Russian Spring (81 page)

It was becoming quite clear that the Americans were aiming not only at the dismemberment of the Soviet Union but at the destruction of the unity of Common Europe itself, by championing, through their puppets in the Ukraine, the worst sort of jingoistic tribalism, turning national minorities against their nation-states, nation-states against their national minorities.

The “Republic of the Ukraine” was loudly proclaiming its “solidarity with the oppressed peoples of the Soviet Union” and inviting them to join it in building a “Liberated Common Europe of Free Peoples.” There had been demonstrations of support in Uzbekistan, Byelorussia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and for the first time in Franja’s memory, riot police had been sent in with water cannon and neuronic disrupters to break them up.

But other than that, and a futile paper attempt to put the Ukrainian National Militia under Red Army command, President Gorchenko had done nothing. Like this flight to Moscow, which had been stuck circling in the stack for twenty minutes now, he seemed trapped in a holding pattern.

As she sat in the cockpit, flying endless circles, Franja found that, despite the deteriorating situation, she could sympathize with Constantin Gorchenko. What, after all, could the poor bastard do?

He certainly couldn’t accept Ukrainian secession. But if he sent in
the Red Army, there was no telling what the maniacs in Washington would do. So all he could do was mass more and more troops along the Ukrainian border, insist that it was all an internal Soviet matter, and use the impending national election as a handy excuse to “wait to hear the voice of the Soviet People.”

But what seemed certain to emerge after the election, assuming Gorchenko could really hold off the catastrophe until then, would be a Supreme Soviet bloated with Bears and Ethnic Nationalists, where no one could put together a working majority, leaving Gorchenko himself, elected by default against fragmented opposition, sitting on an even hotter stove.

What would happen then was something not even
Mad Moscow
cared to speculate on in public print.

As for Franja—

Suddenly her co-pilot, Lentski, let out a wordless whoop.

Franja instantly snapped out of her trance of boredom. “What’s wrong, Sasha?” she said, scanning her instruments at the same time and seeing that nothing was amiss.

Looking at Lentski, she saw that he was grinning from ear to ear like a foolish ape.

“It just came in on the radio, and we’re ordered to inform our passengers immediately,” he said. “Harry Carson is dead. He suffered a massive stroke during a Cabinet meeting, according to Tass. Apparently in the act of screaming obscenities at Vice President Wolfowitz, though that part’s not official.”

“Carson is dead?” Franja stammered.

“As a parboiled pig. You’re to announce the sad news immediately.”

Now it was Franja’s turn to break into a simian smile and not care who saw it. “I’ll try to keep my tears in check,” she said as she switched her mike to the cabin speaker system.

“A sad moment, isn’t it?” Lentski said, and burst out laughing.

“Comrades, your attention please, this is Captain Gagarin speaking. It is my . . . ah . . . solemn duty to tell you that we have just been informed that the President of the United States, Mr. Harry Carson, is dead. It would seem that his brain exploded in a fit of rage. I repeat, Harry Carson is dead. We will give you details as we have them.”

Even through the cabin door, the applause from the passengers was quite thunderous. For of course Harry Carson was loathed by Bears and Eurorussians alike; the former because his threat to use Battlestar America to protect the American puppet regime in Kiev was preventing the Red Army from giving the Ukrainian traitors what they so richly deserved, the latter because his reckless adventurism was responsible for the crisis which threatened to sweep the Eurorussians
out of the Supreme Soviet and destroy the Russian Spring itself.

Only the Ethnic Nationalists had anything but loathing for Carson, and if there were any of them aboard, they knew enough to keep their big mouths shut.

And now the architect of the impending catastrophe was dead, and Nathan Wolfowitz, Carson’s bitterest enemy, the self-proclaimed “American Gorbachev,” was apparently President of the United States.

It was almost enough to have a good Marxist believing in a just God.

WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE?

While the world hardly has cause to honestly mourn the sudden death of Harry Burton Carson, it has little cause to welcome the ascension of Nathan Wolfowitz to the American Presidency either.

