He hoped the simple routines of farm life would assuage tragedy’s pain, the health-giving chores, the communion of his boisterous farmhands and his many other friends. He will stoically endure the joshing repartee over his nationally advertised role as the bon vivant of Garibaldi. He must not miss the official launch of Hot Air Holidays — that seemed an important message from his dream.
He slipped into the main room — quietly so as not to arouse Abzal — and filled the coffee maker with water. “Damn,” he said, too loud, as his packet of ground coffee broke open and spilled. Oddly, that didn’t cause Abzal to stir — not the slightest motion or sound came from the sofa bed.
“Abzal?”
Closer inspection revealed that the bulge beneath the blankets was fashioned by cushions and pillows.
34
“Road to Victory!” proclaimed the banner on Clara’s Winnebago. “Join the Conservative Bandwagon.” Out side, five old-timers — boaters, braces, and brass instruments — were playing Dixieland, a genre Clara thought had died in the last century.
Advance scouts had done a methodically inept job of hiring local talent for each stop on this West Coast tour — yesterday’s jug band had been bad enough, but the Dixiecrats betrayed her party as seeming old and out of touch.
Clara had awakened to their sounds with a bang, bringing her alive to the innumerable crises from which sleep had given fitful release. She was now hurriedly dressing in the confined space that was her bedroom in this heartland-friendly Winnebago — the strategy was to portray Clara Gracey, Ph.D., as down to earth, just one of the folks.
She peered out a window. The Dixiecrats were outside an old movie house — the Palace, according to a marquee blazing bright in the dim morning light. “Remind me, Percival, where are we?”
“Oyster Flats.”
“And what are we doing here?”
“You are about to flip pancakes.”
She saw grills being set up near the press bus. Eight o’clock, locals streaming in, enough to make it a respectable show. She was in Margaret Blake’s constituency, a pit stop to show the flag in the Viking’s home town.
A jolt of black coffee swept clear the last cobwebs of sleep. No headache today, that was a mercy.
“Where will I take the Moscow call?” Arkady Bulov, the Russian president, was due on the line in about forty-five minutes. She’d met him once, at an economics summit in Lucerne. An unstuffy Harvard-trained M.B.A.
“A secure line is being set up in that theatre over there — it’s now the town’s recreation centre. After that, four quick stops before lunch, at which time we will connect you with General Buchanan.”
Operation Wolverine. As of two o’clock, she must tell Air Command to proceed or back out. Her divided cabinet, after wrangling through a long conference call, had thrown the whole load on her. She had never felt more alone, or more overwhelmed.
“Did Buster express any second thoughts?”
“He remains gung-ho.”
Clara opened the curtain of another window. A frost on the ground, but snowless. She’d had it with snow; somebody had lied about global warming. Her view was of framed country houses on large, well-kept lots — a neighbourhood that ought to be Tory blue, but the only lawn signs were Green, three of them. No matter. Clara had practically gifted the riding to Blake, whose brand of direct talk and unyielding idealism was playing surprisingly well across the country.
The Greens had gained two points in a weekend poll, only six behind the Conservatives, sitting at an anorexic eighteen per cent. The brief euphoria of Operation Snow Job had evaporated after Canada got the goose from Mukhamet.
The former justice minister had added exponentially to the bleeding. Thiessen was still holed up in the Subarctic, hiding from the medical team sent to fetch him. Clara would love to tie Crumwell into the charade at the Château, but he was claiming ignorance. The only Burton on staff at the Small Business Ministry was a twenty-year-old female clerk.
Meanwhile, Thiessen’s name remained on the ballot like a curse — it was too late to slot in someone else. The party was no longer staying on message in admitting he’d gone off on a wild tangent. Somehow, his mother had got through to Clara on the weekend: her Charley had been set up, the victim of a Liberal plot, none of it was true.
