Don Pendleton - Civil War II (31 page)

But now the red phone and all phones sat silent in disuse. Other than Winston, Normal Ritter appeared to be the one man aboard with his eyes open. The tough little

redhead was reared-back in a swivel chair, his feet crossed atop a draw-leaf of the executive desk, his eyes on the man at the window. "You look like hell," he told Winston quietly. "You want some coffee?"

The head country-tender shook his head negative. "What time is it?" he croaked.

"It's three o'clock in the morning," Ritter replied. "Ten hours and ten minutes since the truce."

"I had them on the run," Winston said wearily. "I shouldn't have let them hold this parley before a complete withdrawal. They've got two more hours. They damn sure better get with it. I'm not giving them another damn inch."

"Sure you don't want some coffee?"

"No, but I'd like a cigarette."

A loud buzzer sounded. The room leapt to immediate attention. Bogan was bolt upright on the couch. Ritter's feet pounded to the floor. Stanley half rose, then sat back down. Howard Silverman lurched toward a toggle switch on the turret. He flipped the switch and gave a high-sign to Winston.

Winston picked up a telephone at his side, held it to his head, and his lips moved in quiet, barely audible sounds. "All right," he said. "All right, yes, I accept that. You have those assurances. Of course. Yes, I'll be down early next week."

He hung up the instrument, smiled, let his eyes rest lightly on each of his companions, and announced, "The council of war is over. They accept our assurances of full redress of grievances. They will commence withdrawal to military bases immediately. Abe Williams is down there. That's him I was talking to. He says it's A-OK."

A loud exhalation of pent breaths sighed through the room. Norman Ritter was in an ear-to-ear grin. "Well you bluffed the hell out of
those
guys, didn't you," he exclaimed happily.

Then the grin faded and he asked, "You
were
bluffing, weren't you?"

Winston sank wearily onto the desk and drew a leg over the edge to massage the ankle. How long and how short a time ago it had been since he'd bruised that ankle, fighting

his way free of Tom Fairchild. And suppose he hadn't. . . suppose he'd meekly allowed them to put him away? What course would history have taken?

"I honestly don't know, Norm, if I was bluffing or not," he told Ritter. He pulled an empty cigarette package from his pocket, crumpled it, dropped it into the wastebasket, ran a hand across his eyes and pinched his lips in his palm. "Hell. Out of cigarettes. Out of gas. Out of everything. I suggest we all retire, gentlemen. It appears that the ship of state will float, even with the likes of us at the helm."

Winston walked out of the room without a backward look.

Norman Ritter announced to no one in particular, "That guy
still
scares the hell out of me."

General Bogan moved slowly to the door. He turned to gaze back upon Ritter. "With good reason," he said simply, then went on out.

"A principled man is a scare-some thing, Mr. Ritter," Silverman intoned soberly. Then his eyes lit on Ritter and he winked at him and added, "And a
thoroughly
principled man, like our Mr. Winston, scares the hell out of me too, my friend."

EPILOGUE

It is a matter of historical record that Michael Andrew Winston became the first President of the re-constituted United States in the year 2000. Historians write with warmth and pride of that eight-year tenure following the day when America jogged around a dangerous comer of world history.

Awakening from a quarter-century of drug-like slumber, the United States reasserted itself as a leading world power early in the twenty-first century, and proceeded unfalteringly to her present position of greatness and prestige among the world commonwealth of nations. To the quiet but insistent pressure of the national attitude of "do it
because
it hurts," a phrase attributed to President Winston, America led the way to the restoration of human values throughout the world, and to a balancing of planetary resources for the well being of all peoples.

Boundaries of geography, race, religion, politics, and of basic human personality still exist—but,
thank heaven for our differences,
as President Winston often remarked.

Senator Abraham Lincoln Williams had a rather dramatic way of expressing that same idea, as he so effectively did in his now famous senate speech of 2005: "It is our unity of differences that make us unique. It is our

harmony in discord that makes us great. It is the mutual respect and esteem with which individual Americans regard one another that establishs the framework of mortality and justice insuring us all a sane today, a sure tomorrow, and an America everlasting. May God respect us every one."

The End