He could live with the likely scenario, Clara slip-sliding back into academia, good old boy Charley Thiessen elected to succeed her, maybe by acclamation. A spell as Opposition leader, winning applause with his jabs and quips, galloping to an easy win in the next election. Prime Minister Thiessen. Call me Charley.
He sat back, his sock feet up on his desk with its old framed photo of his younger mom, smiling down at little Charley in his Cub uniform. Who’d have known?
He’d run that scenario past her last night. “That’s my Charley,” she’d told him. “You are the man.” She hadn’t said one mean word about how he’d wrong-footed himself in the National Press Theatre — though it had featured on the nightly newscasts, Charley in his juice-stained shirt, his mouth opening and closing like a fish freshly landed. Rick Mercer had done a prime-time skit on the CBC, in a dripping red shirt.
He picked up the phone. “Send him in.” Crumwell, who’d called en route from Ogilvie Road with a promise of good news “that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.” Abzal Erzhan found hiding in the back room of a Montreal tenement? Arthur Beauchamp arrested smoking crack in a bordello? The consensus at CSIS was that Beauchamp’s kidnap scenario stank. Cooked up for a murder defence. That gasbag and his smirking put-down.
Crumwell slipped in like a thief, quietly closed the door.
“How’s that problem with your, uh, works, Anthony?”
“Much better. You wanted something on Arthur Beauchamp.”
“All you got.”
“I hope this isn’t too rich for your blood.” A rare, puckish smile. “He’s having an affair with a convicted felon.”
Thiessen almost slipped off his chair as he sat upright. “Are you putting me on?”
“Savannah Buckett, his farmhand. One presumes she’s progressed from raids on timber booms to a more intimate form of radical action.”
“You got proof? Photos? Tapes?”
“Nothing quite so graphic, but you can take it to the bank. God knows why our man on Garibaldi was so slow in forthcoming — Agent DiPalma is a bit reserved about such matters, a goody two-shoes — but it’s all over that island.”
Thiessen didn’t know exactly where Garibaldi was. He tried to picture it, barren, windswept, the mail packet pulling in twice a week, tobacco-chewing fishermen in their Wellingtons, slatternly housewives at their clotheslines gossiping with neighbours.
“Ms. Buckett is known to be publicly quarrelling with her partner, who is rarely seen on the island any more. But here’s the clincher: there’s an eyewitness to one of Beauchamp’s coital diversions with this young woman. One Robert Stonewell, a local businessman, caught them in bed.” An impish grin.
Thiessen couldn’t suppress a whoop of triumph. Revenge was his, sweet, sweet revenge. That sneering bugger had been caught with his pants down — and not just with some run-of-the-mill tramp, but an eco-terrorist. The old wolf didn’t exactly look like a hotshot with the ladies. Maybe he used his smooth tongue to slick his way into her panties. A task eased by her being on his payroll — that added a scurrilous element.
“Does his wife know?”
“I’m given to understand there are no secrets on Garibaldi Island.”
The possibilities were rich, an explosive scandal, a messy divorce in the middle of an election campaign. “How do we nail this down? Tell me about this Stonewell.”
“An exemplar, an esteemed community leader. Owns multiple businesses, building trades, taxi service, full-service garage, car lot. A tourist venture too, a hot-air balloon concession, so he obviously has a commercial pilot’s licence. Agent DiPalma says he’s quite a go-getter, highly regarded by his peers.”
“My kind of guy. Would he sign an affidavit?”
“Can’t say. DiPalma isn’t sure how close he is to Beauchamp. But he believes Stonewell may be open to, shall we say, magnanimous gestures. Not out-and-out bribery, of course, that’s out of the picture.”
“Oh, yeah, definitely. Politics?”
“Well, he hardly sounds like a wild-eyed radical, does he?”
Thiessen turned to the window, another demonstration out there, against animal testing. Someone in a monkey costume, another a dog, a big furry head with a jovial smile. It brought back Beauchamp grinning at Thiessen, asking for someone to bring a straw. Maybe a little human animal testing was in order.
“Anthony, let’s say we were to bring Mr. Stonewell here on some pretext, a good citizenship award, something like that, show him a good time, get one of your guys to loosen him up over a few tots …”
“With a hidden microphone, just in case.”
“Brilliant. And we invite his wife too, or his lover or companion, whatever he has, fly them first class, put them up in the Chateau. I could meet him myself, buy him lunch or dinner, impress the hell out of him.”
Crumwell smiled his squinty smile. “You don’t think that would be pushing it?”
“Naw, I’ve got a knack dealing with small-town, average-Joe businessmen.” He rehearsed, a jocular voice. “Robert, I guess you must know Arthur Beauchamp. Lovable old sod, but I hear he’s quite a scamp.”
Crumwell nodded with approval. “There are rumours, Charley, that you may take a fling at the leadership.”
Thiessen tried to look pained. “Yeah, there’s pressure, they’re coming at me from all sides. I’m resisting. We can’t look divided, we have to throw all our weight behind Clara.”
“Of course.” Looking at him with his cold, pebbly pupils, seeing right through him.
“Not that Clara has to know about Operation Stonewell.”
“You understand, Charley, that this is, let’s say, a titch beyond our mandate.”
“I’ll cover you.” Thiessen grabbed his jacket, he had to run. “This conversation never happened, okay?”
“I’ll see what we can do. As a favour, Charley.”
Thiessen got to the cabinet room a little late. Clara was reading out a shopping list from the Green leader that was being met with frowns and groans.
He found a seat beside Jack Bodnarchuk, whose arms were folded in tight defiance. He grumbled to Thiessen: “This goes through, Alberta’s out of the confederation.”
The resources minister was a key player in delegate-rich Alberta. “This goes through over my dead body,” Thiessen said. In truth, though, he worried that his party could be on the wrong track on energy issues. He’d been helping his oldest son, fifteen, on a climate change project — the schools pump kids full of that stuff these days. He’d had to sit through that depressing Al Gore documentary, had been forced to read a lot of alarming stuff from scientists. His daughter Joy was even worse, had practically joined the green camp. He’d told her to find balance, seek out opposing views. “From who?” she’d scornfully demanded. “Oil company apologists?”
Anyway, the P.M. definitely wasn’t touting any deal with the Greens. She was going on about how she gave it her best shot, how Margaret Blake had blown her chance, how it would rebound against her party. Calls would now go out for a star candidate to bring home Cowichan and the Islands. Applause.
Thiessen drifted away, half listening to the debate, which was one-sided anyway. A star candidate. Maybe that’s the pitch to give Mr. Stonewell. Robert, there’s another reason we’ve brought you and your good lady here. Our party is looking for a respected, business-oriented candidate …
Margaret was hunched over her desk with Pierette, in near fury as she read the PMO’s noon press release: the government had flatly rejected the Green Party’s costly, recession-deepening ultimatums. Its leader had spurned the government’s own generous bundle of initiatives for a healthier environment.
“That fraudulent hypocrite!” Mocking Gracey’s sugary tone: “‘Can we keep this among friends?’”
“Cool down,” Pierette said. “The corrections we’re sending out are angry enough.”
“Goddamnit, she begged me to sit down with her.”