The Canadian Civil War: Volume 3 - West to the Wall

by William Wresch

Chapter 33

  Surprise endings

  I stood in front of the hotel watching the LNA leave. I don’t think they were gone thirty seconds when two squad cars rolled up. I handed the bag of jewelry to the first officer I saw. He took it without a word. Meanwhile two other officers entered the hotel, guns drawn. Ten minutes later they were back, both talking on phones. I heard the word “clear” multiple times as they spoke to various parties.

  A few minutes later, hotel employees began arriving. French profanity is very interesting, but you haven’t heard anything until you have heard serious swearing in Sioux. Eight employees searched through various places in the hotel, and each new discovery was greeted with another long string of expletives. The cook was probably the loudest, but he was getting serious competition from the two men checking the rooms upstairs. The bartender was too upset to swear. He just stared at all the damage and shrugged his shoulders. What was he to do? The hotel manager stood close to the registration desk and listened to the shouted reports of his employees. He had his phone out and was making calls to contractors within two minutes of arriving. On the plus side, it’s not like the problem was news to any of the contractors who lived in town, and being winter, they were unlikely to be too busy with building projects elsewhere. I have no idea how long it would be before the hotel was useable again, but at least they had regained possession.

  I wondered if it was time for me to leave town. It was now mid-afternoon and the sun was already pretty low in the sky. Maybe it would be better to wait until morning. I dialed up Elise as I walked back to Marc’s house. One more night and I would be headed home.

  Or not. Elsie had a surprise response to my news. “Do you mind staying one more day? As an historian I think you will see something very interesting.” I had no idea what she had in mind, and I really did not relish an extra day in Marc and Nicole’s guest room, but if Elise thought I should stay…

  Oddly, Marc and Nicole already seemed to know I would be staying. But if they knew what was going on, they weren’t saying. Instead, we talked about my day with the LNA. I learned that the police force, the army, and apparently half the local government had been listening to events through a whole series of microphones that had been placed around the hotel. A truck with a dozen soldiers sat in a garage waiting to rush in if needed.

  We talked through the events that had transpired, and we all laughed about me picking up the old beer cans. But then Nicole got more serious.

  “I’m glad all those people are gone and it seems like this mess is over. But in the end, this is trouble for the government.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “We did everything we could to not make this a huge event. We hid what we could. We even let criminals get away with crimes. But however we handle this, the facts are that a bunch of men with guns took over a Sioux village, and then terrorized a provincial capital. Some version of that will be widely known. It will be talked about at parties, and over coffee at work. People may not know the details, or know just how bad it really was, but it will raise questions about our stability and our strength. After all is said and done, Foster got his wish. It may not be as big an event as he wished, but it was plenty big enough to do damage.”

  “He may have gotten his wish,” I replied, “but I think he also had the scare of his life. He really did think he was going to get shot if he went back into the hotel – shot by men he had recruited.”

  “That’s something else that worries me,” Nicole responded. “I think we learned that we have more dangerous enemies than we thought.”

  “I have to believe Foster is less dangerous,” Marc said. “Look how bad he is at selecting and then leading men. He was almost shot by his own troops.”

  “Shawn certainly knows him better than we do,” she replied. I felt chilled to be mentioned as if I were a distant friend. “But isn’t it worse for us that he is arrogant and stupid?” We all laughed at that combination, but Nicole continued. “Give it some thought. If he were smart, we could predict his actions – just plan out the best moves for him and expect him to make them. But how do you predict the moves of a fool?” We had a great time laughing at that idea, but there was plenty of truth to it.

  “I have to admit you might be right about his intelligence,” I replied. “Here is a guy who took the leading crazies of Louisiana on a sail boat and burned the boat down.” At this point we were practically hysterical with laughter. Maybe it was the end of a long day, maybe it was the end of a stressful week, but we just kept laughing. “Predictable? I wouldn’t have predicted that.” You get the idea. Lots of laughing, a string of Foster jokes (“Where do you think they got his snowmobile? Who knew snowsuits came in that size?” etc.). We just blew off steam for a long time.

  Somewhere in there Nicole made some dinner, and now I became the brunt of the jokes as they laughed about my lobster creation. We started telling stories about the worst meals we had ever had, and the evening flowed. It had been a long day and a long week. We said silly things, we laughed, we ate, eventually we went to bed.

  After all we had been through and all the sleep I had lost in the past few days, I slept like rock. That might explain why it took me a few moments the next morning to realize Elise was in bed with me.

  “Hi.” Not exactly a brilliant thing to say when you suddenly find a beautiful woman in your bed, but I was still half asleep and very confused. How had this happened?

  “You must have been very tired. I got into bed about ten minutes ago, and you are just noticing.”

  “It’s been a pretty wild week or two. Now I see why you wanted me to wait a day. Thanks.”

  “Actually I am just one of the surprises for you. But the others can wait a while.”

  “Amen to that.”

  About an hour later we got up, showered, and dressed. I noticed that Elise was putting on thermal underwear and wool socks.

  “I take it one of my surprises involves going outside. Wouldn’t you prefer to stay in all day?”

  “That would be lovely, but I think you will like this too.”

  “You do have any idea how cold it gets here? I have been designing a new line of thermometers – the Dakota line. They go down to 90 below.”

