Some come to clear your path.
― Paulo Coelho.
The prospect of being able to enter a protective bubble and freely converse with Mer without being hacked or spied upon seemed a solution too good to be true.
But Martin Withers knew the ins and outs of counter espionage and how to protect top secret government and military secrets, so I trusted him.
We vacated my house at the agreed upon time and drove with Ginger, Mer's cat, to the Pet Retreat so she'd be spared the trauma of construction work inside the house.
In a way I felt privileged Withers was making available to us a military grade sciff in order that we could continue our investigative reporting and frankly live a somewhat normal life without fear of our every word being tracked and recorded.
He probably also wanted us to make a public disclosure of what we uncovered about Pollock and the Enigma Club to provide a reasonable basis for search warrants and eventual criminal indictments of Pollock and his minions.
We had already compiled a list, a who's who of celebrities and businessmen and high government officials and I was secretly wondering how many of these were lured into a position of kompromat by being video taped or recorded by Pollock and subsequently blackmailed.
At The Toronto Telegraph building Bill Hay, my editor, was surprised and pleased to see Meredith Cassidy collaborating with me on a story.
"Don't tell me any details," he advised me, " if this all goes south and I don't want the paper being held responsible for any legal suits that might be launched against us."
His response suited me. I didn't want anyone including Hay himself being read into what we were doing to limit the chance of anything being leaked before we were ready to publish.
As it was, we were still nervous about being observed even at The Telegraph so we limited ourselves to personal conversations and planning and spent most of the day scouring the newspaper files for background information we could glean about Pollock and his past dealings and associates.
At 215 pm Mer and I gathered up our files and equipment and headed to the Pet Retreat to retrieve Ginger and then on to our safe house with its newly installed sciff.
As always there was an unmarked CSIS car trailing us and making sure we were safe.
Back at the house we both marvelled at the clever way the sciff had been incorporated seamlessly into the houses's architecture and Lenny Wong, the assigned technician patiently walked us through every step of how things worked and what to do and not do to ensure we were fully protected at all times.
The CSIS personnel were professional while being completely unobtrusive and that inspired confidence and assured us we were in good hands.
When Lenny and the CSIS tech team departed and we were alone, we both gave a huge sigh of relief.
"It feels so good just to be able to relax and breathe freely without fear of being electronically surveilled, Mer exclaimed.
"Amen to that," I chirped, "Why don't we just order in from La Vita Vino?" I suggested, "I have a well-stocked wine cellar and Italian food would just be so comforting. We'll take the rest of the day off and relax before the fire."
"That sounds heavenly," she smiled, and added, "judging by that sky outside, we're in for another late October storm complete with thunder and lightning."
"Let it rain," I chuckled, "for the rest of the day we've come in from the cold and tomorrow we can start back in with our batteries charged and fully rested."
At that moment the thunder roared and lightning flashed.
"Speaking of batteries," she grinned, pointing to the rain-streaked windows, "I hope you have your emergency lanterns ready."
I opened the dining room hutch to show her my Emergency kit. "See? This is our port in a storm."
The warmth in her eyes told me she welcomed the prospect of sheltering on a rainy night with me.
Thank you!
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