With the Soviet Union and the United States seemingly on the brink of a nuclear confrontation, the White House is now occupied by a man who has vigorously opposed the policies that have brought us to this pass. That would be cause for guarded rejoicing, were not the new American President a man who has never held any position of responsibility.

Worse still, all the calculated leaks emanating from Carson Administration figures still in place in the so-called Wolfowitz Administration seemed designed to convey the impression that the new President will be the political prisoner of his Cabinet, the Pentagon, the Central Security Agency, and the
CIA
. If this is true, who will really be running the American government during the worst crisis since World War II?

And if it is not, how will a governmental neophyte like Nathan Wolfowitz cope with a hostile Cabinet, military, and security apparatus? Under the American constitution, he has the power to dismiss these disloyal officials, but the Congress must approve any replacements he nominates, and, judging by the impeachment talk already emerging, should he attempt to purge his administration of these Carson holdovers, we could end up with no government in Washington at all.

—
Le Monde

XXVI

It had been a decade since Bobby had seen Nathan Wolfowitz in the flesh, but this seemed like neither the man he had played poker with nor the media image he had watched age on television, and not just because Wolfowitz was now wrapped in the aura of the Presidency.

Wolfowitz did not at all look like a man who had suddenly been granted the impossible dream of a lifetime by the hand of fate. Wolfowitz did not look like a man whose worst enemy had just dropped dead.

Wolfowitz looked like shit.

His thick salt-and-pepper hair was an uncombed mess. His Presidential blue suit looked as if it had been slept in. The knot of his tie was crooked. His face was drawn and ashen, and his eyes looked positively haunted.

And his performance was a good deal less than reassuring to both those who had voted for the “American Gorbachev” and the supporters of the Carson Administration, whose unwholesome apparatus and nightmarish policies he had so suddenly inherited.

Bobby had expected Wolfowitz to be nervous. He had a hostile Congress, an even more hostile Cabinet, a nonplussed Pentagon, a rebellious Central Security Agency and
CIA
, and there he was, with Battlestar America on yellow alert, and the borders sealed, and the Red Army massing on the Ukrainian border, and America already committed in the vaguest terms to defending the Ukraine.

But neither the poker wizard Bobby had played against in Berkeley nor the fast-talking shoot-from-the-hip Nathan Wolfowitz of a thousand and one television appearances had ever looked as freaked-out as this, would have been constitutionally capable of all this mealy-mouthed evasion, even with nothing showing and only a pair of deuces in the hole.

Bobby had moved heaven and Earth to get StarNet to send him here to Washington to cover President Wolfowitz’s first press conference. He had bullshitted his superiors shamelessly about his “personal relationship” with the new President.

For now Sara’s previously sardonic suggestion that he appeal to Nat Wolfowitz to get him an exit visa had new meaning. Wolfowitz was no longer a Vice President in political purdah. He was in charge of everything. He could do it with a word, with the stroke of a pen. All Bobby had to do was get to him.

And now here he was, in the middle of a crush of White House reporters, wondering what the hell he had been thinking. How was he
really
supposed to get close enough to Wolfowitz to ask him for anything? What made him think the new President would even remember someone he had played poker with a decade ago?

From the way Wolfowitz was behaving, it seemed like a minor miracle that the man had been able to remember to seal his fly.

“Mr. President, what does it really mean that the United States has placed the Ukraine ‘under the nuclear shield of Battlestar America’?”

“Uh . . . Moscow’s guess is as good as mine at the moment. . . .”

“You mean you don’t even know what the policy is!”

“I mean that the previous policy died with Harry Carson, and I haven’t had time to figure things out.”

“But Mr. President, just what will the United States actually do if the Red Army invades the Ukraine?”

“Ah . . . I’m sure Mr. Gorchenko would like the answer to that one too. . . .”

“Mr. President, do you support independence for the captive peoples of the Soviet Union?”

“Er . . . it would be undiplomatic of me to make any comments that might be construed as an attempt to influence the current election campaign in the Soviet Union.”

