Balance of Power

by James W. Huston

  “Mr. Secretary,” a woman from The Washington Post asked quickly, “did they get the bodies of the Americans off the ship?”

  “No,” Roland replied. “They were chained to hard points on the ship. They couldn’t cut them loose.”

  “They went to the bottom with the ship?” The press corps was astonished and energized. This was turning into a huge story, if a horrible one. They shifted in their seats and sat up straight.

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Secretary,” yelled a popular New York columnist. “You said the captain was taken. Where is he now, and has he been harmed?”

  “We have no idea, other than he wasn’t on the ship.”

  “How do you know that the Navy personnel didn’t just miss him, not find him on the ship?”

  Roland hesitated. “Because the terrorists left behind a photograph of the captain with a gun to his head. We’ve identified him from the picture. You’ll each get a news summary at the end of this conference. It contains the names and backgrounds of the captain and all the deceased.”

  “Did the terrorists leave anything else to indicate who they were or what they wanted?”

  “No. Nothing at all.”

  “Have they made demands of any kind? Do we know who did this?”

  “As you were told last night, there were twenty to thirty men dressed in Ford coveralls who walked aboard the ship when it docked. That’s all we know about them.”

  “Mr. Secretary,” said a woman in the back.

  “Yes?”

  “What are you planning on doing about this?”

  “Very simply, we’re trying to find out who did this and why. We’re using every resource available to find whoever is responsible. When we do, we will respond appropriately. We aren’t ruling out anything.”

  “Will you take military action?”

  “I said we aren’t ruling out anything. That’s all for now. I will give you more information when we have it.” Roland stepped back. He, President Manchester, and Admiral Hart headed down the hall to the Oval Office, leaving the hubbub of unanswered questions behind them.

  President Manchester sat down heavily in his chair. Molly was there with the other advisers and Cabinet members sitting on the couch or standing around the desk. The President rubbed his forehead and sat forward.

  “The great United States can’t find three motorboats. That’s how it will play around the world.”

  The Secretary of Defense shrugged his shoulders. He had never been one to care too much about world opinion. His approach was to get the job done, and world opinion be damned.

  “Find them,” the President said standing up, indicating clearly that the discussion was over. The others stood to go, but thought much more needed to be said. What approach? What to do?

  “If I may, sir,” offered Nathaniel Corder, the Secretary of State. “What about Admiral Billing’s request to contact Indonesia and get permission to overfly their air space?”

  “Of course. Why do they even have to ask us about that? Isn’t that automatic?” His tone exposed his frustration. “Please expedite that request.” The President looked around the room. “Anything else we absolutely have to deal with? I didn’t get much sleep last night. I’m tired.”

  They considered several things, then remained silent.

  “Fine. I’ll call you if I need you. Let me know if you hear anything or have any brilliant ideas. Oh, Ms. Vaughan,” he said as they were leaving.

  “Yes, sir?” she replied, not sure whether to stay or go.

  “How’s that one-page memo on the War Powers coming?”

  “Fine. I should have something very soon.” She smiled hesitantly. “It’s not hard getting the information; what’s hard is reducing it to one page. Any limitations on font size?” she asked mischievously.

  Manchester smiled. “Have to be able to read it with my glasses off. Fourteen point.”

  Molly held the door, about to close it behind her. “I’ll try to get it to you this afternoon.”

  Manchester nodded. His mind was already on something else.

  “What’d you think of the press conference?” Grazio asked as he sat in Jim Dillon’s office. They were going over the agenda for the day.

  Dillon noticed the playful look in his eyes. “I thought it was weak. The President should have run it himself instead of dishing it to the Secretary. Made him look like he wasn’t sure what was going on.”

  “They did answer the most important questions.”

  “But they didn’t say anything. ‘We haven’t ruled anything out.’ I guess there isn’t much more to say, but I’d like to hear that we will pursue these people to the ends of the earth. That we’ll do whatever it takes, no matter who it turns out to be. Why do we have to wait and see who it is to be able to say what we’re going to do about it?” Dillon stood up, almost involuntarily, “It’s like the police saying we know there’s been a murder, and as soon as we find out who did it we will decide whether to make an arrest. What difference does it make who it is? Why do you have to know about all the angles when U.S. citizens have been murdered and valuable property ruined?”

  Grazio nodded and smiled. “Exactly,” he said, pointing at Dillon. “That’s what sets you apart as a nonpolitician. To a politician everything is relative, everything has to be examined from all possible angles before any commitment can be given. In my opinion, a gifted politician also knows when not to waffle. But that instinct is found only among the truly developed political animal. I’m afraid our President, of the other party, I might add, fails on that test.”

  “Oh, and you happen to have a perfect feel for the use of that instinctive response, instead of a careful political response.”

  “I was just evaluating the President’s performance. I didn’t know we cared about mine,” he said wryly. “So what’d you find out about Indonesia?” he continued, carefully changing the subject.

  “Quite a bit, actually,” Dillon said. “I admit to being basically ignorant about it before today. I knew where it was, but I sure didn’t know it was the fourth-largest country in the world—in population.”

  “Seriously?” Grazio said.

