The Caucus in the Cold

Treason is a lot harder when your fingers are too frozen to hold the lighter.

The snow wasn't falling; it was being thrown horizontally, like gravel from a passing truck. Gord felt it hit the exposed strip of skin between his toque and his scarf, stinging until the skin just gave up and went numb. He hated this. He hated the performative masculinity of 'winter camping' to clear the head. He hated that Stephan was ten paces ahead, breaking trail with that annoyingly rhythmic crunch-crunch-crunch of his snowshoes, looking like he was enjoying it.

Gord’s own snowshoes were ancient, the bindings stiff and crusted with ice. The left one kept drifting inward, clipping his right ankle. Every third step was a stumble. He stopped to adjust it, ripping off his glove with his teeth. The cold bit his hand instantly, a physical weight clamping down on the knuckles. He fumbled with the nylon strap. The plastic clip was frozen shut. He swore, the sound snatched away by the wind before it even left his mouth. He thought about the heated seats in his F-150, parked ten kilometers back at the trailhead. He thought about the half-eaten bag of dill pickle chips on the dashboard. That was a mistake, leaving those.

"Keep moving, old man!" Stephan shouted back. He didn't even turn around. Just a voice in the grey swirl.

"I'm fixing my binding," Gord yelled, but the wind shoved the words back down his throat. He jammed his glove back on, ignoring the fact that the strap was still loose. He’d just drag the damn foot if he had to. He wasn't old. Forty-four wasn't old. In politics, forty-four was barely seasoned. But out here, with a resting heart rate that felt like a techno beat, forty-four felt terminal.

They pushed on for another twenty minutes. The trees were tight here, black spruce mostly, their branches heavy with snow, drooping like wet shoulders. It was dark now, or as dark as it gets in a snowstorm, the world reduced to a flat, grey static. Gord’s headlamp cut a cone of illuminated flurry, highlighting nothing but the sheer volume of precipitation. It was suffocating. He focused on Stephan’s backpack, a bright orange expensive thing, bobbing up and down.

Stephan stopped abruptly in a small clearing protected by a ridge of granite. The wind howled overhead, hitting the treetops with a sound like a jet engine that wouldn't take off, but down here, in the lee of the rock, the air was relatively still. Dead still.

"This is it," Stephan said, breathless. He turned, his face flushed red, snot freezing in his mustache. He looked manic. "GPS says we're at the waypoint."

Gord bent over, hands on his knees, gasping. The air tasted like iron. "Great. Wonderful. Let's set up before I die of exposure."

They worked in a clumsy silence. The tent was a nightmare of poles and slippery nylon. Gord’s fingers were useless sausages inside the mittens. He let Stephan do the fine motor work, holding the flashlight steady and trying not to think about the meeting he was missing back in Sudbury. The riding association president was going to be pissed. Gord didn't care. The riding association president wore clip-on ties.

Once the tent was up, a green dome shuddering in the gusts that leaked into the clearing, they cleared a pit for a fire. It was an optimistic gesture. Everything was wet. The wood they gathered from the underside of the spruce trees was damp and smelled of rot. Stephan produced a small butane lighter. He flicked it. Nothing. He flicked it again. Sparks, no flame. The gas was too cold.

"Put it in your armpit," Gord said, his voice gravelly. He sat on a log, brushing snow off his pants. His thighs burned. "Warm it up."

Stephan shoved the lighter into his jacket. He looked at Gord, his eyes wide, too bright. It wasn't just the exertion. The kid was vibrating with something else. Adrenaline. Or fear.

"I got it," Stephan said. Not about the fire.

Gord stiffened. He looked around the clearing. Just trees. Just snow. Shadows stretching out like oil spills. "Not now, Steph."

"Yes, now. That’s why we’re here, isn't it? No cell service. No bugs. Just us and the freeze." Stephan pulled a Ziploc bag out of his inner pocket. Inside, wrapped in a toque, was a black rectangle. A portable hard drive. A WD Elements, probably two terabytes. You could buy it at Best Buy for eighty bucks.

Gord stared at it. It looked so stupidly mundane. It should be glowing, or humming, or heavy. It was just plastic.

"The voter lists?" Gord asked, his voice low.

"And the donor cross-reference sheet. The real one. The one with the developers mapped to the numbered companies in the Cayman accounts." Stephan grinned, a jagged, nervous expression. "It’s all there, Gord. The Premier’s Chief of Staff? Done. The Minister of Transportation? Done. We hold the whole deck."

Gord felt a surge of nausea that had nothing to do with the cold. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He didn't smoke anymore, hadn't for three years, but he kept a pack for moments when the universe decided to test his blood pressure. He put one in his mouth, unlit.

"You stole property of the Crown, Stephan."

"I secured evidence of a felony," Stephan corrected. He finally pulled the lighter out, got a flame going, and lit a piece of birch bark. He shielded it with his body, feeding it twigs. The fire sputtered, hissed, then caught. Yellow light flickered against the snow, casting long, jumping shadows.

Gord leaned in, warming his hands. The heat didn't penetrate the gloves yet. "So what's the play? We walk into the RCMP detachment on Monday morning? Be heroes? Lose our pensions and spend the next five years testifying in court while they smear us as disgruntled staffers?"

