The Citadel Summit

By Joseph Green

When Canada’s first Indigenous Governor General takes office, Quebec’s separatist Premier gets permission to use the famed Quebec Citadel, both a fortress and the GG’s summer residence, for what he labels a summit conference. Secretly he wants to use it to declare sovereignty.
Prime Minister Larsen E. Sloat sends veteran official Jack Solenko to control the unpredictable Premier. But Sloat too has a secret plan — to discredit Solenko as an enemy of his projected Canada-U.S. crude-oil pipeline.
Solenko’s unsure if he’s being tricked by Louise LaSorcelle, “Siren of Sovereignty” and the Premier’s key Minister. Then brain-challenged Quebec nationalists infiltrate the fortress, just as a First Nations renegade arrives to kidnap the Governor General from his residence. To get there he’s hijacked a yacht carrying illegal cargo and a soft-porn starlet – niece of the U.S. presidential contender who controls the Prime Minister’s political fate.
Citadel clashes throw Jack Solenko and Louise LaSorcelle into life-threatening peril. Will they follow orders and fight each other, or battle forward together?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Green
• Release date: Oct 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9780995217744

Joseph Green

Joseph Green is the pen name of the author. He is a Canadian of partly American heritage, and has been a fisherman, merchant mariner, editor and publisher, and public-service executive.

Book preview

Published by Friar Rose Press

ISBN 978-0-9952177-1-3 (softcover)

ISBN 978-0-9952177-4-4 (epub)

Copyright © 2021 Joseph Green

All rights reserved: no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or other, except by a reviewer, without express permission of the publisher.

No character in this work of fiction is based on a person alive or dead. Characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Passages relating to governments, the Canadian Forces and their regiments, La Citadelle and its occupants in Quebec City, the former Temporary Building in Ottawa, and all other matters differ from reality. The book takes liberties with French terminology.

Printed and bound in Canada

Friar Rose Press, Ottawa ([e-mail])

Cover design: Diane Dufour

Also by Joseph Green: COME FROM AWAY (novel)

For Marie

Content

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 53

CHAPTER 54

CHAPTER 56

CHAPTER 57

CHAPTER 58

CHAPTER 59

CHAPTER 60

CHAPTER 61

CHAPTER 62

CHAPTER 63

CHAPTER 64

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER 1

The trumpet fanfare sounded through the pillared hallways of the Centre Block on Parliament Hill. A procession started moving at stately pace into the Senate Chamber, where the nation’s high dignitaries would swear in Régis Dursus as Governor General of Canada – the first of Indigenous heritage.

Ahead of Régis walked the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, medals and gold braid gleaming, and their shoulders bearing enough epaulets and lanyards to make a rabbit snare. Under his own deerskin cloak, Régis touched the wooden device put together by the West Coast shaman. It was far from his northern Québec culture, but it should draw the special attention he wanted – if it worked.

He passed the long polished table in the centre aisle where Cabinet Ministers and Canada’s top bureaucrat, the Clerk of the Privy Council, stood in his honour. As Régis took a designated chair at the side, the lame-duck Prime Minister of Canada moved to the lectern. Last week, Valentine Goodhue’s LeapAhead party had lost the federal election. Régis as Governor General would soon swear in his succeit.

The first newcomers saw us as their equals. We were wise and brave. We were eagles.

Régis pulled open the deerskin cloak and moved his shoulders as the shaman had shown him. An eagle mask of red and black sprang out on slim rods before him. Gasps sounded, and applause.

"But the eagles fell. To European diseases, sometimes to drink, and always to the desperation of tiny reserves with no jobs. Many of us brooded and burned. I spent time in jail for being a radical Native.

"Yet, over time, this beautiful and brutal land teaches us to share. We learn what it feels like to be alone in the snow. And then, we open our tents to one another.

"Now the country that locked me up is giving me its highest office.

"I will have the keys of Rideau Hall in Ottawa and La Citadelle in the City of Québec. I hold these grand residences only as caretaker for you – young and old, rich and poor, from every outport, camp, hamlet, town, or city. This country must forget no one. So I invite every Canadian to visit these magnificent tents of stone.

And especially, those of you living outside Québec, please come to the great fortress that holds my Québec residence. Don’t worry about French; we speak friendship. The Citadel – La Citadelle – is yours! I will greet all of you I can, any day. And for all tomorrows, may we share the campfires warming our Canadian home.

Everyone was standing and applauding. Next he must mingle with guests in the Hall of Honour, then inspect a ceremonial guard out by the Peace Tower. Finally he would head for Rideau Hall in the state landau, pulled by beautiful horses ridden by Mounties in scarlet tunics. Thirty years ago, he might have jumped onto a horse’s back. Now he’d be happy to relax in the landau.

Five years of ceremonies stretched before him, handing out awards to commendable citizens and greeting foreign ambassadors. And soon, unavoidably, he must swear in Prime Minister Sloat and his Cabinet.

Unless a parliamentary crisis required his intervention, he held no power. Some Prime Ministers valued a Governor General’s connection with the people, and sought advice. But Larsen E. Sloat hated everything he stood for.

