The Mazovia Legacy (35 page)

“Sergeant Morier, would you mind if I had a word privately with our operative here?” Rawson said. “Just for a moment?”

Morier seemed relieved. He nodded and walked over to an unmarked car, where he sat down in relative comfort and warmth.

“I'm nobody's operative, Rawson,” Delaney said.

“That's not how I understand it,” Rawson said.

“Well, you've got it wrong. Hilferty had that wrong from the start.”

“I'm sorry to say that Hilferty is dead.” Rawson waited to see what effect this news would have.

“If he's dead that's because he was out of his league,” Delaney said. “I don't give a damn about Hilferty.”

“That is a very hard thing to say about someone you worked with so closely on this, Delaney.”

“I wasn't working closely with anyone,” Delaney said.

“Well then, we're going to have to sort all of this out very, very quickly,” Rawson said. “Just who was working for whom and your own involvement, and so forth. Because, as I hardly need to remind you, we have two bodies in the woods across that lake, plus one of my agents dead a few kilometres down the road, and a French agent lying beside him. We have a whole raft of very unhappy and suspicious SQ officers and some very unhappy people over in France. We're going to have to sort out people's allegiances very quickly here, Delaney, or it could get even more complicated than it presently is. If you see what I mean.”

“You mean you've got to decide how to save your ass in this fiasco,” Delaney said.

“Yours is the one very much on the line just now, I'm afraid,” Rawson said. “There is a world of difference to those people standing over there near those cars if we have a CSIS operation gone wrong and an operative offside, as opposed to simply having a journalist wandering around the backwoods of Quebec carrying guns.”

“And what about Vatican agents carrying guns and killing Canadians on Canadian soil?” Delaney said.

“Will that be your position, Delaney? Vatican? I think we're going to be calling it rogue elements from Polish State Security. From where we sit.”

“That would be convenient,” Delaney said in disgust.

“Well, yes, it would. Sometimes, if we're very lucky, a certain scenario can be more helpful than others in matters of diplomacy and international affairs. You've been around long enough to know that as well as I do.”

“Helpful but not true.”

“We're going to play it the way we see it, Delaney.”

“More convenient for you if it's rogue Poles, and . . . let's see how you'll play it, Communist rogue Poles to boot, than if it's friendly agents, so-called, from the Vatican. Is that how you're going to play it?”

“We are going to play it the way we see it,” Rawson said again. “In Canada's best interests. At least for public consumption. Other aspects of this of course we'll have to deal with a lot more discreetly. If you're right about who that dead man is in there. But we will deal with all aspects of this, have no fear of that.”

“In the best interests of your pathetic little security service,” Delaney said. “And in the interest of future relations with the Vatican. And maybe even for a nice little outcome in the Polish election. Walesa's people will be very grateful to the government of Canada for some fresh dirt on the Communist side about now, wouldn't they? The Vatican will be too. You get an awful lot just by keeping the lid on an inconvenient little killing or two.”

“We've lost one of our own people in this, Delaney,” Rawson said. “Remember that. On what as far as I can gather here this afternoon has been nothing more than a wild goose chase of some kind.”

Delaney didn't try to explain what he himself had lost, with Natalia dead. Nor did he try to guess how much Rawson might actually know about what had been going on.

“I would think losing one of your own agents would be enough to outweigh any diplomatic niceties in this, Rawson,” Delaney said. “Depending on who killed him.”

“I'm not sure what you mean by that, Delaney.”

“Really? That guy lying dead out there tried to kill Natalia and me. And his partner killed Natalia. I suppose it would be terribly inconvenient, diplomatically inconvenient, if we were to discover that one of those guys also killed your man Hilferty.”

“You're naïve, Delaney,” Rawson said. “For a journalist of your reputation. To think that anything like that would ever get dealt with publicly. Even if it turned out to be true.”

They stood contemplating each other's options. “You can come onside or not, Delaney,” Rawson said finally. “It's as you wish. Either you're an operative, or perhaps we would now just call you an informant, a bad one, an amateur who fouled up badly on our behalf, or you're a journalist. But very much a freelancer. As in having no visible means of CSIS support. The outcome in your case will be very different, as you can imagine.”

