Lonely wisps of gathering nocturnal fog were gently disturbed by the brisk, purposeful gait of two darkly attired men walking up the village’s main street towards the tall-spired catholic church. A short while ago its bell had sounded the midnight hour, and the men, drinking nearby in a crowded local tavern, were calmly draining their glasses over several minutes in moderate draughts and then took their leave in the midst of an outburst which broke forth from the patrons sitting at the bar. They had been watching a sports channel on the tavern’s large television screen as a local boy playing for Les Expos just swatted his first professional home run against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
It was mid-September and the nights were beginning to get cool, so the tempo of the crickets’ nightly serenade was slowing down somewhat. The taller of the two men led the way up the unlit cement walkway which curved around to the side of the church leading to the vestry: Sylvain Leclerc was a solidly built, imposing figure of a man with a military haircut -- he had spent ten years as a commando in the élite Airborne Regiment of the Canadian Armed Forces before resigning in disgust when it had been disbanded in 1995 because of the public outrage at the involvement of some of their number in the Somalia Scandal. In the years following his apparent return to civilian life, his taste for military activity was sated by stints as a mercenary in Mexico, fighting for the Zapatista Rebels, and in various countries in Africa, contributing to the general chaos which reigned throughout that continent in the late nineties and into the new millennium. His natural gift for leadership and his strict warrior ethos gained him respect from a wide network of underground paramilitary organizations, especially factions of the growing Militia Movement in the USA. He was a master of military history, strategy and tactics and had much field experience in guerrilla-type warfare. His manner was most consistently expressed by an intense, assessing stare and calm demeanor, even as his mercenary buddies would later testify, while he was spraying unarmed enemy troops with machine gun fire. He was nothing but a cold, ruthless killing machine.
Sylvain effortlessly pushed open the heavy wooden door entering the vestry foyer and immediately turned to his right, proceeding to the stairs which he descended silently, unconsciously, with hardly any body movement above his knees. At the far end of the basement sat four men engaged in a heated discussion at a large round table. Sylvain strode quietly towards them and would not have been noticed by them until he was close by, had his associate been as equally light on his feet. Gilles Lantier was a slightly built man of about medium height with long, dark, greasy hair hanging almost to his shoulders. He walked with a slight limp and was prone to periodically scuff the ground with his bad leg. A moderately successful writer of modern québécois fiction, Gilles had been suffering the last few years from writers’ block due to intervals of depression and was surviving on a small disability pension from the provincial welfare office, in addition to the proceeds of selling much of the marijuana he cultivated yearly behind a false wall in the second floor apartment he occupied above the village’s dépanneur.
The men ceased their discussion when they noticed the new arrivals and welcomed them silently, with a slight, almost collective nodding of the head. Sylvain and Gilles took to the two chairs available and sat down next to each other opposite the others.
After a few moments of silence, the elderly man second from the left cleared his throat and addressed Sylvain with a slight, wry smile.
“Alors fiston, quoi d’ neuf?”
Sylvain looked clear through the soul of the man and replied with a cold smile:
“La vengeance, c’est le meilleur plat servi froid.”
An almost imperceptible shudder ran through the elderly man as the coded message’s significance registered in his mind. His three companions at the table all emitted barely stifled gasps as they too understood the news.
“Then we shall all have a busy night, n’est-ce pas?”, smiled the heavily bearded man at the far right, as he rubbed his palms together in front of his chest.
All present smiled with him, though a couple of them wore smiles vaguely torn by the inner turmoil and regret.
The balding, middle-aged man at the far left of the table gestured courteously towards the carafes of coffee, cups and condiments placed on the edge of the stage behind them inviting the new arrivals to help themselves and then gave them a thin package of documents, through which the others had been flipping. He looked out over his thin, half-framed reading glasses at them as they both quickly perused the contents, particularly the ten pages of brightly coloured maps. Gilles, reading his package, stood up, sauntered over and poured himself a cup, added some cream and stirred in three lumps of sugar, sipped noisily and retook his seat, having flipped through the first five pages of text. Sylvain remained absorbed in the maps for several minutes while the others calmly sipped their coffee or smoked cigarettes. Then suddenly, he looked up at the elderly man and spoke:
“It would appear that Intelligence Cell has identified more than eleven hundred targets right across the country,” he said. “Isn’t this just a little ambitious, even taking account of the possible retaliatory strikes at the height of the main conflict?”
