Canada: End of a Bad Dream

FOR a fortnight, the first-floor flat in the working-class suburb of Montreal North had been under tense surveillance. Only when police were completely satisfied with the accuracy of their tips and leads did they swing into action. They routed the residents out of a four-block area. Hundreds of policemen, Mounties and troops in battle dress were rushed in to encircle the stark apartment building at 10945 Des Recollets Avenue. The electricity was cut off. A nearby school was closed so that it could be used as a helicopter pad. Finally, two hours after the siege began, a lead pipe came flying out of one of the flat's windows. Said the message inside: "If you try anything (gas, guns, etc. . . .), M. J. Cross will be the first to die."

Monsieur J. Cross is British Trade Commissioner to Quebec James Richard ("Jasper") Cross. The defiant note was the last truculent gasp from the Quebec Liberation Front fanatics who had held Cross--and Canada--in fear, anger and uncertainty for 59 days. When the F.L.Q. members finally freed Cross last week, their price had come down considerably: a safe-conduct to Cuba for four terrorists and three of their relatives.

Cracking Down. The Oct. 5 abduction of Cross--the first political kidnaping to occur north of the Rio Grande--set in motion a series of events that shocked the world. Acting with unflinching determination, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau rejected the terrorists' initial extravagant demands for Cross' release: $500,000 in gold bullion, plus transport and safe conduct for 23 jailed F.L.Q. thugs to Cuba or Algeria. After the ransom was denied, another group of kidnapers then abducted Quebec Labor Minister Pierre Laporte, prompting Trudeau to crack down really hard. Under a little-used World War I security measure, the Prime Minister invoked emergency police powers --something that had never been done in peacetime in tolerant, democratic Canada--and sent battalions of special police and troops into Quebec to deal with what he called an "insurrection, real or apprehended." The F.L.Q.'s response was swift and savage. Less than two days after Trudeau's action, Laporte was found in the trunk of a car, dead by strangulation. Little hope was held out that Jasper Cross would ever be found alive.

That Cross could be kept hidden in an ordinary apartment just ten miles from downtown Montreal for two solid months suggested that the Canadian police were rather sorry sleuths. They also did badly in one of thousands of raids carried out under the 1914 wartime-security act. Police searching for an F.L.Q. suspect named Gerard Pelletier stormed into the rambling Montreal residence of Canadian Secretary of State Gerard Pelletier.

In the house of another suspect, the police found a telephone number on a scrap of paper; the same number had turned up in other raids. Incredibly, 19 days passed before anyone got around to tracing the number. Sure enough, when the police finally did so, they nabbed another suspect, Bernard Lortie, who admitted his role in the Laporte kidnaping and even named his accomplices. But he neglected to reveal that the accomplices were in the house all the time he was talking, hiding behind a false wall in a closet. When the police padlocked the front door and left, the hoods crawled out of their hiding place and quietly slipped out the back.

Wary Talks. The police, however, fully redeemed themselves last week. Nothing had been heard from Cross since Nov. 21, when in a letter addressed to the police he reported that he was well but wondering "when this bad dream will be over." By then, the police were already closing in on the apartment at 10945. Two weeks ago, a five-man surveillance team moved into the flat above the kidnap hideout. But not until early last week, when one of the kidnapers and his wife were arrested and talked, were the police sure that Cross was in the apartment and that his captors were in a mood to negotiate.

Wary bargaining went on for four hours in a building across Des Re-collets Avenue between two lawyers, one representing the F.L.Q. and the other Premier Robert Bourassa's Quebec provincial government. Finally an agreement was reached.

Three F.L.Q. kidnapers filed out of the flat, led by a soft-faced Montreal cab driver named Marc Carbonneau. The terrorists, their lawyer, a policeman and Cross all crowded into a wine-colored 1962 Chrysler that belonged to one of the kidnapers. An escort of a dozen police cars and motorcycles roared out of Des Recollets Avenue, the Chrysler sandwiched in the middle, for a 60-m.p.h. dash to the former site of Expo 67, twelve miles away. Carbonneau insisted on taking the wheel of the Chrysler, which was rigged with booby traps that would blow him and everyone else to smithereens if all did not go as the government had promised.

When the motorcade reached the island, which was declared "Temporary Cuban Territory" for the exchange, Cross was turned over to the Cuban consul. The four F.L.Q. terrorists and the three relatives clambered into a helicopter for the 15-mile flight to Montreal's Dorval Airport. There a Canadian Forces Yukon transport was waiting to take them to Cuba, which had agreed to act as the terrorists' travel agent early on in the shabby kidnap drama. Five and a half hours later, the Yukon arrived in Havana, and the seven French Canadians began their life of exile. Only then did Cross become a free man.

Sad Note. The government had yielded very little to the terrorists, who were reported to be "not very keen" on going to Cuba. But there were some who thought that there should have been no bargain with them at all. Cross, of course, did not share that view. "It's almost like being out of hell," he told reporters after his release.

During his two months at 10945 Des Recollets Avenue, Cross was forced to live in what he described as an enforced "state of suspended animation." He saw 164 French-language movies on TV and lost 22 lbs. on a diet that consisted largely of spaghetti and peanut butter. His captors, "convinced and fervent revolutionaries," confined him in a sunless room. There he was handcuffed every night and watched 24 hours a day by two guards who had a disconcerting way of fiddling around with the clips of their submachine guns. At first, hoods and hostage talked politics; but after Laporte was killed, Cross "did not feel like continuing the discussions."

Only once did Cross fear that he too might be killed. In one of the letters dictated to him by his captors, he intentionally misspelled the two words prisonners and questionned, intending the extra ns to indicate that he was in Montreal North. When the kidnapers realized what he had done, they went into a rage and screamed that he was "a dirty son-of-a-bitch."

Two days after his release, Cross flew to London for a reunion with his wife, who had spent much of the long ordeal in Switzerland with friends. So eager was Cross to leave Montreal, where he had lived since 1967, that he passed up Trudeau's invitation to dinner. "It may be difficult for me to return," he said at the airport. "It's a bit sad that we ended up on this note."

Still at Large. Though the "bad dream" is over for Cross, it is not yet over for Canada. The police have yet to find Pierre Laporte's murderers. As for Trudeau, he still has to convince a sizable number of independence-minded French Canadians that they belong in Canada. He has already proved to everyone that he will go to considerable lengths to prevent la belle province from getting away.

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