World: Canada: End of a Bad Dream

(3 of 3)

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.