He had the crane operator lower the grappling chains, shifted the whole tree trunk several feet, so that the butt hung out over the back of the truck, and then started to cut round the trunk to a fraction over the depth of the saw blade. The rain stopped and at one point, shifting the position of the saw, he said, ‘Looks like plastic.’ Finally, with the log cut all round and hanging by just a single hinge of wood, so that the end-section trembled at a touch, he stepped back. ‘Okay boys, now see what it is.’ He paused then, looking at us. The man had a natural sense of the dramatic, holding the heavy chainsaw in his big paw as though it were a sword. Then he leaned forward, revved the motor and snicked the wooden hinge with the tip of the blade, the whole log-end suddenly hanging free.
He gave it a kick and it fell into the truck at our feet, and we were looking at a new butt-end with a hole in the centre of it about eight inches in diameter and white powder dribbling from it. The American reached forward, took some of it in his hand and stood staring down at it. ‘Jeez! It’s pure. Virgin pure coke. Uncut.’
Customs men gathered round, dipping their fingers in, staring at the powder. ‘Let’s see how much they’ve stowed there. Is it plastic bags?’
The foreman shook his head. ‘A container more like.’ His big hands were already working round the broken edges of the hole. ‘Yeah, plastic container — long one by the feel of it.’
It took three of them to drag it clear and lower it to the truck. It was a clear plastic tube measuring 20 cms by 4.5 metres and it was packed from end to end with cocaine.
‘Not much difference, is there?’ The Drug Enforcement agent had straightened up and was staring at the great pile of logs. ‘Why the hell didn’t I think of that?’ He turned to me. ‘Walking sticks! It’s just a matter of scale, isn’t it? If you can hollow out the one, you can hollow out the other.’
‘If you’ve got the right equipment,’ I said, ‘and it’s available in the right place.’ I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it, or Tom, looking down on the Cascades logging camp and seeing that mobile drilling rig and a tree trunk up-ended against that cliff.
‘Yeah.’ He took off his glasses, nodded to himself as he wiped the rain off. ‘Neat. Oh, so very neat.’ He put his glasses on again, staring at the stack of logs. ‘Wonder how much we got in that pile? One hell of a lot, that’s for sure. And only a few days back we checked out a barge-load and let it through.’
The elder of the two Canadian customs officers patted his shoulder. ‘Not your fault. You’d no means of knowing — ’
‘Of course I hadn’t. I wasn’t there. But we had our suspicions — a tip-off. Reliable, too. And we never had the sense to relate that special stand of trees to the drug concealment potential. The barge-load we let through a few nights back will have been trundled through the passes and across the plains, and right now it’ll be in the SVL Company’s timber yard in Chicago, or maybe it’s already out in the street… Just think what that means in terms of road accidents, muggings, rape. God! I never thought I’d be faced with something as big as this.’ He turned to the foreman. ‘Better take me to the manager’s office. I need a phone — lots of calls — Chicago.’ He was already clambering down from the truck. The other followed.
Suddenly we were on our own, the police hurrying back to their car, which had a radio, the customs officers heading towards the pier where the Coastguard cutter was now the only vessel. ‘I need a drink,’ Miriam said in a small voice. ‘I feel slightly sick.’ And I heard her murmur to herself, ‘Tom was right all along.’
There wasn’t anywhere to get a drink. We stood around for a while. Then more police arrived to mount guard over the High Stand logs and it began to rain again. We were finally given a meal in the mill canteen and shortly afterwards a police car arrived to whisk us half across Vancouver Island, through Campbell River and down the coastal highway to Victoria, where Brian and I were put up at that lovely creeper-clad relic of Victorian days, the Empress Hotel. It faced the inner harbour and the BC Parliament Building and was conveniently close to the Provincial Courts.
Miriam, after throwing a fit of temperament that was more than justified in the circumstances, was allowed to go out to Oak Bay with the Canadian family she had stayed with before, while Brian and I settled down to drink ourselves into a more relaxed frame of mind. It had been a long journey from Ocean Falls, longer still from the Yukon, and now we were being told we had to wait in case further evidence was required from us when those on the tug, who had now been arrested and charged with drug smuggling, made their first appearance in court.
That might have been the end of it if the authorities, both in Canada and the States, had not decided to go for Wolchak. It was a mark of the size of the operation that he had been on the spot and running it himself, and as a result he was more exposed than he had probably ever been before. He was arrested at his home in Chicago the day after we reached Victoria, but despite pressure from the public and the media, the courts released him on bail of half a million dollars pending extradition proceedings. Roy McLaren, when I saw him in his office in Vancouver two days later, told me proceedings of that sort could drag on for months. Meanwhile, Barony had already successfully avoided arrest, the SVL Timber lawyers pleading that neither he nor the company was responsible for anything that had been done in the remoteness of the Halliday Arm of Cascade Inlet. The company had purchased the trees, that was all. The felling had been arranged through the owner’s representative and delivery through Angeles Georgia Towing.
I was booked out the next day on the Wardair flight back to Gatwick, and feeling I owed myself the luxury of a view over the water, I was staying the night at the Bayshore. Brian had already left for the north again, back to Ocean Falls. That evening, after lazing for an hour in the circular pool beside the parked charter cruisers, I stood in my room with just a towel round my waist, smoking a cigarette and watching the lights come on along the North Shore. I had two windows to my room, one facing across Coal Harbour and Burrard Inlet, the other towards the city where the glass of Vancouver’s mini-Manhattan was reflecting the last of the sunset glow. A cargo ship disappeared slowly beyond Deadman’s Island and the black silhouette of the trees of Stanley Park.
It was all so beautiful, a floatplane landing, a yacht going alongside the refuelling raft and the lights twinkling right up the slopes to the ski-lift high above the First Narrows. All that was missing was somebody to share it with and my thoughts turned to Miriam, wondering what she was doing tonight, whether to ring her. And then, just as I had seated myself on the bed and started to look up the Oak Bay number of her Canadian friends, the phone rang.
Later, of course, we said it must have been telepathy. She was downstairs and wanted me to have dinner with her. ‘Something very exciting. I must tell you.’ And she added, her voice bubbling with it, ‘You’re not doing anything, are you? I must talk it over, and now Brian’s gone there’s nobody — nobody who knows it all and how Tom would feel. Can you come? Can you join me for a sort of quiet celebration?’
‘Of course,’ I told her. ‘What’s it all about?’
‘Later.’ And almost in the same breath she muttered, ‘It’s all so ironic. I’ll wait for you in the Verandah Room.’ And she rang off.
I dressed quickly and went down to find her with a tall glass in front of her frosted with ice and eating roasted nuts as though she hadn’t had a meal for weeks. I don’t know what she was wearing, trousers I think and a light woollen top, a very ordinary outfit, but she looked radiant. She had another drink with me and then we left the hotel and strolled across the lit driveway to the dim, mysterious labyrinth of the old Coal Harbour quay. She had booked a table at the Keg where I had dined the night I arrived in Vancouver. ‘We’ll have fish and lots of wine — a lovely, simple atmosphere. Then I’ll tell you.’ We passed the broken sleeper palings of the old boatyard and went round by a lot of parked cars and the entrance to the marina, laughing at the tow-away signs, her arm linked in mine. I could feel the movement of her hips against me and I was filled with a warm glow, sensing that we would sleep together in my room overlooking the harbour and that it would be a night to remember.