CHAPTER 25
1970
ARRIVING HOME IN THE WEE HOURS AFTER A DOUBLE shift, constable Émile Cinq-Mars slept past noon. He was vaguely aware of the women being up and having breakfast, and remembered them saying something about taking the dog for a walk, but when finally he roused himself, he was alone in his apartment. He awoke to a note, which made him want to just go back to sleep. He felt sad.
Émile needed time to feed himself, shower and shave, and generally prepare himself for the next foray. Yet there was no shaking a sluggish mood. After the double shifts and the deep lows of the job, and now the departure of the Clément women, he felt let down and lethargic. Late in the afternoon he received a call from his watch commander.
“Hey, kid, how’s it hanging?” the duty sergeant asked.
“Good. You?”
“Listen up. An SQ sarge called me ten minutes ago. Said he got the number from you. Your man’s down at the jailhouse again, he said. What’s that about?”
For a few seconds, Émile couldn’t recall. Then it hit him—Father François was visiting prisoners.
“A lead I’m following.”
“Yeah? So Touton told me you work for him now.”
“Special duty, yeah. For a bit.”
“Take care, Émile. He didn’t seem all that pleased with you. He kept referring to you by your rectum.”
That didn’t sound good. “He’s trying to keep up our morale.”
“I also heard you requisitioned a squad car this morning. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt using that word, ‘requisitioned,’ instead of saying you stole it.”
“I need it, sir.”
“We all need something, but you don’t need a brand new one. Get your ass down here. I’m also referring to you by your rectum, asshole. Trade the car in. You get to drive some old wreck.”
Sometimes life in the police department just seemed so damned trivial.
“I’ll be down as soon as I can, Sarge.”
“Whatever Touton’s got prepared for your arse won’t be nothing compared to what I do.”
If he ever acquired rank, Cinq-Mars vowed, he’d change a few things. Such as how things worked, even the way people talked to one another. “Sarge, make sure the replacement car is ready. I don’t have time to screw around on this.” He just had to fight back, snap out of his slump, although, really, he could think of nowhere to go.
“Look who’s high and mighty.”
“Whatever you say, Sarge, but I got a gold shield in my pocket.”
“What?” Cinq-Mars heard the other man sucking air. “Don’t shit me, son. You never made sergeant yet. You haven’t put in the time.”
“Desperate times. Desperate measures. I’ll show it to you when I get there.”
He listened to the pause at the other end of the line. This was probably a difficult adjustment for his sergeant. “Forget it,” he said. “Keep the car. If you got that shield—”
“Keep the car. Unless you want an unmarked.”
The sergeant had changed his tune. Amazing, the difference created by the hue on a badge. “The blue-and-white suits me fine,” Cinq-Mars told him. Then he chose to twist the knife deeper. He had nothing against his sergeant, although a few grievances against the department as a whole were brewing. He had logged time as an officer of the law, and his early romanticism was wearing thin. He added, “For now.”
He knew he was getting big for his britches as he flicked on the siren and flashed the cherries and drove down to SQ headquarters at blazing speed. At every main intersection, soldiers with automatic weapons watched him whiz by.
He felt his good energy flowing back.
He wasn’t really sure what to do once he reached the Sûreté lockup. He chose to park by the curb and sit in the car. His presence was insignificant. Half the other vehicles around were cop cars. Probably the majority of those that were unmarked were official vehicles or owned by cops. They had that aura.
On Parthenais Street, near the northern mouth of the Jacques Cartier Bridge, which rose high above the St. Lawrence, SQ headquarters stood as a narrow, black monolith. When he brought in prisoners, he processed them on the first two floors before they were transferred to penthouse suites via an elevator. Up there, way up the mast, the windows were barred. Prisoners were given rooms with a view. Escape was not impossible. Before the bars had been installed, and several times since, felons had knotted bedsheets together and slid down the external wall to freedom. Twice, fledgling escapees had lost their grip and fallen to their deaths. Another prisoner had miscalculated the distance. Bereft of enough sheets, helpless and exhausted from dangling four storeys up, he waited to be rescued by jailers who deliberately took their time before dialling the fire department. Cinq-Mars wondered how that man felt, dangling above the pavement, knowing that his scary bid for freedom reduced him to pleading for rescue by his captors. He felt vaguely sympathetic, and a bit that way himself, a dangling man. A yob. He didn’t know if he’d even be able to saw through the bars, or if his sheets would be long enough, and if he came up short, the man who’d have to save him would be his own boss, who’d probably prefer to watch him dangle for hours, then let him plummet.
Putting his hands behind his neck, he arched his back, and, really for the first time in his life, experienced an unruly duress—pressure. His body required release, his muscles a good stretch, although mentally he believed himself set now. Hadn’t he become a cop for this?
Still, what to do about Father François?
Cinq-Mars had no assurance that the cleric would depart through the same door as the last time he’d been there—likely, he’d leave by whatever exit was convenient to where he’d parked, which could be at the other end of the building or even on another street altogether—nor did he have any idea how long he’d be staying or if he was still inside.
But he waited. He called it a hunch.
Father François Legault, he knew, had been involved in every transformative social uprising that had occurred in the province. He’d walked in the big marches, been on the picket lines for the critical strikes, observed every riot. That was his way, his life’s blood. His appearance among prisoners during this crisis should have been expected, and had Cinq-Mars been making the bet ahead of time, he’d have assumed that the priest would be incarcerated by now. Of all citizens, his name should have come up on a warrant, and he ought never to walk freely down prison corridors offering pastoral support. His collar alone saved him. In a land where priests were still accorded residual respect, he’d been skipped over for arrest.
He was the prime minister’s pal. There was that, too.
Logically, Cinq-Mars believed that he had good reason to monitor the priest’s movements. He was here, suffering a potentially fruitless reconnaissance, to serve a hunch. If he was going to be the cop he wanted to be—and, eventually, the detective he intended to be—then he needed to develop a nose—oh, that magnificent beak of his—for crime. A nose for investigation.
Like it or not, he was going to have to trust his instincts. He’d wait for Father François and hope he had the right exit covered. He also prayed that the priest was no different than anyone else involved in this affair, busy busy busy, and that he wouldn’t be staying inside the building forever.
That aspiration, at least, was soon rewarded.
Father François emerged, large and shuffling, hands stuffed in his pants pockets, emitting both the lethargy of obesity and resolve. When the man checked his watch, Cinq-Mars checked his own. Twelve to five. Five o’clock would be a fitting time for a rendezvous. The man hadn’t parked anywhere. Instead, he was travelling by cab and hailed one near the entrance. Luckily for Cinq-Mars, he could tail the vehicle without the passenger becoming aware of him in the rear-view mirror.
