December Ultimatum

by Michael Nicholson

  The speech would be beamed live from one satellite twenty-two thousand miles high in space to the next, across the Atlantic to the European capitals and to Moscow, across the Indian Ocean and the Pacific to Peking. By ten minutes past seven, Central Eastern Time, the President’s ultimatum would be known to the world.

  He got up from his desk, ready for his lunch, and waited for Mrs Baines to take away the marked transcripts, his notes and the empty coffee pot. He opened the French windows to go out on to the terrace for exercise and fresh air, stopped and then drew a cross with the red pencil on the back of his left hand.

  He walked slowly down the steps on to the lawns and a security man, dressed in a winter Burberry and brogues, followed twenty yards behind. The President knew him as Jed and recognized him as the man who had driven the Volkswagen to National Airport, a conspicuous man, he thought, to be in security—with bright ginger hair and freckles on his face the size of golfballs.

  It was freezing again and there was snow in the air. The morning cloud had now come together, and everywhere was a dull grey with the wind constant from the north-west. The wind and the smell of snow were the usual forerunners of a blizzard.

  He liked Camp David, but like every other American he associated it with crisis. Presidents only came here in trouble. Except Eisenhower, who had come simply because he liked the place and liked it so much he had had a nine-hole golf course built, with the first tee a ten-yard walk from the breakfast room of Aspen Lodge. The camp had been named after his son. Presidents now, with a greater sense of urgency, used the green instead as a convenient helicopter pad.

  The holly bushes were covered in berries promising a good winter—or was it bad, he could never remember. The holly and the ivy and Christmas so soon. He picked a dark green shiny leaf and, one by one, nipped off the prickly corners and flipped them in the air with his finger and thumb. If he could survive until Christmas he knew he would survive another seven Christmases as President.

  The air was suddenly icy and as he turned back to the house for the housekeeper’s pea and bacon soup, the frost crunched under him and he saw his own footprints. In an instant he was back more than forty years with his two brothers, lying on the ground, playing with their toy lorries on such a frozen patch, cutting trucking routes with their fingers through the frozen wastelands of a child’s Alaska in a wintry Boston suburban garden.

  It was dark before time. The snow clouds were almost touching the peaks of the Catactins and the wind was shaking the blades of the small Bell helicopter parked on the green by Aspen Lodge. The floodlights picked out the small Presidential insignia on its nose and the two crewmen standing by the open door slammed their arms around their bodies and jogged on the spot to keep themselves from freezing. Five minutes before they had been drinking hot chocolate in the warm kitchen. Then came a message that the President was leaving for Washington before the weather closed in. The President’s bodyguard stood by the rotor arm at the tail, the collar of his overcoat up to his eyes, covering the golfball freckles.

  The upstairs lights had just been switched off and the only lights in the lodge now were in the kitchen and in the President’s study. The curtains had not been drawn and the crewmen and the bodyguard could see him clearly, standing in his shirtsleeves, his tie half way down his chest, in front of the fireplace. He was talking to himself in the mirror, waving an arm, clenching a fist, snapping a finger. They watched in the dark, fascinated.

  At fifteen minutes past five, the curtains of the study were drawn quickly and the house lights went out. The bodyguard ran across the lawn to the terrace and the crewmen began their start-up procedures. Seconds later the President appeared in a heavy fawn mohair overcoat and long multicoloured hand-knitted scarf wound high around his neck.

  The helicopter turbine screamed at near full power, waiting for the pitch of the blades to lift. The President reached out and grabbed the supports of the door to pull himself up. He saw the first flakes of snow on his overcoat sleeve and, on the back of his hand, a cross drawn in red. He remembered the pocket tape recorder needed new batteries.

  LONDON

  ‘The Americans are going stronger’

  The Foreign Secretary smiled back as the policeman saluted, a habit of many years acknowledging subordinates. His face dropped again as the door of Number Ten shut firmly behind him. He walked the twenty yards across Downing Street, through the arches of the Square and into King Charles Street. Usually at this time of night, when the last bus had left Whitehall and the traffic had faded into the London suburbs, he would hear the clip of his steel-capped heels on the cobbles, but tonight there was a soft crunch of snow and by the time he had reached the wide swing doors of the Foreign Office his head and shoulders carried a layer of it. He stood still and to attention while the night porter brushed it away. He wiped his spectacles dry with the yellow duster that hung by the radiator for just such emergencies.

  The Foreign Secretary was neither a tall man, nor as young-looking as his press photographs and reputation indicated. His photographs also showed a smiling, pleasant man, genial almost, with humorous owl-like eyes behind the bi-focals. He was none of these things either.

  He was short-tempered and vindictive. He came from a long line of aristocrats, an illustrious English family who had been bequeathed thousand of acres of fertile Norman England by a generous and grateful Conqueror, wealth compounded many hundreds of thousands of times since.

  The tea tray was already on his desk. By it was the vacuum flask of hot water and next to that the small black plastic travelling clock. It was thirteen minutes to midnight and the Foreign Secretary stood dripping by the two-bar electric fire, tired after a four and a half hour Cabinet meeting followed by two hours with the Energy Committee. His office was cold and smelt damp and he was irritated.

