2
First, however, the customary minuet had to be performed.
The pattern established in recent years was too sacred, now, to be broken.
First the State Department conference, already held …
Then the National Security Council meeting, about to be held …
Then the secret conferences with the people in the field, getting their advice, considering it, usually ignoring it because, after all, they were only on the scene and what did they know about it—“the process of getting our ducks in a row,” as Brad Temple said. “Throwing it all in the pot,” as the President put it.
Informing “the necessary people” on the Hill …
“Preparing the media,” which involved a sort of pre-leakage in which one had to be sure that the information went to people who could be really helpful, not just to malcontents who might begin raising hell too soon and upset the schedule; a process to be handled with care in private telephone calls because everybody was tapped these days, even the President; and with thoughtful discretion in murmured conversations at White House state dinners, or at Georgetown functions such as those at the homes of social leaders like the widowed Dolly Munson, still going strong at eighty-three …
Then the first public leakages, to such can-be-counted-on outlets as the Times, the Post, Larry King, MacNeil/Lehrer, leading columnists such as Jimmy Van Rensselaer Burden and Tim Bates …
Then the loud public backlash from the Hill, carefully invited, carefully planned, to stir up public opinion and test how far an administration dared go …
Then the sudden things-getting-out-of-hand when the wrong people in the media and on the Hill began to clamor …
Then the President, questioned sternly by the White House press corps (that righteous soul and conscience of the nation), backing away, obfuscating, covering his tracks, “keeping his options open” in the deft game, all moves anticipated, all bases covered, no surprises, that he and the media played with each other all the time …
Then the demands from the Hill for “clear-cut, decisive leadership from the White House” …
Then the agitations from the United Nations, discreetly invited, calmly parried, the shield of “UN action” brought smoothly to the fore …
Then the vigorous public statements from the President and his Secretary of State: they will—they won’t—they’re thinking—they’re planning—they’re ducking—they’re dodging—they’re about to become the scourge of the universe—or fly away like the gentlest puff of smoke in the desert wind …
And then—
But then, in this particular instance, the challenge issued, the gauntlet flung down—all the carefully coordinated steps thrown out of kilter, brought to naught, because the best-laid plans of mice and men are not enough, these days, when many men are self-interested and a lot of mice have their own agendas.…
* * *
“Ray!” Jaime Serrano exclaimed from the White House about five pm on that first afternoon. “You have heard the news from Lolómé! We mus’ talk. We mus’ talk. Can you be here at seven pm for an NSC meeting?
“I could,” the Secretary said, “but Mary and I are supposed to be at Dolly Munson’s for dinner at eight. Won’t it cause a lot of unnecessary preliminary stir if I suddenly cancel?”
“Don’t cancel,” Jaime suggested. “Arrive late.”
“In this town?” Ray Stanley said. “That’s even worse. They’d all be on me like a flash. ‘What’s up, Mr. Secretary? What can you tell us, Ray?’ Not with that crowd, thanks. She always has a lot of media. I couldn’t carry it off.”
“You could carry anything off,” Jaime Serrano said. “The President wants you. Be here.”
“Yes, sir!” Ray Stanley said. “I can always have a sudden virus. Mary can always represent us. Dolly will understand.”
“Dolly understands everything,” Jaime said with a chuckle. “She’s been around this town so long.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” the Secretary said. “However. As a matter of fact, we already have State’s recommendation ready for you.”
“You have polled the whole depar’men’,” Jaime said with wry surprise. “We are impressed.”
“As much of it as necessary to give the Secretary adequate cover,” Ray said with a chuckle of his own. “You know the department, the most amorphous institution in Washington. Some Secretaries, such as George Shultz, have liked to work through and with the bureaucracy, some, like Kissinger and Jim Baker, have run it all out of their hip pockets with a tiny handful of close advisers and to hell with the bureaucracy. It’s wide open to any method a Secretary chooses. My method—”
“We know your method,” Jaime said.
The Secretary chuckled again. “Saves time, wear, and tear,” he observed. “Eulie will be coming with me.”
“At leas’ we’ll know there’s some division in the depar’men’,” Jaime said. “It won’t be all jus’ your say-so. Good!”
Basically, the Secretary reflected as the national security adviser hung up, it was pretty much his say-so. He had received a clear reporting of where his subordinates stood. It was not, as Basil Rifkin had remarked on a previous occasion, “as though we need a lot of charts and statistics to understand one another. We’re all predictable.”
And so they were, Ray thought, particularly with regard to the Middle East. He and his top aides all had very definite ideas as to where they wanted State to go in that area. They had expressed them so many times to one another that prolonged discussion was not often necessary. And, as he had reminded them gently, the head of the table had the final vote, the forcefulness of it depending almost entirely on his own character and view of the world.
If he was himself a Secretary in the Kissinger-Baker mode, and he supposed he was in spite of his usual careful appearance of attention to conflicting views among his subordinates, it was because the department really was amorphous and that method was, in his mind, the only really efficient way to run it.
Along with Treasury, it was one of the two oldest departments of the federal government, created in 1789 to succeed the original Department of Foreign Affairs created in 1781, when the Articles of Confederation were succeeded by the Constitution of the United States. Its employees had always felt themselves a cut above the rest of the government because they, after all, were continuing custodians of the foreign policy of the United States. “Presidents come, Presidents go,” as Willie Wilson had once remarked, not sounding too happy about it, “but the State Department goes on forever.”
In recent times this self-importance had led to such bland assertions, published in the department’s official brochure, that it (and apparently it alone) “leads the United States toward the global challenges of the 21st century.” It wasn’t that the department ignored the fact that others might also be involved in the creation of foreign policy; it was just that it sounded as though it wasn’t aware that they even existed.
The unconscious arrogance of this statement, its critics thought, was a very accurate indication of the way the department and its employees regarded themselves.
“And after all,” Basil Rifkin liked to say with a sardonic smile, “it’s true, isn’t it?”
