Margaret had been in such a foul mood for the last week that Arthur had wished he could adjourn the discoveries. But that was out of the question. It would be seen as an admission of weakness and play into the opposition’s hands, delay the trial, free up Farquist.
Margaret had exploded when Lloyd Chalmers jumped ship and couldn’t be restrained from denouncing him at a press conference as a “self-serving hypocrite” who, only a month ago, had answered a champagne toast with a solemn pledge of loyalty. “Sold his conscience, bought a cabinet job with it.” “A slap in the face to the voters in Halifax East.” “Thinking with his dink.” That one made for ribald, bowdlerized leads in the press.
Chalmers declined to respond in kind, reiterating his view that the green agenda would be better served by his working from a place of influence. He respected the Green Party and its leader, but they were powerless to do what had to be done.
That came near the end of the December sitting, and Arthur had flown to Ottawa to help her through her malaise. Though she’d promised to soldier on, she’d lost some spunk. Arthur could only pray.
He chided himself for not sharing her grief at Chalmers’s defection, but he couldn’t suppress his glee that the dashing, womanizing bedder of his life companion had proved to be a faithless lout. But, of course, he never said as much.
Arthur wasn’t oozing with optimism about the trial. While in Ottawa, he’d met with Agent Fitz McGilroy, who had been forthcoming enough, though he added nothing to what he’d told Margaret. Arthur remained equivocal about using the spy’s information — it could backfire. He didn’t fully trust McGilroy and worried that this was some kind of setup, with Photoshopped pictures of Svetlana and the Russian spy.
He was also uncertain how to handle the matter of the pregnancy of Farquist’s anguished mother. Sierra had found Lee’s priest, but he was senescent, in a nursing home.
Roberto whirled him toward the mirror. “I shall call this the Monty, after Field Marshall Montgomery. The full Monty.”
§
Alone and lonely in a king-sized bed in the Palliser Hotel, Arthur had slept poorly, rolling about and worrying, thinking about his wife next door. But he dragged himself up at eight — Farquist’s discovery was to begin at ten — and had a hot shower and combed his Monty and put on his general’s uniform: dark suit, white shirt, his lucky blue-striped tie.
He met Margaret in the lobby restaurant, where they both fuelled with coffee and eggs, neither saying much. “Sleep well?” he asked hopefully.
“Like a rock. Joking. You?”
“Okay, I guess. Will Pierette be joining us?”
“She’s coming in on a noon flight. Something came up with Agent McGilroy.”
“What kind of something?”
“She couldn’t say on the phone.”
That sounded ominous. Another thing to worry about.
“I am going resign, you know. I mean it.”
“Let’s do this first.”
The day was sunny and they would like to have walked the few blocks to the courthouse, but sidewalks were still treacherous from the snowstorm a few days ago. So Nanisha Banerjee picked them up. She was their shepherd, intimate with her bustling town, and had taken them to a very good curry house last night. Most Calgarians they’d met seemed in good humour, and tension had abated over the wretch who’d been prowling in the summer and fall.
Nanisha let them out at the entrance of the glass monolith that was the Calgary Courts Centre. Most of its work had been suspended for the holidays; an exception had been made for their court-ordered discovery. A small body of reporters and photographers was outside, and Arthur bantered with them as they waited for Nanisha to park.
“No story here, ladies and gentlemen. Just a friendly, private get-together to ask some questions.”
“What do you expect to get from Minister Farquist?”
“It’s a beautiful, crisp day. Why aren’t you all out on your sleds, skates, or skis? Tell your editors I’ve instructed you to take the day off.”
“Fat chance. Will you be discussing settlement, Mr. Beauchamp?”
“Calgary looks lovely all dressed in white, doesn’t it?”
“Why all the secrecy, Mr. Beauchamp? Why aren’t we allowed in?”
“Because the courthouse is officially closed today. I wish you all the best of the season.”
