“So what you are telling me is that no one knows what is going on. Exactly what am I going to tell the United States Ambassador?” The entire cabinet sat silently for a moment.
“Maybe we could tell them the truth,” ventured the Industry Minister. The glares from around the table made him blush. “I didn’t say it was a good idea. But since we don’t know what is going on, anything else would be lying.”
The Defense Minister shook his head. “It would make us look like total idiots. Can we afford that? We might see an American invasion force coming over the border a day later.”
“What I’d like to know about is where all those Leopard and Leopard II tanks went to. CSIS has tracked over four hundred of them which were supposedly bought by the Canadian Armed Forces, and shipped to Canada. We didn’t buy them. They didn’t show up anywhere else. In at least three cases we were able to track them to ships which came to Canada. Where are they,” the Public Safety Minister asked?
The meeting dissolved into bickering again.
“Silence!”
The rather stunned cabinet stared at the Prime Minister.
“Gentlemen and Ladies. We have a problem. Arguing isn’t going to solve it. We need a plan. We might have to change the plan, but we need something. Let’s sit down, pool our suggestions, and come up with something.” He smiled. “Think of the good side. If we are this confused, how badly confused are the Americans?” He watched smiles break out around the table. “Exactly. For now let’s come up with something that we can use to baffle them more, while we try to find out what the hell is going on.
*****
At the same time in Hamilton Ontario several police cars pulled up by the dock where the HMCS Haida had been docked. Had been docked. Exactly who could manage to steal a retired World War II Tribal Class Destroyer that was serving as a museum had the cops puzzled.
The Mayor of Hamilton drove up not long after. He looked totally puzzled. So did the Parks Canada staff. The ship’s engines were dismantled. It couldn’t move. The ship hadn’t moved under its own power for forty-eight years, since the summer tour of the Great Lakes in 1963, just before it was to be sold off for scrap.
So what the hell was going on? You couldn’t walk away with a nineteen-hundred ton, three hundred and seventy-seven foot long ship under your arm. The only way you could transport something that large was by water.
Hamilton Harbor control was consulted. They had no radar tracks of anything leaving harbor. A frantic search began. If it didn’t leave the harbor, it still had to be here. Somewhere.
The reporter for the Hamilton newspaper covering the story mused aloud that, “Maybe someone wants a warship.”
The reporter from the television station replied, “But what would they do with an antique like that?”
*****
In a small Mississauga industrial park another tractor trailer backed up to a manufacturing plant. The sign above the loading dock said Canada Drive Systems. The fifth shipment of the day was ready to be loaded.
The first shipment been a single large unit, that filled the twenty foot short trailer. This shipment, like the other three consisted of twenty skids. Each skid had a plywood and two by four box bolted onto it.
Once loaded, the truck pulled away. An hour later another truck pulled up to be loaded.
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