This is the Way the World Ends

by James Morrow

  “And then, when you got the Hawks to work, you celebrated with champagne?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Newsweek reported that you drank to ‘a bad night in the Kremlin.’”

  “To ‘a sleepless night in the Kremlin,’ actually.”

  “You didn’t foresee any sleepless nights in the White House?”

  “I can’t grasp your logic.”

  “Well, each Hawk you deployed would have further blunted Russia’s retaliatory capability, until mutual deterrence was virtually nonexistent. Thinking that America was about to strike first, the Soviets might have struck first.”

  “When America had a nuclear monopoly, we did not strike first.”

  Aquinas pulled a folder from one of the evidence piles and shoved it into Randstable’s lap. “I would refer you to Document 476, the 1951 edition of the SPASM, the Single Plan for Aligning the Services of the Military. As you know, it calls for the complete pulverization of the Soviet Union—the nuclear strip mining of an entire nation—in response to conventional aggression against Western Europe.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “To me, Dr. Randstable, everything was a long time ago. No further questions.”

  The engineer gangled his way back to the booth and asked, “Well, what’s the verdict?”

  “You stood your ground,” said Wengernook.

  “I think we’re on top of this thing,” said Brat.

  “I couldn’t follow the part about the embryo,” said George.

  During lunch—the defendants could choose between killer whale chowder and cold boiled skua—Randstable showed George some chess openings, then challenged him to a game, offering the tomb inscriber a rook advantage and the first move. George had not played since junior high school, but he thought it might be fun to lose to somebody who had beaten a Russian grand master.

  Reverend Sparrow testified next. In a voice that blasted its way into icy nooks and crannies never before visited by human speech, the evangelist told the tribunal how, as an adolescent mired in “a slimy pit of drugs and fornication,” he had one night reached into his parents’ collection of X-rated videocassettes and inadvertently grasped a Bible. He began reading it. He could not put it down. A year later he was attending the Coral Gables Theological Seminary. Before the decade was out, his cable television channel had more subscribers than any except the one sponsored by Crotch magazine, and he had become the youngest person ever to chair the celebrated right-wing Committee on the Incipient Evil.

  “This guy makes me nervous,” said Wengernook.

  “No, no, it’s good he’s on the team,” said Brat. “We need a religious component.”

  “Your bestselling book,” said Bonenfant, “Christians Will Come Through the First Strike, argued that as the millennium approached, certain Biblical prophecies would be fulfilled. How do your interpretations square with the recent Soviet-American exchange?”

  “The Hebrew prophets were right on the money.” The evangelist unzipped his scopas gear and pulled his little Bible from the vest of his three-piece suit. “As you know, that war destroyed the temple at Jerusalem, a prelude to what Christians call the Perfect Exile. In the Perfect Exile, the church—those who have accepted Jesus—is cleaved into seven segments and transported to the far corners of the earth. Which explains why I’m here. If you look in the North Pole and other remote places, you will find boatloads of Christians.”

  “And after the Perfect Exile?”

  “More explosions—though of course they cannot touch the church. So destructive are these bombs that the survivors succumb to a man who promises peace. But who is he? The Antichrist, that’s who.”

  For the first time in his life, George realized what an intrinsically boring religion Unitarianism was.

  “I’m not sure where all this is leading us,” said Justice Jefferson.

  Sparrow responded by raising his voice. “For seven years the Antichrist provokes a series of major nuclear conflicts, including the hundred-thousand-megaton Battle of Armageddon! But then the Son of Man returns in time to prevent total annihilation!”

  “Is that pretty much it?” asked Justice Jefferson.

  “The present world vanishes, the Last Judgment occurs, and a New Heaven and Earth appear!”

  “Anything else?”

  “Eternity,” said Sparrow quietly.

  “Last week,” said Bonenfant, “former Vice President Mother Mary Catherine accused you of measuring a nation’s Christianity by the size of its thermonuclear arsenal.”

