Russian Spring (15 page)

LET GERMANY LEAD THE WAY

Amid all the current cries of outrage at even the suggestion that the Soviet Union be admitted into Common Europe in order to balance so-called German economic hegemonism, it may seem quixotic, even unpatriotic, for Germans to support such a proposition.

True, every German, from the greenest of Greens to those throw-backs who secretly embroider swastikas on their underwear, can only be offended by what it implies about our true standing in the hearts of our fellow Europeans.

True too that we have earned our present economic predominance through hard work, skill, and positive cultural values, rather than as the outcome of some dastardly plot. True as well that we have neither the preponderance of votes in Strasbourg nor the military power to translate it into anything more sinister than our own prosperity.

But alas, it is also true that we have given our European brothers abundant historical reason to fear us. And if that fear may no longer have a rational basis, its emotional reality must be dealt with.

And sometime soon we may be presented with the opportunity to at long last exorcise the ghost of the Third Reich for all time.

Let Germany not stand in the way of Soviet entry. Let us even support it. We would only be placing ourselves on the side of a long-term historical inevitable, and by so doing, proclaim to the peoples of Europe that we have not only foresworn military power, but are willing to surrender our unquestioned economic dominance in order to create a more balanced union.

Germany may be far from ready to contemplate such a selfless act in its present state of wounded outrage, but in the end we must finally ask ourselves what we really have to lose by Soviet entry.

We are already the Soviet Union’s largest trading partner, large amounts of German capital are already invested in co-ventures with the Soviets, we do not now dominate Europe politically or militarily in any case, and so, in real terms, rather than in terms of national pride, we stand to gain much and lose nothing.

That is the future Europe Germany should seek. A Europe in which Germany and the Soviet Union can stand side by side, feared by no one, and truly accepted by all as fraternal and moral equals.

—
Die Stern

V

“This should really be quite a party,” Pierre Glautier had assured Sonya in the taxi. “The European Space Agency is having a reception for potential launch customers, there should be people there from all over Common Europe, the Middle East, and Africa too, maybe. Scientists and media barons and who knows what else. They’re trying to convince as many people as they can to book launch services on their Daedalus spaceplane, which apparently doesn’t even exist yet, so you can be sure that everything will be strictly first class and plenty of it!”

Well, Pierre had certainly been right about the lavish style! The party was being held up on Avenue Foch in the 16th, in what had apparently once been the parlor floor of the private mansion of a true plutocrat of the old school but which was now rented out for corporate functions such as this.

There was an immense eighteenth-century salon, with two much smaller rooms done up as more intimate living rooms on either side. The main salon had brocaded cloth wallpaper in red and gold, high ceilings with gilded rococo plasterwork and hanging crystal chandeliers, antique chairs scattered about. The kitschy and murky French Romantic portraits and landscapes and battle scenes in heavy gilt frames that one would have expected in such a setting had been replaced by huge and stunning photographs—the rings of Saturn, great Jupiter, spiral galaxies, and of course, the inevitable portrait of the living Earth entire from on high.

A long bar had been set up along one wall, from behind which a team of tuxedoed bartenders served quite decent champagne, considering the volume, and mixed drinks to order. Along the other long wall an immense buffet table had been set up, with whole precarved roast geese and ducks, sliced hams and charcuterie, great platters of raw oysters and cracked crab and lobster meat, smoked salmon, huge bowls of Russian caviar, canapés and crudités and breads of every description.

The centerpiece of this enormous buffet was as impressive as the food—an ice sculpture about three meters long of a sleek aircraft in the act of roaring skyward on a trail of frozen fire.

True too that this reception had an impressively transnational cast, with Germans and Spaniards and Englishmen and Dutch; and Portuguese, Belgians, and Arabs; and even a few Turks and Japanese and who knew what else liberally sprinkled in amid the French. And the men here were of every age, shape, and form, and outnumbered the women at least four to one.

But what Pierre hadn’t bothered to tell Sonya was that all of these people seemed to be here to do business or discuss arcane technical matters beyond her comprehension or interest.

Pierre, as usual, had left her to fend for herself while he flitted about the salon sniffing after potential material for popular journalism. Sonya found herself wandering aimlessly around, drinking champagne, eating from the buffet, and waiting for interesting men to try and chat her up.

She was wearing a tight white leather skirt cut diagonally from left to right so that her left thigh was quite exposed while her right leg was covered to well down below the knee. She wore a contrasting black silk blouse asymmetrically cut the other way, exposing her right shoulder and the top of her right breast, a red sash tied around her waist, and a fashionable sprinkling of stardust in her long dark hair.

Even Pierre had remarked on how stunning she looked, and in all honesty she did not think she was being conceited in believing there was not another woman in the room nearly so attractive. Men should have been swarming all over her.

But they weren’t. Most of them seemed more interested in talking to each other, and the only woman in the salon surrounded by a retinue of admirers was a plain-looking old woman who must have been at least sixty holding forth on the subject of “wormholes,” which, apparently, had more to do with outer space than with spoiled apples from what Sonya overheard.

A few men indeed had tried to make small talk with her, mostly in French, one in English, and another in largely incomprehensible German, but they were odd types, physically acceptable for the most part, but somehow sexually quite unappetizing, perhaps because they were simply boring, with their inept and primitive comments on the cuisine, and their technobabble about launch vehicles and landsat sensors and transponders and
GEO
and
LEO
, whoever they were, by way of small talk.

Sonya was becoming exasperated, and she was also getting a bit nervous. Pierre’s London porn star would be showing up tomorrow, which meant Sonya would have to make other arrangements, and here she was at a party with something close to two hundred men from all over the world, or at any rate from all over Common Europe, and nothing was happening.

