Snow Job (44 page)

A
s of noon on Friday, January 6, the eve of Orthodox Christmas in the Republic of Macedonia, Arthur had not heard from Dordana and Djon. Three days, they had promised — and if anything went awry they were to phone him here, in his assigned hotel on Lake Ohrid. But not a whisper. Five days had passed since that promise.

An ugly scenario haunted him — Arthur Ramsgate Beauchamp, Q.C., who had dealt with some of the most brilliant minds of criminality, had been sucked in by an Albanian grandmaster.
If I fail, I want only thanks for trying
. Arthur had eaten it up like a hungry dog. And now Djon and Dordana were off on a romp with $43,000 of his law firm’s money.

How would he find the strength to face Bully? The jeers of Crumwell and Thiessen? His portrayal in the press as an innocent abroad?

He’d had qualms earlier, certainly at the beginning of the week, as he emptied his account. But those had settled when Djon and Dordana picked him up at nightfall as planned, in her Fiat compact. He’d even slept, a bumpy back-seat slumber as they drove up the winding road to Korça and beyond, his compatriots jabbering gaily away in Albanian.

At dawn, he was dropped off at the Macedonian border, on the shores of Lake Ohrid. He was quizzed by a distrustful immigration official unused to lone Canadian tourists showing up on foot in winter. Arthur’s explanation — he was fulfilling a lifelong dream to see the beauties of the region — felt lame, but he got through.

Macedonia was a small landlocked country of two million, with a large Albanian minority, maybe less corrupt than its neighbour and slightly better off — as symbolized by its working ATMs. And there
was
beauty here, with its mild Mediterranean climate, the beaches and Byzantine churches and cobbled, hilly streets and red-tiled roofs.

His apartment in a lakeside hotel in the old town was clean and spacious, with a balcony overlooking the deep blue lake. Beyond,
distantly, the snowy mountains of Albania. Somewhere over there were Djon and Dordana, enjoying their lucrative joke now that Arthur was out of their hair, out of their country.

He had spent the first few days in Ohrid touring by foot and taxi: its thousand-year-old churches, its castle, museum, Roman ruins, the palatial, peacock-patrolled grounds of the ninth-century Sveti Naum Monastery. But for the last two days it had rained, and he’d rarely ventured out, preferring to pace and fret or surf his TV’s hundred satellite channels.

On his arrival, he’d called Margaret to say he was back on the trail. She was mainstreeting somewhere, crowd noises, horns beeping. The line was bad. A few words of cheer and affection were followed, confusingly, by, “Oh, thank you, they’re lovely. Smell these, Arthur.” Her little joke — someone had given her flowers.

He’d made no mention of DiPalma, and would have hedged had she asked about his health or whereabouts; there was no point upsetting her in the midst of a hectic campaign. He had promised to call her later, but buried under the rubble of growing depression he hadn’t found the strength.

Arthur kept up with Canada and the world on his twenty-inch screen. Aside from the third son’s resurrection, there’d not been a peep from Bhashyistan — all TV and radio services had been knocked off the air, and the national Internet server was down. The BBC was trying to confirm reports of widening unrest, protests, arrests, martial law.

That network also reported an unusual event outside the Bhashyistan embassy in London. Demonstrators, along with a couple of news crews, had witnessed two limousines pull up, a platoon of businessmen hastening in with their briefcases, avoiding shouted questions. It hadn’t taken long to identify them as lawyers and board members of Anglo-Atlantic Energy.

Now, as Arthur quit his pacing and turned up the sound, a BBC expert was speculating as to what seemed obvious to Arthur: Anglo was about to get its hands on the oil reserves of a country in
desperate financial need. A furor was expected. The interloping oil giant was already being widely condemned. The Russian president, Arkady Bulov, had brusquely announced the recall of his ambassador in Igorgrad for consultations.

Though grimly pleased that he could now settle on Anglo-Atlantic as the architect of a scheme of assassination and false incrimination, only one man, Abzal Erzhan, could identify its hirelings who had bundled him into that sedan. High-flying gangsters who’d come from careers as anti-terrorist agents: Arthur liked the irony of that theory. Experts at rendition, at assembling roadside bombs. Still unexplained was why they’d not dropped their kidnappee into the Atlantic Ocean.

The day was waning, the phone waiting, demanding an act of penance. Finally, he gritted his teeth and called the Catholic hospice in Tirana. They took the phone out to the courtyard, where DiPalma, bundled up against the cold, admitted he was working through his third pack of cigarettes that day.

When Arthur confessed to having been played the chump, DiPalma said, “You should never have trusted me.” That seemed sardonic; there was a brittle quality to his voice, edgy, likely brought on by a drug they were feeding him. “Zykoril, it’s a boutique mood elevator only licensed in a few backward countries like Albania. Gets you up faster and higher than top-shelf flake from the Alto Chapare.” Bolivia, Arthur guessed. Maybe he ought not to have been surprised that DiPalma had such familiarity with quality cocaine.

“How are your ribs?”

“Prime and tender.”

“More important, your head?”

“Fucked.”

Arthur was astonished — he’d never heard this good Catholic utter a vulgarity.

When the rain began to slow, he took a pre-dinner stroll through the old town, gaily decorated for the Orthodox Christmas. There was music in the air, sprightly music that weakened his resolve
to nurse his sour mood. Buskers, a violin-accordion duo, a trio with lute, bagpipes, and banjo, a quartet of shivering women in miniskirts setting up amplifier and microphones. Arthur had seen the posters: this resort town was about to host a holiday weekend music festival.

