In His Image

by James Beauseigneur

  Hansen and Kruszkegin continued to exchange small talk for a while as their breakfast was served, and then Hansen attempted to elicit some information. “You seem worried,” Hansen said. He was lying. Kruszkegin’s face showed no emotion at all except possibly enjoyment of his breakfast. Hansen had said it solely to observe Kruszkegin’s response.

  “Not at all,” Kruszkegin answered.

  Hansen tried a different tack. “You don’t have any more idea what’s going on than I do, do you?” But Kruszkegin only smiled and continued chewing. Hansen tried a few more times, to no avail. Kruszkegin just continued eating his breakfast.

  “I thought you were on a diet,” Hansen said in frustration. “Why did you even accept my invitation to breakfast if you weren’t going to talk?”

  Kruszkegin put down his fork. “Because,” he began, “one day I will want you to come to breakfast as my guest and I will be the one asking all the questions.”

  “When that happens,” Hansen responded, “I shall endeavor to be as tight-lipped as you.”

  “I’m sure you will be,” Kruszkegin said. “And then I will notify my government that we met but that I was unable to learn anything new, just as you shall do today.”

  Hansen gave a brief chuckle and went back to his nearly untouched breakfast. A few moments later, however, the gravity of the current situation resurfaced and Hansen began to push the food around on his plate rather than eat it.

  “You look worried,” Kruszkegin said, echoing Hansen’s earlier statement.

  “I am,” Hansen answered. “Yuri, things have changed. I can’t tell what’s going on in Russia anymore. The men in power are unpredictable. Men like Yeltzin and Gorbachev, even men like Putin, would never have taken chances like these men have. I just don’t know what we can expect from them.”

  Kruszkegin stopped eating, and unlike before, it was obvious he was not thinking about his food. Hansen had struck a nerve. In truth, Kruszkegin was as concerned as Hansen, probably more so. Still, he offered no comment.

  After breakfast Hansen and Kruszkegin left for their separate missions. When Kruszkegin arrived at the Mission of the Russian Federation on East 67th Street, his personal secretary handed him a message.

  “It came while you were at breakfast,” she reported.

  Kruszkegin looked at the note. It was from his nephew at the Ministry of Defense. The message was simple but unusual. “Uncle Yuri,” it began, which was unusual in itself; in the past his nephew had always addressed his correspondence, “Dear Mr. Ambassador.” Kruszkegin did not pause long over the informality, though; his mind was on the message that followed. “Say your prayers,” it said.

  Kruszkegin went to his office and locked the door. Sitting at his desk he took out a Cuban cigar and lit it. He thought about the brief message from his nephew and looked at it again. “Say your prayers.”

  It was a joke. That is, it had been a joke four years earlier when he had helped young Yuri, his namesake, get the position on Khromchenkov’s staff. “What shall I say,” his nephew had asked him at that time, “to warn you, should we ever decide to launch a major nuclear attack?”

  Kruszkegin remembered his response: “Just tell me to say my prayers.”

  Russia

  The heavy, German-made cover slid quickly back from the underground silo, clearing the way for the missile inside. At eighty-seven locations scattered around the Russian Federation, the same foreboding sound of metal against metal was followed by the release of mooring clamps and then by the roar of rocket engines firing. Slowly the missiles rose from their tranquil catacombs, hidden at first by the white clouds of exhaust that rose around them. Emerging above the banks of smoke, the missiles crept heavenward, picking up speed as they continued in their course. Their targets were not limited to Israel alone. In truth, Israel had now become insignificant. Khromchenkov’s plan for restoring Russia to world prominence was to control the world’s oil supply. With this launch it would no longer be necessary to use Israel for a staging ground to take control of Egypt’s and Saudi Arabia’s oil fields. Now that would be accomplished with one stroke. Israel needed to be taught a lesson and so six warheads had been targeted at its cities. But the hundreds of other war-heads, as many as sixteen MIRVed 33 warheads in each missile, were targeted at every major city in every oil-rich country in the Middle East. Throughout Russia the military was put in readiness for the invasion to follow.

  West of St. Petersburg a farmer ceased milking his cows as the frozen ground shook and the roar of engines reached his ears. Running from his barn in confused wonder, he saw the sun briefly eclipsed by a rising missile, which cast a shadow over him and his efforts.

  Outside the Cathedral of St. Basil in Moscow a wedding party looked skyward toward six rising plumes of exhaust.

  On a bridge in Irkutsk, children watching a puppet show were startled as the puppeteer suddenly ceased his craft to stare at the foreboding display in the sky.

  In Yekaterinburg, at a ten-kilometer race, ice skaters and spectators alike stopped in silent terror as the sun reflected off the hulls of four missiles speeding skyward.

  Throughout Russia similar scenes played out.

  Eighteen and a half seconds into their course, at a point approximately two miles into the air, as people in cities, towns, and farms around the country watched … the unexplainable happened.

