The Rise of the Speaker

by Pete Driscoll

  There were a few notable absences from my list of visitors, however. Neither Russia, nor China had decided to meet with me although neither of these were a surprise. The absence that did surprise me though was the US President, especially considering our mutual history and – more importantly – the strict instructions he had received from Krustov; his attendance, if only to deliver his Russian mandated threat, had been presumed – if not expected - since Charlotte had shown me the video of his meeting in the White House kitchens.

  I had given an inordinate amount of thought to how I would respond to this threat, it had plagued every waking and sleeping moment when my mind was not occupied with one diplomatic negotiation or another. Over dinner on the second day, I had discussed with Alice the idea of confronting him with the evidence of the meeting, offering him a way out, by that evening the proposition had died out; there was no way to reveal the existence of the tape without either revealing British involvement or implying that Atlantia had spied on the President instead.

  By nighttime, we had moved on to the idea of negotiating. Maybe the US and Russia could be placated with other forms of technology or – if that failed – we could possibly release small amount of obsolete or under engineered technology to them to avert a war. That idea was virtually a non-starter; not only would it excuse the US from the crimes they had committed to obtain this technology in the first place and go against every principle I held, it would abjectly violate the terms of Atlantia’s agreement with the European powers, the agreement that guaranteed us the votes needed to pass the UN resolution to grant us sovereignty.

  My appearance before the Grand Assembly was scheduled for two o’clock on the third day. It was five minutes before I was due to leave my office when the door slammed open and in stormed the man himself. I – mid way through packing some paperwork into the last of the boxes – spun around to watch David Turnbull take the last few strides towards my desk.

  His face was twisted in rage, a burning look that didn’t diminish in the slightest as two of my Spartan guards stepped forward to bar his path, they did – however – have the effect of stopping him in his tracks. I made to speak but the inexplicably furious President beat me to it.

  “You arrogant son of a bitch!” he roared as he came to a stop, “you think you can overrule the United fucking States? We are the most powerful country on Earth and if you or any of those other pussy diplomats think that when America tells you to jump, your only acceptable response is not to ask how high, you are even more fucking stupid than I thought!”

  Any notion of playing nice with this man had immediately gone out of the window, but he still had no intention of allowing me to speak. “You will come to know who you are dealing with, one way or another, and I am not a man to be trifled with!” he continued, “So here is what is going to happen; you are going to announce that you will be complying with a US ordered inspection of your military installations and you will hand over all the technology we desire, if you don’t, we will take it by force! A war with the US is not something that you can win, boy. Maybe once my marines are finished with you, they will film your hanging and accidently release it on the internet… just like we did with Saddam Hussain! Make the announcement or face the consequences!”

  With that, he turned and stormed back out the room. I hadn’t uttered even a single syllable. Alice, who had been stood by the door to the back room, off to the right of the desk I was packing up, turned her eyes to meet mine. In a single look, I knew what she was thinking, and I knew what I had to do.

  Less that fifteen minutes later, I was standing back at the podium in the Assembly Hall. “Ladies and gentlemen of the international community,” I started my speech, “I have been moved and humbled beyond description at your overtures of friendship. The meetings I have had over the past two and a half days have been more productive and more collaborative than anything I could have expected before coming here, and for that, I am profoundly grateful. Atlantia extended the hand of friendship and the number of countries who reciprocated that gesture is truly overwhelming, regardless of how you chose to vote in today’s meeting, it was the honour and privilege of my life to have met each and every one of you…

  “…except one.” A soft murmur rippled through the crowd as I paused for effect, the delegations looking amongst themselves wondering if they had done something to offend me. “Not five minutes ago, the President of the United States burst into my office demanding that I hand over all military technology, if I refused, he threatened war, invasion and my eventual execution…”

  “This is outrageous!” Turnbull roared, standing from his seat in the front row of the auditorium, “These are just more lies from a known criminal!”

  “So, you deny making those threats, Mr Turnbull?” I replied calmly.

  “Of course, I deny making those threats!” he shouted back, in a tone anything but calm, “This is just another Atlantian attempt to stain the character of the United States and her leader!”

  “Are you sure? I have the recording right here…” I held up a small memory card, “you see… the Spartans record everything they see and hear and there were five of them in the room when you burst in!”

  The President spluttered for a second before regaining his composure, “Those meetings and everything said in them is confidential!” he boomed back, trying to regain control of the exchange.

  “Unless I choose to share them! Mister Turnbull” I shouted in reply, my voice now raised to match his.

  “God Dammit! It is President Turnbull or Mister President, you arrogant little shit!”

  “I was an American long before I was an Atlantian and that title is one you neither earned nor deserve. I will address you as the President of the United States the moment you start acting like it!”

  Alexi Ivanov, the Russian Premier, cleared his throat from his place a few desks further along the front row.

