Outside, the Peace Tower carillon announced the quarter-hour. Within the room only Adrian Nesbitson's heavy breathing broke the silence, and the rustle of paper as the official reporter turned a page of his notebook. Howden wondered what the man was thinking, if he was thinking; and if he was, unless conditioned in advance, could any mind grasp truly the portent of what was being said?, For that matter could any of them really understand, until it happened, the sequence of events to come?

The basic pattern, of course, was appallingly simple. Unless there were an accident of some sort, or a false warning, the Russians almost certainly would be the first to fire. When they did, the trajectory of their missiles would lie directly over Canada. If the joint warning systems worked efficiently, the American command would have several minutes warning of attack – time enough to launch their own defensive, short-range missiles. The initial series of intercepts would occur, at best guess, somewhere north of the Great Lakes, in southern Ontario and Quebec. The American short-range weapons would not have nuclear warheads, but the Soviet missiles would be nuclear armed and contact-fused. Therefore the result of each successful intercept would be a hydrogen blast which would make the atom bombing of Hiroshima squib-like and archaic by comparison. And beneath each blast – it was too much to hope that there would be merely two, Howden thought – would be five thousand square miles of devastation,and radioactivity.

Swiftly, in terse crisp sentences, he transposed the pictures into words. 'As you must see,' he concluded, 'the possibilities of our survival as a functioning nation are not extraordinary.'

Again the silence. This time Stuart Cawston broke it, speaking softly, 'I've known all this. I suppose we all have. And yet one never truly faces… you put things off; other things distract… perhaps because we want them to…'

'We've all been guilty of that,' Howden said. 'The point is: can we face it now?'

'There is an "unless" in what you have said, is there not?' This time Lucien Perrault, his deep eyes searching.

'Yes,' Howden acknowledged. 'There is an "unless".' He glanced at the others, then faced Perrault squarely. His voice was strong. 'All that I have described will occur inevitably unless we choose, without delay, to merge our nationhood and sovereignty with the nationhood of the United States.'

Reaction came swiftly.

Adrian Nesbitson was struggling to his feet. 'Never! Never! Never!' His face brick-red, the old man spluttered angrily.

Cawston's expression was shocked. 'The country would throw us out!'

Douglas Martening, startled into response, said, 'Prime Minister, have you seriously…' The sentence was never finished.

'Silence!' The hamlike fist of Lucien Perrault smashed down upon the table. Startled, the other voices stopped. Nesbitson subsided. Below his black locks, Perrault's face scowled. Well, Howden thought, I've lost Perrault and with him goes any hope I had of national unity. Now Quebec – French Canada – would stand alone. It had before. Quebec was a rock – sharp-edged, immovable – on which other governments had foundered in the past.

He could carry the others today, or most of them; that much he still believed. Anglo-Saxon logic in the end would see what had to be seen, and afterwards English-speaking Canada alone might still provide the strength he needed. But division would be deep, with bitterness and strife, and scars which would never heal. He waited for Lucien Perrault to walk out.

Instead, Perrault said, 'I wish to hear the rest.' He added darkly: 'Without the chattering of crows.'

Again James Howden wondered. But he wasted no time.

'There is one proposal which, in event of war, could change our situation. That proposal is perfectly simple. It is the movement of United States missile bases – ICBM and short-range missiles – to our own Canadian North. If it were done, a good deal of radioactive fallout which I have spoken of would occur over uninhabited land.'

'But there are still winds!' Cawston said.

'Yes,' Howden acknowledged. 'If winds were from the north, there is a degree of fallout we would not escape. But remember that no country will come unscathed through a nuclear war. The best we can hope for is reduction of its worst effect.'

Adrian Nesbitson protested, 'We have already cooperated…'

Howden cut the ageing Defence Minister short. 'What we have done are half-measures, quarter-measures, temporizing! If war came tomorrow our puny preparations would be insignificant!' His voice rose. 'We are vulnerable and virtually undefended, and we should be overwhelmed and overrun as Belgium was overrun in the great wars of Europe. At best we should be captured and subjugated. At worst we should become a nuclear battleground, our nation destroyed utterly and our land laid waste for centuries to come. And yet this need not be. The time is short. But if we are swift, honest and above all realistic, we can survive, endure, and perhaps beyond find greatness as we have not dreamed of.'

The Prime Minister stopped, his own words stirring him. Momentarily he had a sense of breathlessness, of excitement at his own leadership, at the looming pattern of great events to come. Perhaps, he thought, this was the way Winston Churchill felt when he had impelled others to destiny and greatness. For a moment he considered the parallel between Churchill and himself. Was it so obscure? Others, he supposed, might fail to see it now, though later they might not.

'I have spoken of a proposal, made to me forty-eight hours ago, by the President of the United States.' James Howden paused. Then, clearly and with deliberation: 'The proposal is for a solemn Act of Union between our two countries. Its terms would include total assumption of Canadian defence by the United States; disbandment of the Canadian armed forces and their immediate recruitment by the US forces under a joint Oath of Allegiance; the opening of all Canadian territory as part of the manoeuvring arena of the US military; and -most important – the transfer, with every possible speed, of all missile-launching bases to the Far North of Canada.'

'My God!' Cawston said. 'My God!'

'One moment,' Howden said. 'That is not quite all. The Act of Union, as proposed, would provide also for customs union and the joint conduct of foreign affairs. But outside those areas, and the others I have named specifically, our national entity and independence would remain.'

He moved forward, bringing his hands from behind and placing their fingertips upon the oval table. Speaking for the first time with emotion he said, 'It is, as you will see at once a proposal both awesome and drastic. But I may well tell you that I have weighed it carefully, envisaging consequences, and, in my opinion, it is our only possible course if we are to emerge, as a nation, from a war to come.'

'But why this way?' Stuart Cawston's voice was strained. The Finance Minister had never seemed more troubled or perplexed. It was as if an old, established world were crumbling about him. Well, Howden thought, it's crumbling for all of us. Worlds had a way of doing that, even though each man thought his own world was sure.

'Because there is no other way and no other time!' Howden rapped out the words like the crackle of machine guns. 'Because preparation is vital and we have three hundred days and perhaps – God willing – a little more, but not much more. Because action must be sweeping! Because the time for timidity has gone! Because until now, in every council of joint defence, the spectre of national pride has haunted us and paralysed decision, and it will haunt and paralyse us still if we attempt more compromise and patching! You ask me – why this way? I tell you again – there is no other!'

Now, quietly, in his best mediator's voice, Arthur Lexington spoke. 'The thing, I imagine, most people would want to know is whether we could remain a nation under such a covenant or if we would be merely an American satellite – a sort of unregistered fifty-first state. Once our control of foreign policy was surrendered, as would happen of course whether we spelled it out or not, a good deal would need to be taken on trust.'