The High Road (35 page)

I made one final heartfelt apology and backed away slowly. He just waved and joked about advancing his knee replacement surgery. At least I think he was joking.

“Smooth” was all Lindsay said.

In two minutes we were on a bench next to the river ice. Lindsay opened her backpack and I mine. Out came our skates. She favoured hockey skates, which made me love her all the more. I pulled on my CCM Super Tacks, while Lindsay donned her Bauer Black Panthers. She insisted on carrying her own boots in her backpack and I loaded my hiking shoes into my own. Then we were on the ice. I grew up playing hockey, so skating for me, even if I made it onto the ice only every couple of years or so, was just like riding a bike – or falling off a bike, as the case may be. I was a bit wobbly until I’d rediscovered the long-dormant leg muscles that seem to be used only for skating. They cried out in agony but I was too content to listen. Eventually, I found my stride and was able to keep up with Lindsay. Holding hands helped.

It was a stunning day to be on the river. Wispy cirrus clouds
lay in the sky, artfully arranged on a cobalt canvas. In time, my eyes grew accustomed to the sun’s glare and my perpetual squint faded. But it was cold. Both Lindsay and I pulled our hats down low and wound our scarves around our necks and faces, making our parkas look more like down-filled burkas. We didn’t skate in a straight line but meandered, following the serpentine strip of clear ice. We saw not another soul as we carved our way towards the boathouse – our boathouse! – around the next point.

When we were even with the craggy promontory, I let go of Lindsay’s hand and took off. She understood immediately that the Olympic speed-skating gold medal turned on who beat the other to the dock. My first inkling that all was not right with the world came when we were still about 300 yards from our boathouse. Lindsay was only three strides behind me and closing fast as our arms and legs pumped. To the average Canadian observer on the shore, it was a classic winter scene – two carefree skaters racing for some arbitrary finish line. But to the hair-trigger Secret Service lookout, trained to read evil into the most bucolic scene, Lindsay and I were a terrorist sleeper cell, our backpacks filled with gelignite, on a suicide mission to take down the smug and arrogant leader of the free world. Even though we were a day early.

The three snowmobiles came out of nowhere, driven by agents in arctic camouflage. Ever sensible, Lindsay apparently just stopped. I was ahead and just kept skating, trying to escape the snowmobiles. In moments of crisis, I’ve learned the hard way that I don’t always think clearly, despite plenty of opportunities. I actually thought I just might be able to outpace state-of-the-art souped-up snowmobiles that were capable of speeds in excess of 100 kilometres per hour. See what I mean about my clear thinking challenge?

I was still streaking along the ice when the snowmobile pulled alongside. The driver looked my way and shook his head. His fellow agent sitting behind him leapt into space to close the gap between us. There was a soft and fluffy snowbank just to my right that would have been a nice place to land. But I managed
to miss it. The flying agent wrapped his arms around my neck and down we went onto the ice. Intellectually, I know that diamonds are the world’s hardest material. But at the moment of impact, I thought the frozen Ottawa River had to be in the running.

Ten minutes later I could breathe again and was able to confirm that I was not in fact a quadriplegic, despite the searing pain in my back.

“You’re lucky your girlfriend talked fast or it might have been a bullet that brought you down, not Agent Dickerson,” Ken explained.

A bullet might have been less painful, I thought to myself.

“We were just skating back to our own apartment. How is that a threat to Western civilization?” I asked, exasperated. My body felt like one gigantic sprain.

“If we’ve already set up our security perimeter, an old lady in a motorized wheelchair is a threat,” explained Agent Leyland. “We are not programmed to take chances with the President’s life.”

“But the President is still in Washington,” I insisted.

“But we couldn’t know whether you knew that, so in your mind, you could have still been a threat if you thought the President was in fact here already,” spun Agent Leyland.

“Okay, hold it. My brain is just not pliable enough to handle that kind of heroic convolution,” I confessed.

Having found no C-4 in our backpacks or Uzis strapped to our inner thighs, agents Leyland and Fitzhugh eventually escorted us to the boathouse and warned us against any further unauthorized river cavorting. It was easy advice to follow. My body would need at least a week of recovery before I could even contemplate a return to cavorting of any kind.

