Face/Mask (38 page)

“And you can always find this man later, even if you accept his offer now?”

“Yes sir. I’ve always been able to keep tabs on him. I think he’ll believe that once the trade is consummated we will have no further interest in him.”

“This is excellent news, Inspector. I gather if you’re calling me then nobody else is aware of his offer.”

“Nobody, sir. However, there are some people who wish to see him subjected to enhanced interrogation over the bombing. If we want to get our hands on the information you want, these people can’t be allowed to get their hands on him, sir.”

“Give me their names, Inspector. And go find my missing information.”

A few minutes after this conversation Sévigny received an e-message from the Justice and Security Minister informing him that the administration no longer considered Walid Kadri a suspect in the RCMP bombing. A copy of this e-message was sent to Deputy Minister of Public Works Yves Prescott. Sévigny smiled to himself, imagining Prescott’s reaction at the news that his little gambit had been foiled. He had no idea why Prescott had decided to have Kadri arrested but the stakes were much bigger than the man could have suspected.

Sévigny was certain that the chip that Kadri told him about was what Schultz was after. He couldn’t imagine any information that was potentially more inflammatory than what Kadri claimed. No wonder so few people could know of its existence.

It shouldn’t have surprised him that Kadri would find this missing information. The man’s influence had obviously spread beyond the fences of the Laval camp to touch on anything and everything that took place in the Montreal region. That was something Sévigny would have to think about later.

That evening Kadri directed him to an apartment building in Laval. They were in an unmarked car, with no other escort. Once inside the building’s entrance Kadri buzzed the intercom. When a woman’s lightly accented voice answered he asked to be allowed up as casually as if he were ordering coffee.

She buzzed them in without hesitation and soon they were standing outside her door. Kadri moved to the side and motioned to Sévigny to open it..

“It won’t be locked,” he said.

Sévigny opened the door and stepped inside the apartment. He saw a woman wearing jeans and a sweatshirt sitting on a sofa. Her face showed her surprise at his presence, her eyes going straight to the RCMP cap on his head. Her mouth drooped slightly, as if she realized what was about to happen.

“Are you Sahar
Chamseddine? My name is Robert Sévigny. I’m-”

“I know who you are,” she interrupted.

“Then you must know why I’m here. I’ve come to recover an object that is in your possession.”

“He told you?”

Sévigny turned and saw that Kadri was standing in the doorway. He looked back at Sahar and nodded. Her expression was one of pure resignation, like someone who expected life to deal her a bad hand. She got up a bit unsteadily, gathered herself and headed toward another room. Sévigny took a step forward, then stopped. He knew she wasn’t going to run.

A moment later she came back and slipped a small metal case into his hand. He flicked it open and took out an info-chip. He walked over to an old P-screen that sat on her kitchen table and then turned again to her.

“Do you mind?”

She shrugged at this unnecessary courtesy on his part, and he plugged the chip into the console. He spent one or two minutes looking at its contents, while neither Kadri nor Sahar moved. He read just enough to satisfy himself that it contained what Kadri had claimed, then placed the chip back into the case.    

He turned back to Sahar as he slipped the case into his pocket, and gently directed her toward the door. She stopped to look again at Kadri, who backed into the hallway. Her face wore an expression that combined her sense of betrayal with confusion. It was an expression that appeared on the faces of so many suspects when they learned who Sévigny’s informant was.

“I’m never coming back here again,” she stated in matter of fact way.

“No. You’re not,” Sévigny said.

“There’s a picture, of my family; my children. It’s in the night table. The top drawer. May I take it with me?”

“Your apartment will be emptied tonight. I’ll see to it that the picture is kept among your personal effects and sent along with you.”

“Are you sure they will not lose it?”

Sévigny looked at this woman who might have been beautiful once, and who was accepting the loss of everything she had with silent stoicism. She was one of the many hundreds of people that he’d arrested in his life, yet he said something to her that he’d rarely felt moved to say before.

“I promise.”

October 20, 2039:

It had been three days since the bombing that had killed 37 people, 21 of them RCMP agents, with the administration no closer to an arrest. Alone in his office, staring out the window at his smog-covered city, Yves Prescott was still having difficulty accepting the order to release Walid Kadri. His attempts to get an answer from his former colleagues at Security Prosecutions had led to embarrassed promises of clarifying the matter sometime soon.

Prescott had tried reaching Sévigny several more times, ostensibly to ask for an update on his investigation, but mostly to find out why he’d interfered in Kadri’s interrogation. On Thursday Prescott finally got through to him.

“This is unacceptable, Sévigny,” he said, glaring at the face that was looking placidly back at him on his P-screen. “How could you be no closer to an arrest after all this time?”

“My jurisdiction is Laval,
Monsieur
Prescott. And right now, all evidence leads me to believe that the attacker, or attackers, didn’t come from here.”

“
C’est de la merde!
You know who the terrorists are. We had one of them in our hands until you took it upon yourself to let him escape.”

“Escape? That’s not exactly what happened.”    

“Isn’t it? If I didn’t know better I’d swear you were in cahoots with this Kadri, protecting him instead of helping me prosecute him for his crime.”

“
Monsieur
Prescott, unless I’m mistaken you’re not prosecuting anybody any more. As for my own work, if you wish to lodge a complaint to the Justice and Security Minister, who is the person I answer to, by the way, you’re of course free to do so. He has had no complaints about me so far.”

