Face/Mask (25 page)

A stupid Department Head,
he grunted, as he sipped his wine.
With a very active traitor living under his roof.

Sévigny had wanted to laugh out loud when he’d read the report that named Janus as the informer against Pizzi, despite a good deal of trouble on the man’s part to remain anonymous. His years on the force had taught him that people often had motivations that weren’t easily discernible. The most invasive investigative procedures couldn’t uncover all the secrets that lay in a man’s heart. Yet, after so many years in different police functions, Sévigny never ceased to be surprised by some of the things that people did to each other.

Allen Janus was an enigma. For reasons that were far from obvious he’d had his wife’s uncle arrested. Yet, there he’d been that night at the police station, looking heartsick over the man’s fate. Janus’s distress seemed as authentic as was his surprise at the nature of the charges. A change of heart, perhaps? A case of informer’s remorse?

And if all that hadn’t been surprising enough, this morning Sévigny received a report that Janus had been spotted at the
Café Liban
. What was that all about? And what was the link between Janus’s new Muslim friends and his turning on his wife’s uncle? It was all puzzling, especially since there was nothing in Janus’s profile to suggest his interest in rabble-rousing of any kind, let-alone sympathies toward the Muslim population.

Sévigny’s stable of informers would help him solve this riddle. None of them was more reliable than Walid Kadri.

Now there’s a double-crosser who is truly worthy of the name
.
If Janus went to see him, I’ll expect a full report in short order.

As far as Sévigny was concerned, Walid Kadri could usually be counted on to tell him the truth. The problem was weeding out the truth from among all the lies and exaggerations that it came wrapped up in.

He took a final sip of his wine and then turned off the music, before shuffling to the kitchen where he placed his glass in the sink. He coughed once, and then several times in a row, holding on to the sink so he wouldn’t fall. When the spasms subsided he tried to take a deep breath, then leaned over to spit into the sink. He was surprised to see a reddish tinge to his phlegm, but assumed that it was from all the red wine he’d drunk.

He opened the tap to wash it down the drain and then headed for his bedroom. He’d need a good night’s sleep and only the mildest of hangovers if he were to be up to the challenge of dealing with Kadri.

June 20, 2031:

Sévigny had run the RCMP’s Intelligence Division in Laval since 2028, back when he was a “real cop” and not just a boss, as some of his former colleagues liked to tell him. His main job then was finding Muslims who weren’t so full of hatred against the administration that they couldn’t be bought off to snitch on their compatriots.

There were many young men and women in Laval who were ready to help the RCMP investigate any potential radicals in their community. There were a number of reasons for them to betray their co-religionists, including the fact that some were simply fed up with being associated with terrorism.

Sévigny never cared to look too deeply into their motivations, as long as their information proved reliable. Two to three years was considered the limit of a snitch’s optimal usefulness. Sometimes these snitches changed their minds, sometimes they were found out by the people they worked against. Sometimes they just ran out of useful information to divulge.    

But in his third year of recruiting informants Sévigny came across a man who, eight years later, was still providing usable intelligence, with seemingly no end in sight. At the time the man had been a simple thief who was caught trying to pawn electronic equipment that had disappeared from a warehouse in Laval.

Sévigny was constantly on the lookout for new “talent” among the daily arrests. He made it a point to review every one of the dozens of police reports that were filed on the island each day. Sometimes he was looking for a particular pattern of criminal activity, or some specific ability. In the case of Walid Kadri what caught his eye was the family the man belonged to.

His cousin, Selim, had languished on death row for seven years, the second person ordered executed in Canada since the death penalty was re-instituted in 2023. His crime, a car bomb set off outside Montreal's City Hall that killed four people, had not earned the man any sympathy from the court, nor from the public. Kadri's older brother, Fayez, was serving a fifteen-year term for being an accessory after the fact in that bombing. Fayez had testified for the prosecution against Selim, which was all that saved him from the same fate as his cousin.

But the youngest Kadri was more interested in making money quickly than in any kind of terrorism. His entrepreneurial mindset, as well as his family connections made him a perfect candidate to be the kind of long-term informer that Sévigny was looking for.

The day that Kadri was arrested with a van full of sound equipment Sévigny went down to the holding cells, not certain what he would find. He saw that Kadri was in his early forties, and wore a European-style white suit with a dark blue open-necked shirt. His carefully cut hair, despite being messed up by the arresting officers, showed that he favoured the same Parisian styles as did many men of Lebanese origin.

