Russian Spring (90 page)

And tonight a dying space cadet and the girl who had been his English porn star, against all the odds, and with the whole world against them, had walked on water together again too.

WILL DEAL ONLY WITH GORCHENKO,
WOLFOWITZ DECLARES

The American President, Nathan Wolfowitz, has warned the Red Army Central Command to fulfill its promise to return the government of the Soviet Union to full civilian control.

“I will deal only with Constantin Gorchenko, the duly elected President of the Soviet Union,” he declared. “The United States may have been supporting tin-pot military dictators all over Latin America for longer than anyone cares to think about, but as long as I’m President of the United States, this country is going to stand up for what we profess to believe in, namely democratic governments elected by the people, throughout the world. The peoples of the Soviet Union have elected Constantin Gorchenko President, and that’s good enough for me. And if it’s not good enough for the Red Army, well, don’t call me, Marshal Bronksky, and believe me, I won’t be calling you.”

—Tass

RED ARMY CENTRAL COMMAND RETURNS
POWER TO PRESIDENT GORCHENKO

With a tersely worded memorandum, the Red Army Central Command has returned full control of the Soviet government to the Administration of President Constantin Semyonovich Gorchenko.

“We have fulfilled our duty to preserve peace and order through the election, and now that our stated mission has been accomplished and the Soviet people have made their democratic choice, we relinquish all control of governmental functions to the duly elected representatives, as promised,” the short communiqué declared. “The Red Army now awaits its orders from the Soviet President to do its patriotic duty in a normal manner, and as quickly as possible.”

—Tass

XXIX

Sonya, despite all the dire speculation, had seen it coming all along, and so had most of the Russian bureaucrats in Paris.

How could the Red Army be expected to hand back power to the very man it dragged off Lenin’s tomb at gunpoint in the first place?

How could it not?

To a Soviet career bureaucrat, the move was inevitable. Just as Harry Carson had painted America into a corner—and then died before he had to face the consequences—so had Bronksky and the generals painted themselves into their own corner by issuing a toothless ultimatum that Nathan Wolfowitz had thrown back in their faces.

They might have used the election to save face by delaying the inevitable, but now that it was over, they were still sitting on the same hot stove.

If they sent the Red Army into the Ukraine, the Ukrainians would launch missiles at the fleet off their coast and the invading troop formations. If they attempted a preemptive strike at the Ukrainian missiles, the chances were excellent that the Americans would use Battlestar America to thwart it, while the Ukrainians made a nuclear strike at Russian population centers. After which, the Americans might even launch a preemptive strike at the Soviet Union themselves, thanks to Bronksky’s stupid threat to launch a strategic strike at
them
if the Ukrainians launched any of their American missiles.

But if they backed down, if they spinelessly acceded to the Ukrainian secession, other nationalities would only be encouraged to declare their own Soviet Socialist Republics independent sovereign states, and the Soviet Union would disintegrate within months or even weeks.

Whatever happened, the consequences would fall on the heads of whoever was in power. Surely rather than die their way out of it like Carson, the generals would much prefer to drop the mess they had made back in the lap of Constantin Gorchenko. If he failed, well, no one could blame the Red Army, could they? And if he somehow managed to avert catastrophe, why they could all give themselves medals for their patriotic dedication to Socialist Democracy.

The Red Army Central Command, was, after all, a bureaucracy, and even generals understood the first law thereof—cover your own ass!

Nathan Wolfowitz, however, not being a career Soviet bureaucrat, had perhaps never heard of the first law of bureaucracy, or at any rate had obviously been unwilling to leave things to chance. His support for Socialist Legality had dispelled any lingering thoughts of clinging to power on the part of the Red Army, and made him an
unofficial Hero of the Soviet Union, but Sonya could not imagine what his own bureaucracy and his own people must be calling him now.

“What an amazing man this Wolfowitz is!” she declared as they all sat before the wall screen waiting for Constantin Gorchenko’s fateful first address to the Supreme Soviet since his restoration to power. “Never have I heard a politician use such blunt language or admit so openly to his own country’s crimes!”

“What about a guy named Gorbachev, Mom?” Robert reminded her.