They each headed off, first through the military checkpoint protecting the SQ, then along broad, busy Dorchester Boulevard towards downtown, which commenced a couple of miles to the west. Jeeps occupied by soldiers and other military vehicles were interspersed along the way, standing guard over the intersections to the major cross-streets. The cab, before reaching downtown, veered south as though Old Montreal might be its final destination. This proved to be true, and Cinq-Mars took advantage of being in a blue-and-white to park his vehicle in an alley off narrow St. Paul Street, as parking spots in the district were otherwise scarce. The priest had to be intent on a meeting of some sort, for he piled out of the cab and entered a bar-restaurant just as people were pouring in for their afternoon cocktails.
Cinq-Mars surmised that the priest was not hearing confessions in there.
The English preferred the phrase happy hour. In Quebec, the French used the term cinq à sept—five to seven. The meaning was specific to the province, for in France the same phrase referred to an illicit romance, as a man typically might meet his mistress between five and seven before heading home to his family after work. In Quebec, the term referred only to the hours for early-evening drinks, though it borrowed from the Europeans a sense of the mischievous.
Cinq-Mars knew how meanings and pronunciations changed as language crossed the Atlantic. His own name literally meant the fifth of March. In researching his family background, he learned that the origins of his name were obscure, that it derived either from antecedents with a name similar to Mars, in which the offspring of the fifth son had prospered while families of the other four sons had petered out, or the pronunciation had drastically altered over time. Likely, the name had begun as Saint-Marc, and he was descended from inhabitants of such a village.
He sequestered himself on a barstool, hoping not to be spotted by the cleric.
Along a far wall, he caught sight of the priest’s shiny pate. The identity of the man seated across from him took a moment to determine, due to the congestion of patrons and the inconvenience of a pillar in his line of sight. When he shifted barstools, he could see the man clearly, and immediately the blood vacated his body and shot to his brain.
The priest and his confidant had fallen into a heated exchange.
As he made his exit, it occurred to Cinq-Mars that he was close to his own police headquarters. Father François had essentially travelled from one to the other—from the SQ to the Montreal Police Department—for the man he was talking to was none other than his own boss, Captain Armand Touton.
That gave him a lot to think about.
He had to wonder.
He was in awe that his boss maintained a pipeline into the SQ lockup where revolutionary suspects were being held. At the same time, he felt a rising dismay, for he remained a practising Catholic who felt seriously at odds with the priest’s conduct. How long had this liaison been in force? Cinq-Mars rehashed the order Touton had given him some time ago to check out Father François. When had Touton established contact? Before or after that command? In his deliberations and investigations, the neophyte detective could only tap the surface of the alliances, betrayals and deals that intertwined so many diverse people. Dwelling on that, he remembered what Captain Gaston Fleury had once told him: that they could be going up against the people—not this or that person or authority or institution, but a gallimaufry of mythologies and allegiances interwoven through the entire population.
Getting into the blue-and-white and creeping out of the alley, Émile Cinq-Mars told himself that he was learning fast. He experienced a sensation of being alone in the world. He had no one to call upon for reliance or favour, no one to signal. He also felt, for the first time when not under an overt threat, scared.
The ride was rough. He had to stop the car to find out why. Kids. Or people sympathetic to terrorists. Someone, in any case, had let the air out of his front tires.
At least they’d not been slashed. He limped off towards headquarters nearby.
Late in the afternoon, Jasper Cross felt queer and dizzy. His testicles went tight, as if shrunken to the size of peas and forcibly inserting themselves back inside his body. He cried out from the pain of it. His captors ran into the room. A young man placed a cool compress on the back of his neck, and the sensation made him jerk as if he’d been stabbed. Suddenly, he realized that he was perspiring. His clothes were soaked. He believed it was over—the world, his life. He’d made it easy on them—he was suffering a heart attack or a stroke and he’d die before they needed to shoot him through the mouth. Yet they were taking the trouble to calm him down, speaking gently, and as he quieted down he began to feel half-normal.
His rapid breathing slowed.
Silently, he spoke the phrase that described what he’d been through—anxiety attack. Knowing the name was beneficial, a comfort, but he guessed that another such attack was imminent.
How could he prevent it? Laporte had been killed.
Pierre Laporte was dead. No one could pretend now. They killed the other captive. He’d be next.
His life persevered in precarious balance, and even these men who might have pretended otherwise knew it now, too. They comforted him, in order to keep him alive so that they could kill him.
He was their barnyard animal.
The woman repeated the news for him, in case he hadn’t heard the television distinctly through the walls. “The scumbag is dead, gotten rid of. They killed him. Strangled him, they say. With wire, they say. Stuffed him in the trunk of a car. What’s the word in England? Merry old England? In the boot. They stuffed him in the boot of a Chevrolet.”
“Leave him alone,” a man’s voice intervened.
“He thinks we’ll drop him into a Rolls-Royce, or a Jaguar, this guy.”
“Stop it, I said. Enough.”
“He thinks we’ll do him a favour. Hey, it’ll be a Chevrolet. An old wreck.”
“Shut up. I’m not going to tell you again.”
“I just want to know if he’s expecting a limousine. Maybe we can find him an old hearse from the scrapyard.”
“Okay. Out. Now.”
That was a change. A development. Someone was standing up to the woman. The killing of Laporte had altered the landscape, violated the rules of engagement.
Pierre Laporte. Oh, that poor man. His poor, suffering family.
Instigated by anxiety, or perhaps not, the pain that stemmed from his heart was visceral and real, compressing his chest and suturing his windpipe closed. He coughed and gasped. That poor man.
In idle mind, removing himself from the sordid reality of his captivity, he had fantasized about meeting Laporte. He had wanted to sit down and have a drink with him and exchange notes. He had imagined the conversation, the menu, the décor of the restaurant, its cozy fireplace and old stone walls. No man knew what they had gone through, except the other. They were brothers, that way. And now that dinner would not occur, and he felt diminished, reduced to lesser aspirations.
Laporte. And he was named Cross. Were they unaware of the symbolism, these folks? How could they not get it? At a time when the entire population was abandoning the Church, a new wave of political alarmists chose to kidnap a man called “the Door” and another called Cross. Blindfolded, he would run these matters through his head, over and over again. Longing to rant, This isn’t a fight against the political power in the land, as you believe. It’s a subversive, scurrilous attack directed against the ancient regimes of Church and cultural upbringing. He wanted to bring that up with them. Shout it from a podium, give them a lecture. He fantasized about addressing college students, putting things straight. If his captors placed a pistol against his temple, which he imagined repeatedly, he’d say, Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do. Surely, they’d recall the reference. They’d been brought up in the old Church. How could they shoot a man whose name was Cross? Others, others had strangled the man called Laporte. He had to keep that detail in mind. Trust in it. Hope. Others had killed. Not these few.
He rehearsed what might become his final plea.
Remember, I’m Irish.
