The President stirred. His first instinct had been to put the extraction operation on hold. How could he explain any of this? Either by an act of commission or omission, they were discussing the best way to prevent something unfavorable from happening to America’s principal enemy. But you can’t even say that in public, the President reflected. If you said out loud that the Russians are our enemy, the papers would throw a fit. The Soviets have thousands of nuclear warheads aimed at us, but we can’t risk offending their sensibilities . . .
He remembered his two face-to-face meetings with the man, Andrey Il’ych Narmonov, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Younger than he was, the President reflected. Their initial conversations had been cautious, each man feeling out the other, looking both for weaknesses and common ground, for advantage and compromise. A man with a mission, a man who probably did wish to change things, the President thought—
But is that a good thing? What if he did decentralize their economy, introduce market forces, give them a little freedom—not much, of course, but enough to get things moving? Quite a few people were warning him about that possibility: Imagine a country with the Soviets’ political will, backed up by an economy that could deliver quality goods both in the civilian and military sectors. Would it make the Russian people believe again in their system; would it revive the sense of mission that they’d had in the 1930s? We might be faced with a more dangerous enemy than ever before.
On the other side, he was told that there is no such thing as a little freedom—one could ask Duvalier of Haiti, Marcos of the Philippines, or the ghost of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. The momentum of events could bring the Soviet Union out of the dark ages and into the 20th-century era of political thought. It might take a generation, perhaps two, but what if the country did start to evolve into something approaching a liberal state? There was another lesson of history: Liberal democracies don’t make war on one another.
Some choice I have, the President thought. I can be remembered as the regressive idiot who reinstated the Cold War in all its grim majesty—or the Pollyanna who expected the leopard to change its spots, only to find that it had grown bigger, sharper fangs. Jesus, he told himself as he stared at his two interlocutors, I’m not thinking about success at all, only the consequences of failure.
That’s one area in which America and Russia have paralleled their history—our postwar governments have never lived up to the expectations of our people, have they? I’m the President, I’m supposed to know what the Right Thing is. That’s why the people elected me. That’s what they’re paying me for, God, if they only knew what frauds we all are. We’re not talking about how to succeed. We’re talking about who’ll leak the reason for the failure of policy. Right here in the Oval Office, we’re discussing who’ll get the blame if something we haven’t yet decided upon doesn’t work.
“Who knows about this?”
Judge Moore held his hands out. “Admiral Greer, Bob Ritter, and me at CIA. A few field personnel know about the proposed operation—we had to send out the heads-up signal—but they do not know the political issues, and never will. They don’t need to know. Aside from that, only we three at the Agency have the entire picture. Add you, sir, and Dr. Pelt, and that makes five.”
“And already we’re talking about leaks! Goddamn it!” the President swore with surprising passion. “How did we ever get so screwed up as this!”
Everyone sobered up. There was nothing like a presidential curse to settle people down. He looked at Moore and Pelt, his chief intelligence advisor, and his national-security advisor. One was pleading for the life of a man who had served America faithfully and well, at peril of his life; the other took the long, cold look at the realpolitik and saw a historic opportunity more important than any single human life.
“Arthur, you’re saying that this agent—and I don’t even want to know his name—has been giving us critically important data for thirty years, up to and including this laser project that the Russians have operating; you say that he is probably in danger, and it’s time to run the risk of getting him out of there, that we have a moral obligation to do so,”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“And you, Jeff, you say that the timing’s bad, that the revelation of a leak so high up in their government could endanger Narmonov politically, could topple him from his leadership position and replace him with a government less attractive to us.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“And if this man dies because we haven’t helped him?”
“We would lose important information,” Moore said. “And it might have no tangible difference in its effect on Narmonov. And we’d be betraying a trust to a man who has served us faithfully and well for thirty years.”
“Jeff, can you live with that?” the President asked his national-security advisor.
“Yes, sir, I can live with that. I don’t like it but I can live with it. With Narmonov we have already gotten an agreement on intermediate nuclear arms, and we have a chance at one on strategic forces.”
It’s like being a judge. Here I have two advocates who believe fully in their positions. I wonder if their principles would be quite so firm if they were in my chair, if they had to make the decision?
But they didn’t run for President.
This agent’s been serving the United States since I was a junior prosecutor handling whores in night court.
Narmonov may be the best chance we’ve had for world peace since God knows when.
The President stood and walked to the windows behind his desk. They were very thick, to protect him from people with guns. They could not protect him against the duties of his office. He looked at the south lawn, but found no answers. He turned back.
“I don’t know. Arthur, you can get your assets in place, but I want your word that nothing will happen without my authorization. No mistakes, no initiative, no action at all without my say-so. I’m going to need time on this one. We have time, don’t we?”
“Yes, sir. It will take several more days before we have the pieces in place.”
“I’ll let you know when I make my decision.” He shook hands with both men and watched them leave. The President had five more minutes before his next appointment, and used the time to visit the bathroom that adjoins the office. He wondered if there were any underlying symbolism in the act of washing his hands, or did he just want the excuse to look at himself in the mirror? And you’re supposed to be the man with all the fucking answers! the image told him. You don’t even know why you went to the bathroom! The President smiled at that. It was funny, funny in a way that few other men would ever understand.
“So what the hell do I tell Foley?” Ritter snapped twenty minutes later.
“Back off, Bob,” Moore warned. “He’s thinking about it. We don’t need an immediate decision, and a ‘maybe’ beats hell out of a ‘no.’ ”
“Sorry, Arthur. It’s just that—damn it, I’ve tried to get him to come out before. We can’t let this man go down.”
“I’m sure he won’t make a final decision until I’ve had a chance to talk with him again. For the moment, tell Foley to continue the mission. And I want a fresh look at Narmonov’s political vulnerability. I get the impression that Alexandrov may be on the way out—he’s too old to take over from the current man; the Politburo wouldn’t stand for replacing a relatively young man with an old one, not after the death parade they had a few years back. Who does that leave?”
“Gerasimov,” Ritter said at once. “Two others may be in the running, but he’s the ambitious one. Ruthless, but very, very smooth. The Party bureaucracy likes him because he did such a nice job on the dissidents. And if he wants to make a move, it’ll have to be pretty soon. If the arms agreement goes through, Narmonov gains a lot of prestige, and the political clout that goes with it. If Alexandrov isn’t careful, he’ll miss the boat entirely, get moved out himself, and Narmonov will have his seat nice and safe for years.”
“That’ll take at least five years to accomplish,” Admiral Greer noted, speaking for the first time. “He may not have five years. We do have those indications that Alexandrov may be on the way out. If that’s more than a rumor, it might force his hand.”
Judge Moore looked up at the ceiling. “It sure would be easier to deal with the bastards if they had a predictable way of running things.” Of course, we have it, and they can’t predict us.