“He calls himself the ‘American Gorbachev,’ doesn’t he, I had forgotten that,” Sonya said. “But even Gorbachev never got
this
far out ahead of public opinion in his own country. Won’t the jingo press and the American majority that voted for Carson crucify Wolfowitz for disowning their own criminal acts in Latin America, especially at a time like this?”

“Nat Wolfowitz never did give a shit about what people like that said about him,” Bobby told her. “ ‘The opprobrium of assholes is a badge of honor,’ he told me one time.”

Constantin Gorchenko approached the outsized podium to the thunderous applause of two thirds of the Delegates. The Bears quite literally sat on their hands as a gesture of contempt while the Ethnic Nationalists sat there staring stonily into space.

Marshal Bronksky met Gorchenko at the foot of the podium, said a few words to him, actually shook his hand, and then departed, looking less like a dictator surrendering power than a small boy who had just escaped punishment for his misdeeds by the skin of his teeth.

Gorchenko himself looked grimly determined as he mounted to the speaker’s stand, but there was an ashen cast to his features visible even on television, a certain bloodlessness that gave Sonya a sudden chill, that made her wonder to what extent Gorchenko was really his own man, and to what extent he would be speaking words that the Red Army had put in his mouth.

“Citizens of the Soviet Union, Delegates to the Supreme Soviet, I thank you for the confidence you have placed in me, and I wish to assure you that I shall not waver in dedication to the task before us, which is to secure, once and for all, the territorial integrity of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the unity of our great community of peoples against internal insurrection and the nefarious meddling of external powers.”

“What?” exclaimed Franja, as loud boos and hisses erupted from the Ethnic Nationalist seats, as the Bears stood up and applauded, and the Eurorussian majority sat there staring at each other in horror and befuddlement.

As Franja was staring at Sonya.

“What’s happening, Sonya?” Jerry said. “What’s gone wrong? You two look like you’ve seen Joe Stalin’s ghost.”

“Perhaps we have,” Sonya muttered. “It would appear that the Red Army has exacted a heavy price for its dedication to Socialist Legality.”

As Gorchenko’s speech continued in much the same bellicose vein, as he ranted against Kronkol and his cabal of traitors, and vilified the shade of Harry Carson, and denounced the genocidal machinations of the
CIA
, what had happened became all too horribly obvious.

The Red Army might have given civil power back to the elected President, but he in return had had to cede control of the military situation to them, accept public responsibility himself for whatever they did next, and deliver this horrendous chest-pounding speech, the text of which no doubt had been negotiated with the generals word by word.

When Gorchenko had worked himself up into a sufficient synthetic frenzy, he paused, took a sip of water, and stared straight ahead like an animated corpse as he delivered the dreadful words that the generals had put in his mouth.

“As President of the Soviet Union, I demand that the United States remove its missiles from the Ukraine. Since no sovereign Ukrainian state exists, we can only regard these weapons as being in the hands of employees of the
CIA
on Soviet territory, and as such, an act of war against the USSR.”

“Oh no . . ,” Franja gasped. “What’s he
doing?
”

“What he’s been told to do, I’m very much afraid,” Sonya said somberly.

“If the United States does not agree to remove its missiles within forty-eight hours, we . . . we . . .” Gorchenko seemed to be choking on his own words. “We . . . we will be forced to act accordingly.”

There was a dreadful silence in the chamber. Not even the hairiest of Bears seemed ready to applaud that.

“But we will do so in a responsible manner,” Gorchenko went on much more firmly, as if this was one part of the speech that had at least been a negotiated settlement. “We will not be the first to use nuclear weapons. We will let the Red Army settle matters with the Kronkol clique by conventional means on the ground. But should a single nuclear warhead explode on Soviet territory, our retaliation will be swift and total against everyone concerned.”

“Jesus Christ,” Robert groaned, “it’s the same damn ultimatum!”

“It’s the same damn situation, after all,” Sonya told him. “It’s one thing to hope for a miracle, but it’s another to expect it.”

Constantin Gorchenko paused for a sip of water again, paused to change faces, and now he seemed to be the real Gorchenko, not the reader of someone else’s script.

