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Some of the Whole Truth

By

Mark Sproule-Jones

Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co.

Book Design/Layout by Kalpart. Visit www.kalpart.com

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ISBN: 978-1-63135-547-9

Dedicated to

Megan and Amy

Preface

This is a fast-paced novel about duplicity, cunning and sex in Canadian politics. It is almost a first for novels set in Canada. It is about real world politics in Ottawa and Washington, with the major characters being the prime minister, his wife and chief advisors, as well as the American president and the secretary of state, who is also his mistress. Canadian novels love to skirt around the seamy aspects of Canadian politics, preferring tales of social issues and moral dilemmas. This novel differs in that it is influenced by the tone of John le Carre’s early books about cold war spying in Britain, while retaining a distinct Canadian cultural feel.

It is a short novel, with constant changes of scene in and between chapters. Films and television shows have changed presentation methods in the last decade. Scenes last about four seconds unlike in previous years when settings and conversations could last many minutes. Novels have never really copied the new media techniques. While many authors change the pacing in a novel by using dialogue to speed up and situational descriptions to slow down, this book uses rapid sequencing of parallel story lines to keep the reader fully absorbed. This newer method may presage comparable changes in the e-book age.

The author is a professor emeritus of political science and has published 12 books of non-fiction and 70+ academic articles. He uses his expertise to accurately depict the nature of prime ministerial and Cabinet decision making, of the bureaucratic free enterprise practised by security forces like the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and of the electoral bases of politicians brought up and tutored in places like Victoria, Toronto, Newark and Terre Haute. The works of C.P. Snow act as a very approximate guide.

Finally, there are three women in this story who play key roles in a world of clever, strategic and ruthless men. One is the prime minister’s wife, a tough matron who uses pillow talk to get her way. A second is a younger “first-term” Member of Parliament from Burnaby, British Columbia, who crosses the floor to join the governing party in Parliament. She admits that lust and power are motivators and the prime minister the target. The third is a streetwise politician from New Jersey, formerly a governor and now secretary of state, whose modus operandi is distrust all rivals for influence in DC.

Mark Sproule-Jones,
Burlington, Ontario
November 2013

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Playing with Fire

Chapter Two: Keeping It Alight

Chapter Three: A Little Domestic Fun

Chapter Four: Friends or Allies?

Chapter Five: Confusing and Confused

Chapter Six: Some Past and Some Present

Chapter Seven: Some Fun and Games

Chapter Eight: Jane at Large

Chapter Nine: Barry Comes Clean

Chapter Ten: Power in Different Places

Chapter Eleven: Family Ties?

Chapter Twelve: Owning Up a Bit

Chapter Thirteen: Playing for Keeps

Chapter Fourteen: Preparing to Leave

Chapter Fifteen: The End or Not the End?

Cast of Characters

Chapter One:
Playing with Fire

He made a point of going to the Cabinet room early—well, about an hour early, roughly half-past eight—and with strict orders to the attending commissioner to keep all others out, including his wife, until 9:25 am.

He would sit in his chair and swivel it around to see out of the windows to his left. He used to conjure new and different places to seat his colleagues. He had offended protocol, deliberately, at his first Cabinet meeting. He liked to face his allies, place the more thoughtful next to him and always put the hostile ones at the corners unless it seemed they might collude. It made sense to move everybody at different meetings. It kept discussions lively and shuffled the hostile and admiring glances.

He reserved time at these solitary sojourns for reading or rereading the executive summaries of briefs delivered the day previous, with luck before 7 pm. A night’s sleep, good or otherwise, gave his subconscious the room and time to spell out the pros and cons and whether he really cared about the conclusions. Many affairs of the state could wait and mature, he discovered, like the Croft’s port he enjoyed sipping late at night.

At about 9:25 am the ministers would dribble in, always frantically preceded by the Clerk and his crew of scribblers and laptop merchants. You could never count on ministers to remember to bring their briefs. Too busy could be a legitimate excuse. The smile on the House Leader’s face betrayed some good news, and it now would set the tone for the rest of the group.

He didn’t like to fill the seats around the walls with every aspiring deputy minister, let alone ministers of the state. He had prided himself on getting good products from working committees, and their written-only products could easily be garnished by the comments of attending ministers.

Today’s welcoming introductions were quickly followed by the Prime Minister’s request for an agenda change to allow the House Leader, Gilles, to make an announcement. Anne Barnaby, the NDP critic for social policy and housing, had agreed to cross the floor of the House. It increased the Prime Minister’s majority to twenty-four but more importantly it would give him some numerical strength in Metro Vancouver, a city long lost to those in $1,000 suits.

The main items on the agenda today were economic. That meant a long review of the state of the national economy, of particular issues like commodity prices and of prospects for worldwide markets and economics. This meant a dry but necessary twenty-minute introduction by John Bradshaw, his Minister of Finance, followed (he would insist) by comments first from the Minister of National Revenue on revenue projections. He could always come back another time to expenditure items, for these were never packageable enough for orderly deliberations by the twenty-six sitting around the table.