An anxiety attack. Don’t let it get that far again. He felt so miserable and woozy going through it. He had to be stronger of mind, less prone to despair and desperation. Be an unemotional diplomat to the end. If only they’d remove his blindfold. If only they’d relax his restraints. If only they’d let him piss and defecate in private, have a bath on his own, revel in the water, recover. If only he could argue with these people. If only they’d let him get inside their heads. If only he weren’t so damned anxious, then perhaps he could think straight. React. Do something. If only he were a free man again.
They killed Laporte—their friends did. Now they think about killing me. They prepare. It’s not right. Hey! It’s not right, what you want to do. Scriptures prevail against you. You were Catholics one time. You learned about right and wrong. This is wrong.
He rocked in the chair to which he was strapped. He didn’t want another attack, but it was so hard, so difficult, to remain steadfast and calm. To remain a diplomat.
Killing poor Monsieur Laporte, that also was wrong. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know anything anymore? Have you lost your minds?
In the midst of the various furies that spun around him in his august office, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau bore in mind that the FLQ had killed a friend. Perhaps the man had died precisely because he had been his friend—he had that to consider, also. Other considerations were prevalent. The attention grabbers and wild radicals were willing to kill, and while their politics were now less serious than ever, their determination to do evil could no longer be dismissed.
They were killers now.
That changed everything.
Amid the demands upon him as the country’s leader, he took a few moments to remember his friend, Pierre Laporte. A good man, a family man, a journalist of integrity, a government minister, but particularly, someone he’d gotten along with, a pal. Murdered. Strangled first, then shot. Stuffed in a trunk. The bastards.
He repeated the thought under his breath, aloud. “Bastards.”
He had to watch himself. His office demanded much of him at this time, and he could not step away from his duties to cosset grievances or personal pronouncements. He could also not take the death too deeply upon himself. He was obliged to govern, not indulge an inner fury. The country would be second-guessing him right now. Pundits would suggest that his hands had been around Laporte’s throat, although the polls indicated that the use of military force and the suspension of rights were supported by the population, equally among English and French. A comfort, to have the people behind him. Yet a man was dead, and his policy had initially been devised to save his life. Initially, then, the policy had failed, and tragically. Still, he said it again, whispered aloud in the sanctuary of the prime minister’s office, as though he needed to step away from the trappings of his duty for a moment and just be a man on the street with an opinion. “Bastards.”
Then he went back to muddle through his agenda, keeping abreast of police and military developments while his staff prepared for the funeral.
Coming up, the minister of foreign affairs was on tap for a recital, prelude to a duet with the British ambassador. Then the secretary of state would command centre stage for his dull solo, followed by a barbershop quartet of army generals, a choir of police directors, the off-pitch harmony supplied by the leader of the opposition, a deep-based response from the labour secretary, then Marc Lalonde, his finance minister, had been begging time to rehearse an encore. During the concert, he could expect to be interrupted endlessly by stage managers and their production assistants—Bourassa, for one, would call in desperate need of assurance, and probably the mayor of Montreal would plead for another audition. As well, a chorus of walk-ons—presidents, prime ministers and kings—were telephoning to express their regrets that Canada had fallen into the sinkhole of an alternative universe where provincial cabinet ministers were snatched off their front lawns and executed. Life had become an opera, dramatic and large, chaotic, vibrant and ultimately tragic.
He had no time to grieve, he knew, yet grief lodged inside him. Somehow he had to make it through this travail. He had to lead.
Life itself these days—the erotic silk of life, time’s living tissue—had become next to impossible to fathom. Once upon a time, she knew a few things. In the United States, an underground radical group, the Weathermen, had taken its name from a line in a Bob Dylan song. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. From the first time she’d heard the lyric, she had assumed that that was true, actually and metaphorically. Lately, she’d grown less certain. She might need a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing. She couldn’t cross a street without being buffeted by gusts from every sundry direction. Soldiers held their rifles so lovingly in their arms, no differently than young fathers would their newborns. Of friends she had known and trusted for years, some were bitter, others fearful. They didn’t want to go to jail for their radical politics, as they were no longer convinced that their politics were radical. They didn’t like the idea of French killing French to make a point to French politicians about the English. How did that make sense? And for a few, a notion that the blood stained their hands and clothing also, for past actions, troubled them. Would it wash off? A few, even quite a few, exulted in the tumult and the violence. Yet for most others, the issues were less tidy. Arguing the future of Quebec in a bar or a classroom had been intoxicating, an elixir of life. But declaring with one’s being that the proper future of Quebec lay only in following Mao’s dictum that power exists in the barrel of a gun was less fascinating than had been surmised. Always confusing, now the idea felt reactionary: against life.
Catching hold of the winds of change proved ephemeral, for she heard an argument for one position one night, countervailing reasoning the next, then grasped that the same person had pontificated both points of view. The guy had changed his mind during the day as fresh news had come in and events had been debated. He wasn’t the only one. A man she knew had long scoffed at her political interests, and suddenly he was not only keen on current events, but had been radicalized. He suggested while inebriated that they form their own terrorist cell. “Hey, buddy, have you talked this over with your wife yet?” Many radicals gleefully dug in their heels, and the socialists and separatists happily Krazy-Glued themselves to one position or another, yet the man in the street, the woman in the office tower, the young person on his way to school, the mother with her stroller, the grandparent fretting over the safety of a society—among these, few felt secure or stable or firmly decided on what anyone should do next, if anything at all.
Everyone watched the news though, and followed each rumour and talked it into the ground.
Anik herself felt run to ground.
She had called her friends together, ostensibly to connect, but really to access what they were feeling. These were the four she’d run into in the midst of the Jean-Baptiste Day riot two and a half years earlier. That time seemed different now, only because they had changed. Their dreams for the nation had shone with brilliance, yet now so much seemed tawdry. Recently, she was in touch with each of them, yet they were not coming together as a group. A boy pointed out that they had not come together as a group since Anik had taken up with Lévesque, but she was largely oblivious to that cantankerous opinion. She was floating ideas that she considered to be more immediately vital than any strains on their friendship.
By the time she arrived at their usual subterranean watering hole on St. Denis Street, the two literature students, Vincent and Pierre, had secured a corner nook. The boys had been served their beers, and Anik kissed them on both cheeks and held a finger up to the waiter to indicate that she’d have the same.
“What’s happening?” she asked, waving a hand in the air. “Hey. Let’s make a deal. For two whole minutes, we won’t talk about Laporte.”
Vincent had decided to return to school for a master’s. In the context of the times—amid the chaos and the uncertainty—his choice struck Anik as political. Pierre had dropped out with no intention of going back, or of doing anything that might seem vaguely adult. His friends felt that he suffered from an odd pride—he accepted life only on his own terms, but Anik believed that he was fundamentally too lazy to make that work.
They asked what she’d been up to lately.
“Hiding,” she told them.
“Anik,” Vincent parried, wanting to gloat, “you were the one who’d never join anything. No petitions. Your name would never show up on a list that way. Remember? Are you telling me you’re on a list?”
