He said that was more likely, although he’d been out in a place in Montana that the FBI and CIA were watching closely, and he’d never seen a plane overhead. But he said if they didn’t like somebody they’d send in a few agents on the ground. Maybe put some Stupid Juice in the well or something. That way you can watch how well it works.
They doing that to you? I asked. He said if so he hadn’t found out about it yet. He said Potto and Cory should give him a bit of warning. Then he pointed out the dummy and said if someone burst in they might put a bullet in the dummy first and give him a chance to do something.
I didn’t know what to think; he sure sounded like he was on the same side as I am, even if he didn’t believe about the gas.
I told him about how the cities can kill you. Then I told him about the guys who took over the cottage next door. He said he knew them and that they were secret agents from the States but I shouldn't do anything but watch them.
I told him that made sense to me the way the people from the cottage left, but I didn't tell him they left by boat because you can't trust any of these guys. I said I was going to spend the night in the woods and he told me to be careful because these guys were pretty good in the woods too and probably had night vision goggles. He said, if I saw people sneaking through the woods it was probably people scouting him out and not after me. I asked if I should bean them, and he said no. Just leave them alone, he said, unless you can warn me and get away with it.
Then we talked about the way the world is in and what happened to democracy and it was nice to talk to someone who talked the same beliefs, even if he was making them up. It was nice to hear a voice that didn’t come out of my own head or off the radio.
I asked him if he had a gun and he said no, a gun will get you into trouble in this country, but it won’t get you out. In some places, he said, you need a gun, so I asked him where and he said in grizzly country and in polar bear country and in parts of north Toronto. I laughed.
He started asking me if I had enough food and things like that, so I said goodbye and left, but not before I nuzzled Cory and Potto so they’d remember my smell. They're not guard dogs, so I don't know why he has them, really. Dogs generally like me, even if people don't. You always know what a dog's about.
He didn’t come out onto the deck and he didn’t shoot me in the back, so I figure they’re just taking notes. If not, I can’t figure out their game.
The moon was still pretty full, so I circled around. He had Cory outside but she didn’t smell me because I stayed downwind and I’m quiet when I want to be. I was tired by then, really tired. Or maybe it was something in the tea or cookies. Do they have such a thing? Stupid Beams? I seemed more confused than usual after the visit.
In the morning I did another canku, this one about the beauty of snakes.
This morning I went over to his cottage again. I was careful to make sure I didn’t eat or drink anything unless he did first. He was gone, and the two spies in the next cottage were gone. I fed the dogs and opened a couple of cans for me. I didn't see any cameras hidden in the ceiling but that doesn't mean anything. They’ll get us all when they want. In a year or two I’ll go to Weyburn and be a little harder to find. Now is just preparation for the Great Escape!!!
I’ve decided to kill him when he comes back. I liked him but that only makes him more dangerous. I looked around the cabin and figured a couple of ways to poison him and I could take him in the night or even right in broad daylight, but I want it to look like an accident.
****
Brighton:
Along Popham Bay.
Day after Button Day
For a while after Tom left there was silence, and Cope prepared a few traps from the supplies he'd purchased locally. Potto lay on the floor, watching everything. Cope was sure the dog would raise his head when he heard something outside the cabin but not make a sound unless he was actually concerned. The dog didn't make a sound as Cope rigged up a dummy, standing it just inside the door, wearing one of Jagger’s sets of clothes. Then both dog and man closed their eyes and went to sleep, waking only when Cory, tied outside, barked.
When they came for him, well before dawn, somehow he knew it. There was something in Cory’s bark that was different. Cope took that to mean a human was near. Cory, he'd been told, liked all people, and her bark was happy when she heard one coming.
Potto, on the other hand, started a deep, almost inaudible growl and stood up, facing the door. Cope was fully awake within seconds. He was sure there was a person out there and so decided not to open the door.
