ReUNION: What if the Civil War had never happened?

by Harvey Ardman

“I don’t know about this,” Vice President Garvey said. “I’m not an expert in a lot of these things. The environment? Transportation issues?”

  Wang came very close to saying something.

  “Well,” said Kooter Barnes, “there’s not much here in my bailiwick either. But we could rustle up some experts I suppose.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to start,” Garvey protested.

  “Well, you’re in luck,” Veronica Tennenbaum said. “I cut my eyeteeth on the NAU-German Friendship Treaty of 1996. I think I know just about every pothole and dead end in the road. I could work with the two of you if you like.”

  “Veronica, that would be wonderful,” Garvey said. He looked like a baby whose mother had just restored his missing pacifier. “What do you think, Kooter?”

  “Always good to have a knowledgeable woman on hand to show us the way,” he said with a big smile, every syllable a lie.

  “Always good to advise a handsome man,” Veronica purred, not fooled for a second. “Even better when there’s two of them.”

  “Excellent,” President Callaway said. “We’re already making progress.”

  “We are?” Pickett asked, dubious.

  “Oh yes indeed,” Wang assured them.

  Veronica stood, displaying her paisley caftan at full billow. “Gentlemen, shall we retire to my office?” She glided toward the door.

  “Veronica,” Callaway said.

  She stopped and looked back at him, while the Vice Presidents walked on. “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  “You owe me one,” she said, sotto voce, over her shoulder. And she was gone, closing the door behind her.

  That left four of them: The two Presidents, Roy Pickett and Eric Wang.

  “That Vice President of yours,” Bourque said affably. “Seems to me his engine is running but there ain’t nobody driving. ‘Course I could be wrong.”

  “You are talking about the Vice President of the North American Union,” Callaway said, feigning offense. “But I’m aware of the problem. And speaking of Vice Presidents…”

  “I know. Mine’s a good ole’ dog, but he’s not much for hunting.”

  “So I guess it’s up to us,” Callaway said.

  Bourque shrugged. “Never thought any different.”

  Silence reigned for a few moments, while each side waited for the other to speak first. Callaway volunteered. “I’m going to cut through the persiflage, Mr. President, and get down to what we like to say is where the rubber meets the road. What do you want from us and what are you prepared to give to us in return?”

  Bourque grinned. “Mr. President, you have a turn for getting to the point of the matter. Tell ‘em what we want, Roy.”

  Pickett would have swallowed his gum if he’d been chewing any. “Well, I…um…there are two areas…I mean, the military and the economic points on the agenda…”

  At that moment, Pickett’s cell phone rang—tinkled, actually. “That wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said, fumbling for it, embarrassed.

  The next moment, another set of melodious tones interrupted the proceedings—Eric Wang’s cell phone. “No it wasn’t,” he said, pulling the gadget out of a pocket.

  The two men twisted around in their chairs, in the vain hope of gaining some privacy. “Boss, we got a problem,” Pickett said to Bourque.

  “What?”

  Before Pickett could answer, Wang spoke to Callaway. “Linus Hawke is in the hall. He wants to see you. Something about Mexico. Says it’s urgent.”

  The two Presidents exchanged significant glances.

  “I have a feeling we’ve just got bit by the same Chihuahua,” Bourque said.

  Callaway nodded in agreement. “Eric, ask Linus to come in.”

  Wang spoke a few words into his cell and in walked Linus Hawke, the Director of Central Intelligence, courtly and contained as usual. He surveyed the conference room occupants dispassionately. “I need to see you privately, Mr. President,” he said.

  “President Bourque, Mr. Pickett,” Callaway said, “This is my DCI, Linus Hawke. Linus, please meet President Bourque of the Confederate States of America and his assistant, LeRoy Pickett.”

  They all shook across the table.

  “Linus, lets go out into the hall,” Callaway suggested. “You can tell us what’s on your mind and our guests can discuss the phone call they just got.”

