River City (108 page)

“I don’t mean to insult you.”

“No? You’re doing a pretty good job of it.” He could hear her breathing become calmer. “It’ll be me,” she said. “On that part, you just have to trust me.” “I wanted to know. Before I go over there.” “I’ll be watching,” she said. “Maybe I won’t wear my hat.”

“Yeah, it’s the seventies already. Nobody wears hats anymore. You should change your style.”

Touton smiled as he crossed the street, knowing that commentators on television would be wondering what amused him so much. Other cops standing around looked aggrieved. This one was smiling. He wasn’t wearing his hat, so his face was easy to see on the cameras, and that must mean something. One analyst mentioned that he had never seen the captain without his hat. Probably, he suggested, it was a way to help put the kidnappers at ease.

They made the absence of his hat a turning point in the negotiations.

He entered the building. A man spoke to him from behind the door to the first-floor apartment. As if he was reading his mind, or recalling his reputation, the man warned, “We got a gun on Cross. Try anything, he’s dead—like that.” The young fellow snapped his fingers, and Touton decided to forgo any heroics. On his rickety legs, he’d need better odds than those he was facing now.

“Don’t put ideas into my head. We just want to get through this negotiation. I understand it’s hard. But you brought me in here because you figured I’d be a stand-up guy to talk to, right?”

“We want to stick it to the Mounties. Keep them out of the picture.”

The comment made Touton chuckle. “You’re doing a good job. They’re peeved. Us Montreal guys, we appreciate it. We’ve had a few bad turns during this manhunt. We haven’t come across so well. So it’s nice to look like we can walk and talk at the same time.”

The man inside also chuckled. Then he asked, “What did you want to tell me that you couldn’t tell the lawyer, Mergler?”

“Bernie’s a good guy. Trust him. Some secrets are secret though, you know what I mean?”

The man said he didn’t have any idea what Touton meant.

“Getting you on a plane to Cuba has been authorized by the prime minister of Canada. He talked to Castro himself to make it all happen.”

“That’s nice if it’s true. How do I trust you? How do I trust him?”

Touton realized the man was sitting on the floor, so he slumped down as well. There were three apartments in the building, two of which were above them. For more than a day, a cop had been residing on the top floor, with a make-believe wife, in a place borrowed from a school crossing guard.

“In the course of this investigation,” Touton said, “we found something out about our Mr. Trudeau. About a lot of people, if it comes down to that. But we’ve got something on him, that if it comes out, he loses the next election.”

“Oh yeah? What?” This was unexpected, a carrot tossed into the stew.

“I can’t tell you that,” Touton said. “The truth is, I don’t know. But somebody who does know will talk if Trudeau doesn’t keep his word to you guys, if he doesn’t make the flight to Cuba happen. He’s aware of the situation. He knows it’ll all come out if he lets us down. Trust me. He doesn’t want the embarrassment.” The policeman adjusted his sitting position, becoming more comfortable, which was meant to indicate to the man inside that he was being more trusting himself. “Anyway, you should understand this: he wants you out of the country. He doesn’t need any of you becoming martyrs—that’ll only make his problems worse. He doesn’t want you sitting in jail cells, either, becoming folk heroes. We don’t want people writing songs about you. You want to know why you’re going to Cuba? Because you’re holding James Cross? Don’t believe that. Hey, if you were just a gang of bank robbers who’d taken a hostage and it was just you and me, I’d have raided by now. I’d have smashed the door down and taken my chances. ‘Fuck the dynamite,’ that’s what I would say. ‘Just go get ‘em.’”

“Try it,” the man inside threatened.

“I won’t,” Touton thrust back, commando-style, hard and fast, as he was trained to do—only not with his fists this time, but with words. “Why won’t I? Because nobody wants another killing, and because I have my orders. We all do. Nobody wants you dead, sir, and nobody wants you in prison and nobody wants you in the system. You think going to Cuba is your best answer? Guess what? It’s everybody’s best answer for you.”