  At the core of each of the multiple warheads carried by the missiles, in an area so infinitesimally small, an incomprehensibly immense burst of energy was released. In less than a hundredth of a millionth of a second the temperature of the warheads rose to more than a hundred million degrees Kelvin—five times hotter than the core of the sun—creating a fireball that expanded outward at several million miles per hour. Instantly everything within two to four miles of the blasts was vaporized: not just the farmer, but the tools with which he had worked; not just the wedding party, but the cathedral from which they had come; not just the children and the puppeteer, but the bridge on which they stood; not just the skaters and spectators, but the frozen river on which they had raced. Even the air itself was incinerated. For eight to fifteen miles around each of the exploding warheads, what was not vaporized burst instantly into flame.

  As the fireballs expanded they drove before them superheated shockwaves of expanding air. Reflecting off of the ground they had not vaporized, the secondary shockwaves of the blasts fused with the initial shockwaves and propagated along the ground to create Mach fronts of unbelievable pressure. Buildings, homes, trees, and everything that had not already been destroyed were sheared from the surface of the earth and carried along at thousands of miles per hour.

  The death toll in the first fifteen seconds alone was more than thirty million.

  The huge fireballs, having expanded to as much as six miles in diameter, now rose skyward, pulling everything around them inward and upward like huge chimneys. Hundreds of billions of cubic meters of smoke and toxic gases created by the fires, together with all that had been blown outward by the blasts, was now drawn back to the center and carried aloft at five hundred miles per hour into scores of mammoth irradiated mushroom clouds of debris that would rain deadly fallout for thousands of miles around.

  Tel Aviv, Israel

  The unsecured black phone rang and Lieutenant Colonel Michael White answered according to standard operating procedure, simply stating the last four digits of the phone number. The voice on the phone was that of the Israeli prime minister calling from his recently liberated office in the Knesset. “Congratulations,” he said. “Not one missile left Russian airspace. All Israel owes you their life and their freedom.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister,” Colonel White said. “But it wasn’t us. Our line of control was cut hours ago. Our strategic defense is still entirely inoperable.”

  17

  Master of the World

  Two months later

  New York, New York

  FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY-GENERAL Robert Milner and Namibian Ambas
sador Thomas Sabudu paused briefly to be sure everything was in order before stepping onto the elevator. When they reached the British Mission on the twenty-eighth floor they were warmly greeted by Jackie Hansen and shown into Hansen’s inner office.

  “Good afternoon, Bob, Ambassador Sabudu,” Hansen said as he left his desk to show his guests to the sitting area in his office. “How have you been, Bob?” Hansen asked.

  “Not bad for an old man,” answered Milner.

  “For an old man, you certainly haven’t slowed down at all. I think I see you around the UN more now than when you actually worked there.”

  Milner laughed. “Well, now that I don’t have to be there, it’s a lot more fun.”

  “So, are you just operating out of your briefcase now?” Hansen asked.

  “Oh, no,” Milner answered. “Alice Bernley let me set up shop in a spare room down at the Lucius Trust.” Jackie brought in tea and scones and the three men sat down to business.

  “So, what can I do for you?” Hansen asked, looking alternately at Sabudu and Milner.

  “Jon we’re here—Ambassador Sabudu officially and me unofficially—on behalf of certain members of the Group of 77,” Milner began, referring to the caucus of Third World countries that had originally consisted of seventy-seven countries but that had since grown to include more than one hundred and fifty nations.

  “We have come,” said Ambassador Sabudu, “because on two previous occasions you have addressed the General Assembly on the subject of reorganizing the UN Security Council.”

  “Yes,” Hansen recalled. “But I’m sure you understand that on both of those occasions my intent was to dramatize the seriousness of another point. Most recently—just after the Russian invasion of Israel—it was to make the point that Russia could not just start invading other countries and assume the United Nations would do nothing about it. It was never my intent that the motion would pass. If Russia had been removed from the Security Council, I think it’s a pretty safe bet they’d have dropped out of the UN altogether and we’d have lost the opportunities the UN provides to settle disputes diplomatically. So, as I said, my motion was simply to make the point, not to actually change the Security Council.”

  “Yes, of course,” Sabudu responded.

  “Jon,” interjected Milner, “we’d like for you to bring it up again, this time in earnest.”

  Hansen sat back in his chair.

  “Ambassador Hansen,” Sabudu began.

  “Please, call me Jon.”

  “All right then, Jon. As you know, many things have changed since the Disaster and in the two months since the nuclear devastation of Russia. Many of us in the Group of 77 believe it is now time for the UN to change as well.” In truth, the Third World countries had been wanting to change the Security Council since they began to make up the majority of members in the UN. “It is totally unreasonable,” Sabudu continued, “that five nations should exercise such dominance over the United Nations as do the five permanent members of the Security Council.” Sabudu’s voice was spiced with the conviction of his message.

  “Let me assure you, Thomas,” Hansen said, taking the liberty to call Sabudu by his first name, “even though my country is one of those five you refer to, I personally share that view.”

  “Jon,” said Milner, “Thomas and I have polled most of the members of the Group of 77 and a great many of them—one hundred and seven at this point—have committed their support to such a motion. Another thirty-two are leaning strongly in our direction.”