  “That would be good,” Pickett said. He glanced at Bourque, who nodded.

  “Of course,” Hawke said and headed for the door, Callaway close behind.

  “You’re with us, Eric,” said the President.

  They left the room, closing the door behind them.

  “Up there on the left,” Wang said pointing. “Unoccupied office.” He led the way, closing the door after Callaway and Hawke entered. It was in this room that Howard Exley had kept his collection of antique firearms. The walls were covered with empty gun-racks, and a sturdy wooden table nearly filled the room, as did the faint aroma of gun oil. The three men found seats in the thickly upholstered chairs that surrounded the table.

  “So, Linus,” Callaway said. “What’s this all about?”

  Hawke reached into his inner suit pocket and withdrew some papers and began to read. “At 11:15 this morning, the Mexican National News Service announced that a Mexican flag tanker, the SS Tampico, had been sunk in the Gulf. The Mexican government says this was the result of an unprovoked attack by a torpedo boat flying the flag of the Confederate States of America.”

  He paused and glanced at the President, who was stony-faced. He took another breath and continued. “Although an intensive search is underway,” he said, “it is believed that none of the Tampico’s fifty man crew survived the attack. While no video of the event exists, the tanker’s captain did manage to radio his home port and describe the attack as it took place. His last transmission ended at 9:43 a.m.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Wang said.

  Callaway just shook his head. “This is not good news,” he said.

  “No,” Hawke agreed.

  Eric Wang chose that moment to get furious. “We offered them help. Shit, we gave them help and they betrayed us. They used us.”

  “Do we have any hard evidence?” Callaway asked. “I mean other than the Mexican broadcast. Any proof?”

  “A couple of airline pilots called in a thick plume of smoke coming from the western end of the Gulf,” Hawke said. “Then there’s the distress call. We picked it off Mexican radio. It’s about 10 minutes long—the ship’s captain, evidently, describing the attack, pleading for help, telling his crew to abandon ship, an explosion. Then silence.”

  “I think we should immediately recall the task force we sent to guard the CSA’s Atlantic Coast,” Wang said. “We’re just asking for trouble.”

  Callaway sat back in his chair and considered the matter.

  “I don’t want to say it, but I told you so,” Wang said.

  Callaway shot him a look. “If you really didn’t want to say it, you could have kept your mouth shut, Eric.”

  “I think you may want to cut the Bourque meeting short, Mr. President,” Hawke said. “Otherwise, his problem could become our problem.”

  Callaway fixed his cool grey eyes on Hawke’s. “You know,” he said, “it is possible that there’s less to this than meets the eye.”

  “Explain, “ said Hawke. “I mean,” he continued quickly, and less imperiously, “what are your thoughts on the matter?”

  “Well, it raises a question,” Callaway said. “Why would Bourque do such a thing. It’s against his interests. I’d think the last thing he’d want to do is to kick that Mexican hornet’s nest—and endanger these talks.”

  “Hmmm,” said Wang, not convinced.

  “What he says makes sense, Eric.” Hawke said. “I can’t see what they’d have to gain by attacking a Mexican ship. Can you?”

  Wang thought about this, his anger starting to cool. “Maybe a pre-emptive attack?” he suggested.

  �
�If they’d wanted to launch a pre-emptive attack,” Callaway pointed out, “they would have hit a military target—not a tanker.”

  “Maybe they are hoping to drag us into a shooting war with Mexico,” Wang said without much conviction.

  “If they’d been aiming to do that,” President Callaway said, “that torpedo boat would have been flying an NAU flag the size of a garage door.”

  “He has a good point,” Hawke told Wang.

  “Okay,” Wang said, “the CSA wasn’t involved. I buy that, I guess. So what the hell happened to that tanker and why?”

  Hawke’s cell phone beeped and he checked out the screen. “Text message coming in,” he said. He waited for a count of four, then started reading. “In a TV address to the Mexican nation, President Garcia calls on CSA to apologize, pay damages for attack on tanker or face retaliation.”