“But let us not speak only of the gathering darkness,” he said, “let us speak of lighting candles . . .”

“What?”

“There it is again!”

Sonya leaned forward intently. There was no doubt about it, this was another enigmatic message to President Wolfowitz, coded in a language they had developed from afar, somehow, a language only the two of them seemed to understand, a language that enabled them to communicate something over the heads of their bureaucracies and military commands.

“I call on you, President Wolfowitz, to light the first candle, to immediately announce the withdrawal of the Ukrainian missile sites from the protection of Battlestar America as a gesture toward peace,” Gorchenko said. “Show the traitors in the Ukraine that they now stand alone. And in return, I will light the second candle, and soon enough there will be no more dark.”

And with that enigmatic statement, incredibly enough, he left the podium.

“Second candle?”

“
What
second candle?”

“I don’t know,” Sonya muttered. “But somehow I earnestly hope that President Wolfowitz does.”

WILL LAUNCH NUCLEAR ATTACK AT MILITARY
TARGETS IF RED ARMY INVADES,
KRONKOL DECLARES

—Reuters

UKRAINIAN MISSILE STRIKE
WILL BE RESPONDED TO AS
AMERICAN NUCLEAR ATTACK,
BRONKSKY WARNS

—Tass

JOINT CHIEFS REPORTEDLY DEMAND
PREEMPTIVE FIRST STRIKE

—
New York Times

WILL LAUNCH ON WARNING, SAYS RED DEFENSE
MINISTER

—
New York Daily News

POPE BEGINS FAST FOR PEACE

—
L’Osservatore Romano

SOVIET UNION ORDERS URBAN POPULATION TO
SHELTERS

—Agence France-Presse

COOL NAT REFUSES TO DECLARE NATIONAL
EMERGENCY, WILL ADDRESS THE WORLD

—
New York Post

“What can he possibly do now, Bob?” Dad said.

“Something that no one could ever imagine,” Bobby replied, repeating the very words Sara had left him with the last time he had managed to get a call through to New York.

“Like what?” Franja said.

Bobby sighed. “
I
can’t imagine what either,” he admitted.

“But you played poker with this man . . . ,” Mom insisted. “What would he do now if this were a poker game? Not that it isn’t!”

Bobby shrugged. “If I had ever been able to figure that out,” he said, “he wouldn’t have kept cleaning me out.”

He could see that he had bucked up their spirits with this professed confidence in the card-shark magic of Nathan Wolfowitz, but Bobby couldn’t really see how Nat could turn up a winning hand with what he now had showing.

Especially since Vadim Kronkol had raised wildly like a man who knew he was sitting on an ace-high straight flush.

Only two hours before Wolfowitz’s scheduled speech, Kronkol had issued what he called his “final position,” without, apparently, any recognition of the sardonic graveyard humor implied.

The Red Army now had twenty-four hours to pull back fifty kilometers from the Ukrainian border. If it didn’t, he would launch three missiles, each armed with five unstoppable nuclear warheads, at the troop formations, and another at the fleet off the coast. If the Soviet Union attempted to attack Ukrainian population centers, which was to say his own missile sites, he would launch everything he had at Russian population centers. If the Americans did not use Battlestar America to destroy any incoming Soviet missiles, the blood would be on their hands too.

“That is how ready we are to die for our national independence,” he had declared coldly. “Who is ready to die to take it from us?”

Bobby had seen Nat play this kind of hand many times before. The kind of hand where some mark had a four-card straight flush showing and was raising as if he had the missing card in the hole. If Wolfowitz was still in the game by the sixth card, it meant that he was sitting on it himself and therefore knew the raiser was bluffing.

But this time, no matter what he was holding, Nat couldn’t drop out and wait for the next hand. If he didn’t win this one, there wasn’t going to
be
a next hand.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, speaking to you from the Oval Office in the White House, in Washington, D.C.”

Nathan Wolfowitz wore a forest-green blazer, a white dress shirt, and a black string tie. He looked like a self-satisfied riverboat gambler about to rake in the pot, his eyes sparkling with that royal-flush glow. There was no doubt about it. No doubt at all.