The Mazovia Legacy

by Michael E. Rose

  Natalia didn’t answer. She pulled the inflight magazine from the seat pocket in front of her.

  “What is it that you think I do, and your friend Mr. Delaney here does, Ms. Janovski?” Hilferty asked again.

  She did not answer. Delaney said nothing. The passenger in the seat across the aisle, a businessman in a regulation blue suit, smiled over at them but he had his audio headset on and apparently could not hear the exchange. Delaney could not see who was in front of them.

  Hilferty leaned closer to them and spoke more quietly.

  “Has Mr. Delaney told you, by any chance, that he’s been one of our operatives in this little fiasco, Ms. Janovski?” he said. “A paid operative? Did he tell you where he got the money for these plane tickets, for example, and where he got the gun that he so expertly used in Rome? Has he explained all of this to you fully?”

  Natalia looked up at Hilferty, and then over at Delaney. He could not read what it was her eyes were saying to him.

  “I would suggest, if I may, that before we all land in Montreal you and Mr. Delaney here have a long chat about just who has been doing what to whom and what your options might be after that. I’ll leave you to it, if I may.”

  “You are becoming pathetic, Hilferty. You know that?” Delaney said. “You are really and truly out of your league here.”

  Hilferty smiled calmly at them.

  “When we land,” he said,“I’m no longer going to play around. Do you understand? You take us where we need to go, and tell us what we need to do, or I will choose from any number of unpleasant options available to me, judicial or, as they say in the trade, extrajudicial, and then it will be over. No more games. The minute we land.” Hilferty walked somewhat stiffly to his seat. “He’s floundering. He doesn’t know what to do next,” Delaney said to Natalia. “He’s an amateur.”

  “And you? Are you an amateur?” she asked.

  “Of course. Of course. He’s just trying to put a wedge between us, don’t you see, just when we have to stay together on this. I’m no spy. I told you that. I’m not working for anybody.”

  “I’ve wondered almost from the beginning,” she said.

  “I know that.”

  “Did you take money from them?” she asked.

  “Yes, at the beginning. Hilferty came to see me, and asked me to keep an eye open while you and I were looking into all of this. I didn’t agree to anything. I’m a reporter. I just watched what he was trying to do and I filed it away for future reference. That’s what I do. Or what I used to do.”

  “Every time, there’s a little bit more story for me.”

  “We talked this all through in Como, Natalia.”

  “Not the money part.”

  “OK. All right. But it doesn’t change anything.”

  “Did you use his money?”

  “Yes,” Delaney said. “Some of it. Why not? I saw it as a bit of a joke on them.”

  “They haven’t seen it that way.”

  “No. They haven’t. But that doesn’t change anything from where I sit.”

  “You used their gun,” she said.

  “Obviously. I had too. I may have to use it again.”

  “And spies give reporters guns.”

  “Sometimes,” Delaney said. “I’ve told you that. When they have to. I’ve already told you where I got the gun.”

  Natalia went silent. Eventually she said: “I have to trust you.”

  “You must trust me,” Delaney said. “This is going to get difficult now. We can get through this thing but we can’t have any doubts. From the minute we touch down.”

  “I’m frightened again,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  “I don’t like these two up there.”

  “I don’t either. But Hilferty is not dangerous. He likes to think he is, but he’s not. That stuff about extrajudicial moves is bullshit. He’s CSIS, not Polish State Security, or Vatican. It’s the others in this we have to worry about.”

  “Who? Exactly.”

  “Whoever has heard now about what your uncle hid away,” Delaney said. “Whoever badly wants whatever it is. But it will be over soon, and we can start something new together.”

  “What? Where?”

  “Whatever we want. And wherever.”

  “If they let us. Any of them.”

  “We’re in control of this now. They haven’t got much room to manoeuvre, Natalia.”

  “Neither do we.”

  “There’s enough. You’ll see. Just trust me.”

  O’Keefe came through beautifully, if perhaps a little extravagantly. He would never let them down, never let any friend of his down, even if he did not know exactly what was at stake. But Delaney was a little startled nonetheless at the sort of reception O’Keefe had arranged for them in Montreal.

