Authors: Allen Drury
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Political, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Spies & Politics, #Assassinations, #Thrillers
Again their eyes met and locked; and eventually, this time, it was Shulatov’s that dropped—but only to lift again after a moment to meet his with another bland and disarming smile, accompanied by a characteristic shrug.
“Mr. President,” he said patiently, “there is no need for us to become heated. You truly say that things are very difficult here for me and our new government. The people demand of us stability and leadership: much remains to be done. Surely you can see that my colleagues and I cannot possibly leave at this moment to go to China with you. It would be impossible. Later, perhaps … later. But not at this moment.…
“Mr. President”—his tone and expression became earnest, respectful, politely admonitory—
“you
go to China! Take with you our assurances of friendship, our willingness to cooperate, our desire for peace! Tell our new counterparts in Peking that we understand their problems as I am sure they must understand ours. Make your suggestions to them, Mr. President—urge them to cooperate as you have urged me! Be our emissary as well as the world’s. And then—return to us! Bring us back their agreement and their pledges and their plans for compromise! Bring back
their
promise to allow an international police force to invade their country,
their
promise to withdraw behind their borders,
their
program for disarmament. And
then
we will sit down with you and, using their agreement as basis, we will plan for peace and decide how to stabilize the world.
“But do not ask me to agree to anything without knowing what they will agree to, Mr. President. Surely, you must see I am not being unreasonable about that!”
And earnest, respectful, politely friendly if just possibly a touch self-satisfied, he sat back and looked blandly up and down the American side.
And again the President of the United States thought bleakly to himself:
Exactly so.
Outwardly, however, he gave no sign. After a moment he nodded thoughtfully.
“What you say seems reasonable enough, Mr. President. And of course the Chinese will want to know your position also. What am I to tell them? That you completely reject an international peace-keeping force along the border to protect them from another sneak attack? That you refuse to enter into an agreement not to cross your frontier again and invade their territory? That you intend to rebuild your armaments as fast as possible to the point where you will once more be a major threat to them?”
This time, he noted with a grim satisfaction, the consternation was on the other side and it had hit so fast that there was no time to dissemble. Shulatov and his colleagues looked openly dismayed. It was not with any bland smile that his antagonist responded to him now.
“Mr. President!” he cried indignantly. “How dare you misrepresent our position so unfairly? I have never said any of those things! I have never said one of them! Not once have I ever—”
“You haven’t said the opposite,” Orrin remarked in an unimpressed tone. “You have had your chance to agree to these protections for the Chinese and for yourselves and for all of us, and you have refused. I submit I am not being unfair at all, Mr. President. The logical inference to be drawn from your position is exactly as I state it. I shall so inform the Chinese.”
“Mr. President,” Shulatov said, and with what was quite clearly a major effort of will he forced his voice down, his breathing into a more normal rhythm, his face into calmer and less agitated lines. “Mr. President, I ask you not to draw inferences and not to prejudice our case with the Chinese by such statements. I have said we do not trust them, true, and I have said we must have certain things for our protection, true, but I have never said we wanted more war with them or had any desire to attack them again. I will never say those things, Mr. President, because they are not true.”
“Very well, then,” he said, “I must have your promise that I can tell them that you wish to reach a genuine cooperative agreement on these three basic points. And I must have your promise that when I return here, you
will
agree and you
will
cooperate. Otherwise, I shall have no choice but to tell them exactly what I said.”
He sat back and folded his hands before him on the table, his expression impassive and unyielding. Many things crossed the shrewd face opposite: obviously a major internal struggle was under way, accompanied by little flutters down the ranks of the new government.
Finally Shulatov leaned forward, extended his hands palm upward, shrugged, smiled.
“Mr. President,” he said, tone once more most reasonable, “let us not complicate matters. I have told you right along that we are willing to help stabilize the world—indeed we have no choice, we must, for the sake of Russia. So you state it as you please. We will do what we can to help. My government and I agree to that.” He looked sharply along the table. “Is it not so, citizens?”
“Yes, Citizen!” murmured many voices, and many bright, eager smiles and head-noddings besought the friendship and understanding of the American side.
“Then I think,” the President of the United States of America said, “that we had better go see the press and tell them what our understanding is.”
“By all means,” agreed the President of the United States of Russia most heartily. “By all means!”
And presently, after they had stated it in a press conference that was held to a terse fifteen minutes in the crowded Great Hall of the Kremlin, it appeared in headlines that did not erase the growing misgivings throughout the world that Earth’s agony might not be over yet.
