Fanatics (25 page)

“Want to come with me for the performance?” Raphaella asked me on the phone that afternoon. “You can give me a ride out and back.”

I picked her up after an early supper and we rode out to Geneva Park, motoring through the Chippewas of Rama territory and past the busy casino. We turned off Rama Road, followed a tree-lined lane to a gatehouse, where we signed in and received photo-
ID
badges from blue-clad rent-a-cops, and parked in the lot nearest the conference centre, where the performance would be held. I noticed several security personnel in similar outfits near the main building.

Inside, teenagers of all sizes and shapes and wearing a wide variety of dress styles wandered around in small groups, obviously on a lull between laid-on activities, chatting in languages I didn’t recognize. Chairs had been arranged in front of the stage. Music stands stood skeletally off to the side. Raphaella and I went backstage, where Mr. and Mrs. Director were arguing about something.

“I’d better get out of your hair,” I said. “Maybe I’ll go for a walk.”

Handing me the
PIE
, she replied, “Take care of this for me? I forgot to leave it at home.”

Raphaella had a rule that no cells were allowed backstage. People said they’d turn them off, then they’d forget. I shoved the
PIE
into my pocket and gave Raphaella a kiss.

“See you later,” I said. Then, nodding toward the warring directors, “Good luck with the children.”

A crew of groundskeepers were tending to the lawn and shrubs in the open area beside the main building, cutting and trimming and raking, looking overheated in their brown uniforms and baseball-style hats. According to the map in
the pamphlet I had picked up at the gate, the centre occupied a forested peninsula intersected by pea-gravel trails connecting tennis courts, sleeping cabins, outbuildings, patios, and the beach. I followed the path toward the lake. At the shore I came to a boathouse and dock, where a security guard who looked as if she’d rather be just about anywhere else stood sentry. I continued along the edge of the water until I got to a stand of white pines. I walked a few steps into the green grove, the mantle of fallen needles springy under my feet, and sat down, leaning against one of the trees. The lake was bright with late-afternoon sunlight, shimmering in the still air, the green water along the shore fringed with spiky grass and sand.

Chiefs Island lay off to the southwest, between me and Wicklow Point, where Mrs. Stoppini was probably writing letters in her study or reading over a glass of Chianti, alone in her big empty mansion. No, not quite alone, I reminded myself, and shivered. The friar was there, too, lurking. I asked myself again how Raphaella and I could force the spirit to slink away for good, and as always I was stuck for an answer.

I opened the pamphlet I had picked up at the gate, curious about the World Youth Congress just under way. The teenage participants had come from all over the world, representing more than two dozen countries. No wonder there were rent-a-cops around, I thought. The congress brought the kids together to inspire “mutual understanding and cooperation between cultures,” through activities like “team-building” and “goal-oriented tasks that encourage and reward collaboration.” I hoped that meant the kids could have fun together and get to know one another by sailing, swimming, playing games, and generally horsing around.

I looked up when I heard boots scraping on the footpath. A man in a sweat-stained brown uniform made his way along the shore. Grass clippings clung to his trouser cuffs. He glanced at me and continued on without saying anything. He looked familiar, in a vague way.

I folded the pamphlet and slipped it into a back pocket, thinking the congress was a terrific idea. I liked it when people from different countries and cultures mingled. Lazy in the heat, I settled back against the tree and idly picked up a clump of dry brown pine needles. Dad had tried to teach me some arithmetic once, long before I started school, using pine fascicles. We were hiking the Ganaraska Trail, west of town, in a blaze of autumn colour, and he was rambling away about white and red pines, how their needle clusters were different. Five white, two red, he chanted, not realizing that I was barely paying attention. He plucked one fascicle from each kind of tree and pointed out that the red pine fascicle held two needles, the white five.

“Remember, the word ‘white’ has five letters, and the white pine has five needles. The word ‘red’ has three letters—two less than five—therefore red has two needles. And white times red makes ten.”

How he imagined this convoluted logic would help me remember anything was beyond me—for a while, until I realized it had worked.