Too many thought so, the Secretary felt, for the department to coexist in entire comfort with other departments of the government that had, over the years, been able to encroach upon much of State’s territory. Nearly every embassy, for instance, had its military attaché from the Department of Defense, its agricultural attaché from the Department of Agriculture, its commercial attaché from the Department of Commerce, its never officially acknowledged but-always-there representative of the CIA. Wherever there was a pretext, the other departments and agencies moved in, each with its own special channels to the media. He had felt from his earliest days in the Middle East that this diluted and weakened State’s position and diluted and weakened the formulation of American foreign policy. But there it was, and they had to live with it, even though it made almost inevitable the confrontation he knew was going to occur when he and Eulie, riding beside him now in the Secretary’s official limousine, reached the White House.
The Pentagon: Public Enemy No. 1 in State’s eyes, as Secretary after Secretary had concluded when engaging in the endless tussles over policy that went back and forth across the Potomac. Arlie McGregor, Secretary of Defense, would be with him in general on the policy he was already encapsulating as “Go slow on Sidi,” but there would be some Pentagon twist put on it, some way of moving in and trying to appropriate the issue, even if it was only the constantly reiterated assertion that “sound military policy” had to take precedence in all crises.
He reflected with satisfaction as the limousine swung in under the East Portico of the White House that at least for the time being the media were not swarming all over them with their own characteristic confrontational arrogance. Most of them had gone home, some to collapse after a day spent chasing the President from pillar to post on one of his busier schedules, some to change to tux and formal dress for official Washington’s magic socializing hours of eight to eleven pm. Use of the East Portico was designed to thwart any last lingering bright-eyes who might be keeping watch on the main entrance or the west entrance. He was pleased to note that they were greeted only by the familiar, pleasant presence of the chief usher, backed by a couple of lounging Secret Service men behind the glass doors.
“Evening, Mr. Secretary—Madame Secretary,” the chief usher, a black as statuesque as Eulie, greeted them cordially.
“Roman,” the Secretary said warmly, “how are you?”
“Fine, thanks,” the chief usher said.
“How’s the extended family?” Eulie inquired.
“Very good, ma’am,” he said with a pleased smile. “Everybody doing well.” His expression sobered. “And Mr. Montgomery?”
She sighed.
“Poorly. But we keep hoping.”
“All you can do,” he said with a sympathetic cluck. “Such a pleasant gentleman.”
“Yes,” she said, voice breaking a little in the only topic on which the Secretary had ever known the Deputy Secretary to reveal her inner tension. “Thank you.”
“Come on in, Mr. Secretary, Madame Secretary,” Roman said. “The President’s waiting.”
“Anybody else here?” Eulie asked.
The chief usher grinned. “You know Secretary McGregor and General Rathbun,” he said. His tone became a little dry. “They’re always the early birds who catch the worm.”
“Or hope to catch it,” Ray Stanley said with a chuckle. “We at State always hope to get there first.”
“Have to move fast to catch that Pentagon,” Roman remarked with an answering chuckle. “Those military men move mighty fast sometimes.”
“Well,” the Secretary said. “We shall see. Right, Lulie?”
“You tell me,” she said with a smile as they went on in, to nod to the Secret Service and head along the hall to the West Wing. “I’m just along for the ride.”
“That’ll be the day,” the Secretary said, and the chief usher laughed.
“Not the way we hear it, is it, Mr. Secretary? Go right along, now. He’ll be down in a minute.”
Walking the familiar corridors that he had walked so often down the years, at meetings, official functions, in the last decade formal state dinners as he rose steadily toward the top of the Foreign Service, the Secretary was struck, as always, by the simple, overpowering dignity of this house. Its occupant might be enormously popular, abysmally unpopular, or, in the fluctuations of Presidents, somewhere in between, sliding up and down with each new poll claiming to show what the American people and the world were thinking at any given moment—but the White House remained simply and overwhelmingly the White House. Like Everest, it was there, always present, unique, unchanging in the American mind. There was nothing like it, so much history, so much of human living, power, ambition, dreams—so much of America; lovely to look at from the outside at any time of day or any season; lighted up on a soft spring night, white and gleaming in the winter snow, stately, always stately, aloof yet intimate, carrying the hopes of a still hopeful people, a still glowing vision dimmed somewhat by the social and political erosion of the past years but still symbolizing something unique and precious for its own people, and for the world.
It lent dignity and purpose to all who passed within its doors. Some might not appreciate it fully, but very few were unimpressed. It appeared to be, and in its ultimate place in the American scheme of things it was, shining, perfect and pure, a symbol along with the Capitol and the Supreme Court building, the supreme physical expression of the great dream brought forth upon this continent and now so challenged, in so many ways, by so many vindictive enemies and so many almost insoluble domestic problems.
We won’t let you destroy it, the Secretary told these swarming attackers silently in his mind. The dream is ours and we won’t let you destroy it.
It was probably a useless and rather silly thing to say, but he felt better for having expressed it.
As they entered the small, intimate Roosevelt Room, named for the ebullient Teddy, where the President liked to hold his private conferences, Ray could tell that Arlie and Gen. Wilson Rathbun, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were loaded for bear. They might not always know exactly what bear, he thought dryly, but they were always loaded for it.
“Ray—” the Secretary of Defense said. “Eulie—you two look loaded for bear.”
“Funny,” Ray Stanley said with quick amusement, “I was thinking the same thing about you and Bill. Don’t we agree on Sidi?”
“Maybe,” Arlie McGregor said warily. “Maybe you and I and Bill do. I’m not sure about Eulie.”
“I’ll sign onto anything that takes a forceful stand on things,” she said. “Anything with a little backbone in it. Does that make me a radical?”
“The worst one in Washington,” General Rathbun said with a grin as a door opened and the President stepped in with his quick, authoritative gait—somewhat slowed today, Ray thought; perhaps some worry was penetrating the armor? But the voice was cheerful, the mood upbeat.
“If we don’t watch Eulie,” the President said, “she’ll have us in a third Gulf War, stringing up Sidi on Pointe Sinistre one day and blasting his secret sponsors out of the sand on the next. Where,” he demanded abruptly, “is the CIA? Where’s the Vice President? Where’s my national security adviser?”
“Here, Mr. President!” Jaime Serrano exclaimed, breathless from an obvious dash down the hall. “I am here!”
“About time,” the President observed, smiling with that rather dangerous amicability that could change quite suddenly to sarcastic impatience and even, on occasion, explosive anger. He was not detached where his own ego and the dignity of his office were concerned. Challenges to those, as Mary said, “bring out the tiger. Too bad that doesn’t apply to foreign policy.”
