Russian Spring (34 page)

Yuli shrugged. “It’s an honorable Third World tradition,” he sneered. “Time was, the Soviet Union used to encourage it!”

“They can’t possibly believe they can get away with such a thing!”

“Oh really?” Yuli said contemptuously. “Who is going to stop them? Certainly not
us!
While we were on our great peace offensive and turning ourselves into good little Europeans,
they
were making themselves militarily invulnerable. Their orbital lasers could destroy everything we or the Europeans have up there—the Cosmograds,
Spaceville, every last satellite, perhaps even our Moonbase—in about as much time as it just took me to tell you about it. They’ve been deploying Battlestar America for decades, and the brute fact is that the damn thing works, or at least it works well enough to make them totally immune to the threat of force, as has been more than amply demonstrated by the way the world has had to stand aside while they do just as they please in Latin America.”

“But surely, economic sanctions—”

Yuli laughed bitterly. “Oh, to be sure, Common Europe will no doubt nationalize American holdings here, such as they are, in retaliation, but the Japanese will do nothing for fear of giving the United States a handy excuse to nationalize
their
American holdings. Even a nation that doesn’t play chess seriously can understand the advantage of trading a bishop for a rook and a queen!”

Sonya was appalled to say the least. “Is this mere conjecture on your part, Yuli, or . . .”

Yuli shrugged cavalierly. “A lot of it has been out in the open all along,” he said. “When you add the necessary minimum of intelligence data . . . They mean what they’ve been saying, they’re intent on turning the Western Hemisphere into a totally self-contained American economic empire, and no one can keep them from getting away with it. . . .”

Yuli continued to babble on, but Sonya was no longer listening. “They’ve got the resources to do it, coal, iron ore, copper, oil, more than enough farmland, uranium. . . .”

The professional part of her mind had taken over and was racing ahead to the pragmatic consequences.

Red Star, S.A., had no direct American holdings—Soviet investment had long been prohibited by American law—but it held hundreds of millions of shares in scores, perhaps hundreds, of Common European corporations that certainly did. And when the Americans expropriated those holdings, the prices of those stocks would plunge, there would probably be bankruptcies. . . .

“How much time do we have, Yuli?” she demanded.

“What?” Yuli said, blinking at her like someone emerging from a trance.

“How long before the Americans begin their expropriations?”

Yuli shrugged. “A matter of weeks, perhaps. They’ll wait for European outrage at the debt renunciation to peak, hoping for some stupid gesture from Common Europe, which no doubt will be conveniently forthcoming, and then they’ll use it as an excuse to—”

“It’s been interesting talking to you, Yuli,” Sonya said, rising from her chair, “but I’ve got to get going now, you understand. . . .”

And she stormed off into the tumult in search of Ilya Pashikov. There was a nasty undercurrent that had taken the euphoric edge off the celebration, but from the passing snatches of conversation that Sonya overheard, it seemed to be mostly a matter of righteous indignation and besotted anti-American outbursts. It would seem that few if any of the people here had access to Yuli’s intelligence, or if they did, were not yet clear-minded enough to draw the bottom-line conclusions.

She finally found Ilya still blithely attempting to seduce the same redhead as if nothing of personal significance had occurred. “If you will excuse us,” she said, grabbing him by the arm.

“Sonya—”

“
Now
, Ilya!” Sonya insisted. “This is vitally important! We must find some place private to talk.”

“This had better be good, Sonya,” Ilya muttered petulantly. “
She
certainly was!”

“Oh it is, Ilya, it is!” she assured him, and muttering and glowering, Pashikov allowed her to lead him up onto the balcony, and out along one of the dizzying walkways to a clear Lucite platform where a small table and two chairs hung out in space high above the mob scene below.

“So, Sonya Ivanovna?” Pashikov demanded, folding his arms across his chest and staring fixedly straight ahead at her, as if in order to avoid looking down at all costs.

“So, Ilya Sergeiovich . . .” Sonya replied, and she told him what Yuli had told her, omitting the political rantings and sticking to the economic pragmatics.

