Snow Job Read Online Free

P.M. A clever woman, with a doctorate from Harvard, but with a feminist edge that rubbed him raw.
    “I should also add,” he said, “that if Alta doesn’t get invited to the ball, a host of others await their chance, including Gazprom, Dutch Shell, and a British-American consortium. But we have an edge: Ultimate Leader for Life Ivanovich distrusts the big powers, with their bad habit of invading Third World countries. He despises the Russians.”
    “I can’t see how we can let our boys down,” Bodnarchuk said.
    “Our boys?” Clara rolled her eyes. They were talking about affluent oilmen, not combat soldiers. She wondered why Lafayette was pushing this — it was bound to blow up in their faces. But he was always seeking subtle ways to degrade the P.M., enhance his own role. He’d flunked his tryout for the Pierre Trudeau role everyone was demanding of him. Single, soigné, a flair in dress, multilingually fluent … but the ingredients never jelled as charisma. It was the non-stop arrogance, the narcissism. Showed up in bed.
    “I know those guys at Alta International,” Bodnarchuk said. “If anyone can step in, anywhere in the world, and do a job, it’s them. Their CEO is a real inspiration. A.J. Quilter, I’m proud to know him, he’s a can-do kind of guy. And if anyone can tell me how to fund a campaign if the oil patch turns its back on us, let me know.”
    Bodnarchuk represented a riding full of old dinosaur bones, and in Clara’s view he was their living counterpart. He wore ten-gallon hats. Said things like “Howdy-doody.”
    “Look,” she said, “half of these tinpot dictatorships subsist on bribery. It’s one of their main engines of commerce. Down that road we do not want to go.”
    “No bribery.” Guy DuWallup, attorney general and justice minister. “Or we call off the wedding.” A crony of the P.M., a holier-than-thou Pentecostal, but well regarded, honourable.
    “A.J. Quilter doesn’t work under the table.” Bodnarchuk again.
    “Nonetheless, we should caution him,” DuWallup said.
    Finnerty didn’t like the idea of rubbing rear ends with envoys of a megalomaniacal dictator, but Canada First — otherwise, after all his pounding on that theme he’d look like a fool. “Well, folks, my view is that in this dog-eat-dog world we have to think of the home team first. We’re not in the business of telling sovereign nations how to run their affairs.”
    “Well said, Prime Minister,” Lafayette said. “A diplomatic breach must be repaired, wounds healed, trade restored. But let us hone the message. We are inviting our Bhashyistani colleagues to see a free society in action. Our goal is to inspire and nurture democracy in this young, emerging state. Bring it into the world, rescue it from isolation.”
    Applause, table thumping. “Hear, hear.”
    “Well said yourself, Gerry.” Finnerty had to admit to an admiration for Lafayette — how well he played to the cabinet’s shifting balances, seeking to seduce allies to his side, always on the move, like a circling buzzard waiting for him to falter. But Gerard Lafayette was never going to be prime minister,
never
, as long as Huck Finnerty had a last breath in him.
    He took a show of hands. Some abstainers, only Clara Gracey opposed. She was lying in wait too. Able and thoughtful, but a pink Tory from the Toronto beltway, out of step, hard on guns, soft on abortion.
    “Very well,” said Lafayette. “I’m sure we can work out terms that will be satisfactory to all parties.”
    “Except the sacrificial goat,” said Thiessen.
    “A point of information.” Attorney General DuWallup. “This alleged assassin — as I recall, despite his false passport and all sorts of suspicion, some clever lawyer got him off on a failure of identification. No reliable eyewitnesses. Whatever happened to him, Gerry?”
    “The government of the time decided, bless their soft hearts, that they couldn’t very well deport him to his native land. He was