Russian Spring
Norman Spinrad
ABOUT RUSSIAN SPRING
“Norman Spinrad has built a career on challenges few other writers . . . would take.” —Newsday
Exhilarating, poignant, and thought provoking, Russian Spring is the most ambitious novel yet from the award-winning author of Child of Fortune and Little Heroes. Set in the near future but based on today’s headlines, it forecasts the success of perestroika and the transformation of the Russian economy, culminating in the Soviet Union’s entry into the Common Market.
Against this background of world political and economic upheaval, Spinrad weaves a powerful saga of ardent dreamers and star-crossed lovers:
Jerry Reed—His heart’s desire is a career in orbit, but the American space program has dead-ended. When he is offered a job with the burgeoning European Space Agency, Jerry seizes what may be his only chance to realize his dream—even though the price is his American citizenship.
Sonya Gagarin—Clever, liberated, fluent in English and French and reveling in the vitality of Common Europe, Sonya is a typical child of the Russian Spring. Her love affair with Jerry brings them to the attention of important figures on both sides of the political fence.
Franja Reed—Daughter of Jerry and Sonya, she inherits her father’s dream of going into space—but political barriers thrown up by her unorthodox parentage may keep her earthbound forever.
Bobby Reed—Entranced by the American dream, he leaves his family for college in California—only to discover a United States turned belligerently isolationist by anti-European backlash.
Seeking vengeance, a declining America pits itself against its former allies—and now Jerry Reed discovers that dreams can demand a dear price. Loyalties torn, his family’s happiness imperiled, Jerry must make decisions that will resonate for decades in his dreamer’s soul . . . and in a world hurtling toward the brink of nuclear frost.
Russian Spring is Norman Spinrad’s triumph: a spellbinding novel so timely we could be reading it in tomorrow’s newspapers.
A native of New York City, Norman Spinrad moved to Paris and spent two years traveling in Europe and the Soviet Union to research Russian Spring. Author of fifteen previous novels, about fifty short stories, and several screenplays, he is also a literary critic, political commentator, and occasional songwriter. Spinrad’s novel about Adolf Hitler, The Iron Dream, was banned in Germany for seven years, and Bug Jack Barron, his controversial novel about presidential politics and the power of television, was denounced on the floor of the British Parliament.
Part One — American Autumn
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
Part Two — Russian Spring
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
Part Three — American Spring
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Chapter 23
• Chapter 24
• Chapter 25
• Chapter 26
• Chapter 27
• Chapter 28
• Chapter 29
• Chapter 30
For Mikhail Gorbachev,
who made it necessary,
and
N. Lee Wood,
who made it possible
Part One
American Autumn
* * *
Secretary Goddard: “Sooner or later, Bill, we’re going to have to face the unfortunate fact that Latin America simply isn’t capable of standing alone.”
Bill Blair: “Standing alone against what, Mr. Secretary?”
Secretary Goddard: “Standing alone on its own two feet. Successfully managing modern economies with stable currencies, feeding its own people, and maintaining some semblance of stable democratic government. They certainly aren’t doing it now, and history is no cause for optimism. A passive role is an abdication of responsibility.”
Bill Blair: “You mean we should intervene openly in the affairs of Latin American countries whose internal policies are not to our liking?”
Secretary Goddard: “I mean we should do whatever we have to do to establish stable democratic governments capable of joining with us to form a Western Hemispheric Common Market that will prevent this hemisphere from turning into another Africa! And if that’s your idea of gunboat diplomacy, well then I’ll be proud to have you call me a gunboat diplomat!”
—Newspeak, with Bill Blair
STAGGERING TOWARD DISASTER OR JUST TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS?
The Americans seem to be staggering into yet another mini Vietnam in Latin America, and outraged but impotent European opinion seems to be stumbling once more into the wishful conclusion that it will be a disaster like all the others.
But what if the wise men have been wrong all along? Certainly this latest intervention seems like a disaster for the poor Costa Ricans, and certainly it seems likely to involve the United States in yet another endless military quagmire.
But what if the Americans have been applying different lessons all along? For them, after all, the Vietnam War was a long period of domestic economic prosperity. And the Gulf War taught them that no other nation on earth could hope to successfully oppose their high-tech might, establishing the United States as the impoverished military overlord of the planet.
“If you’ve got it, flaunt it,” goes an old and currently quite ominous American aphorism. And if you don’t have much of anything else, is nakedly flaunting your de facto military overlordship really a mistake in the amoral world of political and economic realpolitik?
