“You whisper one word and I’ll strangle you with my bare hands.”
“Well, that puts a new light on our long relationship, don’t it? I wanna cry when I hear you speak with such distrust. I’d cut out my tongue before I’d betray my friends. I got a code of honour. See no evil, speak no evil, that’s my golden rule.”
As they pulled into the ferry dock, he added: “Anyway, man, no one’s gonna believe it.”
14
Huck Finnerty stared at his sad and haggard reflection in the washroom mirror. He would have to change his shirt; his sweat glands were working like bilge pumps. Deodorant. A couple of Tylenols. A nip of rye. He was having trouble breathing. It occurred to him he’d better cut down on the booze and burgers or he wouldn’t last the session.
Question Period had done all this damage. He felt he’d been pepper-sprayed by each opposition leader in turn. That loudmouth Liberal, Cloudy McRory, screaming and sputtering as he tabled his non-confidence motion.
Patience, he’d urged. Crises are made only graver by ill-thought-out reactions. The government was not dithering. It was not in freefall but rising to the occasion. It was working quietly behind the scenes in the time-honoured Canadian way.
With 156 members to the opposition’s 151, the government would hobble off with a vote of confidence, but some backbenchers were restless — he’d picked up faltering, disaffection, Lafayette’s people whispering, conspiring, even as they listlessly thumped their desks. His whip had been working the caucus relentlessly, intimating that dissidents would be hanged from the beams of the Peace Tower.
All he needed was some breathing room. A few more days until Operation Eager Beaver was launched. A medal of dishonour for whoever came up with that corny name.
E.K. Boyes was waiting impatiently by Finnerty’s desk, organizing the clutter, lining up memos to be read. “Admirable, Huck, truly admirable. Calm in the midst of the storm. Mind you, referring to the socialist leader as ‘the honourable windbag from Winnipeg North’ might have crossed the line.” A snicker. Whenever the chief of staff smiled — not often — he had the look of a contented gargoyle.
Finnerty lowered his aching bulk into his high-backed swiveller — it was like a wheelchair, he could do loops around the room, he never really had to get up. “Where are we meeting?”
“Right here. You’ll want to say this was hatched in your office. Assuming matters don’t go awry.”
“They won’t,” he said overconfidently. That would be the end of his government. Thumps from above — the Opposition leader’s office was directly above him, McRory a heavy walker. Occasionally you could hear him bellow.
“The issue of whether to invoke war — uh, emergency measures is still to be resolved, Huck. Lafayette won’t say so publicly, but he believes we can justify it.”
“That’s real brave of him.” Finnerty wasn’t ready to touch that one and risk losing their eleven francophone seats. “You notice he wasn’t there to take any of the flack? He didn’t ask me if he could take the day off.”
“You need him onside for now. If Eager Beaver works, he’ll either be your obedient puppy or you can cast him adrift.” The gnome, for all his shrivelled morality, was comfortable to have around calling the shots.
Finnerty rolled over to a sideboard, surveyed its offerings of hard-boiled eggs, sliced salami, salted thins, pickles. No. He opened a Diet Pepsi instead.
E.K. leafed through the dispatches. “One of the Bhashyistan embassy staff has joined the ranks of those seeking refugee status. We have something to gain from that. He’s familiar with the Igorgrad prison.”
“Former head torturer, I suppose.”
“Nikolai Globbo. He was assistant deputy director of political corrections.”
“Say no more.”
Globbo looked up nervously from the maps, charts, and diagrams spread across the table, trying not to stare at the maimed hand of this frightening man beside him — he was like a mangai, the monster of the Altay Mountains remembered from childhood myths. He wondered what was this mangai’s crime, why they had cut off his fingers, and why he was back in power. A regime change maybe.
With the mangai were three men in uniform, a general, two colonels, and two others in civilian clothes, and also a Russian interpreter. Globbo had a sickly smile, and was sweating, scared that if he didn’t tell them what they wanted they would take his hand too.
He wondered how they had come by these detailed aerial photographs — satellites, drone aircraft? He could make out buses, fruit vendor stalls, even donkey carts on the streets of Igorgrad.
But this is what they wanted to know about, the central prison, the three-storey rebuilt Mongol fortress on the banks of the Five-Year-Plan River. The overfed third son, on a computer site called YouTube, had shown the Canadians sulking in one of the big cells on the main floor.
Globbo was surprised they weren’t being kept with the agitators and subversives crowded into the dungeons below. The ordinary criminals, thieves and homosexuals and other scum, were crammed into the second floor. The prostitutes and loose women who’d survived abortions were on the top floor, guarded by prison matrons. “Conditions are not too bad up there,” he said, “because they are only women.”
Globbo was having trouble keeping up with the questions. How many guards outside? How many in? How were they armed? How well trained? Where stationed? Where is the nearest army base? Show us on the map. Describe the prison, cell blocks, stairs, doors, corridors, exterior accesses.
Globbo continued to sweat as the mangai’s surviving fingers impatiently tapped the table. He thought of his wives and mistresses; he would miss them. But not as much as his occasional official visits to the delights that had awaited him on the third floor of the state prison.
Gathered around Finnerty’s desk were the few and select who made up the Eager Beaver team, men he could count on, plus Lafayette and his pal Crumwell. The others were E.K. Boyes, Charley Thiessen, Dexter McPhee of Defence, forces chief Buster Buchanan, and a general from Air Command. Uncomfortably present also, in spirit only, Sir John A. Macdonald in a gilt frame on the carved oak wall, looking bemused at these lesser mortals, suppressing a smile.
“Before we get into the gritty substance’s of today’s meeting …” Lafayette paused. “You two gentlemen from the services might wish to absent yourselves for the moment.” The two generals rose. “No offence, a slight detour into the arcane world of politics.”
“No problem,” Buchanan said, and led his compatriot out to the waiting area in the Horseshoe.
Finnerty wondered why Crumwell was not excused too. He wasn’t supposed to be political. “What’s this detour, Gerry?”
“Huck, I have decided there are sound reasons why you ought to consider invoking the Emergencies Act. Let us remember that it was steamrollered through by a Liberal government, post-nine-eleven, so they’d be hard pressed to oppose. We might lose a few Quebec members — indeed, I might face a difficult situation in my own riding were my position known — but we could gain substantially elsewhere.”
“Whoa, just pause there, pardner,” Charley Thiessen broke in. “You want Huck to take the rap for proclaiming emergency laws, and you’re going to say you were opposed?”
“Of course not, Charley. Cabinet secrecy prevents me from saying anything.”
“The civil libertarians will be screaming blue murder. I’m head honcho at Justice, the guy they’ll be nailing to the cross. Sorry, Gerry, no disrespect, but it’s too risky.”
“Let’s hear him out,” Finnerty said. “Try to convince me, Gerry.”
“Very well. The electorate, however fickle during tough economic times, rises as one to support a nation in peril. Declare an emergency, justify it, and what prudent voter would want a change of guard in the heat of a crisis? Call a snap election, and patriotism becomes the unbeatable theme.”