Still he could encourage people. Tonight at his Rideau Hall banquet, he would chat with Jack Solenko. The LeapAheads had brought Jack from Saskatchewan – was he sober again after his wife’s death? – to start up that new Department of Reserve and Rural Rehabilitation. Jack might actually help lost people and lost places.

Trailing in the new Governor General’s procession to the Hall of Honour, Larsen E. Sloat gritted his teeth. That radical was known for socialist blather about sharing. He’d urged Indians and Inuit to beware of oil pipelines in favour of fish, birds, and worms.

Maybe he’d even influenced the LeapAheads to set up that atrocious Department of Reserve and Rural Rehabilitation. Left-wing bureaucrats wanted only to be agitating Indians and other rural losers against progress, which was to say, pipelines. But they would be foiled.

In the Hall of Honour, he jabbed a finger at the Clerk of the Privy Council. Come to my office in fifteen minutes. I’ve got orders about a government department.

CHAPTER 2

In most provinces, the Governor General’s words left a haze of good feeling. But in La Province de Québec, every particle of vapour held the squirming cells of politics.

Premier Ludovic Ouillesophe snapped off his office TV, angry eyes glittering like the sequins on his cloak. That half-breed dared say Native peoples saved the early French, when in truth, those Christian pioneers had lifted the savages from the Stone Age.

Worse, the Gouverneur Général was inviting Anglophone ignoramuses to infest La Citadelle, declaring that the historic fortress belonged to them. By moral justice it truly belonged to the people of Québec, who had dominated North America until robbed by the English.

And thus, La Citadelle truly belonged to their Leader. Once Québec declared independence, he would make it his palace.

Ludovic Ouillesophe knew that his gift for speeches, mysterious even to himself, had won him election. At La Citadelle he would give ever-greater orations. For his highest, most mystic deliverances, he would speak from the King’s Bastion, on the clifftop where French cannons once defended the ancient capital from the British.

And a nation-forming opportunity was coming. His provincial government had got federal permission to use La Citadelle for an international conference. At that occasion his spellbinding speech would surprise the world! He would denounce Canada and announce Québec’s destiny of separation and sovereignty.

Yet – did he recall a complication? Something arising from a discussion with Louise LaSorcelle, his Minister of Planetary Affairs? He dialled her office, one floor below in L’Assemblée Nationale.

The Minister must report to me at once.

Of course, Premier, as soon as she’s available.

The secretary hung up and rolled her eyes. Her Minister obeyed roughly one summons of four, counting on the Premier forgetting.

Though today, whatever was driving him sounded deeply felt.

Inside a bleak apartment in Québec’s Lower Town, TiDorque l’Incomplet flung an empty beer can at the television. That Indian was calling the Anglo squareheads who’d stolen this continent to revel in their rapine, at the historic heart of La Nouvelle France.

TiDorque had a mission undreamt of by the têtes carrées. He would reclaim the past possessions of New France – New Orléans, Des Moines, Détroit, and other cities that Americans couldn’t even pronounce right. Through his strategy of urban ransom, cities with French names would pay monetary tribute to the Ligue. He only needed to train his followers in La Ligue Suprême des Anciens Territoires.

And he could use the Gouverneur Général’s outrageous speech, he suddenly realized, to re-inspire his anti-Anglophone group for action.

In a shack hundreds of miles northeast of Quebec City, the static-scratchy words of His Excellency Régis Dursus came over the short-wave radio. Simon Littleclaw, Ermine Firth, and James Shining Coat were smoking the last of James’s marijuana joints, brought when he came home to hide out.

Lying on a stained mattress, Simon raised an arm. I get the Governor General’s message. We are at one with the sun of harmony warming this land of love.

That old bastard. James looked out the window at the few miserable Native houses and the dead mine’s discoloured smokestack sticking up like an elevated anus. Made his name whining about poor Indians, and now he’s moving into a Quebec City castle.

He sounds like an okay guy, Simon said. He might take us in at the Citadel.

Maybe give us a beer. Ermine Firth shifted on the tattered armchair, a broken spring twanging. We’re running low.

That reminded James to get a bottle from the two-four in the corner. We’ll visit him.

Sure, James, Simon Littleclaw said. Except we got no road and no airport, and the supply ship don’t come for another three months.

I wasn’t meant for Rat River.

But having no cops makes it handy, right? Although La Province de Québec and the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador both claimed Rat River, neither controlled it.

Temporarily.

Right, James, you could get us all out. You’re that smart. Part white, even.

Don’t forget the Black part.

Or the strange streak, Simon thought. You say the U.S. Marines made you a deadly commando.

And marksman.

So show us your powers. Get us out of here.

You want?

Sure.

All right then. Get ready to leave.

Of course, James. Without fail.

James took his beer back to the window and gazed past a blotch of blackflies. Out on Moonblood Sound the scow ferry from Antimoney was approaching, the Quebec or Newfoundland flag rising, who cared which, and the other dropping. Nothing else moved in today’s version of nothingness.

Enough of Rat River. There must be a way out. And yes, God damn it, he would get to the Quebec Citadel. Soon.