I checked my watch. The show would be starting soon. I got up and ambled back, using a different route. The trees threw long shadows across the trail. I passed through a cluster of sleeping cabins—old log structures that had been updated. The cabins were scattered across a pine grove. Whitewashed rocks delineated the paths leading from the gravel walkway to the ground-level platform at each cabin door.

White times red makes ten popped into my mind again. Ten divided by white equals red. Ten divided by red equals white. I chanted as I walked.

Ten.

At the edge of my vision, a brown blur. I whirled around in time to see a man hurry into the trees behind the cabin nearest the lake. It was the groundskeeper I had met at the shore, the one who had looked familiar. He was carrying one of those small foldable shovels. He hadn’t noticed me.

Ten.

What kind of task would take a landscape worker into the bush? I wondered. Keeping the cabin between him and me, I worked my way around it until I could see movement in the maples beyond the pine grove. Where the ground sloped away to the lake he stopped, got to his knees, and began to dig. I crept back to the front of the cabin, my shoulder brushing the log wall.

Ten.

I ransacked my memory, frustrated. I couldn’t place the man’s face. Why did that number and the image of the face chase themselves around my brain box? Were they linked? I allowed my vision to play across the grounds and the tall white pines that striped the area with shadows. Around me, all was quiet. No one stirred in any of the cabins or along the walkways. Everyone was in the audience, waiting for the show to begin.

Ten.

In a dark corner of my mind, something clicked as a connection was made.

Ten.

The news reports about the suspected terrorists associated with the paintball/jihadist training camp called the men who had been apprehended by the police the Severn Ten.

And I hadn’t paid enough attention to the details.

Ten had seemed right. I had seen exactly that number of camo-boys at the camp, and I had taken photos of some of them, including the leader. Ten men had been arrested in Scarborough and Mississauga.

But one news report had stated that an imam had been taken into custody as part of the conspiracy. Was the imam one of the men at the camp? Or should the total number of arrests have been
eleven
?

Had the cops missed one? Had one of the paintball-camp terrorists slipped out of the net?

Frantically, I snatched Raphaella’s cell from my pocket. My hands shook so violently I could barely thumb the keys.

“Hello?”

“Dad, put Mom on. Hurry.”

“What—?”

“Do it!”

My mother’s voice came on a couple of seconds later. “Garnet?”

“Mom. You have the photos from the paintball camp on your laptop.”

She caught the excitement in my voice.

“Yes, I still have them.”

“Email the picture of the guy with the machine pistol to Raphaella’s cell. Right away.”

“Got it.”

I disconnected. I stole a look around the corner of the building. The man was still at work, deep in the trees,
digging. I stood quietly, listening to the air flowing in and out of my lungs. Once more I scanned the cabins, each with its path neatly bordered by white rocks, each with its single window and low platform before the door. I visualized another cabin, colourful paintball strikes around the door and windows, like acne.

The
PIE
vibrated.

I punched buttons. Opened the email. Mom had sent the photo. I zoomed in on the face of the camp leader. Take away his moustache, exchange the camo field cap for a brown groundskeeper’s hat, and there he was.

I erased Mom’s email and called her back.

“Listen carefully,” I said in a low voice, trying and failing to hold back the adrenaline buzz. “He’s here—at Geneva Park, at the World Youth Congress. I saw him.”

It all made sense, I rushed on. Why did the terrorists access their camp by water, from Lake Couchiching down the Trent system to the landing? Because they intended to
attack
by water. Their target was Geneva Park!

And what had they been doing out on the lake during a storm that night? Rehearsing. Practising. Getting their timing right. Maybe landing at Geneva Park in the middle of the night, in a storm, when they wouldn’t be seen, and burying arms and ammo right on the grounds. But they ran into trouble. A violent thunderstorm. An overloaded boat, maybe. A boat pitched around by savage waves. One of them—the undercover—fell out of the boat during the thunderstorm. Or his cover was blown and they killed and dumped him. His
GPS
floated free and washed up on the grounds of the Corbizzi estate.

“They planned to assault Geneva Park during the youth summit all along, Mom! I—”

“I’m phoning my contact at the cops. Hang up, Garnet. Right now. And get the hell out of there!”