Margaret said nothing, making her best effort to smile. She had begged off sitting in on Farquist’s testimony. “I just can’t handle being near him. I’d go berserk.” She was still bruised by Chalmers’s defection.
Nanisha led them in, and they went up to the twentieth floor, where Arthur poked his head into an interview room: a table and several chairs, the court reporter setting up her equipment. She introduced herself as Sarah Blair with a cherubic smile, a Jamaican lilt. “This is exciting,” she said.
Margaret and Nanisha sat on a sofa in the waiting room off the corridor, while George Cowper Jr. paced, looking even more lugubrious than usual, impatiently waiting for his client. Finally, twenty minutes after ten, Emil Farquist strolled from the elevator, along with Jonas Hawkes, his chief political operative.
Cowper seemed to want to introduce Arthur, but Farquist merely glanced his way, sizing up the enemy. He studiously avoided looking at Margaret as he followed his lawyer into the discovery room.
Ms. Blair was at one end of the table with her steno machine and backup voice recorder. Arthur and Nanisha sat down across from Farquist and Cowper, whose junior, a thin, prim, grim young man, perched at the end of the table over a thick writing pad. Hawkes remained outside, as did Margaret.
“Very well, we’re late starting,” Arthur said crisply. “Please swear Mr. Farquist.”
Blair administered an oath to tell the truth. “Yes, of course, I so swear,” Farquist said. He was in casual dress, a purple turtleneck pullover stretched over his ample front.
“Very well, please state your name.”
And so it began.
§
Arthur presumed that Farquist had spent a grim Christmas in training, being grilled by his lawyers in pseudo-cross-examination, but perhaps not in great depth, given the many distractions of the holiday and his political ambitions. Arthur also presumed that he’d been warned the lawyer for the defence was sly and tricky, and to keep his responses short, unembellished, not to argue or indulge in the sarcastic rhetoric he was prone to.
Arthur did not underestimate Farquist’s mental agility, but his Achilles heel might be his distended ego, so he played to it, running him through his academic history, achievements as an economist, his electoral successes, his fast climb up the political ranks. Farquist obligingly answered Arthur’s soft questions, but often glanced at his shiny Rolex as if to let everyone know he had better things to do.
Arthur found it hard to budge Farquist from his script, and he came off — distressingly — as modest, despite hints of self-importance. (He was “humbled” to have earned two honorary doctorates.) Arthur was cordial and respectful as he waited for Farquist to begin to loosen up, which he finally did, obviously having expected worse.
Cowper watched Arthur alertly, clearly expecting him to accelerate, to stop lobbing his pitches and throw a fastball. That must come soon, Arthur decided — he must unsettle the witness, break him out of his cocoon of safety.
He took Farquist back in time. “I understand your late father, Sandor, was also an economist of no small reputation.”
“Without question.”
“How would you sum up that reputation?”
“He had an impressive mind and was a powerful influence.”
“On you?”
“On me and many others.”
“In what way was he a powerful influence on you?”
“As an academic. A father.”
An opening. “As a father?”
“Y
es.”
“A father who disappeared from your life when you were a lad of eight, correct?”
Farquist looked coldly at him for a few seconds, prompting Cowper to butt in. “Mr. Beauchamp, I don’t see that this is close to being relevant.”
“Surely, Mr. Cowper, it is vital to examine his personal history, given the nature of the alleged slander. It goes to the heart of the case.”
“My objection is on record.” And there his objection would sit until pre-trial motions, when the judge would decide whether the line of questioning was admissible.
Farquist tersely responded to a series of questions about his provenance: born 1971; sole progeny of Sandor and his youthful wife, Lee; Sandor’s affair; the separation and divorce. During this, he kept checking his watch, and could not resist a sardonic postscript: “It happens in the best of families, Mr. Beauchamp.”
“The best of families, Mr. Farquist? You’ll agree, I hope, that doesn’t include a family that broke apart upon the husband deserting an unloved wife and their only child?”