“The outcome will be very different in your case, too, Rawson, if the real story gets out about who's killing whom in this. Which country's agents are operating where. And about some new operational procedures I've observed among certain CSIS agents lately.”

“Oh, I don't think you'll be writing any stories about this one, Delaney,” Rawson said. “I'm betting that when you've thought it over very carefully this is one you'll decide to help us keep off the record, as you people like to say. One you'll decide to let us handle. When you see what you're risking.”

Rawson stood and waited for Delaney to respond. Light snow fell steadily. It gathered on their shoulders. Police officers moved around the parking lot. Radios crackled from the open doors of cars parked here and there. All of the talk and the activity had distracted Delaney. But he now began to think again of Natalia lying under a blanket of snow out in the woods.

He thought suddenly of what had been stolen from her that afternoon. He wondered where the gold chalice she had paid for so dearly might be now. He thought also of all the bars of gold still likely lying in the cellar of the old stone church. He wondered how much longer that secret could last. He wondered whether the young priest, or the old priest in another church a long drive away, would now be at all inclined to make that secret last.

Delaney realized that he wanted very much for it to last. He wanted those bars of gold to be Natalia's monument. Until he could decide what she would have wanted done and until he could make sure that the right thing was, eventually, done.

Mazovia for Poland

D
elaney back in Montreal, standing quietly near another lake. This one not frozen. It is Beaver Lake on Mount Royal, where he and Natalia once etched infinity signs with their skates.

He came here often now, ever since things had settled a little. It was spring. In Montreal in April the sun is still weak, but strong enough to melt snow and soften ice and give people a hint of what is to come.

As he walked away from the lake, Delaney smelled the rank thawing earth and watched workmen clearing away the last of the snow from sidewalks and terraces in the park. He took in deep bracing drafts of rich spring air as he watched, and loosened his scarf and unbuttoned his coat. His plane ticket to Warsaw, newly purchased that afternoon, was tucked in an inside pocket of that coat, close to his heart.

It was almost time to leave this city again. But Delaney had wanted a last look at what was now his favourite place. He had wanted a last moment to think of Natalia and frozen lakes and infinity signs before setting out to do what must be done. Delaney had been arrested, of course, for form's sake. He had not minded the long ride from SaintJean-de-Mantha to Montreal in the back of a big
Sûreté de Québec
car. It gave him time to rest and think. The two police officers assigned to bring him back said nothing at all to him and little to each other. The silent ride after the events in the woods near the church was a blessing.

They took him to Parthenais Detention Centre for questioning. But CSIS provided him with a lawyer, a sharp young Quebecois who knew precisely what needed to be said. This young man, solemnly on behalf of his masters in Ottawa, gave Delaney the wise, worldly, cynical advice that was required and sat blinking behind gold spectacles as his client was interviewed by the police again and again.

In the end, the version for the police of what had happened in the woods that afternoon sounded very much like the truth. A young woman had been killed. One of her assailants had been killed by CSIS operative Francis Delaney; the other was nowhere to be found. Clearly, it had been a matter of selfdefence, of life and death. Life for Delaney; death for Natalia. The police seemed satisfied with this explanation. CSIS had also put words into appropriate ears, had made the right noises at high levels about agents and informants and the Official Secrets Act, and that had satisfied some others in Quebec. Delaney was to remain available to help various investigators in their work, should he be required. He was to be available for a coroner's inquest. He was to cooperate in every way. And that, for the moment, was that.

In some ways, it was all too simple. A part of Delaney wanted more drama, more complications, and more conflict. A part of him wanted to make a scene, to shock, to shout out that Natalia had been wrongly, foully, coldly murdered and that he would not stand for this, would call down justice from the heavens, would bring everyone down around him in a grand theatrical catharsis of rage and retribution.

But he did not make such a scene, at least not for the Quebec police. He sat quietly with his lawyer and did what he was told until they said, eventually, that he could go. He went along with this because he knew that what needed to be done required far more than staging scenes of impotent rage, and he was willing to wait. As Stanislaw Janovski had known how to wait. As Natalia would have wanted him to wait.