He checked that he had the little flashlight and a knife into one pocket, then grabbed a camouflage cloth and a silver thermal survival cloth that he'd left handy on the table. Pushing open the window in the bathroom, he rolled out and onto the mossy patch beneath. He slid the window closed behind him.
He looked around but could see no movement. That didn’t surprise him; these guys were professionals. If there were now more than two of them, it was almost certain that one of them had his image in a some sight. He waited to die or be confronted. But if there were two of them, one would be at the side door and the other would be watching the door to the veranda at the front of the house.
After a few seconds, he crawled into a space beside the wood pile, a couple of yards from the cabin, then pulled the foil cloth around him. He rolled the camouflage cloth over top. The foil, which was surprisingly noiseless, would cut his thermal signature and the outside cloth pattern would make him less visible.
Cope huddled in the darkness, slowly sliding the cloth around until the one hole in it was in front of his right eye. He’d have preferred his left eye, but wasn’t willing to do much more shifting. He was right-handed but felt that his left eye was more perceptive, less accepting of things. Some artist had told him that, and, true or not, it seemed to work.
The darkness was complete but both Cory and Potto were barking steadily.
Cory abruptly stopped, then started whining from affection, like she did when Cope was petting her, so Cope was pretty sure now that there were humans around. He waited, willing himself to look like a lump. It was a good sign that they hadn’t killed Cory. Or maybe they thought stopping her barking would arouse more suspicion than letting it go on.
He heard the door latch rattle once. Another good sign; they could have tossed a grenade into the cabin through the window. Then there was nothing for a few seconds but Potto’s growl.
Cope knew both dogs were unlikely to be adopted because they were old and getting near their trip to the incinerator; so he’d figured the dogs would come out ahead on the deal with a trip and a forest adventure, even if he had to kill them and run. Still, he’d had a couple of dogs when he was a kid, and had learned to like both these dogs.
Through the small eyehole, Cope saw movement in the darkness as a figure came slowly around the cabin then passed out of his line of vision. Cope didn’t dare turn his head, but he heard the window open a bit, then close again. The snapping of a twig told him that the dark figure was moving back around towards the door again.
He heard the latch move again, then two muffled pops. Potto’s growl stopped with the sound. Cory began to whine and broke into a howl. Cope would have dearly liked to have known if one of the shots was for the dummy; it would have told him how serious these guys were about keeping him alive.
On the other hand, it would have been so simple to have started a fire against the cabin and shot anyone trying to escape.
So the worst he could fear now was to be taken prisoner, tortured a bit for information, then drowned. Another canoeing accident. Or maybe they'd just want to talk about old times in Afghanistan.
There were a few sounds from inside the cabin, then louder sounds.
“Not in here,” a voice called from the door.
There was a lot of scurrying through the undergrowth around the cabin, and more than the usual amount of twig-breaking and leaf-shuffling and a figure passed darkly thr
ough Cope’s vision again. They were probably worried, he thought, that he was somewhere close, with a weapon, waiting to take a good shot. So they’d hide behind all the corners, scanning the area with night-vision equipment and poking their guns in all directions at once. Or maybe that was just his imagination.
A few minutes later they began searching with flashlights. He could hear the outhouse door slamming and the boat and canoe being rolled over. He waited, patiently but aching from not moving. The woods were beginning to lighten with the coming dawn. Cope didn’t think his cover would last much longer, but one never knew.
“Copeman!” a man bellowed. “We’re not here to harm you. We just want to talk!” The words echoed off the woods across the road.
Cope doubted that “just” word. They could have knocked politely on the door and suggested tea in the evening if they’d wanted nothing more than conversation. They wouldn’t even have had to shoot Potto. When he was sure both men were on the far side of the cabin, he shifted, easing the aches a bit. A treacherous jay started a racket above him, but the intruders seemed to pay no attention.
Cory barked and whined happily over near her tree. Bad news, Cope thought as the whining got closer. Cope slowly took the small folded knife out of his pocket and slipped it under his belt and down into his underwear.
