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prevail. It was Lafayette’s show anyway — he would carry the can if this disgusting love-in with these Mongol invaders went haywire. The red carpet he’d unfurled for them was a national humiliation. A colour guard! The governor general dragged from the sickbed to witness the signing of protocols. They’d been wined and dined, a stretch limo provided, a tour guide, interpreters, gifts of Inuit art and sterling silver embossedwith maple leaves. Bhashyistan’s gift, a yak from the personal herd of the Ultimate Leader, had also been in the Ilyushin, in the aft cargo area. That delightful interlude, the ceremonial unloading of the shitting yak, had been on all the newscasts. It was trucked off to an animal farm in Chibougamau.
    Foreign Affairs had also arranged for an entire wing of suites in the Westin Hotel. Treasury wasn’t paying for these, thank God, or for the several street women who’d ended up there last night, according to RCMP watchers.
    Clara cracked open a window and lit a cigarette. Her driver tuttutted, but he was used to it. Ice on the canal, a frozen slick. Bringing to mind Ms. Blake’s well-reported sound bite about oil slicks. And their champion, the slick foreign minister.
    So much for Lafayette’s concept of educating these characters in the benefits of democracy. Only four showed up for the tour of Parliament yesterday. They’d sat in the Speaker’s Gallery for forty minutes, bored to numbness, then went shopping at the Rideau Centre. The Ilyushin was later observed being loaded with barbecues, dishwashers, and home theatres.
    At least the sovereign state of Canada had not demeaned itself by apologizing for permitting twelve of its peons to acquit the alleged assassin of the Great Father, Boris Mukhamed Ivanovich. His son, Mad Igor, had named a planet after him. Mars was now known, in Bhashyistan, as Boris. Venus had been named after Boris’s second wife, Igor’s Revered Mother. It was now called Nanotchka.
    A ceremony honouring the Great Father seemed to satisfy the Bhashies: expressions of deep regret, the laying of a wreath at the National War Memorial, another honour guard. Shameless. A
huge
demonstration outside the Centre Block today by a coalition of green NGOs abetted by the usual peaceniks and Amnesty Internationalists. One of nine such rallies across the country, a sizable crowd even in Calgary, outside the Alta International Tower.
    This government was in peril. The thought of jumping ship,returning to academia, continued to tempt Clara, but would be painful, a rebellion against five generations of party faithful. Her great-great-grandfather had served under Sir John A.
    Clara summoned strength as they arrived at 99 Bush Street. The fifteenth-floor Rideau Club was a venerable institution restored from premises devoured by fire some decades ago. A lavish affair was promised, allegedly bankrolled by the Friends of Bhashyistan, an organization previously unheard of, likely slapped together for the occasion. Presumably Canada
had
some friends of Bhashyistan, even immigrants from there, but Clara had never met one.
    There weren’t many on the Hill who doubted this was Alta International’s treat.

    Somehow, Gerard Lafayette hadn’t expected the Bhashies to have a minister of culture, but here he was, in the Rideau Club’s dining salon, raising a glass. “To Canada, like patriotic song saying, glorious and free.” A throaty voice from a barrel chest. This was the tenth toast of the evening; these eight beefy, genial visitors were taking turns, some twice. Most had a smattering of English, with strong Russian accents.
    Prominent among them was the minister of police, Mad Igor’s brother-in-law, a boisterous fellow with flashing gold teeth. Of possibly higher rank was the Ultimate Leader’s nephew, a big, shambling ruffian without a word of English, already half pickled, a clump of caviar in his beard. The defence minister, General Buhkyov, who’d been like a leech on Lafayette, was