by Anne Emery
“I did worry that the police would look to Hubert Rendell, and sure enough that’s what they’ve done. I told myself that they wouldn’t be able to charge him because there is no evidence against him. Because he didn’t do it; he wasn’t there. I can’t have an innocent man, a grieving husband, charged with the killing I did myself. So here I am, trying to figure out what I might say to get my own conviction down to manslaughter, or second-degree murder. It isn’t first degree; I didn’t go out there with the intention of doing him in. But as for now, I don’t know what my strategy would be because I sure as hell cannot reveal the real reason.”
Patriquin was pale, trembling.
“John, should we be calling a doctor?”
Patriquin shook his head, then said, “Did MacNair tell you anything . . . about me? I know you can’t tell me specifics.”
“That’s right.” Was this why Patriquin had come to Monty, to find out whatever MacNair might have told him? “But if you want me to represent you, you’ll have to explain what was behind all this, so I don’t end up misleading the court, however unintentionally. Or getting sandbagged by the Crown.” In fact, though, Monty would almost certainly have to bow out and procure another lawyer to handle the plea.
Patriquin gripped his coffee cup in both hands, took a long sip, and looked down at the desk. “MacNair and I were acquainted here in Halifax, him a much younger serviceman, of course. In 1974, we were both here on leave from our postings in West Germany, and we ended up having a few drinks together at RA Park. And he started going on about how much he hated the fact that the government had stripped us of our separate identities as Air Force, Navy, and Army. He hated unification, and so did I. And sitting there, I had a flash of inspiration. Alban MacNair would be my courier.”
Monty stared at him.
“I . . . I owe my life to someone over there.”
“Over where?”
Patriquin cleared his throat and said, “Germany.”
Monty waited him out.
“It’s a long story and a long-ago story. From the war. The second war. A man saved my life. I’m not going to get into that part of it. But I always felt I owed him. And I was pissed off at our leaders here, the politicians, the military. And I came up with a way to provide something for the man in Germany and to embarrass our Department of National Defence, if it should ever come out that the other side had the information.”
“The other side being the East Germans? The Soviets?”
“The East Germans, yes. I had already done my research on how to locate the man who saved me, by that time serving in the bureaucracy in Berlin. So, I began working on MacNair. He was pissed off enough that he’d be more than happy to stick it to the brass in Ottawa.”
There was something missing in this tale, Monty knew.
“Why, John, would the East Germans care about the unification of our forces? Or any ill-conceived decisions along these lines made by the politicians in Ottawa?”
“I . . . I gave them a bit of other information.”
“Oh?”
“Just stuff that they could find out for themselves. Hell, they probably knew anyway, given their espionage capabilities.”
“What sort of information are we talking about here?”
“We’re not, Mr. Collins. We’re not talking about it. Trust me that I didn’t give them anything that would put any of our own spies in danger, our people behind the Iron Curtain. Nothing like that.”
Monty knew there was a wealth of information that a high-ranking officer in the Air Force could pass over to the other side, which would have nothing to do with spies on the ground. What was it? Details of Canada’s military personnel, equipment, weapons?
“But —” he began.
“I’m not saying anything more about it, Mr. Collins. Haven’t I just admitted killing a man? Isn’t that enough for now? That’s why I’m here. So, 1974. I told MacNair I had put together a package in such a way that it would look as if it was compiled by someone at the top in Ottawa. And would be profoundly embarrassing to the government and the Chief of the Defence Staff if it ever got out; it would look as if the leak had come from the very top. I put a little something in that my contact over there would recognize as coming from me, but nobody else would catch that.”
“What made you think that your contact or anyone else working in the East Bloc would ever let slip what they had learned? I don’t recall anything about our government being humiliated in that way.”
Patriquin shrugged. “We handed it over. What they did with it was out of our hands.”
Monty knew he wasn’t getting the whole story, or even the real story. And he likely never would. His concern should be the fight out at MacNair’s cottage, which resulted in the lieutenant-colonel dying on the floor of his living room.
“All right,” he said, “so you put together this information. What role did MacNair play in this?”
“We returned to our bases in West Germany, me at Baden-Soellingen and him at Lahr. MacNair would travel from Lahr to West Berlin, and somebody would cross over from the East and pick up the envelope.”
“And,” Monty asked, knowing the answer in advance, “who was the person who crossed over to pick up the envelope?”
“You know perfectly well who it was.”
Monty remembered MacNair’s reaction to Monty’s question about how he first met Meika Keller; had he known her in Germany? And how MacNair had laughed off the suggestion, had told Monty to look at a map and see how far Canadian Forces Base Lahr was from Berlin. He answered his own question: “Meika Keller.”
“Right. And she wanted to get out of Germany. The two of us helped her defect and get resettled in this country. Long story there, but we got her out. And from that day on, we were all vulnerable to blackmail. We all lived in a state of fear, each of us terrified one of the others would tell. We lived in a situation of Mutually Assured Destruction, you might say.”