  “Don’t be such a whiner. I bet it is no lower than 30 below. Besides you will feel much better after you have a good breakfast.” While we were talking, I could hear lots of noises coming from elsewhere in the house. It sounded like half the town was here for breakfast. Elise can draw a crowd.

  I put on thermal everything, laced up my boots, and stepped out into the hallway. Or at least I tried to. I might have been right. Half the town did seem to be over for breakfast. People stood in every room of the house. I “excused me” through the crowd, pulling Elise behind me, and headed to the kitchen. Nicole caught me halfway – she was carrying a huge plate of pancakes – and told me we were breakfasting in the dining room this morning.

  Several “excuse me’s” later, I saw the reason for the crowd. Sitting at the head of the table was Canadian ex-president Claude Jolliet. Every other chair at the table was filled, and there was at least one person standing behind each chair. Mssr. Jolliet was slowly working his way through a plate of pancakes. Everyone else at the table had a plate in front of them, but they seemed far more interested in talking than eating. Just in the ten or fifteen seconds it took us to come into the room we heard people describing a new sewage treatment plant in town, an addition to the grade school, and a new record for cold. DeSmet had no end of things these excited folks could brag about. Jolliet ate, listened, smiled, and congratulated all assembled on the marvels of their city.

  When we got close enough to the table for Jolliet to see us, he shouted across the crowd, “Shawn, Dr. DuPry, nice of you to join us.” There was something in his smile that implied he knew how we had spent the last hour. Almost immediately, two men got up from the table to make r
oom for us. We sat down and Nicole put pancakes in front of us. She was a blur of motion, but I have never seen a bigger smile on her face.

  “I understand you were in the hotel yesterday when the last of the visitors from the south left us.” Jolliet’s use of the term “visitors” was my clue on how to respond.

  “Yes, I went to check on my room.” I replied. “I got there just as they started leaving. Based on all the beer cans in the lobby, I think they decided to leave now that they had drunk all the beer in town.” That got a laugh from people in the room, and more importantly, an appreciative smile from Jolliet.

  “I hear they were not a pleasant bunch, and there may have been an arsonist among them. I think the whole town can be very proud of how well you worked together to protect the homes here. I will be meeting later this morning to personally congratulate the law enforcement people who stopped the arsonist. These were trying days, but the people of this city rose to the occasion like no others.” That drew a round of applause. It also provided a line that would no doubt be shared around town and with family and friends. The town had been scared; now it would be proud.

  Breakfast went on for another hour or so, and there was lots more said, but you get the drift. Jolliet said good things about the people and the town, and people ate it up faster than the pancakes. He was giving them what they needed. Folks were pretty good about not monopolizing his time or their place at the table, and so there was a constant shift of people and places. Eventually, it seemed that almost every person in town got at least a few minutes sitting at the table with an ex-president. Enough cameras were in the room that everyone had their moment of being in the same frame as Jolliet. I suspect if I went back to DeSmet now, I would find a framed photo of that morning on nearly every mantle in town.

  Eventually, and with apparent reluctance he must have practiced over many years, Jolliet said, “Thank you for coming folks. I am very pleased to have met all of you. Now we need to get ready for a visit.” That started the exodus. It took a little help from Nicole and one of Jolliet’s secretaries to get the last of the people out of the building, but eventually the house was cleared. Marc and Nicole joined us at the table, and we all had another cup of coffee.

  Jolliet began with a long series of thank yous to Nicole for the breakfast and hosting the event, and she thanked him for allowing so many people to visit with him. It seemed to me the real thank yous should have gone to his security team which must have been going crazy with the number of people and proximity to Jolliet.

  Eventually, the pleasantries done, Jolliet turned to me. “I have heard the tapes from inside the lobby. It sounded like Goulet handled it pretty well. What was your impression?”

  “He handled it very well. He came prepared with a plan and he executed the plan perfectly. What you couldn’t hear on the tape was the signaling he was doing to his subordinate. They had a code for how to evaluate each man on the fly, and make it look like they had a full record. I have to admit I was impressed.”

  “This was the same man you fought with last summer?”

  “We threw punches on a couple occasions. Basically boy stuff.”

  “And now?”

  “At least based on this one incident, I think he has earned his promotion.”

  “That’s the way our military people see it too. Planning, and discipline, and ruthlessness. They think he would have followed through and shot the Dubuissants if needed.”

  “I agree. And they certainly thought so. They were scared half to death.”

  “Unfortunately, that makes him – and them – a more formidable enemy. And then we have Foster. Our security people are promising to keep better track of him, and we are trying to determine what he hoped to accomplish in that Sioux village, but I think I side with the theory Mrs. LeGrande explained to me before the crowd arrived. Foster may be much more stupid than we have thought. And I also agree with her that this might actually make him more dangerous – less predictable.”

  “Maybe we can get him to set another boat on fire and solve the Foster problem himself.” Not the best joke, but it got the five of us laughing. There was basic chitchat after that, but we really did have to get moving. I learned we were taking a snowmobile ride out to Robert DeMille’s village. Apparently more thanks and kind words were in order. I was fine with that. I just wished it didn’t involve snowmobiles and icy drives.