But perhaps it was just as well, the Secretary thought now, as the telltale first flush of annoyance subsided on the presidential cheek and the surface good nature resumed control. Maybe it was just as well that the chief executive was very cautious about committing his country—and his own political and historical position—to any swift and decisive action that might threaten them. It might, perhaps, have saved himself and the country from much hasty and ill-advised action; although, in Eulie Montgomery’s view, it only weakened further the strength—“the consistent strength,” as she often emphasized—that she felt the United States and its executive should show.
“And the Vice President?” the President inquired as they all took seats around the table.
“He is coming,” Jaime said. “He has been notified. He is on the way.”
“I hope so,” the President said, “even though”—his voice dropped to an intimate level and he grinned an intimate we-all-know-what-we-think grin—“even though we could probably get along very well without—Ah, Hank!” he exclaimed cordially, changing gears in an instant as they had often seen him do, as the Vice President hurried in, somewhat flustered. “There you are!”
“Sorry, Mr. President,” the Vice President said, with the easy grin that had extricated him from difficult situations all his life. It was youthful and boyish. (“Because he is youthful and boyish,” Eulie Montgomery often said. “God help us if anything happens to the President.”) “I was trapped by some staffers with a report on our let’s-cut-the-government-waste program.”
“Not another one!” the President exclaimed in mock horror. “Well, that’s all right,” he added as they all laughed. “You were engaged in good work. We just didn’t want to start without you.”
“I should hope not!” the Vice President said cheerfully as Eulie winked at Ray across the table: Little does he know, she conveyed as clearly as though she had spoken. Everybody in Washington thought the Vice President was dumb, dumb, dumb. Sadly, and sometimes rather touchingly, he was secretly more hurt by this than he ever let on and was determined to prove them all wrong. His only problem was that the President, who had created him politically, never gave him a chance to do so.
“Now the CIA,” the President said, “and we can begin.”
“Right here, Mr. President,” Eldridge Barnes said calmly, entering without haste and slipping into his seat at the table with the same air of smooth self-confidence he brought to everything. He was sixty, looked fifty, had affairs like forty, and all in all was one of the smartest men ever to head his ubiquitous agency.
“Let’s begin with you,” the President suggested. “Your people have everybody excited with these reports about old Sidi and his bombs. Do you believe it’s true?”
“We have no reason to disbelieve it,” Eldridge Barnes said. “Creed Moncrief—”
“That name!” the President exclaimed. “Every time I hear it I don’t believe it.”
“It isn’t his fault,” Eldridge Barnes observed. “Talk to Mr. and Mrs. Moncrief. Anyway, Creed and Regina Gates in Lesser Lolómé—”
“That’s more like it,” the President said. “A name after my own heart.” Eldridge refused to let the President fluster him, which the President liked to do if he could; he usually couldn’t.
“Creed and Regina,” the director repeated calmly, “are two of our best people anywhere and both have these rumors going around. Both say they come from very reliable sources that have generally been proven correct at various significant times in the past. Both are checking further. Meanwhile, they’ve let us know so we can make up our minds what to do if the rumors prove out.” He looked at the President with dispassionate interest. “What are we going to do, Mr. President?”
“What do you people advise?” the President retorted.
“That’s the easy way,” the director remarked.
The President looked quite annoyed for a second, but before he could respond, the Secretary of Defense did.
“We at the Pentagon,” he began (in what Ray Stanley thought of as “his usual grand manner”), “would like to be very sure of all the facts before we commit ourselves to anything that might conceivably involve any military action—”
“Who’s talking about military action?” the President inquired blandly.
“I am,” Arlie said, flushing a little but standing his ground. “Surely the option has to be considered. If it’s going to be, we just want to make our position very clear. Unless we can be very sure that our mission is limited and clearly defined, unless we can be very sure that the consequences of our action have been clearly understood and completely anticipated, unless we have an absolutely rigid timetable for ending the mission, and are absolutely sure of victory—”
The Deputy Secretary of State snorted.
“That sounds like the military, all right,” she observed acidly. “After the first Gulf War somebody in this house went around crowing about how ‘the Vietnam syndrome is dead.’ He was absolutely wrong. It’s alive and well and living in the Pentagon. When were all the aspects of a mission ‘absolutely clear’ at its inception? When were all the consequences known in advance or even halfway predictable? What timetable was ever made that wasn’t changed, and often drastically, by events in the field? When was anyone ‘absolutely sure’ of victory? War sets its own rules. You know that as well as we do. And you folks over there are absolutely scared to death of it. That’s the problem.”
“It is not the problem!” Arlie McGregor snapped. “We’re simply trying to impose some rational thinking on people like you who won’t be happy unless we’re sending troops and tanks and planes and ships and maybe even missiles and A-bombs into every tight situation on the face of the globe. We can’t do it.” His face set in stubborn lines. “We won’t do it!”
“You will if I tell you to,” the President observed cheerfully. There was a stunned silence.
“Surely—” Arlie said after a moment, voice a little unsteady but recovering. “Surely you don’t contemplate—”
“No, of course not,” the President said with one of his baffling changes of mood—or changes of what seemed to be his mood. “Not for a minute. I just wanted to keep things in perspective. Of course we have to have more facts before we do anything. How long will it be before Creed Moncrief—love that name!—and Miss Regina can get a final fix on it, El? Have they given you a timetable? Have you given them one?”
“Mutual pledges of urgency at both ends,” Eldridge Barnes said. “They know we want it fast—they want us to have it fast. Meanwhile, though, as I said at the beginning, I think we should recognize that these two young people—young and very bright—were correct to suggest that we decide now what to do about it, should the rumors be correct.” He gave the President a bland stare. “Is there some opposition here to doing some advance planning, Mr. President?”
“Not a bit,” the President said amicably. “Ray, you’ve been very silent in the face of your deputy’s little tirade—”
“Not tirade, Mr. President,” Eula Lee Montgomery said firmly. “Just factual analysis. I resent that word.”