Confusing matters was last night’s news that Abzal Erzhan had disappeared again. All Macedonian border posts and airports were being watched, but he hadn’t been sighted. Clara didn’t know what to make of that, how it might play out politically. Not to the government’s advantage, obviously. Had he been kidnapped, murdered — who knew? Or was this some kind of political ploy by his wily lawyer?
The arrests of two CSIS agents, the utter incompetence shown by Crumwell, the unaccountable death in Albania of one of his agents (DiPalma, the screw-up — what was that about?) … she was almost drowning. But, strangely, still no headache. Do the honourable thing. Percival’s calm advice was the lifesaver keeping her afloat.
“The Viking awaits your gracious presence at the flapjack table.”
The local throwaway candidate. She saw him out there, mixing a batch, a bearded leviathan wearing a gag hat with horns. A few dozen wrestling fans had gathered to gape and schmooze, while his election workers stood by listlessly, like shipwrecked sailors waiting for rescue.
Clara’s campaign staff, crowded like penguins in this vehicle’s midsection, cowered as she emerged from her room. “Pancakes!” she shouted. “Dixieland! A fucking Winnebago! I want the head of whoever came up with this loony backwoods theme.” A moment of recovery as she squeezed past them. “Sorry, wrong side of the bed.”
Outside, she put on her happy face as she waved at an assembly of meekly applauding supporters, about as dutiful in their enthusiasm as the cheering section she’d seen on YouTube corralled at the feet of the Ultimate Leader.
In exuberant contrast was the Viking, who was handing out DVDs with highlights of his televised matches. “I grew up here, everyone knows me,” he confided as she joined him. “There’s an undercurrent of support you don’t see on the surface. Don’t be surprised if I whomp the pants off the sitting member.”
That image almost caused her clenched smile to come unglued. She endured a photo op, her hand swallowed in the Viking’s forklift grip, then donned an apron, posturing for the press, bantering with the folks lined up with their plastic plates and cutlery. “It’s so nice to be here in Oyster Flats, you’re so lucky to live in such a lovely town, thank you for your support. A big fat one for you, little man.”
Despite renovations, the Palace had retained the faded ambience of a movie house — complete with popcorn machine — but the stage had been extended. A yoga class was in progress there, young women stretching and curling, non-attendees of the pancake breakfast. Those thin, lithe thighs — maybe Clara ought to take up yoga after she goes down in flames on January 24.
An office at the front afforded little privacy — glassed interior walls, a window to the street, the Dixiecrats still blaring away. Clara and Percival were there with a communications technician, her campaign crew on the other side of the glass, whispering, speculating about this top-secret call. The Viking was also out there, grinning, such an awful presence that she turned her back to him.
“All set. Good luck.” The technician placed the phone in front of her and slipped away. She started when it rang, but it was only E. K. Boyes. “President Bulov will be on at the count of ten. I shall quietly monitor. His English is excellent, so no interpreters to slow things up, and you won’t notice the split-second encryption delays.”
The president was bold and cheerful in greeting, tempting the bounds of sexism by telling her how radiant she’d looked on a recent cover of The Economist. She said he must not have been wearing his glasses. He laughed.
“We have a very clear line, Prime Minister, it’s as if you’re right beside me.” He carried on with a weather report: a Siberian front, twenty below, Moscow buried in snow. “But you are no strange
r to snow in Ottawa.”
“Actually I’m on the West Coast. Much milder.”
“Pacific climate. Like Vladivostok. And what is the time there?”
“Half past nine. I suppose it is late in Moscow, so I hope this is no terrible inconvenience.”
“Not at all — we’re having a few friends over for a late meal. But it is breakfast hour for you?”
“I’ve just indulged in a little ritual called a pancake breakfast.”
“Like blintzes, except you use maple syrup. With us it is cream cheese filling, a famous Russian treat … What is that music? Dixieland? I love Dixieland.”
“Part of the hoopla of an election campaign.”
“An election. Another great Canadian ritual.” He laughed to tell her he was joking. “I hope it goes well for you, Prime Minister. A tough one, yes? But as the saying goes, it’s not over until the fat lady sings.”
