In High Places

'Don't!' The party director raised his voice, determined to make himself heard. 'Let the past stay dead. Leave it alone.'

The Immigration Minister raised his glass and drained it. He gestured at Richardson. 'If you want a drink, mix it yourself.'

'Thanks.' Brian Richardson turned to the desk where there was a tray of glasses, ice, and bottles. I need this, he thought. He poured a generous rye, added ice and ginger ale.

When he turned around, it was to find Harvey Warrender watching him intently. 'I've never liked you,' the Immigration Minister said. 'Right from the beginning I never did.'

Brian Richardson shrugged. 'Well, I guess you're not the only one.'

'You were Jim Howden's man, not mine,' Warrender insisted. 'When Jim wanted you to be party director I spoke out against it. I guess Jim's told you that, trying to set you against me.'

'No, he never told me.' Richardson shook his head. 'And I don't think he'd want to set me against you either. There'd be no reason for it.'

Abruptly Warrender asked, 'What did you do in the war?'

'Oh, I was in the Army for a while. Nothing very spectacular.' He forebore to mention three years in the desert -North Africa, then Italy, through some of the toughest wartime fighting. Ex-Sergeant Richardson seldom spoke of it now, even to close friends. War reminiscences, the parade of hollow victories, bored him.

'That's the trouble with you fellows who had soft billets. You all came through. Those that mattered most…' Harvey Warrender's eyes swung back to the portrait'… a good many of those didn't.'

'Mr Minister,' the party director said, 'couldn't we sit down? There's something I'd like to talk to you about.' He wanted to have done with it all, and get out of this house. For the first time he wondered about Harvey Warrender's sanity.

'Go on then.' The Immigration Minister pointed to two facing armchairs.

Richardson dropped into one of the chairs as Warrender crossed to the desk, splashing whisky into his glass. 'All right,' he said, returning and sitting down, 'get on with it.'

He might as well, Richardson decided, come directly to the point.

He said quietly, 'I know about the agreement between you and the Prime Minister – the leadership, the television franchise, all the rest.'

There was a startled silence. Then, his eyes narrowed, Harvey Warrender snarled, 'Jim Howden told you. He's a double-crossing…'

'No.' Richardson shook his head emphatically. 'The chief didn't tell me, and he doesn't know that I'm aware of it. If he did, I think he'd be shocked.'

'You lying son of a bitch!' Warrender jumped up, weaving unsteadily.

'You can think that if you like,' Richardson said calmly. 'But why would I bother lying? In any case, how I know doesn't make any difference. The fact is, I do.'

'All right,' Warrender stormed, 'so you've come here to blackmail me. Well, let me tell you, Mr Fancy-Pants Party Director, I don't care about that agreement being known. Instead of your threatening me with exposure, I'll get the last laugh yet. I'll beat you to it! I'll call the reporters and tell them – here, tonight!'

'Please sit down,' Brian Richardson urged, 'and shouldn't we lower our voices? We might disturb your wife.'

'She's out,' Harvey Warrender said shortly. 'There's no one else in the house.' But he resumed his seat.

'I haven't come here to threaten,' the party director said. 'I've come to plead.' He would try the obvious way first, he thought. He had little hope of it succeeding. But the alternative must only be used when everything else had failed.

'Plead?' Warrender queried. 'What do you mean by plead?'

'Exactly that. I'm pleading with you to give up your hold over the chief; to let the past be finished; to surrender that written agreement…'

'Oh yes,' Warrender said sarcastically, 'I imagined you'd get around to that.'

Richardson tried to make his tone persuasive. 'No good can come from it now, Mr Minister. Don't you see that?'

'All I can see, suddenly, is why you're doing this. You're trying to protect yourself. If I expose Jim Howden, he's finished, and when he goes, so do you.'

'I expect that would happen,' Richardson said tiredly. 'And you can believe it or not, but I hadn't thought too much about it.'

It was true, he reasoned; that possibility had been least in his mind. He wondered: why was he doing this? Was it personal loyalty to James Howden? That was part of it, he supposed; but surely the real answer should be more than that. Wasn't it that Howden, with all his faults, had been good for the country as Prime Minister; and whatever indulgences he had taken, as a means of retaining power, he had given more, far more, in return? He deserved better – and so did Canada – than defeat in disgrace and ignominy. Perhaps, Brian Richardson thought, what he himself was doing now was a kind of patriotism, twice removed.

'No,' Harvey Warrender said. 'My answer is positively and finally no.' '

So, after all, the weapon must be used.

There was a silence as the two surveyed each other.

'If I were to tell you,' the party director said slowly, 'that I possess certain knowledge which would force you to change your mind… knowledge which, even between ourselves I am reluctant to discuss… would you change your mind, change it even now?'

, The Immigration Minister said firmly, 'There is no know-, ledge in heaven or earth which would make me alter what I have already said.'

'I think there is,' Brian Richardson contended quietly. 'You see, I know the truth about your son.'

It seemed as if the quiet in the room would never end.

At length, his face pale, Harvey Warrender whispered, 'What do you know?'

'For God's sake,' Richardson urged, 'isn't it enough that I know? Don't make me spell it out.'

