ReUNION: What if the Civil War had never happened?

by Harvey Ardman

  Then—it seemed like at least five minutes, but it was really only about twenty seconds—Phyllis Iserbyt’s face finally disappeared from the TV screens. It was briefly replaced by a “stand by, technical difficulties” slide, then the screens—at least the ones that had been brought in for the rally—went dark.

  Ms. Iserbyt finally surveyed her surroundings. Ed Poindexter was shaking a fist at Herb Czeckjo, who was laughing at him. Her ladies-in-waiting had fled. Aside from a few dazed and confused die-hards, the crowd had pretty much vanished, leaving an ugly stratum of debris on Pennsylvania Ave., mainly cardboard signs, but also water bottles, Our Country First tshirts, several sneakers and an auto baby seat.

  *

  If, as sometimes happened in cartoons, hot steam could actually shoot out of human ears, Helmut Metzger surely would have accomplished the feat. His face was practically purple with rage and his eyes were bulging.

  “I ordered you to give Iserbyt and her rally maximum coverage,” he told his second-in-command Robert D. Wade, his words dripping with acid. “It was not a request. It was not a suggestion. It was an order.”

  Wade stood in front of Metzger’s desk, trying to keep his composure. “I gave your orders to the news producer. Word for word.”

  “And he ignored them. He interrupted the woman. He cut away to that, that Canadian Prime Minister. Who gave him the right to do that?”

  Wade took a deep breath. If he didn’t sit down soon, he was going to fall down. That’s what a giant belly did to a man. “He didn’t have any choice, Helmut. He was acting in accord with our contract with the Canadia Broadcasting System. We have to carry the Prime Minister’s national security speeches.”

  “That contract is a fraud and a sham,” Metzger snarled. “I don’t know how you could have agreed to it.”

  “Actually, I was in France at the time,” Wade reminded his Boss. “Didn’t you negotiate the deal yourself?” It was risky to tell Metzger an unpleasant truth, but not telling him seemed even riskier, at least this time.

  Metzger just growled.

  “Furthermore,” Wade continued, multiplying the risk but unaccountably feeling brave, “Every other network, broadcast and cable news, covered it live. If we hadn’t, our viewers would have asked questions—if they hadn’t switched channels.”

  Metzger regarded his second-in-command with undisguised malevolence. “Get out, Wade,” he said. “Get out of my sight. Send me Sullivan.”

  Robert D. Wade momentarily considered continuing the debate, but his instinct for self-preservation belatedly asserted itself. Even in the best circumstances, Metzger’s mind could be changed only by heroic efforts. And in his current mood, the attempt would be suicidal. Besides, Wade was really getting tired now. He had to get back to his office and sit down, maybe lie down. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Of course. I’ll get right on it.” He got in the elevator and left.

  Ten minutes later, Jack Sullivan came out of the aerie elevator, surprised at the summons, but ready to fight whatever battle Metzger wanted him to fight.

  “Did you see it?” Metzger asked, without so much as an hello.

  “It?”

  Metzger held his temper. “The Bowman speech.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure did. That changes everything, doesn’t it? I mean Canadia, with all that oil, and the great ski resorts…wow. I sure didn’t see that coming. But I’ll bet you did, right?”

  Metzger regarded Sullivan as one might regard a cockroach. “No,” he said. “I did not. For once, all of my sources, all of my contacts and all my so-called friends failed me. But no matter. I know my next step. That’s why I’ve called you in.”

  Sullivan smiled. “Well, you know, Mr. Metzger, anything I can do…”

  “Good,” Metzger snapped. “This is what I want you to do. I want you to get on the air tonight and destroy Bowman. I want you to make his proposal look ridiculous and self-serving. Crazy, even. I’ll find you people to back you up.”

  “Hmmmm,” Sullivan said, troubled. “But…well…how? I mean he made a pretty strong case. Put all the pieces together and you would have a pretty powerful country…I mean, wouldn’t you?”

  Metzger stared at Sullivan as though he’d never seen him before. “What?”