  “Ah. I begin to understand,” Callaway said.

  “We’ll have the video and a transcript in a couple of hours,” Hawke said. “But I think it’s pretty obvious what Garcia is up to.”

  “Looking for a way to blame the victim,” Callaway said. “Trying to justify an upcoming attack—make it look like retaliation.”

  “That’s my guess, Mr. President.”

  “Shit,” Wang said. “Now I’m feeling pretty stupid.”

  Callaway tried to let him off the hook.“You made a reasonable guess.”

  . “I jumped to conclusions,” Wang said. “Sorry about that, Mr. President.”

  “Well, at least you didn’t say all that in front of Bourque and Pickett,” Callaway said. “They might have concluded you didn’t trust them.”

  “Yeah,” Wang said, chastened. “That would not have been useful.”

  “You think President Bourque has the same information we have?” Callaway asked Hawke.

  “Well, there was that call,” Hawke remembered. “So I think it’s almost certain that he does.”

  Callaway looked at Wang and raised an eyebrow. “What would you suggest we do now, Eric?”

  “I suggest we go back into the conference room and see how we can help President Bourque,” Wang said.

  “Good,” said Callaway. “That’s exactly what I was hoping you’d say.”

  They walked back to the conference room. Wang decided it might be a good idea to knock, which is what he did.

  “Come on in,” Bourque boomed up.

  The Americans rejoined the Confederates.

  “Seems like I have a problem,” Bourque said.

  “What have your people told you?” Callaway asked.

  “We’ve heard the Mexican radio announcement, got word of airplanes sighting a plume of smoke and we’ve heard a translation of the distress call,” Pickett said. “Sounds like you have everything we do,” Hawke said.

  “Oh, we have one thing extra,” Bourque said. “We’re the ones who are being blamed for it. We’re the ones who have to apologize and pay restitution.”

  “Even though we didn’t do it,” Pickett said.

  “Yes,” said Wang, “we figured that out.”

  “What do you think happened in the Gulf?” Callaway asked Bourque.

  “I’m just as blutterbunged as you are,” Mr. President. “This is none of my doing. If I’d been thinking along those lines, I would have tried to drop a bomb on Garcia’s office.”

  Callaway couldn’t resist a smile. “Not surprised you feel that way,” he said. “But I think we have a problem. What are we going to do about it?”

  “We?” Pickett said, surprised.

  “Well, I don’t see how we can deal with the, ah, bigger issues before this gets taken care of. So, if we can help…”

  “I don’t know how,” Bourque said. “Seems like it’s on my head.”

  “What will you do?” Wang asked.

  “That’s what we’ve been discussing,” Pickett told him.

  “I’ve made a decision,” Bourque announced. “I’m gonna deny everything at the top of my lungs and call Garcia a big fat liar.”

  Callaway frowned. “I think that’s the reaction he’s hoping for, Mr. President,” he said.

  “Oh, I know that,” Bourque said. “I’m just shootin’ off my mouth.” “Should I call the military to the situation room, Mr. President?” Wang asked.

  “Hold off on that for a minute, Eric,” Callaway said. “Let’s think this thing through.”

  Bourque leaned back in his chair and stroked his chin. “Well, since we know I’m not lying” – he looked at Callaway with an ironic twinkle—“Then, Garcia must be the liar here. Phony outrage, phony distress call, phony attack—although maybe they did sink something out there.”

  “Yes,” Callaway said, “that was our thought as well.”

  “Who’s he trying to fool?” Wang asked. “And why?”

  “First of all,” Bourque said, “he’s trying to fool you. Second, he’s trying to fool the rest of the world—Germany and the League of Nations in particular. He’s trying to give himself cover. You know, a justification for attacking us, I mean the CSA.”

  Callaway and Hawke exchanged glances. “We reached the same conclusion,” said the President.

  “Do you think he’ll strike now?” Wang asked. “I mean, if President Bourque denies complicity?”

