by Allen Drury
“What a beautiful spring day, Mr. Chairman!” he exclaimed. “I am so glad you offered me the opportunity to see Geneva for the first time, and in such a lovely season of the year. I am quite glad now that I decided to come.”
At this Tashikov, with whom Orrin supposed he would have to deal with very shortly, as the delegate from Yugoslavia, rapped the gavel for First Committee to come to order, had leaned forward and muttered something harshly in the Chairman’s ear. The Chairman had nodded in the grimly thoughtful fashion familiar from a million photographs and television glimpses and snapped out, “Da, it is beautiful!” and turning on his heel had trudged doggedly up the steps. The President waved to the cameras with a broad smile and wink that amused all but the Soviet photographers, shrugged elaborately, beckoned to his companions, and started, in a deliberately leisurely fashion, to follow.
His host, if that was the proper designation, had disappeared down the hallway when the American party entered the building. With another shrug and a humorous look about, the President continued past the long line of guards standing at attention and the massed flags of the two nations intermingled with exact mathematical equality by the UN/Geneva protocol office, until he came to the heavily-guarded bronze doors of the Assembly Hall and there found some three hundred reporters clamoring without success to get in. He then precipitated the crisis of the day.
“I don’t know where the Chairman has gone to,” he said to Tashikov, who was waiting at the door, “But you can tell him that my predecessor accepted this invitation on the sole understanding that this meeting would be open to the press, radio, and television of the world. I agreed to honor his acceptance on the same understanding. Is the meeting to be open?”
“Mr. President,” the Soviet Ambassador began coldly, “my government felt it would save you embarrassment in the eyes of the world if—”
“Is it!” the President snapped, and Tashikov snapped back, “It is not!”
“Very well,” the President said without a moment’s hesitation. “Come along, gentlemen.”
And he had swung about and led them, startled but having the sense to conceal it, back to the entrance, back to the steps, back to the waiting limousines, and so, with a roar and a flourish and the inevitable scream of sirens, back along the dazzling blue lake in the gleaming bright sun and the warm whipping wind to the villa.
There he collapsed into an enormous overstuffed chair with a little grunt of satisfaction and a happy smile.
“Now,” he said with what was for him a surprising use of profanity, “let’s see what the bastards make of that.”
“My God, Mr. President,” Bob Munson had said, and not entirely joking either, “hadn’t you better check and see if Washington is still there?”
“Washington is still there,” the President had responded in the same vigorous vein. “Washington will be there a damned sight longer than these sons of bitches. Have a drink, everybody. I’m perfectly happy, but you all look as though you might need it.”
“Yes,” Orrin Knox agreed, “I think we do.”
Now, as he put on his earphone for the simultaneous translation in First Committee and switched the dial over the six channels to English on Channel 2, he could remember with satisfaction Tashikov’s appearance when he came to the villa at 6 p.m. The Soviet Ambassador had been white-faced and quivering, both at the situation and at the Secretary’s insistence on meeting him in front of the press in the villa’s ballroom. Under the anger, Orrin could sense an uneasy and growing uncertainty. It had not been alleviated, he knew, when he informed the Ambassador tersely that the President had given orders that he was not to be disturbed for the rest of the night.
“I thought he was entertaining the Chairman at a state dinner at 9 p.m.,” Tashikov had said angrily. “And the Chairman will entertain him tomorrow night. That was the agreement.”
“Agreements can be broken,” the Secretary had taken some satisfaction in pointing out, “as you have already proved this day. Anyway, I think it’s just as well to get away from this standard nonsense about how much everybody loves everybody at these international conferences. You didn’t ask us here to be friendly. You thought you would bring us here to destroy us. Well: you haven’t; nor will you. Now, state your business, and if it’s worthwhile, I’ll tell the President. That’s my function.”
“We cannot possibly agree to open the conference to the press!” the Ambassador said.
“We can’t possibly agree to attend unless it is open,” the Secretary replied. “Tell the Chairman. Good night.”
And taking a leaf from the President’s book, he turned on his heel and went back to the private quarters where the White House communications center had set up an enormous bank of transmitters and receivers, over which he could hear the frantic commentators of his own country telling the world how horribly dangerous the American delegation’s behavior was and how irresponsibly it jeopardized the world’s hopes for peace.
Watching Tashikov now as he launched into another of his high-pitched tirades against the United States, translated word for word and smug inflection for smug inflection by the UN translator, Orrin Knox recalled with a grim amusement the Ambassador’s three subsequent visits to the villa that night: at 8 p.m., at 11, and, finally, at 1 a.m. Each time their conversation had been roughly the same, and each time it seemed to be briefer; and yet the Secretary of State had the growing conviction that all he had to do was stand firm and presently he would win out. At the last he had gestured to all the cameras, the reporters, and the television gear before which they were standing. “Do you know what you’re doing, Mr. Ambassador? You’re making yourself utterly and completely absurd.”
“Very well,” Tashikov had said with a black anger that sounded, at last, completely genuine, “if that is your attitude, your blood be on your own heads, Americans!”