  Sullivan looked for a way to retreat. “Well, you know, I mean after Bowman’s speech, I think most people…”

  “You are a fool, Sullivan,” Metzger said. “You are a—what’s that word?—a jackass. You have no idea what this is all about, do you?”

  “I know, I know, the reunion with the Confederacy…”

  “You Dummkopf,” Metzger snarled. “It has nothing to do with that. It is about power, you Stecknadelkopf. It is about power politics. It is about who controls America. That is why we are fighting Callaway. That is why we tried to sabotage the Bourque meeting. If we lose this battle…he wins.”

  Sullivan’s mouth fell open. “I don’t know,” he said, bewildered. “Bowman is right, it’s a perfect fit. It will make America the biggest, richest, most powerful nation in the Western Hemisphere, maybe the equal of Germany.”

  Helmut Metzger stood, leaned across his desk, and, delivered the blow for which, as a young boxer, he had been notorious: a vicious, backhanded slap to Sullivan’s face, sending the talk show host stumbling across the room. “Out,” Metzger said, “Geh mir aus den Augen, you idiot! Raus aus meinem Büro.” Eyes afire, he picked up the telephone. “Get me security!” he yelled.

  Sullivan was working his jaw from side to side, trying to assess the damage. Now, he held up his hands in surrender. “All right,” he said, “all right. I’m going, I’m going.” He hit the elevator button, and when the door opened, he scurried inside. The door closed. He was gone, leaving Metzger standing, panting, face red with impotent fury.

  *

  In his video viewing room, Presidente Miguel Garcia sat dead still, his single eye glaring at the wall-sized television screen. He was gripping the arms of the theater-style seat as though he intended to rip them off. When the “stand by, technical difficulties” appeared on the screen, he composed himself sufficiently to hit the off button on his remote control.

  Finally, Garcia got up and strode back toward his office. He stopped at Rosalita’s desk. “Get Espinosa here. Now.” he instructed.

  Less than ten minutes later, General Carlos Espinosa, Chief of Staff of the Mexican armed forces steamed into the room, all sails flying. He was a mess. His green dress uniform jacket was only half-buttoned. He was wearing mismatched shoes. A dollop of shaving cream lingered under his left year. His hair was wet.

  Garcia raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “And what happened to you, Carlos?”

  “I was in the bathroom when I was summoned, El Presidente,” said General Espinosa. “I came as quickly as I could.”

  “You slept in, this morning?” Garcia regarded the man with disgust. He reached out and gave the bejeweled globe a spin.

  “No, Presidente. I was up at 5:30, for a field exercise,” he explained. “I had just returned and I was cleaning up.” He began to sweat.

  Garcia sighed deeply. “Sit down Carlos. I have urgent business to discuss.”

  “Of course.” He sat—he almost collapsed—into El Presidente’s guest chair.

  “Are you all right?” Garcia inquired, not so much out of concern, but because he needed the information.

  “Yes, yes. Of course.”

  “Good,” said Garcia. “Now tell me, how many landing craft are ready to go?”

  “Ready to go?” Espinosa asked, surprised. “By when?”

  “By tomorrow.”

  Espinosa was aghast. “Tomorrow? But that’s impossible. Nearly three hundred landing craft have been built, but none could go tomorrow.”

  Garcia’s face turned to stone. “Why not?”

  “They need fuel and oil. Their batteries need to be charged. The seat cushions need to be installed….”

  “How long?” Garcia interrupted. “How quickly can this be done? If every available m
an is put on the job?”

  Espinosa seemed flummoxed. “I really don’t know. We planned to take care of that over the next three weeks, but…”

  “Three days,’ Garcia said. “I want it done in three days.”

  “But Presidente, even if the landing craft are ready, the drivers are still being trained.”

  “The drivers?”

  “Yes. The landing craft are, by nature, very unstable. Well-trained drivers can handle them, but neophytes…well, it could be catastrophic.”

  “Nonetheless,” Garcia said stubbornly. “I want them ready by…”

  “Ready?” Espinosa said. “Ready for what? Have you spoken with Admiral Diaz?”

  “About what?”