  ‘We must get some cocoa powder, Simmonds.’

  ‘Drinking chocolate?’

  ‘Get some. Difficult taking tea this late at night and we’re going to have a lot of late nights.’

  Simmonds poured hot water from the flask into the floral- patterned china pot and stirred, as the Foreign Secretary eased himself slowly into his chair. Simmonds covered the teapot with its knitted cosy and pushed it carefully towards him on the tray.

  ‘Bad news, sir?’

  ‘It’s not good.’

  ‘Unanimous?’

  ‘Absolutely.

  ‘How long do we have, sir?’

  ‘Tonight. Just tonight. She’s going to announce it at ten tomorrow morning, won’t even wait to do it in the House. Shame. It would have given me something to work on, something for the French especially.’

  ‘She’s not afraid of expulsion, sir?’

  ‘She’s afraid of bugger-all. Couldn’t care a tinker’s! Wondered tonight whether she wasn’t delighted at the prospect. She’s never been very keen. But whatever they do doesn’t matter. We keep our oil to ourselves until the Saudis sort themselves out.’

  ‘Or the Americans sort them out for us.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘The Americans might use military action. Go and take the fields.’

  ‘Wouldn’t dare. They’d have the world on their backs. They’d do nothing unilaterally.’

  ‘The President is new, sir.’

  ‘And rash?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Checks and balances, Simmonds. Essential to the American Administration. He may shout. But he can’t do. This is awful!’

  The Foreign Secretary pushed the tea tray away and wiped his lips with a large white monogrammed linen handkerchief.

  ‘Will there be a vote in the House, sir?’

  ‘No. No vote. We can’t go through that kind of palaver at a time like this. She’ll do an Order in Council. Privy Councillors will meet at nine, statement released at ten.’ Simmonds moved in closer with relish.

  ‘King Fahd is safely i
n the Lakes, sir.’

  ‘Damn! What bloody news! As if we haven’t enough. Why on earth did he pick us?’

  ‘He does own a lot of England, Sir. And Scotland. And you did promise.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Eight months ago, sir. In Riyadh, during your visit. You said you would—’

  ‘Be delighted to be host in return. God! Did he ever think we would? He was the Almighty then and we could buy his oil. Now he’s not and we can’t. Will he stay long?’

  ‘Hard, sir. It’s an immense estate, the whole east side of Ullswater. And very secure, which is what he wants. There’s a risk, of course, sir.’

  ‘Risk?’

  ‘That they’ll do to us what the Iranians did to the Americans over the Shah. Take British hostages. Demand Fahd back.’

  ‘Possible. But improbable. The Shah was a crook and unloved. Bloody shame, though. Used to go to Ullswater myself once. Lovely place. Disgraceful it should go to an Arab. His brother’s with him?’

  ‘Sultan’s dead, sir.’

  ‘What about Yamani?’

  ‘He was out of the country during the coup.’

  ‘The clever ones always are.’

  ‘The President’s televised address is coming live from the White House.’

  ‘Be saying the same as us. Conserve stocks, domestic restrictions, rationing, possible new impetus for alternative energy research. Usual thing. Always the same solutions to the same repeating crises and never venturing beyond a promise of intent. It’ll hit the Americans hard even if this Saudi thing ends in a month or so. But it’ll do them good. Austerity. No harm in it.’

  ‘They’ll ask for our oil to bide them over.’

  ‘Maybe. But I’m not certain they’ll get any. It was talked about tonight but we couldn’t see how we could suspend oil exports to Europe and then sell to Washington.’

  ‘All our exports?’

  ‘All. As of ten tomorrow morning not a drop will be sold. All pumping operations will be suspended. The PM will order it to be left in the sea. Royal Naval patrols in all areas, and the military aboard the rigs, until the Saudis come to their senses. We have enough oil already ashore for two months, once domestic rationing is imposed.’

  ‘When is that, sir?’

  ‘Tomorrow, too. All be in the same Order in Council.’ ‘When will the Community know?’

  ‘The PM wants it done tonight. Has to be. They all know we’ve been in Cabinet They’re all expecting something, probably guessed already. Hate to think of the revenge being planned at this very moment in Bonn, Brussels and Paris. You take Paris first, then the Germans. I’ll wake up the Community Chairman. Tell them there’s a temporary suspension of contracts pending clarification of the Saudi embargo. We renege on the Treaty of Rome—with mortification of course, but national law, like national interest, is paramount.’

  ‘They will expel us?’

  ‘Possibly suspend membership. But we’ll survive. We can do without them but we can’t do without oil and that’s our message tonight. We’re keeping it until further notice.’

