The God Game. Jeffrey Round

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СКАЧАТЬ your office, or else they’re hacking my email.”

      “We haven’t had an email exchange.”

      Peter snorted. “My phone, then. Who knows how they get this stuff!”

      “I would advise caution from now on. Let’s talk directly in person when we speak about it.”

      “A little late for that!” Hansen rounded off his conversation with a few well-placed expletives. “Sorry. Not professional of me.”

      “I understand.”

      “Please just find Tony.”

      “I will,” Dan assured him.

      He’d just put the phone down when it rang again.

      “Sharp.”

      There was a short pause followed by a tenor voice asking, “Could I get a comment on the Peter Hansen situation?”

      “Who is this?”

      “Simon Bradley. I’m a journalist. I cover local politics.”

      The name rang a bell, Dan thought, but from long ago. This voice sounded too young.

      Bradley continued. “I’d like to ask a few questions about Tony Moran. I might be able to tell you something in return.”

      “Such as?”

      Dan heard cars whizzing past on the other end, a busy highway.

      “John Badger Wilkens. The Queen’s Park minister who committed suicide at Christmas.”

      “Why would I want information on him?”

      “I’ll explain, if you meet me.”

      Dan looked over at Nick, who had busied himself with a magazine.

      “When?”

      “I’m just heading back into town. Say half an hour?”

      Vesta Lunch had been open on the corner of Bathurst and Dupont, night and day, for as long as Dan had lived in Toronto. It never closed and never seemed to change. Not the servers, not the clientele, not the menu. As greasy spoons went, it was one of the best. Late-night comfort food for the lonesome and early-morning remedies for the hungover. Even an emergency shelter in a snowstorm, if need be. No matter how far your fall from grace, it was a place to hang your hat and call home.

      Simon Bradley stood upon Dan’s arrival. He was young and easily six-foot-four, with a slim build under an Armani jacket, a confident smile, and a haircut that must have cost two hundred dollars. Dan recognized him as an occasional on-air broadcaster, the type who showed up in the midst of swirling snowstorms to report on traffic jams, house fires, derailed trains, and the other detritus that made up the bread and butter of the all-news stations. Apparently he’d been transferred to doing pieces of a political bent. Someone must have thought his mug worthy of the cause.

      “Was it your father or your grandfather?” Dan asked.

      The question caught Simon by surprise, but he quickly got back on track.

      “Grandfather,” he said as they shook hands. “You remember him?”

      “As a kid, yes. The name mostly, but I think I recall a resemblance.”

      Simon Bradley Sr. had been one of the names reverberating through the Sharp household, spoken with reverence, when Dan was a boy. The names, including old-school politicians such as Lester Pearson, hockey players like Jean Béliveau, and broadcasters like Simon’s grandfather, were laid out as evidence of the glory days now past. They’d been legends back in the day when television ruled and you couldn’t get through the bleak northern Ontario winters without one.

      “You’re right. I got his name and his looks,” Simon said. “But my dad got all the literary rights to his books.”

      There would have been dozens of them, Dan recalled. Bradley had been one of Canada’s mainstays as an on-air journalist, and before that as a historian famous for his coverage of the Cold War. Now here was his grandson trying to make a name for himself in the same field. Sometimes the pressure to live up to a forebear was more trouble than it was worth.

      Their server heard them talking and stole a look at Simon as though he was considering asking for an autograph.

      “You somebody I should know, man?” he asked, setting down a plate of fries alongside a chicken-and-gravy sandwich.

      Simon shrugged. “Only if you watch television.”

      The waiter shook his head. “Nah. Waste of time,” he said, glancing over at Dan.

      “Just coffee,” Dan told him.

      Simon grinned as their waiter walked away. “That puts me in my place.”

      The server returned with a cup of coffee, managing to slop it into the saucer as he set it on the table. He looked at it as though it might merit a second pour, then shrugged the gaffe aside as not worth his bother.

      Dan tipped a single cream into his cup and sipped. It was always great coffee. He watched as Simon picked up a gravy-covered fry and slipped it into his mouth with a satisfied grin.

      “So good! Love this place.”

      “Just to remind you, Mr. Bradley, the meter is ticking.”

      Simon gave him a reproachful look, as if he’d just insulted their new friendship. Suddenly he looked like a kid straight out of journalism school. “Sure, sorry, Dan. What do you know about John Badger Wilkens III?”

      Dan shrugged. “The minister who committed suicide? Not much, really.”

      “Well, let me tell you a few things. At twenty-five, John was the youngest elected minister in the legislature. He was a five-time debating champion in university, as well as a crackerjack lawyer and chartered accountant. Word is he was being groomed to be party leader in a few years. Which is to say he was considered by many to be a likely fit for future prime minister. Conservative, of course.”

      “Naturally.”

      “He was voted most popular member of the legislature before he turned thirty,” Simon continued. “Then last year something happened. From being leader of the pack, John’s star dimmed suddenly, and he was shunted to the backrooms. His party advisers stopped pushing him in front of TV cameras. Then came the revelations: missing money from a public portfolio. His fall was unthinkable after such a quick rise.”

      Dan recalled Nick’s depiction of Conservatives as being prone to financial scandals. “What happened?”

      “I don’t know for sure, but similar things have happened to others. Before him there was Sharon Timmons. Remember her?”

      Dan nodded. “Another up-and-coming star. The New Democrats. Wasn’t she implicated in some scandal or other?”

      “Drugs. Though she and her husband both proclaimed her innocence. For a while it looked like it might have been the teenage son, but they vigorously СКАЧАТЬ