I thumbed the Off button and shoved the
PIE
into my pocket. Then I heard a twig snap behind the cabin.

I
FLATTENED MY BACK
against the logs and held my breath.

The terrorist in the brown uniform walked purposefully past the corner of the building, heading down the main walkway, his feet crunching on the gravel. He held the shovel in one hand and a gym bag sagging from its handles in the other. What weighed down the bag was easy to guess. Thoughts flicked on and off in my mind like camera flashes in a stadium crowd. A man twisted with hate carries a rifle into a Montreal school and massacres more than a dozen women. A couple of Colorado teenagers zoned out on self-pity make war on classmates, leaving a dozen dead. It seemed every country had its school shooting or equivalent, where twisted minds saw murder as a form of self-expression. But this guy was different. He was a fanatic calmly carrying out his version of Allah’s will. Within minutes he would stroll into the main building, pretending interest in the show—your friendly lawn-care guy attracted by the crowd and the music. He’d find a good vantage point in the semi-darkness, put the bag down, whack a bullet clip into the machine pistol, lay out the extra clips in a neat line for rapid reloading, and let the gun make a statement that
would ensure he’d be remembered for decades—and so would his cause. He’d open up on the crowd, screaming that God was great as bullets tore into flesh and bone, filling the air with a fine mist of gore. Within minutes the auditorium would be a slaughterhouse strewn with corpses, the floor a lake of blood. When the cops came for him he’d keep tossing grenades until he was shot dead. He’d be a martyr.

And Raphaella would be among the dead.

“Hey!” I called out.

He stopped about ten paces from me. His broad shoulders bunched. He turned slowly, his dark eyes hard and calculating.

What to say next? I scrabbled for words. Blanked. Stood like a fool, mouth open like a startled fish.

“Er, have you seen Mary?” I blurted, my heart battering my chest wall. “I … she told me this was her cabin. Number … whatever. But nobody’ll answer. See?”

Moronically, I demonstrated by rapping on the screen door. I ransacked my brain for a way to delay him, but I had run out of ideas. He took a step toward me. He still hadn’t uttered a word. Behind him in the distance I heard the opening cymbal bash of the overture for
Merrie Olde Orillia
.

“Don’t,” I pleaded. “They have nothing against you. They’re innocent.”

His eyes flared. His fingers tightened on the looped handles of the bag. Something came over his face—a shadow—and I could almost hear him asking himself how I knew that he was about to make the auditorium an inferno of gunfire and smoke. The dark unyielding eyes widened again. Did he realize I was the intruder who had come upon him and his followers in the forest outside Orillia, who had caused the arrest of his accomplices and the destruction of his plans?

“Think about it,” I said desperately. “You can’t do this.”

He strode determinedly toward me. The hand gripping the shovel’s handle relaxed and allowed the tool to slip through his palm until he could grasp the end of the shaft. I readied myself to shift quickly at the right second. But he fooled me. In one lightning-fast circular motion he flung the shovel. It whickered end over end across the space between us, small lumps of earth flying off the blade as it spun.

I flinched instinctively, twitching my head back and to one side a split second before I heard the sickening
pang
of metal on bone. Light exploded inside my head and I dropped like a stone to the platform. He was on me in a second, snatching up the shovel, lifting it high, and striking down toward my skull. I rolled onto my back and he grunted as the shovel crashed into the plank beside my head. He snarled, eyes smouldering with hatred and frustration. I brought one knee to my chest, and as he raised the shovel overhead, I gathered what strength I could and jabbed my heel into his balls.

He cried out and fell to his knees, desperately groping for breath. The shovel clattered to the planks. I scrabbled away from him and, struggling dizzily to my feet, stood swaying like a drunk, my vision blurred, my head ringing. Something streamed down the side of my face like hot syrup.

The terrorist fell forward onto one hand, the other clutching his crotch, choking as if the air around him had been sucked away. He turned his head, fixed his eyes on the gym bag. As if in slow motion I picked up the shovel, stumbled out of his reach. I had no doubt that if he got the tool I’d be dead in seconds.