  The customs area at Mirabel was crowded, as it always is after a big international flight lands. But it would just as quickly become quiet again, in an oversized, underused outpost of an airport far from downtown. Hilferty and Stoufflet went through quickly with their diplomatic passports and they were waiting for Delaney and Natalia at the baggage carousel. Hilferty had just finished making a call on his mobile phone. Stoufflet looked as if he wished he had someone to call. The Frenchman still had nothing to say to them as they came up. Hilferty was curt.

  “We’ve got a car waiting outside,” he said. Delaney said nothing. He had spotted the bearish figure of O’Keefe through the glass doors, and gave him a sign. When they all walked out together, pushing their baggage carts, the media horde was upon them.

  “There they are,” O’Keefe said to the waiting crowd of reporters and cameramen. Delaney nodded in the direction of Hilferty and Stoufflet; O’Keefe pointed, and the scrum skewed sideways, surrounding them.

  Electronic flash guns exploded; motor drives whirred and clicked. Lights from TV cameras blinded the two spies as they tried to get through.

  “Why have you decided to defect?” O’Keefe shouted at Stoufflet. “Who is this escorting you to Canada?”

  Reporters fired off other questions. The scrum had stopped. Two uniformed RCMP constables moved in quickly to try to restore order. Arriving and departing passengers with laden baggage carts jammed the area as the police tried to get past.

  “Quick. Let’s move,” O’Keefe said.

  He raced with Delaney and Natalia out to the arrivals parking. A blue-and-white CBC Television news van was idling in the damp March air. A young man with long hair and stylish yellow Walkman headphones was waiting in the driver’s seat.

  “Go!” O’Keefe said, after throwing their bags in the back amidst a jumble of cables, lights, tripods, and aluminum cases.

  He was enjoying himself hugely. Delaney and Natalia had barely enough time to settle into the small bench seat behind the driver before he roared off down the ramp to the airport access road. O’Keefe leaned back over them to peer out the rear window to see what was behind them.

  “Dickheads,” he said happily. “Still fucking stuck there. We’re away.”

  He settled happily into his plush high-backed seat and pulled the seat belt forward to fasten it.

  “Better buckle up, kiddies. Jean-Luc here is really going to move.”

  Jean-Luc grinned at them in the rear-view mirror.

  “I’ve got to get the truck back to the station for another shoot,” he said happily.

  “Go for it,” O’Keefe said. “We’re outta here.” He looked back again past Delaney and Natalia. Still, apparently, no one behind them.

  Jean-Luc was driving very fast on the slick road, but he was an expert. He had put the news van’s blue flasher on and did not seem to expect trouble with radar police. Natalia simply looked stunned.

  “Jesus Christ, Brian, how did you manage such a crowd?” Delaney said. “I said a little distraction, but Christ . . .�
�

  “The awesome power of the press,” O’Keefe said.

  “Seriously.”

  “You know how it works, Francis. A well-crafted little press release, some keywords and phrases here and there. Pull the right levers, make a couple of calls, send a few faxes. Plus it’s a slow news day. Right, Jean-Luc?”

  They both laughed beery midafternoon laughs. They had clearly waited for some time in the airport bar.

  “Jean-Luc here is my main man. We’ve been through shit together, Jean-Luc and me. Before he put his little Nikon away and retired to work in TV.”

  O’Keefe passed a copy of his press release back to them.

  “You going to introduce me to your lady, Francis?” he asked.

  “Brian, this is Natalia Janovski. Natalia, Brian O’Keefe. I told her a bit about you.”

  “Enchanté, madame,” O’Keefe said. “Enchanté.”

  “It’s very good to meet you, Brian,” she said. “Thank-you for helping us back there.”

  “A pleasure, madame. Maybe one day you will tell me a little more than your friend over there has told me about what this is all about?”

  “I will tell you, Brian, I promise.” Delaney said, “Just stand by for a little while longer, OK?”