CHAPTER 3

The Clerk of the Privy Council took discreet corridors and back stairways from the Hall of Honour towards the fourth-floor office of Larsen E. Sloat, Prime Minister Designate. This unseen route, it occurred to him, symbolized his invisible leadership of every public servant in Canada, from floor-moppers to Deputy Ministers. He even shaped the actions of political leaders.

Let the incoming PM think he ran the show. The Clerk would act on those ideas he agreed with and sidetrack the rest.

He found Sloat behind his desk but with legs stretched sideways onto a leather hassock. The man actually wore cowboy boots. Sloat took his time swinging around to face the Clerk, letting him know who was boss.

The day I’m sworn in, Clerk, you will kill off that new do-gooder department – the Rehabs – before they interfere with my pipelines.

If I may, sir, creating Reserve and Rural Rehabilitation took great strain and pain, and a sudden reversal could be worse.

But I made a sacred vow to the biggest Responsibility donors, promised to snuff the Rehabs on Day One. Then I’m off at a gallop. Sloat made as if to whip the side of his desk.

You also promised the Grand Council of First Nation Chiefs and the Canadian Federation of Villages and Hamlets to support the new department.

A misinterpretation of what I meant.

Of course, and I must remain clear of politics. Except to note that since you stressed that promise on national television and in the newspapers, the opposition parties might accuse you of a certain inconsistency.

They would, wouldn’t they.

And since yours is a minority government, the LeapAheads can work with other parties to bring you down on any issue. Including this one.

Unease showed in Sloat’s grindstone eyes. The knob-like protuberance between his eyebrows, the Clerk noted, seemed to lighten and darken with his mood.

So can my donors bring me down. And the Responsibility Base wants the Rehabs dead.

That can happen, sir, without your going back on any perceived commitments.

Meaning?

The new department could be encouraged to, ah, decompose. In fact, anticipating your attitude, I have taken certain steps. For example, the miniscule office space provided to Deputy Minister Solenko –

That socialist!

– and the Assistant Deputy Ministers I’m sending him, those and other factors may be unfavourable in terms of the department’s life expectancy.

In government code, this meant the Rehabs quietly disappearing over a reasonable time frame. But Sloat wasn’t taking it in.

Clerk, I want Bruce Grawbul to oversee their destruction.

Grawbul was the Responsibility Party’s scheming pollster. You mean, of course, as part of your political staff in the Prime Minister’s Office?

I mean he’ll be within your bureaucracy, doing my bidding.

Sir, I must point out that such political appointments are not readily done. We have traditions about a neutral public service. Even regulations.

Like the one that says the Clerk of the Privy Council serves at pleasure?

The PM Designate was threatening his job! The Clerk hid his shock.

We can look at the situation. Maybe some quiet placement for Mr. Grawbul –

A very high one. Get it done.

Retreating through dim corridors, the Clerk told himself he had emerged with honour intact. He had spoken truth to power.

Bearing in mind that truth had many nuances, else why did scholars write long books about it? Besides, power by its very existence manifested a form of truth.

Therefore, if Sloat wanted to destroy the Rehabs and that new Deputy Minister, Solenko, they must die. But with none of his own fingerprints visible.

Larsen E. Sloat felt satisfied with his lesson to the top bureaucrat. Responsibility’s priorities were simple. Put Quebec’s Frenchies in their subservient place. Elevate the West, except of course for kinky British Columbia and socialist-breeding Saskatchewan. Sell off all possible resources. And launch the action by terminating the Rehabs.

Responsibility’s biggest donors had always hated the loser-coddling LeapAheads. Then their leader Valentine Goodhue, during a single day of the election campaign, questioned the need for new oil pipelines and, separately, announced the new Department of Reserve and Rural Rehabilitation. To Responsibility backers, this coincidence meant a public-service conspiracy against them.

But he, Larsen E. Sloat, would annihilate the Rehab abomination and bulldoze pipelines through any sad-sack Indian, white, or mongrel communities standing in the way. Biggest and best would be his flagship project: the AlberTex pipeline from his home province to Texas.

Already he was getting positive signs from Buckminister Clutcher, the United States Secretary of Energy and future presidential candidate. Sloat dialled his number, and to his joy got an answer.

Buck, just wanted to let you know I’m taking power soon, and I’ll be sending you our rich Canadian resources.

Clutcher was busy, and the conversation was brief. But it reassured Sloat. His pipeline was alive.

And the Rehabs, by his order, would die.

CHAPTER 4

Jack Solenko, Deputy Minister of Reserve and Rural Rehabilitation, watched the Governor General’s speech on an ancient TV in his newborn department’s assigned quarters, inside a shabby low-rise at the far edge of downtown.

Mrs. Lodgeley, the widow he’d brought from Saskatchewan as his assistant, watched with him, and then reported no calls or e-mails. Mr. Solenko, does anyone know we’re here?

Somebody must. They gave us this place.

Where the elevators don’t work and you’ve only got seven people on staff. Not the best signal of our importance.

"The Clerk of the Privy Council promised me help. Two Assistant Deputy Ministers, old Ottawa