Farquist reddened. “Mr. Beauchamp, you will not bait me. There was a separation. It was on mutual terms. I resent being subjected to this kind of game, sir.”
“Is that how you see this? A game?”
“Can we avoid these exchanges, please?” said Cowper, sending his client a warning look. “We are delving into matters that are entirely irrelevant, Mr. Beauchamp.”
The tension was palpable in this confined space, Nanisha rigid beside Arthur, Farquist’s junior sitting up like a bear sniffing the air. Ms. Blair, however, seemed to be suppressing a smile as she recorded all this.
“How often did you see your father after the divorce?”
“Several times.”
“Where?”
“At his office.”
“Not in his new home with his new wife?”
“My mother preferred that I not visit there.”
In subdued tones, Arthur dealt with her suicide, the barbiturates, the shocking suddenness of it, the impact on Farquist.
“I trust this questioning will end soon, Mr. Beauchamp. I can’t describe the devastation I felt.”
“Is it fair to say that Lee remained deeply in love with Sandor until her death?”
“There’s nothing unusual in that.”
“You were living with her all that time, until you were eighteen?”
“Yes.”
“And in that time she didn’t take up with another partner?”
“She never remarried, if that’s what you mean.” His tone remained sharp, aggressive. He darted a look at his counsel.
“I am instructing my client not to answer questions along these lines.”
“In that case, I shall apply for an order that he answer. That may extend this hearing for several days.”
That worked. “Let’s get through this,” Farquist said.
“I have a standing objection,” Cowper said.
“That is on record, Mr. Cowper.”
Arthur pushed on. “She had no romantic relationships after he left his home, wife, and child?”
“I refuse to couch the matter in such a way. They separated.”
“As you wish, but did she have such a romantic relationship?”
“I believe she was seeing a gentleman, yes.”
Arthur wasn’t expecting that, and was thrown off balance. “And who might that have been?”
“A widower, I believe. Someone from her church. A gentleman.”
Arthur asked for details, but Farquist stayed deliberately vague. A businessman, building management, something to that effect. Edward or Edwin, his surname a blank. Average height, slender. He visited only occasionally.
Arthur assumed a convenient fiction had been concocted. But he had no recourse but to follow through. “Was she sleeping with him?”
“This is outrageous. I am not aware if they slept together. It was none of my business, and it should be none of yours.”
Arthur had the sense Farquist had prepared for this peripheral line of attack. He was hostile but not rattled. Arthur’s strategy wasn’t showing profit.
“In those troubled years, you were very close to your mother?”
“Of course.”
“She loved you.”
“Is that not what mothers do?”
Arthur let it go at that. He couldn’t bring himself to boldly suggest she’d been pregnant with his child. With that mysterious lover on the scene, Arthur would only appear desperate and slimy.
A washroom break for the court reporter allowed Arthur to confer with Nanisha in the corridor. “Keep at it,” she said. “He’s famous for his temper.” Despite her encouraging words, she seemed disappointed at Arthur’s meagre results.
Margaret was also famous for her temper, and Arthur worried she would lack Farquist’s controlled cool when it came her turn. She was standing by a window, looking at Calgary’s snow-thickened rooftops. He wanted to embrace her, offer strength, but his sense of propriety forbade that.
§
“Mr. Farquist, I understand you keep homes in Ottawa and Calgary.”
“A residence here and a condominium in Ottawa.”
“And, as well, a chalet in the Gatineau Hills near the town of Kazabazua.”
“I recently sold that.”
“‘A stunning, private lakeside chalet on four pristine acres,’ to quote your real estate agent. The sale was effective as of December eleventh, two weeks ago?”
“You’ve done your research.” A more relaxed tone. His instructions had been to cool it, to be civil. Cowper would have told him, “Beauchamp is firing blanks. It’s all bluster.”