The man inside was quiet awhile, but Touton could tell that he was thinking. Something told him that more than one person had been listening. Probably the terrorists were exchanging hand signals, and Touton was vaguely tempted again, because he knew that they would have taken their fingers off their triggers. But that was an old self speaking to him, powered by adrenaline and instinct. Given the state of his knees, and his present position down on the floor, in any assault he’d need about thirty to forty seconds just to stand up. Some charge that would be.

Then the guy stipulated what he had been waiting to hear. “Send Mergler back and we’ll work it out. Listen, I don’t want a bunch of Mounties escorting us. That would be humiliating. City cops. Only.”

“It’ll be mostly city cops,” Touton promised. “We’ll escort you through the streets. A Mountie or two, and some SQ will ride along. Please, don’t say that can’t happen, because, to tell the truth, I’ve got enough headaches right now without going through that discussion with them.”

“One more thing,” the man inside said, without disputing what he was told. “How come there’s all those plainclothes cops outside, walking around with red armbands?”

“Two reasons,” Touton told him. “In case of a shootout, they want to be able to identify who’s a terrorist and who’s a cop. If I were you, I’d wear a red armband. You’ll be safer.”

“What’s the other reason?”

“They want to scare you, because the truth is, nobody wants a shootout. So far, that’s worked.”

“I’m not scared,” the man said, but who on this earth would believe him? “I am,” Touton told him.

The man inside locked the door again, and Armand Touton pushed himself
up to his feet, groaning a little from the pain in his legs. Then he went outside and crossed the street.

TV commentators noted that he was limping on the way back. One suggested that the legendary captain of the Night Patrol might be showing his age, and he and his partner beside him chuckled into their microphones over their mean zinger.

Back in the command truck, Touton told the go-between, “Bernie. Good man. Go. Do your lawyer thing. End this.”

In Canada, only the queen of England on an official royal visit could command such a motorcade. Marc drove his relic of a Chrysler, the one in which Cross had been kidnapped, his foot heavy on the gas. A replacement car was driven along behind in case his broke down. Twenty-two motorcycles and eight cars raced through Montreal towards the island named after Champlain’s child bride, Île Ste.-Hélène. Streets along the route were closed to traffic, with cops waving the entourage through the intersections. Thanks to live television coverage on every channel, the route was lined with the curious, as if for a parade. In this instance, rather than welcoming a monarch, they were watching kidnappers flee the country. Tens of thousands stared as they sped to the makeshift Cuban consulate at sixty miles an hour, while the rest of the country watched their history on television.

The process seemed very Canadian—polite, without drama or fanfare. In the former Canadian Pavilion from Expo 67, temporarily designated as Cuban soil, the kidnappers surrendered their weapons and Cross was taken into Cuban custody. He said goodbye to none of them, and shook only Cuban and British hands, no others. The terrorists waited, then were joined by Lanctôt’s wife and child. She was close to giving birth, so a physician would accompany them on the flight in the event that a delivery became necessary.

They enjoyed, and had negotiated to assure, TV coverage. The cameras helped guarantee their safety and, they believed, helped advance their cause throughout the world. That satisfaction took a bad turn. They deposited
suitcases in the trunk of Marc’s rickety Chrysler, and now could not open it. “The damn lid’s jammed.” Rather than make a spectacle of themselves on international TV, trying to break into their own car and possibly failing, they abandoned most of their belongings. What they had taken in the back seat, however, across a pair of their laps, was the big old television they watched so intently over the previous sixty days, and they lugged that into the Cuban embassy, all set for passage. They would not be arriving in the Caribbean without a few trappings of home. They would bring what was most important, for sure. Their revolutionary gear. A few books. Their TV.

Once they were in the hands of the Cubans, they were off the airwaves. For posterity, and for broadcasts later that evening, film of their departure was made, but live coverage had been concluded. A military Sikorsky helicopter took them to the city’s airport, where, as they waited on the tarmac, they horsed around a little. They boarded their aircraft, a Canadian Forces CC-106 Yukon, fitted out to transport dignitaries, in silence.

Inside, they briefly broke the tension.

“Hey! We’re going in style.”

“Like princes.”

“Like presidents.”

“Like kings and prime ministers.”

“Like queens.”