“My mom is. I’m hiding out with her to keep her company.”
Her experience and background always seemed more stimulating than theirs.
Jean-Luc arrived next. Anik could tell immediately that he was suffering from the airborne virus of the time—paranoia. She’d have to stay clear, or at least be constant in her friendliness while making no demands on him. He entered the bar talking, and hardly a sentence passed without him saying “soldier” or “sell-out” or “pigs” or “Trudeau the fuck” or “Bourassa the little shit.” He was wired to the vocabulary of the times—a surprise, for he’d always been the one with his head in books and his ideas had seemed two steps removed from reality. Now he seemed overwhelmed by reality, as though his cerebral world had imploded. The revolution, or at least that bit of it now known as the October Crisis, had buried him alive.
That Paul came in last was another surprise, until he explained himself. Traditionally the most social among them, he was constantly pulling people together for a beer, then coaxing them to stay out as long as possible. By Anik’s count, he’d never been late for a get-together ever. Yet Paul was finding his element. He studied photography, and dreamed of creating artistic work through a camera’s lens. The kidnappings and the army’s advance had changed his approach. Now he wanted his camera to record life as it was being experienced in the moment. He wanted his snapshots in the news.
“One way or another, we’ll get through this,” Anik suggested. “Then you won’t have any more big moments.”
“Send me to the next crisis, then. War, earthquake, famine, plague, I don’t care. I want excitement, you understand? I’ve acquired a taste for it. I’m hooked.”
They believed him. He had discovered his true vocation and glowed with a new enchantment. Anik assessed, at that moment, that among them she’d trust only him, only Paul.
Touton contacted his young protégé through his squad car’s two-way radio. The message was to go at full speed to an address in the industrial north end, adjacent to an expressway.
“Full speed?” he inquired back to the switchboard operator. He meant the question to be rhetorical. He was unaccustomed to personal messages being sent over the air to him and replied somewhat dumbly. The woman took his question seriously and got back to him with Touton’s response.
“Lights flashing.”
He zoomed.
He arrived at a dreary ten-storey warehouse and rag-trade building within seconds of his boss, their front bumpers nearly colliding as they braked severely. Other officers had already arrived and were just lounging around, but when Touton extracted his pistol and dashed into the building, they suddenly did the same. Through the melee, Cinq-Mars caught up to him inside.
“You two,” the captain barked. “Guard the elevator. More guys are coming. When they arrive, tell them to start evacuating everybody out of the building. The rest of you, we’re taking the stairs.”
The old man was puffing by the fifth floor, but he didn’t relent. On the sixth, they went into the corridor where two RCMP detectives tried to block their progress.
“Captain,” one said, “there’s no way around this. It’s not legal.”
“Ask yourself two questions. You guys are already here. The RCMP does not call in the Montreal police to help them with an illegal task. So. Who called me here? When you answer that question, then ask yourself why.”
The Mountie thought it over a second, then stood aside as Touton and his ten men went down the corridor. They stormed through broad doors and Cinq-Mars raised his pistol.
“Police! Don’t anybody fucking move!”
The six guys inside had been expecting trouble. They carried semi-automatic weapons leisurely at their sides. The man who answered had a thick Spanish accent, but his French was good.
“We already told those Mounties. This warehouse is under the control of the Cuban Embassy. This is Cuban soil. You must leave. You have no right here. You are in violation of international law.”
The man was small, with a snide look on his face, and watching him, Cinq-Mars deduced that he was treacherous and experienced. A soldier.
Touton looked around the room. He saw what he’d been told he would find. His fellow officers were clueless as to the meaning of this raid, and one man visibly went pale as he checked things out. Cinq-Mars took it in at a glance, then knew that this fight was serious. He could easily die here.
“Who are you?” Touton demanded.
The man shrugged, made a gesture as though he was inventing a name, and said, “Miguel.”
“Miguel, there’s one thing you have to understand. Those other officers left. But we will not leave. The guns you have here, the dynamite, the explosives, the grenades, have no business being on Canadian soil—”
“This is officially Cuban soil—”
“I don’t give a shit!” he yelled, and suddenly the Cuban was less arrogant. He understood that he faced a problem now where the rules of diplomacy might not protect him. “You brought explosives and bomb-making material into a country that is combating an insurrection. I was a soldier once. I am speaking to you at this moment as a soldier, not as a cop. You are not going to be permitted to blow up my city and the citizens in my city and I don’t give a sweet fuck about your goddamned diplomatic immunity or international-fucking-law. Is that clear to you?”
“My guys are better armed than yours.”
“Then some of us will die and some of you will die, but you, Miguel, will be the first. You’ll have your international incident then. But no Cuban or terrorist will have access to this material.”
The standoff was secure. No one had a next move. Cinq-Mars heard the door open behind him and looked back. Half a dozen Mounties entered, including the two they’d spoken to in the corridor. They now carried semi-automatic rifles, too.
“I told you men before,” the Cuban said to them. “You have no right here. This is Cuba!”
“We were cops then,” the ranking officer told him. “We’ve resigned our commissions. Maybe that’s temporary—we don’t know yet. Now we’re just a bunch of hard-assed boys with stolen guns. You got to leave now, or we will help this man blow your heads off.”
Miguel didn’t budge. His eyes surveyed the officers. Occasionally, he glanced at his own men. He was getting no help here, and seemed to be waiting.
A phone rang and everybody jumped.
One of the Cubans answered. He indicated that it was for Miguel.
“Excuse me,” the man said, and went to the phone. He said, “Si,” and then only listened. After he hung up, Miguel returned to his position facing the policemen.
“What does Castro say?” Touton asked.
Miguel cleared his throat. “If there is any mention of this in the papers, we will deny it and cause an international incident that will embarrass your government. If you do not agree,” and he indicated his own men, “we must die here. Many of you will die also, probably all of you if something explodes.”
Touton looked around. None of his men budged. “Well,” he said, “we’re staying. And I don’t see any reporters around, do you?”
“It has to be more official than that.”
“I got this,” the Mountie who had talked to them earlier said, and he left the room. He was gone for seven minutes, and during that time the men just stared at one another, too fearful to blink, ready to shoot. Each man feared for his life and stared at the man across from him that he might soon kill.
Then the Mountie returned.
“What does Trudeau say?” Touton asked him.
The Mountie raised an eyebrow. Then he said, “It’s been taken care of.”
They waited, eye to eye.
When the phone rang again, nobody jumped. Miguel answered it himself. “Si,” he said. Then he listened. Then he said, “Si,” and hung up.
Miguel did not look at the policemen—not so much as a glance. He left the room, and his confederates followed. As each man arrived at the exit door, he set down his heavy weapon, then left.
When they were gone, the Mountie said, “Gather ‘round.”
