Short Synopsis: Tom McLaughlin (Paul Gross), former Canadian prime minister, watches from the sidelines as a majority of Canadians vote for union with the United States of America. The Canadian flag comes down and the country is redrawn into six states.
In revenge, McLaughlin -- secretly backed by three key European nations -- runs as an independent for President with his ex-wife, Texas Governor Mary Miller (Martha Burns) as his running mate. An assassination attempt boosts his credibility with voters. Veteran British journalist Helen Madigan (Greta Scacchi) is probing the London shooting of her adopted son –- she too gets targeted for assassination after she uncovers a computer program designed to fix the votes in the next U.S. election. She believes McLaughlin is an honest broker and she looks to him to expose the corruption in President Stanfield's (Tom Skerritt) current U.S. administration, an administration hell-bent on invading Saudi Arabia to cut off China's oil supply.
Detailed Synopsis of Part One: Tom McLaughlin (Paul Gross), former Canadian Prime Minister, watches from the sidelines as a majority of Canadians vote for union with the United States of America. The Canadian flag comes down and the country is redrawn into six states, each one sending senators and congressmen to the capitol -- Washington D.C. McLaughlin appears to take this development in stride, but has actually concocted a plan to get revenge on those he sees as having stolen his country out from under him.
In London, England, a mild mannered man is giving a deposition at his lawyer’s office when a gunman enters and executes him and everyone else on site. Among the dead is a young lawyer who had been given up for adoption as an infant by journalist Helen Madigan (Greta Scacchi). The police insist the killer was a crazed war vet with a grudge towards lawyers. Helen isn’t buying it, and starts to look deeper.
In Washington, D.C., President Stanfield (Tom Skerritt) is floundering in the polls and desperate to shore up his reelection bid. When terrorists kidnap the American ambassador to Saudi Arabia, the President’s aides see it as a pretext for a U.S. invasion. An invasion would not only secure the precious supply of oil, but would keep it away from the Chinese. More importantly, a wartime Commander in Chief would be impossible for the Democratic challenger to beat.
Tom McLaughlin spoils their plan. Aided by the vast wealth of business tycoon and media baron Randall Spear (Kenneth Welsh), McLaughlin secretly buys the Ambassador’s freedom. McLaughlin has a plan og his own -- one even more ambitious than his project to sell water to the U.S., a scheme which propelled him into Canada’s Prime Minister’s chair.
McLaughlin lays out his scheme to the Big Three of European Intelligence: Sir Miles Fortnum, MI-6 (William Hutt), Yves Bardot (Jean Pearson), French GDSE, Christian Kruse, German BND (Heino Ferch). As Tom tells it, America’s unilateral and bellicose foreign policy is leading the world to a nuclear showdown with China. For years, the European Union has quietly tried diplomacy to rein in America’s imperial ambitions. They have failed miserably, Tom says, because America cannot be changed from the outside. It must be changed from within. To do that Tom needs their backing. Spear announces the plan to install Tom McLaughlin as the next President of the United States of America. McLaughlin will run as an independent.
True, Ross Perot only got 19% of the vote, but Tom McLaughlin has proven leadership, had previously won the affection of millions in the Sun Belt as the man who brought water to their draught stricken region and if he can mire the democrats and republicans in scandal, he might just be able to sneak up the middle and win.
In London, Helen’s investigation reveals that the man who killed her son and four others was acting under duress, taking orders via an earpiece (used exclusively by Germany’s elite BND anti-terrorist teams) from someone who’d abducted his only child and threatened to kill her if he didn’t comply. The kidnapper is John Neelon (Clark Johnson), a veteran black ops agent, acting on orders from the CIA station chief. Neelon has been following Helen for a while and comes to realize that his boss had no authorization from Washington to order him to carry out the killings in the Soho law office. When his boss next orders him to kill Helen, Neelon balks, turns rogue, and ultimately helps her with her investigation.
Together they learn that the main target of the Soho killings was a software engineer who wrote a ghost program designed to be implanted in electronic voting machines to change the results of the votes. Aided by Helen’s long time source within MI-5 they discover six names on the ghost program: incumbent President Stanfield, the Democratic challenger, Mallory Clarkson; Green Party Candidate, Ralph Radan; consumer activist candidate, Martha McLean and Independent candidate Tom McLaughlin. Given the scale of the operation, and the cover-up that followed, they deduce -- incorrectly -- that only the President’s team would have the means to rig the American election.
The wrench in the works is Tom McLaughlin’s name on the program. After all, Tom has yet to announce his candidacy and he’s just been shot. Helen and Neelon don't know that Tom planned the assassination attempt. That attempt thrusts Tom into the media spotlight -- and brings his ex-wife Mary Miller (Martha Burns) to his bedside. Mary happens to be the Republican Senator from Texas, and an heiress to a vast oil fortune. Tom plans to seduce her, remarry her and convince her to join him on the ticket as his vice presidential running mate.