He sat in a small cell with four other detainees, but he stood out from the group. It was not just the way he was dressed, it was the expression of total insouciance with which he looked at Sévigny. The policeman would have thought that it was he who was in a cage and Kadri the one looking him over with barely feigned indifference.

This one’s too full of himself
.
That’ll just make him easier to turn
.

He asked that Kadri be transferred to an interview room and brought some cold juice to drink, and ordered that his handcuffs be removed. Sévigny then left the station and went for a late supper by himself, letting Kadri have some time alone to wonder exactly what he was in for.

Despite being “known” to the police for a long time, this was Kadri’s first arrest. His expression indicated that he wasn’t overly-concerned about his situation, but outward expressions were sometimes deceiving. The report specified that Kadri was a natural-born citizen, so he didn’t face potential deportation. But maybe he wasn’t looking forward to spending the rest of his life shuttling between a federal penitentiary and the outdoor jail that was Laval.

There were a number of carrots that could be dangled in front of him in order to get him to work for Sévigny, if he was somebody for whom the stick was not an effective method of persuasion.

After his meal Sévigny spent some time in his office going through the interminable paperwork that was an integral part of his job. By the time he made his way to the interview room Kadri had been sitting alone with his thoughts for over four hours. When he entered Kadri looked expectantly toward him. A thin layer of sweat had formed on his upper lip. Sévigny was gratified to see that the man looked less nonchalant than he had earlier in the cells.

“
J’ai besoin d’aller à la toilette
,” Kadri blurted out as Sévigny sat down.

“I'm sorry?”

“
La toilette
. A bathroom, please.”

“I speak French,
Monsieur
Kadri. Your request was simply unexpected.”

“Unexpected? I was arrested over eight hours ago, and that very refreshing juice they gave me is threatening to spill all over your floor. May I go to the bathroom, please?”

Sévigny wondered if he’d get further with this man by being a hard-ass, or by showing him some courtesy. He chose the latter.

“Of course,” Sévigny said as he stood back up and invited Kadri to do the same. “Please come this way.”

The look of gratitude on Kadri’s face showed that his need had been real and very urgent, unless the man was an excellent actor.

More flies with honey.

Chapter ten

From the McGill University Symposium on Ozone Degradation, Nov. 12, 2037: “
Constant ozone depletion over the past forty years has had major effects, as the amount of ultraviolet light from the sun that reaches the Earth has increased exponentially... For every 1% of the ozone layer that was depleted, 2% more UV-B was able to reach the surface of the planet, increasing the rate of skin cancer in the population....The environment has also been negatively affected by ozone depletion. The life cycles of plants have changed, disrupting the food chain. Effects on animals have been severe... Oceans have been hit hard as well. The most basic microscopic organisms such as plankton have not been able to survive; as a result all of the other animals that are above plankton in the food chain have begun to die out. Other ecosystems such as forests and deserts have also been irreparably harmed. The planet’s climate has also been affected by depletion of the ozone layer. Wind patterns have changed, resulting in climatic changes throughout the world.”

September 23, 2039:
    

After his visit to the
Café Liban
Janus began to worry that every stranger who looked in his direction was an RCMP officer come to arrest him, and that every call on his com was the Minister advising him that he’d just been fired. In his office he was unable to concentrate on his work, expecting his door to burst open at any moment.

Terry had cried herself to sleep the night before, as she had every night since Joe’s arrest, but Janus buried himself in his work. He was even afraid to join her at the bail hearing, fearing that anything that made him look sympathetic to Joe could cast further suspicion on him.

“Further suspicion,” he whispered to himself. How easy it was to accept that the police were watching him for any little slip, although he’d seen, in fact, nothing to indicate that such was the case.

His concern had even led him to ask Terry not to attend her uncle’s hearing. She finally convinced him that as Joe’s niece she had legitimate reasons to be concerned with the man’s freedom, and this wouldn’t reflect badly on him.

In the meantime his co-workers avoided looking him in the eye, as they had since news of Joe’s arrest became public. Even Leblanc, who’d been spooked by the rumours of an audit, avoided being seen talking to Janus.

That morning he borrowed five thousand dollars from his credit line for the retainer Silver had asked for. He’d had to swear an affidavit at the bank that the money was for lawyer’s fees, although he hadn’t had to specify who Silver’s client would be. He gave the money to Terry in a brown envelope and kissed her on the cheek as she took Richard and the family wagon and headed downtown.