  Bourque considered the question. “No. Not yet. One incident won’t do it. He’ll have to stage a second one. That’ll give him all the excuse he needs.”

  Wang had an inspiration. “What if you immediately apologize, pay restitution and promise it will never happen again?”

  Bourque laughed. “Mr. Wang, you are a good deal more devious than I imagined.”

  “Clever idea,” Callaway said, “but it wouldn’t work. He’d just claim the apology was insincere and insulting and stage another incident.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Wang said, disappointed.

  DCI Hawke crossed his legs, flashing a brilliantly-polished cordovan loafer. “Mr. President,” he said, “Do you mind if I ask President Bourque a few questions—intelligence questions?”

  “You ask me any question you want,” Bourque said. “I’ll tell you whatever I know.”

  Callaway gave Hawke a nod of approval.

  “Okay,” Hawke said. “Do you have any radar showing Gulf traffic, anything you might have on tape?”

  “Hmm,” Bourque said. “Not that I know of.”

  “We have weather radar,” Pickett said.

  “I’m afraid that’s a little too…primitive…to be useful,” Hawke said. “What about automatic radio intercepts?”

  “We don’t have that technology,” Pickett said.

  “We have it,” Bourque said, surprising Pickett “But we can’t afford to deploy it.”

  “I see,” said Hawke. “And of course, you don’t have any surveillance satellites.”

  “We’re talking about the Confederate States of America here, Mr. Hawke,” Bourque said. “Not the German Empire.”

  “Hmmm,” Hawke said. “President Bourque, you’ve just given me an idea.”

  Chapter Fifteen xxx

  Junior—Harlan Hurbuckle Jr., that is—awoke with a vague sense of unease, which was not unusual. This time, however, he knew its source: the unprecedented—and in his opinion loathsome—meeting between the Confederacy’s great President Buddy Bourque and the North American nigra anti-Christ, President Charles Callaway. Despite his hopes, despite his wishes, despite his most fervent prayers, it had happened.

  Lying in bed, cocooned in his blanket, he opened one eye and, to his disappointment, saw thin stripes of sunlight pushing their way through the venetian blinds that covered his bedroom window. He’d hoped for another hour, but when had that ever happened?

  Then came the thump at the front door. He’d spoken to the boy about putting the Times-Picayune in the mailbox, and the boy had promised he would, but nevertheless, Hurbuckle was greeted every morning at about 6:30 by a thump at the front door. He unrolled himself and planted his feet on the cold linoleum

&n
bsp; Junior buttoned the top of his thin, nearly threadbare pajamas, plodded through the kitchen to the living room, stepping on crumbs from last night’s dinner. At the front door, he flipped open the lock, stuck his hand outside, grabbed the paper and pulled it inside. Then he plopped down on the divan and unfolded the thing.

  He scanned the front page—car accidents, liquor store robberies, a missing coed, sports reports—it could have been printed any day of the week in the last ten years. It was always the same. Then he noticed the photograph in middle of the front page, above the fold. It had been taken, evidently, in the Oval Office of the White House. It showed a grinning, down-home Buddy Bourque extending a paw and that smiling monkey in an expensive suit, Callaway, grabbing it like Bourque was his favorite uncle, touching as though they were equals. He felt his gorge rise.

  This was everything he hated and feared—the nigra President of the NAU, gaining power and influence over the Confederacy, and yet another opportunity for that hollowest of men, Buddy Bourque, to play hero and savior.

  Junior knew what this would cost. It would be the ruination of everything the Confederacy stood for. It would mean the destruction of a culture. The set of traditions and customs that had defined his country for generations would vanish. His world, his life, his hopes destroyed—unless, somehow, he could save it.

  *

  The Rivoli Theater in Staten Island, New York was one of those art deco monstrosities that some over-confident impresario put up when the 20s were roaring, only to abandon it to his creditors when the market came tumbling down. Eight hundred seats in blue velvet and they reclined.