The policemen—city cops and Mounties—formed a circle around him.
“There’s enough explosive in this room to bring down a bridge. In a crowded place, thousands would die. There’s enough here to do that over and over again. Your country will never know to thank you, but I thank you. And now we’re duty bound to keep this among ourselves. It’s not going to be in the papers because there’d be more shit to pay than any of us can afford. Captain Touton was right. This comes down from Trudeau himself. If what we did here today gets leaked, I’ll arrest every last one of you, and if that doesn’t give us the one guy who talked, then you’re all fired. I don’t care who you are. I can, and I will, deliver on that promise. Plus, that’ll be only the beginning of your troubles. Captain Touton—thank you.”
The two men shook hands.
“If you don’t mind,” the Mountie said, “we’ll take care of this now.”
“I don’t want to be around here.”
Nobody said another word until they got outside, where Émile Cinq-Mars, who was both a religious man and someone who rarely swore outside of a hectic moment, calmly said, “Holy shit.”
Touton exhaled a deep breath.
Cinq-Mars looked at him. “Are we at war?”
Touton was digging for his smokes. “If we are, we’re the only ones who know it. Fuck. This is what Trudeau’s talking on TV about—his ‘apprehended insurrection,’ he calls it, what he’s telling the people he can’t tell them about. Now he still can’t tell anybody, not unless Castro dies first.” He turned suddenly towards the others and barked a final command for this operation. “Everybody, out of here before somebody wonders what we’re doing. Cinq-Mars, come with me for a second.”
They moved to a corner of the building, then a little farther to get out of the wind.
“Here,” Touton said, and he handed the younger man an envelope. “The arrest lists you wanted. Both names were on it, both have been removed.”
“Thanks.”
“And here.” Another envelope emerged from the man’s coat pocket. “Don’t lose it.”
He did not need to look inside to identify the contents. The envelope carried the weight of a dime. He could feel only a small, thin, hard fragment. The stone chip from the Cartier Dagger.
“Thanks again.”
“Stop fucking thanking me,” Touton told him, “and do something.”
“Can’t you climb it?” she asked.
“Not with all my stuff,” he said.
“Fuck your stuff,” she said back.
“What do you mean? I need my stuff.”
“One camera. That’s all you need.”
Paul had never thought so. He needed his tripod and light meters, assorted lenses and filters, his telephoto for sure, the zoom, a bag of film, the extra camera bags, a flash wand, light reflectors, his—
“Just climb up the fucking tree and take the fucking pictures when somebody fucking shows up. Stop being such a prima-fucking-donna.”
A radical idea. Paul climbed with a single camera around his neck. Anik waited nervously below.
“Pssst!” she hissed.
“What?” he asked, curled on a limb.
“Toss me down a smoke.”
“What,” the prime minister inquired, “do we have?” He sounded hopeful, yet wary.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t say ‘nothing.’ Whatever you say, don’t say ‘nothing.’”
“Sir, we have very little so far.”
“Why do people say I’m in power? The press should report, honestly, that I’m now the least powerful man in the country.”
“Sir, the army has control of the streets—” the commissioner pointed out.
“—and the kidnappers control me.”
“You don’t mean that, sir.”
He didn’t. That was true.
“If I may say so, Mr. Prime Minister, we’re making progress on many fronts.”
“Progress?”
“We know a few of the kidnappers. Except for one, we can’t find them.”
“And you call that progress.”
“The police are drawing the net closer.”
“If they don’t know where to look, how can they draw the net closer?”
“It’s only a matter of time.”
“Who said we have time? A Quebec cabinet minister is dead, and where’s James Cross? You’re closing in, but you don’t know where in is. What if that cell or another cell kidnaps somebody else? What if Laporte’s killers strike again? For that reason alone, I can’t have the commissioner of the RCMP come into my office to tell me that matters are at a standstill.”
His secretary rang through on the intercom. Someone had arrived to see him who was not on the agenda.
“Who is it?”
“A police detective from Montreal.”
“Name?”
“Émile Cinq-Mars. He says he wants to talk to you.”
He’d heard that name before. Lately, he’d heard a lot of names. “Ask him to go through channels. Follow protocol, for heaven’s sake.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Take down the name of his superior officer before he leaves.”
The prime minister returned his attention to the police commissioner. “What are your plans?”
“Mr. Prime Minister, Laporte’s body, the car, the discovery of their hideout, then finding Lortie, that business. What was bungled was bungled, but each clue brings us a step closer.”
“Cross was abducted by a different cell,” Trudeau reminded him.
“A lead that concerns one cell may help with the other. We are working every lead to its limit.”
The prime minister shook his head as the intercom lit up again.
“He’s insisting, sir,” his secretary said.
“Don’t we have a Mountie outside?”
“We do.”
“Ask the Mountie to escort him out. If he’d like a direct command from the commissioner, he’s with me now.”
The voice returned a moment later. “The Mountie is escorting him out, sir, and has acquired help to do so. The officer insists that he has something you must see before you make a final decision.”
“I’ve made my final decision.”
“You don’t have to see him. So he claims. Only what he has to show you.”
A belligerent cop. Even the commissioner was smirking, to decry the lack of discipline in the more primitive forces.
That name. He remembered. He’d heard it from Father François.
The prime minister clicked the button to speak. “Hold on.” He looked at the commissioner and shrugged. “Go out and collect whatever it is I’m supposed to look at, will you?”
“Sir—”
“If it’s a waste of time, we’ll see that the officer is disciplined.”
“Yes, sir.”
The top officer in the land accomplished the rather modest errand in short order, and returned with an ordinary business envelope marked fragile and folded to a third its size and sealed. Whatever lay inside felt weightless and small.
“Curious. I wonder what it is.”
The commissioner stood waiting to find that out himself.
“How’d he strike you, this Cinq-Mars?”
“Young,” was the commissioner’s first reaction. But he conceded, “Intelligent. It’s odd. He’s too young to have a gold shield. He says it was given to him by Captain Armand Touton in order to conduct a special line of inquiry on the FLQ. But he’s still a Montreal cop. You know what that means.”
Trudeau ignored the slur. “We owe Touton for the Cubans.”
“It’s curious, sir.”
“We should call Touton and check him out.”
“Intelligent-looking, you say? An odd description, Commissioner.”
“Sir?”
The prime minister used a letter opener carved by Inuit from a walrus tusk. He looked inside, but did not touch the object there. “What’s this?” he said, more to himself than to the man in the room. He continued to stare at it, perplexed initially by the seemingly innocuous contents. He picked it out and held it up to the light between his thumb and middle finger.
From the opposite side of the desk, the commissioner squinted at the pale greyish chip.
Then the prime minister deposited the object back into the envelope and punched the intercom button. “I’ll see him,” he said.
“Sir,” the commissioner protested, “we should contact Touton.”
“Don’t bother.”
“What is it, sir?”
