OCTOBER 5, 1970,
8:20 A.M.

THE BLACK TAXI HAD JUST stopped in front of the luxurious home nestled on the side of the mountain among a splash of orange and purple maple crowns and fallen leaves that rustled underfoot like coloured crêpe paper. A blue, blue sky. On the ground floor, Her Majesty’s Commissioner of Trade, John Travers, was about to enter history dressed in a singlet, underwear, and socks. He emerged from the bathroom freshly shaven, looking as ridiculous as it was possible for a man to look, but saved from that same ridiculousness by a quarter-century of conjugal intimacy. There he was, trousers in hand, hopping back and forth before the foot of the bed in which his wife is sitting up reading the morning’s Montreal Sun. The couple’s Dalmatian, Fyodor, is curled up in the warm depression where the consular body had lain. What are they talking about? Bridge, of course. But Travers cocks an ear, he’s heard a bell: the front door. A long way down, down there. The maid will get it. She’s Portuguese.

Travers left the bedroom without his pants on, talking to his wife, and found himself confronted by a young man holding a pair of handcuffs and pointing a .22-calibre Long Rifle pistol at his face, loaded with eight rounds.

“Get down on the floor or you’ll be fucking dead!” the young man screamed, words that instantly assumed their place in history.