Miss Montreal (27 page)

“That’s it?”

“It’s enough. He wants an atrocity he can blame on Muslim extremists. What better target than this?”

“Where are you now?”

“On the Champlain Bridge. Trying to get to the site. Is there a way you can clear the area?”

“Of a hundred thousand people? Not without a stampede. Or a riot. And Montreal has had enough of those this year. There’s nothing else I can go on?”

“His sister believed me,” I said. “And she knows him better than anyone.”

“Merde
. Okay. I’m going to go there myself. When you’re going to get there?”

“Less than half an hour, I hope. Which gives us less than half an hour to find the bomb.”

“How so?”

“I think Luc will set it off while Lortie speaks, which is around ten-fifteen. A singer named Johnny Rivard is supposed to bring him up on stage.”

“Christ.”

“Tell your people to look for a white van, might be parked along the north side of the park.”

“Why there?”

“Luc can blow up the crowd but not the stage where his father will be. Listen, his sister just emailed me his picture. I’m sending it to you right now. Get some plainclothes men to
look for him. The van is an older Safari with recent damage on its left side.”

“Which matches the paint on my fucking car,” Ryan said.

“I’m putting the plate number in the email,” I said.

“Good. There’s already a big police presence there. They can start to search the crowd.”

“He’ll be somewhere on the fringes. Close enough to see the blast, far enough he doesn’t get caught in it. Or the stampede it causes.”

“All right,” he said. “I’m on my way. See you at the party.”

Once we were finally off the bridge and heading east on Notre-Dame, I called Jenn’s cell again and was surprised to feel tears in my eyes as I dialled the familiar number. When it went to voice mail, I hesitated. I wanted to tell her I loved her. That I wanted her to be safe and happy, content with Sierra, thriving in her work and her life. All that came out was, “Call me. Please. Tell me you’re safe.”

At ten o’clock, we were at the corner of Sherbrooke and Pie-IX, as close to the park as we were going to get by car. Ryan pulled onto a side street and blocked a hydrant, and we spilled out into the warm night, all five of us, the Afghans looking cramped and hobbled as they pulled themselves of the back seat and took their first steps. We walked north in the shadow of Olympic Stadium, its concrete shell and unfinished tower looming cold and grey against the starless sky. Up ahead to our left was Le Jardin Botanique, Montreal’s botanical gardens, silent, mostly deserted, except for people walking toward the park. Still a few acts to catch.

Still a climax to come.

Straight ahead I could hear electrified fiddle music and see blue strobe lights flashing from the bandshell. Crowds of people walked along with us; even more were streaming out of the park, having already partied long enough. Some looked
sunburned, some looked drunk, their arms around each other. Faces painted blue and white, hair dyed bright blue, many wearing identical white T-shirts with blue hearts in which was written,
“Québec à nous.”

Quebec for us.

How different was that from Laurent Lortie’s idea that Quebec belonged more to some people than to others?

Across Sherbrooke, the crowd was massed like an army awaiting orders. I’ve been at Canada Day parades, Israeli Independence Day festivals, but never in my life had I seen so many waving flags. Every other person seemed to have one, forming a sea of blue and white, moving back and forth as if a conductor somewhere was directing them with a baton. I saw huge puppets made of papier mâché towering over the crowd. Some were familiar figures from Quebec’s past, like René Lévesque and Maurice Richard. Others went much farther back in time, wearing the rough clothes of voyageurs and explorers.

I tried to make out where the press pen was, but the area close to the stage was completely jammed with people shoulder to shoulder, bouncing up and down to the music, waving their arms, transported by the sound, the closeness of others, the community around them.

They could all be dead in minutes if we didn’t find Luc’s van. If that was the vehicle he was using to deliver the blast. It could also turn out to be something entirely different: something stolen, rented, borrowed or bought.

“Mr. Geller!” a woman cried.

Lucienne Lortie was moving along the sidewalk toward me, pushing people aside, ignoring their angry glances. Her face still bore pancake makeup from the television interview she had been preparing for. Tears had streaked down her cheeks at some point, turning the powder to something like clay. “Have you seen my father? Or Luc?”

“We just got here.”