  It appealed to him. The traditional, routine diplomatic protocol had always appalled him despite his apparent subscription to it. It belonged to another age—if it had ever belonged to any, and he doubted even that. The Age of Diplomacy had been when ambassadors and emissaries had needed to talk and present credentials in time-consuming pomp and ceremony because, while they were doing that, battalions and fleets could be moved slowly and laboriously to new advantage and new adventures. Diplomats parried and delayed in foreign ministries to give their own generals time to outflank in the field and their politicians time to design alternative strategies, prepare new ultimatums. In the age before the intercontinental ballistic missile and the neutron bomb, diplomatic manoeuvres were essential preludes to war or peace, but the Foreign Secretary thought such luxuries were no longer relevant today, and it surprised him that there were still people in government and the Foreign Service who were only now just beginning to complain that the traditional rules of international conduct could no longer be taken for granted. The world is changing, they’d say, as if it was something sudden, new and momentous, and their naïveté appalled him. The world was not changing. It had changed. The metamorphosis was already complete. There simply were no rules any more, the unpredictable had become commonplace The world was a gangster.

  The description appealed to him because he knew that privately many of his colleagues and as many of his opponents considered him also to be outside the rules. But then, he would argue, how effective was a man who used yesterday’s techniques today? Oil was the newest and most efficient fulcrum of power so why shouldn’t the British Government use it as such? Thankfully he and the Prime Minister were in accord. It had, after all, been very much her idea.

  The red telephone, the direct line to the PM’s private secretary, began its soft buzzing. He picked it up and grunted. Then, very suddenly, he sat erect and grabbed his pen. His lips pursed inwards and his yellowing teeth began chewing them. For one full minute the room was silent except for the faintest buzz from a faulty bar of the electric fire and the pattering of snow on the windowpanes outside.

  Slowly he kneaded the loose folds of skin in his neck, pulling at the ridges with his finger and thumb, the pen in his hand moving as if he was writing, though it did not touch the paper.

  Without a word of acknowledgement, the Foreign Secretary replaced the red receiver, leaned back in his chair, rested both hands on the table, his spectacles reflecting the red in the glow of the fire.

  ‘Simmonds,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘The American President is making his address in ten minutes. Make sure you record it.’

  He stood up. Tm going back to the PM. She’s just had a call from our Ambassador in Washington. He knows what’s in the President’s speech.’

  Simmonds helped him on with his heavy overcoat and, for the cold return to Downing Street, the Foreign Secretary put on a knitted woollen scarf and wrapped it around his neck and head. At the door he turned to speak again, and Simmonds thought he looked ridiculously like an old granny.

  ‘Don’t bother with those calls to Europe,’ he said. ‘They’re not important for the moment.’ He paused. ‘Things have changed, Simmonds. Drastically. Appallingly. The Americans are going strong. The President is issuing an ultimatum as a prelude to a military invasion.’

  In the four minutes it took the Foreign Secretary to walk from the swing doors of the Foreign Office to the shiny black door of Number Ten, snow covered his scarf and water dribbled from his long, thin nose. The policeman, now a snowman, saluted again, but this time there was no smile, and the door opened to the Minister without a knock.

  THE PRESIDENT’S SPEECH

  ‘An assault will be repelled’

  ‘The light’s gone.’

  ‘What d’you mean, gone?’

  ‘I mean gone. Out. Bulb in the left back flood’s busted.’ ‘You’ve got five lights up—Christ! you can manage.’

  ‘I can manage on one, but the President of the United States is going to lack something behind.’

  ‘So we’ll have a dim Stars and Stripes. You should worry.’ ‘I should worry? I’m not worrying. It’s your problem. You’re the director. You want the President shot in half-light you got it. The networks will think they’ve bought themselves a Fellini on the cheap.’

  ‘Don’t be crude!’

  ‘Fellini, crude. Not fellatio. He’s Italian, uses natural light—Christ! You should know these things—you’re supposed to be in the picture business.’

  ‘I’m in television. That’s not the picture business.’

  ‘So where’s a new bulb?’

  ‘So where’s your assistant?’

  ‘He’s parking the van.’

  ‘Move one of the lights round.’

  ‘And lose his shoulders? The
President will have head, flags and no support?’

  ‘How come he’s still parking the van? We’ve been set up an hour already.’

  ‘So he’s having problems. He brought someone with him. They’re saying goodbye.’

  ‘That’s sad.’

  ‘Sure it’s sad. They’ve been together a long time. He came home last night and found another man in the apartment. Coming out of the bedroom. Just his socks on.’

  ‘That’s bad.’

  ‘Sure it’s bad. Real friendships are a treasure.’

  ‘Schmaltz! Where d’you pick up that crap? Anyway he’ll find another bit of tail. There are plenty of nice girls around.’

  ‘Girls? Who said anything about girls? C’mon, you got him all wrong. He’s not like that.’

  ‘Turn that second flood around a bit, spread it. It’ll cover shoulders and the flags. No problem.’

  ‘Problem? So who says there’s a problem? Hilton Smilton in Yonkers says the President hasn’t got shoulders. So we shouldn’t worry about the customers?’

  ‘Christ! Where is he anyway?’

  The President was running late. His live insert into the Network was timed for forty-five seconds after the early news shows had finished, forty-five seconds made up of four ten-second advertisements and a five second introduction off-air. There were now three minutes and those forty-five seconds to go. On the television monitors in front of the floor manager, the three separate national news shows were moving into the last of their reports. Don Rather, in his own nightly address to the nation, was summing up the day’s events and promising viewers that CBS would extend their late-night news bulletin for analysis and comment of the President’s speech ‘if it was so called for’.