THE VIEW FROM THE PARAPET
Lying on the roof of Montreal’s Duheme Building, his back to the street, it occurred to Percy Winkle that back home in Alsfeldt, Ontario, there was no such animal as a “parapet.â€
“Come to think of it,†he’d said to himself out loud at the time, “there probably isn’t a single soul in Alsfeldt with even the foggiest idea what a parapet is.†Percy himself had been pretty sure he understood “parapet†when the security guy was telling him and the other sharpshooters where they’d be stationed, but he’d looked it up anyway. “A low protective wall along the roof edge of a building, often ornamental, to offer protection where there is danger of a sudden drop.â€
Well, the parapet behind him met all the requirements. It was a low, protective wall – came, maybe to his knees when he stood up; it was ornamental –- little scoops every couple of feet or so like a phony castle wall; and the Duheme Building was four stories high with a flat roof, so, without a parapet, the odds of someone pitching over the edge onto Sherbrooke Street would be increased considerably.
Percy hunched up onto his elbow and shifted a bit to peer over one of the little scoops. The painter was still there across the street, working on the front of the religious bookstore. Still awful slow and careful, too. Why Teff Schlag, the guy who did everybody’s painting back in Alsfeldt, he’d have been finished hours ago.
There was a cop filling up her patrol car at the self-serve gas station. Montreal city cop. Awful small for a cop. She’d taken her cap off and Percy could see her dark skin. East Indian probably, he thought. He wondered what someone her size would do back home when the O’Reilly boys got tight on Saturday night, as they always did, and she’d have to break up the inevitable fight at Bender’s Dance Hall.
The two kids in front of the variety store, they were still there. Teenagers. No – older than that. So hard to tell with those wide, sloppy pants, the crotch down at the knees, the plaid shirts hanging open, and the baseball caps on backward. This was a very ethnic area of the city, and Percy was pretty sure those two were Middle Eastern, Egyptian possibly, or Iranian – maybe Lebanese. He’d had experience with people from the Middle East when he’d done his stint with the UN peacekeeping mission in Cyprus. The families he’d met there, they sure didn’t go for the North American slob look. Doesn’t take them long to assume all our bad habits, Percy reflected.
The old guy on the corner by the gas station. He was still there on the bench, face held up to the sun. Funny. Percy was sure the guy’d walked in with his cane in his left hand. Now, here it was leaning against the bench on his right. Percy tried to focus in a little more. To use the binoculars he’d have to lean over the parapet, and the security guy had said to keep the lowest possible profile for now. Still, that old guy…But then, why shouldn’t he put the darn cane on whatever side he wanted to? One word Percy did not have to look up was “paranoid.†He knew it all too well. It came with the territory.
Movement on the periphery made him start. He stretched to see a little farther. This was a new one. A guy with one, two, three – good God, five dogs! Now that would sure get attention in Alsfeldt. Just walking your dog – and on a leash, yet – that’d turn heads, but this guy had five! A dogwalker! Somebody that walked dogs for a living! Probably made a good buck, too, from those fancy houses a couple of blocks over. Percy let his body slump back down behind the parapet again, shaking his head at the sheer brainlessness of the things that city people do.
He looked at his watch. 1539 hours. A minute left. He could recall perfectly the words of the agent from CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Percy didn’t like him. He was kind of smarmy. Superior.
“You make your caution call according to this schedule. Tell us what you see on your section of the route that looks suspicious, and we’ll tell you if you have clearance to take anyone down. Has that penetrated? You wait for clearance! This isn’t Hollywood! Here are your call times. MacLean, 1538 hours. Winkle, 1540…â€
Completely hidden by the parapet now, Percy pulled the tiny microphone closer to make his call. Very soon, a marked man would be walking through his section of Sherbrooke Street. Rene Sildenafil was head of the anti-terrorism section of the Surete du Quebec. A CSIS mole planted in an Algerian terrorist cell had learned that Sildenafil was marked for assassination on this stroll, but the man insisted on walking as planned. CSIS had reluctantly agreed, but responded with mass coverage along the route by highly qualified sharpshooters like Percy, brought in from armed forces bases across Canada.
With typical Canadian reserve, however, the CSIS brass had built in a “caution call†element, so that the sharpshooters’ skills could be made an absolute last resort. Percy was now about to make his call, and his analysis of anything suspicious.
Of the five situations that Percy notes, which one does simple logic suggest is improbable, and therefore suspicious?
