With that, he filled the cup at the place next to Forte, put down the tray, and settled comfortably into the chair beside him.
“Who the hell’s this?” Forte demanded, turning to the president.
The president chuckled.
“Allow me to present Nikolai Vasilievich Grimm, former admiral of the Red fleet. Nick, meet Gwillam Forte.”
“You’re supposed to be dead.” Forte pushed back his chair and turned to face the other man. “Missing at sea. I read your obituary-last July, I seem to remember.”
“Typical Soviet disinformation.” The man in the white jacket shrugged. “I can assure you that I’m alive.”
“I also remember your face. It wasn’t the one you’re wearing now,” Forte said coldly.
“If it were, I could scarcely have become the president’s favorite steward. Plastic surgery, of course.”
Gwillam Forte turned to Wynn. “I don’t suppose… ?”
The president shook his head.
“No doubt whatsoever. This is Nick Grimm, no question about it. He’s been under interrogation eight to ten hours a day since he defected, and the information he’s given us has been confirmed many times over. Besides, I’ve known Nick for years, and I saw him before the surgeons got to work on him. He-”
“Allow me to explain, Mr. President. In brief, Mr. Forte, as a Ukrainian of German descent, early in life I decided that frank, cold opportunism was the only way to survive and prosper in my land. That was my path, and it took me to the top. I married in cold blood, joined the Communist Party in cold blood, curried favors with the Politburo in cold blood, betrayed friends when it was in my interest, corrupted superiors and then blackmailed them to advance myself. In short, the portrait of a successful Party man. I’m afraid you won’t find that I conform to American standards of morality, but then I wasn’t living in America. The important point is, I survived-survived and reached the top.”
“Then why aren’t you still there?”
Admiral Grimm took a cigarette from the silver box on the table and lit it. He blew twin streams of smoke from his nose and regarded Forte thoughtfully. “I’m getting old. Backstabbing is a sport for the young and fleet of foot. I could feel the breath of the ambitious on my neck, and it gave me a chill. I’m unusually susceptible to chills, I might say. So before the wishes of my subordinates could become reality, I arranged for my own demise-aboard a nuclear submarine of which, I am happy to report, I am the sole survivor of an explosion conveniently close to Charleston, South Carolina.
“Nick proposed a deal,” the president said. “We’d give him a new identity and a discreet but very lavish future. And for this he’d allow us to pick his brains.”
“Treason, in other words,” Forte remarked.
“Ah-the very word I’ve been looking for.” Admiral Grimm snapped his fingers. He chuckled. “I don’t have to justify my life to you, Mr. Forte, only to myself. And I can tell you that if treason always paid off so handsomely as mine has for the United States, you’d advertise for traitors like me in The New York Times.”
“What he says is true,” President Wynn affirmed. “He has given us information of enormous importance.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the hypothesis I attributed to my service staff, concerning a possible Russian attempt to invade the United States in four or five years via Mexico, using a Soviet fleet in American waters as cover.”
“It’s not a hypothesis but a fact,” Grimm interjected. “I was one of the chief planners of Project Lime Kiln, as it is known in the Kremlin. The target date is the fifth of July, 2001, but the exact date depends on the degree of obsolescence and attrition of American arms that could oppose the onslaught. Already, in anticipation of the signing of the protocols, a steady stream of soldiers-Russian, German, Turkish, and Bulgarian, mostly-is flowing toward assembly points and training camps in Central and South America. When the time approaches, they will move north in small groups, form into divisions, and roll over the border of Mexico on a broad front into Texas and California. We-the Kremlin, that is-anticipate the subjugation of the United States and Canada will be complete by the following summer.”
“Has this man’s story been thoroughly checked out?” Forte asked the president.
“Yes-again and again. He’s been subjected to truth serum, lie detector tests, voice-stress analysis- every method known to science. Furthermore, in the six months he’s been with us, the predictions he’s made-such as the movement of East Bloc soldiers into South American camps-have been right on the money. I wish I didn’t have to believe him, but I must.”
“All right, then-it’s all true. Why are you telling me? Why didn’t you bring in Grimm and have him say his piece at the meeting this morning? Instead of sounding the alarm against the Washington Protocols, at this moment my colleagues are preparing media campaigns in its favor.”
President Wynn nodded somberly.
“Naturally, I considered it. In the first place, it wasn’t until after Grimm received his new identity that he divulged the information you heard today. If I had confronted them with Grimm today, they’d have insisted he was a ringer sent by the hawks-his or ours-to sabotage Russia’s peace proposals. After the series of operations, even I couldn’t prove he was really Grimm, you see.”
“Your assurances were good enough for me.”
“That’s why I confided in you, Will, and not them. They are press and television tycoons, neither pure nor simple. They’ve seen and heard and manufactured lies all their lives. It’s their profession. Why should they believe me?”
It was a good question. Forte wondered whether he was believing any of this himself.
“But there was a greater danger,” President Wynn went on. “The danger was that they would believe that it was Grimm, that he had defected from Russia with the connivance of the Kremlin hawks and was intent on sabotaging the peace process. They would feel even more compelled to trumpet the virtues of the protocols than they already are. And even if they did go along with my plea to counsel reason and due deliberation on the part of the American people, give them time to understand the dangers inherent in the protocols, it would only give the Russians the leisure to formulate an alternative strategy-once they knew Grimm was alive and talking, as they surely would, given your colleagues’ propensity to share their secrets with the world.”
Forte’s head felt as though stuffed with cotton wool. The president’s words had registered, and they seemed to make sense, but the tableau-the president of the United States, a defected admiral of the Red fleet dressed as a waiter, and a triple-amputee industrialist from Texas, all sitting cosily around the table talking about World War III-greatly disturbed him and confused his thoughts. President Wynn and he were old acquaintances, but hardly friends, having stood on the opposite side of almost every public issue in the twenty-five years since Wynn had emerged on the national scene. So what was Forte doing there? And why was Wynn confiding in him?
He asked the questions, but as is usual with politicians, President Wynn eschewed the straightforward reply.
“Nick,” he said, turning to where the Russian lounged in his chair, apparently as bored and aloof as a boyar watching peasants being flogged, “what would it take to make the Russians abandon Project Lime Kiln, make them pull in their horns and leave us the hell alone?”
“The same medicine that has always worked with the Soviets-a good punch in the mouth,” the admiral drawled through a cloud of smoke.
“Where did you learn English like that?” Forte asked.
“As a lieutenant in the Soviet Navy, I became an illegal-I used faked papers to enlist in the U.S. Navy. Spent six years on cans and flattops. I could pull my time on you, Mr. Forte.”
Forte regarded Grimm thoughtfully, more at sea than ever.
“Be specific, Nick-what can we do about the Russians?” the president repeated.
“Very well.” He took the cigarette from between his lips, flicked off the ash in his coffee cup, and took a deep drag.
“From earliest times, the Russians have been a conservative people, like peasants everywhere. They’re not risk-takers. They prefer the certainty of suffering to the risks of revolt. They bury their rubles and kopeks under the apple tree rather than gamble them on a turn of the cards. They’d rather fight a bear than grapple with a new idea. In war, they never take the offensive unless they are three hundred percent sure of winning. By July 2001, they will be in that pleasant situation if you sign the Washington Protocols. It’s as simple as that.”
“And if I don’t?”
“But you will. Thanks to the press campaign of Mr. Forte’s colleagues, which will cater so sedulously to the Americans’ craving for peace, you’ll have no choice but to sign.”