The General's President

by John Dalmas

  The priest nodded. "Of course, Arne. I'll be glad to." For God works in strange ways, he added silently, through strange and often secular instruments. The Jesuit felt a chill flow over him, perhaps on omen of sorts. And this is a good man, he told himself. Perhaps through him I have an opportunity here to do something very large in the service of God.

  They talked of other things then: the economy's steady upward creep, the problems and successes of the new legal system, Haugen's ideas on education and what his task force was doing with them, and what might be accomplished in Zurich. And after a bit they said good night, the priest going to his room.

  The president headed for a few more hours at his desk. There was so much to accomplish, sometimes it was hard to stop working and go to bed. Maybe I should get more sleep, he thought. My energy level isn't what it ought to be.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  The Swiss were practiced, skilled, and diplomatic at coordinating foreign security contingents with their own police. Thus Zurich was as safe for Gurenko and Haugen as could reasonably be managed. From the airport, Zurich was a short drive south along the river Glatt, and small groups of military police were stationed along the way. The highway and city street on which the foreign entourages would travel had been briefly cordoned off, well before dawn, and the route carefully checked for mines and other devices. Reopened for morning traffic, it was kept under constant surveillance. Other vehicular traffic would be excluded during the passage of the official convoys, and as soon as the armored limousines had passed, the road would be opened for normal traffic again.

  Both Soviet and American parties arrived at the airport in midmorning, when traffic was well past its peak. Then, under the watchful eyes of Swiss marksmen, some of them on roofs, they were driven, with police escorts, to the Zuricher Hilton, where the conference would be held.

  Days earlier, after their staffs had presented them with what they considered the needs and problems involved in such a meeting, Gurenko and Haugen had talked twice more on the hot line, establishing ground rules. And when they arrived in Zurich, it was with modest staffs of subject-matter specialists—smaller than their advisors had urged.

  They met in person for the first time at 1100 on the day they arrived. Gurenko began by speaking Russian, and Haugen English. But then, on a whim, Haugen switched to Russian, and as if by agreement, Gurenko to English. In confused embarrassment, the Russian interpreter suddenly realized he was translating Haugen's Russian into English for Gurenko.

  From that point, the interpreters did little except, mainly in Haugen's case, clarify terms. (Haugen had been practicing his Russian. On his daily visits to the hospital, he and Lois had spoken little else, and he'd had a State Department Soviet specialist come over for a half-hour each day to discuss technical matters with him in Russian.)

  Gurenko and Haugen even took lunch together, separate from their advisors, talking mostly about things outside the conference agenda. Supper involved the two heads of government and their staffs, and at Haugen's and Gurenko's insistence, everyone was required to talk. As the vodka, Scotch, and bourbon flowed, some talked a little loudly.

  There was a Mrs. Gurenko, Xenia Federovna, and she'd come to Zurich with her husband. Based on an inspiration someone had voiced at the first supper, on the third day she flew to Washington to meet with Lois Haugen at the hospital, and stayed for two days.

  So far as any of them knew, there'd never been a summit conference even remotely like it before. The American and European media covered it like a festival, with unprecedented access to the principals and their consultants. Not at the meetings themselves, of course, but outside the meetings. And the Soviet media were allowed a degree of reportorial freedom that at first they hardly knew what to do with. But they got the feel of it quickly enough.

  After six days it was over. To world television viewers, its ending left a vacuum almost like the closing of the Olympic games. The event was over; all that was left were the results, the agreements.

  The Soviet Union had been in the poorer bargaining position, partly because the industrial-transportational machinery was scarcely operating, partly because parts of the empire were not safely under control, and partly because the Russian people themselves, the backbone of the empire, were in a sort of passive noncooperation that could turn violent, given the problem of food shortages. And there was a real prospect that troops would refuse to fire on civilians if massive rioting developed in Russia itself. If that happened—chaos.

  So while there might be grumbling in the Soviet military council that Gurenko had been soft, had given up too much, presumably there'd be nothing more than grumbling. The generals could see that the nation's resources had to be focused on the internal situation.

  In America, the far right would call Haugen a communist sympathizer because he hadn't insisted on the impossible dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the Soviet military, while the left-wing was already complaining that Haugen had thrown away most of the gains of the past sixty years. But neither wing had wide support.

  The existence of the scalar resonance transmitters was made public in a joint statement, saying nothing of their recent use and only generalities about their physics. (Colonel Paul Fairbairn's previously ignored book, Tesla's Unknown Legacy, became an instant best seller. Based only on speculative analysis, it had the principles remarkably correct, though of course it lacked the technical details.) Each great power would retain two scalar resonance transmitters, to be staffed by joint crews. They'd be used to ameliorate or divert seriously damaging weather, such as severe droughts or major hurricanes. Requests would be channeled through the World Meterological Organization, an affiliate of the United Nations.

  All Soviet military forces would be removed from East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. All American military forces would be removed from the continent. This agreement was contingent on Britain and Canada also removing their remaining forces, but there was no doubt at all that they would.