“I have to find them,” she said, her chin trembling. “My father, I think, is waiting behind the stage until Johnny Rivard goes on. My brother—he could be anywhere.”

“We’ll find him,” I said. “Now stand a little to your right.”

“For what?”

“Just hold still.” I took out my cell and took her picture with the stage and its blue lights clear in the background.

“What’s that for?”

“Just something I might need. Go find your father. And keep him off the stage. If Luc is waiting for him to go on before he sets off the explosion, maybe it will buy us some time.”

I watched her walk to a gate behind the stage, manned by burly men in bright yellow jackets with
“Sécurité”
lettered on the back. I kept watching. Hoping to see Paquette materialize. He didn’t.

“All right,” I said to Ryan and Mehrdad. “The press pen is at the front of the stage.”

“We’re going to have to get through ten thousand people,” Ryan said.

“I don’t care if it’s twenty thousand. Jenn is in there somewhere.”

“Then let’s get moving. You,” he said to Kamal. “You’re the biggest. Get in front and start pushing.”

Kamal hesitated until Mehrdad urged him forward with a nod. Ryan and I got behind him. Mehrdad and Rashid backed us up until we were a tight wedge and then we started pushing our way through the mass of people facing the stage. We were trying to create a perpendicular path, coming at them from the side. Stepping on feet. Making them step back. Elbowing their sides. Someone kicked me in the side of the leg. Someone else swore and clapped the back of my head. I kept pushing against Kamal’s broad back, making him go forward even when the wall of people didn’t want to give way. I wished I were taller, tall as one of the giant puppets I’d seen, able to see out over the crowd,
spot Jenn’s shining blonde hair or Holly’s pile of curls. I wished my arms were long enough, strong enough, to sweep aside the people blocking our path. That I were Moses, able to part this sea and find a clear path forward.

I put my arms on Kamal’s shoulders and drove with my legs.

“Easy,” he shouted. The first indication that he spoke English.

“I’ll take it easy if you keep moving. Use your legs. Come on, push.”

I could smell my own sweat running down my sides. It was too hot, too close, too many people getting angry, pushing back. Someone threw a plastic cup at me and I felt ice and liquid run down my back. Ryan was grunting beside me, swearing under his breath. I wondered how far we had come. What if it were only a few feet? It felt like we’d been moving an hour. Sisyphus had it easy compared to us; he only had to push rocks up a hill. We were pushing people who didn’t want to be pushed. I felt another blow to my neck as someone cursed and struck out at me. I ignored it and kept my arms up, my head down. The music was getting louder as we got closer to the towers of speakers facing the crowd. I could feel drums and bass pounding up from the earth, resonating in my chest. I wished they’d turn the sound down, gag the singer, so I could shout out Jenn’s name. Hear her call mine if she saw me. I should have asked Holly exactly where the press pen was. With so many people around us, so many flags, we could be going right past it.

Kamal stopped. He was panting and his shirt was soaked through with sweat.

“Keep going,” I said.

“You get in the front.”

“We’re halfway,” I said. A look to my left showed we were at centre stage. I could see the band now, a singer with an electric guitar at a microphone, waving his hands over his head, getting the crowd to wave along. Which didn’t help us, since it
made it harder to see where we were going. More hands slapped against me inadvertently. Someone’s long fingernail poked my right eye and it teared up. I blinked a dozen times, trying to clear it, then walked into a cloud of exhaled smoke. I put my hand on Kamal’s shoulder and trusted him to be my eyes.

“Up ahead,” Ryan said. “I think I see a fence.”

I wiped my eye and looked ahead. Had to close the blurred right and peer through the left. Inside a fenced-off area were cameras mounted on tripods. A mike boom held high above a techie’s head. We shifted direction slightly and kept pushing, Kamal grunting like he was dragging a plow through rock-hard earth. Sweat dripping off his chin.

Seconds later, our forward movement stopped. We had hit the metal gate enclosing the press. Ryan shouldered his way in front of Kamal and we both bellied up to the gate and scanned the people inside the enclosure.

“You see her?” I yelled.

“No.”

“Hang on.” I crouched down and stuck my head between his legs, took a deep breath and rose with him up on my shoulders. People behind us booed and yelled at us as we blocked their view.
“Descends!”
a hoarse voice yelled. “Get down.” Someone shoved me and I almost fell over but Kamal caught me and kept us upright. And smiled at me, flashes of gold in a few lower molars.