The elderly man replied:
“There are, in total, eleven hundred and forty-seven hard targets -- dams, canals, hydro distribution stations, telephone interchanges, bridges, to name a few. Of these, more than eight hundred belong to the enemy, from B.C. to Ontario, from Labrador to Nova Scotia. According to the plan overview proposed by the Intelligence Cell, the Maquis will initially undertake to strike all targets outlined in red outside of Quebec in a random pattern, and increasing intervals, alternating west and east. Particular attention will be paid to targets in Ontario, Labrador and New Brunswick.”
“And the targets inside our borders?” asked Sylvain.
“They propose that those targets be actioned only during a defensive strike, to slow down the enemy during the expected counterattack. As you will gather from the text in front of you, analysts predict the shift in international public opinion in our favour will come only after a protracted defense against a massive onslaught from the Canadian Army -- we will take an initial pounding in the polls until the point when all out war is begun against us, and then, if we can hold out successfully for at least six months we will have sufficient international public opinion to fall back on as we commence negotiations with Canada -- in effect, we will have won the war while losing most of the battles. The interior targets will be targeted only once the Infrastructure Cell has accomplished its plan for back up systems for our people while we, in effect, institute a ‘scorched earth’ policy for advancing enemy troops.”
While Sylvain digested this information in silence, Gilles looked at the four men opposite and spoke:
“So, les boys, how are we to handle our thus far silent political partners in Quebec City? Do we have any kind of support from them? How will they react to this operation once the first handfuls of C-4 are making mincemeat of les maudits anglais?”
The man who sat second from the right now spoke now for the first time. He was a small man, with nicotine-stained gray hair and very pale skin.
“The politicians are becoming a great deal more concerned than usual as military aggression becomes more of a real possibility. But they have nothing to worry about in the end -- all the dirty work will have been accomplished and they will be able to quickly change roles from being apparently unknowing and powerless to the first administrative body of an independent Quebec -- the public will not even blink, as they’ll simply believe that they were playing their part in the big production all along, as they will in fact be doing. The greatest political flak that we can expect to encounter will be from the Canadian provinces and from the international arena.”
“What can we expect from the motherland,” asked Gilles.
“She will likely come squarely on side once victory on the battlefield is assured, make no mistake about that, my friend. There is even a rumour afoot in Quebec City that a couple of ships, a battle cruiser and an aircraft carrier from the French navy may show up for ‘repairs’ at St.Pierre at a crucial time in the conflict. This will no doubt cause quite an uproar in Canada, for one, and will serve as an effective diversion in our favour for a time. Other than that, France will simply continue to posture effectively as it always has during the worst times of its relationship with Canada -- coy, snooty, aloof, brutally blunt in its opinions when forced -- they’ll simply frustrate all comers as they usually do when pressured. It will be great theatre for those of us in the know here in Quebec, don’t you agree?”, as the speaker finishes with a laugh.
Smiles sprout all around the table.
The balding man on the left then asks Sylvain:
“So, Colonel Magloire, what do you think of Opération Fleur-de-lys?”
“Military Cell has anticipated a good deal of the draft plan, but there are some concerns that I have about the breadth of sabotage activities planned for the Maquis”, responded Sylvain, who just finished speed-reading the narrative portion of the report. “I have absolutely no doubt that we will eventually have to engage the enemy in pitched battle, my friends, so we must therefore be very careful not to waste our resources, whether in troop strength or in matériel, on wasted efforts, even in circumstances when a small battle won may serve to boost the morale of our people.”
“Your point, Colonel?”
“My point is simply this: over half of the identified targets west of the Great Lakes are of very negligible strategic importance -- we should be concentrating on striking only vital points of transportation, communication and other areas of public infrastructure. While I applaud the zeal contained in this plan, I can not approve the assignment of valuable and limited resources to secondary targets like inner-city commuter highways in Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg, and trunk railway lines in Saskatchewan and Alberta, to name only a few examples. The goal of the expeditionary battalion of the Maquis is to cause as much disorder on a national scale as possible in the quickest amount of time.”
“You disagree with the timing of the attacks, then?”, asked the small man on the right . . .
© 1998
ljR
