Face/Mask (36 page)

He assumed that Richard was asleep but he would check just to make sure. Once Rollie was tucked in, Janus tiptoed to Richard’s room and softly opened the door. He could just make out the shape of his son sitting on the bed with his back resting against the wall.

“Rich. Can I come in?”

“OK,” Richard whispered.

Janus stood next to the bed, hesitated a moment, and then decided to sit beside him.

“Your mom and I are worried about you,” he said. He expected Richard to brush him off, or tell him that he was fine. Instead his son flung himself forward and wrapped his arms around his waist.

“Dad, I’ve fucked up so badly,” he wailed.

“What’re you talking about? What happened?”

Instead of answering, Richard buried his face in his father’s shoulders and began to sob.

“Christ, Richard,” Janus said, pulling his son’s arms away so he could look him in the face. “What is this? Did one of your friends die?”

“I did it, Dad. I did it!”

“Did what? Richard, get a hold of yourself and tell me what’s going on.”

Richard took a deep breath and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He looked into his father’s eyes, and then looked away again.

“Rich. Speak to me. You’re freaking me out here.”

Richard answered without raising his eyes, his voice hardly more than a whisper.

“The bomb, Dad. Today. I’m the one who did it. I planted the bomb.”

“What’re you talking about? Are you crazy saying that?”

This time Richard did turn his face to look into his father’s eyes. Although his lips quivered, his voice was a bit stronger. As he spoke he squeezed his dad’s hands tightly.

“My after-school group. Mr. Robinson, my teacher, holds the meetings at his apartment. We thought that the only way to get people’s attention is to hurt them. To make them see how bad things are. We decided to attack the
Cons
, because they’re how the administration controls everyone. We wanted to make a statement.”

Janus couldn’t believe what his son was saying. He didn’t want to believe it. This had to be some sort of nightmare. Or maybe a hoax of some kind. But one look at Richard’s crushed expression told him that it was all too true.

“Oh, dear God, Richard. What have you done?”

Chapter fifteen

Excerpted from “Winston O’Brien, a Life in Politics,” copyright May 2033, Freedom Publications:
“In the first place, we should insist that the immigrants who come here act in good faith and assimilate themselves to us before they can expect to be treated with equality… They can have no divided allegiances. Any man who says he is a Canadian but also something else is no Canadian at all. We have room for one flag, the Canadian flag. We have room for but one loyalty here, and that is loyalty to the Canadian Administration.”

October 18, 2039:

Janus had no memory of riding the metro-bus to work the next morning. If anybody at the Department greeted him when he entered the building, he didn’t hear them. If alerts or notices popped up on his P-screen, he didn’t see them. He was in a giant bubble, cut off from the rest of the world by his anguished thoughts.

He wasn’t sure at what time he’d fallen asleep the night before, only that he’d woken up about 8 AM and found himself still in Richard’s bed. His son was sleeping next to him, curled up in a ball and facing the wall. They had spent hours crying and talking, Janus trying to understand what could have led his son to commit this monstrous act.

He left Richard sleeping and went to his bedroom; Terry wasn’t awake yet. She had gone to bed with no clue of what was said in Richard’s room, and Janus wanted to keep it that way. He hoped she never found out what her beloved first-born had done. He almost wished that Richard hadn’t chosen to confide in him, unsure how he was supposed to live with this knowledge.

He took a quick shower, before dressing and leaving without having any breakfast. He was going to be late for work, but that was the least of his concerns. He could think of nothing but Richard’s shocking news. His son was a mass murderer. A seventeen-year old high school student, still without a girlfriend, who had been taking such good care of his younger brothers in recent weeks. Yet, he was a mass murderer nonetheless.

None of it made sense, but Janus had to deal with it. He could see from Richard’s pain that the boy knew he’d made a terrible mistake. He’d obviously been seduced by whatever anti-administration rhetoric his teacher, this Mr. Robinson, had been spouting. And Robinson had used him, that was clear. Why else send a naïve and impressionable boy to plant the bomb?

As terrible as his actions were, Janus had no intention of ever letting Richard being punished for it. What good would it do? It wouldn’t bring the dead back, and the thought of his son spending the rest of his life rotting in jail horrified him.

No
, he thought with a shudder.
We have the death penalty now.