  “He and I agreed that he would talk to you this morning,” Espinosa said, sounding bitter. “He promised.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Espinosa shook his head. He was helpless now. Diaz had played the coward, leaving it up to him to deliver the bad news—and face Garcia’s fury. The General steeled himself and marched into the war zone.

  “Yesterday, Diaz sent a scout plane over the Confederacy’s east coast. It discovered an NAU task force about 20 miles offshore, covering the Carolinas and Georgia. Five fast missile frigates, the newest and most deadly vessels in their navy. If we sent in our landing craft, it would be an unmitigated disaster. Our entire fleet would be destroyed. Our invasion force…would drown.”

  Garcia did not react. He gazed at Espinosa without expression.

  “Presidente?”

  Garcia put his hands to his face, closed his eye and bowed his head.

  “Presidente? Do you under…”

  “Missile frigates,” Garcia said, looking up, stunned.

  “Yes. Missile frigates,” Espinosa said. “And it would be suicidal to attack them. They’re much too fast and too well-armed for any of our ships, even in combination.”

  “Could we hit them from the air?” Garcia asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Their ships are bristling with the latest ship-to-air missiles. If we had the stealth bombers I discussed with you last year…but we do not.”

  Garcia glared at his Chief of Staff. “Are you suggesting…”

  “No, Presidente! I assure you. I am suggesting nothing.” Espinosa said quickly. “Everyone knows that you are a brilliant military leader and strategist. No one could have anticipated Callaway would send a task force to protect the Confederacy, even before making an agreement with them. We would have dismissed the suggestion with laughter. It was foolishly premature. Nonetheless…” He let the word dangle.

  “Yes,” Garcia said. “Nonetheless.”

  He reached out and spun the inlaid globe again, bring it to a stop at the splotch of green meant to portray the greater Mexico of the future. He gazed at it for a moment, then he rose, growling like a bear and grimacing wildly. He seized the globe with both hands, raised it high over his head, and with all of his considerable strength and fury, threw it against his office wall.

  The bejeweled globe barely missed a window, slamming into the wall and shattering into the proverbial thousand pieces. Shards of country-shaped semi-precious stones rained down on the office’s thick grey carpeting. The large wafer of jade meant to represent Mexico plus the Confederacy came to rest against one of Garcia’s muddy boots. He scrutinized it briefly, then raised his booted foot and tromped down on it with all of his weight, grinding the fragments deep into the carpet.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Julia Callaway sat on the living room couch in the White House living quarters, legs curled under her, about to watch the 6:30 p.m. TV news. She’d chosen channel 704, the INN channel because she wanted to see how Helmut Metzger’s network would play the day’s events.

  Specifically, she wondered how anchorman Sean O’Neill, would explain the gigantic and ultimately catastrophic Our Country First rally, most of which she’d watched from her bedroom window, and what the station would say about the astonishing offer from Canadia and its Prime Minister, Gordon Bowman.

  She was sitting through the second station break commercial when the door opened and the President walked in.

  “Charlie,” she said in surprise, “what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in your office on the telephone, putting the arm on some of the famously undecided?”

  Callaway took off his jacket, tossed it over a chair and sighed. “If I make one more phone call tonight, my head will explode.”

  “You’ve talked to everyone?”

  “Some of them twice. Could you get me something to drink? My mouth feels like sandpaper.” He sat down heavily, kicked off his shoes and rested his head on the gold damask upholstery covering the back of the couch.

  “Soda?”

  The President roused himself. “I said something to drink, dear heart, not something fizzy.”

  Julie went to the wet bar in the corner of the room and brought back a Scotch and water for her husband. As he sat up to take the glass, the 6:30 news began.

  “Good evening, I’m Sean O’Neill, with the evening news. And it’s been a busy news day, with a number of major stories, all of them revolving around the efforts of President Callaway and Confederate President Bourque to reunite the NAU and the CSA after 150 years of separation.

  “The biggest surprise news came in a television address seen both in Canadia and America delivered by the Prime Minister of Canadia, Gordon Bowman, He announced that his country would be petitioning Congress to merge the two nations, on the condition that Congress accepts the CSA’s petition for reunion.