  “Yep. Over a hundred ninety million people. Bigger than Russia. Bigger than Japan.”

  “You sure don’t hear much about it.”

  “Not much anymore. During the seventies and eighties they had a lot of trouble with the Communists, the military taking over the government, Sukarno and all that. Some have said up to a million were executed in the seventies when the Communists made a big run at taking over the country.” He leaned forward and put a piece of paper in front of Grazio. “I copied a page from the atlas. I’ve circled Indonesia.”

  “It’s really spread out,” Grazio said as he examined it. “How many islands?”

  Dillon looked at his copy. “Hundreds. Maybe thousands if you consider five square miles an island. There are bays and coves all over the place. There are all kinds of different languages and cultures. Any group could have done this to get back at Indonesia.”

  Grazio nodded, thinking. “What’s their dominant religion?”

  Dillon looked at him intensely. “Guess.”

  Grazio frowned, “Buddhism?”

  “Nope.”

  “Taoism?”

  “Nope.”

  Grazio was stumped. “Hindu?”

  “Nope.” Dillon leaned forward. “Guess which country is the largest Muslim country in the world?”

  “I don’t know. What does that have to—”

  “Indonesia.”

  Grazio’s face showed his puzzlement. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Eighty-five percent of the country is Muslim.”

  “I wonder if that has anything to do with what happened—the country being Muslim.”

  “Beats me…. What’d you find out from your pal at the Pentagon?”

  Grazio shrugged absently. “Nothing. He said he doesn’t have anything you can’t find out on CNN.”

  “Sound
s like we’re all up to speed. Look, I’ll call you if anything else comes up. I’ve got to do some other stuff.”

  Grazio stood up. “I can take a hint,” he said as he walked out of the office and closed the door loudly behind him, as he always did.

  Dillon turned toward his desk. It was stacked high with books and magazines on Indonesia. He threw open a National Geographic and began reading about indigenous groups and religious traditions. There were also the usual pictures of naked breasts. He turned the page and frowned at a picture. It was an exotic picture of people on Irian Jaya, a province in eastern Indonesia, one half of the island of New Guinea. He leaned down and looked more closely, his face inches from the page.

  The photo showed the men of the island wearing long gourds on their penises. The gourds were held up by cord tied around their waists to look like they had a permanent erection. Dillon laughed. He shook his head as he stared at the picture, imagining the status of the guy in the tribe with the biggest gourd. He wondered what would happen if some young buck found a gourd bigger than the head chief’s. Would he have to surrender the gourd? He looked more carefully at one man in the picture. His gourd looked different. He bent down and squinted at the photo.

  “No…it can’t be,” he said. The man had a pink plastic doll leg over his penis instead of a gourd. The leg protruded from his abdomen, with a small little foot pointed up at the sky. He looked very proud.

  Dillon wondered how in the hell some native got a pink plastic doll leg, and what compelled him to put it…there. He wondered if Molly would be impressed if he met her for a movie with a pink plastic doll leg protruding from his fly….

  There was a knock on the door, and Grazio stepped in. “Thought I might find you here.”

  “Good guess. My office and you just left,” Dillon said. “Check this out,” he said to Grazio, showing him the National Geographic article, and pointing to the guy with the doll leg.

  “What the hell is that?” Grazio said, staring at the picture, his mouth open.

  “Doll leg.”

  “On his crank?” Grazio said, a startled laugh forcing itself from him.

  “Sure,” Dillon said. “Where else would you put a doll leg?”

  “That what Muslims wear under all those big robes and everything? Doll legs? Gourds?”

  “You’re pathetic,” Dillon said. “I think you’d better stop thinking the only Muslims in the world are Arabs.”

  Grazio ignored him. “Listen, I just got another call from my guy at the Pentagon.”

  “Good,” Dillon said, turning in his chair toward Grazio. “So. What’d you find out?”

  “Indonesia has more than I thought,” he said. “Did you know they have F-16s and F-5s?”

  “Yeah. It was a big deal in Congress when they agreed to sell them F-16s; then later, they bought MiG-29s.”

  “They’ve also got a military of two hundred thousand men.”

  Dillon whistled. “I had no idea. They any good?”

  “Initially trained and supplied by the Dutch when Indonesia was the Dutch East Indies. Since independence in 1948, they’ve been on their own; they haven’t fought anybody but themselves. So it’s hard to say how good they are.”

  “Anybody else in the area that could challenge them? Anybody they’re scared of?”

  “Japanese. Have been since World War Two. Maybe India and Australia? China, I suppose, except the fifty-trillion-man Chinese Army can’t walk there. Indonesia is all islands, it’s basically secure unless some real heavy with a navy—like us—decides to pop ’em.”

  Jim Dillon sat back and put his hands behind his head. “I just don’t get it. What does anybody gain from killing those crewmen and sinking the ship?” His chair creaked from the weight on the spring.

  “Seems to me they’re trying to make some kind of statement. But to who?”

  “Whom.”