“I’m sorry, Eulie,” the President said, turning on the charm, which clearly did not impress her very much. “Of course you were right to put things in perspective. The Pentagon needs a little dressing down once in a while, right, Arlie and Bill? One learns from it. God knows I expect Eulie to tell me off at any moment. It will be good for me!”
“That’s right, Mr. President,” she agreed, unperturbed. “Indeed it would. So watch it!”
“Look, folks,” the President said with a chuckle. “She isn’t laughing, either. Boy, is my tail in a wringer!”
And at this, of course, they all laughed, some more easily than others, but all relieved that the increasing tension had, at least for the moment, been broken.
“You asked me, Mr. President,” Ray Stanley said, “what I thought. Without repeating or joining all of Eulie’s strictures, I do think she has some good points—even though, on balance, I do tend to agree, as my friends from Defense know, with their general feeling that caution and circumspection are almost always advisable in our response to international crises. I do wonder, in this instance, if this is a crisis. Surely you people have your own sources in the Lolómés, Bill?”
“You’re being diplomatic, Ray,” General Rathbun said, looking, as always, as plain as an old shoe and as trustworthy, which was why his popularity with the American people remained consistently high. “You know damned well we have military attachés in both places. After getting the Agency report this morning like you did, I talked to both of them. They don’t seem as bothered as Moncrief and Gates. They say they haven’t heard anything quite so definite. Could it be your people are being a little hysterical, El?”
“Better hysterical,” Eldridge Barnes retorted, “than blinkered by preconceived notions about the Middle East. Both Creed and Regina are in their second tours of duty there. Neither of your people has been there before. What do they know?”
“Well,” General Rathbun said, putting a little starch in his normally level tones, “I don’t know that I’d put it quite like that. They’re both veterans of several overseas assignments—”
“Where?” El Barnes demanded. “The Seychelles and the Maldives?”
“No,” Bill Rathbun said patiently, his normally impassive face beginning to crinkle a bit with anger. “Germany and Poland, if you must know. Anyway, they say they don’t see any reason to send up any flares, yet. Based on my sources, I’d say go slow.”
“Which might only indicate that your sources aren’t always the best,” El Barnes suggested. “Mr. President,” he said, turning directly to the chief executive, who was listening to all this with a deliberately exaggerated wonderment, “I would appreciate it if the work of the Agency could be given its proper rating in the scheme of things. We do, after all, have our carefully cultivated sources. We do, after all, keep a constant alert for changes which is not always duplicated in other departments and agencies of the government. We are, after all—”
“You are, after all,” the President interrupted, “a very challenging and confrontational type of individual, always anxious to protect your turf. Which may or may not be a good thing.”
“Doesn’t everybody?” the director of the CIA inquired blandly. “I feel I have better turf than most to protect.”
“Many opinions on that, El,” Ray Stanley remarked. “Anyway, aren’t we straying a bit? The essential here is a divergence of opinion and our task here, it seems to me, is to decide of our own judgments, which is the more valid. With all respects to the CIA—”
“For which you don’t have many,” the director observed.
“Turnabout’s fair play.” the Secretary said with a smile. “In—any—event, the CIA says eether and the Pentagon says eyether, so let’s call the whole thing off. Or shall we? I’d say yes, basically. I’d say let’s go slowly until we have more information one way or the other. And proceed from there.”
“Which may be when?” his deputy inquired with some skepticism. “It seems to me that if there is something there, time is of the essence. If we intend to issue a warning to Sidi, better now before things get really established. And the Agency says they likely may be well established. With all respects to you, Bill, I think the reports from these two kids in the field are sufficiently detailed already so that we’d be perfectly justified to go ahead as though we had absolute proof.”
“To what end?” General Rathbun inquired. “To what purpose? You criticize the military all the time, Eulie, and maybe to some extent your criticisms are justified. But just remember that we almost never get a clear-cut decision on policy out of you civilians. There’s no direct and consistent line of policy on anything; everything’s as shifting as the sands of Sidi’s deserts. Give us a clear-cut, consistent directive for once in your lives, and we’ll gladly follow it. But what do you want to do now, say ‘Scat!’ and hope the bombs, if Sidi has them, will go away, and the missile launchers disappear? And if it’s to be something more than ‘Scat!’ then what is it? That’s what we in the Pentagon want to know. You can call it lingering Vietnam syndrome if you like, but we call it common sense. Where do we go, what do we do? Have you got an idea, except to make a noise and try to bluff him out of whatever his pals are putting him up to?”
“Boy!” Eulie Montgomery said. “I’ll bet that’s the longest speech I’ve ever heard you make, Bill Rathbun. Okay, you challenge me, I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d announce that we have good reason to believe that Sidi has bombs and the means to launch them, and I’d warn him that if he doesn’t prove the contrary to the satisfaction of the international community, then we’ll put on the pressure, starting with economic sanctions, and go on from there.”
“Go on to where?” General Rathbun inquired. “And with what? Now you want to get into the same old pattern that’s been characteristic of American administrations for at least the last ten years. Bluff—threat-loud noises—sanctions that hurt only the people, not the leaders, who take care of themselves very well, thank you very much—and then a puff of dust as it all settles down again, with nothing to show for it but damaged people, scot-free leaders, and one more slide down the scale of world prestige for the United States of America. Haven’t we had enough of that? Better to keep our mouths shut and say nothing until we’re ready to back it up, it seems to me.”
“You aren’t arguing with me,” Eula Lee Montgomery said. “You’re looking at one high-ranking government official who is quite willing to back up what she advocates with force, if need be. I’ve been a longtime opponent of the bluff-and-puff school of American foreign policy, as Ray well knows. I think we have enough to go on with Sidi, right now. Let’s do it. Let’s not crawfish again. Let’s rock ’em and shock ’em and be a real leader, for a change. It’s been a long time.”
“Of course,” the President observed thoughtfully, “you aren’t taking into account world opinion and the United Nations, which might be opposed to even a hint of strong action on our part. They’re so afraid it would turn out to be action conducted independently of them—”
“Oh, well,” she said in a dismissive tone. “If we’re going to worry about the United Nations—”
“I have to,” the President said.
She looked at him with an exaggerated blankness. “Why?”
“Because it’s a fundamental principle of American diplomacy that we must always act in accordance with UN decisions and policies,” the President said calmly. “My recent predecessors established that, and it seems to me a good principle to follow.”
