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“I think your investigators ended up with the wrong gun and phone, director,” said Pothier. “I think there was a mix-up. This is the right pistol. This is the pistol that you have to send for ballistic testing.”

Zwicker stared at Pothier for a moment as he absorbed what the Mountie was saying. He turned away, shook his head, pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled noisily. He stared down at the gun and BlackBerry. He didn’t make eye contact with the other men.

O’Malley leaned his head close to Zwicker’s. “Wayne. If we get a match, we would have to charge a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with shooting a foreign national on a diplomatic passport. Think about that for a fucking second, would you?”

Pothier cleared his throat. “Director, a charge like that would present very significant challenges to the RCMP, to the office of the minister of public safety and to the prime minister of Canada,” he said. “Very significant challenges.” He fixed Zwicker with a sharp look. “It’s just, uh, not the kind of thing that can happen. You might think I’m just covering my ass here, which I am, but tell me what you think we should do. Tell me the alternative.”

Zwicker didn’t trust himself to speak. He folded his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair.

O’Malley stood up. He took the pistol and BlackBerry from Pothier’s briefcase, walked over and placed them on Zwicker’s desk. He removed the other pistol and cell phone, sat back down and placed them in Pothier’s briefcase. He closed it and rested it at Pothier’s feet.

Pothier kept his eyes on Zwicker. “I can see you don’t like this,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Zwicker. “That’s about right.”

“I don’t blame you. To tell you the truth, I don’t like it too much myself.” He held his hands open, palms up, and shrugged.

“Christ,” said O’Malley. “You two look like a couple of old maids at a priest’s wake. Wayne, get that goddamn bottle of rye out of your desk and pour us all a fucking drink, will ya? Jesus Murphy. None of us shot the goddamned African.”

Casse-Croûte Chantal is a roadside poutine joint in Templeton, a working class French neighbourhood on the edge of Gatineau. When Bouchard arrived, Dupré was already hunched over a small poutine, picking at it with a wooden chip fork. Far from downtown Ottawa, this was the kind of place where neither man was likely to run into anyone they knew. The dining room had a worn linoleum floor, four small booths and a takeout counter. It was busy at suppertime, but by the time Bouchard arrived, the dinner rush was over, and Dupré was the only customer.

Bouchard walked over to Dupré’s table with an evidence bag in his hand.

“I got something for you,” he said, tossing the bag on the table. It landed with a heavy thunk. “It’s a parting gift from Pothier.”

He went to the counter and ordered. When he walked back to the table with a poutine and a coke, the bag was gone.

“So, you’re out,” he said, sitting down.

“I’m out,” said Dupré. “I gave Wheeler my badge this afternoon.”

“What are you, twenty years in?” said Bouchard.

“That’s it,” said Dupré.

“Well, too bad,” said Bouchard. “You didn’t do anything except what we asked you to, and you did it damned well, but there’s nothing we can do. We have to bury this shit.”

“I know,” said Dupré. “I understand that. But I need to make a living.”

Bouchard put his hands up. “I told you not to worry about that,” he said. “I’ve been working on it. There are still some wrinkles to sort out, but we’re almost there.”

Dupré took a bite of poutine and raised his eyebrow. “And?”

Bouchard pulled a business card out of his breast pocket and put it on the table. It was for a Laval lawyer named Henri Savard.

“This is your new lawyer,” he said. “Tomorrow, you are going to Montreal to sit down with him. He will have documents ready for you to sign, first of all hiring him as your lawyer, and second of all, registering you as the sole proprietor of DigiService Information Technology Systems. You will be president. Savard will be secretary. You will both be directors.”

Dupré wiped gravy from his mouth and raised his eyebrows.

“Next month, Via Rail will issue a request for proposals for an information technology security contract, to be granted by Via’s new director of security,” Bouchard said. “Wheeler will see to it that DigiService is the successful applicant.”

“And what will I do for Via Rail?” said Dupré.

