Deadline (11 page)

Balusi was nervous. He got on well with Frank Naumetz, the boss’s chief of staff, who appreciated him for his hustle, his subtle communications skills, his work ethic and his partisan instincts, but Knowles made him uneasy. For one thing, they were about the same age, but Knowles had been working for Stevens a lot longer. He had worked his way from his body man – his go-fer – to principal secretary, the man who speaks for the boss when the boss can’t make the call himself, the man who can walk into ministerial offices, casually, and see what’s going on, asking questions that leave little doubt about what the boss wants.

Unlike Balusi, who liked to party with other young staffers, Knowles went home to his family whenever he could get away from the office early, and also unlike Balusi, he had the prime minister’s personal confidence.

Knowles pointed to the screen. “What do you see?”

“Uh, Greg Mowat,” said Balusi, glancing back and forth between the screen and Knowles. “The minister of public safety.”

“Yeah,” said Knowles. “How’s he look?”

“He looks relaxed. Comfortable.”

“Yup,” said Knowles, and hit play. They watched Mowat gave his spiel. “What do you think? Good lines, eh?”

Balusi nodded. “Yeah. About perfect.”

“The way Bouchard would write them?”

Balusi thought for a minute and nodded.

“Not like something he was making up on the spot?”

“No,” said Balusi. “It looks like he had his lines ready.”

Knowles rewound further, and played Wong and Donahoe’s clumsy responses and Mowat’s again.

He pressed pause and looked at Balusi.

“Looks like we’ve found our leaker,” said Balusi. “Mowat.”

Knowles shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe he and his little press secretary – what’s her name, Sophie – maybe they were just shooting the breeze, hashing out what Mowat should say after QP, and so he was ready for the ambush.”

Balusi said: “Or maybe Mowat leaked so he would look sharp and Donahoe would be caught flat-footed.”

Knowles laughed and got to his feet, signalling an end to their little meeting. “Politics is a funny business.”

Mallorie Ashton opened a bottle of Pinot Noir the minute she got through the door of her condo. She finished her first glass as she drew her bath, her second as she soaked in the tub, and was making a pretty good start on the third by the time she finished warming her leftover Thai take-out in the microwave.

She flicked on the TV as she tucked into her red curry chicken and rice. The news was just starting. The lead item was the resignation of the prime minister. Ashton watched as Ellen Simms walked viewers through the news, showing Stevens addressing the Commons, then the Liberal leader’s attack, which seemed beside the point. The piece continued with more gracious quotes from Lesley Nowlan, the leader of the NDP, who congratulated Stevens on his decision and urged him to use the rest of his mandate to leave a positive legacy for working families, and Bloc Quebecois Leader Richard Tremblay, who said that Canadians and Quebecers, whatever their political views, should be grateful to Stevens and his family for his service.

The piece ended with clips of Jim Donahoe and Greg Mowat, who Simms said were the most likely candidates to succeed Stevens. Ashton grimaced when Donahoe said that he would “leave the speculation to the speculators,” and thought that Mowat hit the right tone, although he struck her as a bit preachy.

When Simms’s piece was over, the old reporter, Murphy, did a story on Stevens’s career, from his days as a Progressive Conservative member of the Ontario legislature, his decision to join the Canadian Alliance when he switched to federal politics, to his patient takeover of the party, and finally his three minority election victories.

When the anchor set up the next item, about a helicopter crash in British Colombia, Ashton muted the sound, pushed her plate away, and thought for moment.

She always voted – she had voted for the Conservatives in the last election, based on the Prime Minister’s promise to put more police on the street – but she didn’t follow politics they way most people in Ottawa did. She and her husband used to watch the news together, but since her divorce three years ago, she had stopped paying much attention. She picked up her phone and called Flanagan’s cell number.

“How you doing?” he said.

“Good,” she said. “Tired. That was a long day. How about you?”

“Not bad,” said Flanagan. “Just dropped Jason off. We managed to catch the last two periods of the Sens game.”

“How’d we do?”

“Lost to the Leafs,” said Flanagan. “So where are we on the case?”

“Well, I just watched the news,” said Ashton. “And there was a piece on about Stevens’ resignation. It looks like Donahoe and Mowat are the two main contenders to take over. Our victim works for Donahoe, and his girlfriend, Sophie, works for Mowat. There’s likely not any connection, but I should probably have a chat with Sawatski’s boss, see what files he was working on, get some understanding of his professional life. Did you talk to the reporter?”

“Yeah,” said Flanagan. “But he didn’t give me much. Said he and the victim were loaded and he could barely remember getting home himself. Said he had no idea how Sawatski ended up in the canal.”