As John advanced his theses and comments, Arthur Jones, the PM, liked to lean back in his chair and reflect on the spirit of these meetings. There was a liturgy to them, familiar and warming. With luck he would avoid the sermon and have colleagues murmur agreements and otherwise in the more hallowed tones of august priests. This was really where he was meant to be.

There were times in his past at both federal and provincial levels when the agenda unravelled. Comments elicited more and more outrageous ones, and Arthur would essentially give up refereeing, in the hope that exhaustion would overtake the speakers. Rarely did it do so. His colleagues would often begin to resemble squabbles of seagulls on a sandy beach, flying and hopping at crumbs of food, with piercing squawks and rising tempers. He felt in time that good organisation, control of the agenda, prior review of contentious issues could keep things civil. The drivers of war were best kept to times of acknowledged battles.

The discussion of John’s brief was short and desultory. He had not given them much in the way of conclusions other than the usual “close monitoring calls” especially over grain prices. Concerns about softwood lumber were never handled well at this level, and were best sent to the resources and environment committee after due consideration by the MNR Minister (Minister of Natural Resources). They might die there, as Jimmy, the cautious Albertan minister, was more a Scottish Presbyterian cleric in temperament than an impulsive intervener into provincial interests. Arthur was glad this meeting was going to finish before noon. Now he needed to let the Cabinet in on some “secrets.”

Secrets they were not to some. He had already discussed the issues with Raj (his Minister of Foreign Affairs), Gilles and John, Mario (his Deputy Prime Minister from Montreal) and some of his Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) staff. All loyal men. Why no women?— he must look into that, he mused.

Here it goes, he thought. “New business. I must say a few words. We have discovered that the Americans, we believe in the Pentagon, have hacked into our deepest core of e-transmissions, past the two firewalls and through to my inner office. We can’t figure out why. We don’t leak their confidences. We support them on foreign affairs almost to the point of electoral embarrassment.”

He felt it best to end there, but added that the Cabinet committee on foreign affairs, defence and security would meet that afternoon. He would be there for most of the meeting, and Raj would brief him on the full discussion later that evening. Arthur would be inviting a few over to Sussex Drive after dinner, but he kept that quiet in case they all wanted to attend.

The Prime Minister told Cabinet that they should keep these developments secret for now. He knew this was the best way to prompt orderly leaks of government business. There were always one or two ministers who owed a parliamentary correspondent a favour. He didn’t expect a television discussion tonight. Too many layers of approvals and arse-kissing at the CBC, and CTV people never liked working after 5 pm. No, it would run in Saturday’s Globe and Mail or the TORSTAR chain, and the endless pages of editorials would begin next week.

For the time being, he needed to discover what the Yankees were up to. At noonish he escaped further questions, thanks to a thirty-minute meeting with Anne Barnaby before a lunch with Stephen, his Chief of Staff. With luck he might get forty winks before his intensive committee discussion.

Anne was refreshing—perpetually optimistic, a go-getter, and always with a big smile. He enjoyed her company. He had, in fact, taught her in third-year law courses not too many years ago. A good, viable A- student with strong convictions about helping the marginalized. He had two agenda items for her to think and then worry about. The issues had been passing comments in his manifestos but needed action now in order to mature in concept and start in implementation before the next election. The items involved investing or pushing for hospices for Canada’s growing elderly population. Lots of ideas there. The other was, he knew, close to her heart. It was developing a new Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation push into bachelor apartments in central cities, for the burgeoning numbers of single men and women. That issue required delicate provincial negotiations. Anne would be up for it.

Arthur outlined those priorities to her after the usual pleasantries and thanks for her courage to switch allegiances. He said that he required some weeks to orchestrate a smooth reshuffle of Cabinet. The current minister of state for housing needed to maintain face, stay loyal and embrace a different challenge more suited to her suite of skills, which lacked any taste and energy for infighting with entrenched “we know best” bureaucrats.

* * *

When Raj arrived after dinner, he was in quite a flap. Everyone around the sub-committee table had different prescriptions for dealing with the issue, but Raj impressed on them that any decision had to involve the PM directly. By now the White House would have realised that their strategy or blunder would be known in Canada’s top circles. They would be expecting the Prime Minister to respond personally, perhaps by phone, to the President himself. Now all kinds of possibilities could open up.

Gilles joined the group at about 7:15 pm, moaning about slow traffic meandering past the Christmas lights and other decorations. It was also never easy to speed past the American Embassy. Gilles was quite delightful in moments of crisis—an ebullient poker player with a big smile and bigger tummy upon which often sat a pair of large brown hands.

Arthur opened the discussion by confirming what Raj already knew. Canada’s Ambassador had no information to share. The Prime Minister asked Raj to have his deputy minister contact the American Embassy to tell the US Ambassador that Canada’s defence review was at its midpoint, and ask if the Ambassador would prefer to hear the conclusions confidentially before a final draft was prepared. It was always useful to put such people in a quandary. The Ambassador would know about the review but wouldn’t be aware that it was close to conclusion. Arthur encouraged Raj’s deputy minister to wonder aloud to the US Ambassador if Canada’s own Ambassador in Washington might keep the Secretary of State more up to date. Ambassadors hated being out of the loop—any loop!