Knox, Shulatov reach “agreement in principle” on arms cut, end to imperialism, international peace force. Details to await President’s return from Peking, where he flies tonight. Sporadic civil fighting continues in many areas of both countries as new governments seek to strengthen hold. Death toll from atomic exchange expected to near thirty million as refugees pour in.
Chinese express “grave disappointment’ at lack of firm agreement in Moscow. President may face tough negotiating in next phase of peace effort.
And that he would, he thought with a sigh as Air Force One and its accompanying press planes rose into the air above Moscow and turned east: that he would. Tougher, in all probability, than what he had faced here, now that the Chinese were receiving an increasingly clear picture of Russian intransigence.
The way was open, now, for a return to the old ways of obstruction, subversion, evasion, deceit.
The way was open for a return to war.
“Tell me,” he said abruptly as they reached cruising altitude and leveled off for the long night journey, “was I too harsh, do you think? Should I have been milder? Should I have been tougher? Do I interpret the situation correctly, or am I all wrong?”
Around the little conference table in the forward cabin they stared back at him with somber faces. His predecessor, by tacit agreement, led the response.
“I think you did about as well as possible under the circumstances,” William Abbott said slowly. An expression of sudden disgust touched his face. “I don’t believe the tricky bastards have learned one damned thing.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Senator Munson said. Senator Richardson uttered a confirming grunt.
“It seems to me,” he said, “that it’s as though the war had never been. The atomic exchange, the devastation, the dead—none of it ever happened. The military just took over from the commissars, and here we go again.”
“What do you think, Tommy?” the President inquired. “You’re our resident optimist. How did they seem to you?”
“Not good,” the little Justice said in a somber tone, his normal ebullience given way to a profound uneasiness. “I kept hoping they would give you a really affirmative response. But”—his face turned bleak at the thought of what this could mean—“they did not.”
“No,” he said with an equal bleakness, “they did not. So where do we go from here—assuming, as Arly does, I think correctly, that what we are facing is a military take-over under the guise of a civil revolt? Should I go all out in threatening them? Or should I keep trying to reason?”
“Why were any of us ever naïve enough to think,” Bob Leffingwell inquired moodily of no one in particular, “that when the Communists finally fell it would be anything
but
a military government that would succeed them? You keep a nation in chains for six decades and the machinery of oppression isn’t going to vanish that easily. It’s just going to acquire some new managers.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “So do I get tougher, or do I go along with the pretense that it’s a democratic civilian government that I can maybe, just possibly, if I talk long enough and gently enough, persuade to return to sanity and join the rest of us in keeping the peace?”
“It did not appear to me,” Blair Hannah remarked, “that any amount of talk and gentle persuasion is going to do the least bit of good. It appeared to me that force is still the only language they understand in Moscow.”
“So what do we do then?” the President inquired somewhat tartly. “Lead a world crusade to isolate and conquer Russia? I think I made the threat strong enough to give them something to think about, but they aren’t fools. Shulatov knows as well as I do that such a thing would be enormously difficult to organize, if it could be done at all. He knows time is on his side if he wants to keep on being intransigent.” His face again turned bleak. “He knows it isn’t on mine.”
“But he knows his country is half ruined,” Hal protested. “He knows its peoples are in such a state of panic that they could turn on his government tomorrow. He knows he can’t risk more atomic war—”
“And even under those conditions,” his father said in the same bleak way, “men will gamble on the edge of hell that somehow
they
are the ones who are going to manage the trick of continuing to be evil, and still survive. He and his government apparently think they can do it:
they think they can do it.
Somehow
they’re
going to be able to cling to all their ambitions, all their deceits, all their selfishness, all their cupidity, all their defiance of the hope of nations, the word of God and the rule of love, and come out on top, free to go right on destroying the peace, destroying mankind, destroying the world.”
“They must not be allowed,” Justice Davis said, his face white with the strain and worry of it all.
“They must not be allowed.”
“They will not be,” the President said flatly. “Although,” he added with the quick, wry honesty that had always characterized Orrin Knox, “at the moment I’m damned if I know how I’m going to stop them.…”
“A great deal will depend on what you find in Peking, won’t it, Mr. President, sir?” the Speaker inquired into the silence that followed. “Hadn’t maybe we’d best wait and see what we find there, instead of worryin’ too much about it right now? Isn’t there somethin’ might happen there that will show us the way? Aren’t we mebbe worryin’ too much?”
“That’s a comforting thought, Jawbone,” the President agreed with a certain dryness, “and I’d like to believe it if I could.”
“You got anything better to believe, Mr. President, sir?” Jawbone inquired quietly. “You got anything better to believe, now?”
For a long moment Orrin studied him thoughtfully. Then he nodded concession.