But at 3 a.m., after they had all gone to bed, a courier had come and awakened the Secretary: the Russians would meet them at the Palais des Nations at 3 p.m., and the conference would be open.
“Imperialist colonializers … oppressing the just aspirations of the peoples for freedom … destroyers of human rights … enemies of justice …” The idealistic phrases of the liberty-loving friends of Hungary, Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Albania, East Germany, and the Baltic states came to him in violent precision over the earphone as he watched the Soviet Ambassador pounding and gesticulating across the curved horseshoe of seats in First Committee. He had heard it all so many times before—so infinitely many times. But never, he was sure, with quite the ominous and portentous contempt with which it had been hurled at the President and his companions by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers as he delivered his three-hour denunciation in Geneva.
After one or two futile attempts to interrupt, the President had sat back with an expression both amused and bored while the torrent of invective flooded in upon them through the same UN earphones and apparatus of translation. In fact, it could have been the same translator: there was the same precise rendering of emphasis and inflection, a mimicry so perfect as to border, unconsciously or perhaps not, on parody. The gist of the first two and a half hours of it differed little from what had been coming out of Moscow ever since the Soviets began their calculated campaign of world imperialism at the end of the Second World War. “I don’t think they like us,” Bob Munson had confided at one point, leaning across to Orrin behind the President’s chair. “I’m saddened,” the Secretary had replied with a cheerful amusement that caused an uneasy little ripple through the ranks of the Soviet delegation.
In the final half hour, however, the Chairman, looking about with his angry scowl and customary hostile expression, had gotten down to business. It was not a pleasant prospect that he laid out before the world; although it was, as Warren Strickland remarked later, no different from the prospect presented so often in the past by his late predecessor before that worthy’s abrupt and unexpected demise. It just sounded uglier, reduced to bald esse
ntials and stripped of the grins, the proverbs, and the bouncy banging-about.
“Gospodin!” he had begun, giving to that word, as versatile as the French alors!, a fateful and somber inflection: “Gentlemen, attend me well. You have come here at the direction of the Government of the U.S.S.R., after great and overpowering gains by the U.S.S.R., to hear what the U.S.S.R. requires of your country in the interests of world peace. It is this:
“You will at once abandon the imperialist military alliance known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and will assist with all possible speed in the liquidation of the NATO armed forces. This to be accomplished not later than one month from today.
“You will abandon all military and naval bases of whatever nature on the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, South and North America, exclusive of the United States, retaining only those bases not more than ten miles from the shores of the continental United States. This to be accomplished not later than one month from today.
“You will terminate at once all missile and space exploration projects of the United States, transferring immediately to the U.S.S.R. control of all such projects and their personnel.
“You will terminate at once the experimental programs of the United States in the field of nuclear, thermonuclear, chemical, germ, and other super-weapons, transferring immediately to the U.S.S.R. control of all such projects and their personnel.
“You will reduce the Army of the United States to one hundred thousand officers and men, effective two months from today.
“You will reduce the Navy of the United States to ten battleships, five destroyers, and thirty supporting vessels, with suitable complements. You will discharge all other naval personnel and transfer to the United Nations Security Council tide and control of all other vessels presently in the United States Navy.
“You will immediately destroy, under supervision of the United Nations Security Council, all nuclear-powered submarines in the United States Navy and immediately discharge their personnel.
“You will immediately disband and destroy, under supervision of the United Nations Security Council, the Air Force of the United States and most particularly the Strategic Air Command.
“You will abrogate at once all treaties of alliance, mutual assistance or defense, between the government of the United States and other governments.
“You will take immediate steps to make certain that persons friendly to the U.S.S.R. are brought into the Cabinet of the President and other high offices of your government, and you will take steps also immediately to assure a friendly attitude toward the government of the U.S.S.R. on the part of the press, radio, television, and motion picture industries of the United States.
“You will prepare to receive in Washington not later than one week from today commissioners of the U.S.S.R., who will advise you on carrying out this agreement.
“You will appoint immediately two representatives to sit with the representatives of the U.S.S.R., the Afro-Asian States, the People’s Republics of Europe, the People’s Republics of the Caribbean and Latin America, and a representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, to supervise the carrying-out of all the terms of this agreement.”
He paused and looked up and down the long table, and only the whirring of the television cameras and the sounds of pencils racing over paper in the press areas along the walls broke the silence. His gaze came back to that of the President, who looked at him with impassive curiosity from directly across the table. He gave a sudden cough and an impatient, angry shake of his head.
“Now, gentlemen,” he said, “these terms may at first glance seem harsh and difficult for you to accept. Be assured it is not the intention of the U.S.S.R. to be harsh but only to do what is obviously necessary to guarantee the peace of the world. Our sole interest lies in removing the causes of friction and of war. We have tried for many years without success to persuade the United States to abandon policies, which could lead only to war. The United States has persisted in these policies even though it has been obvious to the world that they could have only one conclusion, a conclusion which would be disastrous for all mankind.