While Raj phoned his deputy, Arthur asked Gilles for an update on the state of play of Canada’s security forces based in DC. Did the committee discuss their role this afternoon? Gilles murmured some words about the country’s skeleton resources in eavesdropping, forgetting perhaps that the Department of National Defence (DND) had its own parallel systems to those of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

When Raj returned, the Prime Minister began a discussion on how to proceed firmly and with strategic guile. He felt it might be useful to create some allies overseas on this issue. The Brits would join anything perfidious, but they were unreliable where the Americans were concerned. France was too devious. Israel offered the best choice—always strategic, suspicious and ready for mixed strategy games. The PM offered to handle the issue directly with their Prime Minister tomorrow; he would outline the threat to Canada’s interests if it became merely a client state of the US. That would resonate with them.

All present agreed that Raj should ask the US Ambassador for a meeting, but not too early in the day. Let him fester. Raj would also recall our UN Ambassador from New York even though he was a appointee of limited guile. The symbolism would surprise the US Secretary of State and divert some attention from other strategies. The object was to create so much traffic of a difficult nature on the eavesdroppers that consequences of any actions by them would escalate with uncertainties.

* * *

No one thought the Israeli PM would be surprised by Arthur’s revelations. Better still he was quite bemused and offered his help with some alacrity. He was tired of America’s penchant for supporting everyone involved with Palestine. Win—win—win and more seemed to be their goal. Here was a chance to remind the US of a real Middle Eastern power.

He agreed to cooperate in devising a strategy to obtain oblique entry into the Pentagon’s computer core. Israel had some codes that took them past initial firewalls, ostensibly in case Hamas proved belligerent inside towns like Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Once inside, Canada would supply some dummy information about security risks within the defence establishments of a number of NATO countries. The President loved it; the plan was a brilliant practical joke..

The phone call was made from Arthur’s parliamentary office but patched through to that of the defence minister. No office seemed fully secure now. The Department of National Defence was occasionally in contact with Israel and, even if the Americans twigged to the leaks, they would be confused and surprised by these developments.

The ministers of defence and national security were both given authority to get their hackers working on the indirect line through Israel and the direct line to the White House.

So, with the elements of “create the confusion” in place, it was time to launch Canada’s offensive retaliation. Arthur would call the President tonight. The President hated to be reached on Air Force One. It was supposedly his secure love nest in the sky.

Chapter Two:
Keeping It Alight

Barry Evans was one of those ebullient, friendly politicians who characterized much of Indiana’s body politic. The smile was always broad, the body language attentive and only occasionally did his blue eyes betray another agenda. Born in the Corn Belt east of Fort Wayne, he had honed his political skills in the United Automobile Workers, a union that still revered Walter Reuther and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Automobile workers used to believe in their superior values prior to the Toyota invasion. Barry never fell into that trap. The Indiana Democratic Party rested on two foundations: the United Automobile Workers and the United Steelworkers. Neither could be alienated, at least not in state-wide elections. And neither could afford to ignore the importance of Japanese-owned automobile companies and their thousands of nonunionized employees in Indiana and other states.

The Prime Minister knew all this about President Evans. But he only found out recently that Barry’s zipper was never constantly vertical. Mutual friends in Indiana University Law School always spread malicious gossip, true or false. And CSIS loved nothing better than verifying the rumours of others. Unkind bureaucrats suggested that this was because they were too slow to find their own. Prime ministers needed to recognize when some gossip could be lost and others filed for future occasions. Barry’s blue eyes might be a source of his undoing, so to speak.

Prime Minister Arthur Jones was not to play this trump card in his discussions with the President, at least for now. But he savoured the potential embarrassment of calling the President on a long-distance overnight flight to Canberra. People awakened from a sound sleep, even a torrid sleep, rarely spoke with a clear mind. Might this prove to be a cute little trap for a sleepy president?

“Mr. President. I apologize for calling so late, but our government in Canada is perplexed and horrified by some news. Our communications systems into my office and that of our defence minister have, we think, been penetrated by some hackers from Russia. We think they are former KGB but are not sure. We fear our defence secrets and those we share with the US and other allies may be compromised. Can you help us? We need verification. We need dates of entry. We need any hackers’ codes you could reveal. We then need you to help us communicate this disturbing event to NATO powers.”

“Arthur, I’m pleased you called although tomorrow might have been a more pleasurable time. I am not aware of this Russian hacking threat. I’ll put our people on it right away. It would be best if you postponed contacting our mutual allies. We need some good proof. Putin is very touchy about NATO and its organization.”

“Can you direct your CIA people to link up with our CSIS group and work together to determine the plausible ways that our firewalls could have been broken? They have the resources and expertise to help our smaller group. And they might help us seal up our network holes.”

“We would love to help, Arthur. Let me put my Secretary of State in charge of the next steps.”

“That would be great, Barry. We have also put our ambassador in Washington on full alert. Give my best to Beryl the next time you see her in person.”