“Like revolutionary heroes.”

Were they that? They didn’t know.

Their plane—Military Flight 602—rose unobserved into the sky above the city of Montreal, and above the province of Quebec, and as the land fell away, they soared among the sparse clouds, pleased that they had killed no one, but also that they had saved themselves. The men and women wondered about the others, those who killed Laporte, guessing that they were observing their escape on television, for they did not know that their friends were hiding out in a tunnel dug beneath a barn thirty miles from the city. From there, they’d be flushed a few days after Christmas to face a rowdy trial and imprisonment. Those who had not killed continued to rise above the land and took succour in hopes they’d see those friends again, or any friends, and those with window
seats noticed that, below them, the higher landforms had whitened with the advent of winter.

They cleared Quebec skies, heading south.

Onboard, C.T. was thoughtful. His girlfriend slept fitfully in the cradle of his arms. Whenever she awoke, she looked around, then wept, then curled more closely into him again. She was already missing her homeland, already dismayed by exile.

He had learned some things, he knew. He had learned that he was no terrorist. Che, his hero, had talked about becoming a killing machine, but he wasn’t one and wanted no part of becoming one. He told Cross one time that they planned to let him go after a few days of captivity, and his cell would have done so, except that Laporte was kidnapped, too, and that changed everything. Then Laporte was murdered, and that changed everything again. Che had never talked about what to do when you discover that you’re not a killing machine, and didn’t want to become one, either.

So, in the end, they weren’t killers. Consequently, neither were they revolutionaries. They committed a revolutionary act and affected history. But they discovered other dimensions that embodied who they were, and they were not people who killed middle-aged British diplomats, no matter what their cause. C.T. had seen his colleagues change during the action. Jacques grew into their leader, directing that Cross not die. That made him their leader, because they were thinking the same way, yet Jacques had the courage to state it, to instruct the others accordingly. Initially, Marc was their leader. He was ten years older than anyone else, they had followed him, but now Marc followed the others and did as they decreed. Yves, who was passing himself off as Pierre Simard and held a passport in that name, was the only one among them from the upper classes. He embraced his new life, his new identity, but he was not a killing machine, either. None of them were made of that material. Had they been, the only man to die in the previous months would not have been a fellow Quebecer, while the English captive walked free. Under the pressure of the
time, they found their true selves, and uncovered strength, and fortitude, and the substance and supremacy of their own humanity, their own care for life. They uncovered the courage to follow through on a newly determined objection to violence.

Which surprised them all. Astonished them all.

In committing a violent act, they discovered themselves to be peaceful. That irony was almost overpowering for C.T. He was sad, too.

They had made history, in a way. They’d stirred the pot. He worried that they were now celebrities after a fashion, that books would be written, documentaries filmed, and he would probably be identified as the stutterer, the young one who tripped over his own words. People might laugh at how he was portrayed. He’d been through a lot, though, more than anyone knew, including those who went through it with him, even Louise. He helped keep her together, as she was wired pretty tightly. He supported Jacques against Marc and helped Yves from getting too depressed, from bolting, as Yves was inclined that way. He kept Marc feeling that he looked up to him, because Marc needed that, having thrown away so much to do this action, not least of all his wife and family. So C.T. knew he had contributed, and as the youngest among them he was not finishing this episode as the weakest, or the least valuable. In the end, he was stronger than when he began. Throughout the two months, he continued to read the same books that so influenced his life, so opened his mind to injustice in the world and to change. He again read Che, Mao, Pierre Vallières, sometimes out loud to Cross, but increasingly his analysis was different, the context altered. He began picking holes in the philosophy. Mao maintained that violence created a necessary repression by the government. Repression instigated an uprising among the people. And C.T., having hours to kill during which he merely watched over Cross and mused about things, thought,
The role of the revolutionary is to make the people suffer so that they will rise up. We did that. People are suffering under the War Measures Act, and we brought that on. But when you break it down, doesn’t that mean that the role of the revolutionary is to be an enemy of the people? If the revolutionary is to be an enemy of the people … then I’m an enemy to my own people. When did I sign up for that?