“A good excuse to follow,” she remarked dryly, and not for the first time but the first time today, the President looked quite annoyed with his Deputy Secretary of State.
“Are you accusing me of hiding behind the UN, Eulie?” he inquired with a dangerous mildness.
She stood her ground. “It’s been done. Frequently. In the last two terms.”
“Only when America’s best interests were clearly served by it!” he snapped.
She shrugged and settled back in her chair. “Over to you, Mr. President,” she said. “You’re obviously going to do whatever you want to do, regardless of any advice you receive here.”
“With all respects to you, Eulie,” the Secretary of State said mildly, “I think the majority of the advice he’s going to get here is going to be exactly what everybody but you seems to want him to follow. Namely, go slow. Don’t put us out on a limb. Wait for further clarification. Be prudent.”
“Be timorous,” she murmured, and then said, “Oh, hell!” in a louder tone. “You do what you want to do, of course. I’ve said my say, I’m out of it. It’s been nice knowing you all.”
“You aren’t going anywhere,” the President said calmly. “I need somebody to say ‘no’ once in a while. You aren’t leaving. Relax…So, then. Does anybody think we ought to do something drastic at this point?”
“One thing you might do,” the Secretary of State suggested quietly, as the Deputy Secretary shifted her papers and stared down at the table, flushed and flustered but stubbornly unconvinced, “if you feel like it, Mr. President, is talk directly to the ambassadors, right now, and get their input.”
The President looked thoughtful.
“I could,” he said. “Why not? Jaime, why don’t you have the Signal Corps boys set it up and have the calls patched in here on my phone. How long would it take?”
“Oh—ten minutes, I suppose,” Jaime Serrano said. “It’s morning over there. Everybody’s up. Or ought to be.”
“Good,” the President said. “And Hank”—the Vice President, earnestly silent, jumped as though he had been shot—“call the kitchen and tell them to get some coffee and pastries up here, pronto…You all know where the facilities are. We’ll reconvene in twenty.” He smiled. “Do you want me to call Dolly Munson and make your excuses, Ray? You may not make that dinner.”
“Why don’t you?” the Secretary agreed with an answering smile. “She’ll keep the secret.”
“She’s a dear old thing,” the President said. “I’ll do that.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, coffee and pastries on the table, the Vice President again an earnest, silent presence, Dolly pleased and mollified, the voice of the Signal Corps commander came evenly over the intercom, which the President had turned up so they could all hear.
“The ambassadors to the Lolómés, Mr. President,” he said. “On line to you and linked to each other. Conference call ready to go ahead.”
“Thank you,” the President said, leaning forward slightly to the transmitter. “Big Bill Bullock!” he exclaimed in a jocular tone, sliding instantly into his hail-fellow-well-met mode. “Stately, dignified Arthur Reeves Burton, ambassador plenipotentiary and extraordinary! How the hell are you both?”
“Fine, Mr. President,” Bill Bullock answered in his heavy, gravelly voice from Greater Lolómé.
“Very well, thank you, Mr. President,” said Arthur Reeves Burton from Lesser Lolómé, sounding as stately and dignified as the President described him: like Ray Stanley and Eulie Montgomery, he went back a long way in the Foreign Service.
Bill Bullock, self-made oil millionaire from Texas—“Not one!” Senator Wilson exclaimed dryly when his nomination came up to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—sounded as though he had just completed a big meal of barbecued spareribs. Well fed, well housed, and well satisfied was the sound of Big Bill Bullock; or, as Joan Cohn-Bourassa had acidly described him—
“Bill—” the President said, “Arthur—what’s going on over there? You know what Moncrief and Gates sent us today. Anything to it?”
“Quite a lot, I think,” Ambassador Bullock said. “The slimy bastards are on the loose again, Mr. President. I think we have a problem.”
“I wouldn’t put it quite that way,” politely confirmed Ambassador Burton, sixty-two and another longtime Arabist. “But basically, I agree.”
“Arthur likes these desert scorpions,” Bill Bullock said with a jovial laugh. “They don’t impress me.”
“I daresay it’s mutual,” Arthur Burton remarked dryly. “You have a way of making friends wherever you go, Bill.”
“Boys!” the President said, as jovial as Big Bill. “No temper, now! No tantrums. Everybody solemn here. If it is solemn. You both think so.”
“I do,” Bill Bullock said. “Arthur always cuts them plenty of slack.”
“Not always,” Arthur Reeves Burton protested with a small, exasperated sigh. “Come off it, Bill. The chief wants to know what’s really going on here. I’ve said I agree with you. It’s all in how we handle it.”
“Isn’t it always?” the President said with an exasperated sigh of his own. “So the reports are correct, then—you believe.”
“Yes,” they replied together.
“Details?” the President demanded.
“Essentially what Creed and Regina report,” Ambassador Burton said. “Three bombs, maybe more, from sources we haven’t quite identified yet. The principal possibilities are Russia—China—North Korea—”
“And don’t forget the likeliest,” Bill Bullock said. “Your friend the father of all chaos, sitting back and pulling the strings and putting Sidi up to all kinds of mischief. God, how I hate that guy. And how I despise Sidi. I hope they’re both listening.”
“Oh, I hope not,” the President said. “It isn’t supposed to be possible. Though it might be a good thing for them to hear how determined we are.”
“You mean that?” the Deputy Secretary murmured. She saw the President’s expression. “You mean that.” She subsided.
“And the launching facilities?” the President inquired.
Ambassador Bullock snorted.
“Hell!” he said. “Do you know what old Sidi had the nerve to tell me when I asked about all those construction trucks going in and out of the Pink House gates? He said he was ‘expanding my personal facilities.’ He said he was adding to the palace because it seems the Sultan of Brunei has just finished adding forty new rooms to his monstrous little cabana on Borneo and Sidi doesn’t want to be outdone. I said that seemed like a damned sight far away for him to get jealous, but he just shrugged and gave me that bearded Cheshire Cat smile of his.”
“So what did you do then, Bill?” Eulie Montgomery inquired.
He uttered a startled little laugh.
“Eulie!” he said. “How many people are sitting in on this, Mr. President?”