“That will be all, Commissioner. Good luck. We’re counting on you.”
“Yes, Prime Minister.”
Feeling snubbed, the commissioner departed the room.
“Should he come in with an escort?” his secretary was asking.
“No,” Trudeau directed. “Send him in on his own.”
“Sir, there are more people on your schedule. We have—”
“Ask them to wait.”
He got out from behind his desk to greet the mysterious and unknown police officer who had called upon him with the missing chip from the pointy end of the famous dagger. The last he’d heard of that missing chip, it had been lodged inside a poor bastard’s heart.
The door was held open for him, and with his knees feeling somewhat slushy and his heart jumping an occasional beat, Émile Cinq-Mars entered. Silently, the door swished shut behind him, and that easily, after all the commotion and argument and pleading down the corridor, when he’d come within a hair of being given the bum’s rush, he stood quietly, alone, with the prime minister of Canada.
“Officer Cinq-Mars,” Trudeau said in a tone that made his name sound like an accusation.
“Sir,” the younger man commenced, and discovered his mouth dry. For some reason he’d been talking English in the outer office, and now stumbled as he reverted to French. “Thank you for seeing me.” He caught himself bowing slightly, not sure how to conduct himself.
This was a time of crisis, the circumstances of the meeting unorthodox, so Trudeau had no patience for pleasantries. “I presume you know what this is,” he stated, holding up the envelope that Cinq-Mars had sent as his calling card. He wiggled it, as if jingling a bell.
“I do, Mr. Prime Minister.” He ventured a few strides across the pale carpet, hoping he wasn’t tracking mud in behind him. His eyes shot around the room. “As do you.”
“Do I?” Turning, Trudeau moved behind his desk to sit in his high-backed swivel chair, from where he observed the officer intently.
Nervously, Cinq-Mars took in the room with a glance. The old mahogany woodwork impressed him, as did the lush carpet underfoot. Interior shutters had been folded back to reveal windows shaped like elongated spires, the sides closing at the apex like hands at prayer. Over a sofa hung a woven Inuit hanging—figures hunting walrus and tracking wolves. The igloos, Cinq-Mars noted, were a perfect decorative feature for a Canadian leader.
“Have a seat,” the prime minister invited. Perhaps a command. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve neither the time nor the patience to digress. As you must know, the Montreal Police Department is not in anybody’s good graces these days.”
“I thought that perhaps, after the incident with the Cubans—” He stopped as the prime minister scorched him with a look.
“No incident occurred between Cubans and police in this land.”
“My mistake, sir.”
“So the poor performance of the Montreal police remains our only reference.”
The department’s name had been sullied. Having found and searched the abandoned house where Laporte had been held captive, they’d located an address on Queen Mary Road. There, they discovered a female college student, who had answered the door, and, hiding behind a chair, Bernard Lortie, one of those wanted for the death of the Quebec labour minister. Montreal cops exulted in their coup. Lortie was willing to sing, was being mocked in the press for doing so, and they had the apartment to scour for clues. The cops were there for more than twenty-four hours, after which they kept a pair of detectives on the premises. Then the two officers went to dinner. When they returned, they discovered that a false wall had been opened in their absence. Through the wall was a compartment with benches, water and food. To further taunt the police, the men who’d been hiding there had smeared their fingerprints all over the freshly dusted apartment. The cops had screwed up by not bringing in dogs and not finding the fake wall, but even those glaring errors might have been forgiven by the other jurisdictions had they not screwed up more seriously again. Embarrassed, they failed to tell the Mounties and the SQ what had happened. While the perpetrators were clearly in Montreal, the Mounties were searching for them on the other side of the continent, continuing to do so because the embarrassed Montreal cops did not share their information. The department would have remained silent altogether were it not for an FLQ communiqué that blew the whistle on them and extolled the virtues of Bernard Lortie for not telling the police about the secret wall, and now no Mountie, and no prime minister, was willing to trust a Montreal cop again.
“Why have you brought this to me?”
“It’s connected to the crisis.”
The answer appeared to take him aback, and Trudeau, setting the envelope down on the desk, rubbed under his lower lip with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He studied the man seated before him, then asked, “How does a sliver of stone relate?”
“Sir, in seeing me, you have, in essence, if not explicitly, admitted—or shall I say, rather, indicated—that you know what this sliver of stone, as you call it, represents. What it means.”
“Not true, Detective. This is merely the most curious calling card I’ve ever seen. And you told the commissioner outside that you’re Armand Touton’s man. That’s what got you in the door. Now, why don’t you tell me how this sliver of stone relates to the current crisis. But—before you do that, just so we’re clear—did Captain Touton send you?”
Cinq-Mars cleared his throat before replying. “He knows that I’m here.”
“Ah, but does he approve of your being here? You’ve not entered the room through the usual channels, Detective.”
“It’s not an authorized visit. Captain Touton has made a conscious decision not to stand in my way, and—” Cinq-Mars said, then paused to take a breath before proceeding with his gambit, “—he did give me the tip of Cartier’s dagger—”
Trudeau stared back at him. He spoke quietly. “Is that what this is?”
Cinq-Mars paused again, perhaps to signal his distaste for the prime minister’s deception, for they did not need to confirm that detail. The prime minister possessed the knife, and the shape of the missing tip would be well embedded on his consciousness. “By giving me the chip, he facilitated this meeting. Let’s say that that’s something he and I understood between us.”
The prime minister touched both forefingers to his lips. “How did you come upon this sliver?”
“It’s evidence. The last known whereabouts of the Cartier Dagger was in the heart of a murder victim. The tip of the dagger remained behind when the knife was removed. It’s evidence. Captain Touton has been holding on to it all this time because he’s never given up on the case. Shall we conclude, sir, that my possession of this tidbit of evidence validates my presence here?”
Rocking his head one way, then the other, Trudeau demonstrated that he was reluctant to concede the point. “The question still remains, Cinq-Mars. How does any of this relate to our present circumstances?”
“It could lead to the beginning of a negotiation between the terrorists and the government for the release of James Cross.”
A silence ensued. In the prime minister’s gaze Cinq-Mars detected a modest hope, a genuine willingness to seize any valiant straw that might save the day.
“If you can begin a negotiation to bring an end to this fiasco, Cinq-Mars, then why have we not commenced that task already?”
“We have. It starts here, with me and you.”
“You’re representing the terrorists?”
“I represent someone who is willing to lead us to the terrorists.”
Another pause. The prime minister then spoke slowly, “Shall I not call the commissioner back into the room?”
“Let’s keep this between me and you, sir, for now.”
“In this room, I outrank you,” Trudeau noted.
Cinq-Mars acknowledged that fact with a brief nod, then stood. He reached across the table, his movement deliberate, slow, and pressed the middle finger of his right hand upon the white envelope to slide it back across the desk towards himself. He then picked it up, visually checked that the chip remained inside, and returned the envelope to his jacket pocket once more. Then he sat down again.
