The High Road (37 page)

Secret Service agents are generally not known for their tolerance when it comes to kidnapping the First Lady of the United States.
Baddeck 1
was barely fifty metres onto the ice when a squadron of snowmobiles, or is it a drift of snowmobiles, was scrambled and in hot pursuit. Fifteen seconds later, both escort choppers were nearly on top of
Baddeck 1
. In the distance, I could see twenty or thirty cameras attached to journalists trying to get some
newsworthy shots of the private presidential visit from beyond the security cordon. How about a renegade MP abducting the First Lady in a hovercraft? Is that newsworthy enough for you?

They didn’t get far. Angus shut her down as soon as he saw the choppers. They hovered directly overhead, kicking up so much snow that all you could see below them was a white cyclone. The pilots eventually understood that the First Lady probably wouldn’t appreciate what the choppers’ downdraft was doing to her hair, so they backed off and landed on the ice fifty metres or so away. The scene and the snow slowly settled.

At first, I wondered where they’d gone. When visibility was restored,
Baddeck 1
was coated, stem to stern, in snow. It blended in with its surroundings very well. I was feeling queasy by this time. What seemed like an eternity later, but was probably just a few seconds, I saw first a mitten and then a frosted head pop up above the windscreen. Angus was not very happy. He disappeared below again and surfaced with the First Lady. She was completely white with snow, and red with rage. By then, the Secret Service in their snowmobiles had surrounded the snowbound hovercraft and were scrambling to “secure” or, more accurately, extract the presidential spouse.

For a semi-intoxicated, snow-encrusted First Lady, she seemed to have reasonable control over the uppercut she threw at the first agent to reach her. She landed it, too.

Had the President not intervened, the Secret Service investigation might still be going on. He lived with the First Lady and had no difficulty understanding how Angus might have been persuaded to take her for a ride in
Baddeck 1
. After
Marine One
lifted off with the President and the chilled First Lady, and the Prime Minister and Bradley Stanton had stomped to their limousine, it had taken Angus, the two Petes, and me an hour to dig out
Baddeck 1
and get her safely back into the boathouse. Angus used a hair dryer on the engine to combat the deleterious effects of melting snow. I had no idea Angus, of all people, knew how to operate a hair dryer.

The Secret Service needed a few hours to tear down their security installations and vacate the property. They didn’t lift a finger to help us dig out the hovercraft. Well, actually, one of them did lift a finger our way as he drove by on a snowmobile. Nice.

“Can I just ask one simple question?” I inquired.

“Do you mean in addition to that one?” said Angus.

“Yes. It’s very straightforward. Not complicated at all,” I said. “What were you thinking?”

Angus paused to look pensive.

“I was thinking just how sorry I felt for that poor woman,” he explained in a serious tone. “She’s a prisoner as surely as an Alcatraz inmate.”

“Well, that’s her lot in life. She’s the First Lady. It comes with the turf.”

“I just didn’t see what harm there was in taking her for a spin about the river.”

“‘A spin about the river?’ Angus, come on. You knew that’s all it was. The First Lady knew that was your intention. I knew you had no nefarious motivations. But the Secret Service is programmed to think that Girl Guide cookies are laced with arsenic and razor blades. That’s how their brains work. And that’s what keeps the President and his family safe.”

Angus stared out the window and said nothing.

“So their reaction when you took off in the hovercraft was as predictable as it was effective,” I said quietly. We sat in silence for a while. Eventually, I stood and walked to the chess table.

“Enough of this, let’s play.”

My cellphone rang. I was in a coma at the time but Lindsay nudged me with enough force to bring me to the surface. It was nice to have her home again, now that the Secret Service had finally vacated the property. I took an additional second or two to focus my bleary eyes on the phone’s screen for the caller ID.

“Muriel, don’t tell me you’re up and about at this hour, it’s still dark outside.”

“It’s nearly 7:30. It’s always dark at this hour in February,” she replied. “And yes, I’m up. I’m over eighty. At this age I don’t sleep in. I can’t afford to miss anything this late in the game.”

“Don’t be talking that way,” I scolded. “You’re going to outlive us all.”

“Not with the gut rot they serve here I won’t. It’s damn hard to screw up Cream of Wheat but somehow they manage to, every day.”

I was fully awake now, at least my head was. My arms, legs, and the rest of my body were still asleep.

“So which side are you on? Are you in favour of Angus abducting the President’s spouse, or opposed?” I asked. “Right now, it’s running two to one in favour.”

“That woman is trouble. I knew it the moment she slithered into the White House,” Muriel declared.

“Well, Angus feels sorry for her.”

“He won’t when he sees the front pages of virtually every U.S. and Canadian Sunday paper. And for pity’s sake, do not turn on CNN.”

After I’d hung up, I revved up my laptop and started browsing newspaper websites, just to indulge my masochistic streak.

Our photographic nemesis, André Fontaine, had hit the jackpot, again. His photo had been syndicated through Canadian Press and had by now appeared in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of newspapers around the country and beyond. Some were in colour, some black and white. But all were big.

André told me later that he’d been stationed on our neighbour’s dock, still within the security cordon. He’d been lying on his stomach with a small table-top tripod and a humongous tele-photo lens. It was just his good fortune that when the maelstrom of snow kicked up by the choppers finally settled, a gift from the Nikon gods revealed itself – a head-on shot at just the perfect angle and elevation. He snapped one perfect photo before the scene was overrun by Secret Service agents, snowmobiles, and helicopters. Amazing photographs get picked up. When CP put it on their photo-wire, it went viral around the world in minutes. One perfect shot.

