It was two days before order was restored, by the combined police forces of neighboring cities of southern California. (Admiral Grell wisely forbore to launch his shore patrols into the maelstrom, fearing they would be sucked into the melee in their turn.) Bloody, tattered survivors were flung into then: whaleboats and motor launches en route to the brigs aboard their respective ships, which soon resembled so many floating Black Holes of Calcutta. Some sailors had taken their liberty literally, seeking it as far away as Des Moines, Iowa, before being rounded up and brought back. The city itself looked as if it had come through-only barely-a typhoon. Mayor Archibold Grace was in hiding, wondering bitterly whether the money he had skimmed from Forte’s bankroll before the descent of the Slavs would be sufficient to put out a contract on that eminent Texan’s life.
Admiral Grell released to the press an excoriation of the city of San Diego, which had with consummate capitalist cunning provoked his blameless men into riotous excesses, and hinted darkly that they had been drugged, seduced, poisoned, debauched, and otherwise abused by the scheming natives. With that, the Soviet Seventeenth High Seas Fleet raised anchor and stood out to sea.
The devastated and benumbed city tallied the cost of its hospitality. With the results still incomplete, the score stood at 2 murders, 76 rapes, 332 aggravated assaults, 13 arsons, 20 kidnappings-mostly of teen-aged girls-56 robberies with violence, uncounted cases of public drunkenness and disorderly conduct, and several thousand lesser misdemeanors such as child abuse, micturating on and throwing bottles at pedestrians from hotel windows, driving stolen buses off bridges, hijacking an airliner, pulling down statues in public parks, defilement of churches and cemeteries, and destruction, theft, burning, and looting of private property valued at $33 million.
Gwillam Forte read the reports with both distress and exhilaration. He grieved for the bereaved, and felt a twinge of guilt for having been the author of their misfortunes. On the other hand, viewed as realpolitik, a decisive victory had been won by making the fraudulent Washington Protocols politically unacceptable to all thinking Americans. Seen in this light, the costs had been negligible compared with the eventual, inevitable defeat and enslavement of the United States. It was thus with sanguine expectation that Forte awaited the outpouring of national indignation from the media, which would crystallize resistance among Americans against the Russian foe.
He waited in vain.
With the exception of his own newspaper and television chain and that of New Hampshire’s J. D. Pascal, the media seemed to have taken its cue from TASS, blaming “rightist adventurers” and “cold-war mastodons” for inciting the impressionable young sailors of the Russian fleet to ungentlemanly behavior. Establishment editorialists attributed the tragedy of San Diego variously to youthful high spirits, the collision of cultures, tensions of shipboard life, and the innocent misunderstandings that must always arise at the interface of linguistic, social, and geographical disparities. None were so indelicate as to recall parallels of Soviet criminality and rapine in Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Warsaw, and Budapest in 1945 and thereafter.
By the end of the first week in July, except in California, where the Russians had been, and Texas, where they were headed, the San Diego ‘events’ had been obliterated from the American consciousness by the deluge of euphoric newspaper and television commentary on the benefits of prosperity that the Washington Protocols promised-just around the corner.
In Las Vegas, political pollsters were giving eight-to-one odds on a national consensus that would make the protocols law of the land by October, ushering in a new era of international relations and peaceful cooperation between the Russian and American blocs. At a press conference televised nationally, President Wynn stated that, as he had always done, he would respond to the will of his countrymen; when pressed, he admitted that, up to the present moment, that will was overwhelmingly in favor of the Washington Protocols.
He wasn’t speaking for Texas.
In the State house in Austin, the legislature had gone into continuous executive session at noon on 24 June, when the true dimensions of the sack of San Diego became apparent. The lawmakers were of one mind concerning the imminent visit of the Soviet Seventeenth High Seas Fleet to Houston: they wanted it canceled. To allow the Russians to repeat their barbarities on the maidenhood and the business capital of the southwest was obviously unthinkable, especially in view of the refusal of the Russian high command to take any responsibility for the tragedy of San Diego-which practically guaranteed its repetition in Houston.
A resolution outlining the reasoning of the legislature, and respectfully requesting that the President of the United States change the venue of the Soviet fleet’s visit to another site, was drafted, passed unanimously, endorsed by Governor Tom Traynor, and sent by hand of a confidential messenger to the White House.
The president read the missive with relief. Here was the first evidence of the existence of an organized, powerful, and vocal pressure group opposed to the Russian program of creeping conquest of America. A whole state, and a pivotal one, was on his side. California, too, had weighed in against the Russians. This antipathy could, if nurtured, be translated into active political resistance against the protocols. But even as President Wilson Wynn savored the thought, his political instincts told him Texan and Californian anger would not be enough for victory against the overwhelming influence on the electorate of the media, which had come down hard on the side of the Russian initiative. From this point of view, and incidentally that of the Californians and Texans, the situation would have to get worse-much worse-before it would get better.
The president took pen in hand, and using it like a coal scoop, shoveled salt into the open wound. The messenger who brought the Texans’ courteous petition took back President Wynn’s blistering response.
The president reminded the governor and legislature that when he, as president of the United States, had informed them of the Russian request that the Soviet Seventeenth High Seas Fleet pay a courtesy call at Houston, they had answered that Texas would be “honored and delighted to receive” the fleet with the “customary and generous hospitality for which Texas has been famed down through history.” He declared that it was much too late in the day for the President of the United States to face the embarrassment of telling the Russians they would have to cancel their ten-day port call, disrupting their logistical arrangements and necessitating finding another port that could accommodate the fleet on short notice, an obvious impossibility. He observed that any disruption of plans now would imperil delicate negotiations between the two powers, and even jeopardize the signing of the Washington Protocols, which all thinking and patriotic Americans realized represented the only hope for a peaceful and secure future. He added that only small-minded and vicious men could doubt the friendship of the great Russian people and the benefits that would evolve upon closer cooperation with them. He warned that neither he nor other decent Americans would tolerate any break in the united front for peace by renegade troublemakers. He cautioned the Texans, saying that this matter transcended petty state interests, and indeed impinged upon foreign policy, reserved to the president and the Senate. He recalled the fate of Texas when, in 1864, it reaped the bitter harvest of sedition, and suggested that a short memory should not put Texas in a position to suffer the same tragedy once more.
* * *
The speaker of the Texas House of Representatives rose behind the lectern before the joint session of the legislature and ceremonially received the letter of the President of the United States from the courier. He slit the envelope and removed the message. The chamber was hushed as he scanned the single page and opened his mouth to begin reading. He closed it again, as his eyes swept the lines of text. His face flushed, then slowly paled.
He leaned over and whispered a few words to the clerk of the House, who got up and replaced the speaker at the lectern.
The speaker retired to the well of the House and took a seat. He remembered that the messenger who brought evil tidings to the king in olden times generally had his head cut off. He was afraid he wouldn’t be so lucky.
3 JULY 1998
For six months-ever since his discussion with President Wynn and Nikolai Vasilievich Grimm- Gwillam Forte had heard the time’s winged chariot hurrying near. In the past weeks, when it became apparent that no engineering miracle could be wrought that would give the Texas the blazing speed that must scare the Russians into sinking the ship in panic, the pressure had become unbearable. Forte was one of those who compulsively step on the lines on a sidewalk, though knowing it breaks his gait and slows his pace- and is stupid, to boot. So it was with the larger things in life, projects he had spawned, promises he had made: they had, somehow or other, to be reconciled; until they were, each night he went to bed a miserable man.