There were other interviews to be endured. Delaney was summoned to Ottawa for debriefings with Rawson and a man called Smithson and some other grim-faced CSIS types. They seemed to think he owed them something now that they had helped him with the police. They expected him to be grateful, to cooperate as best he could. They had no doubt after they helped him that Delaney would be their man, as Hilferty once assured them he had the potential to be.

They pretended to bring him into their confi dence as much as they possibly could, sitting all together in secret briefings in secret Ottawa offices. And Delaney pretended to bring them into his.

There was an elaborate charade of traded information, reconstructed scenarios, conspiracy theories. Occasionally, they even helped each other with their various agendas.

The main CSIS agenda was to find out which agents had been operating on Canadian soil and why. Delaney saw no reason now to hide from them most of what had happened in Quebec, or for that matter in Paris and Rome. They seemed to know most of it anyway. They hungrily lapped up his new information, however, about what had been hidden in the cellar of the old church. A golden chalice, he told them, inlaid with pearls. Catholic Church treasure from the war. Hidden in an old armoire all those years and sought so urgently by competing teams of Polish and Vatican agents, rogue or otherwise. The chalice missing once again. Likely now somewhere in Rome, or en route from Rome to a Polish church where it once belonged. Imagine that.

They were happy to imagine parts of that. But they claimed they could still not buy Delaney's theory of Vatican involvement in the murders of Natalia and Hilferty. They would look into it, of course, but they could not buy such a theory. Poles, they said. Rogue Poles. Not Vatican. Delaney, however, insisted that this was incorrect. Polish agents for Stanislaw's murder; yes, he agreed. For the priest in Lachine who had been Stanislaw's friend; yes, Polish agents. Quite possibly rogue Polish agents. But not for Natalia and Hilferty. No, he said. That was another matter. And further, Delaney insisted, he believed Vatican agents had sat back and watched the kidnapping and mistreatment of Natalia in Rome, if indeed they had not been directly behind whatever Polish faction carried it out. These were his theories and he wanted it to appear he was doing his best to convince his Ottawa interrogators that his theories were correct.

Delaney's agenda was for them to see that he believed these things with all his journalist's heart, because for him not to insist would be seen as something out of character and reason for suspicion. So he stuck to his position, his theories, his accusations, as they expected he would do. He showed outrage at their obstinacy, as they expected him to do. He played his part to the hilt, as they played theirs, and in the end their exchange of information was all very earnest and civilized and off the record and incomplete.

Delaney knew they would never reveal to him who they thought was responsible for Natalia's death, if indeed they did know, and that they would never reveal any suspicions they might have had about the extent of Vatican involvement in the whole affair. As Rawson had explicitly told him that last afternoon near the church: such things are best dealt with in far less public ways. For Delaney, all that was fine. He would find out for himself and needed no CSIS confirmation. He had decided to leave for another time, however, the issue of exactly what he would do to those responsible if ever he found them.

Delaney also knew that CSIS would never share with him any accurate information about whether the Polish side, the Polish sides, were still in the game. Or whether some among the various Polish players had now decided the game was lost and that the treasure all sides had been seeking was beyond reach. Delaney's CSIS handlers would only say to him that, yes, continued covert Polish activity must always be considered a possibility. One must be watchful, of course.They would keep him informed. Of course.

He had asked them about such things, not because he expected the truth, but because his handlers would have wondered why he did not ask. He knew he would be very much on his own in this when he continued it, and he expected no help from CSIS.This task, he knew, was now his alone to carry out.

The CSIS men had feigned outrage of their own that Hilferty had given Delaney a gun, that Hilferty's surveillance methods had been irregular, that he had gone far beyond his mandate, that he had put the good name of Canada's security service at risk at home and overseas. For them not to be outraged would under other circumstances have raised suspicions in a journalist's heart. They knew this very well. So, they said piously, if Hilferty had not been killed he would have had some explaining to do about his procedures. This is not the way things are normally done in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, they said, and Delaney should have no illusions about that. None.

Delaney had no illusions. He simply wanted them to relax, to think that he was chastened, heartbroken, glad to be done with it and, above all, willing to remain silent. He wanted them to harbour no suspicion that the story was still not fully told, that perhaps something else lay hidden in an old Quebec church, that Delaney had decided to get it to the right people in Poland once he could decide who the right people actually were. He wanted his supposed handlers to harbour no suspicion that once that first job was finished he would set about finding who had killed Natalia and that there would be much more to this saga yet.

