This is what it was all about. This is what killed Huck Finnerty. Clara stared at her wan, haunted face in the dressing table mirror. Eyeshadow seemed well advised. “What else?”
“A.J. Quilter filed suit yesterday against Her Majesty for two billion dollars.”
Clara snorted derisively. “Oh, dear, he must be smarting.” The week before, Quilter and five executives had spent a night in the pokey while the RCMP took twenty boxes of paper from their offices. The PMO, meanwhile, had issued a press handout saying the government remained fully dedicated to the safe return of the Calgary Five.
“Will Mr. Crumwell also be joining us for lunch?”
“I expect so. He has rallied from his intestinal problems.”
“Don’t let him get away.” He’d been avoiding her.
The testosterone was so thick in 24 Sussex’s boardroom that Clara instructed an aide to open some windows, letting in a draft. Crumwell looked grumpy back there, bundled into a coat and scarf.
Everyone had seen Mukhamet’s video, his triumphant return from the supposed dead. The mood was angry, vengeful.
Clara was also picking up a sense of suppressed disdain from the high commanders, with their military jargon, their assumptions she had no clue what they were talking about. Even their one woman officer, a colonel, had a contemptuous smile, a reverse sexist.
“Nothing handles unprepared runways like a Herc,” an air force general was saying. “Exceptional STOL ability, she’s the vehicle of choice.”
STOL, Clara knew, meant short takeoff and landing. She also understood the Hercules turboprop was the force’s workhorse. But she kept silent, reluctant to ask questions that might indeed show her up as a military naif.
Buchanan raised a pointer at an aerial image of Ozbeg, a cross-hatching of streets in the desert, the police station circled in red, a few scratchy lines depicting highways. “We could risk a run for the Russian border. But we’ve no idea what might welcome us there.”
“We wouldn’t want to rile the Russians.” A Central Asian expert from Foreign Affairs. “But what if we simply have our commandos surrender to them? Make them look good.” He began to wilt under Buchanan’s fierce scowl, but struggled on. “Surely they’d simply deport our people to Canada.”
“Surrender.” Buchanan was having trouble digesting the word, he croaked it, struggling, his face red.
Clara finally spoke. “The concept offends me too. Summarize for us, Buster.”
“Operation Wolverine. Named after the commando group that’s going in, the Wolverine unit. Pound for pound, the toughest animal in the world, by the way.”
“Okay, a step up from a beaver.”
“Stage one, we airdrop a few personnel in the flat desert south of this burg, in darkness. They’ll scout and prep a landing site, and do some snow clearing so we don’t face an evac impediment. They’ll set up flares, landing lights. Stage two, another Herc will nestle down two hours later, at five a.m., with the troops and three Humvees. A pre-dawn raid on Ozbeg’s police station. There may be a firefight, but we expect the hostiles will prove too cowardly and disorganized to engage effectively. Stage three, back to the C-130, and non-stop to home plate, Kandahar Airfield. We’re at maximum turnaround range, that means in-flight tanking.”
Aerial refuelling, Clara decided. “The timeline?”
“Target day is January tenth.”
“Can’t be sooner?”
“Too much prep, Prime Minister.”
“What’s our risk level?”
“Light to medium. I can’t guarantee there won’t be casualties.”
Nor, she supposed, could he guarantee against calamity. She looked over at E.K. Boyes. “Nothing ventured,” he said. Other advisers nodded. Unspoken was the fact that an election was in the balance.
“We had unreliable information for Eager Beaver.” She looked at Crumwell, his cold, deadpan expression. “Buster, has there been any unusual activity in this town, or around their jail? Anything to suggest they might be expecting us?”
“Negative on that. Our drones are keeping a watchful eye.”
Instinct told Clara to put off her decision, to tread with caution. She’d been the one government voice urging thoughtful patience. But she had a week and a half to say go or no. Her headache was not abating. She kept seeing Mukhamet’s hamlike face.
“I’m giving this a provisional green light. I’ll want an update two days prior to the point of no return. Let’s have lunch.”
Crumwell had looked ready to eat and run, but his escape was thwarted by Percival, who ushered him into Clara’s study with coat in hand. “You asked if I could stay behind, Prime Minister.”
“Yes, sit down.” She swivelled to the window, the forest of frozen bare-limbed trees that made the grounds seem spooky. She struggled to quell her distaste for the spymaster, his mask of competence, his paranoid mindset, his misogyny. “Anthony, I’m still waiting for that briefing note.” Promised a week ago.
“Yes, I have that project on my desk. I haven’t been feeling too tickety-boo.”
“I’m very sorry. Well, brief me now. What’s the latest on this threatened tar sands bombing?”
“We’re waiting. We have eyes everywhere, but we’re not sure of their timing.”
“But you have someone in deep cover. What’s his name — DiPalma.”
“Ray DiPalma.”
“And is he still out of contact?”
“It’s been eleven days. I can’t say we’re not worried.”
“You’ve no idea where he is?”
“Afraid not. He has befriended Zack Flett, whom you’ll remember is posing as Ms. Blake’s hired hand — though his real goal is to run around the country stirring up trouble. Flett’s movements are known to us, but he’s had no recent contact with Agent DiPalma, by telephone or otherwise. I should add that we have a judicial order to intercept the suspect’s calls.”
“Does that extend to Margaret Blake’s home phone?”
“Indeed.”
“Okay, I want that stopped. You are not to bug the line of a member of Parliament.”
“Excuse me, madam, but that would seriously compromise our efforts.”
“It could seriously blow up in our faces. Especially if it turns out your Mr. DiPalma has been fed a line of bull.”
Crumwell looked shocked. “Agent DiPalma is a very capable operative.”
Clara pulled a news clipping from a file. “This him? Left his laptop in an unlocked car in a shopping mall?”
“That was, uh, when he was having marital difficulties. Started off brilliantly … I did discuss all these matters with Minister Thiessen, but let me brief you.”
“Please.” She was in growing dread that a massive screw-up was afoot, a concern not allayed by Crumwell’s narrative of nervous breakdown and wife-stalking. Astoundingly worse, it appeared DiPalma was quickly outed as a CSIS agent by his targets on Garibaldi Island.
“Sorry, I’m spinning. He is posing as a traitor?”
“He has artfully persuaded Zack Flett he is a convert to his cause.”
“And Margaret Blake as well? And Arthur Beauchamp?” Unable to still her fury, she stood, her fists balled. “Do you think they’re idiots? Are you saying Charley Thiessen did not put a stop-action on this?” Her voice cracked.
Crumwell stammered. “I, um, didn’t see this as being so awkward, because, uh … the operation was also cleared by Gerry Lafayette …”
She sat with a thud, pinched herself. No, she was not asleep, this was not a nightmare.
“And now your incredibly talented Mr. DiPalma has vanished into thin air. Let’s bloody hope we don’t find his body floating down the Fraser River.” She sighed wearily. “Anthony, tell me bluntly. Has anything else been going on I should know about?”
A massive clearing of throat. “Excuse me.” He drank some water. His eyebrows scrunched in thought. “No, uh, no, nothing comes to mind.”