci, comme ça.

  “Those are contacts that take time to cultivate,” he said in his raspiest voice. “And you didn’t leave me much time, eh?”

  “Operation Deliverance couldn’t wait.”

  “Operation Deliverance my ass.”

  POLICE WARRANT

  TWICE NOW THE BIG PURPLE Meteor had driven past the house. Inside it, a quartet of guys (trench coats, collars up, sunglasses, a couple of them wearing hats) took the opportunity to scan the front of the bungalow.

  “Okay,” René said, breathing out, as if he’d suddenly let out all his air. “They’ve found us …”

  He walked away from the window, grabbed the two M1s that lay on the living-room table, made sure the magazines were inserted correctly, threw the second one to Gode, who managed to catch it despite his knees rattling against each other. Ben’s hands, already clammy, held the wooden grip of the sawn-off shotgun.

  A second car joined the merry-go-round. Black, full of men in leather coats. The two cars followed each other a good distance apart, slowly turning around the hideout on the two tiny lengths of perpendicular road that led them first to Nelson, then Collins — birds of prey.

  Gode stood at the entrance, assault weapon pointed straight at the door.

  “What do we do now?”

  The night before, Jean-Paul had called to tell him he’d been tailed and had managed to get away from his pursuer, but that the most elementary caution required him to stay away from rue Collins for the time being.

  René emerged from the closet, his M1 in one hand, the other holding an old mop with a solid wood handle, like some medieval knight. He hit the floor three times with it.

  “I think I just had an idea …”

  Back against the wall, gun pointed in front of him, Gode waited for the assault to come. A few metres away, René, nose against the window, surveyed the street. He held a backpack full of newspapers with a couple of sticks of dynamite poking out. Except the dynamite was made from the mop’s handle wrapped with construction paper and covered in butter to give them the right finish. An electrical wire poked out of the bag and led to a doorbell, which he held in his other hand.

  “They’re coming,” he said.

  The same unmarked cars came streaming toward the house, followed this time by a number of police cars. They all came to a stop in front of the house. Policemen jumped out and spread out up and down Collins.

  “Go get Lavoie!”

  Ben came back, pushing the miserable hostage in front of him, with the leash still around his hands. The labour minister was shaking uncontrollably. Then he felt the cold barrel against the back of his neck.

  “Nothing personal,” René said while strapping the backpack to the man’s chest. He spoke like a man who was very calmly riding a wave to a nervous collapse. “Nothing personal, but if things don’t go well, you’ll be the first to go …”

  “No, please, stop it! Have some pity!”

  They stood just away from the windows, in case snipers had already been deployed. Gode had his finger taut against the trigger. René kept his own finger on the doorbell masked as a detonator and brandished the M1 with his other hand. Ben stood behind Lavoie, ready to blow his brains out with his shotgun.

  Short, nervous gasp came from Lavoie. He sounded like a scared puppy. His fear was physical, pathetic.

  Hearts in their stomachs, legs wobbling, they waited. And nothing happened.

  After a while, Gode went to the door and looked out.

  “No, it can’t be …”

  “What?”
r />   He fell back against the wall and slid to his heels.

  “It can’t be …”

  He was completely, utterly cleaned out. He tried to speak, but his lips moved without sound. He stayed there, mouth hanging open, shaking his head.

  René, keeping his finger on the doorbell, tiptoed toward the window to look out.

  “They’re at the neighbours’,” he said in a whisper. “Jesus fucking Christ in heaven. They’re at the neighbours’.”

  Half-turning, he nuzzled his gun against Lavoie’s ear.

  “Make a sound, and you’re dead.”

  OPERATION TOUCHDOWN

  THE SLOW, PULSATING DRONE OF an army helicopter’s rotors shook Gode out of his sleepy trance shortly after noon. It was Thursday. He found Ben at the window, binoculars held up to his eyes, watching the low-altitude flyover of the large bi-rotor chopper that had just lifted off from the nearby airbase. A little later, Hercules airplanes landed on the strip and unloaded columns of armed soldiers, gear and all. René noted that many of them wore green gear covered in darker patches meant to look like greenery. Camo gear … He lowered his binoculars to his chest, completely stunned.