He paused at a travel agency, at a window in which were posted flight schedules from Ohrid with connections to the Americas. He was aching to return to Canada. But he could hardly leave DiPalma behind, in his condition, and it seemed unrealistic to flee the Balkans before alerting authorities in Ottawa — the RCMP, not CSIS, Ray had urged — to the evidence they’d obtained of Abzal’s kidnapping.

Arthur walked down to the strand, gazed out at the boats at anchor, a few yachts among smaller pleasure craft and fishing boats. Distantly, a few sailboats were bending to the wind. A dinghy was idly motoring into the little harbour, with two fishermen in black Greek caps slouched unhappily over their empty catch baskets.

He perched on a low stone wall, pulled out his pipe, watched a bus disgorge festival-goers. Others were pulling in by car. From a nearby café, soulful Balkan folk music. From another, folk-jazz fusion. A television van marked “TV A-1, Skopje” prowled toward the buskers, who hurried to meet it, attracted like birds to a feeder.

Arthur knocked the duff from his pipe, watched the two luckless fishers tie up their dinghy and stroll off in their rainslicks, heads bowed. He knew their pain, had often shared their sense of failure. He wondered if coho were running in Blunder Bay. That’s where he ought to be today, on the
Blunderer
, trolling, doing what he did best.

He made his way up the street to watch the TV A-1 cameras bearing down on the four young women in miniskirts, two of them on flute, one with a two-sided drum, their leader belting out a wailing melody. After a few moments, he felt his foot tapping. Other onlookers were laughing, whooping, clapping in cadence with the beat. It was hard to maintain his comfort blanket of despair.

From behind him, close to his ear: “Nice voice. Nice legs also.” He had a ludicrous delusional moment: Ray DiPalma, fully and mysteriously recovered, had just materialized from the ether. The face, beneath a black Greek fisher’s cap, bore no such resemblance, but was oddly familiar. As was that of his companion, who had also pulled in on that dinghy.

“Like road sign say, sorry for delay. But mission accomplish.” Djon Bajramovic wiped his thick glasses, set them on his face, grinning. His prize moustache was gone. A five-day stubble of beard. “Please now you meet famous revolutionary comrade.”

Abzal Erzhan’s hug took Arthur’s breath away.

“Y
our town has a great future, Mayor.” Charley Thiessen gathered it hadn’t had a great past: your basic Main Street, not even a mall. But now it had a shiny new ethanol plant, thanks to the federal green initiative program. “Yessir, boom times ahead.”

“Ay-yep,” said the mayor, a man of few words, almost none.

“There’s gold in them thar hills, eh, pardner? Liquid gold.” The snow-covered cornfields, he meant.

“Ay-yep.”

Charley had just cut the ribbon, the exclamation point to the day’s festivities, which included a tour of the plant and a peppy speech while freezing his ass on a makeshift outdoors stage. But they ate it up, the good humble folk of this Ontario town whose name he kept forgetting.

Later in the day, he was off down to Middlesex County to help the local M.P. open a federal office building. Tomorrow, a stopover in Ottawa for a cabinet briefing, then back to his own riding, where last week he’d whomped the local lacklustre Liberal in an all-candidates debate. He’d got the crowd roaring with a string of lawyer jokes — people love a guy who can make fun of his own profession.

Also coming home for the weekend was his eighteen-year-old Greenpeacer, who was threatening not to vote for him. He expected
a lecture about biofuels, about crops being diverted to fuel overpowered cars, all of which was somehow connected to starving people in Africa and food riots and God knows what.

It was impossible to argue with Joy; she didn’t see reason. Global warming had brought the earth to the tipping point, she said — but look at the evidence, it was the coldest winter in years. No ice caps were melting here, snow was blowing relentlessly, almost a blizzard.

Despite the weather, despite the defecting daughter, he was in much better fettle than a couple of weeks ago, after the calamity with that doper from the Left Coast. As of this seventh day of a new year, there hadn’t been a hint of fallout.

Politically too, things weren’t looking too bad, thanks to Operation Snow Job and the demolition of the enemy’s propaganda machine. All they had left was a clown posting videos on YouTube. Tomorrow’s cabinet briefing was about something called Operation Wolverine, hush-hush, another go at rescuing the Calgary Five, and if that worked Canada might yet stay true to Conservative blue.

“Looks like we’re in for a little weather, Mayor.”

“Ay-yep.”

His driver was urging him to get into the Lincoln van. He’d kept the engine running, thank God.

“Ready, Dog? Turn up them burners. I’m gonna loosen this here rope.”

Dog was standing in the gondola like a zombie, the envelope of the balloon suspended limply above him from a high tree branch. He’d suited up in hockey gear, a helmet, a chest protector, leg pads, a ratty old Canadiens sweater reaching to his knees.

“Give it a burst,” Stoney yelled.

No reaction. This was supposed to be dress rehearsal for next week’s official launch, but it looked like Dog had stage fright,
possibly induced by the presence of the trespassing media in the form of Nelson Forbish, perched on his ATV.

He’d been totally on Stoney’s case, stalking him like some hippo from the wilds of Africa. It had been a mistake whetting Forbish’s appetite about that recorder, a mistake compounded when he’d blurted out it had to do with Arthur Beauchamp.

He stomped over to confront the trespasser. “Official ceremonies are next week. This here preliminary event is closed to the public. We are in camera.”

“After talking to Ernst, I see that I treated your high honours too light, and I’ve come here to apologize. I have a proposition. The
Bleat
is willing to put out a spread on you being West Coast entrepreneur of the year.”