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Madison’s Democratic-Republican party drew much of its support from the rural South, along with the territories stretching up the Mississippi basin to the Great Lakes. Frontier inhabitants were eager to claim Canada because they suspected the British there of arming Indian tribes. People at the time thought the invasion would be easy, that ordinary Canadians would welcome them as liberators. Thomas Jefferson predicted that the entire campaign “will be a mere matter of marching.”
But that proved not to be the case.
The American forces were poorly equipped and poorly numbered with fewer than 7,000 men, most of them untrained and lacking in discipline. They were led by an aging general named William Hull, whose own subordinates damned him as an imbecile. After an abortive foray across the Detroit River into Canada, Hull was duped into thinking that a
vast Indian war party was heading his way. So he surrendered his 2,500 troops to a much smaller British force. With the war only a few months old, the entire Michigan territory fell into enemy hands.
And for the second time, an invasion to the north failed.
After 1815, America abandoned its hope that Canada would become a part of the United States. Peace reigned between the two neighbors. By the 20th century, at a length of 5,522 miles, Canada and the United States shared the longest nonmilitarized border in the world. Neither one gave the other a bad thought.
Except during World War II.
With the Battle of Britain raging in late 1940, the prospect of Hitler taking England loomed large. The United States had proclaimed its neutrality, as both the American people and Congress wanted to stay out of the war. But Roosevelt saw it another way. He deemed it inevitable that America would enter the fight. Intelligence reports at the time indicated that one plan Hitler imagined was to place the abdicated Edward VIII back on the British throne to rule as a Nazi puppet. Edward’s sympathies toward Germany were no secret. Hitler also wanted control of Britain’s Commonwealth of Nations—Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Canada, and an assortment of other colonies across the globe. Though by a 1931 act of Parliament, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Ireland were independent of British control, many entanglements with London remained.
For the United States, securing Canada became a priority to prevent it from becoming a staging area for a German attack. Beaches were identified that could be used for amphibious landings. A strategy of a preemptive takeover was devised. A 94-page document outlined plans for stopping overseas reinforcements by taking the port of Halifax, then seizing the hydroelectric power plants at Niagara Falls while the navy blockaded all of Canada’s Atlantic and Pacific ports. The navy would also take control of the Great Lakes. The army was to invade on three fronts–advancing from North Dakota toward Winnipeg, moving from Vermont to capture Montreal and Quebec, then advancing from the upper Midwest to take over the rich mines of Ontario. A military convoy was to travel to Vancouver, and simultaneously all British colonies in the Caribbean were to be seized. The goal was to claim Canada, preparing its provinces to become territories and states upon a declaration of peace.
Stephanie listened in amazement to Peter Hedlund.
“The society developed the invasion plans in 1812,” Hedlund said. “We were charged with the task by James Madison. He wanted it done in secret. At that time most of our members were Revolutionary War veterans. Some even fought in the 1775 Canadian campaign. Our plan was viable, but the army and navy were simply incapable of executing it. We just weren’t the military power we thought ourselves to be.”
“That’s ancient history,” Luke said. “What about invading Canada in the 1940s?”
“We prepared that plan, too, for the War Department, in secret. Roosevelt was familiar with the society. Some of his closest aides were members. He liked the fact that we kept the Revolutionary War alive through descendants. He was told of our work during the War of 1812. Like Madison, Roosevelt wanted to be ready, and he did not want the War Department involved with drawing up the plans to invade an ally. So he came to us and we worked up a workable strategy out of the limelight.”
She was becoming impatient. “What is the Tallmadge journal?”
Hedlund shifted slightly in his bed. His wife stood on the opposite side from Stephanie and Luke, her look of concern undaunted. Stephanie wondered how much of this she already knew, as Hedlund had not asked her to leave the room.
Earlier, when Hedlund had explained about Benjamin Tallmadge to Petrova she’d recognized the name immediately. He’d served in the Continental army and led what came to be known as the Culper Ring, a network of spies that successfully operated inside British-occupied New York. He ultimately became George Washington’s chief of intelligence, in essence the first American spymaster. After the war he served in Congress, and now Stephanie knew he’d also been a founding member of the Society of Cincinnati.
“Tallmadge headed our efforts in 1812 on drawing those Canadian invasion plans for Madison,” Hedlund said. “He recorded his work in a journal. It’s one of only a handful of sensitive documents the society ever possessed, passed down through the Keeper of Secrets. It’s nothing sinister, really. We just thought it best that it never be available for public inspection.”
And she could understand why. “That image of a benign social society of military officers would be shattered if the public had known you were making war plans.”
Hedlund nodded. “Exactly. Everyone at the time thought it best to keep that to ourselves.”