Just past four that afternoon Janus’s com sang out. He answered and put Terry’s image up on his P-screen. Although her eyes were red and puffy from crying, she was composed when she spoke.

“Hi Allen, it’s Terry,” she announced as she had since the days when people made voice-only calls.

“Hey, Ter,” he answered, trying to maintain a normal tone to his voice. “How’d it go today?”

“Exactly like Silver said it would. It was a big joke; barely a formality before the judge ordered him detained the same as everyone else.”

“Well, at least they’re not singling Joe out for harsh treatment. I mean, if they detained everyone else...”

“Maybe. But all the others were charged with things that were a lot more serious than Uncle Joe. There were guys who’d planned to blow things up; there were guys spreading sedition on the net. I still can’t understand how my uncle is being treated like one of these terrorists.”

“So now what happens?”

“The preliminary hearing’s in two months. But I’m worried that it’s a foregone conclusion.”

“Is it really that bad?”

“Silver said they have several witnesses lined up, all willing to denounce Uncle Joe for working with some sort of anti-administration underground.”

“Oh, Christ. They can get people to say anything. There really isn’t any reason for hope, is there?”

“Only if we get the… you know…what he mentioned. We can maybe turn things around. I’ve been thinking, Allen. We should just get a second mortgage-”

“No,” Janus interrupted. “We can’t go through the banks. There’s no way we could explain this.”

“There’s nothing illegal about getting a second mortgage.”

“You don’t think what he suggested is illegal? What’re we going to say we borrowed the money for? If we borrow that kind of money we’ll have to show how we spent it, so forget banks.”

“Well, you said you might know somebody who could help. Can you speak to this person? Allen, honey, no matter how we get the…it…I know we’re going to put ourselves in debt forever, but it’s my uncle’s life.”

“I know that,” Janus snapped, feeling his frustration rising. “I know what has to be done. I promised you, Terry, I was going to find a way to get Joe out. I still am. It’s taken me a little longer than I’d hoped. It
is
a hell of a lot, but I
will
get it done. I promise.”

By the expression on Terry’s face he could see that she expected him to keep his promise. It was a promise that he hadn’t made lightly, and that he had every intention of carrying out. He just didn’t know if he was ready to ruin his life to prove to Terry how far he’d go to help her uncle.

Once she signed off Janus stared at the blank P-screen and imagined Joe’s face looking back at him. He knew that Joe wouldn’t hesitate for a minute to put his reputation and even his life on the line to help out Janus or anybody else in the family. It was the thing everyone who met Joe came to realize very quickly; the thing that had driven Janus to an unreasonable hatred for him. Now he was being asked to match Joe’s willingness to martyr himself, as if he didn’t have the rest of his life, his career and his family to worry about.

Janus didn’t know, when push came to shove, if he would be able to go through with it.

That evening, Richard stood outside the brownstone apartment building, and felt a small tingle run up his spine. He was finally going to meet with Mr. Robinson’s group: adults and students, but all of them discussing and planning ways to change the path their country was on. He was certain that his father, having seen how the crooked system worked firsthand, would be proud of Richard’s growing interest in activism.

He buzzed from the lobby and waited for a few seconds before hearing his teacher’s voice.

“Good evening, Richard. I’m so glad you could join us. Come on in.”

A soft click signaled that the door had unlocked. He opened it, holding his crutches with one hand, and then hopped into the decontamination area. He counted to ten, then headed inside, swinging his broken leg gingerly ahead of him, and got into a waiting elevator. Having grown up in a large house in the suburbs, this downtown apartment complex was something of a novelty for him. Thirty stories, with a dozen or more units on each floor; he had difficulty imagining so many families living in such close quarters.

“It’s several times worse in Laval,” Mr. Robinson had told him the day before. “The administration has those poor people crammed in like sardines.”

Richard didn’t know anything about “those poor people.” He’d never seen an actual Muslim, other than on the news reports when arrests were made. The people on screen looked like wild animals, their hair long and unruly, yelling unintelligible slogans at the news cameras as they were dragged off to the courthouse. Yet Mr. Robinson insisted that they were no different from Richard or any of his school friends.

Richard had never worried about so-called radicals or activists until Uncle Joe was arrested. His mother’s uncle wasn’t a wild animal. He hadn’t screamed slogans at anybody when the
Cons
arrested him. Mr. Robinson told him that what was shown in the news wasn’t always true; that arrests were often staged to make it look like crazy and violent people were hiding out in our midst, ready to destroy our Canadian way of life.

