The Kashmir Trap (10 page)

Max had never been invited here, or to Philippe's home. And it felt strange being here tonight, as though he were an intruder, a stranger, yet one who recognized certain objects, like a trinket that once belonged to Philippe. Here was David's privacy spread out before him, and his presence felt almost indecent. Especially now that he knew certain intimate things about the couple, like Juliette's pregnancy.

On the wall behind the sofa was a collection of photos, again both familiar and foreign: David and Juliette in one another's arms, so obviously in love. Then there were older ones of David as a teenager standing in between Béatrice and Patterson. Some, even older, were of Philippe and Béatrice at the award ceremony for the French high school in Bangkok, or of David shivering by the pool at their house in Ottawa. Then, there they were, all three of them, on a ride at a fair in some country or other. He couldn't tell. Max felt himself being overtaken by an immense sadness. His nephew's life, like his brother's, had unfolded without him. Béatrice's orders at the funeral home on O'Connor had been respected by her son. Max had no longer existed, had just disappeared, completely obliterated and shut out of the lives of both his nephew and brother.

Yet Philippe had always been there, discreet but faithful, despite the Kavanagh episode, often showing up when Max least expected. You thought he was on the other side of the world, and then suddenly he'd be there at the penitentiary with the right words of encouragement, as usual. Max asked for nothing, but Philippe gave him everything. Why was that? Out of love, but also out of guilt, Max figured. Philippe mistakenly felt responsible for what had happened to their father. Perhaps he'd promised himself never again to make the same mistake. Two brothers united forever like the folded blades of a pocket knife.

One day, when he was in Ottawa for a meeting of the Asian bureaus — he was posted to Ankara at the time — Philippe received a message from a Turkish businessman who absolutely insisted on meeting him at the Château Laurier. Max waited with Pascale in Room 506. He was proud to introduce his wife and apologized for not having informed his brother of the wedding: “It all happened so fast!”

Philippe had hugged Pascale and welcomed her into the family. And into a normal life. Almost.

“Hey, look at that,
yaar
!” Jayesh exclaimed as he crouched next to the stairs, facing the wide-open safe beneath the lowest step, its door wedged under the bottom of the banister. Max knelt down for a look while Jayesh swept the inside with his flashlight. Documents such as insurance policies had been removed from their plastic sleeves, so had a copy of the lease on the house, various expired passports belonging to David and Juliette, a marriage certificate, and an airline ticket.

Max took a closer look. The latter was for David via Paris on Air France to Montreal. That would have been for the conference. The dates matched. He took a closer look, especially at the cover it was in — a sort of wax-paper envelope — where David or someone else had scribbled some notes. But the ink had run because of the paper, and the words were illegible. Maybe they had been jotted down quickly while on the phone and copied somewhere else later on. Using Jayesh's flashlight, he could make out one word,
Tourigny
, and some digits, perhaps a phone number.

There was something else inside the envelope: a coin that rolled out onto the floor. Jayesh trapped it with his foot.

“Rupee?” asked Max, coming closer.

“Yes, but Nepalese.”

Kathmandu again.

Next morning, the bellboy with the Texas accent brought breakfast to Max's room sporting the smile of one who expects a huge tip. On the tray were a teapot, toast, porridge, and the daily edition of the
Times of India.
Page one had an account of the previous night's clashes in Kashmir, as well as the latest Bollywood gossip and releases from the international press.

There was a photo of David:
DIPLOMAT DIES
.

 

LOUNGE LIZARD

“C
ome
on, don't be afraid, I'm telling you!”

On the ramparts of Fatehpur Sikri, David held out his hand and flashed that killer smile of his. “You won't fall, I promise. Come on up!”

Juliette slipped her hand into his and felt his fingers closing over hers: “Okay, nothing can happen now.” She felt swept up and David's arms held her fast and high. His deep, good-hearted laugh was like a child's as he carried her. She didn't dare open her eyes. That would mean losing her balance and smashing her skull on the flagstones in the courtyard.
How stupid I am!
she thought,
He's here holding on to me. I can't fall
. This man, this man of her life, seemed to be made especially for her protection, she the free-speaking young university student. She opened her eyes. “I love you, David.”

Now, that same hand felt soft, weak, damp, and meaningless.
Who'll protect me from vertigo now that he's gone?

After they unplugged his life support, David didn't die right away as she had expected. There was a moment of suspension, unbearable, as she and Béatrice hugged each other, two wounded souls, already emptied of tears and pain. Then he was gone, just like that, with no further ceremony. The machines confirmed it.

Juliette wanted to be alone now. She didn't throw herself on David's body as she'd done so many times these past few days, but she surprised Béatrice and the personnel by running out into the corridor.