“No: you’re right, Jawbone. I haven’t got anything better to believe.”
“Then let’s hope, Mr. President!” the Speaker cried triumphantly. “Let’s hope! Let’s don’t be mopin’ and moanin’ ’cause they’s been a li’l ole temporary setback, a li’l ole temporary hostility, mebbe, in Moscow. They’ll come around, Mr. President, they’ll come around! Wait until they see you cozyin’ up to the Chinese, Mr. President. Wait until they see that! They’ll come around, mighty fast!”
“Is that what I’m really going to have to do, Jawbone?” he inquired moodily. “Is that what it’s really going to take?”
“You said yourself,” Bob Munson pointed out with equal moodiness, “that men don’t change. They still understand the balance of power, even now.”
“Power politics!” Hal exclaimed bitterly. “Power politics! The same old thing! Is that what he’s got to do? Who’s going down the same old path, then? Who’s subverting peace and endangering the world and flirting with war, then? Can’t
we
ever do anything better, either—even now?”
“
I
pray we can,” Justice Davis said with a desperate gravity into the silence that abruptly fell again.
“I pray we can.”
“Don’t you think, Tommy,” the President asked quietly, “that I am praying too?”
And that, essentially, was all that he or anyone could do, although their inconclusive talk went on for another half hour until he finally pointed out firmly that it was past midnight, they wouldn’t get much sleep at best, and they had better try to get at least a little.
After they retired to their seats and he to the President’s private cabin, he sat for a long time staring out into the blackness that enclosed the three tiny cylinders of light hurtling his party and the press toward Peking. They were on a far-northerly course to avoid passing over the major war areas, and only once was the blackness broken in the more than two hours that he sat sleepless and brooding.
Far below he saw a minuscule illumination, hazy, obscure, almost hidden: the fires of a village or hamlet, he supposed, somewhere in the vast empty reaches of Asiatic Russia.
Hello down there,
he thought.
Do you know we are passing, and are you praying too?
But no answer came back, and swiftly the pinpoint vanished.
Presently he buzzed for the White House physician, asked for a sleeping pill, received it. Presently he slept, as did, he hoped, most of his companions on this strange fantastic voyage into the future—or the past, as the fates might eventually decree. Very soon would come Peking, and they would need their strength.
2
This time they were not met by an escort. Their captain reported contact with Peking when they crossed the border, rousing them from fitful, uneasy sleep. But no exuberant jets sailed up to meet them in the growing light, no cheerful young voices cried out an innocent enthusiasm soon to be subverted by cold and calculating elders. At regular intervals impersonal voices contacted them, at regular intervals the captain reported the contacts. It was all very businesslike, and in a way it was more encouraging and more heartening than the puppy-dog effulgence with which they had been met when they entered Russia. At least they were not being misled, however innocently, about the mood they would find when they landed.
“There’s one thing to be said for starting at dead level,” Bill Abbott remarked finally. “You know the only place you can go is up.”
An hour and a half later, somewhat groggy from lack of sleep but shaved, dressed, decently fed and in a reasonably optimistic mood, they saw beneath them the endless drab roofs and occasional shining temples and palaces of Peking; and presently, to further terse commands from the airport, their convoy came down, the doors opened, from the press planes the reporters and photographers swarmed forward, and at the top of the steps the President of the United States appeared and stood for a moment, silent and unsmiling, looking out into the gray, hazy, ice-cold morning.
Below he saw a red carpet, a group of men as drab and gray as the morning. He stared at them, they stared at him: no false exuberance, no artificial welcome here. The only sounds and the only signs of life came from the photographers shouting and tumbling over one another in their frantic competition. He suddenly found the atmosphere as stagy, in its way, as Moscow’s false and phony airport camaraderie. He permitted his face to register annoyance, holding the expression long enough for the cameras to record it. Then he lifted his head with a sharp impatience and started down the steps. As if on signal a rickety band off to one side began playing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and suddenly smiling men were stepping forward to hold out their hands and welcome him in polite and carefully modulated phrases.
A minute later, standing before the inevitable microphones alongside the lean-faced, impassive man to whom the rest deferred and whom they introduced to him as “President Lin Kung-chow,” he heard words of greeting that immediately presented him with the problem he faced.
“Mr. President,” Lin said in a smooth and thoroughly adequate English, “on behalf of the peoples and the new democratic government of the United Chinese Republic, we greet you and welcome you gratefully to our land.
“We are pleased that you take the time to visit us, and we hope your stay will be fruitful for China, for peace and for the world.
“We are especially pleased,” he said, and his voice, still smooth, turned subtly harder and more emphatic, “that you have first visited Moscow and then have come to us, because it has given you the opportunity to find out the attitude there. That attitude, Mr. President, does not promise well for the future of world peace.