  “Have I got a choice?”

  “Not just now. No. Sorry.” Delaney was reading O’Keefe’s ludicrously overwritten and overblown press release. On quite amateurish letterhead: “The Front de Libération du Québec. Cartier Cell. For Immediate Release.”

  “Brian, for heaven’s sake, who’s going to buy something like this?”

  “Only about two dozen people. You saw them. Not a bad turnout.”

  “‘A heretofore unknown accomplice in the 1970 political kidnappings in Quebec’?” Delaney read aloud. “‘Returning to Quebec after self-imposed exile in Corsica to give himself up to authorities’? ‘Plans to name members of the Bourassa cabinet who may have been implicated at the time’? Brian, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “It doesn’t say anything about a defector here.”

  “I know. I threw that bit in just while I was standing there. You know how the lads love a good defector story. They always happen at Mirabel.”

  Natalia looked incredulously over at Delaney. He wondered what a psychologist would make of O’Keefe’s overheated imagination.

  “You won’t have a friend left in this town, Brian.”

  “Who’s to know?”

  “The fax number.”

  “Press Club.”

  O’Keefe let go another wild howl of laughter.

  Jean-Luc’s shoulders heaved up and down while he laughed and drove.

  “Pull in, pull in,” O’Keefe said suddenly. Jean-Luc pulled in to a giant Texaco service station about fifteen kilometres from the airport. Brian’s old black Jeep Cherokee was parked near the back. They all got out and transferred the bags. Jean-Luc solemnly shook all their hands and then roared back out onto the highway, leaving behind a trail of steamy exhaust.

  Brian was calmer now, as he drove. But he still looked often in his rear-view mirror. After a short while, a blue unmarked police car, with a red temporary flasher stuck on the roof near the driver’s door, shot past them, heading fast to Montreal. Delaney looked intently ahead but could not see who was inside.

  “RCMP, I’d say,” O’Keefe said.

  “They’ll pull Jean-Luc over,” Delaney said.

  “If they catch him. And if he says anything to them. It’s out of their jurisdiction here.They’ve only got the airports in Quebec, and Jean-Luc’s a separatist. We’ve got some time.”

  O’Keefe picked up speed now. In forty-five minutes they were at his farm at Saint-Jean-surRichelieu, south of the city. He did not ask any more questions, and Delaney was grateful. Eventually, he would explain more of this, perhaps all of this, to his old friend. But not now. Natalia sat quietly in the back seat, composing herself, aware that there was little reason for small talk.

  Karen was there, with their son. The dogs barked ferociously until Brian calmed them. Seamus seemed pleased and excited by the two grown-ups arriving unexpectedly on a weekday afternoon. Karen was not, however.

  “What’s going on, Brian?” she asked coldly, as they all crowded in to the overheated and untidy farmhouse kitchen.

  As always, there were the remains of a child’s lunch on the table, sideboard, and sink. Karen made hurried moves to tidy up, to clear spaces for guests to sit.

  “Karen, relax,” O’Keefe said, a little too loudly. “Francis here is in a small jam and I’m giving him a hand. I’ll explain everything a little later on. OK?”

  “OK,” Karen said, unconvinced.

  “OK,” Seamus said. “Uncle Francis is OK, OK, OK, OK.”

  “Seamus be quiet,” Karen said.

  “This is Natalia Janovski, Karen,” Delaney said. “We’re just back from France and have to get going right away on a story I’m working on. Sorry to intrude.”

  “If it’s not you, it would be something else, Francis,” Karen said. “Hello, Natalia.”

  “Hello, Karen,” Natalia said, shaking her hand formally. “Sorry to come in like this.”

  “I don’t suppose anyone would want a coffee,” Karen said.

  No one did. She seemed relieved. They left her with young Seamus and went out behind O’Keefe’s barn. The sun had managed to defeat some of the grey clouds, and the air near the barn had been warmed a little by the old wood. They stood blinking together in the suddenly bright winter light.