“Christ!”
“Yeah. Oh, it eased off for a while there. When nothing happened over the years, we all relaxed a bit. But when MacNair found out she’d received some kind of message from Berlin and then bolted for Europe, he must have experienced a terrifying wave of fear, same as I did. That’s what the two of them would have been arguing about that night by the Arm.”
And, Monty figured, that explained the nine panicked phone calls. He remembered, too, the story MacNair had told him when Monty questioned him about the postcard; MacNair said she had been composing an opera, and the postcard must have been connected with that. Monty now saw that as a fiction made up, perhaps on the spot, to deflect speculation about the card.
“But what we’d all heard about Meika Keller escaping to West Berlin, getting past the checkpoint . . .”
“Ha! That was a legend she built up around herself. She was so completely trusted by the regime over there that they let her go over and get the papers. It was timed with a volleyball tournament in West Berlin; she was a talented athlete. She fooled them, though, and defected to the West. And, it has to be said, became a model citizen of this country. Loving wife and stepmother, esteemed professor of physics, tireless worker for charity. Driven by guilt? Or was it her good side permitted to come out at last? I’d say the latter, wouldn’t you?” He paused for a few seconds and then said, “She had a discreditable past, but mightn’t we all have acted as she did, in those circumstances? And once she had the freedom to do whatever she pleased, she chose to lead an exemplary life.”
Patriquin’s expression hardened. “But then she flies off to Europe, I think we can assume to Germany, and comes back. And next thing we know, she’s dead. And Alban MacNair gets arrested for the murder.”
Monty wondered whether Patriquin assumed MacNair had killed her. He kept that to himself.
“And I was spooked. Aside from the fact that the woman had died, and MacNair was facing life in p
rison, I was worried about my own ass. Would MacNair get so rattled that he might let something slip? That he’d met her in Germany and handed over secrets that I had procured? I was afraid MacNair might try to make himself a hero, claiming he got her out of East Berlin, and that he’d never hurt her after taking such a risk for her. Would this lead to the other information coming out? And if convicted, would he even offer to trade information — deflecting the attention onto me — for a more lenient sentence for the murder?
“I nearly went out of my mind worrying about it all. I’d wake up at three in the morning, bathed in sweat, with visions of being paraded in front of the officers and men with a noose around my neck, or being put up against a wall to be shot by a firing squad!”
“Noose? Firing squad? John, there’s been nobody executed in this country since two men were hanged for murder in 1962, and . . .”
“And the death penalty was abolished for criminal offences twenty years ago. But it’s still there in the National Defence Act, isn’t it, for military crimes. Spying or passing intelligence to an enemy!”
“When was the last execution of a member of the forces, though, John? There weren’t any during the Second World War, as far as I know.”
“There was one in 1945, July, so the European war was over. The Army always tried to keep it under wraps. There were no other executions during the war and none since. But look what happened in more recent times. That young fellow a few years ago in Newfoundland caught trying to sell information to the Soviets. Info about our — or, the Americans’ — underwater surveillance capabilities, how Soviet submarines could be tracked. Sensitive stuff. He was a civilian, not a member of the forces, so he wasn’t tried under the National Defence Act but some other law, I can’t remember now. But the young guy had had a tragic background, family trauma and all that, and he still got sentenced to nine years in prison. What would a court do with me?!”
“I know the Criminal Code, John, but I’m not familiar with the limitation periods, if indeed there are any, under the National Defence Act or any other act that might come into play here, but I—”
“Let’s assume I’m in the category of they can come for me any time. But prosecution or not, I’d still be unmasked as a traitor!”
“But, John, if you plan to admit to the killing of MacNair . . .”
“My desperate hope is that we can get it down to manslaughter. A drunken argument. Without admitting what the argument was about. After all, the two other people involved in the scheme are dead now. And the only other people who’ve been told are bound by the secrecy . . . When I learned that somebody well known to you flew over there, over to Germany, to try to put things together, I . . .”
“You what?”
Patriquin was flustered and said, “Never mind, never mind. Water under the bridge now.” Once again, he held up a hand to discourage any questions. “Even without considering the length of the sentence I might get, I’d rather go down for an unintended death than for betraying my service, betraying my country.”
Monty didn’t know where to begin to react to all of this. And then there was more.