“Here in China, where we have suffered great casualties and devastation because of the unprovoked sneak atomic attack of the former Russian government, we had hoped that the new government would be as dedicated to peace and understanding between our two countries as we. Alas, Mr. President, we do not find this so. We have followed the results of your visit to Moscow with great interest. They have not encouraged us, Mr. President. We feel a deep concern for the world because of the way you were treated there. We feel little has been learned by the new leaders of Russia. We regard this as a great tragedy for us and for the world—but most of all, for the great Russian peoples, who will only suffer further if their new leaders do not permit them to make peace with us.
“Mr. President”—he turned and looked directly at Orrin, who with considerable effort was managing to conceal his concern and remain impassively listening—“we pledge you the full cooperation of the United Chinese Republic in your great journey for peace. We will work with you, Mr. President. Together we will lead the world back to sanity. Together we will make peace. You may rely on that.”
And with a grave little bow he gestured to the microphone and stepped back. Orrin stepped forward and stood for a moment as calm and impassive as his host. There and wherever men watched his face and heard his voice, a profound hush fell. There raced through his mind several courses of action. He decided, characteristically, upon one as blunt and straightforward as his host’s.
“President Lin,” he said, his words booming through the misty air while a wan sun struggled unsuccessfully to break through, “my colleagues and I appreciate your cordial and constructive greeting.
“We, too. Mr. President, have been profoundly disappointed by the attitude we found in Moscow.” There was a movement of satisfaction at his side, a sudden intake of breath from many in the media. “We, too, had hoped to find a more open and more willing approach to the problems of peace. We, too, had hoped there would be more understanding of the true situation that faces the world, more genuine willingness to give up old attitudes and forge new approaches to it. We came away, like you, disturbed and apprehensive.
“But, Mr. President”—and though he was speaking to the Chinese he knew his message would not be lost upon Shulatov and his colleagues, to whom it was really addressed—“we are not discouraged. We are especially not discouraged now that you have spoken. We are, in fact, much heartened by your willingness to cooperate with us and with all the peoples of the earth in our great universal search for peace. We are glad you are with us. Together, as you truly say, we will achieve our goal.
“It is my intention, Mr. President,” he said, and now he was again addressing his host and the message was not lost there, either, “to return to Moscow after I leave here. I shall convey to the leaders of the United States of Russia the results of our talks. I shall relate to them the examples of your willingness to cooperate. I shall tell them of your unselfishness, your vision, your statesmanship. I shall tell them of the sacrifices you will gladly make for the common cause of humanity. I shall tell them how China has rejoined the world of sane and responsible nations. I will tell them of her sane and responsible leaders.
“Then, Mr. President, I think we may find a different attitude in Moscow. Inspired by your example, I believe the United States of Russia will join us in our search for peace. I believe then we will all be together, and together I believe we will achieve our common goal of peace and safety for all men, happiness and prosperity for all nations.
“Mr. President and gentlemen of the United Chinese Republic, we stand ready to assist in any way we can. Let us begin.”
He turned and shook hands gravely with his host, turned back and waved for a moment, smiling now, at the applauding crowd of officials, colleagues and newsmen; caught the eye of Walter Dobius, crowded up close beneath the rim of the platform, and exchanged a glance in which Walter said as clearly as if he had spoken aloud,
You hope!
and he replied with a grim yet jaunty determination,
Yes, I hope!
—and
presently was in a limousine, followed by his party, the Chinese and the press, being hurried away along ramshackle, winding streets, past undemonstrative but politely attentive crowds, to the American Embassy.
Because of the night flight, they would spend most of the day in bed. Promptly at 8 p.m. they would meet their Chinese counterparts in the embassy for the first of their projected talks. Their attitude was slightly more optimistic, but here, also—wary.
“Mr. President,” Lin Kung-chow said gravely after the introduction of his Cabinet, “I first would like you and your friends to see photographs of some of the things China has suffered in these past few days. Then you will better understand us and why we feel as we do on certain things. Later, if you have time, we should like to fly you and the press to various points in the devastated areas so that you may see for yourselves.”
“We may not have time,” Orrin said, “but if we do, we shall certainly accept. In the meantime, I think it would be very helpful to see your pictures.”
“Thank you,” Lin said. He pressed a button under the table edge. A group of youthful army officers entered and set up a screen and two projectors, one for slides, one for movies. The room settled down, the lights went off, a machine began to whir. The slides came first.