On and on it went, nonanswers to every question, and all the while, Wolfowitz’s eyes darted back and forth frantically, his lips working nervously, his hands kneading the edge of the lectern.

Wolfowitz looked like a man who had bet the farm on an inside straight only to see the card he needed to fill it turn faceup on the sixth deal in someone else’s hand. And he sounded like a man who had just learned some horrifying secret, something awful enough to turn him into a stammering mealy-mouthed politico.

It reminded Bobby of a book he had read in Paris as a kid, called
The Curse of the Oval Office
. In it, Timothy Leary, the acid guru of the 1960s, had hypothesized that there was some kind of curse on the Presidential office that drove otherwise sane men mad upon occupying it. Leary had pointed to Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon and Watergate. Bobby had thought it pretty humorous then.

It didn’t seem so funny now.

“Mr. President, are you in contact with the government of the Republic of the Ukraine?”

“Uh . . . no comment. . . .”

“Mr. President, do you plan to discuss this crisis directly with President Gorchenko?”

“Uh . . . I’m ready to talk to anyone about anything that might get us out of this mess. . . .”

Jesus, what a disaster! Bobby thought. What’s
wrong
with the man? Wolfowitz had started glancing back over his shoulder down the corridor behind the podium after every question, as if hoping that someone would appear to yank him off the stage.

Long tradition had it that these press conferences were ended not by the President, but by the senior White House correspondent, with a firm “Thank you, Mr. President.” But neither that worthy nor the rest of the press corps seemed in any mood to end the embarrassing agony anytime soon. The faces of the reporters were getting more
and more surly, waves of dismayed murmurs swept around the crowded room after every answer, some of the reporters were even cursing under their breath.

Bobby had long since given up any idea of trying to ask a question himself, since the only one that came to mind was “What the fuck’s wrong with you, Nat?” Instead, he started snaking his way through the crowd toward the podium, not so difficult with everyone else jumping up and down and waving their arms. He wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do, but he wasn’t going to leave without at least
trying
to get a word with Nathan Wolfowitz somehow.

“Mr. President, don’t you think you at least owe the American people some kind of coherent statement of what policy you intend to follow to prevent a nuclear holocaust? I mean, frankly, Mr. President, you really haven’t said a damned thing!”

There was a collective gasp and then a sudden silence at
that
one. Something of the old Nathan Wolfowitz finally seemed to flare up in the eyes of the distracted figure behind the lectern bearing the Presidential Seal.

“What the hell do you expect me to say?” Wolfowitz snapped. “The world is on the brink of a catastrophe, and I’ve just inherited the policies of the maniac responsible! You really expect me to shoot my mouth off like an idiot before I’ve even had time to think? Well, like it or not, I’m not Harry Carson. Don’t you think there’s been enough irresponsible bullshit out of here already?”

The words of the President utterly stunned even the veterans of the White House press corps. No President had ever called his immediate predecessor an idiot and a maniac in public before the body was even cold. No President had ever said “bullshit” on national television. And no President had ever actually admitted he needed time to think.

For a long moment, no one moved, no one made a sound.

Then, finally, the voice of the senior White House correspondent mercifully shouted out the magic words “Thank you, Mr. President,” and pandemonium broke loose.

Everyone started shouting at once. Reporters broke for the exits. Other reporters surged forward and started trying to shout more questions at President Wolfowitz over the tumult as he stood there uncertainly on the podium, looking stunned, and distracted, and not knowing quite what to do.

Three Secret Service men emerged from the corridor behind the President. One of them took him lightly by the elbow, another said something to him, and they started leading him away.

Without thinking, Bobby shoved his way through the melee, and burst around the podium, screaming “Nat! Nat!” as Wolfowitz, his
back to the room now, was about to disappear down the corridor with his escort.

Everything happened at once.

Arms grabbed him from behind. The President whirled around at the commotion. For a moment, their eyes locked.

“Nat! Nat! Please! I’ve got to talk to you!” Bobby pleaded at the top of his lungs as they started to drag him away.