“There,” Ryan said. “Jenn! Hey, Jenn!”

“Can she hear you?” I panted.

“No,” he said and then yelled, “Jenn! Jenn Raudsepp!”

“Now?”

“Fuck it,” he said. “We’re going over.”

The fence was only chest high. I boosted him onto the other side and followed him over.

“Thank you,” I said to Kamal, and to Rashid and Mehrdad behind him. They were sweating and breathing hard too.

“We’ll go look for the van along Rosemont,” Mehrdad said. “If we see nothing by Viau, we’ll turn south. Check the back of the crowd.”

“We’ll be right behind you,” I said. “As soon as I get my friends to a safe place.”

“I see the crazy brother or his van, I call your cell.”

I gave him the number and he and his boys started making their way through the crowd, this time away from the stage. People moved aside instinctively, less resistant to people who weren’t trying to usurp the space they’d fought so hard to get.

“There she is,” Ryan said.

I turned and saw Jenn and Holly: Jenn rapt as she watched the band on stage, no idea what was going on or what it had taken to come find her; Holly taking notes in a narrow reporter’s pad, flipping the page and scrawling away on a fresh one.

We hadn’t taken a step before a man in a yellow Sécurité jacket blocked our path. He was over six feet and broad as a Douglas fir. He said something I couldn’t hear.

I said, “What?”

He leaned in closer and said, “I saw you climb the fence. This is for journalists only.”

“We’ll be out in a minute.”

“You have accreditation?”

“My name is on a list.”

“Then why did you come over the fence?”

“We’re just picking up a friend.”

“Out. Now.” He put a big hand on my chest and pushed.

I had spent the last twenty minutes pushing and being pushed. I’d had more than enough. I kneed him in the balls and he doubled over and clutched his groin in the expected way and we moved quickly around him. A cameraman swore at me as I moved through his field of vision, ruining whatever shot he was taking. I left his balls unkicked.

“Jenn!” I yelled, and this time we were close enough for
her to hear me. She turned with a look of surprise, a what-are-you-doing-here look. I rushed up to her and said, “Your phone turned off?”

She said into my ear, “Huh? No. Except—no, maybe it is, I forgot to charge it when I got in. Why?”

Why
. “We’re leaving,” I said.

“What’s happening?”

“The bomb, honey. It’s here. Holly!”

She turned and gave me the same surprised look that Jenn had, a spotlight illuminating her tangle of red hair.

“You’re early,” she said with a smile.

“We have to go.”

“I can’t. I’m covering this for—”

“Holly, remember Luc Lortie? The brother who’s supposedly slow?”

“Of course.”

“He’s planted a bomb here. And it’s going to go off once Laurent gets up on that stage.”

She pulled back and looked me in the eyes. “You’re serious,” she said. A statement, not a question. And could tell from my look back that I was.

I turned around and saw the guard I had kneed getting to his feet. “Is there a faster way out of here than the way we just came?”

“Yes,” she said, pointing to the far side of the press pen. “There’s the stage door to the left and an exit to the street.”

“Then let’s exit. Now.”

She shoved her notebook into her shoulder bag and led us out a break in the gate that opened onto the backstage area. I wished we’d seen it from the street—getting into the press pen by that route would have saved us a lot of time and energy. We passed through it and out another gate onto a paved path bordering the grounds of the Botanical Garden.

“Don’t you have a cell?” I asked Holly.

“I had my hands full taking notes and photos,” she said. “It was in the outside pocket of my purse.”

I filled them both in and we strode quickly along the path. When we were at least a few hundred yards away, beyond what I judged to be the ring of any explosion, I pointed Jenn toward the street and said, “Take a taxi or the Metro, either one. Wait for us at the hotel.”

“You’re not coming?” Jenn asked.

“I need to find Luc.”

“Let the police find him.”

“I can’t just walk away.”

“But you expect me to?”

“I promised you nothing would happen.”

“But it’s okay if it happens to you?”

“Just go.”

“Not unless you come.”

“Does anyone give a shit if I come?” Ryan said.