Then, of course, there was Cory all over him, pawing the cover off and licking his face. He shoved her away, and looked into a gun barrel, squinting in the light in his face. “You should have shot this damn dog, too,” he told the dark figure. The figure laughed but the barrel didn’t waver. He could hear the other person coming, crunching the forest debris. The jay got louder.
Cope slowly got up. No-one tripped him and beat the crap out of him, so he figured they were being polite to start with. “Would you like to come in for some coffee?” he asked.
“Sounds good to me,” the closest person, who sounded like Lester, said. He backed up a few steps.
Cope stretched his back, which crackled a bit.
“Don’t move,” said the man with the gun. He gave Cope a quick frisking, and removed the flashlight. Fool, thought Cope, when the folded knife under his balls wasn’t discovered. The frisking done, one of the men used Cope’s flashlight to lead them back around the cabin to the door.
One figure stepped through the door, over the body of Potto. Cope couldn’t tell if the dummy had been shot or knifed. Cope followed, stepping over Potto as if it were perfectly normal to have a dog lying motionless inside a cabin door. The last man followed.
“I’m going to turn the lights on,” Cope said. There was no response, so he flicked the switch. The lights came on.
Cope looked at his visitors. Both Lester and Sammy were dressed in jungle camouflage outfits with lots of grease paint on their faces. They looked very much like special forces, except for the guns and Sammy's green shoes.
"Paintball guns?" Cope asked. "You shoot to spatter?"
"Paintball guns," said Sammy. "Special ammo, though."
"Ah," Cope said. That made sense. The SEALs could pretend to be attending a paintball tournament somewhere, and while the guns might be normal, the special ammo was logical. They'd have a couple of cyanide paintballs, and some that put you out like a light. He looked more carefully at Potto and felt better when he saw the dog was still breathing. Maybe, he thought, I won't have to kill these guys. Which was just as well; he couldn’t figure out what part of his training would be most suitable to killing special forces with a jackknife busy getting tangled in his pubic hairs.
Both his visitors watched as he lit the propane stove and put a percolator of coffee on. Cope didn’t drink coffee, so he didn’t care if the coffee was awful.
“I’m going to get some cookies to go with the coffee,” he told them. He was far from certain of his future and could still imagine his own lifeless body filling the low point in the ground out behind the outhouse, and covered with leaves.
Cope set an apparently unopened box of mixed Oreos onto the table, then, watched carefully by the SEALs, got out three cups. He filled each one, then brought it to the table. Slowly, conscious of the knife, he sat down in one chair. “Would you like to go to the veranda?” he asked. "I can put the outside light on."
Lester shook his head. “We’d just as soon stay inside,” he said. It was a logical call; out on the veranda they’d have been visible in the growing light to a sniper or even a sudden attack from Tom since they probably had no idea whether Tom was an enemy or just a passerby.
"Want to talk?" Cope asked.
"Like you'd tell us anything useful," Sammy said, opening the cookie box.
"Like I would."
There was silence until Sammy bit into an Oreo laced with very hot pepper. Then there was a tense moment until Lester burst into laughter. "Good try," he told Cope, who hadn't been able to take advantage of the situation.
Cope was aware there was some sort of game playing out here, but he wasn’t sure which one it was.
It all came back to that damn thing in the bay, he knew. Some people wanted it found, and others seemed to want it to stay lost. Those who wanted it found needed him alive, even if his information came out with his fingernails. Cope would have decided to tell all if he hadn’t wondered if he would end up dead very shortly thereafter.
“What would you like from me?” he asked, as pleasantly as he could. “You seem to have the upper hand here, as they say.”
“We,” said Sammy, setting his coffee down, “don’t want to know a fucking thing.”
Cope nodded. “I think I can handle that.” He walked over and kicked Potto’s inert form. “Tell me, Lester,” he asked, “why young Sammy here gets to do all the talking. You been second-rate in the organization for a long time?” He didn’t look at either of them, but went back to pour himself some coffee. His body parts – the ones that he’d strained hiding – were aching a bit less, but his imagination kept coming back to his fingernails. He tried to ignore the scene in his imagination where a hand-crank generator was connected to his dick.
