The Thin White Line

“Why are you revealing yourself to me now? What if they discover you’re my source?”

Spence took off his baseball cap, wiped the perspiration from his forehead with his hand, then put it back on.

“I’ve put in my twenty years and am about to retire – and just in time, I might add. They’re becoming suspicious. But there’s still lots of opportunity to be killed or worse, discredited as a traitor before I take my pension and disappear–or even after I do.”

“So, you want me to be your insurance policy?” Matt asked.

“Or my legacy.”

Spence took off his sunglasses. His blue eyes were red-rimmed and puffy from lack of sleep. “After being in Afghanistan I wasn’t too keen on their politics or religion. I didn’t feel as strongly as some of my buddies, but I figured the fewer we let in this country the less likely there was to be a problem. But it was when I was deployed to Mali in 2018 that I realized there’s no way of stopping this.”

“Stopping what?” Matt asked.

He’d been to Mali as well, assigned to do an article on the Canadian Armed Forces contingent sent there under the auspices of the United Nations to help establish conditions for durable peace, in the war-ravaged, impoverished country.

Spence looked back toward the pond. “One day we were sent out to investigate a raid on a nearby village. By the time we arrived, all that was left were smouldering ruins and in the square a jumble of corpses.” He cleaned his sunglasses with the tail of his t-shirt. “It was a Fulani village, they’re herders. They’d been attacked by Dogans who are farmers. The two groups have been competing for water for centuries but with climate change, it has become a matter of life and death.”

Mali was located in the Sahel region of the continent, a transitional zone between the arid Sahara to the north and the belt of humid savannas to the south, one of the front lines of climate change.

Matt was only there for six days but it was long enough to see that the society was at the point of collapse. The mission had been extended twice, but as far as Matt could tell it hadn’t achieved the durable peace it was established to achieve. And little wonder, as well as competition for water the population also had to deal with jihadists, warlords, and a weak and corrupt central government.

“The thing about people who have nothing to lose, is they have nothing to lose, you know what I mean?” Spence smiled.

Matt nodded.

“It became clear to me that if we couldn’t stop it, we should at least try to manage it. As my attitude became more tolerant, it was just the opposite for other guys I served with. That’s when it really came home for me. Their way of saving this country is to destroy all it stands for and then put themselves in charge.”

Spence paused like he was considering whether to continue, then shrugged and carried on.

“I love Canada. I don’t want to see it explode in violence nor do I want to see its institutions slowly dismantled. It’s one of the few places in the world where the circumstances of your birth don’t determine the life you’ll live.”

“And you thought if you leaked some of this information it might derail their agenda.”

“Something like that.” Spence stood and looked toward the parking lot. “Enough with the small talk.” He suddenly seemed anxious for the conversation to end. He retrieved a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. “There’s a cache of arms and munitions being stored at a residential property in Langley, 7018 Glover Road, off Highway 10. It’s an isolated house on a large lot, next to the nursery.” He handed Matt the paper with the address and two names on it.

“How much?”

“Enough to equip a small platoon.”