Sussex Drive: A Novel (30 page)
Becky’s hands almost took on a life of their own; they wanted to wring her husband’s neck until he was unconscious and softly compliant on the floor.
“Greg,” she said. She had to ask. “Did Taylor’s death have anything to do with our daughter?” She wasn’t referring to suicide; she knew Greg knew that. She was so far past the posthumous spin touting the young Mountie’s PTSD and his expertise with incendiary devices.
And while she waited for him to speak, Becky admitted, if only to herself, that the alternative theories would be too hard for her to live with and also make it impossible for her to continue living with him.
“Do you think I care about two kids in the bush?” he said. “About an illegitimate bun in the oven?” He stood up and towered. “I am working for a—”
She heard
Ma
emerge from pressed lips like
mother
,
maman
,
ma belle
.
A
T THE PREMIERE OF
Nun from Bucharest
, by the writer-director of
In Bruges
, Lise sagged in her rhinestone- and ruby-barnacled bolero, heavy enough to serve as an in situ workout. Her palms sweated. She sat thigh by thigh with her distant ex-consort in the darkened Paris, a retro art house cinema near Central Park in Manhattan (which they’d entered on a red carpet not her own, to the scent of buttery topping and fresh
merde
from the horse-and-carriage rides). It was the birth of the cerebral movie season, the week before American Thanksgiving.
René’s role was award jailbait: priest, death,
derrière
. There was already an Oscar hiss; he was reputedly a lock for a Best Supporting Actor nod. Advances in the trades were rapturous: “Claude is Cinematic Catnip from Canada,” “René-nian Rhapsody!” And they were in the same row as Benicio del Toro and Penélope Cruz, along with their significant plus-ones, such as Javier Bardem.
Niko sat on René’s other side.
It had been months since Lise had hung, so to speak, with René. Hollywood was all over him and he was stewing about a stack of features, an AMC series. Not only that, but he’d spent months with Niko in the North, Mistassini, last spring, embedded in the Neeposh family, bonding in a complex form of Cree Outward Bound, and running, reading, talking and ruminating. They were both stronger, infuriatingly spiritual, and lean.
The Romanian threat to René hadn’t played out, at least not yet; the Canadian public had adapted to his resignation, almost a year ago, with either a mature detachment or vicarious interest. Lise had just missed him.
Niko had returned to his mother in midsummer, and they’d drifted away from Dr. Pelletier—
pas vraiment un pique-nique
, particularly after Niko learned about the tragic, terrible, gruesome death of Corporal Shymanski last April. But he’d become even closer, to Lise’s surprise, in mutual bereavement, to Martha. Lise was partnering again, reluctantly, with Becky, recovering from a bad barbecue burn, on the next ArtsCAN! Martha tagged along with her mother to Rideau Hall and Niko lurked, listening to her rehearse Greg’s misogynist songs on Glenn Gould’s piano. Afterwards, he’d lead her out, in her black leggings and Juliet blouse, her cumbersome silver cross hanging like a middle breast, to his all-season tent, behind the tennis court.
Martha was around
beaucoup
.
As the final credits started to roll,
Nun from Bucharest
received an ovation like a cannon shot. René and Niko clung; Penélope Cruz’s bodyguard fist-humped with Lise.
The Sony Classics after-party was held twenty blocks north in a Byzantine ghetto at the Met Museum. The guest list ran the gamut, a
méli-mélo
of the Broadway A-list, the LA elite and boring politicos from the Beltway. She met René’s new agent from WME, and his newer manager from wherever, both short, loquacious juice guzzlers. Javier pumped Niko about sleeping naked under the northern lights on stacked spruce boughs.
“You must be so pleased, René,” Lise said. “With how things have turned out.”
“Oui, vraiment. Mais il y a quelque chose qui manque.”
She waited, hopeful.
“I realize that by pushing you into accepting the GG position, I sublimated my own need. Denied my heritage.”
Before she could pursue this further, he left with Niko for a loft in Nolita.
Bye bye
.
Lise sat up when her BlackBerry buzzed. She had to squint to decipher the caller ID. It was the middle of the night back at the Waldorf Tower.
“Prime Minister,” she said.
“Sorry to call so early,” Greg said. “Can we talk?”
“
Certainement
. What’s the matter?” She realized she hadn’t checked in with her secretary, Noel, since the screening of
Nun from Bucharest
.
“I want to prorogue.”
“Prorogue what?” It was late.
“Parliament.”
“Again?”
“Been a year.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“It’s crazy.”
“Nope.”
“What about protocol? You don’t just phone me. That’s not the way it’s done.”
“It is when the Governor General isn’t in the country. As usual.” Prime Curtness.
“I’m back in Ottawa tomorrow.”
“Will you or won’t you?”
“Why do you want to prorogue?”
“This Parliament has run its course.”
“That’s it?”
“Yup.”