“It’s all a crock of shit,” Mr. Robinson said, surprising Richard with language teachers rarely used. Between Mr. Robinson’s criticisms and Uncle Joe’s arrest, Richard could see the lies behind all the images that the public was bombarded with each day.

The elevator doors slid open on the eighteenth floor and his teacher was standing there, grinning, his shirt top undone and his right arm slung over the shoulders of a tall, willowy woman with large, round glasses and blonde hair down to her buttocks. She wore a thin, clingy blouse with no bra underneath and Richard had to force himself not to stare at her nipples.

“This is the young man, Suzanne,” Mr. Robinson said, reaching out to Richard with his left hand and pulling him close to the couple. “The face of innocent youth about to be corrupted.”

Suzanne took Richard’s other hand and pulled him toward her, kissing him softly on each cheek. He closed his eyes as she did so, and smelled lavender in her hair and marijuana on her breath.

“
Bienvenue, Richard
. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. Jordan has told me so much about you.”

For a moment Richard didn’t realize that his teacher was the Jordan she was referring to, but it didn’t matter. Suzanne’s eyes were the palest blue he’d ever seen, and her hands were soft and warm. He grinned stupidly but said nothing in reply to her greeting. She was the most sensual woman he’d ever met, and the expression on her face showed she was aware of the effect she was having on him.

She led him by the hand down the long corridor to an open door. Richard hesitated briefly on the threshold, until he felt Mr. Robinson’s hand pushing him lightly from behind.

“Come on in. There’s a couple of guys you know from school, and a few other friends of mine. They’re waiting to meet you.”

Richard caught his breath and looked nervously at his teacher, who just smiled and clapped him on his back.

Suzanne went ahead of him into the small apartment and Richard saw several people sitting around the living room. Some sat on chairs or on a long leather sofa. A couple sat on the floor next to a low coffee table where there was some rolling paper and a bag full of a greenish-brown substance. Two of the people on the sofa were Randy and Chris, from his Social Studies class; the others he didn’t know.

Everyone stopped talking when he came in and turned to look in his direction, making him uncomfortable. Suzanne, still holding his hand stepped forward to introduce him.

“
Tout le monde, c’est Richard.
One of Jordan’s more enthusiastic students
.
 ”

September 24, 2039:

The weather forecast was for a red alert that Saturday and well into Sunday. It had been months since they’d been trapped indoors like this, and at times Terry had thought the days of the thick, suffocating smog were a thing of the past. But Richard said that the weather patterns could change with little warning, and he’d been right. Still, she’d preferred the self-delusion which kept her going through the tough times.

As Richard had explained, strong winds brought carcinogenic clouds from the American and Canadian industrial hubs. These clouds would hover over Montreal for a day or two, covering the city in a thick brown carpet of acid rain, before being carried off to the eastern half of the province, where few people lived.

The pall hanging over the city reflected the dark mood inside the Janus family home. Nobody could go outside. Like Uncle Joe, they were confined, although their release would come much sooner than his. Terry spent the day looking out the window, while reliving a scene she was unable to forget. In her mind she saw her uncle standing in the prisoner’s dock, wearing handcuffs and looking lost and confused.

She’d hardly understood what the prosecutor had said at yesterday’s bail hearing, and doubted that Joe had understood any more than she did. As for Silver, he was a loud and impassioned orator, arguing about outmoded ideas like human dignity and basic rights, but she knew that it was all for naught.

The prosecutor hardly had to raise his voice to get his point across. He referred several times to national security and the secret evidence that could not be revealed in open court, and the judge, puffed up with his self-importance, responded by nodding and constantly clearing his throat. The expression of dejection on Silver’s face told her all she had to know.

As easily as that, a good man’s freedom was taken away, and she was left wondering about a system that she understood so little about. She turned away from the window to look affectionately at her sons, who were playing a Vid-bot game together despite the differences in their ages. One day, all this would end, she knew, as they put away the things of children and went out into the real world. Richard, so serious these days, was already halfway out the door.

Allen had gone down to his basement office right after breakfast and wouldn’t come up until it was time for lunch. He spent much of his time viewing reports about the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The fighting seemed to never end, although it hadn’t touched anybody that she knew. What she did know was that the cost of fighting this war had gotten so high that the administration had to ration more basic goods. And that’s what led people like Uncle Joe to buy things on the black market.