“Those could be aliases. I’m not banking on that turning up much.”
Dubois turned sideways to look at his friend. “It’s gonna take some digging. It’s one thing I learned as a Catholic. These guys all get their comeuppance in the end. You trust me on that, Nick.”
Nick said nothing. Memories of Walter Martin weighed heavily on his mind. He was a man in mourning, who only wished he could mourn openly. For Walter, and all the others who had died in the line of duty. It weighed on him now like unwanted baggage.
“Where to, my friend?”
“Drop me off at the Chateau Laurier. I’ll catch a cab to the airport from there.”
For the next hour he wandered through the capital like a man lost in a trance. He moved where his feet took him, revisiting familiar places. What he really wanted was to pick up the phone and call Grace. But so much water had flowed under the bridge since they broke up. It was painful to realize that he was travelling through the world all alone. He felt as if he had ten men’s loneliness trapped inside him.
Back in his hotel room, he changed into his running gear. He ran for the high of it. To feel the pounding of his heart against his chest. On a deeper level, he ran to forget the bullshit and craziness of the workday. And to try to blow her out of his system. Usually it worked, but not today. He was in her town.
He stared at the phone one last time before heading out to the airport. No, he wouldn’t call her. What the hell was he going to say? That he was in town, and how about a drink?
Instead he closed the door behind him and hit the button for the elevator. Get it through your head, pal. It’s over. Long past the point of blaming her. He could only blame himself for not being wiser. For not knowing, until it was too late, that her ambition on the bench far outweighed any love she had ever had for him.
chapter four
It was a hazy morning, promising a bright, hot day. Grace took a cab to work. Her fourteen-year-old Volvo had broken down yet again, which meant two days in the shop and another six-hundred-dollar bill. What she needed was a new car. A Toyota Camry or the latest BMW would be nice, except for one small problem. In her family, the Wang-Weinsteins, Japanese and German-made cars were still referred to as “enemy” cars. Her parents had been mere infants when the atrocities in their former homelands occurred, but the history of it all still lingered in their minds. In any case, with her luck she’d drop forty thousand dollars on a BMW and within a week it would be on a container ship to the Middle East, Hong Kong, or Russia. That’s why a rusting Volvo, supplemented by taxi cabs whenever it was in the shop, was still much cheaper and less complicated.
“This block will do. Drop me off here.”
Three years had programmed her for the walk, which took her across O’Connor and up Bank Street. From there, she turned down Slater towards an uninspiring thirty-seven-storey concrete building. A silver and black sign proclaimed “Immigration and Refugee Commission”.
The IRC sat four blocks south of Parliament Hill, a mere ten-minute walk away from the political machinations it had been set up to bypass. Back in 1989, the commission had been created with noble intentions, as an arm’s-length agency, to determine who was or was not a refugee under the 1951 Geneva Convention. The year she had been appointed was the same year the commission had earned the distinction of being just about the most vilified government agency in the country. Knowing that, she had still accepted a political appointment to the bench. Why? Ambition — and naiveté. She had wanted to grant asylum to every deserving, downtrodden soul from every wretched country in the world. And besides, what else could you do with a law degree and a doctorate in anthropology?
It was easy to tell when an immigration or humansmuggling story had hit the front page. The lobby became a circus of newshounds. She did her best to look unimportant and anonymous as she threaded her way through them towards the bank of elevators. At the security desk, she discreetly flashed her ID badge to the men guarding the agency from subversives, and from the public it was supposed to serve.
On the nineteenth floor, she slipped past cubicles of overworked civil servants who laboured in silence, bent over desks covered in paper and case files. There were days when she still thought that the taxpayers were getting their money’s worth from all these young prosecutors, stern moralists bent on carving out careers, weeding out bogus asylum seekers from the genuine article.
“Grace!”
She turned around and came face to face with Mark Crosby, one of her least favourite colleagues. Crosby was a womanizer and plotter; when not on the bench, he spent his time scrounging around for cheap feels and political gossip.
“What?” she barked.
“I hear you’re assigned the Vladimir case?” he asked, leaning against the door outside her office.
“What’s it to you?”
“Need a second-chair? I could be of help to you. Given that last year, I was in Russia for three months with Immigration.” He glanced at the banker’s boxes of documents stacked outside her office waiting to be returned to records.
“Well, thanks, but no thanks.”
Not put off by the lack of friendliness, he continued, “I’m heading out to Vancouver this afternoon to try a boatload of Filipino sailors. My second-chair is down with the flu. Wanna run away with me?” he winked. “I checked. You got nothing on the docket.”
“No. I’m busy,” she snapped, giving him the onceover. Black horn rimmed glasses, double chin, and an evergrowing paunch. Why on earth should she be interested in him? She found his sexual interest in her almost insulting.
She pushed past him as she walked into her office, a nine-by-nine foot place of chaos, crammed with bulging files and more banker’s boxes of documents. It wasn’t luxurious by any stretch of the public’s imagination. However, this was the cubby-hole where she had produced her best work, the legal decisions that had held up at the Federal Court.
“Grace, you really could use my help on the Vladimir case and I can use yours on the Filipino sailors’ case. I don’t see why you’re not keen to work together.”
“The fact is, I’m not into office romance. I’ve said it once. I’ll say it again.”
“Come on, Grace. What’s a gorgeous girl like you doing all by yourself? You know how it could be between us.”
She glared at him. “I don’t want to hear how you feel about me. Let’s not go there. We’ve got a nice working relationship, so let’s keep it at that.”
“What about the hotel room I’ve already booked for you?”
“What? What?” She was royally pissed. “Cancel it! Cancel it right away! I don’t need that kind of cheap gossip hanging around me.” She wagged her finger menacingly at him. “Do something like that again and it’s grounds for a harassment charge. Send me an e-mail when you’ve cancelled the hotel room. Jesus!”
Without another word she buried her head in the file sitting in the middle of the desk, hoping he would go away. Mark Crosby had a sharp mind for spinning clever legal arguments, but she found him irritating. Unfortunately for her, he was somewhat infatuated with her. At the same time she could see the loneliness in his face. She wondered if he could see the loneliness in her as well. They were both workaholics, partly because they both had little going on in their private lives. He probably interpreted that as common ground. The fact of the matter was, he just didn’t appeal to her.
As she reached for the second package of exhibit items, the phone rang.
“Ms. Wang-Weinstein? This is Cindy Black from the law offices of Richard and Richard. We’re seeking a postponement