  “Your car’s about three kilometres across those fields,” O’Keefe said. “I parked it there last night and put some things in it you might need. You’ll have to cross old man Lacroix’s property, but there’s a break in the fence and he doesn’t shoot at people anymore. Not much anyway.” The O’Keefe smile, directed at Natalia. “The human interest angle,” he said, “is that it’s snowmobile for you, I’m afraid. The snow’s still deep, and wet, and my Cherokee won’t make it. Better not to use it now anyway, I’d say, after the performance at the airport. Not that I’m in any position to advise you what to do, bereft as I am of any useful information about the situation.”

  “Brian, I’m sorry. Really,” Delaney said. “I’ll explain everything soon. We just haven’t got time right now. We’ve really got to go.”

  “Right. So let’s start this bastard up then, shall we?”

  Brian heaved himself onto the bench saddle of the old yellow-and-white Ski-Doo. The electric starter groaned a little and then the engine turned over in a burst of noise and grey-blue oil smoke.The noise did not decrease as the motor warmed. O’Keefe had to shout to be heard above the din.

  “It’s a good one and you’re not going far,” he said. “Just don’t stall it or you’ll have a very wet walk.

  Go straight toward that maple grove over there. You’ll see the break in the fence. Follow the trail I used last night, and when you hit the road you’ll see your car.”

  He handed over Delaney’s keys.

  “Your doorman was reluctant to part with these,” he said.

  “He would be,” Delaney said.

  “We can put your bags in the little sled.” Delaney and O’Keefe left Natalia while they went to the truck to get their bags.

  “You guys going to be all right?” O’Keefe asked.

  “Yeah. It’s not as bad as it looks right now.”

  “You got serious heavies after you or just assholes?”

  “Reasonably serious, Brian. Don’t you mess with them, OK? If they ever track this down to you, just play dumb. A couple of them can be a wee bit dangerous, I think.”

  “I laugh at danger. You know me.”

  “You’ll have to take it easy with them if they come around,” Delaney said.

  “Sure, sure. I got a way with w
ords.”

  “Brian, I’m serious. OK?”

  “Nobody fucks with the Laird of St. Jean,” O’Keefe said.

  Delaney knew it was useless to continue.

  “Thanks for all this,” he said.

  “C’est rien, mon ami.”

  They stowed the bags in the fibreglass sled hooked up to the Ski-Doo. Delaney climbed on, revving the handlebar throttle.

  “You want goggles?” O’Keefe shouted over the noise.

  “No. It’s not far. We’d better go.”

  “OK. Don’t fall off.”

  “Thank-you so much,” Natalia said.

  Brian leaned forward and gave her a gallant kiss on both cheeks. The noise and oil haze from the snowmobile were overpowering. “Salut,” O’Keefe said.

  Delaney pulled slowly away, and then picked up speed as he headed into the snow and brush of the O’Keefe landholdings. The last glimpse he had of his friend was of him clasping both hands over his head and dancing up and down in a sort of lunatic victory jig.

  “He is a madman,” Delaney shouted to Natalia over his shoulder. “Yes,” she said gravely.

  They roared over the wet snow to the boundary fence and saw the break in it just as O’Keefe had said they would. Natalia was behind Delaney on the bench seat and holding him tightly around the waist. He felt, very briefly, an absurd happiness to be whizzing along with her on this oversized toy. It was a feeling, he knew, that could not last. It took them about twenty minutes to reach a small snow-covered dirt road, and another few minutes to find where O’Keefe had parked the Mercedes. Delaney realized they hadn’t discussed where to hide the snowmobile, so he just pulled in beside the car.

  He opened the trunk to put their bags inside, and saw a black-and-white Adidas bag O’Keefe had left for them. And a rifle bag. Delaney opened that first. O’Keefe’s beloved pump action shotgun was inside. A little tag dangled from it with a note: “Shells in pockets and more in the other bag. Point the small end away from you.”

  Inside the other bag was a selection of goods, which said as much about O’Keefe’s psyche as about their current predicament. Delaney and Natalia both laughed as the contents were revealed one by one.