Clara wondered if Bulov had had a cocktail or two. She looked at Percival, listening on headphones. He shrugged.
“President Bulov …”
“Arkady. We are neighbours, after all, along with the great governor of Alaska, sharing the Arctic vastness.”
Clara didn’t like the sound of that. The Russians were always encroaching up there. “Call me Clara, then.” This seemed an over-cozy game: both knew their respective staffs were listening in. “I’m glad you seem in such generous spirits, Arkady, because I’m hoping we can work together on this Bhashyistan matter.”
“A shared concern. We are both having some bother with that cranky, belligerent state.”
For a while they danced about the subject, keeping it light, like a family joke. Bulov characterized Bhashyistan as the juvenile delinquent in a world of otherwise grown-up nations. Clara told him of their psychological profiling, Mad Igor’s failure to find closure after his father’s death. Chuckles.
Then a sigh sounded across the ten thousand miles from Moscow to Oyster Flats. “A shocking business, Clara, with your two agents being arrested. A kidnapping, a foreign rendition — and is there not a likelihood these men committed your terrorist bombing? I pray that does not severely complicate things for you.”
Clara felt she was being needled, and she cut through the fat, bluntly telling him plans were under way to effect a rescue of the Calgary Five.
“Yet another attempt?” More than a tinge of sarcasm.
Clara took a deep breath — this was turning edgy. But she must stick to the game plan: be candid, free from pretense, let the Russians know Canadian forces proposed to attack the Özbeg jail. Express reasoned concerns about Russian troop movements at the border.
Bulov listened without comment to her careful summary of Operation Wolverine, then to her polite entreaty that Russia respect these confidences and not put the Canadian sortie at risk.
He spoke with a slow, calculated firmness, dropping his mask of bonhomie. “The position of the Russian government, Clara, is that we shall do nothing vis-à-vis the Bhashyistanis unless provoked. We have no intentions to trespass upon their borders, but fully intend to guard ours from any spillover from the skirmishing there. We view Bhashyistan’s internal unrest as a matter for them alone to resolve. We do not, like certain other great powers, assume to be policemen to the world.”
That was one of Russia’s practised mantras. Clara took it at face value — she was sure they had something up their sleeve, a view affirmed when Bulov added: “However, it cannot go unnoticed that a major Western oil conglomerate has taken advantage of your dispute with Bhashyistan to make a deal behind our respective backs. We have substantial economic interests there. We intend to protect them.”
Clara assumed he regarded the former Soviet republic as not merely in their sphere of influence but a kind of protectorate. She thanked him for his directness and repeated that her main concern was the safety of the Canadians, those in uniform, the five in the Özbeg jail, and the three women in hiding. When asked if his sources had any knowledge of the latter’s whereabouts, he made no direct answer — which Clara found both curious and foreboding.
“Rest assured, Clara, that we do not intend to expose your nationals to any increased danger that is not of their own making. But given the turmoil in Bhashyistan, our government cannot give you our blessings for your Operation Wolverine.”
That was about as good as she expected to get. They carried on for a few minutes more, in their earlier relaxed manner, Bulov thanking her for the Dixieland music, and belting out an off-key stanza of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Clara ventured that he’d obviously had voice training at the Bolshoi. Both laughed, and concluded with hopes for continued good relations.
“What do you make of that?” she asked Percival.
“They’re giving us a window to go in, but it’s our problem if we trip over own feet.”
“He’s really quite clever, isn’t he, in his Machiavellian way. Couldn’t help treating me like a dumb blonde, though.”
“My dear, you did look radiant. Canada’s cover girl.”
“I’ll bet he actually wants us to go in, to precipitate a crisis, give them an excuse for intervention.”
“Goodness. Maybe you’re not a dumb blonde.”