  “There’s no such passage in any of my writings.”

  “But you do advocate peace through strength.”

  “If you study the Scriptures with an open mind”—Sparrow tapped his Bible—“you will realize that they urge the United States to regain nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union, a nation that the prophet Ezekiel calls Magog.”

  “When I read your books, I saw immediately that you regard nuclear war as a threat that all Christians must work to overcome.”

  “Yes, but we shall succeed only through a willingness to bear the sword of God. The Bible teaches that, in a world of fallen men, military force is essential for social order.”

  “Well, it shouldn’t be a crime to want social order. No further questions.”

  “I’ve never heard that ‘world of fallen men’ hypothesis before,” said Randstable as he inflicted a fool’s mate on George. “Intriguing.”

  “We could have used this guy at SAC,” said Brat. “Our public relations director was a washout.”

  Are we going to become fallen men? asked George’s spermatids. I don’t know, he replied.

  Aquinas approached the stand without enthusiasm. The Devil’s advocate, the Lord’s prosecutor—equally thankless jobs. “Leafing through your books, I’m struck by all the charts comparing American and Soviet military strength. Don’t these statistics take us pretty far afield from theology?”

  “I wanted Christians to understand that the enemy had acquired the edge in every category—throw-weight, conventional forces, you name it. We had to save America while there was still time.”

  “Given that America’s demise had already been revealed to the prophets, wouldn’t it be blasphemous to try averting it?”

  “God has a plan for us,” the evangelist explained.

  “The title of your last book, Deals With the Devil: A Christian Looks at the STABLE Treaties, speaks for itself. Obviously you do not believe in arms control.”

  “I do believe in arms control. What I don’t believe in is appeasement.” Sparrow’s smile was so sweet it threatened to rot his teeth. “After all, Mr. Aquinas, the Soviet Union is a police state, isn’t it? There is no way to tell what agreements they’re breaking or what bombs they’re building.”

  “If it was impossible to know exactly how many weapons the Soviets had, why did you publish charts showing exactly how many weapons the Soviets had?”

  “Those statistics were compiled by the Committee on the Incipient Evil.”

  Aquinas went to a document pile, fished out two paperback books, and opened the one with the mushroom cloud rising over Golgotha. “Now, on page one hundred forty-three of God’s Megatons you say, ‘The approach of Armageddon should cause not fear but joy. For Armageddon is the Lord’s war to cleanse the earth of wickedness.’ I wonder how many Christians read this passage and found themselves hoping for a nuclear exchange?” He consulted the second book. “And then, in Christians Will Come Through the First Strike, you quote Zephaniah 1:15, ‘A day of wrath is that day, a day of thick black clouds, a day of battle alarm against fortified cities, against battlements on high.’ You add, ‘Doesn’t this sound like our second-strike weapons defeating the antiballistic missile system of the Soviet Union?’”

  “I wanted to reveal that, if America were wise enough to avoid the disarmament trap, then the Son of Man could use our arsenal to bring violent judgment against those in Magog who reject the free gift of salvation.” />
  “Jesus would do that?”

  “His First Coming was as the Lamb of God, His Second will be as the Lion.”

  “Oh,” said Aquinas, rolling his eyes into his huge skull. “No more questions.”

  “Knows his Bible, doesn’t he?” said Wengernook.

  “I always liked the Sermon on the Mount,” said George. “Job has some memorable parts too.”

  “I thought you were a Unitarian,” said Brat.

  “Jesus was ahead of His time,” said Randstable.

  At nine o’clock the next morning, Bonenfant called Wengernook to testify.

  “Well, men, here we go,” said the assistant defense secretary, nervously saluting his co-defendants.

  “Just remember, history is on our side,” said Brat. “Strength made the Soviets move cautiously.”

  “Watch out for Aquinas’s left hook,” said Randstable.

  Once on the stand, Wengernook pulled cigarettes and matches from his scopas suit. Justice Jefferson gave him permission to light up.