Janus considered various options for making sure that Richard was never suspected. His first thought was turning Robinson in. After-all, he was the culprit behind the bombing. But there was no way of putting the blame on Robinson without implicating Richard as well, and, as the person who actually planted the bomb, his son would be shown no mercy. Janus would have to think about this more carefully.

He was in a daze as the morning went by; paying no attention to the chaos that still reigned in the streets of the city. Someone, he wasn’t sure who, came into his office at one point, gathered all the traffic reports and began issuing orders to the repair crews in Janus’s place. It might have been Leblanc, except even in his mental fog Janus didn’t remember seeing his friend.

He blinked a few times and sat back in his chair, trying to think straight. After-all, nobody had kicked their door down in the middle of the night. That meant there was nothing connecting Richard with the bombing so far.

So far! That can change in a hurry.

Janus didn’t know what to do. He needed someone to talk to, if only to keep from going crazy. He had no intention of dumping this burden on Terry and didn’t dare say anything to Sahar over a com line. Could Leblanc be trusted to keep something like this a secret? It was a hell of a thing to ask of someone, even his best friend. But there was nobody else to turn to.

He punched Leblanc’s office number on his com. After several beeps a woman’s voice answered.

“Hello.”

“Hello? Isn’t this Normand Leblanc’s office?”

“Oh, Mr. Janus, is that you? This is Sandra from H.R. I’m afraid this number is being reattributed.”

“Reattributed? What’s Leblanc’s number going to be?”

“I understand that Mr. Leblanc has left the Department. I was given a message to hold all his correspondence until we get a forwarding address.”

Janus ended the call. He remembered his last conversation with Leblanc, just before the bomb alerts had sent everyone into a panic. With everything that had gone on he’d hardly given his friend’s fears a second thought. Now Leblanc was gone, and Janus didn’t expect there to be any forwarding address, at least not one which didn’t have bars on the windows.

Leblanc had been terrified yesterday, convinced that he was in trouble because somebody had exposed his corruption. That somebody was obviously Walid, who had all but promised that he wouldn’t use the information from Janus to hurt his friend. And, just as Sahar had said, he’d turned out to be totally untrustworthy.

Janus grabbed his head and squeezed his eyes shut, feeling like his brain was on fire. With everything that Richard had done, the last thing he needed was to feel guilty about what had happened to Leblanc. Or to worry about what Walid had done.

What Walid had done?

Janus opened his eyes and loosened the grip on his hair.

Of course. What Walid had done
.    

He felt like a blind man who had suddenly been given the gift of sight. Sahar had told him some of the things Walid had done years ago. Now Janus knew how to keep bomb investigation as far from Richard as possible.

That it could put Walid permanently out of the picture was just icing on the cake.

Despite maintaining the nation in a perpetual state of emergency, when the unthinkable did happen the administration’s security apparatus’s first reaction was one of near-panic. Orders were issued but not sent to the proper divisions, or they were misunderstood, or ignored outright. Local Division Heads took it upon themselves to round up any known suspicious characters in their areas, preferring arbitrary action over doing nothing.

Military cordons were set up to blockade certain major arteries, while many tunnels and bridges were left unattended for hours. Eventually the downtown core was locked down, although the operation was so slow that anyone who wanted to slip through had ample time and opportunity. Local citizens were harassed, detained, and questioned, but none of this brought the RCMP any closer to finding the bombers.

While video from the city’s security cameras was being scoured for any suspicious activity, it was obvious that the center of the investigation would be several miles north of the bomb site. There was little doubt within the administration that the bombing was the work of a Muslim terrorist group, perhaps with the aid of traitorous supporters in the Canadian population. RCMP agents flooded the streets of Laval without clear goals, as if their mere presence in the streets would drive the bombers to turn themselves in. By the end of the day, although nobody had taken credit for the attack, the residents of Laval knew they were in for a night of raids and interrogations.

As for Yves Prescott, other than making sure that all Infrastructure resources were available for the investigation, he had no role to play. He was limited to watching from the sidelines, fulminating at being left out of the action, and certain that the city’s security apparatus was drifting like a rudderless ship. He told himself that this was what happened when there was such weak leadership at all levels, especially the prosecutor’s office.

He’d tried calling Robert Sévigny in the hours after the explosion, and then again the following day. Laval was Sévigny’s jurisdiction and Prescott wanted to know what the man was doing about catching the bombers.