  The view switched from O’Neill at his news desk to Gordon Bowman, as he spoke to both nations earlier in the day. “So here is our offer, America: We want to join you—and the CSA—to build the greatest country on Earth. And we say to your Congress, vote tomorrow to let the Southern states rejoin the union and then approve our petition, so we can begin conforming our provincial constitutions to yours. Let us join you, as soon as possible, in a new era of peace and prosperity, for the good of all.”

  The picture cut back to O’Neill.

  “Prime Minister Bowman’s speech interrupted another speech, this one by Phyllis Iserbyt, President of Our Country First, in which she called on Congress to reject President Callaway’s reunion plan. Ms. Iserbyt was addressing a Washington, D.C.rally , estimated by its organizers at more than 250,000 people.”

  A new video clip came up: Phyllis Iserbyt, addressing the rally. “Hello everyone,” she called, and she got a loud, ragged hello back in return. “Thank you for coming. Thank you for showing President Callaway how the American people feel. Thank you for showing how deeply we oppose this naïve, poorly-considered and ultimately gravely-misguided adventure, this terrifying threat to our nation and our society.”

  Then, it was back to O’Neill, at his desk. “Ms. Iserbyt had barely begun speaking when Bowman’s speech interrupting her, coming up on the huge monitors scattered through the crowd of protesters and visible by all. This left her confused and unable to hold the crowd, which rapidly dissipated.”

  The picture cut once more to Ms. Iserbyt, just as she realized she was no longer on the television screens and no one was paying attention to her any more. She appeared both frustrated and bewildered.

  In the Presidential living room, Julia looked at her husband and grinned. “Could you have your people make a copy of that?”

  “Why?” Callaway asked. “Seeing it once isn’t enough?”

  “I just want to keep it handy,” Julia said. “I might need to be reminded.”

  “God, I hope not,” said the President.

  The camera came in on O’Neill again. “Coming on the heels of President Callaway’s address to the nation last night, both of today’s speeches—and the anti-reunion rally—come at a critical moment for the reunion plan,” he said. “Congressional debate came to an end on Friday, and a vote on the reunion resolution is scheduled for tomorrow morning. How will that vote go? I’ll be back in a momen
t.”

  O’Neill’s face faded away and was replaced by a series of commercials.

  “Well?” Julia said.

  “Well what?”

  “How will the vote go? What’s the latest count?”

  Callaway shrugged helplessly. “I got five different ‘latest counts’, all different.”

  “Bowman was great,” Julia said. “That has to help.”

  “Bowman was a gift from God,” Callaway said, “But…”

  O’Neill was back on the screen. “Sometime tomorrow morning,” he said, affecting gravitas, “Congress will cast what will certainly be one of the most momentous votes in the history of the North American Union—whether or not to admit the Southern states back into the union, after an absence of more than 150 years.

  “How will that vote turn out. Let’s ask our chief Washington Correspondent, Arthur Nixon. Arthur, what do you have to tell us?”

  The sharp-faced, sharp-nosed man with the prominent incisors and beady eyes took center screen. He was standing on the sidewalk, in front of the gleaming white Capitol Building, wearing a dark-color raincoat despite the clear skies. “Well, Sean, if you’d asked me this morning, I would have said that I didn’t think the measure would pass, even though the Callaway administration is giving it a full court press.”

  “But you’ve changed your mind?”

  “We’ve had two stunning developments today that have thrown all my careful calculations to the wind,” Nixon said, demonstrating, once again, his habitual and incurable fondness for clichés.

  “The Bowman announcement?”

  “Yes, it came like a thunderbolt, absolutely unexpected, not a whisper, not a hint.”

  “Surely the White House must have known,” O’Neill said.

  “Of course,” said Nixon, “but there was no indication at all. I’m told that the secret was held by a very small group, the President and his closest advisors.”

  “How will the Bowman announcement impact the upcoming vote?” O’Neill asked.

  “That’s just it, Sean—no one knows,” Nixon said. “When the Bowman announcement came this morning, most members of Congress were at church, at home with their families or otherwise unreachable.”