Lindsay seemed to have a much easier time finding the humour in our little adventure than I did. Then again, she hadn’t been body-slammed to the ice by a former Navy SEAL diving from a speeding Ski-Doo. She nursed me back to health for the rest of the afternoon and I felt better by the evening. As we’d
promised the Secret Service, Lindsay packed a bag and headed to her mother’s for the night. They’d done security checks only on Angus and me, so Lindsay would have to vacate the property until after POTUS and FLOTUS had safely departed the next afternoon. We kissed and she was out the door, escorted to her car by Barbie, er, Agent Fitzhugh. I went over the itinerary for the next day again and practised my presidential small talk before turning in early. I read several sentences of John Irving’s new novel before dropping the heavy tome onto my face as I nodded off. Awake again and nursing my tender nose, I was then able to read several more pages before sleep finally came.

I awoke to see the perfectly coiffed head of Agent Leyland framed in my window, speaking into the cuff of his jacket. He nodded ever so slightly. I waved him away and he descended out of sight as if he were on a motorized scaffold on the side of the boat-house. When I eventually got up, I discovered there was a motorized scaffold on the side of the boathouse. Agent Leyland, I found, didn’t call it a scaffold. Scaffolds were for painting and window washing. No, this was an ESS, an Elevational Sniper Station. Of course it was.

As outlined in our pre-visit briefings, the President and First Lady’s stopover was not an official state visit, so I did not have to rent a tux to greet the most powerful couple in the world for breakfast with Angus. It was to be casual attire. After all, it was a Saturday morning, and the President was a good old boy from Kentucky who’d grown up on a farm. I figured jeans and boots were his preferred clothes anyway. I pulled on just-back-from-the-cleaners Levi’s cords and a black turtleneck, before heading out to walk up the path to the McLintock house. I was searched on my own porch and then escorted by four Secret Service agents to ensure that I had no plans for setting fires, launching rockets, or deploying deadly nerve gas. I really only wanted a glass of orange juice. But I confess it boosted my self-esteem to know that the Secret Service at least considered the possibility that I might be capable of some rash and monumental act of political violence. They seemed to think I was actually worth keeping an eye on. Cool.

Angus and I were just standing around trying not to violate the security perimeter or make any sudden movements when the Prime Minister and Bradley Stanton arrived. It was about 8:50, with forty minutes to go before the twelve-vehicle motorcade was to arrive.

The PM’s plainclothes RCMP detail blended in with the Secret Service so that we couldn’t tell them apart. It was the one time those silly scarlet tunics might have been helpful. The Prime Minister and Bradley pulled Angus and me out onto the deck. Bradley wore his standard-issue scowl, and the PM did not look happy as he turned to face us.

“I’m not happy. The so-called McLintock Report reaches well beyond the mandate I outlined. You’ve gone deeper in the investigation than I had intended and it’s put us in a very awkward position politically. You do see that, don’t you?” the PM asked.

I jumped in to give Angus a chance to cool down. I knew he’d be angered by the PM’s opening gambit.

“Prime Minister, the report is comprehensive, built on irrefutable facts, and illuminates a national priority, the urgency and scope of which we were largely unaware before Angus started clambering among the twisted girders of the Alexandra Bridge.”

The PM looked pensive and not ready yet to respond, so I just kept talking.

“I truly believe it gives you a great opportunity to do the right thing when the right thing is so obviously staring us in the face. This, to me, is an easy call, even politically. You can still score some big political points on the Tories’ last fifteen years of underfunding. Yes, we started the ball rolling twenty years ago, but there’s not a single Liberal M P, let alone minister, still in the House from that time. Canadians are ready for this kind of straight talk, for this kind of transparency. I think you should run with it.”

The PM didn’t look convinced.

“I understand your position, Daniel, but it’s not that simple. I’ve got Coulombe crawling up my ass.” He paused to look at
Angus. “Pardon my language, Angus. And we’ve also got a set of numbers telling us that Canadians want their damn tax cuts – you know, the ones we promised a few weeks ago, remember?”

I sensed that Angus wanted in, so I clammed up.

“Prime Minister, our situation has changed. A bridge has collapsed into the river and along with it any pretence that either the Liberals or the Tories actually slew the deficit. We are not rid of the deficit, we just hid the deficit. You can now find part of it in the Ottawa River.”

