24 Sussex Drive
Suspense Thriller - Chapter 1
The Cold War never really ended it went underground and ‘waited’ morphing and reorganizing into something far more treacherous…
PROLOGUE
PRESS RELEASE: October 6, 1998
Veteran Diplomat Works With Milosevic In Hopes of Peace
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia – Amid rising regional tensions, Balkans’ trouble shooter Richard Holbrooke and Yugoslavia President Slobodan Milosevic concluded the first day of talks aimed at averting threatened NATO air strikes, concluded without visible progress.
As NATO inched closer to military action, Russia’s defense minister warned of a “retreat to Cold War” if Serbia attacked.
David J. Lynch, USA TODAY
PRESS RELEASE: February 9, 2000
Hackers Hit eBay, Buy.com, Amazon
PALO ALTO, Calf. – In what appears to be a concerned campaign to bring major internet sites to a halt, hackers on Tuesday attacked three of the nations’ most popular command sites – eBay, Buy.com and Amazon.com – just one day after bringing Yahoo to its knees.
CNN’s news site was knocked out for two hours, the company said late Tuesday.
FBI officials said the agency had not yet linked the latest cyberattacks, which tap into powerful computers to overload the Website with enormous amounts of junk data. But the FBI met Tuesday with Yahoo after hackers crashed that site on Monday, and it will meet with other companies today.
Experts cautioned that many sites could fall victim to the relatively easy assault.
Deborah Solomon, USA TODAY
PART ONE
…TIME OF THE CAT…
Watching intently eyes fixed in stare,
the prey continues its way unaware.
Creeping closer, closer stalking then still,
the leap, the pounce, the capture, the kill.
s.t.b.
CHAPTER 1
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada May 9, 1977
Stan performed mental exercises to still his thudding heart. His throat burned as he swallowed the bile that rose up from his churning stomach.
He hadn’t expected to feel this way when the go order came. Of all the emotions Stan anticipated to have when final orders eventually arrived – abject fear had not been one of them.
He was one of two men who emerged from opposite points of Major’s Hill Park. The late spring sun had dipped low on the western horizon. At most there was perhaps another forty-five minutes of daylight.
Both men were of medium height and medium build. They were average in all of the outward trappings that made Canada’s federal capital a sea of three-piece suits.
Stan Harrow was fifty-nine years old with flecks of grey showing in random patches in his curly brown hair. His dark hazel eyes squinted against the setting sun.
He had been a Liberal Member of Parliament for nineteen years representing a small northern riding in Ontario. Stan was married with four sons. He owned a hardware store in the town of Carlton in the riding he represented. Stan was a landed immigrant, orphaned at birth two years after the First World War. His expertly forged identity papers stated his foster parents had been Hungarian.
Bud Peterson, twelve years younger than Stan, was a Conservative Member of Parliament for a small riding in rural Saskatchewan. Bud was one of several caucus advisers who provided the analytical information necessary for the official opposition party to function as a watchdog over the elected governing party.
Peterson came to Canada as a refugee from Czechoslovakia with his uncle listed as his only living relative. Bud was married with one daughter.
Stano Harrowitz and Ivan Petrochensky had changed their names soon after settling in their adoptive country. Stan’s English was technically perfect, but his accent was still pronounced. Bud’s accent was only slightly perceivable.
The two men had slowly worked their way toward the central fountain of the busy public park. Their meeting was to appear as if by chance should anyone have noticed them.
“Bud good evening, good to see you outside parliament’s halls.” Stan greeted Bud sincerely. “I find this park restful after a hectic day.”
The two men shook hands firmly.
“Well Stan Harrow,” Bud Peterson greeted in return, “haven’t seen you in a while. Yes, this park is perfect. How is your family?”
“The family is fine Bud thank you for asking. Marian and the boys are all well. Jon, our eldest, graduates with his degree in engineering in a few weeks. How is Mary and your daughter Gail?”
“Good, they’ll both try to join me in Ottawa at the end of June.”
The men stood for a few moments more making further small talk about the early warm spring as people sauntered by. As if they too were taking a stroll to unwind from their day they walked with purpose across the grass together, avoiding main paths lit by converted nineteenth century gas lamps.
Isolated from the possibility of being overheard, the polite conversation abruptly ceased. They hadn’t had formal communication with each other since Bud first came to Ottawa after winning the by-election in his riding two years before.
Stan understood why Bud had contacted him and as this day approached, he’d grown uneasy. Over the past three weeks his galloping anxiety had not been caused by the excitement of finally breaking away from so many decades of waiting – he knew it was dread.
Stan broke the silence first. “You have heard from your uncle?”
“Yes finally.” Peterson stated clearly eager. “We may begin the ‘go’ phase of Cat’s Paw - immediately.”
