13

Quebec, Canada

It was now late afternoon.

The sun was just beginning to set as the de Havilland floatplane steadily gained altitude and gently banked northeast. The line of thunderstorms they had encountered after leaving Philly had cleared by the time they landed in Montreal and caught the train to the tiny town of Clova. Here, over the province of Quebec, the skies were clear.

Dr. Shirazi sat in the copilot’s seat of the single-engine prop plane, nicknamed the “Beaver” by the Canadian-based de Havilland company. Azad and Saeed sat in the middle row. David was in the back row by himself, surrounded by backpacks and fishing gear. It was cold and cramped, and David knew he would be back there for nearly an hour, but the truth was, he was finally beginning to enjoy himself.

The de Havilland Beaver had just one serious design flaw, as David saw it. It was loud. Really loud. The view out the tiny window was amazing, but he could barely hear himself think. Yet as they reached a cruising altitude of eight thousand feet—soaring high above a seemingly endless carpet of blue rivers and lakes and lush green islands, moving farther and farther away from any sign of civilization—David couldn’t help but nudge Azad in front of him and say, “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“What?” Azad yelled, barely able to hear over the roar of the Pratt & Whitney 450-horsepower engine.

“I said, she’s a beauty, isn’t she?” David yelled back, leaning closer.

Azad laughed.

“What’s so funny?” David asked, bracing himself for whatever sarcastic zinger was sure to come.

“You,” Azad said. “You’re a real comedian.”

“Why? I’m just saying . . .”

“I know what you’re saying. But forget about her. You haven’t got a prayer.”

“What?”

“With Marcy.”

“Who?”

“The girl—Marcy.”

“You mean Marseille?”

“Whatever—she’s not your type.”

David just stared at him for a moment. “I was talking about the plane, you idiot.”

“Whatever. Just steer clear. You’re way out of your league, Charlie Brown.”

Their twilight water landing was picture-perfect.

Moments later, the other two de Havillands bringing the rest of their party landed and taxied over to join them by two wooden docks; four small, flat motorboats were moored alongside. A cluster of small, weathered, rustic cabins stood nearby. The only problem was they were running behind schedule and were quickly losing the light they needed to set up their base camp.

Larry McKenzie, the gruff, scruffy, ponytailed, chain-smoking pilot of the plane David had been on—and the owner of McKenzie Air Expeditions, the charter service his father’s fishing group had used for years—helped them unload their gear. The other two pilots did the same and carried several large coolers and cardboard boxes into the cabins as well. These were filled with food for the long weekend. There was nothing gourmet, just basic fruits and vegetables, milk, juice, coffee, butter, bread, eggs, and bacon, all of which would supplement the main dish each night, which would be, of course, fresh fish.

When they were done, McKenzie gathered the group together by the shore and reminded them of the rules. “Don’t drown,” he barked. “Don’t get bit by a snake. Don’t get eaten by a bear. Any questions?”

Most were veterans of this trip. None of them seemed bothered. Only Marseille appeared a bit unnerved, whispering something to her father David couldn’t quite hear.

“No questions?” McKenzie confirmed. “Good. We’re out.”

A moment later, he and the other two pilots were back in their cockpits, hightailing back to the real world. These guys were making $750 a head to drop “clients” off in the middle of nowhere. That and a “don’t drown” pep talk and poof, they were gone. Nice work if you can get it, David thought. Not that he really cared. It wasn’t his money. It was his father’s, and his father always said this was why he’d escaped from Iran—to be free. Free to think. Free to work. Free to play. Free to travel. Free to do whatever he pleased, without a tyrant controlling his every move. Amen, David thought. He took in a deep breath of cool Canadian night air. The temperature was under fifty and dropping fast. But they were finally here.

Dr. Shirazi turned to the group and encouraged them all to grab their gear and set up the cabins. Meanwhile, he asked David and Marseille to go gather as much firewood as they could. Internally, David resisted. He hadn’t come on this trip to be treated like a kid. But he felt better when he saw his brothers’ faces, just visible in the final traces of the sunset—why should David get time alone with the girl?