The PM actually smiled at Angus’s imagery.

“You’ve clearly been spending too much time with my former speechwriter. It’s black and white to you two, but I’m the Prime Minister now, and decisions are seldom binary. I’ve still got some thinking to do, but let’s get through this charade of a presidential visit first.”

“I’m still back on slew,” said Bradley, looking at Angus. “Slew?”

“Yes, slew. Are you not familiar with the past tense of slay?”

“Well, I’d have stayed with slayed,” Bradley suggested.

“That doesn’t surprise me in the least” was all that Angus said.

“Okay, it’s almost show time,” remarked the PM, checking his watch. “Angus, notwithstanding my, er, irritation over how this bridge business is unfolding, your home is wonderful and I’m glad to be welcoming the President and First Lady here. Thank you for indulging my desire to hold this gathering in your remarkable home.”

“I’m pleased to host it, Prime Minister,” Angus said. “I regret my wife is missing this.”

I heard
Marine One
before I saw it. Looking up, we all focused on three helicopters heading our way from Ottawa in the west.
Marine One
was flanked by two smaller choppers that looked harmless enough but likely packed enough firepower to conquer a small republic. I think they actually call them gunships. On the river, a large square of ice had been cleared and four flares in tinfoil pans now burned brightly, one in each corner.
Baddeck 1
was resting on the ice next to the dock, like a stone lion in front of
the New York Public Library. After all, for the President, seeing the hovercraft was one of the reasons he’d wanted to come.

The Prime Minister, Angus, Bradley Stanton, and I stood in the prescribed formation on the dock, just as we had during the seven rehearsals. I felt we’d all nailed our parts in only three rehearsals, but the protocol officials weren’t quite convinced. As the trio of whirlybirds approached, I scanned Angus’s domain. We’d heard no more about chopping down trees, and Marin’s silver maple still stood tall, presiding over the scene. I did feel sorry for the Secret Service agent halfway up the seventy-five-foot tree, one arm clinging to the thick trunk, the other holding binoculars, ever-alert to threats. I thought it unfair that the term “tree-hugger” had become so closely tied to environmentalists.

As I surveyed the area, I saw dozens of Secret Service and RCMP officers. They were stationed every fifty metres or so along the shore, on snowmobiles out on the ice, on the roof of the boathouse, up trees, under the McLintock deck, on the road leading to the house, and quite likely under the McLintock matrimonial bed. Security was, to say the least, tight. If I’d needed to make an unscheduled washroom stop (I had two planned bathroom breaks in the master schedule), by the time the strip search and interrogation had been completed, my need for the bathroom would have resolved itself, and not in a good way.

Everyone seemed to stiffen just a bit as the helicopters drew nearer. As the PM had said earlier, it was nearly showtime. A separate, cordoned-off zone on the ice housed about two dozen reporters from the White House press corps, the Parliamentary Press Gallery, and a couple of local reporters, including André Fontaine. White House communications staff engaged in reporter husbandry stood along the perimeter of the area, keeping the journalists in their pen.

Marine One
settled in the centre of the square landing area and shut down, the rotor blades spinning slowly to a stop. A red carpet was rolled over the ice to the machine and two marines, polished to an impossible sheen, marched to the end and waited. Then the
hatch swung down to rest on the ground, steps and a railing magically unfolding with it. White hats gleaming, the marines stood ramrod-straight on either side of the hatch and stared dead ahead, oblivious by training to whatever happened on the four steps that descended to the ground between them. After Gerald Ford’s several wipeouts, I’d have thought that they’d be ready with crash mats, airbags, and maybe a gigantic catcher’s mitt in case of another presidential stair stumble. But no. The first out the door were two other chiselled marines, who formed a line at the bottom of the stairs. Then two more standard-issue Secret Service agents appeared. They were either eating snacks directly out of their sleeves or more likely were talking into their standard-issue cuff radios as they came down the steps. They immediately used their X-ray vision to scour the area for threats, their lethal hands clasped in front of them, affecting an air of extreme, even dangerous, vigilance. In the sunlight, they wore dark glasses but I could tell their eyes never stayed on the same object for more than a second – attention deficit disorder writ large.