The Canadian Civil War: Volume 5 - Carbines and Calumets

by William Wresch

  Chapter 22 –

  LeBeck evens the score

  The door to my room blew in. There was another explosion filling the room with smoke. Several huge men rushed in, all wearing masks. They went straight for my bedroom, but I was still on the couch. They rushed around in there, but finding nothing, they then came into my sitting room. It seemed to take them a minute to see me through the smoke, but eventually they did, and they began shouting at me. I couldn't understand what they were saying through the masks but it seemed clear I should not move. I didn't. Four men gathered in a row with their rifles pointed at me. They kept shouting through their masks. I raised my hands, hoping that is what they wanted. Time passed. One of the men kept motioning up with the barrel of his rifle. I slowly stood, my hands still above my head. Once I was up though, it wasn't clear what was to happen next. I stood, they stood, seconds passed, and then another man walked into the room. He went straight to the doors onto the balcony and pulled them open. The smoke cleared and the men pulled their masks off.

  "You are under arrest," the new guy said in heavily accented English.

  "What is the charge?" I asked, also in English.

  "You are under arrest." Okay, it appeared he had used up his supply of English vocabulary. I was tempted to move to French, but I waited to see what was going on. He told one of the soldiers in French to cuff me and take me downstairs. I kept silent while he did it.

  Downstairs I saw twenty or thirty soldiers. They had the six security guards lined up against a wall, and were pointing weapons at them to hold them in place. The hotel manager stood near them, facing the soldiers, but with his hands in the air. As I was marched out the door he looked at me. I mouthed "sorry" and he said the same. Then I was out of the hotel and pushed into a large white truck.

  The ride didn't take very long. I took that as good news. A long ride might have meant I disappeared into a swamp. A short ride meant -- I hoped -- that I was still in the custody of some jurisdiction that followed some semblance of the law.

  The truck backed into some entrance platform, and I was led down a hallway and up an elevator to the seventh floor. I knew this building. It was the provincial courthouse - the same building that had been the scene of the constitutional convention. I doubted I was being invited to participate. They marched me to a small room with a large lock on the door, and pushed me in. There were two chairs and a table, all bolted to the floor. I sat at one of the chairs. Still handcuffed, what else was I supposed to do?

  Time passed. I had seen a few cop movies, so I had some idea this delay might be about setting me up psychologically. Or it could just be they were delayed in getting people to the courthouse. I didn't know what time it was, but I could see from my walk from the hotel to the truck that it was still night. Maybe inquisitors didn't come to work until eight.

  I waited. I looked around the room, but there was nothing much to see. It was a bright white, almost an enamel that reflected light. The chairs were white, as was the table. Whoever did the decorating had little imagination. The last time I was in jail had been DeSmet, and I had fallen asleep there. This had a different feel to it. I didn't think I would sleep in this room, even if they left me here for hours.

  Eventually a young man in a police uniform entered the room and took the seat opposite me. He had a folder that he made a big show of opening. I don't read well upside down, but I could see he was looking at a form, presumably the charge form he had been given.

  "You are under arrest." he finally said. It was interesting he was also speaking to me in English. Who were they using for this arrest? Clearly these folks had not been told anything about me, or they would be using French.

  "What are the charges?" I asked, also in English.

  "You are charge with fraud and false charge of government official." Okay, so his English wasn't the best, but I gave the kid credit for trying.

  "Do you have evidence?"

  "Your website is false."

  "No, my website is true. Minister LeBeck is a criminal."

  "You will remove the website now. It will reduce your sentence."

  "Are you in the Party?"

  "Party?"

  "Are you a member of the Heritage Party?"

  "Yes. Of course."

  "This will be a very bad day for you." I switched to French and saw his expression change immediately. "LeBeck and Tilden Foster did some very bad things. The Party killed Foster yesterday. I will bet you a month's pay LeBeck dies today. Having me arrested may have given him a couple extra hours. Maybe he will use the time to get out of the country. He has three hundred million francs waiting for him in Cuba. That could buy him safety for a while. But he is done in the Party. After he is gone, the Party will clean up the rest of the mess. You need to decide if you are part of the mess, or part of the clean up."

  "You lie." He shouted in French. But then he got up and left. If he was smart, he was going to see which way the wind was blowing.

  I went back to looking around the room. I found some smudges along the back wall. It looked like someone had kicked the wall. Good. It was some relief from the white. I was doing a careful analysis of the next wall, and had already found a light gray crack near the floor when the door opened again and Thomas LeBeck walked in. He didn't say a word. He just hauled off and punched me in the side of the face. I rolled with it as best I could, but it still caught me pretty hard.

  "When we were on the causeway last summer I told you I would kill you if you ever came back." He pulled me out of my chair and threw me against the back wall. He came after me, but I got a kick in first, directly to his left knee. I held nothing back, and braced as I was against the wall, all the leverage was on my side. His knee broke and his leg bent out at an angle. I guessed all the ligaments were torn. He screeched and pulled out his gun. He got two shots off as I dodged around the room. The first one missed but the second one caught me in the upper leg. I managed to take one more step, but my dodging time was over. I suppose we looked pretty stupid, him hobbling around on one leg, and me sliding along the wall, blood smearing the white walls behind me. That was the view the cops got as they ran into the room. LeBeck was lining up the kill shot when the first cop grabbed his arm. Lebeck fired three more times while the cops wrestled with him, but all the shots missed me. They were high and by now I was low. I laid on the floor and watched them take the gun and hustle LeBeck away.

  Once he was out of the room two of the cops checked on me. One looked at my leg and said in English "You good." In French he told his partner, "get a compress, or this guy will bleed out before a doctor arrives."

  I confused them both by saying in French, "Put my feet up on the chair so less blood gets to my leg, but if he hit the femoral artery, I am still dead." They slid me over and put my feet up as I asked, and then one of the men went off, his phone in his hand. The other cop twisted me to one side and took my handcuffs off. I pulled my handkerchief from my pocket and put it over the entrance wound. Half a measure was better than none, I guessed. The exit wound was probably too big to manage with a handkerchief anyway.

  The cop who stayed with me said the usual calming things. Help was on the way, the wound didn't look too bad, et cetera. I laid my head back and let myself drift off. A little sleep might help. I heard running steps in the hallway, and a medical bag dropped near my head. That seemed a good time to catch up on my sleep.