Buoyed by that more satisfying script, he sought out electronic expertise, honed in on the editor of the Island Bleat, who was at a long table, in front of a ton of nachos. Gomer Goulet was beside him, shit-faced, trying to get people to sing along with him. “Everbuddy. Good King Wensheslush.”
“Yo, Nelson,” Stoney said, drawing up a chair, shouting over Goulet, “you ain’t interviewed me yet on my national award as achiever of the year.”
“We only report the facts.” Forbish slapped Stoney’s hand as it hovered above the nachos. He was the island’s champion eater, he pulled 320 pounds, fastened his belt twelve inches above his belly.
“As you probably heard, I just got back from Ottawa after being bestowed upon with this unique honour.” Stoney wasn’t going to tell him about the alternative concept, the hugger-muggery, but a little publicity never hurt business.
“We don’t print rumours unless they’re basically true.”
Stoney produced, with a forgiving smile for the scornful news-man, the letter nominating him as B.C. entrepreneur of the year. Forbish frowned over it, rejected it. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”
The local news anchor was a crack hand with gadgetry, cameras, and computers, so Stoney moved the nacho bowl aside and placed the fat black cockroach in front of him. “You want more proof, it’s all in here, but this here thing ain’t user-friendly, it won’t turn on.”
Forbish held it to his eye, revolved it. “What we got here is some kind of digital recorder. I note the LED light won’t turn on, therefore the battery’s dead.”
Stoney remembered now the green light; the recorder had probably been on when he couriered it. By now McCoy was squatting beside them, and others were leaning over their shoulders.
“They sure are making them new cellphones small,” Ernie Priposki said. “Look, it’s got a suction cup so you can stick it on your forehead.”
Stoney snapped his fingers, remembering Constable Ernst Pound’s role as mailman. “Call Ernst right now, he was the deliverer of these glad tidings. Yes, boys, you’re looking at the achiever of the year for British Columbia, right here.”
“Buy an ad,” Forbish said.
Gomer Goulet boomed from the next table: “Oh, what fun we had today! Laughing all the way! Come on, everbuddy, you all know this one.”
“I got a spare nicad,” Forbish said, peering into the battery compartment. “Where’d you steal this doodad from?”
Stoney yanked it from under his paw. “Okay, Mr. Doubting Thomas, you can cancel my subscription to the Bleat. And this is sensitive material, it ain’t for public consumption. You ain’t getting your hands on it until I talk to my lawyer.”
That was the obvious course of action. Get some advice from his wily house counsel. If the old sharpie had somehow stuck his wire into the wrong socket, he had a right to know before the media got ahold of this. But maybe Arthur was on the run, because, mysteriously, he hadn’t come home for Christmas.
Christmas Day.
Maxine, Ivy, me, and a hundred partisans are lounging around a Christmas tree in a mad dictator’s winter palace in the foothills of the Altay Mountains. Atun went out with an axe last night as we were sleeping, and brought in this bushy ten-footer. Now it’s all decorated with some surveyor’s tape they found, and some painted ping pong balls from the rec room.
I started to laugh, but then found myself blubbering, imagining my family sitting around another tree, Hank and the kids, Mom, worrying, praying.
Ruslan Kolkov did his best to comfort me: “But you have family here too. We are all family, yes? — here are your brothers, here are your sisters. You come next year with your Hank and your beautiful daughters, to Igorgrad, when the statues of the mad god of Bhashyistan have been toppled, and we will celebrate the best Christmas, we will celebrate the gift of freedom.”
He promised we will soon be able to contact the outside world by sat-phone — Canada, I mean, home — and Maxine and I have been absolutely tense with the prospect of doing so. (“Hi, Hank, we’re sitting in Mad Igor’s winter palace with a huge mob of revolutionaries armed to the teeth. What’s up with you?”) But the young man who left with the satellite phone in search of batteries hasn’t returned, and we’re worried for him.
Anyway, Ruslan and my family here (my brothers, my sisters) got what they wanted for Christmas. A huge cheer went up when we heard on the radio — reception is bad, but we get a Russian station in Omsk — that we, meaning us Canucks, knocked the poop out of Bhashyistan’s military base and its airport and totalled the Information Ministry. A different official version from Igorgrad, though, which Ruslan called “a load of Ivanovich.”
The raid had everyone dancing around and giving us hugs, and they broke open the liquor cabinet and there were so many toasts everyone got a little tipsy. Old Ilyich did something stupid, firing off a fusillade outside, and he’s been demoted to dishwashing detail.
But there’s also bad news, terrible news, from the western steppes, a peasant revolt put down, scores of them shot, hundreds of others forced to flee and regroup in the forested hills. The details were vague on Omsk radio, but we also heard about it from the people still straggling in. They say the government is trucking in troops to eliminate “subversives” hiding in the mountains, which means us.
“Now there will be great danger,” Ruslan warned. “Now we cannot risk taking you to the border. We will be shooting ducks.”
Atun was to have escorted us into the mountains, through a pass to Siberia. But that will be too dangerous, so we’re better off staying with our protectors. Ivy is amazing, she greeted that almost with delight — she’s found love. There’s been a lot of steam rising from the hotsprings.
The new plan is to send scouts to find some safe route out of here, away from the advancing troops. We will break into groups, and descend into the pine forests. Snowshoes, winter tents, several layers of clothing to survive the biting weather. We’re from Saskatchewan, we’ve known thirty below, that’s what I keep telling myself.
The fighters will move west to join the partisans on the steppes, but the three of us will be led to a safe shelter — a friendly farm, a yurt, away from the action. We will be led by Aisulu the brave, who refused to be airlifted from the Igorgrad prison. So we will trust Aisulu, and trust in God.
26
As Arthur walked from the Gjirokaster Hotel into a snappy, bright winter afternoon, he was immediately seduced by the siren call of Djon Bajramovic and his sizzling qebaps. “You, mister resort developer, looking hungry, is lunchtime. Best food all Albania, proof is in pudding. Today starring premium lamb and goat.”
Arthur opted for the lamb. “Miredeta, Djon,” he said. “Si ja kaloni?”
Djon roared his approval. “Mire, thank you, I am very good. Where you learn Albanian so fast? But not pronounce right. I give lessons, good teacher, fair price. How come you wearing suit today, you going church? I show you way.”
“I’m looking for the police station.”
That prompted a flurry of questions, to which Arthur responded candidly, telling of DiPalma’s careless, gonad-driven pursuit of Ledjina, and his current status as a missing person.