“Now the time has come to change these false and wrongheaded policies. Soviet science has placed in our hands the means to do so. We would be betraying our responsibility to the human race if we did not exercise this new power to make the United States abandon its mad drive toward war and adopt policies desired by all the peace-loving peoples of the earth. That is our sole interest, gentlemen. We are here in the cause of peace. Do not, I beg of you, stand in the way of the world’s yearning for peace.”
He paused, and this time it was the President who coughed, a perfunctory and rather disinterested little sound which he emphasized by smiling politely and saying, “Excuse me,” in a friendly voice. The Chairman frowned but went on.
“You are asking yourselves, as the watching world may no doubt be asking, why should you yield to these Soviet cries for peace? Why should the great United States abandon its drive toward war and rejoin the community of the world’s peace-loving peoples? Are there not profits to be gained by continuing to pursue a policy of war? Is there not power to be gained by continuing to pursue a policy of war? Gentlemen, do not believe it! No, gentlemen, that day is vanished forever. To continue on such a course is to follow an empty dream, to get holes in your shoes chasing a swamp fog.
“Why, gentlemen, do you think”—and here a heavy sarcasm came into his voice—“do you think there are only radio transmitters in the Soviet expedition to the moon? Do you think that is all we sent up there? Do you think it is just a contest in radio broadcasts that exists between our two countries? No, gentlemen, we—(the translator hesitated and then produced)—tucked in—we tucked in a little something else along with the bread and cheese to keep us healthy when we reached the moon. We did not want to rob you of this contest in radio broadcasts, but we wanted to be sure that we had some other argument available when we asked you to come here and accept guarantees for peace.
“That argument is up there too, gentlemen. It needs only a signal from us and it will suddenly be down here on earth again, falling on Washington and New York and Chicago and St. Louis and Denver and San Francisco and all your other fine cities. That is our argument, gentlemen, and you must not stand in the way of it. And, gentlemen! We cannot necessarily be sure that these are the only cities it will hit if you force us to use it. It may also hit London and Paris and Rome and many other capitals in the former imperialist alliance ring of the United States. We should not like this to happen, but if you force us to use our argument, gentlemen, we might not be able to control it entirely. This would be a heavy responsibility for the United States to assume, gentlemen. The results would be very sad for the world.” He glanced at the watching cameras. “The world is right there now, gentlemen. What do you have to say to it, yes or no?”
And with a gesture that did indeed bring suddenly into the room the watching presence of humanity around the globe—Americans in their pleasant homes, Russians in their dark cities and mud-daubed huts, English in their clubs, Malays in Singapore, a white-robed Nigerian in Lagos, some Indians in New Delhi, little excited groups in the sunny alleys of Rome, a sheepherder in New Zealand, businessmen in Rio, tribal chieftains huddled around a squeaky receiver in Jebel-el-Druz, vividly dressed Malagasys in Tananarive, a frightened group of tourists in Tahiti, and many and many a million more on that bright spring day—he folded his arms abruptly and sat back with an intent and listening scowl. A silence again fell on the room, broken as before only by the busy whirring of cameras and a little stir here and there among the press, as history quieted down and prepared to attend the President of the United States.
“Mr. Chairman,” he began slowly, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the arms of his chair and look with a candid appraisal at his opponent, “I would like to think that I am in the presence of a sane man instead of a maniac, for if I am in the presence of a maniac, then this world, so beautiful in the s
pring, does not have much longer to live.”
He paused, and there was an audible intake of breath around the room and, no doubt, around the earth. But he appeared not to notice and after a moment resumed in a curiously detached voice, as though he were addressing, not the Russians, but the world, as indeed he was.
“I came here with my delegation, composed of old friends of mine from the Senate of the United States, thinking we would find serious and sober proposals for easing the tensions that afflict our poor common humanity.” He stopped and his glance went slowly up and down the Russian side. “Instead,” he said, and a new vigor came into his voice, “we are confronted with utter frivolity. Yes, gentlemen, with utter and complete frivolity. With the most irresponsible playing with the destinies of mankind. With something so monstrous it would under other conditions be considered a joke, though an evil and despicable one.”
“Gospodin—” the Chairman began angrily, but the President went on.
“Evil and despicable!” he said, with all the intensity of one coming from a small town in Michigan confronted suddenly with something dirty and unexpected in the middle of the living-room rug. “Evil and despicable! How dare you, Mr. Chairman?”
“Gospodin—” the Chairman said softly, but again the President brushed him aside.
“We have heard here every dream of every Soviet leader since the end of World War II, boiled down to essence and presented with a straight face. Get out of this! Get out of that! Scrap your defenses! Abandon your friends! Give the world to Communism! Forget your responsibilities to humankind and surrender to us! All the dearest fantasies of the Kremlin have been rolled up in one and presented to us here complete with threats. Gospodin,” he said, giving the word an angry and sarcastic emphasis, “you attend me well, and I will give you the answer of the United States.