“And why did you sell it?”
“Mr. Beauchamp, perhaps your good wife need not be concerned about her legal bills, but I am not so blessed.” A gotcha look. A good answer to a bad question. Cowper seemed embarrassed for his opposing counsel.
“And it was then encumbered with a mortgage for $200,000 taken out last May twenty-fifth?”
“As to the date, you have the advantage of me. Close enough.”
“And what did you do with those proceeds?”
A glance at his watch. A shrug. “The market looked attractive. I turned everything over to an investment advisor. He operates a blind trust, so I have no idea what stocks were bought.”
And so the rabbit scampers down another escape hole. Farquist had been prepared well by his counsel. Lugubrious Cowper, his eyes constantly on Arthur, offering nothing, no hint of triumph.
Arthur had abundant experience with lying witnesses, and read them well — the talent was in his bones, almost instinctive. But there was no noticable discomfort here, no perspiration, no shifting in his chair, no clearing of throat, eye contact rarely broken.
He assembled himself, pressed for details. Had Farquist any proof of payment of those proceeds into that blind trust? Yes, there was a record in his personal financial files. He hadn’t thought to bring that along. Farquist wasn’t reluctant to provide the name of his investment advisor, whose firm was based in Calgary. James Kenniworth, Northern Allied Investments. A trusted friend of long standing.
It would be hard to prove that this trusted friend had funnelled the funds to Svetlana Glinka. He could be subpoenaed, but that might backfire. He may have innocently set up a blind trust that Farquist surreptitiously cleaned out.
“May I suggest that what you really bought was Ms. Svetlana Glinka’s silence. After she threatened to go public with your sado-masochistic relationship.”
Farquist looked as if he’d been slapped. “That’s as ridiculous as it is insulting.” He shot an importuning look at his counsel.
“We can be confident none of this is admissible,” Cowper said.
Arthur changed tack. “Among the documents your counsel has provided is your day b
ook for the current year.” A leather binder, comprising the fifty-two pages marked for each week of the year, crammed with notes and appointments, but nothing politically sensitive. “Please mark that an exhibit, Madam Reporter.”
The key date was Sunday, January 6, the date stamped on Glinka’s video, but Arthur opened the binder to the first calendar page, the week ending January 5. That Saturday showed Farquist in his Parliamentary office in the morning, the environment ministry in the afternoon, and at his Ottawa home that evening with a few friends over drinks. A reminder: “Rhoda prefers Riesling.”
“A busy Saturday for you?”
“We were about to go into session on Monday. We were incredibly busy. We were running the government of Canada, Mr. Beauchamp.”
“And that evening you entertained friends at your condo?”
Farquist studied the last entry on the page. “Yes, it would appear I did. I expect it was more of a work party to free up Sunday.”
“Let us continue to that Sunday. There is nothing in the morning.”
“I would have attended service at the Notre Dame Cathedral. As I do religiously.” Finally, a smile.
“You have scribbled ‘free afternoon’ with an exclamation point.”
“I ought to have crossed that out. I worked all afternoon, into the evening. As you see, I have a note halfway down the page, ‘all day prep parks bill.’ That’s the bill I would be introducing, the National Parks Improvement Act.”
“And when did you inscribe those words, ‘all day prep parks bill’?”
“That day, I suppose, or the previous.”
“You will note it was written with a blue-ink pen. All the previous notations were in black ink.”
“I imagine I used whatever pen was handy, Mr. Beauchamp. I’m not sure what you are implying. I spent all day at home and slept there that night. I distinctly remember wrestling with the phrasing of my bill — a thorny matter involving fees for roads and infrastructure.” He was looking right at Arthur, bold, unwavering. Glinka had spilled the beans to Farquist’s investigators, so he knew the importance of this date.
Arthur was certain that the blue-penned task was a recently contrived afterthought, the “free afternoon” having been spent in his log cabin where he was being flogged for his sins.
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