Russian Spring (91 page)

“You can relax now, folks, it’s all over but the shouting,” Bobby said, grinning from ear to ear.

“How can you possibly say that?” Mom demanded.

“Easy enough if you’ve ever had the misfortune of seeing that look across a poker table,” Bobby told her. “When he looks like that, it means he’s sitting on the winning hand and doesn’t care who knows it. The man has the cards.”

“The Red Army has demanded that I retrieve our missiles from the Ukraine,” the President began, dispensing with the formalities in the style to which the world had become accustomed. “Believe me, I would if I could, but I can’t, so I won’t.”

The President threw up his hands. “I’m not about to defend the policies of my not-so-illustrious predecessors. Thanks to the bird-brains we elected, we wrote the biggest rubber check in history, passed it off on our sometime-friends, and then stiffed them for it like the international deadbeats we now so notoriously are. We then pissed away the loot building ourselves a chrome-plated white elephant called Battlestar America, dropping ourselves right back in the economic black hole we thought we had welshed our way out of. We’ve been propping up our hollow economy with a huge defense industry, and we’ve justified it all, at least on the funny-money balance sheet, by using our nuclear shield to hide behind while our bloated military machine found gainful employment propping up a series of puppet states and stooges in Latin America.”

“I can’t believe he’s actually saying this!” Dad exclaimed.

“Why not?” Bobby said grimly. “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

“But . . . but he’s the
President of the United States!
”

“So he is,” Bobby whispered. “So he is . . .”

Wolfowitz shrugged again. “What can I tell you?” he said. “Our leaders have been a collection of boobs and unprincipled charlatans for two generations, and we elected them, starting with a former straight man to a chimpanzee, and ending up with the late lamented Mr. Carson, who dealt this mess.”

Bobby’s head was spinning. Nat Wolfowitz wasn’t saying anything he hadn’t said a million times in Berkeley, he wasn’t saying anything that hadn’t been common table talk in Little Moscow. But this wasn’t the guru of Little Moscow, or the man who had run an impossible campaign for Congress because it was time for a futile gesture, or the perennial futile Presidential candidate.

This was the President of the United States.

But he was talking like the Nat Wolfowitz Bobby had last talked to in a White House toilet.

And that, Bobby suddenly realized, was the source of the Wolfowitz magic. He didn’t
care
about his Presidential image. He didn’t have one. He wanted everyone to know that the guy sitting in the Oval Office
was
the guy who pissed in the White House toilet.

And that was the most cunning Presidential image of all.

President Wolfowitz’s eyes hardened. “And now here I am, forced to play the hand they’ve dealt me, just as Mr. Gorbachev was forced to play what
he
was dealt by seventy years of bad road, just as Mr.
Gorchenko is forced to pick up the crap that
he’s
been dealt,” he said.

“There ain’t no justice in this world, folks, except the justice that we make. So all we can do is forget the past, play the cards, and try to light some candles.”

“And you’re sitting on the winning hand, aren’t you, Nat?” Bobby muttered aloud to the screen. He couldn’t see how, but he could see quite clearly that Wolfowitz knew the pot was going to be his. The look was unmistakable as he spread his hands palms down on the desktop and leaned toward the camera.

“President Gorchenko has asked me to light the first candle,” Wolfowitz said. “He has asked me to place the Ukraine outside the nuclear umbrella of Battlestar America. That I could do. But it wouldn’t stop the Ukrainians from using their Slam-Dunk missiles against the Soviet Union and the Red Army, and if that happens, general nuclear hell will break loose.”

Wolfowitz paused, made a show of scratching his head, and frowning, as if studying his cards and feigning perplexity. “So rather than just call, I think I’ll raise the ante high enough to separate the men from the boys and the boys from their toys.”

“Here it comes, oh God, here it comes . . . ,” Bobby muttered.