  The question of Soviet forces in Iran was only touched on. The United States took no position on it other than to commend the stated Soviet intention of withdrawing entirely north of the pre-invasion border as promptly as conditions permitted, and surely by mid-April.

  The Soviet Union felt serious concern over the possibility of political and military unification of the two Germanies, in the train of the Soviet military pullout. Russia, after all, would lose much of its leverage on the buffering Warsaw Pact nations. The United States therefore agreed to co-sponsor a conference of the Warsaw Pact and NATO nations, to ensure the development of no new military threat—the two Germanies were not specifically named—in central Europe.

  A plebiscite, supervised by Australia, India, and Egypt, would be held in the Afghan SSR, as "a state whose incorporation within the Soviet Union had been a coercive act by the disgraced, imperialist Kulish government." The Afghans would be given a choice of remaining in the Soviet Union, or independence under temporary UN assistance, with all Soviet forces withdrawn. This, more than anything else, impressed the world of Gurenko's good intentions.

  It was much the most daring and dangerous agreement Gurenko made—it could inspire demands for independence in SSRs that were integral, instead of peripheral, to the empire. But insurrection was flaring in the Afghan countryside and towns alike, and problems with military morale and discipline had convinced Gurenko that the risk was necessary.

  The United States and the Soviet Union would hold an NCB (nuclear-chemical-biological) disarmament conference, to be seated no later than April 1. Other nations could be jointly invited to participate. First-order objectives and ground rules for the convention were agreed upon; the objectives included on-site inspection procedures, and both Haugen and his conference staff felt that real progress might be made this time.

  Several other subject areas were discussed; it was agreed to put them on hold for the time being. Gurenko insisted privately that the commitments he'd already made had put him at a significant deg
ree of risk with the Soviet army.

  Privately, "off the record," Gurenko told Haugen of two internal reforms he intended. That summer there would be a new Soviet constitution, and he would announce a new level of Soviet statehood—"Associated Socialist Republic." In these, the Communist parties would be independent of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with separate and largely independent bureaucracies and their own domestic policies. The native language could be used as the language of government, with Russian as a secondary official language to be taught to children in the schools. The three Baltic states—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—would be granted this status first, both as showcases and to debug the system; other Soviet Republics could earn the status by accomplishments in production and education.

  Haugen was hopeful but not awfully optimistic that this would work, though he concealed his doubts from Gurenko. He'd read voraciously and omnivorously most of his life, sometimes two books an evening. History and nations had been favorite subjects of his, and he had a huge volume of information available to his remarkable recall. He knew that at the end of the Second World War, the Stalin government had hauled to Siberian labor camps approximately 1.5 million of the five million Balts and Estonians who'd survived the war—thirty percent. These had been replaced with Russian colonists. Government was put almost totally in the hands of Russians, who'd favored the Russian colonists over the native people in every way.

  That had been a half century earlier. The iron Russian grip was said to have lightened in recent decades, and since the Russian conquest, two new generations had been born to both the native people and the Russians who'd been forced on them. And there must have been intermarriages. But ethnic hatreds often die slowly, and it seemed likely to Haugen that, given the opportunity, many Balts and Estonians might in their turn discriminate against the Russians among them and against the Russian language.

  He hoped they wouldn't. If they did, the Russian fist might clench on them again.

  And of course, the new and independent Communist parties might change so much so fast, they'd spook the Russians.

  Time would tell.

  At least the cold war seemed definitely over for the time being, Russian imperialism had cooled, and the new ruler was neither paranoid nor xenophobic. And as important as any other trait, Gurenko, more than any of his predecessors, was more a rationalist than an ideolog.

  So Arne Eino Haugen felt pleased with the world and himself when he got an Air Force One and took off for home.

  FORTY-NINE

  The president knew a couple of things as soon as Martinelli told him who was on the line. One: Something was bothering Cromwell, who, since becoming vice president, had seldom phoned him from outside. And two: whatever he was calling about probably wasn't officially urgent, because he'd called through the White House switchboard instead of directly by security phone.

  The general, he decided, was calling to make a point, and he was prepared for Cromwell's response to his usual "What can I do for you, Jumper?"

  "Mr. President, I'd like to make a suggestion."

  "All right."

  "I've been keeping a close eye on Valenzuela ever since you appointed him secretary. He'd make a hell of a good vice president."

  Haugen laughed. "I think so too. You still want to weasel out, do you?"

  The answer came a little stiffly. "No sir. I want to see more suitable presidential material as vice president."

  "Jumper..." The president paused. "Excuse my honest-to-god lousy choice of words. I know you're not trying to weasel, and I know how you feel about being next in line. I've been watching Val with that in mind. From the start. I'll take it up with him when we get together this afternoon. He's coming over here to watch Weisner's talk to the UN with me.

  "But if I died this minute, you could appoint a vice president and resign tomorrow. You know that."