With no one left to protect, the security detail was gone. She rushed into the little room at the end where they'd taken their meals and closed the door behind her. She went over to the window and watched the wind blowing through the trees on Mount Royal, the
out-of
-breath joggers and a cyclist pumping his peddles.

“You won't fall, I promise. Come on up!”

He was the one they'd pushed into the void, and she felt dragged along with him — a long fall into the night that might never end.
David, David, David.
She ought to be remembering the important things, but what came back to her were the little ones: His way of pinching the crease in his pants when he crossed his legs. His inability to make coffee that wasn't a disgusting mess —
“But really it's so easy!”
— The way he slept tangled up in the covers. The scruffy hair he vainly struggled with in front of the bathroom mirror…. Meaningless little memories like that came flooding back.

There was the wind again and a mother, her baby in a carriage, waiting to cross the street. Juliette's hand went to her belly. “His” child. Suddenly, she just wanted to disappear along with him. Sure, just jump out of the window then and there. Get done with it once and for all. Be with him. What was it the Mahabharata said?

“… the body of the king is laid out with the living body of his spouse. The fire is lit and Madri, without lament, quits her life in the heart of the flames.”

She heard the door open behind her as Dennis Patterson stepped gently into the room holding his cellphone. She didn't want to see a soul.

“The prime minister wants to speak to you.”

She looked up at Patterson as he held out the phone to her, more sensitive to manners than sadness, she felt.

“Later …”

He didn't move, but just stood there holding it.

Oh, all right, let's get it over with
, she thought. She took the phone from him.

“Mr. Prime Minister …”

The sympathy, pain, and sadness resonated in his voice as it did on TV, sincere. Sincerity was his job, though, wasn't it? Well, for thirty seconds at a time, anyway.

Juliette handed the phone back to Patterson, still standing at attention. He wanted to discuss practical details, how things were going to be done. She waved him off: “Not right now.”

“Sorry, Juliette.”

She turned toward him and fell into his arms as she had the first time, and began crying once more, uncontrollably, into his shoulder. Then she raised her head, her voice quavering. “Has he been identified?”

For a moment, Patterson didn't seem to know what she meant. Then he said, “False alarm. It was a burglar.”

Everywhere in the hospital, she'd seen the signs warning patients and visitors to keep their belongings close at hand.

“Creep probably just chose the wrong hospital at the wrong time.”

Call Juliette, but to tell her what exactly? Max hadn't a clue. He wanted to talk to her, hear her voice, period. It could wait. Jayesh had left town, knowing that for the time being, Max needed to be alone. From his window, he had a view of the pool, where tourists frolicked without a care in the world. The past caught up with him again. So David's death was one more in the string of deaths that marked out his life. This one was the most unbearable of them all, but who could he turn to for comfort? Pascale would have talked about the predetermined transition from one life to the next, a constant and harmonious cycle of rebirths. The easy pictures of fatalistic Hinduism, like every other religion, he believed, especially for the uneducated and unlettered, deprived of the acquired wisdom of the ages. Small comfort for such an abysmal tragedy. Religion invented to defeat death actually created it, as now in India.

Max felt somehow responsible for what had happened to David: a vague sort of guilt that was hard to pin down, and it was eating him up. Could things have turned out differently?

Alone, Juliette stood before the desk belonging to Patterson's secretary, but the young woman was not there. Patterson himself was in a meeting next door. Should she wait for the secretary to announce her or just walk in? Juliette had been relieved to let Patterson deal with the “arrangements,” as he called them. He kept her informed more than she wanted him to. Who cared what happened now? Nothing mattered anymore. Still, she had to sign all these papers. That was why she'd stepped into this maze. But now the secretary had vanished …
for good?
Wasn't that her raincoat there in the wardrobe with the others? Juliette thought back to the hospital. Here, as well, it would be easy for someone to slip into any of the offices and make off with the coats. That man had been caught in the act. How could she forget? David's death had wiped out everything else. She went on looking at the wardrobe. What had he been doing in a hospital? He'd gone to the trouble of disguising himself as a cook … good cover. But what if Patterson and the cops had it wrong and he really was there to kill David?

Voices were raised in Patterson's office. Juliette could hear the consultant, grave and soothing, then suddenly Béatrice, her voice high-pitched and exasperated, a voice Juliette had learned to recognize among thousands when she called for news of David. There was a third voice, too, a woman's, that she couldn't identify.

She moved closer to the door.

“At a moment like this,” Patterson cut in, “the least you could do would be put aside your differences.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Béatrice!”

“I refuse, that's all. I, too, have a reputation to think about.”

“No one knows anything about it,” replied the unknown woman.

“Exactly. I don't want this business suddenly coming out in public.”

“Look, I'm sure there's a way to work this out,” said Patterson, ever the diplomat.