“Yes, yes, all that sounds quite awful,” he said when she had finished. “But why did you have to bother me about it
now?
It’s not our department’s responsibility, after all, and I was right in the middle—”

“Will you stop thinking with your prick for five minutes and use your head for a change, Ilya Sergeiovich!” Sonya shouted at her superior angrily. “Our department, meaning you and me, has been in disfavor ever since . . . well, ever since
you know
 . . . has it not? Don’t you see, this is our chance to remedy all that! We are now in a position to save Red Star billions of
ECU
!”

“We are?”

“Of course we are! We must pass this information to the securities trading department at once! We have a week, two, maybe three, to unload our shares in the companies that are going to be affected before the bottom drops out!”

Ilya’s eyes lit up. “Oh,” he said simply. “Yes, of course you are
right. Well done, Sonya, well done!” And he grabbed her by the hand, pulled her to her feet, and started dragging her back along the walkway toward the balcony.

“What are you doing, Ilya? Where are we going?”

“To find Lev Kaminev!” Ilya told her. “He’s down there somewhere. . . .”

The party had ripened considerably despite the bad news, or indeed, perhaps in part because of it. People had taken to slugging back shots of vodka in the old traditional style rather than sipping at it. The band had started up again, and there were dancers out on the floor, including a group of louts attempting to demonstrate their inebriated athletic skills by doing the kazatski and laughing uproariously when they fell on their butts. Ties were askew, jackets had been discarded, and yes, there was terrible off-key group-singing going on too.

It seemed impossible to find anyone in this melee, except by random fortune, but once Ilya Pashikov was aroused, he took the bit in his teeth, demanding the whereabouts of the head of the trading department from all and sundry in a loud commanding voice until they finally found Kaminev, standing by one of the bars refilling his glass.

“A word with you, Lev, it’s quite urgent,” Ilya said, grabbing him by the arm.

Lev Kaminev’s eyes were on the bloodshot side, but his elegant powder-blue suit was still unwrinkled, his red tie still neatly tied at the collar of his well-pressed white shirt, and not a lock of his thinning gray hair was out of place. He simply nodded and let Ilya lead him off to an empty table near the circumference of the hall, where the holopanorama, all too appropriately, seemed to place them squarely in the middle of the Siberian tundra.

“Tell him, Sonya,” Ilya said, and Sonya did.

Kaminev’s frown grew deeper and deeper as she went on, his lips began to tremble, and by the time she was finished, he had turned rather pale.

“What a nightmare!” he moaned. “We stand to lose billions!”

“Not if we act quickly,” Sonya babbled at him. “Not if we start selling our shares at once, you must get to a terminal immediately and begin—”

Kaminev shook his head. “It’s not at all that simple,” he said. “If we just suddenly start dumping massive blocks of everything, we’ll knock the bottom out before the Americans even do a thing. This has got to be done as slowly and subtly as possible. Buy puts where we can first. . . . Sell calls at market prices where it’s feasible. . . . Then start unloading in reasonable-sized blocks gradually. . . . Keep the market from collapsing by trading options through dummies while
we do it. . . . We can’t be greedy and expect to come out ahead, or we’ll start a panic ourselves, but maybe we can hold our losses under 20 percent, if . . .”

He ran his hand nervously through his carefully coifed hair, ruffling it into a scraggly rat’s nest. “What a mess!” he groaned. “Our departments are going to have to work together on this, Ilya, and we’re going to have to work day and night. We’re going to have to model the whole damned situation and construct a trading program to get us out of it. . . . Lord, the variables involved . . . And if we’re wrong, if we go ahead with all this, and the Americans
don’t
expropriate . . .”

He looked over his shoulder nervously at the ersatz wastes of deepest Siberia, took a deep breath, and stared directly at Sonya. “If my department trades on this information and it turns out to be incorrect, the Supreme Soviet will reinvent the gulag just to have a place to ship us all to,” he said. “You are
sure
this is not simply vodka talking?”