“That’ll make for a great History Channel show one day,” Luke said. “But on the phone, in your bedroom, before you went Batman on us, you told a guy named Begyn that it was ‘starting again.’ What did you mean?”
Hedlund smiled. “You’re a good agent. On top of things. Observant.”
“I’m shooting to be an Eagle Scout by summer. Just a few more merit badges to go.”
Normally she wouldn’t tolerate that Tennessee sarcasm but she could understand how he felt. Petrova was dead and this evasive man was now their only lead forward.
“We had a problem with Brad Charon,” Hedlund said. “Brad was a great guy. I liked him, but he had a tendency to talk too much.”
“Which is not a good thing for a Keeper of Secrets,” she said.
“Hardly. About thirty years ago there was an incident. We learned that Brad had opened up our secret archives to a nonmember. Believe me when I say this, I don’t know the details. I know only that it happened and Brad was removed from his post. And if that were the end of the story, then all would be fine. Instead, we had another breach. One we hoped was forgotten. But apparently, it’s not.”
“And Begyn?” Luke asked Hedlund again.
“He knows it all.”
Not good enough. “What specifically do we ask him?”
“It’s quite simple. Ask him about what the Founding Fathers wanted Canada to become after the Revolution. What we code-named the War of 1812 Canadian invasion plan. And what Roosevelt called his plan to invade during World War II. All three carried the same label.”
She waited.
“The 14th Colony.”
CHAPTER FORTY
PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND
Zorin was making excellent time.
He was familiar with smartphones and GPS mapping, even the apps that came on the phones that provided precise directions, but he still preferred the old-fashioned ways. He’d stopped at a seaside motel and retrieved a map of the island, which provided directions to Charlottetown. The roads were pitch dark and lightly traveled, the trip southeast taking less than an hour. He was careful with his driving, keeping to the speed limit and obeying all signs. The last thing he needed was a nosy policeman to interfere.
He had an address for Jamie Kelly and located the street on the map. Thankfully, he was no stranger to the island. Its eastern half was heavily farmed and the most populated, the coasts dotted with countless fishing ports. The western half loomed a bit wilder, more forested, less settled. The narrow, central strip, where Charlottetown sat, stayed the most developed. The union of Canada had been born here, the confederacy arising from a famous 1864 conference. He’d visited Province House, in central Charlottetown, where that occurred.
He’d spent three years working out of Ottawa, then Quebec City, one of thirteen officers assigned to the Soviet-Canadian Friendship Society, ostensibly created to promote goodwill and cultural exchanges, but actually a KGB front. Stealing Canada’s national secrets had never been a Soviet priority. If it had, the task would have been relatively simple given the ineptitude of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. In his day that agency was less than a decade old, a baby in the spy business, no match for the much more mature KGB. Besides, it had been easy to exploit the countless pro-Canadians who despised the United States. He’d scored several coups, learning about Amer
ican Arctic activities, means the United States and Canada used to track Soviet Typhoon-class submarines, and obtaining underwater maps of the northern seafloor, invaluable to Soviet submariners. He’d worked his job with diligence, living there alone, his wife and son staying behind in the Soviet Union. Unlike others who accompanied their spouses overseas, his wife had harbored no desire to live in the West.
He slowed the truck as he entered the Charlottetown historic district. Trees bare to winter lined wide streets. Striking churches, Victorian architecture, and clapboard houses reflected its British heritage, but he noticed how trendy cafés and modern shops now dominated. Different from his last visit so long ago. Reflective, he thought, of changing times, which suddenly made him feel old.
Many of the eateries remained open, enjoying a brisk Friday-evening business. He turned off the main boulevard and passed the Great George, the hotel where he’d stayed back in the 1980s. He noticed that another boulevard was named University, which had to be significant, but he wasn’t interested in the college. Only in one of its part-time employees, and Jamie Kelly lived in Stratford, an adjacent town just past the Hillsborough River.
He followed the map across a long bridge, past a dark ribbon of wide water that stretched straight as a highway. Then he veered south on a two-laned road and headed for the address. He drove like a robot, his mind numb, body automatically reacting to the conditions. The pastoral neighborhood he found contained more stylish Victorian homes on spacious wooded lots. Lights burned in only a few windows. The address he sought sat at the end of the lane, a two-story, brick-fronted square with bowed bay windows top and bottom. He grabbed his bearings and determined that the house faced east, the river maybe a few hundred meters behind to the west through the trees.
He parked the truck on the street and noticed that lights burned inside Kelly’s house on both floors. No mailbox or anything else identified the occupant. Only a house number. He stepped from the truck and grabbed his knapsack, deciding not to leave it outside unattended.
