by Allen Drury
“The time will never come,” Ted Jason managed, but Tashikov rounded on him with a sudden contemptuous look.
“Never?” he demanded in a heavily sarcastic tone, sweeping his hand in an encompassing gesture across the lighted map and tables before them. “Tomorrow!”
“Not tomorrow,” the President said with a dogged stubbornness, for it had to be true. “Never.”
“Mr. President,” the Chairman said with a pity as deliberate and heavy-handed as his sarcasm, “I have only shown you half of it. Look now.”
And he touched another button, this one on the table with the book. A slowly rotating globe appeared, suspended in the concave center of the table. New winking lights went on, hundreds of them, in Russia, Asia, Africa, Cuba, South America, the Indian Ocean, the Arctic, the Antarctic.
“Those are missiles carrying multiple independently targeted hydrogen bomb warheads, Mr. President. And these—” another button, and a silvery, pulsating, never-still tracery of wires appeared around the globe’s surface, tiny sparks crisscrossing it constantly in all directions—“are satellites for surveillance, satellites to kill other satellites, satellites armed with hydrogen and atomic bombs ready to descend upon your country if I so much as lift the telephone—” he did so, and listened intently—“and say—” he broke off with a chortle and then went on in a jovially joshing tone—“Ah, comrade! How are you? I was just checking your alertness. That is good. That is very good! Goodbye!…
“And in this volume here, Mr. President,” he said, replacing the telephone, “are listings of germ and chemical warfare bombs and an exact description of where we have such equipment stored and awaiting signal. If you will just look at this first map—” and he opened the unwieldy book and laid it on the table before them—“you will see that we have quite a few items here and there in America, in old buildings, in storage warehouses, at power plants and dams, at many other similar locations. Some are on the persons of people who in the past week have begun just—traveling. Constantly—traveling. Many are in the very midst of cities, near or actually in city halls, police stations, other administrative centers. Yes, here we are: Detroit … Minneapolis … San Francisco … yes, Seattle, Denver … Des Moines, Atlanta, New Orleans … Kansas City, Miami … many others … and of course Washington and New York, of course!”
He closed the book with a snap, turned to look again, with a happy and complacent satisfaction, at the winking lights, the model planes, the spider-web traceries, the symbols of a destruction so great as to be beyond the comprehension of all but the demonically insane.
“So there you have it, Mr. President,” he said, touching a final button that returned it all again to darkness. “How do you like my exhibit? Let us go back to the table and talk some more.… Now!” he said when they were seated again. “You understand why you must swiftly cease this stupid and insane defiance of the will of the world’s peace-loving peoples. You understand why the United States must at once withdraw from her many attempts to interfere in the world’s affairs and assume the role which history has reserved for her hereafter, namely that of a peaceable and cooperative partner of the Soviet Union. Even, one might say—” and the shrewd little face broke into a merry chuckle—“a junior partner, for that is how we see it here in the Kremlin. And how we see it, Mr. President,” he said with a sudden softness, “is how, we believe, it is going to be.”
The President thought there must be some brilliant and effective retort to make to that, but all he could imagine was threat replying to threat, to be answered by threat, to be answered in turn by threat, to be answered in turn—his tired mind was overwhelmed and almost suffocated by the pointlessness of it all. So his answer was lame and he knew it. But there seemed no help for it.
“The Soviet Union,” he said slowly, “has apparently violated every treaty, every arms control agreement, every understanding ever reached with the United States. How could you do such a thing, when we trusted you?”
For just a moment the Chairman looked at him with an expression of such profound disbelief as to be almost comical. Then he shook his head in an amazed and wondering way.
“Oh, Mr. President!” he exclaimed with a wry, almost amiable regret. “If the United States were not so evil it would almost be possible to feel sorry for it. So naive! So wishful! So childish! Treaties! Agreements! Understandings! Did anyone in America really think we would honor those things? Why on earth should we, when all we had to do was play upon the ego, the gullibility and the infinite capacities for self-delusion of your Presidents, your Congress, your intellectual community and your press? America has begged to be betrayed in these recent decades, Mr. President! Even if it had not been our intention, we should have been forced to oblige. How else could we have treated a great power whose controlling minds have had so little understanding of what it takes to survive as a great power, in this harsh world? The race goes to the strong, Mr. President. Were we supposed to be in the business of helping weaklings to save themselves? That is not the Communist concept, I assure you.”
“What is the Communist concept?” Ted Jason inquired in a weary voice. “To threaten the world with all this—this—” he gestured to the darkened tables, the silent map—“galaxy of horrors?”
Tashikov shook his head.
“We do not threaten. It is simply there. We wanted you to know it, so that you might intelligently consider what to do next. After all, we don’t have to convince the world, if they see we have convinced the United States.” He smiled with a grim satisfaction. “They will fall in line soon enough. In fact—” his expression changed to one of open contempt—“they are scrambling already. You would not believe the number of diplomatic approaches we have received in this past week while you have been so silent, Mr. President. A great shift is already under way in the world. I am inclined to believe nothing you could do now could in any way reverse it. And anyway: what could you do now? Do you have any ideas?”