  Bonenfant said, “The prosecution has introduced several documents authored by you, including an address titled ‘The Soviet Plan for Nuclear Victory’ delivered to the Massachusetts Medical Society. Were the Soviets really planning on victory?”

  “The evidence was overwhelming,” said Wengernook. He struck a match, missed the cigarette by inches. “Their arsenal was geared to a protracted nuclear war, and they also had an extensive civil defense program. By the time I joined the current administration, Russia had fully embraced the ugly concept of a winner.”

  “So America had to configure her own deterrent accordingly?”

  “Not only was mutual assured destruction immoral, it had outlived its usefulness. We needed a policy of damage limitation and force modernization, plus a menu of realistic strategic options. In short, a transition from MAD to MARCH.”

  “Some people were troubled that MARCH necessitated a large increase in warheads.”

  “Under MAD, you could get away with, oh, I don’t know—a couple hundred bombs.” At last Wengernook made match and cigarette connect. “But when your goal is damage limitation, you require a much larger arsenal.”

  “I’m not sure I understand this ‘damage limitation’ business,” said Justice Wojciechowski.

  That makes two of us, George thought. That makes four hundred million of us, his spermatids added.

  It took Wengernook most of the morning to clarify the various meanings of damage limitation. “So you see, your Honors,” he concluded, “in the awful event that deterrence fails, you want to remove targets selectively. Your missiles must send the right message.”

  “What message is that?” asked Justice Yoshinobu.

  “‘We’re not trying to annihilate you, we’re trying to save ourselves. That’s why we’re hitting only your silos, bomber fields, submarine pens, and warhead factories.’” Wengernook took a prolonged drag on his latest cigarette. “Hence, the enemy is inspired to refrain from a massive attack.”

  “So in its early phases such a conflict leads to better communication between the superpowers?” asked Justice Gioberti.

  “If a war ever started, God forbid, the Soviets would immediately see they had nothing to gain by moving beyond surgical strikes,” answered Wengernook.

  “They would be deterred from escalating?”

  “Exactly. Their only option would be peace.”

  Bonenfant allowed the word peace to linger for several beats, then announced that he had no further questions. Justice Jefferson ordered a lunch recess.

  “I’m glad he got immorality in there,” said Brat.

  “The line about peace was good too,” said George.

  His bullet wound throbbed crazily as he tried to recall Victor Seabird’s testimony. A complicated test ban, is that what the old man had negotiated? And there was something about weapons-grade material…

  “Secretary Wengernook,” Aquinas began after the break, “is it fair to say that the defense of Western Europe lay at the heart of America’s involvement with nuclear weapons?”

  “Given the superiority of the Warsaw Pact’s conventional forces, tactical deployments were essential to NATO’s security.”

  “Some observers believed that the new intermediate-range missiles in Europe forced the Soviets to adopt a policy of launch-on-warning.”

  “You must consider the stabilizing aspects of launch-on-warning.” Wengernook jettisoned his cigarette. “When a nation puts her missiles on a so-called ‘hair trigger,’ her military leaders feel much less threatened.”

  “Because they know they won’t lose those forces in a preemptive strike?”

  “Yes.”

  “So they’re less likely to do something foolish?”

  “Right.”

  “Like launching on warning?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Tell the tribunal about no-first-use.”

  “This was the proposed doctrine whereby NATO would never be first to fire nuclear weapons, even in the face of a total defeat by the Warsaw Pact’s tank divisions.”

  Aquinas retrieved several items from one of the document piles. “Glancing through your writings, I see that you were opposed to a no-first-use pledge.”

  “It would have severely eroded deterrence. I much prefer a policy that says, ‘NATO will never shoot any nuclear missiles unless attacked.’”

  “By conventional weapons.”

  “It also had a credibility problem. The whole thing would have gone out the window as soon as the Soviet blitzkrieg began.”