  “Whatever,” Grazio said. “I doubt this was some Toyota dealer deciding to murder the comp before they could open. I see this as a punch in the mouth to the U.S.”—he paused for emphasis—“and in particular to the President. Everybody thinks it’s to tell him his diplomacy through commerce is a pile of shit. But who would hate commerce that much? I mean Indonesia nearly begged us to let them be first in this deal. It was their idea to start with, they wanted Ford to open a dealership in partnership with them.”

  “I don’t know,” Dillon said, tired of covering the same ground. “Keep me posted.”

  “Will do. Next, I’m off to the Library of Congress to do a chart of the political history of Indonesia. Speaker says.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Dillon replied.

  8

  CASKEY LOOKED AT HIS WATCH AND THE FLIGHT schedule. Ten minutes until his next brief. Not even enough time to look at the message board. He put his head back against his leather ready-room chair and closed his eyes. As soon as he did, he knew he shouldn’t have. He could feel sleep crawling over him, sapping his strength. He fought it, and reveled in it at the same time. He wanted to sleep, to surrender to it, to let himself go. But he told himself it wasn’t the time to sleep. For the commanding officer to be seen sleeping in the ready room was completely unacceptable.

  The sound of the television in the front of the ready room coming to life made Caskey open his eyes. He saw the familiar face of the air wing intelligence officer, Lieutenant Commander Carroll Cousins, or Pinkie as he had called him since Pinkie was an ensign in VF-84 and Caskey was a lieutenant. He looked at his watch. Eight minutes too early for the brief. Something was up.

  “Good morning,” Pinkie said. “No, I haven’t lost my watch, and yes, I do know it’s not time for the brief, but we’ve just received a message that CNN is going to carry a live report from Jakarta in one minute that will shed light on the events of the last twenty-four hours. We’re getting a good satellite feed, so we shouldn’t have any problem picking up…”

  “Wart!” Caskey shouted to the duty officer. “Get on the horn and make sure everybody catches this report.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Wart said, turning toward the phone.

  “Here we go,” Pinkie said, as the television was switched to CNN for ship-wide distribution.

  The anchorwoman came on the screen and had the serious look that meant she had hard news, not to be confused with the clever knowing look which meant she had filler. “Good evening,” she said. It was evening in Washington, but morning in the Java Sea. “CNN has obtained an exclusive first communication from the group which claims to have sunk the Pacific Flyer. Early this morning Jakarta time a man on a motorbike dropped off a videotape at our local CNN office in Jakarta and sped away. The videotape had a note on the top in English that said: ‘From the FII—those who took the Pacific Flyer.’ There was no other writing with it and no way to trace its origin. The CNN engineers in Jakarta played the videotape and believe it is authentic and is indeed from the men who attacked the American ship yesterday. We are now going to show you the videotape in its entirety. This is a CNN exclusive.” She turned her head sideways to look at a monitor.

  The image changed, and the focus became clear on a white male in his fifties. He was in a dingy room with his hands placed awkwardly flat on the wooden desk in front of him. He sat stiffly. He stared directly into the camera as he had obviously been instructed to do. His eyes appeared slightly swollen and his hair was unkempt. A voice came from offscreen. It spoke in English with a heavy accent as the speaker obviously read from something he had prepared.

  “You Americans continue to believe that as long as you spread your Western poison around the world, the world will improve. You are wrong. The world is tired of your oppression and your self-serving attitude that whatever you want is what is best for the world, especially if it means you make money.

  “No longer will the people of the world bow down to American Imperialism. I am a freedom fighter, like George Washington. I represent the future of Indonesia and the world. We are the Front for an Islamic Indonesia. Through us this co
untry will find its true greatness, by the Koran and obedience to its precepts in this Muslim country. Through us Indonesia will throw off military dictatorship, American support of the dictator, and America itself.

  “We took over Pacific Flyer as a lesson to you Americans. You do not control us, nor can you buy us with your Commerce through Democracy. We want none of your commerce or your democracy.

  “With America come corruption, prostitution, pornography, blasphemy, murder, and enslavement.”

  Those watching thought he had finished, but then he started again. “We will not stand for any of it. First, we demand that America promise not to engage in any further commercial relationships in Indonesia for ten years. Second, the U.S. Navy must stay out of the oceans of this area for twenty years. Third, you must take your missionaries home and not try to convert our people. We are a Muslim country and always will be. If these promises are not made, nothing you do will guarantee the safety of Americans here, or elsewhere in the world.”

  Caskey was transfixed by the broadcast, especially the terrorist’s unemotional delivery.

  “In case you think we are bluffing, as you can see, we have the captain of the Pacific Flyer.” A left hand showed in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and a right hand flashed in the middle of the screen as it slapped Captain Bonham in the back of the head. He jerked forward involuntarily and began to raise his hands. The phantom right hand slapped Bonham again in the back of the head. “I can do whatever I want with your captain. If you do not comply with our demands, he will be executed, just like the others.”

  Caskey felt his stomach tighten as he tried to control his rage. The nerve. To murder innocent men, and then go on world television and challenge the United States and the Navy. Unbelievable.

  “If you are listening, President Manchester, you will do as we ask. You Americans are big ones for rights. Rights for yourselves. We ask simply for what you take for granted, the right to be left alone.”

  The television screen went blank as the tape ended.