And leaning forward, elbows on table, resting his chin on the tips of his fingers, he gave Ted Jason a calmly insolent, blandly inquiring stare.
Again for several moments the President was silent, though his eyes did not leave those of his grand inquisitor. The basic assumptions of a nation, a policy and a human personality were swept away forever. Inwardly he was groping for something that could re-establish at least some faint semblance of sanity and reason to a world in collapse. Nothing came. The silence grew.
Finally he spoke, in a heavy, almost dulled tone.
“I could of course,” he said slowly, “order an immediate attack upon the Soviet Union.”
“How?” Tashikov interrupted. “From here? Of course all your communications are cut off. How would you get the message through? And furthermore, Mr. President—” and his eyes gleamed with a satisfaction long delayed but finally satiated, “what would you do it with? Acting under all these ‘treaties’—and ‘agreements’—and ‘understandings’—the United States has dutifully cut itself back to the point where you really have very little to meet us with. Oh, you might get a missile or two through, although our interceptors by now are so sophisticated that even that would be sheer luck. And one or two of your submarines might be moderately effective. But supposing they were, Mr. President? We still have you outnumbered in every category by at least three to one—and this by the United States’ own doing.
“I will say to you frankly, Mr. President—” he shook his head in a bemused, amused gesture—“that it has been almost awesome to us here in the Kremlin, it has been so unbelievable: every time there has been an ‘agreement,’ your government has dutifully cut itself back like good little boys. What on earth did your leaders expect us to do in return? What on earth—”
“Act in good faith, as people should who bear equal responsibility for the peace of the world!” Ted Jason shot out with a sudden choked anger that surprised Tashikov and seemed to surprise even himself. “Be honest! Be trustworthy! Show some sense of historical responsibility! Have s
ome basic regard for humanity! Apparently you are ready to kill millions and millions of people in your insane drive for world domination. Millions and millions of people—”
“Oh, no, Mr. President,” Tashikov said softly, “it is not we who would have the responsibility for killing millions and millions, it is you. We will not start anything. We are not going to attack anyone with all the power we have. It is you who will start the killing if anyone does. It is you who is talking about attacking the Soviet Union.… Of course, Mr. President, if you do, we will respond. But stop and think about it: do you really want to be responsible for starting an atomic war? Not only would the United States be instantly annihilated, but you would bear the responsibility in history forever as the one who launched the war that could very well wipe out civilization itself. Is that the honor history has reserved for Edward M. Jason and the United States of America? Think about it, Mr. President! You are the one who will make war, if war is to be made. Are you ready to take the responsibility?”
The President shook his head as if to clear it of some great cobweb. But he did not look as though he had succeeded.
“We thought—” he said in a voice almost dazed, “we thought you might have changed.”
The Chairman uttered a short, sharp laugh, completely unamused.
“We will never change. We are educated, trained, dedicated Communists. Our methods may change, our goals never. We have never made a secret of this, either in our published statements or our actions, over six decades.
“Why are Americans always so self-deluding about this, Mr. President? We frown, and America becomes hysterical. We smile, and America falls down and rolls at our feet in gratitude. We have ‘thaws,’ we have ‘détentes,’ we have ‘freezes,’ we have whatever other easy, sleazy catchwords your media dreams up for us; but all the time we just go steadily right along, no matter who is in charge here, no matter what apparent outward twists and turns of policy we may find advisable: we still go steadily right along. We are programmed by history, Mr. President: history says the triumph of communism is inevitable. So why should communism change, if victory is inevitable? Communism never changes. How ineffably childish, stupid and immature of so many influential Americans, so many fools in the West, to deny all the evidence, all the record of history, to self-delude themselves into thinking that we do!
“We are the servants and the instruments of this ideology, Mr. President. From birth, a majority of us, now, have never known anything else. What on earth makes Americans think we are going to change?”
“Then—” Ted Jason said, his voice beginning to sound ragged with emotion and exhaustion, “then war is indeed inevitable.”
Tashikov made a harsh impatient, contemptuous gesture.
“No. Not war. This. You, the American President, sitting here in the face of our overwhelming power, unable to make a sensible or effective move in response. This is what has always been inevitable, implicit in what communism has always done, implicit in America’s unbelievable and obliging acceptance of it. This is what has always been inevitable, the breaking of the American President, and with him the American nation. And now at last it has come.”
“You are leaving me no alternative,” Ted Jason said in a strangely naïve, woebegone, almost wistful tone. “We have always been careful to leave the Communists alternatives. We have never pushed you to the point where it was either atomic war or surrender. We have never—”
“No, that is right,” the Chairman said cheerfully. “You have never pressed your advantages when you had them, when you could really have contained us and made us follow a peaceful course. You were concerned with saving our face. So your leaders foolishly missed all those opportunities. I weep for them, Mr. President! I weep for you! But my tears do not blind me to the duty of the Soviet Union to lead the world to a new era of genuine and really lasting peace. We may sob a little for you, if we happen to think about it, but somehow we shall manage to struggle on with our task, Mr. President. It will be difficult, but we will manage.”