“NSC meeting,” the President said. “We think it’s that important. So what did you do?”
“Let it pass,” Bill Bullock said. “What was I supposed to do, go poking around? I wouldn’t be allowed in. Anyway, Moncrief did that, and very efficiently, it seems to me. He has good sources, that kid. Anyway, I, for one, believe their report. What do you think about it, Arthur?”
“I’m convinced there’s substantial cause for concern,” Arthur Reeves Burton said carefully. “So does The Mouse, incidentally. He’s terrified. Regina is equally competent. Whether we should go public with our concerns at this particular moment—?” His voice trailed away into an obvious question mark.
“That’s what we’re trying to decide,” the President said. “Not getting very far, but maybe we will now that you two have put your official stamp on it. I take it you agree that it won’t hurt to have some sort of general response worked out.”
“A carefully planned response,” Ambassador Burton said, and the President gave a pleased little chuckle.
“Sooner or later,” he observed, “somebody comes up with the perfect phrase, not always deliberately. Deliberately from you, of course, Arthur,” he added quickly, “you’re always deliberate. Anyway, if and when this does become public—as it will sooner or later, no matter how hard we try—somebody on somebody’s staff will spill the beans to the media—then we’ll say we’ve decided on ‘a carefully planned response’ whose nature we won’t divulge. But we’ll emphasize that it’s ready. That ought to make them stop and think.”
“Stop and think. There’s another sidestep from Washington,” Eulie Montgomery said with a sniff. “That will really stop them in their tracks.”
“Eulie, Eulie!” the President said. “You’re always so predictable. I’ll huff and I’ll puff a bit and make it sound ominous. Trust me.”
In far-off Greater Lolómé, Ambassador Bullock cleared his throat.
“I’m with Eulie, Mr. President,” he remarked. “I think you really ought to bear down on these rattlesnakes. I really think there’s a real danger here. We’ve got to be really tough this time.”
“What do you think, Arthur?” the President inquired.
Like his colleague, the ambassador to Lesser Lolómé cleared his throat, but in a slower, more thoughtful way.
“I’ve already said I’m convinced there’s a problem and a real threat to peace in the region. Mustafa called me in this morning and begged for help; terrified, as I said. But I think much more can be done with quiet, behind-the-scenes diplomacy than with any public confrontation. If Bill, for instance, were to talk to Sidi and make clear to him—”
“Why don’t you talk to him yourself, Mr. President?” Ambassador Bullock suggested. “Man to man. Ruler to ruler. King to king. Flatter him and threaten him simultaneously. Tell him what a great leader he is but tell him if he doesn’t comply we’ll cut his balls off—oops, sorry, Eulie!”
“I’ve heard the expression,” the Deputy Secretary remarked dryly. “I’d dispense with the ‘great leader’ bit and go directly to the realities if I were you, Mr. President.”
“Which, perhaps fortunately, you are not,” the President said, and then softened it with the charming smile he could turn on when necessary. “Fortunately for me, that is; the country might be much better off. So, Bill, you think I ought to go straight to Old Three Esses himself right now, hmm?”
“He’s in the Pink House,” Bill Bullock said. “It shouldn’t be hard to get through to him. If he’ll accept your call, that is.”
“You mean that son of a bitch would refuse to speak to me?” the President demanded, blithely ignoring the fact that not only had the US effectively blocked Sidi in the second Gulf War, but as recently as a press conference last week the President had referred to him as “one of the sleaziest scourges of the Middle East.” These items did not deter the chief executive. “Jaime!” he ordered. “Get him on the line!”
“Perhaps, Mr. President,” Ray Stanley said as the national security adviser picked up the phone to the Signal Corps and went to work, “you would prefer us to leave—”
“No, no, no,” the President said. “Sit tight. I mean you all to hear this. Silently, though, Eulie, okay? Silence is golden. And officially requested.”
They were all silent for several minutes while Jaime exhorted the Signal Corps to hurry it up. Presently he turned and gestured to the President with a smile and a wink.
“Mr. Secretary?” he inquired. “This is Jaime Serrano in Washington. Is His Excellency there?”
There was a slight scratch of static, swiftly cleared. The flutelike tones of Sidi’s personal secretary, known to the international community, inaccurately, unfairly, but universally as “The Eunuch,” came on the line.
“His Excellency the President for Life is not available at the moment,” he said with a regretful sigh. “He is so sorry that he cannot—”
“The President of the United States wishes to speak to him,” Jaime Serrano interrupted. “As soon as possible. The President of the United States does not like to be kept waiting.”
“And the President of Greater Lolómé does not like to be addressed like a servant!” the Eunuch responded sharply, plummy tones noticeably less friendly. “If the President of the United States will wait for a moment,” he added, more mildly, “I shall see whether or not it suits the convenience of the President of Greater Lolómé to talk with him.”
“Please do,” the national security adviser said in an unimpressed tone. “It is a matter of some urgency.”
“We cannot recall any matter of urgency between our two countries at the moment,” the Eunuch said. He could not resist a parting shot. “At least, not one that we recognize as such. Please be patient.”
The President refrained from comment but did not look pleased. As the silence lengthened, a noticeable flush of annoyance began to spread across his face. Everyone became very silent. War might be declared in the next five minutes. No one really thought so, but such is the power of that office in that area that no one would have been truly surprised if it had happened.
“Mr. President,” Sidi’s voice, heavy and emphatic, boomed out with a startling loudness. As always in their conversations, a note of barely suppressed sarcasm underlay it; they had never liked one another, and events had not improved their relationship. As always, his carefully tutored English was fluent and expressive.
“To what do I owe the infinite honor of this call?” he asked.
“Your Excellency,” the President said, “no honor I can confer upon you with my call can possibly equal the honor you confer upon me by accepting it.” He winked at Eulie. “It is a small matter, Mr. President, of atomic bombs. And missiles. And missile launchers. How about it?”
There was a perceptible silence but no indication of surprise or agitation.
“How about it?” Sidi inquired.
“Is it true?”
A certain caution crept into Sidi’s tone, but he still did not sound at all perturbed.
“And if it were?”
“Is it?”
“Who can say?”
“You can. Is it?”
