STRATEGY

“NOT TRAVERS.”

“Why not?”

“Because Travers is nothing but a symbol. Goddamn it, it’s not as if he’s got blood on his hands!”

“So you should’ve chosen somebody else.”

Justin Francoeur nervously twirled the end of his moustache. Having come to the brother cell that afternoon to hear the news, he’d been surprised to meet the elder Lafleur in the apartment that served as a communication point between both cells.

“Our position,” Justin announced after a pause, “is that we’re going to keep him as long as we have to. But killing him? No, no way.”

“Your ‘position,’ as you call it, hasn’t changed since the beginning: retreat until the final victory! Don’t you think they’ve already figured out, when you were reading your communiqués that sounded like a syllabus for Sociology 101, that you aren’t prepared to go as far as you need to?”

“And yours sound like some low-level Mafia scum’s ransom demands.”

“Which will be taken seriously, do you think?”

The swelling in Jean-Paul’s face was beginning to go down — even though he’d quickly tossed aside the ice pack the hostess had given him — but he still had a truly sinister appearance.

“Now listen up to what we’re going to do,” he continued. “You can delay Travers’s execution until hell freezes over if that’s what you want. But at our end, if the authorities sign Lavoie’s death warrant, we’re not going to fight it . . .”

“What does that mean?”

“It means what it means.”

“You’re gonna piss away all the sympathy we gained with the Manifesto.”

“If you absolutely want to be nice guys, that’s your fucking business. But you’ve got to understand, we’re up against the wall. We can’t retreat without losing face,” Jean-Paul concluded, fingering his destroyed cheekbone.

“I thought they’d negotiate. I was sure they’d negotiate!”

“If Brien can’t revive the process, all that’s left for us to do is make them pay the price.”

“You remember our trip to Percé?”

“Sure.”

“I never understood where the money came from.”

“The money . . .”

“You know, the envelope Mario Brien passed you, at that place, the truck stop parking lot.”

“It came from the holdup at the university.”

“I thought it’d been seized at Saint-Colomban!”

“Old Brien took care of it. He got it back for us . . .”

“How’d he do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we’ve got friends in the police department. As sovereignist as you or me.”

“Are you telling me the antiterrorist squad bankrolled the kidnappings?”

“Are you crazy? I don’t know all the details, but you’ve got to know that Brien knows what he’s doing. He’s a smart man . . .”

“And how’d it go with the Americans?”

Jean-Paul made a hand gesture that might have meant comme ci, comme ça.

“Those are contacts that take time to cultivate,” he said in his raspiest voice. “And you didn’t leave me much time, eh?”

“Operation Deliverance couldn’t wait.”

“Operation Deliverance my ass.”