“To think,” Ted Jason said almost in a whisper, “to think that an American President should find himself in a position of such weakness as this.”
“It was inevitable that sooner or later one would, Mr. President,” Tashikov said, “considering the deliberate self-weakening of the United States in these recent decades. But how fitting,” he said with an irony almost light, almost jolly, “that it should be Edward M. Jason the Peacemaker who has been chosen to join my country in really bringing peace to the world at last, by ordering home American power and giving up—permanently, at last—all the mad dreams of American meddling and involvement in the affairs of the world’s peace-loving peoples. History has indeed reserved you a place of great honor, Mr. President, for you have been chosen to really make peace. I congratulate you!”
“How do you know,” the President inquired, still very low, “that I will not leave here and go home and then order an attack upon you? How can you be so sure of what I will do?”
“Because I know the American conscience,” the Chairman said in an almost indifferent, offhand way. “And I know your conscience, which is the official representative of it, and its operative arm. We have studied America for many, many years, you know. We have studied you. We know how you both operate. Even if such an action could succeed—even if we did not have you, as we do, completely and absolutely checkmated with our power, we know you still would not do it. You would talk and argue and fret and worry and struggle with your consciences. And your consciences—and we—would join hands and win together.… Mr. President!” he said, and his tone was heavy and emphatic. “You know no American President would do such a thing. You know particularly Edward M. Jason would not. Now, isn’t that the truth?”
“You do not know what I would do if you push me too far,” the President said, again very low. “Too far …”
“Mr. President,” Tashikov said, his tone contemptuous, “we know you have given us all the indication and proof we need in your paralysis of these recent days. We did not really expect a response in Gorotoland or Panama, but when you failed to defend Alaska! Your own territory. We knew then, Mr. President,” he said simply, “that we had you.”
“I was only trying to avoid a confrontation that could mean war,” the President said, and he knew it sounded lame and whining, and he hated himself for it: but it was the truth.
The Chairman snorted.
“We understood your motivations, Mr. President. In the dream world in which America has lived, we knew they would be considered admirable by many of your countrymen. But that did not make them admirable—or intimidating—to us. To us they simply seemed appallingly weak, abominably misguided and, indeed, somewhat pathetic. But if that was the way you wished to present your head to us on a silver platter, Mr. President, we were not, of course, averse to accepting it. Why, Mr. President!” he said, and oddly there was almost an indignation on Ted’s behalf in his voice. “Do you have any concept—do you have any understanding—do you know that we issued orders throughout the world to withdraw at once if you had shown us the slightest sign of resistance?
“Of course we did! But you turned the other cheek. And enough of your people applauded you to persuade you that you had somehow saved the world by being so utterly misguided and weak. We would have appreciated and respected a strong response, Mr. President. But that!” An expression of pitying contempt crossed his face. “It was too much, Mr. President, too much.…
“Now!” he said, and he became abruptly cold and businesslike. “These are the things we want you to do:
“First. You will continue the withdrawal of American power which you so kindly and voluntarily began at your inaugural. There will be no reversal of those orders.
“Second. You will recognize the democratically formed peoples’ governments of Gorotoland and Panama, and indeed all other such democratically formed peoples’ governments, wherever they may be, which the United States has not already recognized.
> “Third. You will begin immediately to curb the disruptive elements among your population which are opposed to the establishment of a genuine and lasting peace brought about by close and obedient cooperation of the United States with the Soviet Union.” His lips twisted with an angry contempt. “And by this I mean: get rid of them!
“Fourth. You will similarly curb the disruptive and hostile elements in the American intellectual community and in the American media which are opposed to this cooperation with the Soviet Union. And by this I mean: force them into line or get rid of them!
“Fifth. You will invite me to come to the United States within a month’s time to sign a formal agreement of friendship and cooperation between our two countries, pledging your loyal support for our peace-seeking efforts and an end forever to attempts by the United States to meddle and interfere in the affairs of the world’s peace-loving peoples.
“Sixth. You will conduct yourself at all times with the greatest circumspection, restraint and respect toward the Soviet Union, both when you leave this city and hereafter. You will not tell your people of the power we have here—for indeed, how can you admit to such weakness?
“If you do not do these things, I promise you there will be retaliation, swift, sudden and complete. There are no divided counsels and no wishy-washy consciences in this building, Mr. President. We have proved that in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia and in many other places. We already hold several thousand of your soldiers captive, you know, and more are coming. If need be, we shall execute them one by one in Red Square—and you know there will be nothing you can do about it except sit and take the horror and the humiliation for your people. And if that does not suffice to keep you in line, Mr. President, well—” he flicked a button and the wall map and the tables sprang again into light—“there are, as you know, other means and methods.…