  “If I may…” he said calmly, “…passions are clearly very high here. But regardless of what was said in that meeting, Russia supports the demands of our American counterparts. A single nation with the military technology to make all defensive forces in the world obsolete, is a risk that the Russian people are not willing to tolerate. Russia cannot, and will not, support the Atlantian bid for international recognition unless they agree to a full inspection of the military infrastructure and the surrender of all their weapons technology. If they refuse, then measures should be taken to force their compliance.”

  “The Speaker is a criminal, a terrorist!” Turnbull – still shouting – added, “Any nation who votes against the interests of the US will be complicit in Atlantia’s crime and will also face the wrath of the US response!”

  Another – albeit louder – wave of concerned murmurs echoed around the chambers as the gravity of the combined threat stared to dawn on the congregation. Looking back – many years from then – I would have told you that time seemed to slow down at that moment, that a maelstrom of thoughts and reasoning blistered around my mind, but suddenly everything became clear… focused.

  I had been the leader of Atlantia since its foundation, since the first literal and figurative building blocks of the nation had been laid and yet, at no point had I ever even felt like a politician, let alone a world leader. I had been an engineer, then a refugee, an outlaw and then a figure head, - I was a small fish in a big fish’s pond; I had never felt in control of my destiny since before Maria was killed – that was more than 4 years ago. I had been swept along with the current of circumstances, all of which had conspired to wash me ashore in this exact time, in this exact place, in this exact situation.

  Yet in that moment, something changed. I didn’t feel angry, I wasn’t offended, and I didn’t feel like I was under attack; all things which would have been at the forefront of my mind under the siege mentality I had lived beneath for so long. All I felt was concern for what I suddenly realised was my country and my people; if Turnbull and Ivanov followed through on their threats, it would be t
hem in the firing line. Atlantia had an identity, a character and a reputation, things that I hadn’t recognised before but with that realisation came the reality that I had a duty, not just to protect the people living on the Island I built, but to defend my nation, its citizens and its international reputation.

  This is what Charlotte was describing about when she talked about a nation’s ‘constant’, somehow I had suddenly recognised the character of the nation I was bound to represent and for the first time in my life, I felt like a leader, like a statesman and the threats against me didn’t seem quite so terrifying.

  “Will you allow the inspection of your military and will you hand over all of your technology, or not?!?” Turnbull’s demands pulled my attention back to enraptured audience before me, Ivanov had never risen from his seat but what watching me closely and Turnbull - who had never returned to his seat - was trying his hardest to stare me down.

  “No,” I sighed, “I will not…” I looked around the hall, the eyes of the most powerful people on Earth were staring at me but somehow, I managed to pick Charlottes face out from her place on the UK’s desk to the left of Turnbull. The small smile on her face told me everything I needed to know. “…I was an American for my entire life” I started softly, not allowing either Turnbull or Ivanov a chance to speak again, “and my belief in the greatness of my country was unshakable, everything about it filled me with national pride and patriotism, but Atlantia was born on the same day that I started to see the cracks in the façade of the American dream…

  “…you see, over the past few years I have been in the position of looking at the US from the outside, to see the flaws in not only its democratic and ruling establishment, but in its very identity. This body was formed in the aftermath of the second world war and almost every country in this assembly – regardless of their role in that conflict - has something to be immensely proud of when they look back at that defining period of time. Great Britain, America and Russia fought against Nazi tyranny at a time when it looked like Adolf Hitler would bulldoze his way across Europe and eventually rule the world, but they weren’t alone. Did you know that only 10 countries on the entire planet didn’t enter the war in any way at all? Greenland declared war against Hitler with only 26 men in their armed forces.

  “The French surrendered, so did Norway, Denmark, Holland, Greece and a whole host of other countries, yet despite their defeat, resistance movements and partisan armies sprang up to fight the oppression in every single one of those nations, not to mention the resistance movements in the Axis countries themselves. Italy fought with the Nazi’s but turned on their allies when they discovered the true nature of the fascist regimes, Italian soldiers even fought alongside Greek partisans on the Ionian Islands. Germany, the birthplace of National Socialism, now teach their children the undiluted truth about the atrocities their forebears committed with a level of courageous honesty that very few other countries can match and they do this to make absolutely sure that those mistakes will never be repeated again. The whole world has grown to ensure that Hitler’s brand of international belligerence could never happen again, this estimable body was formed for exactly that reason.

  “America is different… absolutely convinced of their own moral and military superiority, their national psyche is stuck in the post-war years when they were the masters of the world, as if that was still the case. Even now, after all these years and after all their wrongs, - Vietnam, Iraq, Korea - they still cling to alliances, successive leaders making demands and holding nations to ransom over some perceived debt they owe the US for coming to their rescue and now threatening any nation who dares to exercise their own freewill, freewill that they take sole credit for maintaining.

  “In the US, they call the people who fought in that war ‘the great generation’ and rightly so. They, like countless others, put their lives on hold to fight for freedom and justice against the cruelty and tyranny of the Nazis, but I wonder what they would think of the nation whose values they fought to uphold if they saw it today? Their ‘President’ threatening war if he doesn’t get what he wants, trying to intimidate others into supporting him and labelling all who stand against him as criminals, is it sounding familiar to anybody else who knows their history?

