“What we’ve got,” Forte said, “is this: a lot of wild ideas, some of which the Russians may already have planned for us. None of them are what we really want.”
“Which is?” said Red Cloud.
“Something strictly defensive. Something nongenocidal. You’ll notice that nearly all the suggestions so far proposed involve mass extermination. Despite Stalin’s demonstration that it can be done, and though I have no great love for the Russians, I still don’t see the humanity, much less the wisdom, of wiping them out wholesale. Personally, I think we’ve been on the wrong track.”
Mansour looked up. “What’s the right one?”
“Psychological. They’ve defrauded the free world- not to mention this innocent babe in the Chittagong and Sevastopol operations-so often that they’ve forgotten they’re susceptible to a good con, just like everybody else.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” said Mansour. “Back in the 1930s, Hitler so mesmerized both friend and enemy with his aura of invincibility that he rolled right over Europe even though he had only a fraction of the manpower of the Allies, and fewer aircraft and tanks than the French alone. It was all applied psychology, and it was the fact that he suckered us-not that he was a mass murderer, not that he came so close to winning-that I believe is the basis for our hatred of him. Still, he was a very shrewd individual, and he had the political, military, and propaganda machine to work with.”
“None of which you or your vaunted ‘experts’ possess,” said Red Cloud acidly. “All you’ve achieved in this convocation of savants is to collect a lot of silly ideas unworthy of being dignified by being put in writing.” She pushed the pile of papers away. “Why don’t you just admit failure, like the men you’re supposed to be?”
“Because all the cards haven’t been played yet,” said Forte.
“Nor will they, considering you’re not playing with a full deck.”
Forte glowered but said nothing.
Red Cloud, unaccustomed to having the last word, laughed. “What a pathetic object you are. You inhabit a dream world, a world in which the great Ripley Forte can accomplish any prodigy, no matter how outlandish.”
“I’ve accomplished a few,” said Forte evenly. “I brought in the Alamo when everybody, you among them, said it couldn’t be done.”
Red Cloud reddened. “It was scarcely an individual effort, as I recall. Besides, bringing the Soviet Union to heel is a feat several orders of magnitude more difficult than simply bringing an iceberg to port. No-I am being, as usual, too charitable. It is, in a word, impossible.” She pushed her chair back and got up to go. “I’m afraid I can’t waste any more time on these children’s games, so you’ll forgive me if I leave you. It’s time to feed young Ripley.”
She was halfway to the door when Forte spoke. “Want to bet?”
“What-that I’ll feed him?” she said over her shoulder.
“No. That I’ll bring the Russians to heel.”
“You?”
“Me.”
“Like a shot. What do you want to bet?”
Forte leaned back in his chair and inspected his jagged fingernails. “You’ve got Raynes Oceanic Resources back. That makes you maybe the richest working woman in the world. How would you like to be the richest person in the world excepting, maybe, Joe Man-sour here?”
“State your proposition,” said Red Cloud, Her nostrils dilated, her eyes flashed, as she heard the clarion call to a new battle of wits with Ripley Forte.
“If I don’t make Russia sue for peace”, within the next six weeks, say, you get Forte Ocean Industries-every last share. I’ll go further: I promise you every single dollar I otherwise possess, in corporate and personal assets. If I lose, you get it all.”
“Put it in writing.”
“Gladly. But first, let me tell you what you’re gambling.”
“Raynes Oceanic Resources? I’d bet twenty corporations just like it on your proposition.”
“Well,” said Forte slowly, “Raynes Oceanic Resources, of course. But since Forte Ocean Industries just happens to be about twenty times the size of Raynes, and growing fast, you’ll have to sweeten the pot to get yourself a deal.”
“Name it.”
“Ripley Junior. Whoever wins gets custody of the boy. No visiting privileges for the loser. No contact whatever until he’s twenty-one.”
“You are a bastard!” she flared.
Forte leaned back in his chair and roared with laughter. “See?” he said, turning to Joe Mansour, who had watched the exchange without changing expression. “She imagines she’s a captain of industry. Hell, she’s nothing but a petticoat in a lumberjack’s world. She’s all fired up to lose her cozy little company-which she didn’t do a lick of work to get-first as a result of my half brother Ned’s death, then as a free gift from a Russian mole-but when it comes to risking something, in which she’s made a personal investment, she folds up like a card table. The typical female-all whine, no spine.” He got up and gathered his papers together.
Red Cloud stood transfixed, trembling with rage and frustration. He’d struck the most sensitive nerve. She had always been proud of her ability to get the better of men in a man’s world, and had proved her toughness and business acumen repeatedly. As for Forte’s boast that he, single-handed, could bring the Russians to the bargaining table, it was just too absurd. Were he to so much as show his face abroad, if the Americans didn’t kill him, the Russians would. On the other hand, the mere thought of losing young Ripley to that ape, his father, was more than she could bear. She would die before taking the one chance in a billion that the Texas windbag could do what he claimed.
Forte walked toward the door. As he passed her, he patted her patronizingly on the backside. “See you later, Captain” he sneered.
It was the sneer that did it.
“Write up the goddamned agreement!” she snarled back at him. “Have it on my desk in an hour.” And she walked through the open door, slamming it behind her with all the strength she could muster.
Forte, suddenly sober, looked at the closed door. Then he turned back to the table and resumed his chair.
“I hope you know what the hell you’re doing,” Man-sour said doubtfully, flicking imaginary lint from the sleeve of his dinner jacket.
“So do I,” said Forte. “But you can’t say she didn’t have fair warning. I told her all the cards hadn’t been played.” He picked up a paper from the pile in front of him. Written by a distinguished Hungarian scientist, it was only five pages long. “For a minute there I even toyed with the idea of dealing this one from the top of the deck.”
“Now,” said Mansour, “that would have been a novelty. …”
Three days later Forte flew from Saldanha down to Mansour’s palace-Mansour himself called it a “cottage”-on Table Mountain. Waiting for him were the chiefs of the atomic energy commissions of the Benipic countries-Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and China. Yussef Mansour had sent an urgent personal invitation to each of them, and backed it up with an honorarium-half of it paid when they stepped aboard the private plane he had laid on for each -that would enable them to live in sybaritic ease the rest of their lives.
“You carry the weight of the world’s future on your shoulders,” Forte told the six men and one woman assembled in the conference room. “What I am going to ask of you will, no doubt, shock and disturb you. It is nothing less than a declaration of war against our common enemy, the Soviet Union, by nuclear means.
“I realize that the specter of a worldwide nuclear conflagration appalls you. Well, it appalls me, too. But I can think of no other way out of our dilemma. You know what will happen if the burning of Russian lignite continues unabated. Bangladesh will be drowned. So will Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Mangalore, Surat, Alexandria, Cairo, Djakarta, Surabaya, Port Harcourt, Lagos, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Canton, Tsingtao, Amoy, Hang-chow, Ningpo-well, the list is long. Too long, your leaders have been forced to conclude, to even think about evacuating your coastal populations and moving them to higher ground. The process, it carried to completion in the United States, will wreck its economy. For your countries even to attempt such wholesale relocation of your endangered fellow citizens will cause confusion, stampede, revolution. It must not be allowed.”
“But there must be alternatives,” said Philomen Dutt, the saturnine Indian scientist.
“There are-many. For weeks we’ve had the best scientific minds in the free world grappling with the problem. Dozens of counterstrategies have been proposed. All of them are unworkable. All, I should say, but one.” He outlined it in detail. His listeners were skeptical. They discussed the implications of the plan far into the night. By morning they had to accede. There was, they reluctantly decided, no other way.
27. MISH-MISH PASHA