“I really must know, Mr. President,” Sidi said blandly, “what the purpose of this interrogatory is. If what you postulate were true, I suppose you would threaten me with dire punishments, such being the high moral ground of the United States in world affairs. If it were not, then you would simply make yourself ridiculous by resorting to such tactics. So, you must tell me.”
“No, you must tell me, Excellency,” the President said. His tone became dry. “Save me from making a fool of myself, Mr. President. Save me, save me!”
“Now,” Sidi said, permitting himself a sudden show of indignation, “you mock me, Mr. President. It is not a nice game. Nor is it productive. I shall tell you nothing. How about that?”
For a moment the President was silent. Then he tried a different tack.
“You are not one of my favorite people in this world, Mr. President—”
Sidi laughed without rancor.
“It is mutual, Mr. President.”
“—so it would be very easy for me to become angry with you and threaten some reprisal—”
“It is not threats of reprisals we respect, Mr. President,” Sidi remarked. “Only orders for them. Are you ordering?”
“Not yet,” the President said.
Sidi laughed again, quite comfortably.
“Good,” he said. “I was greatly concerned. For a moment. So, then, Mr. President, what can I do for you? What is the purpose of this call?”
“The purpose,” the President said, “is to verify the reports we have received relative to at least three, possibly five, atomic bombs now in your possession, plus ten missiles with which to deliver them, plus launching capabilities constructed beneath the surface of Pointe Sinistre, disguised, God help us, as ‘expanding your personal facilities’ to make the Sultan of Brunei jealous. What a delightful motive. If true.”
“You doubt it,” Sidi said with a heavy sadness. “Cannot an honorable man accept the word of an honorable man? What becomes of civilized discourse, if this be not the case?”
“Our sources are quite impeccable, Mr. President.”
“Oh, yes,” Sidi said thoughtfully. “Young Mr. Moncrief, known as special political assistant to the ambassador. Very special. I think I shall demand the recall of Mr. Moncrief. At once. Either that, or I shall expel him …” His tone trailed away, came back strong. “Unless, of course, he meets with some unfortunate accident.”
“I would not recommend it, Mr. President,” the President said calmly.
“You would not,” Sidi said, “but I may have to. Accidents do happen sometimes, to meddlesome foreigners in this desert world. And who more meddlesome than young Mr. Moncrief?”
“Such an event would bring immediate and devastating punishment,” the President said.
“Oh, Mr. President!” Sidi exclaimed. “Who could prove it? It would be an accident. It would be a very well-executed accident.” He chuckled suddenly, the cruel, dispassionate sound so many terrified supplicants heard in the Pink House cellars just prior to oblivion. “‘Executed,’” he repeated thoughtfully, “may be just the right word. But accidental, in his case. It is the least we could do out of respect for the ancient friendship between our two countries.”
“Never any friendship, Excellency,” the President said, “and never any trust. If you harm that boy, Greater Lolómé will suffer. If I can arrange it, you will suffer personally.”
“Mr. President!” Sidi said, gently chiding. “You forget that the laws of your noble nation specifically prevent anything so crude as the assassination of foreign leaders. All of us foreign leaders have never understood why the United States was so noble, but since you are, we are all very grateful. Possibly it is because you people don’t want anyone to assassinate you.” He chuckled again, the same cold, dispassionate sound. “This does not necessarily follow.”
“Are you threatening me, now, Excellency?” the President inquired. “This is getting tiresome. I repeat, harm that boy and a lot of things are going to happen very quickly.”
“Oh, Mr. President,” Sidi said. “You are always saying things like that, and who cares? You never do anything.”
Jaime Serrano, hastily scribbling, tossed a note on the President’s desk: Remember the bombs. The President nodded.
“We have once,” he said, “and we will again. Which brings me back to the basic purpose of this call. You have bombs, you have missiles, you have launchers. You have them quite suddenly, from a source or sources we have not yet determined, though we have a pretty good idea. We do not like this. I want to warn you, privately but emphatically, that the United States and its allies are prepared to take whatever action may be necessary to destroy this threat to the peace of the region and the peace of the world.”
“‘Destroy’?” Sidi echoed, not sounding at all impressed. “Are you prepared to go that far, on your own? Without congressional support, without media support, without the support of the country? And what ‘allies’? You mean they will follow you once again down the same old caravan route to nowhere? I doubt it, Mr. President. I doubt it very much.”
“I am contacting them immediately,” the President said. “I am confident they will respond, as they have before, to the peace-threatening moves of you and your sponsor.”
“You may get them to say ‘tut-tut,’” Sidi remarked. “You may even get them to say, ‘Oh, my goodness.’ But more than that? I wish you luck.”
“So it is true,” the President said.
Sidi’s tone became flatly defiant.
“Suppose it were, still this seems to be the best you can do, Mr. President—one more threat. The world has grown accustomed to American threats in recent years, the record is long and pathetic. Bosnia—Somalia—North Korea—China—Haiti—Chechnya—wherever the White House has decided that loud noises are a substitute for strong action. It is an old story to the world. Why should it impress me now?”
“We took up arms before,” the President reminded, “and we can do it again.”
“I was not really prepared then,” Sidi said. “It is a different story now. As always America has delayed too much, debated too much, taken counsel of its fears too much. It will take counsel of them again, and your so-called allies will fall obediently in behind, as craven as you are. They won’t act without you—and you won’t act. It is a formula the world has come to know very well in recent years. Is that all you can say to me, Mr. President? If so, I have better things to do while I arrange to destroy the peace of the world. It may not even be necessary. Mustafa is shitting green camel dung at this very moment. It will not take much to conquer him this time. He will go down in a day.”
“Excellency,” the President said, his tone finally beginning to show the exasperation he felt, “I must warn you that unless you adhere to your obligations under the nuclear proliferation treaty—”
“I am going to abrogate it.”
“Then you must be prepared to face the most devastating consequences.”
“I am prepared to take that risk.”
“Mr. President. I must warn you that when we bring this matter to the United Nations—”
Sidi laughed aloud, a short, harsh bark.
“—when we bring this matter to the United Nations,” the President repeated as firmly as he could, “I am sure we will have the unanimous support of the Security Council—”
Sidi laughed again.
“Which will be just as strong as you are. Which isn’t much.”
The President’s tone became cold.