Still a whisper. 'Tell me what it is you know.'

There was to be nothing presumed, nothing unsaid, no avoidance of the grim and tragic truth.

'All right,' Richardson said softly. 'But I'm sorry you've insisted.' He looked the other directly in the eye. 'Your son Howard was never a hero. He was court-martialled for cowardice in the face of the enemy, for deserting and imperilling his companions, and for causing the death of his own aircraft navigator. The court martial found him guilty oh all counts. He was awaiting sentence when he committed suicide by hanging.'

Harvey Warrender's face was drained of colour.

With grim reluctance, Richardson went on, 'Yes, there was a raid to France. But your son wasn't in command, except of his own aeroplane with a single navigator. And he didn't volunteer. It was his first mission, the very first.'

The party director's lips were dry. He moistened them with his tongue, then continued: 'The squadron was flying defensive formation. Near the target they came under heavy attack. The other aeroplanes pressed on and bombed; some were lost. Your son – despite the pleas of his own navigator – broke formation and turned back, leaving his companions vulnerable.'

Warrender's hands trembled as he put the whisky glass ''' down.

'On the way back,' Richardson said, 'the aeroplane was ' struck by shellfire. The navigator was badly wounded, but your son was unhurt. Nevertheless your son left the pilot's seat and refused to fly. The navigator, despite his wounds and the fact that he was not a qualified pilot, took over in an attempt to bring the aeroplane home.'… If he closed his eyes, he nought, he could visualize the scene: the tiny, crowded, noisy cockpit, bloody from the navigator's wounds; the motors deafening; the gaping hole where the shell had hit, the wind tearing through, outside the bark of gunfire. And within… fear over all, like a dank and evil-smelling cloud. And, in the corner of the cockpit, the cowering, broken figure…

You poor bastard, Richardson thought. You poor benighted bastard. You broke, that's all. You crossed the hairline a good many of us wavered over. You did what others wanted to do often enough. God knows. Who are we to criticize you now? -

Tears were streaming down Harvey Warrender's face. Rising, he said brokenly, 'I don't want to hear any more.'

Richardson stopped. There was little more to tell: The crash landing in England – the best the navigator could do. The two of them pulled from the wreckage; Howard War-' render miraculously unhurt, the navigator dying… Afterwards the medics said he would have lived except for loss of blood through the exertion flying back… The court martial; the verdict – guilty… Suicide… And, in the end, reports hushed up; the subject closed.

But Harvey Warrender had known. Known, even as he built the false and foolish legend of a hero's death.

'What do you want?' he-asked brokenly. 'What do you want of me?'

Richardson told him evenly. 'That 'written agreement between you and the chief.'

Briefly a spark of resistance flared. 'And if I won't give it up?'

'I was hoping,' Richardson said, 'you wouldn't ask me that.'

'I am asking you.'

The party director sighed deeply. 'In that case I shall summarize the court martial proceedings and have mimeo copies made. The copies will be mailed, anonymously in plain envelopes, to everyone who counts in Ottawa – MPs, ministers, the press gallery, civil servants, your own department heads…'

'You swine!' Warrender choked on the words. 'You rotten evil swine.'

Richardson shrugged. 'I don't want to do it unless you force me.'

'People would understand,' Harvey Warrender said. The colour was returning to his face. 'I tell you they'd understand and sympathize. Howard was young; just a boy…'

'They'd always have sympathized,' Richardson said. 'And even now, they may feel sorry for your son. But not for you. They might have once, but not any more.' He nodded to the portrait in its illuminated recess, the absurd and useless relics beneath. 'They'll remember this charade, and you'll be the laughing stock of Ottawa.'

In his mind he wondered if it were true. There would be curiosity in plenty, and speculation, but perhaps little laughter. People sometimes were capable of unexpected depths of understanding and compassion. Most, perhaps, would wonder what strange quirk of mind had led Harvey Warrender to the deception he had practised. Had his own dreams of glory been reflected towards his son? Had the bitter disappointment, the tragedy of death, unhinged his mind? Richardson himself felt only an aching kind of pity.

But Warrender believed he would be laughed at. The muscles of his face were working. Suddenly he rushed to the fireplace and seized a poker from the stand beside it. Reaching up, he slashed savagely at the portrait, hacking, tearing, until only the frame and some shreds of canvas remained. With a single stroke he smashed the little aeroplane, then flung the map case and faded cap into the fireplace below. Turning, his breath coming fast, he asked, 'Well, are you satisfied?'

Richardson was standing too. He said quietly, 'I'm sorry you did that. It wasn't necessary.'

The tears were beginning again. The Immigration Minister went, almost docilely, to a chair. As if instinctively, he reached for the whisky glass he had put down earlier. 'All right,' he said softly, 'I'll give you the agreement.'

'And all copies, as well as your assurance that no more exist?'

Warrender nodded.

'When?'

'It will take two or three days. I have to go to Toronto. The paper is in a safety deposit box there.'

'Very well,' Richardson instructed. 'When you get it I want you to give it directly to the chief. And he is not to know about what happened here tonight. That's part of our agreement, you understand?'

Again a nod.

That way he would be taking the arrangement on trust. But there would be no defection now. He was sure of that.