Prescott was unable to reach Sévigny the first time. The second time Sévigny’s assistant told him that the RCMP Division Head had no time to speak to the Deputy Minister of Public Works. He had a major investigation on his hands and would do his best to communicate with Prescott when there was time.

“Presumptuous little shit,” Prescott had growled under his breath. He got up from behind his desk and began pacing in his spacious office, furious at the impotence of his position. When his com beeped he rushed back to his desk, certain that Sévigny was finally going to fill him in. But the face on his P-screen wasn’t Sévigny’s. It looked familiar, although Prescott couldn’t place it right away.

“Deputy Minister,” the man said. “I’m sorry to bother you. It’s Allen Janus here.”

“Janus? Oh, yes.
Monsieur
Janus. What is it?”

“I’m sure you’re busy sir, but I have to speak to you right away. I have some information you might be interested in. About the bombing.”

“What kind of information?”

“I have to tell you in person, sir. But it’s vitally important, I assure you.”

What the hell could he know that’s vitally important?

Prescott eyed his Department head for a minute. The nervousness was obvious on his haggard face. Janus clearly had something he wanted to get off his chest, and just maybe it was as important as he claimed. Prescott still had concerns about Janus’s suspicious activities in Laval. These had taken a back seat to the investigation of the bombing, but maybe there was a connection.  He decided to hear him out.

For several hours after trying to call Leblanc, Janus sat alone in his office, trying to convince himself that his latest idea made sense.

Sahar had told him that Walid used a bomb to get rid of a competitor, and that the bomb’s timer had been an old, quartz wristwatch. At the time Janus thought this nothing more than a trivial detail which had somehow stuck in her memory. But last night a reporter had announced a leak from an RCMP source that the recent bomber had used a similar timer.

“It’s a signature,” Janus whispered. If the news report was correct, the investigators would be interested in a man who’d used a bomb with that same timer once before. Janus had no idea if Walid made either of the bombs, or if the two bombs had been manufactured by some unknown third party. That didn’t really matter to him now. If he could cast suspicion on Walid he could protect his own son while getting some sweet revenge for Leblanc’s downfall.

He’d run through the idea over and over in his mind, considering and eliminating a half-dozen ways that things could go wrong. By four PM he decided there was no way it could lead back to Richard, so it was worth a try.

He thought of calling the RCMP directly, but his most recent dealings with their agents had left him suspicious of their honesty. If he wanted to speak to a man of integrity, someone who had a higher sense of duty, the one person he knew was Yves Prescott.

At 4:15, shortly after Janus had gotten up the nerve to call the Deputy Minister, he was standing in Prescott’s large office, sweating profusely despite the climate-controlled temperature.

“I’m listening,
Monsieur
Janus,” Prescott said, leaning back in his chair. “What is this information you have?”

Janus cleared his throat, gathered his thoughts, and begun the explanation he’d rehearsed dozens of time that day.

“Well, there was a leak from the bomb investigation about a potentially significant discovery. It seems that the timer on yesterday’s bomb was a quartz wristwatch, something that is pretty much out of style and off the market nowadays.”

“Just because there’s a supposed leak doesn’t mean that it’s true.”

“No. I understand, sir. But if it is true, if this timer is in fact some sort of signature of the bomb-maker, then I’m aware of someone who used the same timer in a bomb several years ago. Which means the same person could have been involved in both bombings.”

“What bombing are you talking about?”

“It was a sort of settling of accounts between two criminals, gang bosses, in Laval. Back in 2030. A man named Walid Kadri, who runs a place called the
Café Liban
in Laval, had a falling out with his partner and decided to get rid of him. He blew up the man’s car with a bomb, and the timer was the same kind of wristwatch that was described in yesterday’s bomb.”

“That’s assuming that this supposed leak is correct.”

“Well, yes sir. You’d know that better than I would.”

Prescott made a face and shrugged. “I am not with the Security Directorate any more,
Monsieur
Janus. If what you say is true, then why do you bring this information to me?”

“Because I heard that you’re a fanatic about doing the right thing and putting away the bad guys,” Janus said, deciding that being blunt was the best way to convince Prescott.

“I suppose that is one way that I’ve been described,” Prescott said with a cold smile that sent chills up Janus’s spine. “But, again, how do I know what you say is true? About the bomb in 2030, I mean. How would you know of it?”