  “Let me get this straight. The problem with no-first-use was that it had just enough credibility to invite a grand scale assault, but not enough credibility to hold up during one?”

  “You should never let the enemy know your intentions.”

  “Is that why in this issue of Strategic Doctrine Quarterly, Document 794, you praised President Truman for introducing something called ‘The Hiroshima Factor’?”

  “Well, Hiroshima certainly gave us an advantage over the Soviets in the ambiguity area,” said Wengernook, leafing through the document in question. “They never knew just what we would do.”

  “So by rejecting no-first-use, America could retain its superiority in ambiguity?”

  “I’m trying to give a serious interview here.”

  “Your 1992 commencement address at the Air Force Academy, Document 613, includes the famous remark that, quote, ‘In a nuclear war our forces must prevail over the Soviets and achieve an early cessation of hostilities on terms favorable to the United States.’ Unquote. What does it mean to ‘prevail’ in a nuclear war, Secretary?”

  “It means absorbing a first strike and then retaliating decisively.”

  “How would you characterize a country that has absorbed a first strike?”

  “The industrial base is largely intact, the command structure is functioning, and deterrence has been restored.”

  “What about the civilian population?”

  “A significant percentage has survived.”

  “And a significant percentage hasn’t survived. Is this what you people call ‘acceptable losses’?”

  “Occasionally we used that term.”

  “Five million people killed, is that acceptable?”

  “Well, we had that twenty million figure staring us in the face.”

  “What twenty million figure?”

  “The casualties Russia suffered in the Second World War.”

  “A troubling sum. You were losing the acceptable losses race.”

  Justice Wojciechowski asked, “Mr. Wengernook, may I assume that no losses were acceptable to you personally?”

  “That goes without saying.” The defendant drew a pair of mirrored sunglasses from his scopas suit and put them on. “Acceptable losses is a very abstract concept. It only comes up in strategic discussions.”

  “I hate to be a Monday-morning quarterback,” said Aquinas, “but the United States didn’t ‘prevail,’ did it? Your menu
got used up, the Soviets neglected to offer favorable terms, the SPASM was implemented, and the human race disappeared. Now, in light of these events, do you still believe your plans were more moral than mutual assured destruction?”

  “There is a world of ethical difference between offensive war-fighting plans and preventive war-fighting plans.”

  “Is that why winning was an ugly concept when the Soviets thought about it and a realistic option when you did?”

  “We had to live in the world as it was, Prosecutor, not as we would have liked it to be.”

  Aquinas moved so close to Wengernook that his breath fogged the defendant’s sunglasses. “But you made the world as it was! Your strategic menu threatened the Soviets from all sides! Your theater forces menaced them! Your Multiprongs taunted them! Your Omegas—!”

  “‘If you would have peace, prepare for war,’” Wengernook quoted somberly. “Appius Claudius the Blind.”

  “And if you would have war, you also prepare for war!”

  George had seen this scene before, on movie screens—the prosecutor trying to break down the defendant.

  “I submit that your strategies had the Soviets frightened to death!” Aquinas persisted. “I submit that the best hope they saw was a quick, unexpected decapitation of the American command structure!”

  But this was not the movies. This was the post-exchange environment, where everybody is extinct and assistant defense secretaries are as unyielding as Vermont granite.

  “No, you’re wrong,” said Wengernook wearily. “That Soviet Spitball attack was completely unmotivated.”

  Aquinas was at the bench, standing before the little frozen missile exhibits. “When was this arms race supposed to end, Secretary?” He kicked the ice arsenal. “When?”

  “An unmotivated, naive, pointless, reckless, suicidal attack,” said Wengernook. “Everybody knows that Spitball cruise missiles are not good for first strikes.”

  “When?” shouted Mother Mary Catherine from the gallery.

  “How many times can you fantasize all these battle plans before wanting to get the whole thing over with?” Aquinas demanded, kicking missiles. “How many times can you go through the door marked DETERRENCE before you end up in a concrete bunker turning launch keys?”