“Who am I to deny the protection of Battlestar America to anyone?” the President said. “I hereby extend it to cover the entire world, including the entire territories of the Soviet Union and the Ukraine. As of now, any missile launched against anyone anywhere in the world will be vaporized. And if anyone doesn’t think we can do it, they’re welcome to try. We’ve got enough ordnance in orbit to turn Mars into a parking lot, we’ve never had a chance to use it, and we’ve got a lot of good ol’ boys up there with twenty years’ of itchy trigger-fingers, just dying for a little target practice. And, oh yes, Mr. Kronkol, we
are
, after all, the people who programmed your guidance systems.”

“My God, that’s brilliant!” Bobby cried.

“Brilliant?” Mom said. “It guarantees that the Red Army will invade the Ukraine!”

“As for what the Russians and the Ukrainians will now do to each other out in the nonnuclear alley, that’s not my job,” the President said. “Far be it from me to get in the middle of two other people’s divorce proceedings. But as a friend of the family with no further national interest in the outcome, I am tempted to offer some free advice.”

He cocked his head to one side, shook it sadly. “Why are the two of you going to beat each other to bloody pulps?” he said. “Who wins what in the end? If the Ukrainians succeed in gaining
their independence through glorious battle, they will then find themselves confronted with a Russian national state three times their size and in effective control of their transport net to the rest of Europe and controlled by outraged Bears in no mood to be friendly. If the Russians succeed in occupying the Ukraine by force, what they’ll have on their hands is what we’ve been doing to ourselves in Latin America.”

He leaned back in his chair and looked at a point in space above the camera. “We’ve been trying to make Latin Americans love us by military force for a long time now, and what’s it gotten us? You go in thinking you’re gonna make out like a bandit with cheap raw materials and cheap labor and a captive market whose economy you control, but the cost of the occupation eats up all the profits, and the resistance eats holes in the local infrastructure, and you end up taking endless casualties for the privilege of subsidizing basket cases in the name of manifest destiny. Sound familiar? Isn’t that why Gorbachev cut the purse strings to his red-ink slave empire long years ago?”

“He cannot really be this disingenuous, can he, Robert?” Mom said. “Surely he realizes that this is an essential matter of national sovereignty!”

“So it really all comes down to the last recourse of the nation-state scoundrel, breast-beating noises about the sanctity of absolute national sovereignty,” the President said.

Mom gasped.

Bobby laughed.

“Well, it no longer exists,” Nathan Wolfowitz said, smiling sweetly. “I’ve just taken it away.”

He paused to let that sink in. “The United States of America has already eliminated the absolute sovereign right of any nation to use nuclear weapons against any other. We’ve got the power to do it, and we will, and that period of history is dead as the dodo. What the new world is to become, Mr. Gorchenko, is up to you now. I’ve lit my candle, now it’s time for you to light yours.”

“
Again?
” Franja groaned. “He can’t leave it like this, can he?”

“We’re all going to have to let go of some national sovereignty to save our asses,” Wolfowitz said. “Seems to me pissing contests over absolute national sovereignty are what got us where we now are. I ask the Russian and Ukrainian peoples to work themselves out a no-fault divorce by separating economic interdependence from national identity. I ask the Soviet government to give the Ukrainians enough national sovereignty to gain independent admission to Common Europe, and I ask the Republic of the Ukraine to cede enough economic
sovereignty to some kind of central authority to keep from shooting itself in the economic foot. The petty details I leave up to you to work out. Just do it, okay? Make me happy.”

“What?”

“What on earth is he saying?” Mom muttered. “He’s asking for the impossible!”

“And you
do
want to make me happy,” Wolfowitz said. “Because if you do, the United States of America will give up a piece of
its
own sovereignty to provide an example for the rest of the world. When, and only when, the Ukraine is admitted into membership in Common Europe via a resolution introduced by the Soviet government, the United States of America will apply for admission itself.”

“That’s what he’s always wanted . . . ,” Bobby exclaimed. “That’s what we’ve all dreamed of.”

“But it’s an impossible dream, Robert, America owes Common Europe far more money than it can ever repay!”

“And you
will
want to admit us very badly indeed,” Wolfowitz went on. “Because upon admission, the United States of America will cede control of Battlestar America to the Common European Parliament. We’ve just taken away everyone’s sovereign power to launch nuclear missiles, and we are ready to surrender
that
power to a community of nations, for neither are sovereign powers that the world can afford to have any single nation retain.”