And so he signed their little oaths of secrecy and their other scraps of legalese, and he agreed that this was no matter for the media. He gave them no reason at all for unease. And they seemed, as far as he was able to determine, content. A terribly nasty complex business, they said. Such troubled times we live in. Thank-you for your help, they said, but your part in this is finished. Leave it now to the professionals and the diplomats. If only because, they ever so politely warned, the legal consequences, the career consequences, the various other consequences for not doing so would be severe.

There had been the funeral to get through.This was a scene much more difficult to play.

They buried Natalia in Côte des Neiges Cemetery, near her uncle. Gustavo, the Chilean refugee social-worker soccer-player ladies' man, had been helpful with the arrangements. As had some of Natalia's other colleagues from work.

They stood apart from him during the service, leaving him alone. A few of them stole looks in his direction, wondering about this lover Natalia had never told any of them about. Delaney had no idea what they knew about the circumstances of her death or even who had told them she was dead. But they never asked him what had happened, never pried.

CSIS sent two men who watched from a distance near their car. They nodded at Delaney but he did not nod back. The CSIS men studied the small group of mourners for a while and then they left. Delaney very much doubted there were any other agents present. But you could never really tell. He understood that now.

O'Keefe had wanted to come along to give Delaney moral support. O'Keefe had offered support in any number of ways after he was told that Natalia had been killed. But Delaney decided he would not involve his friend in any of this anymore. O'Keefe had been dragged far enough into danger and difficulty already. So Delaney told him very little about what had happened in Saint-Jean-de-Mantha, but promised to tell him more as soon as he possibly could and then declined the offer of company at the funeral. O'Keefe was friend enough and experienced enough to simply accept that and stand clear.

It was a grand spring day, full of sun. There was still a little snow among the headstones but the roads and walkways in the cemetery were dry. The ground was thawing, and when the coffin was lowered into the grave there was some loose moist earth available for those who wanted to throw it in. Delaney threw none in. He stood silently among strangers and thought about Natalia and their time together and what he had lost. But he was not one to grieve in public. There would be plenty of other private time for grieving and for guilt.

Gustavo did the public grieving for them. Gustavo cried great Latin American cries of grief for all of them, his shoulders and his ponytail heaving as he cried, tears streaming down his lined and pockmarked cheeks. After it was over, Gustavo came to Delaney and hugged him roughly and said over and over:
Lo siento, amigo, lo siento. I'm sorry. She was a good woman.
Some of the others came to shake Delaney's hand but didn't seem to know quite what to say. They shook his hand and wiped their tears and said they were sorry and they went away.

Gustavo wanted Delaney to come back to the apartment afterward. He had been the keeper of the keys and he thought Delaney would want a last look around before he began to get rid of Natalia's things. She had truly had no family except Stanislaw, just as she had said. Her work friends would share up her possessions, Gustavo said. Delaney should also take what he wanted.

Against his better judgment, Delaney went. He had not been there since before he and Natalia went to Paris. Nothing at all had changed. Gustavo stood quietly while Delaney had a last look.

“Take something,
amigo,
” Gustavo said. “To remember her by. She was your lady.”

“No, I have what I need,” Delaney said. “I have some things already.
Gracias
.”

He had her suitcase and a few other items that were in his car on the day she was killed. The police had returned them to him after he was released. Passport. Commonplace book. Rosary.Those things would do to remember her by if he could ever bring himself to look at any of them again.

Delaney and Gustavo stood awkwardly together in the warm stillness of the apartment. Delaney had a sense that Gustavo was about to ask what had really happened. But he didn't.

“
Lo siento, amigo
,” Gustavo said. “
Mucho.
” Delaney had to go.

He was amazed once again at the utter reliability of certain priests.

Delaney decided he would go again to Saint-Sauveur to talk to Father Daniel Emile Hippolyte Lessard, perhaps for the last time. He very much needed to know what Father Lessard knew and what the old priest, and his younger
confrère
at the other church, might now be willing to keep secret.