What if keeping their military involved in endless little military quagmires in Latin America is precisely what the American economic establishment has intended all along?
—Libération
AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS
The condemnation of our efforts to rescue Costa Rica from far-left fanatics and outright chaos by the Common European Parliament, led by self-righteous German Green Socialists, and the threat of economic sanctions implied, should finally convince even the most Europhilic skeptics that half a century of American generosity has been cynically betrayed in the service of Common European economic hegemonism.
When we saved Europe from the Nazis, we were hailed as heroes. When we rebuilt their shattered economies with Marshall Plan aid, we were praised as benefactors. When we stood with them against Soviet imperialism, we were staunch allies. When we preserved their oil supplies in the Gulf with our arms and our treasure, we saved their economic prosperity at no little cost to ourselves.
When the reunited Germany was hardwired into a tighter confederal Common Europe, there was loud cheering on both sides of the Atlantic that the so-called German Question had at long last been solved. The Soviets pulled their troops back behind their own borders in return for untold billions of deutsche marks in grants, loans, and joint venture capital, and the United States was able to bring its troops home at last.
Now we see how we have been repaid for preserving European freedom and prosperity for half a century and more.
We find ourselves frozen out of the largest economic market the world has ever known. We find ourselves facing a Common Europe, dominated economically by the German colossus, determined to sabotage our efforts to establish a Western Hemispheric Common Market.
We have an enormous overseas debt to the very beneficiaries of our generosity and goodwill, a staggering economy, and an unholy alliance meddling in our own hemisphere, led by a swaggeringly self-righteous Germany, with the Soviet Union cheering it on from the sidelines.
America stands alone. And in sad retrospect, we can see that it has always been so. When our aid was needed, the nations of Europe were our friends. Now that they have long since gotten what they wanted from us, they will not even leave us to tend our own front yard without their interference.
We have been had. We have no other alternative. We must build and preserve an economically free and integrated America for all Americans, North and South. We must make whatever sacrifice is necessary to insure that overwhelming European economic power is counterbalanced by absolute American military impregnability.
We must stand up to Common European hegemonism, bite the necessary bullet, and deploy Battlestar America at long last, whatever the cost.
—Washington Post
Defense stocks, particularly anything aerospace related, which have been in the doldrums for a decade, have already exploded. The early bird does indeed get the fattest and freshest worm.
But there’s still plenty of upside left in secondary and particularly tertiary issues. And even at today’s sharply risen prices, there’s still more upside left in the big aerospace conglomerates in the medium run than the pessimists think. Contrary to popular opinion on the Street, we believe it’s still not too late for smart investors to cash in on the Battlestar America bonanza. We believe that the best is yet to come. Think independent subcontractors.
—Words from Wall Street
METHOD IN THE AMERICAN MADNESS?
Conventional wisdom has it that the decision of the American Congress to fund deployments of major elements of the so-called Battlestar America nuclear defense shield was an act of collective madness. But in truly ruthless realpolitik terms, from the American point of view, maybe not.
Against whom is Battlestar America supposed to defend? Against a Soviet Union which presents no military threat? Against a peaceful and prosperous Common Europe in the midst of an economic boom? Against hypothetical Third World madmen eager to commit national suicide by launching a puny nuclear assault against the planet’s only military superpower as some naive apologists sincerely contend?
This, of course, is a question without a rational answer. But it may not be the right question. For if one asks instead what the Americans have to gain by deploying Battlestar America, however flimsy the official excuses may be, the answers become all too clear.
By deploying Battlestar America, the United States props up a sagging defense sector without which its already staggering economy would fall into a deep structural depression.
By deploying Battlestar America, the American politicians validate the billions they have poured into its development over the decades.
By deploying Battlestar America, the United States serves notice on the republics of Latin America that American force reigns supreme in the Western Hemisphere, that no matter what interventionist excesses the Americans may descend to, no one will ever have the will or the power to oppose them in their own self-proclaimed sphere of influence.
Long ago, Mikhail Gorbachev promised to do a terrible thing to America. “We will deprive you of an enemy,” he proclaimed, and lived up to his words.
And now we see the American response. Having been deprived of the enemy whose existence propped up their economy and rationalized their foreign policy for half a century, the American government has simply gone out and nominated a replacement.
If Germany and Common Europe had not existed to serve this purpose, they no doubt would have been forced to invent us. And indeed, in a certain sense, they have.
—Die Welt
* * *
I
With a leaden thump, a protesting squeal of rubber on concrete, and a disconcerting groan of tired metal, the old 747 hit the runway, popping open half a dozen overhead luggage bins as the thrust-reversers roared, and the plane shuddered, and the lights flickered.
