LITMIR.BIZ

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      He too had big news. “The main perpetrator of the attack was arrested this morning and you are virtually the first to know after the RCMP and us, of course. David’s wife and mother haven’t even been told yet.”

      Max was caught short on this, and he looked to Juliette, who wasn’t privy to the conversation.

      “You still there, O’Brien?”

      “Huh? Yeah, yeah.”

      “One of those nutjobs, and a communist to boot.”

      “I thought that model was obsolete.”

      “Guess not. In India, they’re still current, active, and dangerous.”

      Max got the idea.

      “The Canadians are beginning to see the Indians as foot-dragging, so Chief Inspector Dhaliwal goes back to an old list from the eighties and dusts off a few suspects. Hmmm, let’s see, this one’s not too bad. Besides, he lives nearby.”

      Roberge’s sigh came across the line. Obviously, he didn’t share the sense of humour at the other end.

      “The guy confessed he kidnapped the diplomat with two accomplices, and …”

      “Things just get better and better. An asterisk next to the name means he couldn’t withstand electrodes to the nuts. The perfect suspect.”

      “Look, O’Brien, this isn’t The Lonely Planet anymore. This is the end of the road, so you’ve got a choice. Come in quietly and give yourself up without harming your ‘hostage,’ and I’ll take it into account in my report. Otherwise, I throw the book at you.”

      Max hung up the phone and looked at Juliette. “So, now you’re my hostage.”

      “Who turned you in? Patterson?”

      “Probably thinking of your safety.”

      Max spent a long time looking at her.

      “What you’re doing is illegal, you know. If they arrest me, they’ll accuse you of aiding a fugitive.”

      “I’m big enough to know what I’m getting into. No warnings necessary.”

      He shook his head. Boy, she had guts, this young woman.

      “So, where do we go now?”

      He paid no attention to that one. “David sure was lucky finding a girl like you.”

      Juliette, ill at ease, looked away. “I’m just doing what he’d do for me,” she said. “I won’t stop asking questions till I know what happened.”

      Max had on a canvas money-belt filled with American dollars and three passports, all of them maybe “burned” already. He could just see Roberge before the computer juggling aliases and playing with Photoshop to try out different combinations. For the first time since returning from India, Max had the feeling he was an easy target for the police because he was with a woman who wasn’t part of “the scene.” He absolutely needed a place to rest. He stopped next to a phone booth, opened the car door and let his cellphone slip through the grate into a sewer.

      “Have you got a quarter?” he asked Juliette before heading into the booth. His third call was to Mimi.

      36

      During their one-way conversations, of which there were more and more before Pascale left, she’d tried to make him understand the inevitability of fate, karma for the Hindus. Life flowed as a river whose course was fixed forever. There was no point in trying to alter its direction. The current irresistibly brought us back, not into the “right path” as Christians would say, but into the path, for good or ill, that had been set for us since the beginning of time. This fatalism enraged Max, who considered life an obstacle course, a test in the sporting sense, and one for which he had chosen not to obey the rules. But when Philippe died in El Salvador in 1989, he finally understood what Pascale meant. His brother’s political mishap had been a futile attempt to change the progress of things. Philippe had returned to his riverbed, which now took him to Central America, and not just anywhere, but specifically to El Salvador, where the menu presented a military clique working for the big landowners, generals who imposed order and terror with machetes and prohibitive taxes. It was a country run by death squads supported by the U.S. Army. Rebel groups hidden in the mountains stood up to them. Assassination and kidnapping were the signs of a perpetual civil war.

      A hundred thousand dead in ten years, just one more senseless conflagration on a planet that held to them with demonic persistence.

      Max was sure Philippe knew what hell he was getting into and even suspected he chose El Salvador deliberately, maybe because Lebanon, Burma, and other hornets’ nests were unavailable. Philippe had determined the location of his sacrifice the way Joan of Arc had resolutely said to her executioners, “Put the fire and stake here, not over there. It’s too far!” Karma perhaps, but one he had chosen for himself, as if to prove he didn’t care about dying any more than about the latest limo.

      Sure, and why not El Salvador?

      The sacrifice had been calling to him, and sooner or later, he’d have to face it head-on. The generals just had to wait for the right time to intervene. By seeking to provoke the powers that be, Philippe stood himself in front of the bullseye, but he also drew the sympathy of the people of the capital, terrorized by the violence that corrupted the atmosphere in the country, be they of the right or the left. Lo and behold, here was one, at least, who wasn’t barricaded behind bodyguards at every private cocktail party. He dared to drive along the Panamericana without ten motorcycle cops from the Policia Nacional on his tail.

      Béatrice watched this provocation, this ritual of death, with anger she could barely contain. What her husband was doing made no sense. If he wanted to die, okay, but why take his wife down with him? That wasn’t his plan, either. He chose one of her return trips to Montreal — there were lots of them — to open the embassy gates to some peasants and rebels fleeing the death squads, and in a single night transform his office into Noah’s Ark.

      Ottawa was informed, and the minister awakened in the middle of the night. Philippe O’Brien once again. He regretted not having insisted on the Singapore posting instead of giving in on this one, but the wimpy prime minister had wanted to soothe his fallen star, and here was the result.

      The view from Ottawa showed Philippe creating his own personal crisis to draw attention to himself. This was Bonaparte on Elba plotting his return to the French throne. No question that when this ambitious headline-grabber came home after saving these poor people, his twisted family history would be all forgotten, but what the minister of foreign affairs saw as a rebirth, a resurrection, a roaring comeback, was in reality nothing but an uplifted middle finger. Okay, so Philippe had manufactured his own distinct flashpoint, but he’d done it to be able to make a spectacular exit. A gesture out of the ordinary, the kind that made its agent “useful,” no longer a spectator powerless to act on events, but someone with an impact that made him “essential” to his peers. Since Canadian voters had refused his “total commitment,” illiterate peasants — who probably had no idea where Canada even was — would be the beneficiaries of his act of bravery.

      Things unravelled very quickly. While the whole world watched, Philippe negotiated for the lives of the peasants with representatives of the generals. He offered his own for theirs, despite orders to the contrary from Ottawa. But who were they to get in the way of his sacrifice? The authorities weren’t expecting anything like this insane courage. Then there were the television cameras, and the generals were getting to enjoy their new show. They could of course storm the place and kill everyone, including the ambassador, and put an end to the drama. But these morons enjoyed being instant TV anti-stars, bogeymen scaring good suburbanites all across the West.

      Ottawa was in panic mode. What the hell kind of game was this cretin playing? Communications were cut off, naturally. Anyway, Philippe couldn’t care less about their advice, and within a week, the media getting bored with their clinking medals and grandiose uniforms, and their own grand play, the generals

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