Behind schedule after the long recess at Oyster Flats, Clara gave brief, desperately hearty orations at the other stops, and affected delight at entertainments from a barbershop quartet with accordion backup, a square-dance ensemble, and two pipe bands.
Finally, in Comox, just after one, she was ushered into an operations room of Nineteen Wing, Air Command’s West Coast base. The colonel in charge had been briefed on Wolverine, so she invited him to hook into the line. Percival slipped on another headset.
From National Defence Headquarters, Clara heard a babble, the echoing of many men on a speakerphone. E.K. Boyes and his advisers would be there, facing off with senior military staff. Clara assumed the heavy breathing on the line emanated from Buster Buchanan, unaware they were connected.
“Good afternoon, General.”
“Prime Minister?”
“Let’s get right into this, General Buchanan — what’s our current situation?” More heavy breathing, like a horse pulling a load. “Shoot, General.”
“Two CF-18s are currently airborne, Prime Minister. The Herc with the attacking force has just lifted off from Kandahar field. The advance aircraft is nearing Bhashyistan air space, and in twenty minutes will drop crew and equipment — “
“Twenty minutes! I thought we had an hour.”
When Buchanan didn’t respond immediately, one of his staff broke in. “They had a strong tailwind.”
“Is that twenty minutes exactly, General Montpelier?” Buchanan asked.
“Nineteen and a half, sir, give or take —”
“Never mind!” Clara fought another attack of the furies — they were carrying on as if she wasn’t there. “Continue, General Buchanan.”
“The drop will be to an uninhabited plateau fifteen miles south of Özbeg — aerial surveillance has confirmed this to be a choice landing site.”
Buchanan’s composed tone, his slow, measured words, warned Clara that he was stalling until it was too late to turn back. Hard puffing by high command had produced the strong tailwind; they’d launched early.
“Let’s zip it along. The situation on the ground?”
“The enemy is focused on the border north of Özbeg — that’s where its main positions are set up.”
“How many troops?” Clara asked.
“Four companies.”
“Stationed how far from Özbeg?”
“Twenty-five kilometres of bad road. Not a real problem, Prime Minister, because the Özbeg garrison hasn’t been beefed up. We will be in and out within the hour.”
“General, only two days ago you assured us that the Bhashyistan troops were poking along too slowly to pose a problem. Now we find they got there well ahead of our ETA.”
“They put on a spurt when they reached the flat country.”
�
�Nor was it anticipated, when designing Wolverine, that the Russian army would become a major presence twenty-five kilometres north of Özbeg.”
“We’ve been given to understand they won’t intervene.”
“So they say.”
“General Montpelier here, Prime Minister. We have factored in the Russian presence, and I assure you it’s to our advantage. They have so many planes flying around that the enemy is unlikely to notice our airdrop and landing.”
Buchanan took over, continuing to pound the drums for Wolverine, a fait accompli, inexorable, unalterable. Subdued by this rhetoric, E.K. and his crew were as mute as cowering rabbits. And now it was ten minutes to airdrop.
“General, your enthusiasm is commendable, but now hear me. My take is we’re being played like pawns in an old-fashioned great powers coup.”
“Madam Prime Minister, I beg to differ.” Buchanan, volume up. “This is about Canadian honour.”
“This is all about oil, gentlemen, and nothing about honour. You’ll go in there, and there’ll be a firefight — and let’s not pretend lives won’t be lost — and the Russians will have their excuse to invade. While you’re factoring in the Russian presence, add the Yanks and Brits — Anglo-Atlantic is their shared brat. Canada will be caught in the international crossfire. I will not see our country play the helpless stooge.”
From Ottawa, a sullen silence.
“I am ordering you to abort.”
Dear Hank,
By my watch it is almost five a.m. I guess it was an airplane that awoke me, because I can still hear the drone of distant propellers to the south, over Bhashyistan.
I’ve scurried to the window but can’t see any aircraft, no lights moving in that cloudless sky. The sound is dimming, gone.
Snow Job Page 34
