William Deverell - Snow Job

Wife-swapping, nudist clubs, sex with a slight freaky edge — all that would come out in the public hearings that are as sure to come as death and taxes. The open-marriage experiment never really worked for Janice, not in the end. Blame me, not the other woman. Janet, I mean. Anyway, I don’t intend to testify before some sneering commissioner about my sordid social life, okay? I don’t want to deal with it. I would die of embarrassment.

I’m rambling. That’s another quirky thing about me, I’m the spy who can’t stop talking. Can’t stop acting.

It’s funny how things worked out. Crumwell figured it would be a good test for me to target Margaret, a chance to show my stuff again after my marital trauma. I was supposed to do follows on her, tie her into a conspiracy with Zack and Savannah, that was the idea.

I walked out of Crumwell’s office wondering if he’d flipped. After an hour of open-source intel I was sure he had — I came away from my research wanting to ask Margaret for her autograph. I think the old man has this paranoid thing about environmentalists. He wants all life on the planet to suffer the way he has.

I had no idea our connection was going to play out the way it did. To my advantage. Well, sort of, because I was able to parlay my role as Margaret’s official follower into being friend and confidant to both of you. You particularly, Arthur. I was good, wasn’t I? “I shall need absolution from you. Trust me. I’m on your side.”

You were the key to finding out what Vana Erzhan knew, what Iqbal Zandoo knew. The idea was to entice you to act for them, and the bait I set out was my good intel — alleged good intel — that Abzal had been snatched. The fact that Julien Chambleau was their M.P. smoothed the connection, but you’d have probably gone for it anyway — you were hungry, I could tell. Hungry to show you could still rock and roll.

The other stuff I fed you, from Aretha-May, about Abzal being rendered … What can I say? There’s no Aretha-May. I wouldn’t be caught dead making out with someone called Aretha-May. Doesn’t change the fact that he was rendered. Never mind. Let me collect my thoughts …

Pausing for a refill here. That’s got to be the one for the road, I don’t want the nuns to see me staggering back to my room. Excuse me for a moment while I cycle through the news sites. No flashes, nothing new on the bust of Clugg and Klein. Have they ratted on anyone yet? They will, to save their skins. I know those guys.

I’ve got to remember to delete these musings from the sent box, we don’t want them floating around in the Internet cloud, do we? Because you know what, Arthur? I hate to say this, but you’re going to look like a donkey if this gets out. The tomato juice will be on your shirt, a stain upon your spotless career. Yes, sir, folks, the brilliant lawyer whose thrilling cross-examinations leap from the pages of A Thirst for Justice bought it hook, line, and sinker from a fucked-up spy.

I’m sorry about that because something touched me, Arthur, something about you. You’re a sweet guy, kind of stuffy yet lovable, like an old teddy bear. But full of some weird residual guilt. I’ll bet you had lousy parenting too. So full of self-doubt that I started doubting you too, to the point I underestimated you. I’m still not clear how you sneaked Abzal out of that jail. I’m sorry I missed him.

Moving right along. The Zandoo connection. It was like a purgative, sort of like having your first bowel movement in five days, when you confirmed that Zandoo never saw the driver. So that left Abzal …

Arthur sped to the washroom off the back veranda, thinking he was going to puke. But slowly the nausea dissipated, until he could perch on the toilet seat, his head in his hands, and conquer his shakes. An image intruded: the bottle of rum his housemates kept on the upper shelf, second to the right, next to the dishwasher. Half-full, last time it encountered his eye.

“You all right, Arthur?” Savannah, at the door.

“Splendid. Reading a copy of the Anarchist News someone left here.”

You’ve figured it out by now, right? Yeah, I’m the third man, the wheel man. I actually played with confessing to that priest, it was one of those impulses that hit you when you’re screwed up on booze and coke. Mostly coke that day, I don’t think I’d had a drink yet.

A lot of this came about from too much of the white stuff. We had our own Operation Snow Job going. Rod Klein was the blow-meister, he had a Colombian girlfriend. Sully liked to get shit-faced liquidly too, like me — he didn’t need so much coke, he already came pre-packaged as a dominant, a doer, an ego-fucking-maniac. He was a prick, still is. But you can’t repeat that, Arthur, your tongue is tied.

Did Abzal ever ID me back on Nov. 26? I never got that straight. I was doing lookout, not watching him. But he must’ve ogled Sully and Klein pretty good, given only a couple of hours ago they got busted in the security line for a Transat flight to Mexico. Their next stop would’ve been Panama, but how they expected to access the account without my signature, yo no entiendo .

Pause for a peek at Google News, at Reuters, to see if they’ve ratted on the wheel man yet … If they have, the horsemen ain’t saying. But they wouldn’t grass on their old pal Ray, would they? There’s a code of honour among spies, isn’t there?

Not.

Like I say, I know those guys. They’ve already rolled over on me, haven’t they? That’s why those two RCMP brass are on their way here, isn’t it? I’ve got no place to hide. I’m maxed on my cards and so broke I can’t afford a bus out of town. But the main reason I want to join the eternal chorus is they don’t prescribe Zykoril to lifers in the Kingston Pen.

E.O., Arthur, as we say in the service. Eyes only. Here’s where I foist everything on you, make you haul around my sack of woe and guilt for the rest of your life. Because I have to unload. I can’t bear taking it to the grave.

The story thus far: Klein had a friend in Dallas who’d learned that Alta International had Mad Igor in their hip pocket. This friend visited Klein in October, after learning some of Igor’s cronies were to be red-carpeted in Ottawa. Klein spoke to Clugg. They spoke to me. The three musketeers. Okay, the three greedy, fucked-up malcontents. The London security company with the ex-KGBers? Created from the same raw materials, booze and blow.

Klein worked with the customers, the guys in Dallas (they kill presidents, don’t they?), and made arrangements for the Lear. I had the Albanian contacts, so I took a break from tailing Margaret for a week in early November to go to Tirana to set up Abzal’s reception centre. Clugg did the easy part (easy for him). After a final double-check of the Bhashie cavalcade’s exit route, he stuck his IED in the skate shack at four a.m. and triggered it six hours later from fifty metres away with a modified garage-door remote.

Albania. I never dreamed you’d agree to go with me. I was heading back there anyway, to make sure my acquaintances in the Security Ministry followed through on their commitments before I paid the final instalment. Enter Hanife Bejko with his, “Abzal Erzhan, he say pliss help.” That’s when I burned my finger, reading that note. Those assholes had stiffed me. Stiffed our customers, anyway. My idea was to wander away from you at some point, come up here to Tirana, and tell them to finish the job. Never thought I’d be going by ambulance with busted ribs and possible perpetual brain damage. Never thought I’d die here. That wasn’t part of the master plan.

You enjoy your life, Arthur. You earned it.

Confidentially yours till the end of time,

Ray

P.S. I forgot to mention the little detailing touch that would have made the whole thing credible had those shufflers in Tirana done their job. “No problem,” they said, “we learn at CIA school all best enhanced interrogation methods.” I forget the exact wording we’d agreed on for Abzal’s note, something like this: “My darling Vana, how sad I am that I can never return to you and my beautiful children. I must stay in hiding forever. I love you, and will always remember you. I did it for my country. For both my countries, Bhashyistan and Canada.” Then after they terminated him, we’d mail that goodbye kiss from some international haven for escapees, crooks, and deadbeats, like Costa Rica.