“How bad?”
“As bad as bad can be, Mr. President. The nays were about as numerous as Bible salesmen in Mecca.”
“That’s good.”
Silva was taken aback.
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Sit down, Manny,” the president said, motioning his aide toward a chintz-covered chair. “I’ll tell you a little bedtime story . . . Once upon a time there was a Little Red Riding Hood-no, that’s not quite true. I’d better begin again. Once upon a time there was a Big Red Hood named Ivan, an ambitious but very careful man who one day felt the breath of his fellow wolves on his neck. As a ranking member of the Kremlin hierarchy, he was naturally privy to their secrets. The most important of all was Project Lime Kiln, Russia’s plan to use the Washington Protocols to destroy our manufacturing capabilities while they themselves stockpiled grain, whereupon they would present us with an ultimatum to surrender. The story has many twists and turns, but that’s the bare bones. And the barest of all the bones is that we’d have no choice but to accept, as our defenses would by then be in shambles. We-”
“But why wasn’t I told of this, Mr. President?” Silva asked indignantly.
“Manny, there’s an old saying: He that tells a secret is another’s slave. But keeping you in the dark about Lime Kiln was more than a matter of security. Your job is to reflect the sense of the nation, without being influenced by any inside information the electorate doesn’t possess. You’re my sounding board. As your heart beats, so does that of America. I feel your forehead and know whether John Citizen is running a fever. Why do you think I never look at polls but have you read them and tell me what, if anything, they mean?”
“Because what people say and what they think so seldom correspond.”
“That’s it-and you’re expert in deducing one from the other. Now, then, what was the nation’s mood about the Washington Protocols yesterday, Manny?”
The small man with the dark eyes and six-hour stubble shrugged. “Well, Mr. President, yesterday they were for the protocols. Naturally enough, after the media gush about the manifold advantages of lower taxes thanks to decreased defense spending, the boon for the corn-belt farmers, the boom for the inner city and small industry-oh, the man-in-the-street’s for it, no question.”
“That’s yesterday. And tomorrow?”
Silva shrugged. “About the same, I’d guess. People prefer the comfortable lie to the inconvenient truth. They want to believe the Russians have changed.”
“What it amounts to,” President Wynn concluded, sinking back in the pillows and regarding the ceiling, “is that unless I rescind the invitation for the Soviet Seventeenth Fleet to visit Houston, the State of Texas will secede-that’s sure, because you can always count on somebody shooting off a gun in Texas.”
“We could send federal troops to prevent it.”
“Federal troops,” Wynn said wryly. “In the current state of our defenses, they’d need six weeks to ford the Potomac . . . What happens if I accede to Texan pressure and rescind the fleet invitation, Manny?”
Silva drew a finger across his throat.
“Impeachment-probably no later than next Friday, considering the strength of the peace-at-any-price party. The only states you could count on to vote against your ouster are California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Wyoming. I’ve already made soundings. In which case Vice-President Blackborn would be in, and his first act would probably be to reinstate the invitation. Back to square one.”
Wilson Wynn was silent. For five minutes he lay there, drumming his fingers on the night table. At last he turned to his political aide.
“Thanks for coming in, Manny. See you at the seven-thirty briefing.”
“But-but, Mr. President, what have you decided? The staff is waiting outside. What shall I tell them?”
President Wynn rolled over on his side and snapped out the light.
“Answer to both questions: nothing.”
The red hot-line telephone just sat there, silent. It had been silent when Wilson Wynn entered the Oval Office at seven-fifty, following the overnight briefing at breakfast, and it had been silent ever since. It was now eleven-thirty, and just seeing it there made Wynn nervous. More than likely, Premier and Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Vasily Vasilyevich Vavilov was sitting in his office in the Kremlin, looking at his red telephone, waiting for the proper psychological moment. Well, Wynn was good at waiting . . .
The telephone shrilled. Wilson Wynn reached for it automatically, caught himself, dropped his hand, and leaned back in his chair. He let it ring six times before he picked up the receiver and said a cheery “Hello, Vee! You caught me just as I was on my way out the door for lunch. Nice to hear from you.”