“I shall not talk to you again, Mr. President. We will now proceed along all the tracks open to us.”
“It will do you no good,” Sidi said, with an open contempt in his voice that chilled them all. “May Allah defeat all your efforts and confound all infidels.”
“If you wish to talk more sensibly,” the President said, “call me any time of day or night. There may still be a little time to work something out.”
Sidi laughed again his short, harsh bark.
“First the threat and then the back-down,” he said. “How American!” And went off the line.
For several moments no one spoke in the Roosevelt Room. Presently Eulie Montgomery inquired dryly, “And?”
“I think he’ll come around,” the President said with the comfortable, down-home confidence he often liked to display to the public. “It’s a shock to him that we know. It will take him a little time to absorb it, and then he’ll call me back and be reasonable.”
“I’m glad you’re so sure,” she said.
The President smiled.
“They always do,” he said. “There has to be some face saving, and perhaps a huff and puff or two from him, and then it will all die down and go away. He won’t really dare to carry out any of his threats in the face of world opinion. It’ll work out. You’ll see.”
“Mr. President,” Ambassador Bullock said slowly, “with all respects, I am not so sure. He’s been nursing his grudge ever since we forced him to retreat from Lesser Lolómé last time. Now he’s been given the tools to do something about it. I’m not so sure he’s just going to back off. When I saw him yesterday I seemed to detect a greatly increased arrogance there; from his tone today, I’d say it’s doubled or even tripled. He’s sounding suddenly like one tough cookie. It may have gone to his head, whether justified or not. If he thinks it is, he’s going to be awfully hard to bluff.”
“Who says I’m bluffing?” the President inquired sharply.
“Mr. President,” Arlie McGregor demanded, sounding genuinely alarmed, “do you mean that? Are you actually going to expect us to launch an immediate—”
The President looked annoyed.
“For heaven’s sake,” he said, “it’s Seedy Sidi I’m supposed to be scaring, not my own Secretary of Defense. Of course I’m not asking the Pentagon to launch an immediate attack on anybody. If we have to take armed action in this matter, it will only be after we’ve exhausted all other possible means of containment. I have a lot to do myself, first. I’m going to contact the major allies, I’m going to discuss it with the Secretary-General at the UN, we’ll have to get the Hill and the media lined up, we’re going to have to generate at least a reasonable percentage of support in the polls—”
“How long will all that take, Mr. President?” Ray Stanley inquired.
The President shrugged.
“A week? Two? It shouldn’t take very long. You and Eulie and my national security adviser will all be involved in it. The one thing I must stress is that this is all completely off the record for the moment. I’m going to give Sidi sufficient time, without public pressure, to come around; and at the same time, I’m going to be building that ‘carefully planned response’ you advocate, Arthur. I think that with a combination of careful diplomacy and a little garden-variety psychology, I can persuade him to give up any wild ideas he has, without going to a public confrontation that might create a lot of headaches. Therefore, this is all completely quiet for the moment.”
“Our people at State are going to be wondering, Mr. President,” Ray Stanley said.
The President nodded. “Tell your immediate people, sure, but keep it minimal. I don’t want to hear about it on the evening news.”
“I’ve heard that before,” the Secretary said with a smile.
“I’ve said it before,” his deputy observed. “A couple of dozen million times. It rarely does any good.”
“This time it had better,” the President said in a tone that was not amused. “Otherwise some heads will roll in the department—in any department that violates the ban. Okay, Defense? CIA? NSC?”
They all nodded soberly.
“As for you boys on the spot,” the President said, “we’ll be in constant communication, so stay alert. I want you to see Sidi tomorrow, Bill, and tell him that we are taking immediate steps to isolate Greater Lolómé and organize the strongest possible international pressure—”
“Until he does what?” Ambassador Bullock inquired. “What’s the requirement?”
“That he cooperate fully with an immediate inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency and renounce any further territorial ambition in Lesser Lolómé.”
“He won’t like that,” Bill Bullock said. “What if he refuses?”
“He won’t refuse,” the President said with calm and utter confidence. “And you, Arthur, tell The Mouse to keep calm. We aren’t going to abandon him.”
“He will be relieved to hear that,” Arthur Reeves Burton said, so smoothly that no one could tell whether he was genuinely agreeing or being politely skeptical.
The President looked a little odd for a second but decided to avoid friction and accept his words as endorsement.
“Good,” he said. “Thank you both for your input and support.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” they said in unison, and went off the line.
“Okay, Jaime,” he said, “you stay with me for a bit and we’ll do a little planning. The rest of you have a good evening and we’ll be in touch first thing in the morning.” His eye fell on the Vice President, trying hard to be a good sport but still looking somewhat crestfallen. “Oh, and Hank, of course, you stay too. You can tell me how to go about handling the Senate.”
“Yes, sir!” the Vice President said, looking relieved and pleased.
“Give my love to Dolly, Ray.” the President said. “You can still make her dinner, after all.”
The Secretary of State smiled.
“With pleasure,” he said. “And congratulations on your handling of Sidi. I think you have him analyzed correctly.”
* * *
In the limousine which would drop Eulie off at her home in Georgetown before taking the Secretary along to Dolly’s beautiful old house near Dumbarton Oaks, she turned squarely to him and said sternly, “Ray Stanley, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You do not!”
“Do not what?” he inquired blandly.
“You know what. Think the President has Sidi analyzed correctly. Or handled him effectively. Why do you say things like that?”
He smiled.
“He’s the President. And I’m his Secretary of State. I can’t be too harsh.”
“I almost told him myself,” she said, “except he would have expected a sour note from me. You have enough prestige to disagree and make him pay attention.”
“It’s a matter of not expending one’s capital too fast or too freely,” he said. “I may need to tell him something later, if this doesn’t work out.”
“But I thought you were against putting too much pressure on Sidi,” she said. “Why the reversal?”
“I’m not reversing,” he protested mildly. “I’m just waiting to see what’s going to happen.”
“I might have known. What do I tell the others? They’ll be calling me.”
“Tell them basically what was decided,” he said. “That we’re organizing a ‘carefully planned response’ in the hope that it will defuse the situation before it ever becomes public and requires some more drastic action. That’s good diplomacy, isn’t it?”