  Hansen raised his eyebrows, a bit surprised at the level of support for the proposition. “But why have you decided that I should be the one to make the proposal?”

  “Three reasons,” answered Milner. “First, as Thomas said, you’ve made the motion before. Second, you’re very well respected by all the members, especially the Third World countries. And third, because we feel it’s absolutely imperative that the motion be made by the delegate of one of the permanent members of the Security Council. Some members I’ve talked to have told me that because of the devastation of the Russian Federation, they think that some sort of restructuring will probably occur anyway in the next four or five years. They’re just not sure they want to be involved in rocking the boat to make it happen now. That’s why it’s so important that one of the permanent members of the Security Council make the motion. Quite frankly, they want someone bigger than them to pin it on if the motion fails. If Britain makes the motion, I believe we can pull all or most of the votes from the Third World countries that are leaning our way. With that, we’ll be within a dozen votes of the two-thirds majority needed for passage.”

  “I don’t know, Bob,” Hansen interrupted, “I have no idea how my government will feel about such a motion. It was one thing for me to suggest it when it had no chance of passing, but it’s quite another if it might actually come about. I don’t even know how I’d be instructed to vote on such a measure.”

  “How do you feel about it, personally?” Milner asked.

  “As I said, I agree it’s unreasonable that five countries should exercise dominance over the UN, but on the other hand, I’m not sure I know of a better way to run things and still accomplish as much as we do.” Hansen thought for a moment. “Off the record, if we could come up with a more equitable approach and it wouldn’t bog down the system for lack of direction and leadership, I guess I’d be for it.”

  “Would you be willing to work with us to develop such an approach, perhaps based on some regional plan?” asked Sabudu. “And if we are able to come up with something you’re comfortable with, would you present it to your government for consideration?”

  Hansen nodded. “I’ll do what I can. But it’s possible that even if we can come up with a workable plan and I can persuade my government to support it, I may not be allowed to actually make the motion if it is felt that by doing so we would anger the other permanent members. Is there any possibility one of the other permanent members would make the motion?”

  “We don’t think so,” said Milner.

  “I see.”

  Milner opened his briefcase to retrieve a document. “To get the ball rolling on this,” he said, “I’ve brought along a proposal on restructuring the Security Council based on regional entities. We may want to use it as a point of departure, at least, in developing a final plan.”

  Hansen glanced at the document and put it on the table beside him.

  “What Secretary Milner has said about your personal sway with the Third World members was not just flattery, Mr. Ambassador,” said Sabudu, becoming more formal to make his point.

  “Thank you, Mr. Ambassador,” Hansen responded in kind.

  “Jon,” Milner said, “there is one other item we need to talk about, and I think it may just soften the blow to your government of losing its permanent place on the Council. As you know, in order to ensure impartiality, the secretary-general has always been selected from among the members of the UN who have no ties to any of the permanent members of the Security Council. For years that has served as a major counterweight to the power of the five permanent members on the Security Council. But if the Security Council were reorganized on some other basis, there would be no reason for continuing that requirement. There would be no defensible reason that the secretary-general shouldn’t be from, say, Britain or the U.S. or any of the other former permanent members of the Council.

  “Jon, the secretary-general has already indicated his intention to retire at the end of this session. If you are the one to make the motion and we can get the votes we need for passage, we believe that you would be the obvious candidate to take his place.”

  Jon Hansen took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair.

  In the outside office Jackie Hansen was working at her computer when she looked up to see Christopher Goodman coming in the door. “Hi, Christopher,” she said. “How was school?”

  “Okay,” he answered. “Is Mr. Hawthorne here?”

  “He’s out right now, but I
expect him back shortly. If you want, you can wait in his office.”

  “No, that’s okay,” he said. “I just wanted to let him know that I’d be a little late this evening. I’m going to the seminar and exhibit the Saudi government is sponsoring. Would you tell him for me?”

  “Sure, Christopher,” Jackie answered. “You seem to stay pretty busy going to all those exhibits.”

  “Yeah, it’s great. There’s a different seminar or exhibit or program to go to every couple of weeks. And some of the exhibits can take days to go through.”

  “I envy you,” she said. “I wish I had the time to take advantage of all the educational programs the UN has to offer.”

  Jackie saw the ambassador’s door start to open and put her finger to her lips to indicate that they’d have to continue the conversation after Ambassador Hansen’s guests left.

  Christopher picked up a magazine to keep busy until he and Jackie could continue, but before he could start reading, he heard someone call his name. He looked up to see Assistant Secretary-General Milner standing next to Ambassador Hansen, looking straight at him.

  “Oh, hello, Secretary Milner,” Christopher answered.

  “You two know each other?” Hansen asked Milner.

  “Yes. We’ve bumped into each other on several occasions at some of the exhibits, but we weren’t formally introduced until a few days ago when I spoke at Christopher’s high school about my World Curriculum project and the goals of the United Nations. He’s quite a good student, his teacher tells me. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Christopher went to work for the UN himself someday,” concluded Milner, who then turned his full attention back to Hansen and Sabudu.