“Hiya, Will-how’s tricks?” Vasily Vasilyevich prided himself on his command of American slang, which went back, new words mixed indiscriminately with old, to the 40s.
“Not bad, if never worse,” said Wynn mischievously, knowing that Triple Vee would instantly commit to memory the phrase translated literally from the Spanish, but never heard in English.
“Good deal . . . Not bad, if never worse, eh? Yet, from what I pick up at the hustings, your not bad could become very worse at any minute.”
“Translation?”
“Governor Traynor’s declaration of independence- on July fourth, speaking of interesting timing.”
“Oh, that. You know how impulsive these Texas cowboys are-shoot first, ask questions after.”
“So you think there will be shooting?” the Russian said darkly.
“I sure hope not-not by anybody.”
“But you can’t guarantee it.”
“Who could? There must be eighty million unregistered guns in the United States-if you can believe Trud. And there’s always some hothead-on one side or the other-wanting to make a name for himself as the fastest gun in the west.”
“Then I take it that you, the president of the United States, are not recalling your official invitation for the Soviet Seventeenth High Seas Fleet to visit Houston, Texas, the day after tomorrow?”
“God-if you’ll excuse the expression-no!” said the president. “Why should I?”
“Have you communicated this to the authorities in Texas?”
“I’m afraid such a question intrudes in the internal affairs of the United States, Vee,” President Wynn noted stiffly. “But between us, I have not and will not. I alone, with the advice and consent of the Senate, have sole jurisdiction over our foreign policy. Texas has nothing to say about this visit. Nothing at all.”
“And yet,” Premier Vavilov persisted, “what if they . . . what if firing breaks out between our fleet and certain unruly elements?”
“It won’t, if the Soviet Fleet doesn’t enter Texas waters.”
“But you just said-”
“-That it’s welcome, as indeed it is. It is for you to decide as to the advisability of the visit.”
Wilson Wynn could visualize Vavilov squirming and making silent appeal to the other members of the Presidium tuned in to the telephone conversation. The reply took some time in coming.
“We-I see no reason at this moment to instruct Admiral of the Fleet Grell not to visit Houston as planned and approved by your government.” Vavilov chose his words with care.
“So there’s no problem.”
“There is if we’re shot at. I demand you provide the protection any host guarantees for the safety of his guest.”
“And how do I do that, Vee-station a soldier with his rifle at the head of every Texan?”
“Gee whiz, Will, you’re making it tough on me.”
“You can always skip Houston,” President Wynn suggested.
Ho-ho! Vavilov thought. Now I have the picture. This is all an American plot to induce the Russian fleet to avoid Houston, thus making the Russians look like cowardly fools in the face of Texan bluff. He nodded knowingly to his comrades around the table. Their smiles told him they had seen through the American trick, too.
“Nooo, Will, I think we should stick to our arrangements. But I still hope shooting can be avoided.”
“Me, too, Vee,” the president said. “Especially since once fighting erupted, I would be in a very peculiar position.”
“How so?”
“That Declaration of Texas Independence is conditional upon hostilities erupting. So long as they don’t, I’m still president of the fifty United States. But the moment they do, Texas will become a foreign country, and I shall cease to exercise control over its foreign policy.”
“Unless you send American troops to put down the rebellion.”
“Never. I will never allow American soldiers to fire on their fellow citizens,” Wynn declared firmly. “We’ve made that mistake once. Never again.”
But you won’t mind if we shoot a few of them, you cagey old fox, Vasily Vasilyevich Vavilov remarked to himself. That would solve a lot of problems for you, wouldn’t it, Wilson Wynn? Your hands would stay clean. We’d administer a badly needed taste of discipline to the rumbustious Texans, which you’d much appreciate, since they never voted for you, anyhow. Your commitments to the fleet visits and the protocols would be intact, and your Eastern-establishment constituents would be delighted to see the Texans chastised. Of course you wouldn’t shoot your fellow citizens,