Whether on the front pages of the
Washington Post
, the
Miami Herald
, the
Globe and Mail
, or the
Ottawa Citizen
, or every fifteen minutes or so on CNN, MSNBC, and CBC Newsworld, Angus was clearly abusing the fifteen-minutes-of-fame rule. There was plenty of video footage of the unauthorized joyride, but it was hard to argue with the power of André’s perfect still. Like most compelling photos, his was simple in its composition. Calling it a head-on shot was really a misnomer. Filling the frame were the heads of Angus McLintock and his co-conspirator, the First Lady, frosted and frantic, poking up above what I knew to be the snow-covered windscreen of
Baddeck 1
. It literally looked as if their decapitated heads had been placed on a snowbank, yet the rage and shock on the First Lady’s face made it all too apparent that she was alive, unhurt, and, well, apoplectic. In comparison, Angus looked like a shocked sheepdog who had run amok in a flour mill. Even in a vacuum, with absolutely no wind or air currents to trouble his tresses, it would still be tough to tame his
hair and beard. So forgive me, but I do not have words to describe what the rotors of two helicopters did to his unique look. Yes, I am a speechwriter by training, accustomed to putting the impossible into words. But I do have my limits so I’ll not even try. Virtually all the media coverage made it clear that Angus had no subversive intentions, but had wilted under the thrill-seeking First Lady’s legendary powers of persuasion. When she explained her version of the unauthorized joyride, she exonerated Angus, and the Secret Service agents holstered their howitzers. There was some talk of recalling the American ambassador to Canada in protest, but cooler heads prevailed. In fact, it was the frozen head of the First Lady that prevailed. Just another day in Angus McLintock’s orbit.

I spent the better part of Sunday, the traditional day of rest, talking Bradley Stanton down from a very high ledge. After about an hour, I succeeded in persuading him that sending a special undercover elite black ops military team to dispatch Angus and me would probably prompt some questions. I’m not absolutely certain his threat wasn’t serious. But a quick and painless death would hardly satisfy his blood lust for vengeance.

He was most upset that there was barely a shred of media coverage of the quite productive and constructive talks between the PM and the President.

“The PM made real progress with the Pres. in a very short time on some thorny issues that have languished for years,” said Bradley. “But there’s no ink on that because idiot Angus and the First Freak went AWOL!”

“Bradley, I know it looks bad right now, but it could have been a lot worse,” I replied.

“Yeah? Please tell me how it could have been worse? Just tell me! I’m serious. I want you to tell me just how this fucking debacle could have been any worse!”

Why I set myself up like that all the time, I will never know.

“Well, uhm, well, the Secret Service could have fired a rocket-propelled grenade and blown up the hovercraft.”

“And just exactly how would that have been worse?”

I had nothing. The conversation cycled through the topic a few more times as eventually the fire in Bradley’s vitriol died down.

“And to make matters worse, the PM and that asshole Coulombe are still duking it out on the Budget,” offered Bradley. “If we weren’t so vulnerable in Quebec, we’d have never put him in Finance.”

“What do you mean, they’re duking it out on the Budget?” I asked.

“Don’t you play fucking coy with me. You know what I’m talking about. You and your hairy beast started all of this, and it’s making my life a living hell.”

Interesting. That was just what I’d wanted to hear. It seemed we might still be alive, despite the First Lady fiasco. Bradley eventually grew tired of fighting and hung up. I unplugged our phone and didn’t dare venture out for the rest of the day. Lindsay’s return home from her Secret Service–imposed exile made cocooning in the boathouse an easy call.

It was odd that caucus would be briefed two days before Cabinet, but the logistics in getting all ministers together in one room outside of the regular etched-in-stone Wednesday morning time defeated the meeting-makers. Plus, to accommodate Angus and his report, that week’s Cabinet meeting was to start an hour early, conflicting with the weekly caucus meeting. The upshot? A special caucus meeting on Monday. Always concerned about controlling the message, Bradley instructed us to hit only the broad strokes of the report at caucus and save the details for the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. He’d also fired off a stern memo to remind the entire caucus that the McLintock Report was highly confidential and any leaky MPs would pay a heavy price if their lips were loose.

On Monday morning, the ribbing started up as soon as Angus and I arrived at the special caucus briefing.

“Want to make some snow angels, Angus?”

“Hope this briefing isn’t going to be one of your snow-jobs, Angus.”

“Hey Angus, you really know how to show a girl a good time.”

“I hear you’ve been snowed under with this report.”

Etc., etc. What sparkling wit. I worried that Angus might just blow if one more ham-handed and futile attempt at humour were lobbed his way. But Angus seemed almost serene. He understood just how important this briefing was and seemed more than willing to suffer the slings and arrows of really bad jokes from backbenchers, most of whom were backbenchers for good reason. He just smiled and nodded as the primitive barbs flew and then died on the ground around him. The ubiquitous frontpage Fontaine photo stared back at us from no fewer than nine newspapers resting on chairs and tables throughout the room.

“Aye, it’s been a dream of mine to be buried alive with the First Lady of the United States. I can now check that off my list,” remarked Angus to a chorus of guffaws.

As expected, no Cabinet ministers attended, so the mood in the room was a little more relaxed than it might have otherwise been. Two lower-ranking PMO staffers were there to monitor and report back to Bradley, but most of the caucus members didn’t even know who they were. I nodded to them when we arrived and they nodded back. The friendly banter continued for about ten minutes to allow a few stragglers to arrive, then, to business.

As planned, I took the podium first as the MPs and a few senators settled and took their seats.