The methodical search of the shop; mid-search departure for Southwest ops

pivotal · ~9-11 Nov YDAU

• When: ~9-11 November YDAU — the days following the raid, inside the commandeered, sign-shrouded shop
• What: Named at last — "A.F.R.'s U.S.A. cell's leader, Fortier, the son of a Glen Almond glass-blower" — Fortier commands a search that is the man in miniature: neat, orderly, with time taken; none of the shop's mirrors may be broken or dismantled; the Antitoi cadavers are rolled in construction-plastic for hygiene; a consumer TP is set up in the room of storage so volunteers can sample every cartridge in rotation and discard it in the alley bins. When an F.L.Q. street-display cartridge turns up (crude stamped smile, "IL NE FAUT PLUS QU'ON PURSUIVE LE BONHEUR"), young Tassigny volunteers to be strapped in and EEG-wired to verify it, and Fortier embraces him and kisses both his cheeks as he is rolled in; it and a second from the same box prove blank, and Fortier, philosophical, counsels against disappointment or damage from a frustration — he and Marathe had always read the F.L.Q. displays as hoax. The search's ceiling had in fact been set on day one: the bad news "had been expected by Broullîme and Fortier the moment they witnessed the shop's brothers active and alert," since even the dim Antitois, seeing "the unique case and slightly larger size of a Master," would have put it to the special side, "arranged for the special 585-r.p.m. hardware to view it to check for special value, and been already lost" (n303 p. 1055). The narration fixes the cell's real objective under his command: not blackmail or cartographic extortion but a duplicable Master cartridge, the testicular frappe that would force Québec's secession (narratorial A.F.R. doctrine, not Fortier's on-page speech). Mid-search, Fortier is required to absent himself to help facilitate Southwest ops — the infiltration of the auteur's athlete relative believed (per Marathe) most likely to hold or lead to a duplicable copy.