“There was something else, something I’d dismissed when I heard it years ago. As I say, MacNair was a big drinker, and sometimes he’d absolutely lose it. Go out of control. He quit drinking some years ago. And now I think I know why. I have friends in Moncton, former Air Force guys and others who like to fly. They hang out at the Moncton Flight Centre. Years ago, I got a call from one of them. And he told me something so effing incredible that I thought he must have been making it up. Except maybe he wasn’t. Back in the 1980s, there was a big do in Moncton, brass coming down from headquarters to rally the troops. I was up there for it, and so was MacNair. There was a reception for some of the defence guys out at the Flight Centre. No liquor, just some bakery stuff, tea, coffee, soft drinks. I was planning to take out one of the Pipers right after the reception. But they grounded all the planes, didn’t tell us why. What I heard from a buddy of mine up there was that one of the mugs of tea had some kind of sleeping pills, or nighttime cold medicine, in it, something that makes you drowsy, puts you to sleep. One of the staff at the Flight Centre found this, passed the word up the line, and they wouldn’t let anybody take a plane out. They weren’t sure who had been drinking the tea. Or —” Patriquin paused and looked intently at Monty “— or whether the tea was doctored by somebody, to be consumed by somebody else.”
Once again, Monty was left reeling.
“Could have been disastrous, somebody up there at the controls and the guy falls asleep. My buddy called me a couple of weeks ago, told me two Halifax cops went up there asking about it. Why? Because they’d received information that Alban MacNair had been stopped for the breathalyzer up there in New Brunswick late that night.”
Monty opened his mouth to speak but had no idea what to say.
“Yeah, I know, it’s a stretch, and it all sounds too wacky to be believed. That was the first time I’d heard any possible connection between Alban and the tea. I don’t think I drank very much of it, if it was my mug, because I was anxious to get up in the air. But I do remember that Alban was drunk at the event in Moncton. And sometimes when he got like that, he was a freakin’ hothead. The pressure, the guilt about his past, I don’t know. Did he slip a drug into my tea before I was scheduled to go up in one of the planes? Had he been plagued with the same visions late at night, visions of a firing squad, and this drove him to do something that crazy?
“When I went out to his cottage on Tuesday, I brought this up. And I asked him why he quit drinking so soon after that trip to Moncton. And why he was back on the sauce now. I accused him of trying to kill me. He laughed — hysterically, I’d say — there was something about the look on his face. I think he actually did plan it, on the spur of the moment when he was blitzed. And he sobered up and swore off the booze, till all the new pressures built up inside him.
“We started arguing and I got wild at him and he got wild at me. I ended up killing him. I did not intend to. But would he have killed me? I think he would have. We both had information that could put the other away for life. Or worse.”
Monty was, to borrow a word from Brennan Burke, gobsmacked. Whatever had built up between MacNair and Patriquin over the years had ended in the two men raging at each other, and one of them dead. And the other disgraced, headed to prison for murder or manslaughter for what could be the rest of his life. Monty didn’t know what information had been given over to the East Germans. But it was almost certainly something more serious than embarrassing information about military policy in Ottawa. Whatever it was, it was something that amounted to disloyalty to the Canadian Armed Forces. To Canada itself. And perhaps to its role with the NATO mission in Europe.
As the lawyer who had represented Lieutenant-Colonel MacNair and who had won the trust of MacNair’s family, he could not possibly go on record as the solicitor for Lieutenant-General John Joseph Patriquin. He explained this to Patriquin, assured him that he would never reveal to anyone what had been revealed in his office that day, and said he would arrange other counsel for him before the day was out.
It was impossible to see the dashing airman, the hero of the Sinai, in the diminished figure who shuffled out of Monty’s office to go home, a home that might soon be forsaken for a prison cell.
When Monty was once again alone, he sat back in his chair and chastised himself for underestimating Brennan Burke, something he had learned early on never to do. Burke hadn’t been crazy after all. There was indeed a German angle to this case.
Chapter XXXII
Brennan
Terry had left for New York, and Brennan had only two days left himself before he would take a flight from Berlin to London and from there to Halifax. He took a last look at Leipzig, taking in the splendour of the architecture, the steeply pitched front-facing gables, the ornately carved exteriors of the buildings, and then boarded a train f
or Berlin. The trip took an hour and a quarter, and then he was in a taxi — not a Freundlich taxi but not un-freundlich at all — on his way to Marzahn in the northeast part of the city. He had no idea what he would say to Meika Keller’s daughter, but he could not bring himself to leave the country without having a word, a consoling word he hoped, with the daughter of the woman whose death had set all these events in motion.
When he got to Marzahn, he found himself surrounded by massive grey high-rise buildings, constructed of concrete slabs like so many other brutalist apartment blocks slapped up in so many cities in the middle of the century. Helga Baumann’s place was in one of them, in Märkische Allee. He found the right apartment, and after a bit of understandable reluctance on her part, she opened the door to apartment 306. Facing him in the doorway was a short thin woman with lank light-brown hair to her shoulders and expressionless dark eyes. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties, but that could not be right. If Brennan remembered correctly, Meika said her daughter was only five years old at the time Meika left East Germany. If at least that much of the story was true, Helga would be twenty-seven now. What he could see of the apartment reflected the worn look of the tenant herself. Maroon-coloured curtains sagged over the windows, a white fake-leather sofa was soiled and split, and dirty dishes were stacked on the kitchen counter.