Lester said nothing, but that wasn’t surprising. Cope just hoped that the question had hit home somehow. If so, it might just give him an edge of a tiny fraction of a second. He’d played horseshoes with his neighbors when he was younger and knew the value of interrupting someone’s concentration. When the other guy was winding up to throw a horseshoe, Cope had learned to keep quiet, but to keep moving. No rules against that, but it helped distract the fellow.
If they didn’t want to know a fucking thing, Cope thought, then maybe they were here to deliver him to someone who did. For a moment he considered telling them everything, just to make things easier.
“How long do we wait here?” he asked, gathering up Potto’s heavy body and tossing it at Sammy.
The dog, Sammy, the coffee, and the table, went over sideways and very noisily. It was a fold-up card table, which folded up as it should. In a small cabin, setting the table aside allowed for extra room when one needed.
Cope stood perfectly still, which was just as well, since Lester had a paintball pistol against his nose impressively quickly. Sammy came up from the tangle smoothly and quietly, then reached a hand, curved in some odd way, towards Cope’s abdomen.
Cope screamed before being touched, a long, gut-sourced scream that filled the cabin. He figured he’d better start practicing, that he was going to be doing it as soon as delivery took place. Outside, Cory began to howl.
Sammy yanked the door open and fired two shots from the paintball gun and Cory’s howl stopped. Then he stuck a kitchen knife into Cope’s balls and said, “We just have to deliver you. They never said what condition to keep you in. Or what gender.”
Cope doubted that. Normal practice would have been to intimidate him with violence. Just enough pain to make him docile, without leaving a visible mark. Whatever their superiors said, it was easily done and in the nature of the beasts who did this work. On the other hand, they were in a supposedly foreign and fr
iendly country, and they would not want to do anything they'd be caught at. The very fact that SEALs were in Canada playing these games meant something serious was in the works.
“Look,” Sammy said after a long pause. He removed the knife from Cope’s lower regions and waved it in general directions. “We’re actually on your side. You might not believe it but we’ve been tasked with helping you survive.” Cope raised his eyebrows, and Sammy went on. “There are a number of people – actually some groups, who’d like you dead. We’re a bodyguard unit.”
He tried to looked frightfully sincere, and Cope could see Lester nodding in agreement. But Cope didn’t for a moment believe them. His mind tried to grasp the concept of any of the groups he was likely to come into contact with actually telling the truth. It didn’t work.
“Thanks,” he said with his most earnest expression. “I guess it’s better you than the bad guys. Where are you supposed to take me?” Cope asked.
“Can’t tell you yet,” Lester said, and smiled, but his eyes didn’t warm up at all.
Cope tried to look like he was relaxing; he had no idea what the SEALs were waiting for. “Can I take the dog outside?” he asked, looking at Lester. Potto was beginning to stir.
“Probably be safer for all of us. Lester nodded to Sammy, and watched as Cope picked up Potto and started for the door. He paused at the door, then pushed it open with his foot, sliding past the dummy hanging from the ceiling. Nobody had mentioned the dummy, but Cope supposed these two were used to people hanging from the ceiling. He set Potto beside Cory, still tied to a tree and more or less out like a light. There was just enough light to see by.
His back ached and he straightened slowly. “Mind if I use the outhouse? The toilet in the cottage is all backed up." It would be, since Cope had blocked it after using it.
Sammy nodded. “We saw that. Go ahead. Just leave the door open.” Lester followed Cope out.
“Not very private,” he observed.
Cope shrugged and opened the outhouse door. Lester's gun came up as he did, and he stepped closer for an inspection. Finding no problems, he stepped back again, resting against a tree. Behind him, behind a cedar-covered rock, there was the smallest of movements, a brown-shoed foot being drawn out of sight in the increasing light. Odd, Cope thought. Tom, maybe?