THREE

“… Of the nine of them, Manfred Gunning is the only one you can be sure of. At least Gunning will write a minority opinion that will go down in legal history.” It was Patten’s voice on the cassette recorder I’d planted on the island nearest the Woodward place. Not guessing that I would become a friend of the great man himself after picking him out of the water, I’d set up some fancy borrowed surveillance equipment in two plastic garbage bags under a groundsheet hidden by pine boughs and leaves. It took me five minutes to locate the hiding place myself. Inside the machine, the tiny reels turned slowly. “… It’s not Gunning I’m worried about,” Patten said in a controlled whisper. “It’s Harper, and Bartenbach, and the woman, what’shername, McCready.”

“Because they’re Democrats? Surely …”

“I’m not talking politics, Ozzie. Haven’t you been listening? Harper and Bartenbach both have a history of upholding decisions made in the lower courts, everything else being equal.”

“If the decision goes against you, they’ll be opening up a can of worms that every church in the country’s going to yell about. There will be shouting from the pulpits in every hamlet in America. Think of it, Norrie.”

“What do you imagine I’ve been thinking about? I’ve been through all the arguments. Diodati made only a third of the points I raised with him.…”

“Now, Norrie …”

“You told me he was the best.”

“Diodati? He is the best. He’s one of the club. You need that. You can’t parachute an outsider into Washington. They’ve got to start from the same mark. Diodati gave it his best shot.” Considering the compactness of the microphone and the distance between it and the island, I was getting excellent value from the equipment. It even knew when to turn itself on and off. I’d never want to own stuff like this; I’d use it maybe once in ten years. I moved the tape ahead. There was more crackle now. It was Patten again with Ozzie.

“I want to talk to Van,” Patten said.

“Norrie, please, leave him out of it.”

“You heard me. Or is he leading this vendetta against me? Maybe it’s him I can thank for dragging my name through the courts. My friends scorn me. That’s the first step.”

“Norrie, the senator’s been your most loyal friend since the beginning. Since before the beginning. Please don’t start up with him again. Why he even let you use this place. Is that unfriendly?”

“He could have been behind that motor exploding like that. He was one of the few who knew where to find me.”

“Norrie, you’re not talking sense. The senator loves you.”

“In the last days men shall be traitors. I don’t trust Van or you or Lorca, here. I don’t trust anybody. You’re all out for yourselves. Don’t think I don’t know your little games.”

“Norrie, you know we all love you.”

“I only know one thing: I’m Norbert Patten. That’s my beginning and my end, my going out and my coming in. The rest of you have your hands out.”

“Be reasonable, Norrie.”

“You too, eh, Ozzie?”

“Norrie!”

“Shut up, Lorca. If Ozzie wants out, that’s all right. We’ll pay him off right now. I’ve been alone before. Man is born to strive by himself. Everything else is an illusion. Ozzie, it’s up to you. If you’re with us, good; if not, Lorca’ll write your ticket.”

“Norrie, I’ve never been a ‘yes-man,’ and I’m not going to start now.”

“The ancients used to kill the messenger, Ozzie. That wasn’t such a bad idea.”

“But there hasn’t been any news. Van’s holding the phone like the rest of us. We all have to sit and wait. By Friday we’ll know.”

“Seven days! God built the universe in seven days and took the last day off. Don’t you think we can be undone in seven days? Here I sit in the middle of nowhere while out there the whole organization is waiting for a sign. If I live through this, is it going to be a victory cruise or is it time to leave the sinking ship? I know they’re thinking that. You tell them, Ozzie, tell P.J., tell them all that whatever happens I’m counting on them.”

“They know that. You don’t have to …”

“Say it, damn it! Get it into the papers. Bring out extra editions of Good News.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Whatever the Supreme Court says, our ministry must go on. You got that?”

“Sure, it’ll be in Good News, and I’ll see that the press gets hold of it. Now, don’t worry about Van, Norrie. He’s all right.” I heard Ozzie sigh, like he’d started running down. “My plane leaves at six, Norrie. I have to get back to Toronto.”

“Well, cover your trail. I don’t want the whole world knowing I’m up here. Having somebody on the lake who’s trying to kill me is enough.”

Eavesdropping is a funny business. As a peeper doing divorce work I spent a lot of time listening in one way or another. After a while you wish people would snap up their conversation a little. When you’re standing in the muck getting dripped on every time a leaf moves, you’d like to edit out the long pauses and the false starts to every thought. But I liked that last bit from Patten. I rewound the tape a few feet and played it again: “Having somebody on the lake who’s trying to kill me is enough.”