“You will submit a bill for $50,000 every month,” said Bouchard. “That’s $600,000 a year. From that, you will make a monthly payment of $2,000 to a subcontractor – I don’t have the name of his firm yet, but Savard will. The rest of the money is for DigiService operations, less Savard’s fees, which should amount to $50,000 a year.”

“That seems like a lot,” said Dupré.

Bouchard shrugged. “He’s going to do a lot. He’ll handle all the paperwork for DigiService, including book-keeping, taxes, all that shit. You can expect to clear about $200,000, after taxes. I’m not an expert on this, but I think Savard can arrange it so that most of it lands in the bank account of your choice, so it’s up to you what you tell the wife. But you better pay attention to the details, because if you run into trouble with Revenue Canada we can’t lift a finger to help you.

“If you need extra help with an operation, an extra pair of boots, you file a contract amendment, Via pays it on a costs-plus basis,” said Bouchard. “Like on this job. Who was the guy who helped you? What did you say his name was?”

Dupré laughed. “I don’t recall telling you. That’s an operational detail.”

Bouchard winked at him and Dupré laughed again. “I like it so far,” he said. “So far, it sounds like a clever setup.”

“Savard will handle all electronic communication between us,” said Bouchard. “He has set up a forwarding service, so every email we send to each other moves through his server, meaning it’s covered by solicitor-client privilege.”

“I like that,” said Dupré.

“I thought you would,” said Bouchard.

“So who’s the subcontractor?” he asked.

“Tim Balfour,” said Bouchard. “He’s been working for me for six months, but I think it would be better at this stage if he works directly for you. He’s at CSIS. He’s the guy who was feeding us the co-ordinates on the BlackBerries. He can do a lot of things already, and I think if you push him, he has the potential to develop. I hope so, because a lot of my plans depend on that. We need, uh, communications intelligence, and if he can’t get it for us we need to find somebody who can.”

Dupré finished his poutine. “I’m very impressed. But, what do you want me to actually do?”

“A lot of things, my friend,” Bouchard said. “You’re going to earn every goddamned sou. All national security operations. Surveillance. Intelligence. Security. Maybe some banking.”

He leaned back in the little booth and a look of pleasure spread across his face.

“You are going to serve your country.”

J
ACK FLEW TO
Toronto, checked into the Royal York, bought himself two nice suits with the credit card Bouchard gave him and, a few days later, moved into a condo high above York Street, with a breathtaking view of Lake Ontario.

Every morning, he donned one of his new suits and made his way to Mowat’s Toronto leadership campaign office, and, following Bouchard’s instructions, kept his eyes open and his mouth shut. He attended important meetings, took notes on his laptop and sent detailed daily accounts to Ottawa.

“You’re a reporter, so report,” Bouchard had told him.

What he didn’t do was explain to anyone what he was doing there.

“I’ll take care of that,” Bouchard had said, and he kept his promise, looking for every opportunity to show, at least to people in the party, that Macdonald was doing crucial work, so it would be less of a shock when he was appointed to the Senate.

“We’ll appoint a hockey player or somebody at the same time, so voters won’t pay attention to your appointment,” he said. “But we don’t want it to look too weird to people on the Hill.”

Every day, Bouchard would call him and he’d close his office door and recite every little thing he had seen or heard, and Bouchard would ask him questions and give him instructions. After a few weeks, he started to give Jack instructions, asked him to call people, pass along messages from him, and advised him to speak up in meetings to tell everyone what Bouchard wanted. And he would coach him, on the phone, regularly, about what to say if someone asked about Sawatski.

“Look like you don’t want to talk about it,” said Bouchard. “Look sad, but not bothered. If they press, tell them you visited him in the hospital, hope he’s getting better. If somebody really presses, say that he was very drunk and, so far as you know, he fell in the damn canal.”

They would practise his lines on the phone. But nobody asked about it until Jack ran into Dave Cochrane at the Drake, and Bouchard’s lines wouldn’t have worked. Jack was leaning against the bar, eyeing some girls, nursing a Grey Goose, waiting for his date, when Cochrane called out to him, a shout of happy surprise, and he turned to see him shambling up, his tie loosened, his shirt half untucked, wearing a big smile. He slapped Jack’s back and they shook hands.