  That night, they heard the Quebec government’s final response to their demands. Vézina, in a communiqué, refused to consider freeing every single political prisoner, but agreed to look at at least five cases. As for the rest, the authorities simply repeated their offer of safe conduct: a plane would await the hostage-takers, ready to take off to a country of their choosing. They had six hours left to make a decision.

  “That gives us to three in the morning,” René calculated, disgusted.

  Gode punched his fist through the gyproc wall in anger.

  A bit later, while Ben was keeping an eye on the hostage, Gode and René took the secret passage and ended up sitting in the Chevrolet, René at the wheel and Gode in the passenger’s seat. Between the car and the hole dug through the wall, among the distorted, disproportionate shadows heightened by the poor lighting, stood the oil tank, all four hundred gallons of it. In front of the Chevrolet there was a wall, nothing else.

  They looked at each other a moment in total silence. Gode felt the road beckoning to him. The great plains of Kansas, with its oil derricks hammered into the ground, tall rusted birds. Very early morning in Oklahoma — a pheasant just standing there on the median strip of the highway.

  He lit a cigarette, then gave one to René.

  “What did your brother tell you? I mean, what did Jean-Paul really tell you, over the phone?”

  “He said to start thinking about the measures we need to put in place to terminate the operation.”

  “Terminate the operation …”

  “His words.”

  “Let’s say we let him go. What’s to stop us from disappearing, afterward? To just go and make a new life for ourselves in some lost corner of the Gaspésie? To wait to be forgotten?”

  “We can’t let him go.”

  “Why not? What do you mean we can’t?”

  “What, just open the door? Oh, sorry, our mistake … It’s not possible.”

  “Okay, but we can’t kill him …”

  “Why not?”

  “Because. Not like this. I don’t even want to think about it …”

  “Me neither.”

  “We can’t do something like that. I mean, how would we even do it?”

  “I don’t know. I really have no idea.”

  They each lit another cigarette, and then another, and contemplated the wall through the windshield. Gode thought about people who killed themselves just sitting in their car, waiting for the fumes to do their work. It would be so easy, so simple to just open the garage door, back out, and leave.

  René was trying to think. He nervously pressed the accelerator with his foot. Or it might have been the brake, he wasn’t sure.

  Gode tossed the still-lit butt of his cigarette through the window and watched it roll under the oil tank.

  “I think I might have an idea.”

  PAUL LAVOIE’S

  CONFESSION

  “YOUR LITTLE ALBERT, HE GOT us good, eh? He pretends to be willing to negotiate, just to buy himself some time, and now look what’s happening …”

  Both Gode and René wore masks as they spoke to the hostage, Gode next to the bed and René looking outside with his binoculars. He saw the long column of covered military trucks streaming from the northeast before trundling down avenue Savane, only a few metres from the house. Helicopters continually flying over the neighbourhood. Lavoie was on the bed, eyes covered. Listening to the radio that morning, he’d heard the federal government’s declaration of the War Measures Act at the same time his kidnappers had. Seizures and arrests without warrants had been taking place all morning.

  “They’ve abandoned you. They’re leaving you to your fate.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

  “Maybe not, but I’ve got unfinished business with you. You’ve got to see things as they are, Mr. Lavoie. Your party has decided to sacrifice you. As for me, all that’s important now is to find a way to get you out of here …”

  Lavoie smiled sadly.

  “That shouldn’t be too hard. Just untie me and let me walk out.”

  “We can’t do that. You’re the Minister of Labour, you must know all about bargaining positions. Try to see things from our angle. The only victory we’ve had since the beginning of this whole story was the reading of our manifesto on the CBC. And even then, they weren’t taking us seriously. No, what we need is a text that’s really going to hit hard. Something to make this entire government crumble: The Confessions of Paul Lavoie.”

  René brought the binoculars down. Lavoie said nothing. He was waiting for Gode to continue. The room was as silent as a crypt.