My feet were sinking in the ooze, and I didn’t want to waste too much battery power playing back what I’d recorded. I had another machine back at the cabin. Whenever Joan’s generator was working I could hear the rest of this summit meeting. I replaced the used tape with a new one, removed the earphone, and set the thing recording again inside the camouflaged setting. With shoes squeaking in the muck, I took to the boat again. I’d pulled it up on some flat rocks and fixed the painter to some bushes. Once aboard, I took her out to my usual fishing ground, two hundred yards off Patten’s dock, and dropped anchor. I’d stopped counting worms. I drowned a few, keeping my eyes on the cabin. Nothing moved for half an hour except sweat into the creases around my neck. The Buick had gone, but the Mercedes was beginning to fry in its usual place as the sun broke through the clouds.

Van was the senator, Senator Woodward, who was with Patten before the beginning. I salted that away. I would have to phone Ray Thornton in the morning about Patten. He wanted reports every other day. He already knew about my daring rescue and my positive identification. Now I was a limpet, a baby-sitter.

I was wondering whether I knew Patten well enough to come out and ask him during our next game of chess what his plans were for after the Supreme Court decision, when my fishing rod jumped out of my lap and jammed against the gunwale of the boat. I could hear the reel spinning. I grabbed the cork handle before it disappeared over the side. I could see water skipping off the line as it went taut. God damn it, I thought, what a hell of a time to catch a fish! The reel was spinning so fast, the handle of the reel was a white blur. I knew enough not to try to check the line as it ran out, as the fork in the reel ran back and forth across the diminishing yardage. I tried putting my thumb lightly against the line and gave myself a rope burn. The core of the reel was coming up fast, and I had no other play. The short rod I was using didn’t have much bend in it, and it took all my strength to hold on to it.

Then I felt the pressure easing on the line. He’d run as far as he was going to, or else he’d turned and was going to ram me. God, I hoped he wasn’t that big. Instead of thinking, I began to reel in the slack. I was expecting him to take another run any second, and I was ready for him. I’d picked up an end of the boats painter and had it ready to use inside the reel instead of my thumb next time he took off. I could feel that he was still there someplace. I hoped that he wasn’t running under the boat. He could have me tied up like a birthday present if I let him.

When I had about three-quarters of my line back on the reel he started to take it away again. It was a see-saw operation. In the movies the fish ends up in the net; I didn’t even have a net. The fishing line was as tight as a power line and met the water at a sharp tangent. Then I remembered, or my thumb did, that there was a ratchet on the side of the reel which added a drag to the line. I liked the drone it added to the banging about of my feet against the hot bottom of the boat. He didn’t run as far with it this time, and I was working the reel again. It was funny, this fishing business. Some of the things I was doing I’d never done before, but my hands seemed to know what they were doing. There wasn’t any thinking to be done, just keep things calm and simple. The fish was there all right. I could feel him through the rod and line. It was a different feeling from the drag of a snagged line. There was something electric or living about it. Suddenly as I started reeling in again, it wasn’t drowning worms any more.

When I finally got my first look at him, I wanted to call the whole thing off. He was long and as big as a supermarket pyramid of canned salmon. My rod wasn’t long enough to keep him from sounding under the boat, but that wasn’t one of the cards in his deck. His shadow came closer and closer to the surface. I didn’t know what to do next. I needed a landing net. I had to make do with my shirt. As I lifted his slate-grey nose out of the water, I grabbed him with the shirt in my other hand. There was a little splashing, but when it was finished, we were both in the boat.

I lay back trying to catch my breath for a minute, while the fish—it looked like a lake trout to me, but I’m not asking you to take my word for it—flopped about. I bashed its head with the small bait pail and it stopped moving. It was mottled and speckled with bright colours showing through a darker greenish brown. I put a line through the gills and tied it securely to the boat seat before throwing it back into the lake.

I headed north along the shore for about half a mile, then turned the motor so I’d be able to see as much of the long lake as possible, out past both islands. A couple of loons started a serenade but cut it short, as though their hearts weren’t in it or the acid rain was getting them down. From the middle of the lake I turned the sharp end of the boat towards the shore and watched the lodge get slowly bigger.

Nobody was on the dock when I brought in my catch. There was an electric hum of heat in the air, and most signs of the recent storm had vanished. I hauled my fish in and dallied on the dock, but the whole population of the lodge was off boondoggling or pressing flowers or something. I put the fish in the propane refrigerator. As I sat at the pine table eating soda crackers, I thought that somebody up at Petawawa Lodge knew quite a lot about my chess partner and right now might be planning further means for reducing the total number of cult leaders in North America.