“Did the kid know what happened to Sawatski’s cell phone?” said Ashton.

“Fuck,” said Flanagan. “I forgot to ask him. I’ll call him in the morning.”

“According to a message from the victim to his girlfriend, he gave it to Macdonald to hold while he went for a dance,” said Ashton.

“Christ, I can’t believe I forgot to ask him,” said Flanagan.

“Did you buy his story?” said Ashton.

“I think so,” said Flanagan. “But I don’t think we should give up on him yet. I was thinking I should go to Pigale, show their pictures, talk to the bouncers, see if I can find the girl he had a dance with, see if the reporter’s story holds up.”

Ashton laughed. “That sounds like a tough assignment for you, an afternoon in a strip bar.”

“I will not rest in my pursuit of public safety,” said Flanagan.

Jack was dog tired by the time he turned the corner to his street. He was thinking of drinking a beer, of microwaving a frozen chicken pot pie he had in his freezer and going to sleep. He glanced up at his three-storey brick apartment building from across the street and froze in his tracks. A flashlight beam was playing against the window of his apartment. He stood stock-still and stared, and then saw it again. The inside of the window briefly lit up.

Even though it was dark, he suddenly felt exposed standing in the open. On the other side of the street was a 1960s apartment building, with a covered parking area making up the first floor. He backed into its shadows, crouched behind a car and watched his building.

It took some doing, but Balfour eventually got the number he was looking for.

First he had to write some code to sort all the numbers by signal strength winnowing by the range, which left him with 1,341 matches.

He wished that he had access to the programs the counter-terrorism boys used, instead of having to sit here scratching his head, trying to create one from scratch, but he knew he would get it if he fooled around long enough.

After he had checked his smaller list, making sure that he hadn’t inadvertently scratched any phones that might be the match, he merged all the databases into one file, then sorted the list by the frequency of each phone’s appearance, so the phones that contacted the same transmission towers as the target phone appeared at the top. It was immediately obvious that the phone at the top of the list was the one he wanted.

The two phones had been together from 6 p.m. the night before, first on Sparks Street in Ottawa, then pinging together at various locations in Hull, then back in Ottawa overnight, at a location in the Byward Market.

Balfour tried the matching number in an online reverse directory, but got nothing, so he connected to a database on his work computer and checked a cell phone directory maintained by CSIS. The number was listed as belonging to the Telegram Ltd., with an address in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

He Googled that, and learned that the Telegram was a newspaper. The phone must belong to the paper’s Ottawa reporter, Balfour guessed. Another search found him the name: Jack Macdonald. A final search gave him Macdonald’s home address. He checked that against the location of the two phones overnight. It matched.

He picked up his phone and messaged those details, then entered Macdonald’s number into the tracking program he had used to find the first BlackBerry. By the time his land line rang, he had located Macdonald’s phone. A little dot was flashing on the middle of the block on Peel Street.

The voice on the phone was to the point.

“Have you got a location on Phone 2?”

“I do,” said Balfour. “Just ran it through the search program. It’s blinking on Peel Street. I’d say the phone is in Macdonald’s apartment.”

“Hm,” said the voice. “I don’t think so. I’ve got a team there now and there’s no sign of Macdonald or his phone in the apartment or in his car.”

Balfour sat up in his chair.

“Well, I don’t know why,” he said. “I’ve got it showing up right on Peel Street.”

“Well, he’s not there,” said the voice. “It’s a small apartment and my boys know how to search a place. There’s no way the phone is there.”

“Just a second,” said Balfour.

He laid the tracking map over the Google map of the neighbourhood, and zoomed in. The dot was blinking on Peel Street, but not on 88 Peel Street. It was blinking across the street. He clicked on Satellite View, and zoomed in on the roof of the building, then hit street view, and looked at it from street level.

“Okay,” he said, “I think I’ve got it figured out. It looks like he’s actually across the street, at 85 Peel, a four-storey apartment building with parking on the first floor. I don’t know why he would be there. Is his car parked there?”

“Hold on,” said the voice, and Balfour heard him talking into another phone.

“Okay,” he said, back on the line. “I’ve told my team that he’s likely across the street and they’re going to go look for him there. How long would it take you to load a tracker for this phone onto my BlackBerry?”

“Um, about a half an hour,” said Balfour. “You’d have to download it and reboot your Berry.”

“I can’t do that now,” said the voice. “How about you stay on the line and let me know if that dot moves?”

“Roger that,” said Balfour. “Can do.”