The prime minister observed him.
“Explain this to me,” Trudeau asked. “For instance, why should I not have you arrested—or at least questioned—immediately? Someone can dream up a charge, I’m sure.”
“Under the War Measures Act, no one will have to.”
The prime minister smiled so slightly that it was difficult to determine if he had found the riposte amusing.
Cinq-Mars carried on. “Arresting me won’t move us forward. The person who knows what we want to know is in hiding, and if we go after that person, we’ll be back in our familiar pattern of seeking and not finding. If captured, that person will likely choose silence, or at the very least, fail to divulge what’s critical. Time will be lost, and you’ll agree, time is of the essence right now. We don’t want to obliterate the trust being developed between the police, as represented by myself, and the only person who seems able to help us at this time.”
The prime minister’s intercom beeped. Pressing a button, he said, “Hold all calls and appointments.”
“Premier Bourassa is on line one.”
Trudeau pressed the answer button for a moment and did not speak, delivering silence to his secretary. Then he said, “I’ll call him back. Hold all calls and delay all appointments.”
Cinq-Mars knew then that he had the man’s undivided attention.
“What’s the deal?” Trudeau asked.
“The dagger in exchange for knowledge of the terrorists’ whereabouts. The government must consent to negotiate with them—”
“What curious folktale have you heard that makes you think I know anything about the Cartier Dagger? Aside from that, I do not negotiate with terrorists.”
Cinq-Mars had anticipated the response.
“With respect, sir, if we find them, and Cross remains alive, you will negotiate the terms of their arrest. If they want a plane to Algiers, or Cuba, chances are they’ll get it. I’m not suggesting that they should get anything more. The proposal being presented to you at this moment, is that the government will negotiate any flight to freedom in good faith.”
“A provincial cabinet minister was murdered, Cinq-Mars.”
“We’re not talking about the people who killed Laporte. Only those who currently hold James Cross alive. Not that kidnapping is a misdemeanour.”
“An issue—why are you even talking to me about an ancient relic?”
“It’s in your possession, sir.”
“Says who? You’re supposed to be a police officer, not a rumourmonger.”
“In giving his final confession to Father François Legault, who I understand is a friend of yours, Mayor Camillien Houde spoke of the knife’s sale to you.”
That shocked Trudeau. He pushed himself back in his seat. When he spoke again, he had lowered his voice. “What could Houde possibly have known?”
“He was one of the sellers, sir. Part of that consortium.”
Trudeau rolled his chair back a few inches this time, and crossed his legs, an ankle coming to rest just above the opposite knee.
“Near Houde’s bed was a closet. Someone was hiding in the closet, a girl, when he made his last confession. She was there when Houde succumbed. She’s grown up now, of course. She once threw rocks at you, precipitating the rioting before you won the election. She’s come forward to make a deal.”
“She’s a terrorist?”
“No, sir. But she knows the culture. She’s been around the radical element throughout her life.”
“And you believe her?” He still appeared ready to dismiss him.
Cinq-Mars felt that he could not yield on any aspect of their discussion. He could not blink without his position unravelling.
“Without a doubt, sir.”
Trudeau elected to stand, thrusting his hands into his pockets. “Why should I trust her? This rock-thrower? Why give her a priceless relic? What is her stake in this, other than to undermine the prime minister of Canada with what sounds suspiciously akin to blackmail? Does she expect to sell it?”
“The tip of the dagger, sir,” and Cinq-Mars tapped the pocket containing the envelope, “broke off as it entered her father’s heart. She feels that she and her mother have more right to the knife than anyone, including you.”
Trudeau processed this news, then jumped ahead. “Don’t tell me. She thinks it has magic powers. Some say that nothing else explains my rise to power. Does she not understand what’s at stake here?”
“I believe she does. I’m not sure that you do, sir.”
“Officer Cinq-Mars—”
“I don’t mean to be disrespectful. Not at a time like this and not in this room. Cross’s life may depend on us coming to a binding agreement, right here, and very soon. Time is of the essence.”
Trudeau went to one of the tall, narrow, church-like windows of his office and looked out. Behind him, Cinq-Mars placed three photographs on his desk. The prime minister returned to look at them.
“A terrorist we’re looking for,” Cinq-Mars explained, “somewhat disguised, so his identity is not confirmed. Nonetheless, it fits an existing description. He’s entering a flat by the rear. The lane is innocuous—we won’t find it on the basis of these photographs. If we publish them, the kidnappers will probably change hideouts and the public will overwhelm our switchboards. We need to find the address. Only one person can give it to us, and that’s the woman I’m here to tell you about, and she has slipped underground.”
Trudeau gazed at the images. He picked up a photo. “Cross is in this house?”
“Probably not. But if we can follow this man …”
The two men sustained a period of thoughtful silence.
“She wants the knife,” Trudeau said quietly. He held something in his hands, a hope to properly deliver the country from its deepest crisis in modern times.
“If the negotiation with the terrorists does not go well,” Cinq-Mars stipulated, “and if that’s the government’s fault, then she will tell the media how she acquired the knife. She’ll have it in her possession. Which will make her story highly credible. I’m merely stating her position, sir.”
“Do you understand that she’s asking a lot, this radical contact of yours? A thousand organizations and a million individuals crave ownership of this knife. If I possessed such a thing, how could I possibly give it up on a mere gambit?”
“Because the country’s at stake.”
“Which is why the matter must be turned over to the police, Cinq-Mars. Oh, I know, you’re a policeman. But I’m asking the commissioner to take it from here.”
“That won’t work, sir.”
“Cinq-Mars, you’re asking me to trust you, a policeman I do not know, a member of a department that has performed abysmally.”
“Except with the Cubans.”
“The Cubans don’t exist.”
“Yes they do, sir. You know they do. I saw what was in that room, sir, and the blood, the deaths, the destruction, the chaos that would have resulted had that material been delivered into the wrong hands—”
“I know what you’re saying, but we cannot speak of that action. Do you understand, Cinq-Mars?”
“My colleagues and I would have died in that room, sir. If necessary. Just between us, don’t say the Cubans don’t exist. We have to stop this, before we find more Cubans, or Algerians, or who knows who. The idea of a revolution on North American soil right now is very attractive to a lot of people.”
“I know that. But you’re asking me to trust a friend of yours, not of mine. What else am I to do but ask the proper authorities to pursue the matter? No Cartier Dagger. Even if I possessed such a thing, the situation mirrors that of any kidnapping or blackmail. How do I know that a bargain struck will be kept?”
Cinq-Mars knew he was losing this debate, but he recalled his boss’s words. This was his Dieppe. Around him, lives succumbed in a tapestry of horror—had it been him on that beach, would he have valiantly warred on? In this circumstance, he had to forge ahead, with no thought for himself, and see at the end of the day whether he bled on a beach or stitched up his wounds on higher ground.