  “Since they’ve decided you’re as good as dead,” said Gode, “as a bargaining chip, you’re worth nothing to us now. But you can still make them pay for giving you up, because you know what’s going on, you know their filth. Old-fashioned politics, the old boys’ club, dirty elections, and big money. Vézina simply a puppet in the hands of Ottawa, itself a Muppet for big American interests. Brown envelopes, contracts, private clubs, Scarpino, all of it. You yourself, when you were a journalist at the Devoir, you saw what was happening, and maybe even blew the whistle on a scandal or two. But all that was before you found yourself on the other side of the fence. Then Vézina arrived. We traded a village accountant for a technocrat, but nothing else changed. The establishment put its man in place and walked away with everyone’s money. Listen to me, Lavoie: you know enough to implode his goddamned government! And we’re going to help you do it … They think that with their soldiers in the street they’re going to turn the people’s affection against the FLQ, but we’re going to convince them otherwise, one by one, as they’re sitting there in front of their TVs. We’re going to give them red meat. Names, dates. Special Edition: the Travers-Lavoie Affair, the Bomb.”

  “They’re going to say you forced a confession out of me. That you’ve invented it all.”

  “Let us take care of that end, okay?”

  “If I do this, they’ll never let me walk out of here alive.”

  René turned from the window and stepped toward the bed.

  “Maybe. But if you don’t do it, it’s the Chevalier Cell that won’t let you get out of here alive.”

  Gode was keeping an eye on the hostage, whose blindfold and handcuffs had now been taken off. He was writing, like Proust and Françoise Sagan before him, sitting at the head of the bed, a notepad on his knees.

  Lavoie looked up from his writing and, for just a moment, thought he’d seen movement in the window of the bungalow that he could see from his room, the one on the next street. Without moving, he strained for a few seconds to hear any unfamiliar sounds, but nothing else happened. False alarm. He continued his work without his jailer noticing anything.

  “What you’re asking of me, in the end, is to renounce my life’s work.”
/>
  “Just say the truth. That’d be a great step forward already.”

  “A wife and two kids to feed. That’s the truth.”

  “Don’t make me weep. Write something in prose and in French — without too many mistakes, of course — that’s all we’re asking.”

  “It’d go faster if I could type it up …”

  Gode looked at him, frowning.

  “What I’m writing now is the draft,” Lavoie explained. “I’m going to have to make a copy of it in any case. I was a journalist once, you know … I could type up a first draft that wouldn’t be too bad at all.”

  “Okay by me. You want me to bring you a typewriter?”

  “Not on my knees, like this, here … I’d need a table.”

  “There’s a card table in the other room. But there’s not much space here, unless I move the bed … I could set you up in the other room, maybe.”

  “If you want.”

  The old Underwood’s heightened, almost joyous clacking could be heard from the communiqué room. In a frenetic parallel to the constantly increasing flow of news of fresh arrests and arbitrary detentions that’d been coming in that morning, the staccato of Lavoie’s typing hammered through the house. The arrests made under the purview of the War Measures Act now numbered in the hundreds, and journalists, when they themselves were not in jail, worked to confirm names while rumours began swirling around a few familiar individuals: Godin, Pauline Julien, Chevalier Branlequeue. Lavoie was in the room through which he’d entered the house, the one with the secret passage in the wardrobe. The table was placed against the wall that separated the room from the garage. Under the window, two mattresses lay on the floor, covered in pillows and sleeping bags. Paul Lavoie hit the keys with rhythm and agility, a performance artist. He was enthusiastic, finding his voice, the old fever of the newsroom with a deadline approaching. As long as he kept typing he wasn’t a hostage, but a man free to write.

  And he was still the same man who, in the fifties, had used such ten-dollar words as “concussion” and “prevarication” when condemning the Duplessis government’s scheming; the votes bought with refrigerators and asphalt, the iron and copper and natural gas barons, the salmon-spawning rivers under the control of the Americans, a banana republic indeed. And what had changed, really? Only this: it was now his own government that Paul Lavoie was denouncing.