Juliette gently pushed open the door: “Excuse me …”

All three stared at her, astonished. They'd stopped talking, so to relieve the tension, Juliette said, “If you're discussing the funeral arrangements, I'd like to …”

“We weren't expecting you this early, Juliette,” exclaimed Patterson, walking toward her. “But you did the right thing coming here.”

He turned to the unidentified woman. “Let me introduce Deborah Cournoyer.”

The woman, in a grey suit and with a red scarf knotted at her neck, approached, smiling, to shake Juliette's hand.

“Are you with the funeral home?”

Patterson shook his head. “Deborah's an old friend of Philippe and Béatrice.”

Béatrice stood to one side, watching and frowning. There was no reading her thoughts, but one might hazard a guess. Of the three, she was the only one still in a bad mood.

“If I'm in the way, I can come back later.”

“Your husband was an exceptional man,” said Deborah Cournoyer, “and his death is a great loss for us all.” She stared Juliette straight in the eye insistently in a way that made her uncomfortable.

Béatrice suddenly switched on again. “We'll leave you two alone.” She took the unknown woman by the arm and guided her out.

On her way out, Cournoyer said again, “I'm delighted to meet you. It's a shame it had to be under such sad circumstances.”

As the two women left, Juliette turned to Patterson, who was standing before her with a sheaf of telegrams in his hand: “Condolence messages from all over, especially embassies and High Commissions in New Delhi. Foreign Affairs, too.”

“What business?”

“Excuse me?”

“Béatrice said, ‘I don't want this business suddenly coming out in public.”'

Patterson hesitated a moment, then said, “Nothing for you to worry about, Juliette, I promise.”

She looked at him, but said nothing. She'd talk to Béatrice about it tonight.

Patterson changed the subject. “The minister's coming to the funeral.”

Killed in the line of duty, so the Canadian flag would be draped over the coffin. Gawkers would clap as they exited Notre Dame Basilica facing Place d'Armes where the
calèche
drivers hustled tourists. Juliette would have to stand erect, proud, looking elegant in a black suit, and next to Béatrice, of course. “I know what to do. I've been there before.”

Her head was spinning all at once … must be the heat.

“Then Mount Royal Cemetery for another very short ceremony.”

“Private, I hope.”

“The media and the public are allowed at the church — we can hardly refuse them — but at the cemetery …”

“And I'll need to say something, I suppose.”

“At the basilica? Sure, if you want to. Normally, it would be …”

“Mr. Bernatchez?”

Patterson nodded. “Raymond gets here this afternoon. He'll be at the funeral home and at the funeral itself: the usual tribute, and of course some mention of Philippe. The son joining the father … that sort of thing.”

Juliette was incredulous. Patterson gave her a comforting smile. “Don't worry. I'll write it.” He waited a moment, then added, “I can modify the program if you want to speak, too.”

“No, no, I have nothing to say, not to tourists visiting Place d'Armes, anyway.”

As she was getting out of the elevator a few minutes later, Max called. It was their first conversation since David's death. She regretted not having told him about her decision to cut short her husband's suffering. She was afraid that in apologizing she'd break down completely, and she was never going to cry again, ever.

“You going to get through this?”

“Oh yes, I've got an unlimited supply of chocolate,” she reassured him.

Max's troubled laugh came over the line. He cleared his throat. He wanted to change the subject. Juliette was expecting some sort of revelation, but he had more questions than answers. He was clearly working hard at piecing together bits of the investigation that first seemed unrelated. He struck her as a labourer lumbering painfully through an overgrown field, moving ahead, but at a very slow pace.

“You knew about the strongbox under the stairs?”

She'd forgotten about it. “Oh yeah, that. David had it put in when we got there.”

“What for?”

“It was a gift from Béatrice.”

“What?”

“She started doing it in Rabat — a ‘secret' vault was essential, she said, so when he was posted to Delhi, she gave it to him.”

“What exactly was in it?”

“Nothing all that important. A bit of money.”

“Yes?”

“Two thousand to three thousand U.S. dollars, just a precaution. But it would have been better in a bank.”

“Any Nepalese rupees?”

“Must've been some. He dipped into them for one trip or another. Why?”

“It was empty. The dollars and rupees were gone.”

Juliette was puzzled, but Max didn't think the theft had any connection with the attack.

“I'm sure of only one thing: someone was in that house after you and the police had left.”

“Maybe the cops emptied it.”

“It's hidden under the stairs. They'd have to know that. I think someone else was there.”

“A few thousand dollars …”

“Who else knew about it besides you two? Household staff?”

“No, of course not.”

“Vandana?”

“David may have mentioned it to her.”

Max cleared his throat. “Does the name Tourigny mean anything to you?”

“Who's that?”

“It was scribbled on the envelope of David's airline ticket in the vault.”

On his way back to the hotel, Max had tried that number in Delhi, then Montreal, then Toronto, even Paris. Nothing.

“You ought to ask Vandana.”