Marseille’s reaction brought him back to reality. “Out there?” she asked. “With the bears?”

“Don’t listen to Old Man McKenzie,” Dr. Shirazi laughed. “He’s not even Canadian. He’s from Poughkeepsie.”

“Poughkeepsie?”

“He got hooked on drugs and dodged the draft in the Vietnam War. Moved up here to get away from Nixon and get free health care. I met him when he desperately needed triple bypass surgery faster than the system up here could get him scheduled. Nice guy, but one taco short of a combo platter, if you know what I mean.”

David looked at Marseille as Marseille stared at his father.

“What does that have to do with bears?” she asked.

David grinned at the perplexed look on her face. “Nothing,” he said, handing her a small flashlight and shaking his head. “That’s just the way my dad answers a question. Come on. Let’s go.”

David headed into the woods, a more powerful flashlight in his hands. Marseille clearly didn’t want to be left behind. She zipped up her North Face fleece jacket and caught up to him quickly.

“So my dad tells me you read and write Farsi fluently,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“And German.”

No reply.

“And you’re working on Arabic.”

Still no reply.

“Of course,” she said, glancing at him as they walked, “you might want to work on your English a bit.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m just saying . . .”

“Yes, I speak all those languages.”

“What are you, a genius?” she asked.

“No.”

“That’s what my dad says.”

“How would your dad know? He hasn’t seen me in six years.”

“He says you were almost fluent in all those then.”

David said nothing. They walked quietly for several minutes.

“So where in the world are we, anyway?” Marseille finally asked, trying again to break the ice.

“You really can’t stand silence, can you?” David replied.

“Shut up,” she laughed, punching him in the arm, “and answer my question.”

David feigned pain but finally answered. “The Gouin Reservoir.”

“The what?”

“The Gouin Reservoir—or in French, Réservoir Gouin.”

“Ooh la la, I’m impressed,” she said. “Parlez-vous français, aussi?”

David shook his head. “Je ne remember much pas.”

Marseille laughed. “Je le doute. Anyway, that’s too bad.”

“Why?”

“’Cause we’re in Quebec, and they speak French up here.”

“So you do know where we are.”

“I can read the ticket stub. But Le Réservoir Gouin—what the heck is that?”

“You really want to know?”

“I’d just like to hear you put two or three sentences together in English . . . you know, just to know that you can!”

“Fine,” David said. “It’s a collection of hundreds of small lakes containing innumerable islands and peninsulas with highly irregular shapes, located in the central portion of the Canadian province of Quebec, roughly equidistant from Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec City. Its shoreline stretches over 5,600 kilometers, excluding islands. The reservoir was created in 1918 at the upper reaches of the Saint Maurice River and is named after Jean-Lomer Gouin, who was premier of Quebec at the time. Construction was done by the Shawinigan Water and Power Company to facilitate hydroelectric development by controlling the flow of water for the stations downstream.”

Marseille had stopped walking and was staring at David. “How do you know all that?”

“I read a lot.”

“What did you do, memorize an encyclopedia article or something?”

David shrugged and quickly changed the subject. “Hey, over there, grab those old branches and I’ll grab these,” he said. “That’ll be a start.”

For much of the next hour, they gathered firewood, hauled it back to the camp, dropped it off, and went back out for more, avoiding the older boys. In their gathering, they passed by a few cabins farther inland, unoccupied and clearly out of use. They were unlocked and seemed to have been left to the elements. One of them displayed plenty of bear claw scratchings around the door and windows, but another A-frame style cabin was in pretty good shape, just a little dusty. They didn’t have time then to explore, but this little island ghost town fascinated them both.

It had been a long day, and once the gear had been set up or stowed for later, the whole group was sleeping by 9 p.m. The next four days stretched out in front of them with the promise of endless pike and walleye. But the fish would wait till morning.