She gathered her wits. Documents requested from the government by the media about high-level RCMP involvement in the Kandahar drug and prostitution ring, all supposedly under Freedom of Information, were being withheld by the PMO for national security reasons. Even the embattled Leader of the Opposition wasn’t allowed to take a peek. Then it dawned on her.
“Does this have anything to do with
my
scheduled appearance at the Parliamentary Committee on the Military Police Commission matter in Afghanistan?”
She heard Greg breathing.
“
My
upcoming testimony regarding Corporal Shymanski and the Lieutenant-Colonel?”
“That’s an insult.”
“Does it? Because if I give permission to prorogue, I’d be postponing my own testimony.”
She hung up on him.
Last April, before his car spontaneously combusted, or he committed suicide, Shymanski had phoned her private number. “Your Excellency.” Taylor’s voice was low and shaky.
“Where are you?” She locked her study door.
“I just quit the force.”
“Where are you?”
“Here. I testify in two days.” He paused. “Your Excellency—”
“We have to meet,” she said. “Privately.”
“Where?”
“Niko’s school.” He knew it, of course. He’d sometimes driven Niko there or picked him up, or met him at his locker. “This time tomorrow.”
“D’accord.”
And he was gone.
The next morning, she went unaccompanied; the principal and secretary were used to her dropping in to collect Niko’s homework. So she headed down the hall right into the gymnasium, which was pitch-dark, and hit the switches, but felt his presence. He was right by the door.
Corporal Shymanski was gaunt in his civvies—jeans, a hoodie. If he’d seemed disturbed, haunted, in Afghanistan
four months ago, he was a different person now. He had a frenzied beard and looked older, defensive, and in some way as desperate as he would have had to have been to carry out all the criminal activities he was being accused of. He said to her, “I have been framed.”
“I know.”
“That woman isn’t Aisha.”
“She’s an imposter,” Lise said. Then, “Where’s the real one?”
“I don’t know.”
“We were with her in Panjwai. What happened? Did she even get to Canada?”
“I don’t know. Can you help me?”
“I want to.” She paused. “But what about the Prime Minister’s daughter? Martha?”
“That was a mistake.” His face softened. “But she was so kind. So sweet. I can’t imagine what she must think of me now, with all this—talk.”
“Who abducted you from Rideau Hall?”
He didn’t answer.
“CSIS?”
He shook his head.
“The force?”
He didn’t respond.
“Because of Kandahar?”
“Yes. I’d finally submitted a statement to the Commission about my superiors. I blew the whistle. And later I found out that because Aisha had been found—the real Aisha, in Afghanistan—the RCMP couldn’t keep it covered up. The
Afghans told her she could talk to anybody about what she knew—even Al Jazeera.”
“Mon Dieu.”
“
Oui
, or Iran—Afghanistan needed leverage. They needed to keep
NATO
troops. And she knew a lot. She’d been undercover. And I knew what she knew but had been too scared to talk. For a while.”
Lise shivered.
He handed her an envelope, disc-size. “Find her,” he said. “You’re the only one who can.”
She was suddenly worried for him. “Where are you going, Taylor?”
“I’m meeting Mme. Leggatt now. I’m late.”
“Do you think that’s wise?”
“Yes,” Shymanski said.
“She’s treacherous.”
“She’s also Martha’s mother.”
Lise presumed, then, that this had to do with Martha, perhaps giving her a message.
She hugged him tightly. “
Bonne chance
. I hope it all goes well at the Committee.”
“Moi aussi,”
he said.
“You leave first,” she said.
And he did. She could hear his footsteps going down the hall, and then the bell rang and his distinctive pattern disappeared in the rampage of the boys.
An hour later, he was dead. That was seven months ago.
Of course, Lise tried to hunt her down. The real Lieutenant-Colonel Aisha K. Niko and René were on walkabout and she couldn’t think about anything but her.
But it was tricky. At the reboot of the new session of Parliament back in January, Greg had shuffled the Cabinet. Defence was now Environment,
DFAIT
was now Health, and the Brigadier General had retired to Bogotá, but many deputies were still in place. Lise welcomed them warmly to receptions and ribbon cuttings, then selectively put them on the hot seat.
A long-ago aide-de-camp had been posted to Mannheim, Germany, to handle
CIMIC
communications, so Lise made the annual call on her birthday.
“Were you actually present when Lieutenant-Colonel Aisha K. was reunited with her children?” Lise asked.
“The Lieutenant-Colonel’s children were never at Mannheim,” the aide said. “I heard they were staying with relatives in Quetta.”
Then in early summer, when Lise met privately in a plane hangar with the U.S. president, Barack Obama, on his three-hour Ottawa for Dummies tour, she failed to convey half of what the PCO had instructed her to divulge. Instead, she answered Barack’s barrage about her prorogation decision. He’d heard Rumours, had Concerns. Canada was supposed to be the
democratic
neighbour.
Lise told him everything, everything, he was so disarming, he was her African brother, my God, he was black too.
And then he said he owed her one. A big one.
She’d said, “I need to find an Afghan mom.”