The men continued to meander slowly through the park. They kept to the relative cover of trees and mature shrubs but took no particular route or direction.
Stan Harrow hadn’t realized until that moment just how deeply he had slipped into his cover life, how soft and complacent he’d become. If he wasn’t careful Bud would pick up on his conflict, then Stan would find himself in an exceptionally disastrous position.
Keeping his voice low and deliberate to control his tone, Stan asked, “Does Peter, insist on checking all ridings across the country or does he have a specific area in mind?”
“He’s ordered that we concentrate our search in the west - British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. His criteria is someone in their late thirties or early forties from a small town or city avoiding all densely populated urban areas. We need someone reasonably bright and capable in order to be convincing, yet inexperienced enough to be influenced and manipulated so effectively Canada elects a puppet prime minister taking direction from Uncle Peter, via Moscow.”
“Right. Well, we must have someone like that here now newly elected, fresh, green and impressionable.”
“No.” Bud stopped walking and turned to face Stan whose face was barely discernible in the diminishing park light. “Ignore absolutely anyone who is here now. Lippeau still has a strong presence. What Uncle Peter has instructed to set in place is a complete dark-horse, but someone who can appeal to the media so the media makes our choice the people’s choice.”
“Viva freedom of the press.” Stan chuckled. “It is so easy to get them to chase our butterflies.”
Bud grinned for a moment then is expression was serious again. “Spider wants a Conservative – and he wants a woman.”
The effect of Bud’s last word was immediate. A look of unguarded astonishment swept over Stan’s face visible even in their poorly lit surroundings. “A woman Prime Minister!”
“Yes. Five years from now a woman could easily be accepted. Britain and India have already paved the way. With five more years of arrogant Liberal faux pas floundering, voters could be frantic to embrace someone else and relieved to pitch out Lippeau.”
Stan wasn’t entirely convinced. He shook his head slowly. “So far, Uncle Peter has been extremely lucky. But this plan assumes the Liberals remain in power after the next election and that Lippeau continues as leader of the Liberal Party to run again. That is a magician’s reach even for someone as designing as Spider.”
“Have you forgotten how neatly his first experimental dark-horse was elected? I agree with this strategy. Odds are the Liberals will still be in power and so will Charles Lippeau. He is bored with Parliament, but he is proud and craves both attention and control. His ego is greater than his boredom. By 1983 we shall be ready.”
Bud continued. “When you consider our present situation there are only two, maybe three men Lippeau respects in his own cabinet, even in his entire party. The political victims he has cut down fall like Christmas trees. Only a woman with natural charm and fascination of her own could unseat him. Only a woman could throw Charles Lippeau off-balance.”
Stan Harrow no longer looked at Bud Peterson he looked beyond Bud over the tops of the maple trees in the direction of Parliament Hill. His thoughts raced and churned examining the far reaching effects of what he had been told, and then wondered what had not been told.
The plan was incredible but required chess-timing-skill. Peter Stanislov was a chess master. If any military plotter could pull this off it was Spider.
In the spring of 1947, Spider sent his first wave of sleeper agents to Canada to settle in specific locations. The agents who arrived as landed immigrants were mixed with genuine refugees. Their instructions were to live and work in each of the various regions in the vast open country taking positions in every walk of life.
During the Second World War, eight perceptive strategists in the Russian military resolved that Russia would one day be viewed by the rest of the globe as not just a vast land mass - Russia would be the leading world super-power.
Geographic position, political influence and natural resources, were essential to ensure that Russia could evolve into a nation that surpassed even the Roman Empire in scope and wealth for its time.
The eight men understood that if Russia controlled Canada, then Russia controlled the entire strategic north. Domination of Canada, brought the jurisdiction of a massive physical area that together totaled 10,456,768 square miles of subsurface and surface minerals, resources and water and then modern technology with the expertise Russia required to develop its own vast, untapped natural resources. Canada’s location with its generally benign culture and political climate, made it ideal for infiltration.
Children of wealthy families were the next major objective. Often among the offspring of the rich was a complacency that accompanied financial freedom. Spider sought those who lacked the hunger, the drive and the purpose for being. He befriended those who could afford the luxury of time spent in a succession of impractical, philosophical discussions.
Charles Andre Lippeau, an academically brilliant, socially prominent and wealthy idealist, searching for answers and direction to his life as so many of old money - had been a selected target.
But Lippeau had been only one of many hundreds in three provinces across the country that Uncle Peter had singled out from the children of those listed on the social registers of the financially renowned. They had been easy to find. With notability came availability, particularly on the university campuses in the late 1950s, the 1960s and early 1970s.
“A woman Prime Minister.” Harrow repeated thoughtfully, his attention returned to Bud.
Bud nodded. “Someone who could be trusted and beloved, almost like an angel of liberation.”
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