“Hey, you motherfucker,” said Cochrane. “How you doing?” He stepped back and checked out Jack’s suit, head to toe. “Somebody has come up in the world!” he said, and he laughed and slapped Jack’s back again. Jack smiled weakly.

Cochrane hoisted himself on the stool next to Jack and waved to the bartender. “Give me one of whatever this bad motherfucker is having.”

“How you doing, Dave?” said Jack. “You still working for Donahoe?”

“Yes,” he said. “For, what? Another three weeks. Donahoe’s not running again. I just had a job interview up here. Aiming to make some goddamn money.”

“How’d it go?” said Jack.

“You know,” said Cochrane. “Good, I hope. I’m finished in Ottawa. The Mowat boys ...” He made a chopping gesture with his hand.

“No good?” said Jack.

“Not for me,” said Cochrane, and he took a mouthful of his vodka martini. He suddenly looked a little soberer. “Looks like it might be a bit better for you.”

He stood up from his stool so he could stand closer to Jack, elbows on the bar, his face close. Jack leaned back but there was a brick wall behind him.

“I hear you’re in pretty good with the Mowat boys,” Cochrane said. His eyes searched Jack’s face. Whatever he saw in Jack’s blue eyes didn’t seem to trouble him, and he leaned back, licked his lips, looked down, and had another drink of vodka.

“Funny thing,” he said. “The day after you and I talked about those emails, the boss decided he’d had enough, decided he wasn’t going to run for the leadership, was going to pack it in.” He let loose an angry bark of a laugh, and then he raised his glass in a toast. Jack clinked glasses with him and watched him gulp the rest of his drink and call to the bartender for another, slapping the bar and smiling.

“He didn’t tell me until the next day, but I could tell that he had decided,” said Cochrane. “We were in his office on the Hill, meeting with two organizers from here, couple of sharp young Indo dudes, won some municipal elections, had juice at a couple big Mississauga temples. They’re telling him how they can deliver a bunch of riding associations for him. He was having a great time, listening to these hotshots pitch him, kind of buying it, kind of not buying it, having a laugh.

“He was having such a great time, finally running a leadership campaign. We knew Mowat was way ahead, but the boss was having the time of his life.” His drink arrived and he paused to take a decorous sip.

“So my BlackBerry rings,” he said, now addressing the row of bottles behind the bar. “Bouchard calling. I excuse myself and step out to take it. First time he’s called me since Stevens announced, so I figure I should hear what he has to say.”

He pursed his lips and blew a soundless whistle. “As soon as I heard his voice I knew he was calling about those fucking emails. He didn’t mention them to me, but I knew. He said his boss wanted a few minutes with my boss. Wouldn’t say why, but said it was important and wouldn’t take long and sooner would be better for everybody.”

A little more vodka.

“So sure. I set it up. Mowat and Bouchard come in two hours later. Bouchard and I sit in my office while our bosses have a chin wag. Bouchard is friendly, but quiet, then he takes a long call in the hallway. I expected he would maybe banter a bit, try to ferret out a bit of info about our campaign, but then, why would he do that?” He turned to Jack, to see if he was following. “Why would he do that, eh? He knew the boss was done, because he had the emails, eh?”

Cochrane waited for Jack to nod, to show that he was following, then turned his bleary face away. “They come out, friendly with each other, Mowat says hello to me, Bouchard comes back from the hallway, and poor old Jim says goodbye to them. He was cheerful enough, but I’ve worked for him a long time, and I could see it. He was done. Waited until the next day to tell us, but I knew then. Fuck. I think I knew as soon as Bouchard called.”

He frowned deeply, stared at the bar, then tilted his head and knocked back the vodka. His eyes were watering from the liquor when he turned to Jack again. He gripped Jack’s shoulder with his left hand, squeezed Jack’s right hand in his and spoke into his ear.