A similar parochialism would overtake the United States, too. Certain common concerns-telecommunications, trunk roads, water resources-would doubtless be best administered by the dwindling national bureaucracy. But everything else-taxation, budgets, urban policy, public health, mines, education, family planning, commerce, agriculture-would become again the province of the states, as the Founding Fathers had envisioned, or even smaller political entities, where the people’s will would be applied firsthand, by-passing an expensive, cumbersome, self-aggrandizing, and, especially, growing, national bureaucracy.
The millennium, Forte realized, was not in the offing. Regional rivalries could-doubtless would-lead to strife and bloodshed. But the desire of every citizen to control his fate to the greatest extent possible would militate against once more allowing big brother in faraway Washington or Kiev to make life-and-death decisions in his name. Forte’s solution would make war a restricted, regional, modest affair rather than an international disaster. People would gravitate toward that state or city which most closely represented the kind of life they wanted for themselves and their families. Who could tell? Perhaps it would be a happier world.
The American and Russian leaders, who in seven days had not agreed on anything, at last agreed on something: they might lose the battle to maintain their ranks and privileges, but they would fight to the last breath to win the war against Ripley Forte’s brave new order..
33. MR. PRESIDENT CASTLE
17 NOVEMBER 2009
Dinner on the starlight roof of the Sam Houston Hotel was for four: the two chiefs of state and their deputies, Vice-President Castle and Deputy Premier Anatoliy Badalovich. It was arranged at the suggestion of Premier Evgeniy Luchenko, who hoped that some last-minute entente between the two leaders could produce a common front that would wreck Ripley Forte’s plans.
“We don’t have much time, considering that tomorrow our delegations must begin to leave Houston for their new homes,” Luchenko pointed out to President Turnbull as the soup plates were removed. He waited until the four waiters had brought the entree, poured the wine, and left the room before continuing. “But if we can reach an agreement tonight, I believe we can still maintain control of events in our respective countries.”
“I doubt it,” said Turnbull. He was ten years Luchenko’s senior, and at his age, optimism was a sometime thing.
“I admit it won’t be easy, with Forte’s people-read the Republic of Texas Intelligence Agency-monitoring the radio traffic between the two countries,” Luchenko persisted, “but it will be possible. We will establish back channels. Once the Presidium and I are in Washington, we will make contact with our KGB and GRU operatives who already have penetrated your government agencies. They will then relay our decisions to the respective departments in Kiev for action. If necessary, we will activate our network of sleepers for backup. Our predicament, in the last analysis, is not one of geography but of communications.”
“Your suggestion has merit,” said President Turnbull, examining his steak with a conspicuous lack of relish. Since they had arrived in Texas, scarcely a meal they had been served didn’t have steak as the main course. “It does, at least, for you Russians, who have spent years building up your espionage apparatus in the United States. But what about us? You know damned well that we’ve never had more than a handful of low-grade, scared-green part-time spies in Russia, most of them triples and most of them atomized in the Moscow holocaust. What do we use for a back channel?”
“Yes, there’s that,” Luchenko conceded. He had methodically cut up his steak into bite-sized portions, and now he impaled one on the end of his fork. With it as a foundation, with his knife he constructed a little edifice of mashed potatoes, peas and carrots, topped by a sprig of parsley. He popped it into his mouth and closed his eyes in rapture as he slowly masticated it. “The Texans have no culture,” he said, “and so, of course, their yogurt is without taste, but they do know how to broil a steak….However, I can suggest a way out of your dilemma.”
“Kill Forte?”
“That would be the optimum solution, but what I had in mind was for you, once established in Kiev, to use our KGB-GRU apparatus for relaying communications.”
“Employ the fox to carry the grapes? Oh, yes, that would be the epitome of political wisdom.”
“Can you think of another way?”