Stephan looked up from the fire. The flames reflected in his pupils. "RCMP? Gord, come on. You’ve been in this game twenty years. You think the cops solve this? The Premier appoints the Police Services Board members. This goes away if we go to the cops."

"Then what? The Globe and Mail?" Gord asked. "Leak it. Watch the government fall. We’re unemployed either way."

"Leverage," Stephan whispered. The word hung in the cold air.

Gord laughed, a harsh bark. "Blackmail. You want to blackmail the Premier of Ontario."

"Not him directly. The Chief of Staff. Harrison. We go to Harrison. We tell him we have the drive. We tell him the price for it staying lost."

"And what's the price?" Gord asked. He watched the smoke curl up into the black canopy. "A ride on the Greenbelt board? A deputy minister spot?"

"Consulting contracts," Stephan said quickly. "Private sector. Lucrative ones. We set up a firm. They funnel us work. Five years, we cash out, retire to Muskoka. No one goes to jail. The government stays stable. We just... get our cut."

Gord looked at the hard drive sitting on the log between them. It was getting wet from the falling snow. A droplet of water sat on the USB port. He should wipe it off. He didn't.

"You’re an idiot," Gord said tiredly. "Harrison eats guys like you for breakfast. He won't pay. He’ll send guys to break your legs. Or worse. You think this is House of Cards? This is Northern Ontario. They’ll just find drugs in your car or audit your taxes until you hang yourself."

"He can't touch us if we have copies," Stephan argued, his voice rising. "Dead man switch. If we go down, the drive goes to the press automatically."

"You don't have a dead man switch, Stephan. You have a Gmail account and anxiety."

Stephan stood up, pacing the small clearing. The snow crunched loudly under his boots. "We deserve this, Gord! How many elections have we won for them? How many miles have we driven? I missed my sister’s wedding for the budget lockup last year. For what? A sixty-k salary and a heartburn prescription?"

Gord rubbed his face. The stubble on his chin felt like sandpaper. He was tired. His knee was throbbing a dull, red rhythm. Stephan wasn't wrong about the work. It was a grinder. But this... this was crossing the line from grime to slime.

"We leak it," Gord said firmly. "Anonymous drop. The Star or the Globe. Burn them down. We walk away clean. I can get a job at the assembly of First Nations. You can go back to law school."

"No!" Stephan snapped. "I’m not walking away with nothing!"

"You’re walking away with your skin, you moron."

"It’s worth millions, Gord! Millions!"

"It’s worth prison time!" Gord shouted back. The sound died instantly in the heavy air.

They stared at each other across the fire. The flames were dying down, the wet wood sizzling. The cold was creeping back in, finding the gaps in Gord's zipper, the seams of his boots.

"You’re scared," Stephan said, sneering. It was an ugly look on his young face. "You’ve been a staffer so long you forgot how to be a player."

"I’m not scared," Gord said quietly. "I’m exhausted. There’s a difference."

He reached for the drive. Stephan’s hand shot out, grabbing Gord’s wrist. His grip was strong.

"Don't touch it," Stephan hissed.

Gord looked at the hand on his wrist. He looked at Stephan. He calculated the odds. Stephan was twenty years younger, fitter, but he was standing on ice. Gord could twist, sweep the leg. It would be messy.

"Let go, Steph."

"We do this my way."

Then, the sound came.

It wasn't the wind. It wasn't the settling of snow. It was distinct. A sharp, mechanical *click-whir*. Like a shutter, or a servo motor adjusting focus.

It came from the ridge above them. Maybe thirty feet up.

Gord froze. Stephan froze, his hand still gripping Gord’s wrist.

"Did you hear that?" Stephan whispered, his eyes darting to the darkness beyond the firelight.

Gord didn't answer. He turned his head slowly, straining to hear over the blood rushing in his ears. The wind had picked up again, moaning through the pine needles, but under that, there was something else. Rythmic. Heavy. The crunch of snow being compressed by weight.

Something was moving up there. And it wasn't an animal. Animals don't move in a straight line. Animals don't try to be quiet and then fail with a mechanical click.

Stephan released Gord’s wrist. He scrambled backward, towards the tent. "Is that... is that a bear?"

"Bears are asleep, you idiot," Gord murmured. He stared into the black wall of the forest. He couldn't see anything. Just the white streaks of snow and the deep, impenetrable dark.

He reached down and picked up the piece of birch firewood he’d been about to burn. It was heavy, wet, solid. He held it like a club.

"Who's there?" Gord called out. His voice sounded thin, pathetic against the vastness of the woods.

Silence. Then, another sound. Closer this time. The snap of a dead branch. A heavy boot breaking through the crust.

Stephan scrambled for the hard drive, shoving it back into his jacket. "We have to go. We have to go now."

"Quiet," Gord hissed. He killed his headlamp. Darkness slammed into them, absolute and terrifying. The only light was the dying ember of the fire.

In the sudden dark, Gord’s eyes adjusted. He looked up at the ridge. A silhouette. A shape darker than the trees. Standing still. Watching.

Gord’s heart hammered against his ribs. He felt the cold sweat on his back turn to ice.