It had been a truly ghastly fourteen hours from Los Angeles in this aerial cattle car, what with a thermostat that seemed incapable of maintaining a constant temperature, and two lukewarm and pasty TV dinners, and a movie machine that didn’t work, and a seat that wouldn’t recline all the way, and bad vibrations from the left inboard engine, but somehow the plane had made it, and Jerry Reed was in Paris, or anyway officially on French soil.
For a born-and-bred Californian space cadet whose only previous experience with foreign intrigue had been limited to picking up hookers in Tijuana, it was a long way, my son, from Downey.
Eight weeks ago, Jerry had been planning to spend his three-week vacation backpacking in the Sierras. He hadn’t even had a passport. Now here he was, taxiing toward the terminal at Charles de Gaulle, and heaving a great sigh of relief that he had made it to Common Europe without having it lifted.
“No, no, but of course not, there is nothing at all illegal about it,” André Deutcher had assured him. “The worst thing that can happen is that they refuse to let you board the airplane.”
“And confiscate my passport.”
André had smiled that worldly smile of his and blown out a thin pout of smoke from one of his ten ECU Upmanns. “If they confiscate your passport for trying to leave the country, then it was a document of no value in the first place, n’est-ce pas, Jerry?” he said.
“True enough,” Jerry admitted bitterly. “But if they slice my clearance for trying it, I’ll never work in the Program again, like poor Rob.”
“Rob is finished, Jerry, it is a sad thing, but it is true,” André Deutcher said much more coldly. “And because people like Rob Post are no longer welcome, so is your American space program. . . .”
“With our heavy lifters and our shuttles and our sat sleds, our basic logistic technology isn’t that far behind. . . .” Jerry protested wanly, sounding sad and foolish even to himself.
“While the Soviets are building three more Cosmograds and going to Mars and we are building the spaceplane prototype.”
“When the politics change here, all the Battlestar America technology will give us—”
“Jerry, Jerry, take my offer or not as you like,” André said, fixing him with those ambiguous gray-green eyes of his, “that much is the representative of ESA speaking. But do not delude yourself as all the people at this party must in order to face their shaving mirrors in the morning. This is what happened to Rob, n’est-ce pas, I would not wish to see the same happen to you, and this is a new friend speaking, a friend who has dreamed the same dream, and who knows all too well how he would feel had he been unfortunate enough to be born American instead of French at this hour in its history. Battlestar America is the problem, and can never be the solution. Rob knew this in his heart, yes, and thought he could fight it from within. Do not let this happen to you.”
Jerry had only known André Deutcher for three weeks now, and indeed had met him at Rob Post’s previous party. André had been introduced, by Rob himself in fact, as an ESA engineer spending his vacation time in the United States seeing the sights and meeting like-minded American space people for his own pleasure.
Jerry, of course, had not believed this for a minute, had assumed that the Frenchman was some kind of industrial spy, and had immediately begun to kid him about it. André had countered that the American civilian space program, being all but nonexistent, had no industrial secrets worth stealing, and that he was really working for French military intelligence. The bullshit had flown back and forth, and somehow a spark of friendship seemed to have been lit.
Jerry took André to the original Disneyland, showed him Forest Lawn, and managed to take him on a circumspect tour of the open areas at the Rockwell plant in Downey, and the Frenchman had in turn wined and dined Jerry on the ESA expense account at restaurants that he hadn’t even known existed.
And then tonight An
dré had committed the California faux pas of lighting up a big cigar in the middle of the crowded living room, handing Jerry another, and insisting he do likewise.
There was an unseasonable marine layer rolling in and a foggy chill in the air, so that when Rob’s wife, Alma, had shooed them outside to smoke their noxious Havana weeds, as André had known she would, the deck of the Posts’ rotten-rustic hilltop house in Granada Hills—all that Rob had managed to salvage of the good old days—was empty.
And once André had gotten Jerry out into the chilly privacy of the foggy Southern California night, he finally dropped his cover, or so at least it seemed, and admitted what his trip to America was really about.
André Deutcher was nothing so sinister as an agent of French military intelligence or even an industrial spy. He was simply a headhunter for the European Space Agency.
“You are someone I think ESA might be interested in, Jerry,” André had told him. “Not that this is yet anything like an offer of employment, you understand. But you have told me you have a three-week vacation coming up, and I am authorized to invite you to spend it as the guest of ESA in Paris, meet some interesting people, learn more about our program, and let us learn more about you.”
Russian Spring Page 1