Turnbull couldn’t. There probably wasn’t another way. Forte had outsmarted them all, and there just wasn’t any way out of the Texas trap they had walked into. He controlled the nuclear plants spewing hot water into the world’s oceans. The plants were vulnerable to attack, but only at the risk of meltdown and heat emissions immeasurably worse. The men barricaded within them had provisions for at least six months. Unless the American and Russian leadership acceded to Forte’s demands and switched headquarters, the whole northern hemisphere would be drowned by flood, then crushed beneath a mile-thick sheet of ice. If they tried to avoid their fate by delaying tactics, Forte would surely inform the world of the consequences of their leaders’ acts, and they would be torn to pieces by their own wrathful constituents. No-the leaders of Russia and the United States now assembled in Houston could do only what Forte demanded and hope for the best.
And, speaking for himself, why not? Turnbull had spent a lifetime in politics. Already twice elected to the presidency, he had nowhere to go but out. He was jaded, and he was tired. Why not give Forte’s crazy idea a chance? Whatever happened could surely be no worse than World War III, which he and Luchenko had been on the verge of starting when Ripley Forte intervened.
Turnbull recognized that he, who had stood for election a dozen times, understood the popular mind better than Luchenko, who had the tunnel vision of the military mind. Luchenko seemed to believe that his regime, even headquartered in Washington, would go on indefinitely. The American president knew better. The Russian people, liberated from the suffocating hand of Big Brother, would erupt like a dormant volcano, sending hot streams of repressed energy in a hundred directions, seeking unexplored paths of political, artistic, scientific, and personal expression. Inertia and fear would continue to rule for a week, a month, a year. But when the Russian people saw the state no longer capable of exercising day-today control, they would explode like a hand grenade. And God help anyone who tried to pick up the pieces and reconstitute the monolithic state.
And the Americans? They would probably react much like the Russians. Freed from the top-heavy bureaucracy in Washington, freed from the necessity of paying taxes for idle welfare recipients, pork-barrel construction projects, protection money to uneconomic industries, subsidies to millionaire farmers, millions of paper-shuffling federal employees, and unwieldy and (now) unnecessary armed forces, they would concentrate their attention, resources, and vigor on making for themselves and their families a better life, which has always been the main concern of Americans.
“No,” Turnbull said finally, “I can think of no other way to avert our fate than to kill Ripley Forte. But I won’t consent to such a barbarity for two very good reasons: first, it’s murder, and while an American president may declare war that will kill millions of his people, he cannot consent to the killing of a single individual.”
“Hypocrisy!” retorted Luchenko.
“True-and also an irony. Still, it’s a fact. Besides, Ripley Forte may, in his own warped and devious way, be doing the world a favor.”
“That’s nonsense. But you mentioned two reasons.”
“Yes, in addition to the moral, there’s the practical one: before you can kill him, you have to find him.”
“Indeed. But remember, Forte is a citizen of the United States as well as Texas. He’d answer an appeal from his president for a personal meeting to discuss his proposal.”
“Whereupon I’d have him shot, I suppose?”
“No, no,” said the Russian premier, “the KGB would. That way both our consciences would be clear, and we’d have achieved a nice division of responsibility.”
Turnbull shook his head emphatically. “No.”
“Is there nothing that I can say which will make you change your mind, no political compromises we can reach, no inducements I can offer?”
“None.”
Premier Evgeniy Luchenko sighed and regarded the older man with compassion. Turnbull was obviously a decent, honorable man, but decent, honorable men can rarely make the distasteful decisions and perilous compromises that are the daily bread of a successful leader. After a lifetime of teething on the flabby American body politic, in which statesmen died in bed rather than in prison cells or on the gallows as was customary elsewhere, Turnbull still had not learned to bite the bullet. Of course Turnbull, according to the secret report provided by Castle, was dying of cancer, even though he looked healthy enough. He probably wanted more than anything else, even than the security of his country, an undisturbed mind and the applause of his people ringing in his ears as he lay down for that final, forever sleep.