For approximately fifteen minutes flattened buildings, shattered cities, wasted farmlands, bloated livestock, sagging bridges, leveled hills, crossed the screen to the steady
click-click!
of the projector. At several points, including panoramic shots of absolutely leveled Suchow, Lanchow and Harbin, Lin raised a hand, the projector stopped, the images remained for terrible, lingering moments on the screen. For the rest it was a steady parade of dreadful devastation, Hiroshima and Nagasaki multiplied a hundredfold.
Then came the movies. They too were approximately fifteen minutes in length. Gaunt specters crossed the screen in rapid procession, some in panic, some in shock, some literally torn in half, some mere bloody scraps of flesh hanging on what used to be human frames. Before the showing ended, Tommy Davis, Hal, Blair Hannah and four of the Chinese had to leave the room. It was only by the exercise of the sternest self-control that the rest did not follow. After the final frame—another long pan of Harbin with the still-wriggling stump of what had once been a baby looming large in the foreground—the lights went up to reveal two dozen very shaken men. For several long moments no one stirred. Finally President Lin spoke in a choked voice heavy with emotion.
“This is what happened to China. It can never be forgiven. Never!”
“I don’t blame you for feeling that way,” the President said, his own voice showing the strain of what he had just seen, “but you must remember the same thing happened to the Russians, too.”
“They began it!” Lin said sharply.
“Did they?” Orrin asked. “Will anybody ever really know?”
“They began the use of nuclear weapons!” Lin said in the same sharp tone. “There is no dispute about that.”
“That is true,” the President conceded. “But don’t you think they have paid for it a hundred times over?”
“A thousand would not be too much,” Lin said coldly. “And I do not understand that you found any evidence of reformation as a result of it.”
“Some,” the President said. “Not as much as we would have liked, but some. I can tell you one thing, however”—and his tone grew as cold as Lin’s—“if you persist in vengeance and vindictiveness—if you are unable to realize that both your peoples, and in a sense all peoples everywhere, have suffered equally—then there will be no hope for peace and this mission is aborted before it begins. Is that the news you want me to take back to Moscow? Is that the message I am to report to the world?
More
of this insanity? Is that what you want, Mr. President?”
“No,” Lin said harshly, “it is not what China wants. But China does want the guilty punished. There can be no lasting peace without that.”
“Then there can be no lasting peace,” the President said crisply, “because if you have no charity, no compassion and no willingness to let bygones be bygones in the realization that all have suffered equally, then there is no foundation, no bridge, no nothing. You might as well begin fighting again and I might as well go home.”
“There can be a peace with justice,” Lin said, his tone more reasonable, and along his side of the table impassive men of one skin color but many diverse physical types nodded earnest agreement. “That is the only kind of peace there can be.”
“Then perhaps our first objective,” the President said, his tone more friendly, “should be to define justice. Perhaps if we can agree on that, we can go from there. What is it, in the view of the new government of China?”
“A Russian apology, before the world, for the nuclear sneak attack upon us,” Lin said promptly. “A pledge never to do it again. Russian reparations to rebuild our cities and care for our people. A reduction of arms so that Russia will never again be able to wage war. An abandonment for all time of Russian imperialism. A Russian guarantee of our borders forever.”
“And what will China give in return?”
“Why should China give anything, Mr. President? China is the aggrieved party.”
“I repeat,” he said sharply, “we will never know who began this war, which started in Africa under circumstances that will never be clear. I grant you,” he continued firmly as Lin gave him a stubborn look and started to interrupt, “that the Russians—the old government, the Soviet government—launched the first atomic attack, and that it was a sneak attack. But that came within the context of a war already begun, and I suspect that the only reason China did not strike first was because she was not quite prepared to do so.”
“China would never launch nuclear war!” Lin snapped indignantly.
“China did not launch it,” the President said flatly, “and that is the only fact I know.…In any event, it happened. I can tell you on the basis of my visit to Russia, Mr. President, that China did her part once the issue was joined. You inflicted very heavy devastation upon Russia, too, you know. The Russians could show you slides and films just as dreadful. What I am here to find out is:
Where does it stop?
Where do we put the period and say, ‘The End’? When do we start forgiving and start building the new peaceful world that mankind now wants? You and the Russians have absolutely terrified us, Mr. President. You have opened the abyss that has been waiting at our feet for nearly four decades. We want to know how to close it over again. We want to bury it forever and go forward in peace. If we can’t do that, it will open again and next time we will all be swallowed into it.
“What will you do to help prevent that? That is what I want to know.”
“We have defined justice,” Lin said, and for the first time there came into his eyes something of the infuriating blandness that had met them in Moscow. “And we have described how it may be achieved. Perhaps that is a good point from which to begin trying to answer your questions.”