“They’ll never let him get away with this,” Dad stammered. “He’s . . . he’s giving it all away!”

“Not if I know Nat Wolfowitz,” Bobby said.

Wolfowitz leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Of course there will be those who will demand that we cover the biggest rubber check in the history of the world as the price of admission.”

He shrugged. “Well, what can I say, we don’t have the money,” he said. “And even if we did, we can’t afford to pauperize ourselves any further. It’s hard to say how much it all comes to, just as it’s hard to tote up the complete bill for Battlestar America. But I’ll bet the figures aren’t all that different.”

Wolfowitz grinned, his eyes sparkled like a flush in diamonds. “So let’s just be mensches about it, shall we?” he said. “Let’s not nickel and dime each other like pikers. Let’s just say we hand over Battlestar America, and you forget about the abrogated debt, and we call it even. Isn’t that an offer you can’t afford to refuse?”

He actually seemed to be choking back laughter.

“I mean, after we’ve bankrupted ourselves to build the damn thing, you didn’t expect us to just
give
it away!”

Bobby broke up. He laughed and laughed and laughed. He laughed until his sides ached. He laughed until he could laugh no more. He laughed as if the whole world was laughing with him.

“This has been an address by the President of the United States—”

“—speaking to you from the men’s room in the White House in Washington, D.C.,” Bobby declared, and broke himself up all over again.

SUMMIT PRODUCES AGREEMENT IN PRINCIPLE,
BUT NO DETAILED ACCORD

The Strasbourg summit meeting has adjourned with agreement on the general principles of an overall settlement, but no detailed language for a treaty, which will be written by working committees established at the meeting, who will probably take at least six months to complete their draft.

Soviet President Constantin Gorchenko has agreed to introduce a resolution into the Common European Parliament calling for the simultaneous admission of the United States, the Ukraine, and any other Soviet Socialist Republic that decides to seek direct admission via national plebiscite. American President Nathan Wolfowitz has agreed to place Battlestar America under control of the Parliament as part of the eventual treaty of admission, and the leaders of the other present member states, after much heated discussion, have agreed to consider all old American debts to their governments, central banks, and private financial institutions formally canceled.

It was further agreed that all representation in the new Common Parliament shall be by direct election from districts of roughly equal population under a single statute to be enacted by the Common Parliament, that district lines shall be drawn and adjusted every five years by the Common Parliament, and that any legally qualified citizen of the whole may stand for any district without regard to the old national boundaries.

Member states will retain national military forces on an operational level, but these will be placed under a unified mixed command appointed by the Common Parliament, which will also directly control all nuclear forces as well as the Battlestar America defense system, whose personnel will be chosen according to a national quota system yet to be determined.

No name for the new transatlantic order has yet been agreed upon. “Union of Terrestrial Nations,” “Union of Terrestrial Peoples,” “Atlantic Confederation,” “Northern Confederation,” and “United States of Earth” have all been suggested, but none of these has met with general approval.

It would seem that the new order we are now embarking upon is as yet too fluid in its emerging nature, too much of a break with the
past, too unforeseen in its eventual consequences, at present, even to have found its proper name.

—Robert Reed, StarNet

XXX

It seemed to take forever to get the Tass and StarNet crews settled in their seats, but at long last they had finally secured their equipment, Franja had her takeoff clearance, and the Aeroflot Concordski was at the top of the runway.

It wasn’t stretching a point all that far to say that the negotiations for the coverage of this flight had been more difficult and tortuous than what had gone on at the Strasbourg summit.

Tass had wanted this flight to depart from Moscow; this was, after all, an Aeroflot Concordski, and they had been the ones who’d put the whole thing together, hadn’t they? Mother, and the doctors, had put their feet down on that. The medical risk had to be minimized, and that meant no prior flight from Paris to Moscow, and certainly not a grueling train ride. So it was agreed that the flight would leave from De Gaulle.