GETTING TO KNOW YOU

MPL: Hello Nick, let me get my stuff out, then we can begin. How are you being treated in here?

NB: Aces, Ms. Lafleur, aces.

MPL: You can call me Marie-Philip if you'd like. I've been appointed as your lawyer. You're not stuck with me. At any point, you can petition the court for new counsel.

NB: That's a nice name. Is it French?

MPL: Yes. I was named after a hockey player. She was Québécois, my family are Acadian. Returnees to New Brunswick from Louisiana in the 18th Century.

NB: I'd not known that. My family is from Michigan.

MPL: Do you want to get to it? I've interviewed everyone from the flight from Boston, the one which brought you here. There are many holes to fill, just so that I can understand it all. Agent Tuello from the American consulate handled everything, on behalf of the Americans-in-exile as well as Canada. For the record, you came to Canada on that flight by virtue of your free-will, no?

NB: That's correct.

MPL: And you are a Commander of Gilead, most notably the High Commander of the New Gilead District?

NB: I was. I am now unemployed.

MPL: Huh!? Ok, I get it. Nice one! And you were apprised of your Charter Rights, the Canadian Charter, as well as your rights in relation to any ICC action?

NB: Yes. You've got the paper right there. Those are my signatures.

MPL: Yes, you're right. I need to know that you understand it all. Which I see you do. You understand that the first rape charge is now dropped, the one with regard to your Wife, Kathryn Blaine.

NB: Yes. I'd never touched her. It probably doesn't matter to anyone but me - I'd not touched her in the 12 years we've been together. Not once. Not even when she'd been 'of age' by ICC standards.

MPL: Still, 'consent' with regard to Gilead is at issue. Not age. The second rape charge concerns the status of women in your State, namely their sexual servitude. I mean, did 'consent' mean anything in your theonomic State? Even to women of so-called 'consenting age'?

NB: Me, I'm not proud of the stuff I did, not even the stuff where I was being coerced. I actually do deserve everything I get.

MPL: Oh God, I was warned about you. June thinks you're wracked with guilt. So let me say one thing - I don't care. I don't do confession. My mom has a priest for that. Just to be clear, Serena Joy Waterford claims that your position in other Gilead agencies, most notably The Eyes of God, meant that you'd been in a position to refuse - even in the impregnation of June Osborne.

NB: How do you do this stuff? You must think me a monster.

MPL: Ok, maybe I need to be clearer. I'm your lawyer. I'm a woman. A lesbian-feminist, actually. I abhour your fucked up country. How many people like me were in Gilead - 'alive' I mean. But truly, as a lawyer? I don't care. I'd be disbarred for revealing details of our discussions. I mean, if you are really the bad-dude that Canadian media makes you out to be, I'm certainly not giving you an avenue of appeal by shirking my duty to you as your lawyer.

NB: I guess, then, we understand each other. I'd not meant to be rude.

MPL: You've not been rude! So let's begin again. Like I said, I've talked with everyone on that flight. Now it's your turn. I have a few questions.

LOOSE ENDS

MPL: Ok, just so that I can understand the timeline, at some point towards the end of your tenure as High Commander, you gave a 'safeword' to your secretary to pass to your family.

NB: That's right. Things were falling apart. Aunt Lydia, she had been perhaps the most powerful 'Aunt' within Gilead's Bilhah program, the Red Centre, or in her case Ardua Hall. Aunt Lydia had never been 'Mayday', far from it. But she was one of a long list of powerful Gileadeans who'd wanted to 'clean up Gilead'. Her last act was to kill Commander Judd, one of my colleagues. He was hand-in-glove with the Eyes of God. He'd threatened some of Lydia's girls with arrest. So she shot him. Then committed suicide.

MPL: Ok, I don't need answers that long, but that's ok. You can keep things shorter, I'm just trying to get a sense of that last day - the timeline.

NB: No problem.

MPL: Both Tuello as well as June Osborne said that you were armed, had an AR-45 with you on the tarmac.

NB: That's correct. My wife, Kathryn, as well as our 12-year old were in the limo. My security unit, I'd dispatched them elsewhere. Me, I was it for their protection.

MPL: Neither Tuello nor Osborne, nor anyone else on the Canadian jet were armed.

NB: I believe that is correct.

MPL: You said you had been waiting for up to three others?

NB: I'd sent my security detail to go get the Aunt-in-training, Jade. There was no telling who Jade would bring with her. There was talk of one of Jade's friends, Becka. If not Hannah as well, Agnes MacKenzie. Jade, was 'Daisy' from Canada, smuggled in as a conduit of information for Aunt Lydia, Lydia had turned out to be the informant - the 'rat' who was passing compromising information about Gilead to Canada. 'Daisy', from Canada, had turned out to be my daughter, Nichole. Not even Daisy, growing up, had known she was the famous baby-Nichole of the propaganda war of decade's previous. I'd not wanted to leave Gilead without her.

MPL: But your security team, they'd turned up empty-handed.