“Well . . . ,” Sonya muttered uncertainly, contemplating the vista now herself and shivering. Yuli clearly
had
been drinking, and—

“The Ambassador is still here,” Ilya said forcefully. “Put it to him in no uncertain terms! And if he hasn’t been told about it, which would hardly surprise me, I will make some calls to Moscow in the morning. To people who will see to it that the Foreign Minister himself will be called on the carpet if need be. If they have been withholding information like this from Red Star—”

“Indeed!” Kaminev snapped. “That such information had to be winkled out by our own intrepid economic strategy department will be quite a black mark for them. If it’s true, this may be just what it takes to get their obstructionism out of our hair for good and all.”

He rose to his feet. “Keep this under your hats, you two,” he said. “I’m going to go have a word with his Excellency. Can you get me a preliminary breakdown on our holdings in the affected companies by noon tomorrow, Ilya? Along with
their
holdings in the United States?”

“It’ll take some doing,” Ilya told him, “but we’ll be on top of it!”

“I’m sure you will!” Kaminev said, and disappeared into the crowd in search of Ambassador Tagourski.

Ilya Pashikov sat there grinning at Sonya.

Sonya grinned back.

“You really
should
have my job, Sonya,” he said.

“Who knows, if this goes well, maybe you’ll get a nice promotion, and I will!” Sonya declared.

“Indeed!” Ilya exclaimed. “Why not?”

And he stood up, took her hands, pulled her to her feet, hugged her, and kissed her exuberantly on both cheeks. “If you weren’t a
married woman, I’d give you the kiss you really deserve for this!” he said.

He shrugged. He grinned. “On second thought, under the circumstances, why not?” he said, and planted a quick hard one on her lips.

A warm glow of excitement and accomplishment suffused Sonya from head to toe. Under the circumstances, it seemed no betrayal of Jerry to kiss him briefly back.

A PAGE FROM STALIN’S OLD BOOK

While it would certainly seem true that the United States has turned itself into a long-term pariah-nation by its massive expropriation of foreign property, unable to borrow on international markets or attract foreign capital for the foreseeable future, it is also true that with the stroke of a pen, the Americans have regained control of their own faltering economy, managed an indirect devaluation of the dollar in a manner politically acceptable to their own electorate, and made it abundantly clear that world opinion will no longer exercise even residual restraint over American policy in Latin America.

Thus, in a sense, did Stalin build the Soviet Union into a major industrial power by sheer act of national will. Thus did Hitler rescue Germany from a state of total economic collapse. Internal autarchy and external imperialism is an old realpolitik formula for short-term national renewal.

What happens later may be something else again. But when did American politicians ever look much further into the future than the next election?

—
Argumenty i Fakty

XII

A line of American Marines stood almost shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalk in front of the new cinder-block wall that had replaced the ironwork fencing on the Avenue Gabriel side of the American Embassy compound when Robert Reed arrived to pick up his American passport, the wall itself was crowned with rolls of razor-wire conspicuously wired for electricity, and there were neuronic disrupters mounted atop it at twenty-meter intervals. French Garde Républicain troops on horseback in the gutter cordoned the Embassy off from the park across the narrow street.

Even the passport office had been moved inside the compound for security’s sake, and the security was heavy indeed. Bobby was gone over with a metal detector and a bomb-sniffer at the gate, then body-frisked before he was even allowed to join the line waiting to get into a temporary structure that had been thrown up to house the new passport office, and if there had been a place to do it conveniently, they probably would have made him drop his pants and looked up his asshole too.

Bobby could well understand the paranoia. The park between Avenue Gabriel and the Champs-Élysées was already filling up with people when he emerged from the Concorde Métro stop, many of them carrying furled banners, others carrying what looked to be the usual covered buckets of blood and shit and brandishing throwing sticks rigged out of broom handles and plastic bowls, and the few flics in evidence were conspicuously conversing with the assembling demonstrators.

Paris had been awash in anti-American demonstrations for the past week, ever since the United States had announced its expropriations of European assets, and the French police had done nothing more than hold it down to property damage; indeed, several cabinet ministers had even addressed more organized and semi-official demonstrations. Fortunately enough, examinations had just ended and the school year was over, so there were no arguments about whether or not it was safe for Bobby to attend classes, but Dad had backed up Mom in her insistence that the Dodgers jacket stay in the closet for the duration, and he had been told to stick close to home.