Sévigny’s calm retort would normally have been enough to send Prescott into a paroxysm of fury. But he managed to keep his temper in check. Prescott knew he had no official jurisdiction over this investigation beyond the operations of his own department. That message was made abundantly clear to him when he’d been informed that Kadri was being released.

“You’re right, of course, Sévigny,” Prescott said, trying to take a conciliatory tone. “I apologize. It’s just that you have always been so efficient in your handling of everything that goes on up there, I perhaps took it for granted that you would solve this case with ease.”

Sévigny’s expression showed that he wasn’t sure if he’d just been insulted or flattered. His tone, when he responded, showed that he was going to take a professional approach to this conversation, no matter what Prescott meant.

“My sources, which have always been excellent and reliable as you know, assure me that the bombing was not carried out by anyone from Laval. I’ve been able to keep tabs on the few organized activists here, and this doesn’t look like their handiwork. In fact, there have been no indications of any kind of actions beyond the usual graffiti and on-line petitions.”

“Have you questioned any suspects…other than Kadri, I mean?”

“The several people we interrogated I wouldn’t even refer to as suspects. I’m confident they have no knowledge about who planted the bomb. The fact is the Laval end of the investigation, while ongoing, is of secondary importance. Our Montreal Division will be getting the majority of resources and manpower to do its part.”

“Montreal Division? Surely nobody believes that this attack was carried out by Canadians?”

“Non-Muslim groups have been becoming more active in their protests, as you know. This attack may well have nothing to do with the Laval situation. Usually, after an attack like this, the group responsible takes credit, maybe even declares its goals. This hasn’t happened here, which leaves all possibilities still on the table.

“So it will be to your former colleagues at Security Prosecutions that you’ll have to speak if you want to have any more information about this case. I’m afraid I have no more time to talk with you,
Monsieur
Prescott
.
I have somewhere to be this evening.
Bonjour
.”

Robert Sévigny ended his phone call with Prescott in an ambiguous mood. He worried about lying to his old superior. The man’s family still had powerful connections, after-all. But there were certain things that he could never know. That was why he’d made no mention of the role that Schultz had played in releasing Kadri. While it didn’t hurt to stroke his ego now and then, Schultz had made it clear that there were limits to what Prescott could be told.

The Homeland Security Czar was flying in himself the next day to retrieve the chip. This was something he insisted on doing himself, even though it would have taken mere seconds for Sévigny to incinerate the thing. Schultz had explained, none too subtly, that they needed to verify if any copies were made of the files on the chip, something Sévigny was unaware could even be done.

So, for the previous 24 hours the chip had lain, in a tarnished make-up mirror case, under some discs at the back of his safe. Sévigny had taken it out for an hour the night before. What he’d seen in Sahar Chamseddine’s apartment had piqued his interest, and despite the professional discipline he claimed to possess, he couldn’t resist the urge to know more.

In his office, with the door locked, he scanned the technical specifications and details of the construction and unrecorded transfer of the bomb out of U.S. Army stocks. But it was several classified reports, written by someone who’d initialed them “H.S,” that held Sévigny’s attention.

These reports presented a detailed look at the world’s chaotic politics in the late teens. After the disintegration of the Islamic Caliphate the number of homegrown groups espousing violent Islamist ideals had sprouted in North America and Western Europe. None of these groups represented the kind of existential threat that was necessary to keep the world engaged in the on-going war.

The reports concentrated on one small group that was operating in the Northeast U.S. under the pretentious name of The Islamic Salvation Movement. It was in fact a ragtag collection of American and Canadian Muslims who’d come back from the fighting in Iraq radicalized but leaderless, and with no discernable goals.

They were angry at Western policies in the Middle East, but had done little more than post incoherent diatribes on the old Facebook website. “H.S.” considered that this group had the potential to be taken over by a strong leader and convinced to commit an atrocious terrorist act, which would actually serve the interest of his government.

From this initial report grew the plan to explode a small nuclear bomb on a North American city. “H.S.” obviously maintained some scruples, since he insisted that the detonation not be on American soil. After consideration of various Canadian and Mexican cities, some of which were too populated, or too economically important, or too close to major American centers, Quebec City, with a population of just over half a million, was chosen. “H.S.” argued that such a detonation would cause enough death and damage to convince western governments and their publics that the fight against terrorism was far from over.

Over the years that he’d worked in Laval Sévigny had heard various rumours and urban legends, most of them intended to absolve the Muslim population for any involvement in the attack. He’d never given these allegations a second thought until Walid Kadri had used this information to bargain for his life. Now everything he read on the chip gave credence to his claims, assuming the reports were authentic.

He shut off his P-screen and wondered if such a Machiavellian plot was even possible.

On Thursday night Janus drove through the near-empty streets of Laval, aware that being one of the few cars on the road meant his presence was that much more obvious to the traffic cameras. The attempt on the RCMP station had led to a harsh clampdown among the Muslim population, and nobody could say when it would end.

Most people were staying off the streets if they could. Nobody wanted to risk being carted away for hours, and maybe even days, of questioning by the RCMP agents who were stationed at every major intersection. Janus had never been certain what kinds of civil rights Muslims had before the attack, but he doubted they had much to speak of now.

He wasn’t sure if going to Sahar during this time was the wisest idea, but he needed to see her, to make sure she was all right. He’d stayed up late the night before watching the news on the Vid-bot with Terry, and it was obvious that, whoever turned out to be responsible for the bomb, the Muslim population was bearing the brunt of the administration’s anger. He’d considered calling Sahar directly, but knew he’d be risking serious trouble for both of them if he did. Besides, just as he had every week for so many months now, he needed to be with her.