NB: Yes, then June had come out of the plane's cabin to say she'd just come from Halifax, where both Nichole, as well as June's other daughter - Hannah Bankole - had escaped Gilead on their own. Hannah had been Aunt Victoria at Ardua Hall, she had been raised as Agnes MacKenzie in Colorado Springs, near the Air Force Academy, where her father was a Commander.

MPL: So, June's two children - one of them yours - were already in Canada.

NB: That's correct. I've seen both of them here at the ICC Centre. June's brought them both at various times.

MPL: Ok, I'm going to need details of perhaps an unseemly nature - about any public displays of affection you and June Osborne had had on the flight.

NB: Ok, this has to do with the first charge - you'd said it had been dropped.

MPL: Yes, because of the documents found in the microdot that 'Jade', aka. Nichole your daughter, came back to Canada with. The one that Lydia had got out.

NB: So, why the unseemly queries? Is it relevant?

MPL: It may be to you. If so, it is to me. There's still the outstanding charge against you in relation to June Osborne's time in sexual servitude.

NB: Ok, I don't get it, but if you say so.

MPL: Ok. When I raised this with June, she'd said, "Every story needs a sex-scene." She said that she'd taken that from the Bible. Gilead had never told her that the Song of Solomon was in the Bible. If they had, and these are her words, there'd not have been any sharp corners in her room at the Waterfords. She'd have rubbed them all off. Just from the Song of Solomon alone.

NB: God. June is such a heretic.

MPL: She said that on the steps of the jet, she'd tried to kiss you. She said it had been a long time.

NB: Look, my wife was inside! Worse, my 12 year-old was inside. I'd never kissed Kathryn her mother, not once. How would I explain making out with June to my daughter? Come on! No, I had never touched Kathryn, but that little girl had grown up in my care. I am her father, just not biologically. I mean, she's 12. She annoys me most of the time, that's what pre-teens do, even in Gilead. So she may as well be my daughter. I'd never got that chance with Nichole.

ICC PRISON'S AFTERMATH

MPL: Ok, I think I have an idea now. You can calm down. Your sex-life is safe. But see this form? Visitors' forms for both your wife, as well as one for June Osborne. See that box, 'Conjugal needs'? You've checked 'none' in relation to Kathryn. You've left it blank on June's. It's none of my business, but I can set that up….

NB: Can we talk about something else, please - what's next?

MPL: Well, ok. I have got some news. Don't get your hopes up, it was just a conversation. But I've had an off-the-record chat with the prosecutor.

NB: What did she say?

MPL: She's not convinced you belong in jail. Let's face it, yours is a political case, just like Fred and Serena Waterford's were decades ago. The prosecutor said that the Province of Ontario prosecutor's office may have just assumed that the Americans and the ICC wanted you in prison. With no bail. They'd not really talked about it with each other. Each assumed the other wanted it that way.

NB: But you will? You'll raise it with them?

MPL: I will. Between you and me, she told me that, 'Nick Blaine is no Fred Waterford.' What's not in your favour is that you actually did 'own' a Martha. You'd not employed one, you'd owned her. There's also the disposition of your first wife, another minor.

NB: Eden?

MPL: Yes, Eden. But both Ms. Osborne as well as Ms. Blue had had no direct, non-hearsay knowledge of any carnal relations between you and your first wife - and your 'record' of staying away from Kathryn works in your favour.

NB: Other than me being a major-league jerk. Not to mention being weak.

MPL: I'm your lawyer, not your priest. If you need one, I can get one. What flavour?

NB: No, I'm good. I have Rita for all that. She thinks I'm a dumb-ass.

MPL: You know what? I'm your lawyer, I don't do pity-parties. Guilt? Insecurities? You're entitled. You're a good man, Charlie Brown. Even I can see that.

NB: Sorry.

MPL: How would an ankle bracelet suit you?

NB: We don't have those in Gilead.

MPL: If you read the news, there won't be a Gilead soon. An ankle-bracelet is a half-way thing, to get you situated in Canada. Maybe not Toronto, I mean, you're not popular in Little America. Luke Bankole is openly talking about punching your lights out. But Rita Blue, she's an asset for you. She feels she owes you.

NB: Can't I just bolt anyway? I mean, how closely do they monitor ankle-bracelets?

MPL: You have internet in here…. Google, 'Huawei', or 'Meng Wanzhou', or 'Vancouver' with 'Huawei'. If Canada can secure Ms. Meng from the Chinese juggernaut, it would be a piece of cake with an unemployed drifter like you. As long as your name is not 'Michael', you'd be secure.

NB: What?

MPL: Never mind. I have to go. To see the provincial prosecutor. And as I've always wanted to say to someone named 'Blaine', 'here's looking at you, kid.'

X

Arallute - did the lawyer get in all your questions? Tomorrow? Maybe the lawyer comes back to get Blaine to explain 'Mayday'. Or maybe Tuello comes in. Which one?