The drive back to the cabin felt like the longest twenty minutes of my life. The Turkish delight sat in the passenger seat, mocking me with its innocent packaging while my mind raced through the catastrophic implications of what had just happened.

Sarah Chen knew about JD Ruff. She knew about the meeting. And thanks to my spectacular failure at keeping my mouth shut, she now had confirmation that the Premier of Louise was conducting secret business with Valdorian representatives.

The helicopter was gone when I pulled up to the cabin – just empty sky above the glacial lake and an ominous silence that made my stomach clench. I grabbed the candy and walked toward the front door, rehearsing explanations that all sounded pathetic even in my head.

Daniel was standing by the fireplace when I entered, his back to me, hands clasped behind him in that familiar pose. But something was different. The careful control from this morning had shifted into something harder, more dangerous.

“Turkish delight, as requested,” I said, setting the box on the coffee table.

“Tell me about your conversation with Ms. Chen.”

My blood turned to ice water. Of course he knew. Daniel always knew everything that mattered in Louise, often before it happened. “She was fishing for information about—”

“She was recording you, Al.” Daniel turned around, and I saw something in his eyes I’d never seen before – disappointment mixed with calculation. “The entire conversation. Audio and video.”

The room seemed to tilt slightly. “Daniel, I can explain—”

“JD Ruff left very unhappy. Apparently, our Valdorian friends don’t appreciate having their business arrangements become potential front-page news.” Daniel picked up the Turkish delight box, examining it as if it contained state secrets. “They’ve given us seventy-two hours to contain the situation.”

“Contain it how?”

Daniel’s smile was sharp as winter wind off the lake. “That, my friend, depends entirely on what Sarah Chen plans to do with that recording. And more importantly…” He set down the candy and fixed me with that calculating stare. “It depends on whether I can still trust you to help me finish this game.”

The glacial lake stretched beyond the windows, its surface still deceptively calm while dangerous currents moved beneath. Just like the political waters we were now navigating – except I was no longer sure which side of the game I was supposed to be on.

The briefcase with golden treasures was gone from the table top, with only the scattered Monopoly game resting on it, paper money scattered across the board game and on the floor. Daniel knelt down to pick up the game pieces and carefully returned the hastily set-up game back to it’s original configuration where it looked like he was about to be completely trumped by my prowess at this cautionary kid’s game.

“Now, as you can see, the game is about to conclude, with you as the winner,” Daniel said and then added wryly, “but you didn’t know that I had a card up my sleeve.” Indeed, from inside the cuff of his neatly pressed suit jacket, he teased out one of the other player pieces, the old boot. “There is a third player in this game, who is about join the action right about now.”

I groaned, looking at Daniel sternly, “Really? Of course, I could count on you to try and beat me by not playing by the rules!”

“Who said all the players have to join at the start of the game,” Daniel shrugged and laughed, “Let’s put this worn out old game away and focus on the high-stakes situation we are currently facing. The province of Louise is literally on the line, and if I don’t play my cards right or figure out how to twist the odds in my favour, I could lose more than just my career as a politician.”

“Haven’t I told you that many times before, once I found out you were engaging in backroom – or rather a cabin in the woods – negotiations?” I reminded Daniel, waving my arms around to indicate our rustic surroundings. “Dealing with the Valdorians is no Sunday School picnic. I really don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into with this JD Ruff character.”

Daniel finished putting all the game pieces neatly back into the box and closed the lid. He put the box on the top of the bookshelves, which I noticed that most of the missing books had been returned to their places on the shelves and made me wonder about what happened to the briefcase and it’s valuable contents. I asked Daniel before I forgot again, “So what was all that gold for? Was it a bribe or a donation of some sort?”

Daniel avoided answering my questions and instead shared how he knew about my encounter with the Louise Tribune reporter, “Murphy called me from the store, warning me of what was going on. As it turned out, that call was the necessary diversion I needed to interrupt JD’s unrealistic demands. He was starting to threaten me into doing things that I felt were foolish and counterproductive. His insistence on covering up our clandestine meetings within 3 days gave us time to select our next move.”

“Are you referring to the third party in the Monopoly games you were trying to cheat your way out of losing?” I asked, refraining from sounding too sarcastic.

“Not yet, it’s too soon. No, your lucky meeting with Ms. Chen has convinced me that rather than trying to clamp down on the publicity as the Valdorians want, I will do the exact opposite: I will shout it from every mountain top.”

“How will you do that? All you will be doing is providing hearsay to the press about the bribery attempt. It will be easily dismissed by Mr. Ruff that it wasn’t the intent of the meeting at all. Especially if there is no briefcase filled with gold bars and coins,” I countered, looking around the room to make sure the briefcase wasn’t tucked in a corner somewhere in the cabin.

“True, I did not pull out a tape recorder or camera. JD’s people had scanned the cabin and its surroundings for any kind of surveillance devices. The Valdorians are masters of capturing their targets with compromising audio and video, so they knew full well what to look for… that is, in modern recording devices.”

“So you have a recording of the meeting?”

“I do, I do,” Daniel said as he crossed the room to the old grandfather clock in the corner. He opened a panel in the base to show a wax-covered tube that he gently pulled out and set on the table. From the panel behind the clock face, he carefully pulled out what looked like an old 8mm movie camera and set it next to the wax drum. “It may be early twentieth century technology, but these are entirely mechanical in operation and don’t emit any kind of electric signal.”

“Impressive! And I’m guessing they ran using the gears in the clock? You wouldn’t be able to hear their operation over the loud tick-tock of that old clock.” I was looked closely at the fine grooves in the wax of the drum, and the reel canister of film behind a pinhole lense. “Do you need my help transferring the audio and developing the film?”

“Yes, we don’t have much time to get this to your friend at the Louise Tribune.” Daniel closed his eyes for a bit, and then opened them again to look at the missing books in the bookcase. “I’m also going to need your help with Lucretius’s ‘On the Nature of Things’, and Aristotle’s ‘Magna Moralia’.”

“Ah, I haven’t read those in awhile. It’s going to take me a bit of time to re-read –,” I started to say but Daniel put his hand up to stop me in my misunderstanding of why he was bringing up these book titles.

“Not to read or discuss them, but to cut out holes in pages to fill them with these,” Daniel said in a low voice, pulling out of his suit jacket pockets handfuls of gold coins, glittering brightly in the mid-afternoon light coming through the cabin’s windows. “JD took the briefcase in a huff after not getting what he wanted from me, but I distracted him long enough to abscond with these fine mementos to corroborate the audio and film recordings!”

*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***