Surely there must be at least
one
man here worth at least
flirting
with!

And then she saw him.

He was about her age, decently built, not quite handsome, though more than good-looking enough, but what Sonya found instantly attractive was his attitude.

He was standing by himself with his back up against the bar and a champagne glass in his hand, surveying the scene with the most charming glazed look of world-weariness. Here at last was a man who obviously found this party as terminally boring as she did! If nothing else, it was an undeniable sign of good taste. At the very least, here was someone who might indeed be worth talking to. . . .

Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to forego André Deutcher’s offer of a paid companion for the evening, Jerry Reed thought unhappily as he stood there by the bar, very much the English-speaking wallflower. At least she probably would have spoken enough English to stick with him and translate, although, come to think of it, it might take some doing to find a prostitute who was technologically literate in both languages.

Be that as it may, while Ian Bannister might still be right about English being the working language of
ESA
when it came to design and engineering teams, at this party French was what was being spoken, Bannister wasn’t here for some reason, André had disappeared into one of the other rooms to try to sell satellite boosts to some Algerians and Senegalese, and so Jerry had been left all by himself for at least an hour to eat food, drink champagne, and wish he knew enough French to take part in what he was sure was the high-powered and fascinating conversation going on all around him.

“C’est une soirée un peu gris, hein, beaucoup de cuisine et très bien aussi, et la boisson aussi, mais les gens . . .”

“What?”

Oh Christ, what surely must be the most beautiful girl at the party, a terrific brunette with stardust in her hair, wearing an outrageous black-and-white asymmetric outfit that promised as much as it revealed and revealed as much as it promised, with the most inviting full lips and the biggest green eyes, had walked right up to him with a great big smile and started babbling in French! What exquisite torture!

“Uh, no parlay-voo français. . . .”

“
Je ne parle pas français
, that’s the way it goes,” she said. “You are English?” In English!

Jerry hesitated. He had heard that Americans were pretty damned unpopular in Europe these days, something about what was going on in Latin America, and trade balances and the national debt or something, but he hadn’t thought much about it until those girls at the brasserie had turned up their noses at him. Now he wondered whether it might not be a good idea to pretend to be British or Australian or
Canadian. But this girl might speak really good English, and he was hardly good enough at accents to get away with anything.

“Nope, American,” he admitted, flinching inside as he waited for her smile to fade.

“An American!” she cried, and Jerry was surprised and delighted to see her smile widen and her big green eyes light up like emerald lasers.

A real live American! What incredible luck! American lovers were as exotic as . . . as Andorrans in Common Europe these days, and all the more so if you were a Russian. What a coup this could be!

The United States was limiting American investment in Common Europe and even more so European investment in America, had let the dollar drop like a stone against the
ECU
in order to try to devalue its enormous external debt, was reinvesting its capital and excess military capacity in Latin American adventures and Battlestar America, and loud voices in the American Congress and elsewhere had started clamoring for debt renunciation and even expropriation of Common European holdings in the States, none of which exactly assured Americans a warm welcome in the metropoles of Common Europe.

Besides which, with the dollar so far down against the
ECU
and all the currency restrictions on American tourists, they could no longer afford to inundate the Continent, so most of the Americans one saw in Europe these days were either rich capitalists with
ECU
incomes or businessmen on corporate expense accounts, neither of whom had much use for the Russians who were in the process of supplanting them as Common Europe’s favorite foreigners.

“My name’s Jerry Reed,” he said. “And you?”

“Son—” On impulse, without thinking, Sonya choked it back. “Samantha Garry, ducks, from London,” she said in what she hoped was a good imitation of a lower-class English accent. “And I haven’t the bloodiest of what I’m doin’ at this bloomin’ frog party!”

Well, why not? She’d probably have no chance of getting him into bed if she admitted she was a Russian—all Americans
hated
Russians, everyone knew that—and besides it would be an interesting challenge to see if her command of English was really good enough to keep an American convinced she was British until breakfast.

“You’re not involved in the space business?”

“Space business!” Sonya said off the top of her head. “The only space in
my
business, luv, is the one between me legs!”

“Huh?”

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, as Samantha Garry, London porn starlet, might herself say, for this English lady had to be
somebody
, so why not Pierre’s hot little crumpet from London? It would serve him right.

“The old pooter-tooter, you know, me snatch, though actually me star turn’s more of a skin-flute recital if you get my drift, cobber.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Why me profession of course!”

“Which is?”

“The old in-and-out, so to speak.”

For some reason that didn’t go down very well. “Oh no, not another hooker!” Mr. Jerry Reed moaned.

“Hey, luv, you got me wrong!” Sonya said. “I ain’t no bloody hooker! I’m in
show business!
”

“Show business? What kind of show business?”

“The show business of showing me business,” Sonya said. “On disc, you know, porn TV to order, luv, eatin’ the old banger’s my speciality.”

“You’re a
porn star?
” he exclaimed.

“Well, not exactly a star yet, ducks,” Sonya told him. “That’s why I’m over here in bloody Frogland. This French journalist fed me the old shitty bitty about getting me some real parts in Paris, but the only parts he’s gotten me so far is his own privates, and now he’s dragged me to this party and pissed off with his froggy mates to powder his nose so to speak.”

Sonya grabbed Jerry Reed by the arm with one hand and patted his buttock with the other. “So what say you and me piss off too, hey mate?” she suggested. “You can tell me all about Outer Space, and I’ll see what I can do about a bit of your hard vacuum, better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, now innit . . . ?”

And watched him break into a sweat while trying manfully to keep his tongue from dropping down below his knees. Oh yes, win, lose, or draw, this was certainly going to be more fun than she had had since she got to Paris!