  “Yet, despite these criticisms, Americans – like citizens of any other nation – are welcomed warmly when they chose to call Atlantia home, and none of them – not one – professes or extolls the divisive attitudes, prejudices or unjustifiable hatred and oppression that I criticise so freely today. It is the leadership of this great nation that is to be blamed for its failings, for robbing the American people of the American dream; a dream that is in no way unique to America but should be the undeniable right of every citizen in every nation on earth, but is denied to them by the holders of unimaginable economic or political power. This realisation led me to another – that a nation cannot and should not be defined by their leaders. There are crowds outside this building as we speak, some in patriotic defence of their country and others in the patriotic defence of the ideals for which it should stand, only a tiny minority echoing their presidents call for American superiority at any cost, even violence. They, not you – Mr Turnbull – represent the true character of the country you pretend to lead

  “The simple fact is that Atlantia was born the day that I started to see the cracks in the façade that the American psyche and her leadership portrays to itself and to the world. They – like Russia – are not the leaders of world powers anymore, they are tyrants, and like the great generations who came before us, I will not bow down to tyranny… So, Mister President, seeing as you don’t know your history and you are not known for your intelligence…” Turnbull’s eyes widened for a second at the recognition of that phrase and the way I said it, “…allow me to give you another lesson…

  “More than two thousand years ago, a small army stood at Thermopylae in Greece. The Spartans – the namesake of my own soldiers – faced off against a Persian army that outnumbered them by almost 1,000 to 1. At the beginning of the battle, a Persian officer demanded that the Spartans hand over their weapons, I will give you and your Russian masters the same reply… Come and get them!”

  Turnbull slumped down into his seat, an inferno of impotent indignation and rage playing across his face as the assembly burst into applause. “I will not be bullied into bowing to the pressure of Tyrants and I will stand by any Nation who finds themselves at the mercy of one!” I continued. “We have already signed alliances with the European powers and the Pacific Nations and will defend them against any and all aggression they suffer as a consequence of this vote, in fact, Spartans are already en-route to join their international counterparts in the defence of freedom in Europe and the Pacific. Atlantia is a nation, it was one yesterday and will continue to be one tomorrow regardless of how you vote! I just hope that our nationhood comes with the support and recognition of our new friends, thank you all again for your welcome and I hope the next time we meet will be as equals.”

  With that, I stepped off the Podium and headed towards the main doors. The assembly – with a small number of exceptions – were still on their feet in applause. Somehow, I managed to make out Charlotte’s face in the crowd, her beaming smile and knowing wink flashing me for a second before she was swallowed up by the throng of people and vanished from sight. An hour after I left, I was back in my office.

  Chapter 36

  The Vote

  For reasons that neither I, nor Alice, fully understood, the Atlantian delegation was not permitted to remain in the chamber during the vote, instead we were relegated back to the now packed up office from which we had operated for the past few days. A screen bolted to the wall in one of the corners was displaying a feed from the assembly chamber as the general secretary called the council to order.

  “The matter of international recognition of the Atlantian nation has been brought before the UN council, the Speaker of Atlantia has presented the motion, do I have a second?”

&n
bsp; Ide Museveni jumped to his feet. “The people and government of Uganda are proud to second that motion.”

  “The motion is seconded and will proceed to a vote. A two thirds majority is required to pass the motion meaning that 128 of the 192 current members will need to support the application. Member nations will be called out in alphabetical order and can vote ‘aye’, ‘nay’ or ‘abstention’ depending on their views, no other remarks will be allowed. Before we start, does any nation wish to make a final statement?”

  Ide Museveni stood back up; the crowd turning to face him. “Everyone in this chamber knows the circumstances of Uganda’s relationship with Atlantia, you all know the plight that faced us and my Central African neighbours and when we asked you for help, we were ignored. The indifference and apathy shown to us by the international community – especially those of you in a position to help but unwilling to do so – is a stain on this institution that will take many years for Africa to forget, it may never wash out completely.

  “Yet, when the hour was darkest, friendship and aid came from the least likely of places. What some of you may not know, is that the African nations never asked Atlantia for help, it never even occurred to us that they were in a position to render aide, they offered that help… freely. Their only concern was the protection of innocent lives and they asked nothing in return, I won’t insult this body by asking how many of you would have done the same, we all know the answer. Their aid at a time of war, their limitless humanitarian generosity and rebuilding efforts have shone a light on the shortcomings and self-interests of the nations who claim to represent human freedom and dignity.

  “Atlantia has earned – and will forever hold – the utmost respect, gratitude and friendship of the Ugandan people and their African neighbours, I for one would be honoured to share these halls with our new Atlantian friends, regardless of the spineless and duplicitous remarks of other less-noble nations.” A large cacophony of applause resounded around the chamber as the Ugandan President took his seat, Alice squeezed my hand gently at Museveni’s kind remarks, a hand I hadn’t even realised she was holding.