“You owe it to her.”
Trudeau stared back a moment, then exhibited his familiar elegant shrug.
“The man who was killed with the knife—her father—you knew him.”
“News to me,” Trudeau maintained, stretching his back. “I remember hearing of his death, during the Richard riot. With all that was going on it was almost a footnote. Would have been, too, if not for the fact that an antique dagger had been stolen from the National Hockey League. But I do not recall recognizing the man’s name back then. What was the year? Fifty-five?”
The two men were both standing, as though their verbal joust had taken on the manifestation of a physical sparring.
“The town of Asbestos, sir. The strike. Your fight with Reggie Chartrand.”
Trudeau rocked his head from side to side a little. “That story’s gone around. So what?”
“The real story has never gone around.”
“What real story?” the prime minister inquired.
“Of how you defeated Chartrand. The man who slipped a set of brass knuckles over your right hand, that man, he died with the dagger embedded in his chest. His name was Roger Clément. He kept the story to himself, except that he told it to his daughter.”
The prime minister spoke quietly, “The same man? I never realized.”
“That man’s daughter wanted me to remind you that if her father had not helped you out back then, a fight would have occurred between the police and the miners that would have had a fearful effect on our society—at least back then. Lives would have been lost, which might have been the least of it. She asked me to relate the same point to you. Our current straits can be repaired also, by slipping us information on the hiding spot for James Cross. But now, as then, a sleight-of-hand must first occur. Back then, her father was working for the Church, among others, and was determined to secure the peace. He succeeded in Asbestos, but he failed on the night of the Richard riot. She wants the Cartier Dagger in exchange for her father’s life, to commemorate his life in some way. What she will do with the knife remains to be seen. Or, it may remain unseen. That’s her business. Isn’t delivering the country from the abyss in which we find ourselves … won’t that be worth the price?”
Trudeau pondered his choices. “I admired that man. I’m ashamed that I never came away with his name. Roger, yes, that part I remember. He died during the riot? Did he steal the knife then?”
Cinq-Mars nodded, but only slightly. “That’s broadly assumed. I assume it myself. I’m involved in that ongoing investigation. We have not acquired complete knowledge of that night’s events, not as yet.”
The prime minister first placed one hand, then both, behind his neck, and stretched in that position. Cinq-Mars recognized the gesture as a technique to release stress. It’s how he felt also, although, as a guest here, he did not feel sufficiently at ease to put himself through any similar gyration.
“Roger Clément’s daughter is someone who wrestles with her beliefs and convictions. I actually arrested her on the night that she threw rocks at you. But she does not condone kidnapping or murder. She’s in a fight here, as we all are. In a sense, she’s overmatched, as you were against Chartrand. In asking for the knife, in my opinion, she’s asking you to slip a set of knuckle dusters onto her right hand, just as her dad did for you.” Cinq-Mars looked down and tapped the desk briefly with the ring finger of his right hand. “In a sense, to do what she has to do here requires that she attain the high moral ground. Some will say that she’s in the mire. To do that, to get herself up on a higher plane, she needs to make the knife a part of this arrangement, perhaps because the knife represents, not magic, but history. She needs to understand that what she does will have a particular—and, I would say, beneficial—effect, not only with respect to her father’s legacy, but on the history that is being made. The history we make. For Quebec.”
“History is subject to interpretation, and bias,” Trudeau pointed out to him.
“She has her ideals, sir. We have to work with her assumptions.”
After a prolonged and deep sigh, the prime minister crossed the room and opened a cabinet drawer to reveal a safe, dialled a combination and opened it fully. He handed the rustic artifact, ensconced in its case, over to Émile Cinq-Mars.
“Sir?”
“Study it. Hold it in your hand. By showing it to you I’m taking a great risk. It is a murder weapon, after all. With knowledge that the knife is here you can probably try to get a court order to retrieve it, but you will fail. Or, you can give me time to check you out, and you can give your trusted friend time to produce the kidnappers. If she does, and if she meets my other criteria, which is an exceptional demand, then you have my word, Cinq-Mars, as she has, that I will surrender the knife to you. My word is my bond, but by placing this object into your hands, if only for a few moments, I am demonstrating that I will honour my word, as I have made myself vulnerable. Politically, if not legally. The terrorists first, you understand. Plus one more—no, two more demands. This is my only offer and it is non-negotiable.”
Cinq-Mars held the knife in his hands, finding it heavier than he had imagined, and not so well balanced as a modern instrument might be. The diamonds seemed scuffed and tawdry, the gold a dull yellow. He returned the knife to its case, and the case to Trudeau.
The prime minister took a moment to consider his words, put the case down, and placed his hands on his hips.
“Detective,” he said, then looked at him, “are you Catholic?”
“I am.”
“Practising? You’re under no obligation to answer.”
“I consider myself to be a man of faith.”
“I detected that in you. Or thought I did.”
They both took a moment to consider their odd exchange.
Then Trudeau said, “What Houde revealed on his deathbed interests me. I have often wondered how I was able to acquire this knife—from my enemies, in fact. If she knows something that sheds light on that mystery, then I’d like to hear it. I’m making that part of this arrangement.”
Cinq-Mars nodded. “And your last demand?”
“Maintain the knife’s security.”
He glanced up. “Excuse me?”
“This knife is being entrusted from my care to this young woman’s. Don’t let me hear about it next after a robbery. I don’t want it stolen from her. You’re a cop. Help her to keep the knife safe. It means too much, its history is too diverse, to allow it to be hocked in some shabby way among international collectors.”
Cinq-Mars continued to observe the prime minister a moment, then looked away at the Inuit wall hanging. “I’ll communicate your terms to her.”
Pierre Trudeau put the case back into the safe, and closed the doors.
“You keep it close at hand,” Cinq-Mars mentioned.
“For its magic powers,” Trudeau said, and the policeman could not decide from the man’s tone whether or not he was being serious.
“I suppose, if it ends this crisis, it will have done a great magic.”
The prime minister nodded again, assessing that statement. “That’s actually my own sentiment. It makes the purchase, in another time, a good one. The return on investment was not what I had anticipated, but all in all, it’s not bad. You have an unusual name, Mr. Cinq-Mars. Where are you from?”
“Saint-Jacques-le-Majeur-de-Wolfestown. Do you know it?”
Trudeau nodded, as though to say that he did, but he did not reply immediately, and was gazing out the window again. Then he turned back, his face seemingly quite bright, as though he’d been freed from solemn obligations. “You’re a small-town boy, Cinq-Mars, and now you’re a big-city detective. It’s astonishing, is it not? How our lives turn, then turn again.”
Cinq-Mars wanted to agree, but stood waiting.
The prime minister looked at the young detective. “You and I never had this conversation.”
“Yes, sir,” Émile Cinq-Mars assured him, and departed.