  Cromwell shook his head. "It would look to the people as if there was something wrong with the job. As if it was too much for anyone but you."

  The president nodded. "I see your point. I'll tell you though, Jumper, if someone shot me today, you'd make a helluva good president. Better than most have, I guarantee it.

  "Meanwhile I can't give the job to just anyone, and I don't know how Val will feel about it. I wouldn't be surprised if he told me he's never even imagined the possibility. But if he's willing, I'll let you know. Then you can send me your resignation, to be effective on the date of his approval as vice president. Okay?"

  There was a perceptible lag before Cromwell replied. "Yes sir; thank you sir. I'll look forward to hearing."

  The president knew what caused the lag, too. "1 know I could approve Valenzuela myself," he added, "and I would in an emergency. But I'm not going over Congress's head when it's not necessary."

  "Of course, sir. I agree entirely."

  You do indeed, the president thought. And there we have the difference between the mind and the emotions. "Anything else, Jumper?"

  "That was it, sir. Thank you."

  They disconnected. Arne Haugen looked at the clock on his desk: In an hour and a half or so, they'd be bringing Lois home from the hospital, with a live-in nurse for a while. Gate security was to notify him when the limo arrived.

  He picked up the intelligence summary he'd been reading when Cromwell had phoned. There was a lot to do, as always. He'd finish this, handle his IN basket, touch up his educational reform speech for Friday, go to his twelve o'clock press conference across the street, then come back and listen to Weisner's speech on television.

  ***

  Marianne Weisner, the chief United States envoy to the United Nations, sat in the General Assembly, waiting to be recognized by the chair.

  The resolution before the assembly had been authored by the representatives of the United Kingdom. The Security Council could have taken action on its own, but it had decided to wait for a request by the General Assembly, to allow the African nations in particular to address the matter.

  The African nations hadn't been as hostile as widely expected. And some of the hostility expressed was more form than substance, she told herself. North of the Kuvuma, the resolution even had some support, expressed confidentially.

  The secretary general called on her, and she stepped to the rostrum, switching on the microphone in front of her there.

  "Almost everything there is to say on the subject has been said," she began, "so I will simply resume, stressing some considerations I regard as central to our decision.

  "The white South African has been forced back into a small portion of the large territory he so recently held. But he defends that small portion with great tenacity. To drive him into the ocean would be terribly costly in human lives, both black and white.

  "Of course he can be beaten now, and killed. Much of his motorized equipment is already stalled, out of fuel, and we can be sure his ammunition supply is not endless."

  She looked them over, the assembled faces, the mixture of national costumes among western business suits. They were different in inner ways, too, but all in all they were far more alike than they, were different, brought to a considerable common ground by education. And so she knew them rather well.

  "Really," she went on, "what we are looking at is a choice, a choice between vengeance and justice. Civilized people recognize the difference between the two, and in this assembly we are civilized people. So where does justice lie?

  "Since the evacuation of those who wished to flee, almost all the remaining whites in South Africa are Afrikaners. South Africa is the homeland of the Afrikaner, as it is of the black people there. The Afrikaner was born there, as were his parents, and their parents, and theirs, in most cases for more than three hundred years, a dozen or more generations. He has no other home."

  Her glance, which could be fierce when it suited her need, swept the assemblage mildly.

  "His crimes against his fellow humans are not the issue. We know what they have been, and we have seen them bring ruin upon him. What
we are considering is not what the Afrikaner has done, but what are our future actions will be. Not the momentary satisfactions of revenge, but the long-term benefits of justice.

  "While genocide is a term often misused to stir emotions, genocide also happens in reality. And those who, in their understandable bitterness, would wipe out the Afrikaner, lineage and language, push him back against the sea and kill him, driving any survivors into scattered exile—those people are advocating genocide.

  "That genocide has occurred many times throughout history does not make it right. And I believe we have outgrown such barbarous behavior.

  "And consider the alternative, the resolution before us. Granting the Afrikaner the territory between the Great Kei River on the east and the Sunday and Zeekoe Rivers on the west, from the Ocean northward to the Orange, would allow him a territory of 32 thousand square miles, scarcely seven percent of what he once called his. It is sufficient to support his numbers, probably not much more than two million now, for he uses land skillfully and has a good command of technology. And the world, and his neighbors, will never let him dominate and enslave or abuse black people again."

  She paused to look around once more, her glance stopping here and there on African representatives, most of whom she knew, most of whom knew her.

  "I hope," she said, "that all of us here will vote for the resolution presented by the United Kingdom, as a unanimous statement of principle and justice, and as a step toward a better future for all of us on this planet."

  ***

  On his television screen, the president watched her sit down to courteous and general applause. Ambassador Weisner was a handsome woman of forty-eight, with a master's degree in biochemistry, a doctorate in law, and remarkable energy. Haugen, not having paid much attention to the UN, had paid little attention to her until Coulter had complained to him about "that Weisner woman" who "sometimes seems to think she represents Israel instead of the United States."