by Allen Drury
And again the President of the United States thought bleakly to himself:
Exactly so.
Outwardly, however, he gave no sign. After a moment he nodded thoughtfully.
“What you say seems reasonable enough, Mr. President. And of course the Chinese will want to know your position also. What am I to tell them? That you completely reject an international peace-keeping force along the border to protect them from another sneak attack? That you refuse to enter into an agreement not to cross your frontier again and invade their territory? That you intend to rebuild your armaments as fast as possible to the point where you will once more be a major threat to them?”
This time, he noted with a grim satisfaction, the consternation was on the other side and it had hit so fast that there was no time to dissemble. Shulatov and his colleagues looked openly dismayed. It was not with any bland smile that his antagonist responded to him now.
“Mr. President!” he cried indignantly. “How dare you misrepresent our position so unfairly? I have never said any of those things! I have never said one of them! Not once have I ever—”
“You haven’t said the opposite,” Orrin remarked in an unimpressed tone. “You have had your chance to agree to these protections for the Chinese and for yourselves and for all of us, and you have refused. I submit I am not being unfair at all, Mr. President. The logical inference to be drawn from your position is exactly as I state it. I shall so inform the Chinese.”
“Mr. President,” Shulatov said, and with what was quite clearly a major effort of will he forced his voice down, his breathing into a more normal rhythm, his face into calmer and less agitated lines. “Mr. President, I ask you not to draw inferences and not to prejudice our case with the Chinese by such statements. I have said we do not trust them, true, and I have said we must have certain things for our protection, true, but I have never said we wanted more war with them or had any desire to attack them again. I will never say those things, Mr. President, because they are not true.”
“Very well, then,” he said, “I must have your promise that I can tell them that you wish to reach a genuine cooperative agreement on these three basic points. And I must have your promise that when I return here, you will agree and you will cooperate. Otherwise, I shall have no choice but to tell them exactly what I said.”
He sat back and folded his hands before him on the table, his expression impassive and unyielding. Many things crossed the shrewd face opposite: obviously a major internal struggle was under way, accompanied by little flutters down the ranks of the new government.
Finally Shulatov leaned forward, extended his hands palm upward, shrugged, smiled.
“Mr. President,” he said, tone once more most reasonable, “let us not complicate matters. I have told you right along that we are willing to help stabilize the world—indeed we have no choice, we must, for the sake of Russia. So you state it as you please. We will do what we can to help. My government and I agree to that.” He looked sharply along the table. “Is it not so, citizens?”
“Yes, Citizen!” murmured many voices, and many bright, eager smiles and head-noddings besought the friendship and understanding of the American side.
“Then I think,” the President of the United States of America said, “that we had better go see the press and tell them what our understanding is.”
“By all means,” agreed the President of the United States of Russia most heartily. “By all means!”
And presently, after they had stated it in a press conference that was held to a terse fifteen minutes in the crowded Great Hall of the Kremlin, it appeared in headlines that did not erase the growing misgivings throughout the world that Earth’s agony might not be over yet.
Knox, Shulatov reach “agreement in principle” on arms cut, end to imperialism, international peace force. Details to await President’s return from Peking, where he flies tonight. Sporadic civil fighting continues in many areas of both countries as new governments seek to strengthen hold. Death toll from atomic exchange expected to near thirty million as refugees pour in.
Chinese express “grave disappointment’ at lack of firm agreement in Moscow. President may face tough negotiating in next phase of peace effort.
And that he would, he thought with a sigh as Air Force One and its accompanying press planes rose into the air above Moscow and turned east: that he would. Tougher, in all probability, than what he had faced here, now that the Chinese were receiving an increasingly clear picture of Russian intransigence.
The way was open, now, for a return to the old ways of obstruction, subversion, evasion, deceit.
The way was open for a return to war.
“Tell me,” he said abruptly as they reached cruising altitude and leveled off for the long night journey, “was I too harsh, do you think? Should I have been milder? Should I have been tougher? Do I interpret the situation correctly, or am I all wrong?”
Around the little conference table in the forward cabin they stared back at him with somber faces. His predecessor, by tacit agreement, led the response.
“I think you did about as well as possible under the circumstances,” William Abbott said slowly. An expression of sudden disgust touched his face. “I don’t believe the tricky bastards have learned one damned thing.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Senator Munson said. Senator Richardson uttered a confirming grunt.
“It seems to me,” he said, “that it’s as though the war had never been. The atomic exchange, the devastation, the dead—none of it ever happened. The military just took over from the commissars, and here we go again.”
“What do you think, Tommy?” the President inquired. “You’re our resident optimist. How did they seem to you?”
“Not good,” the little Justice said in a somber tone, his normal ebullience given way to a profound uneasiness. “I kept hoping they would give you a really affirmative response. But”—his face turned bleak at the thought of what this could mean—“they did not.”
“No,” he said with an equal bleakness, “they did not. So where do we go from here—assuming, as Arly does, I think correctly, that what we are facing is a military take-over under the guise of a civil revolt? Should I go all out in threatening them? Or should I keep trying to reason?”
“Why were any of us ever naïve enough to think,” Bob Leffingwell inquired moodily of no one in particular, “that when the Communists finally fell it would be anything but a military government that would succeed them? You keep a nation in chains for six decades and the machinery of oppression isn’t going to vanish that easily. It’s just going to acquire some new managers.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “So do I get tougher, or do I go along with the pretense that it’s a democratic civilian government that I can maybe, just possibly, if I talk long enough and gently enough, persuade to return to sanity and join the rest of us in keeping the peace?”
“It did not appear to me,” Blair Hannah remarked, “that any amount of talk and gentle persuasion is going to do the least bit of good. It appeared to me that force is still the only language they understand in Moscow.”
“So what do we do then?” the President inquired somewhat tartly. “Lead a world crusade to isolate and conquer Russia? I think I made the threat strong enough to give them something to think about, but they aren’t fools. Shulatov knows as well as I do that such a thing would be enormously difficult to organize, if it could be done at all. He knows time is on his side if he wants to keep on being intransigent.” His face again turned bleak. “He knows it isn’t on mine.”
“But he knows his country is half ruined,” Hal protested. “He knows its peoples are in such a state of panic that they could turn on his government tomorrow. He knows he can’t risk more atomic war—”
“And even under those conditions,” his father said in the same bleak way, “men will gamble on the edge of hell that somehow they are the ones who are going to manage the trick of continuing to be evil, and still survive. He an
d his government apparently think they can do it: they think they can do it. Somehow they’re going to be able to cling to all their ambitions, all their deceits, all their selfishness, all their cupidity, all their defiance of the hope of nations, the word of God and the rule of love, and come out on top, free to go right on destroying the peace, destroying mankind, destroying the world.”
“They must not be allowed,” Justice Davis said, his face white with the strain and worry of it all. “They must not be allowed.”
“They will not be,” the President said flatly. “Although,” he added with the quick, wry honesty that had always characterized Orrin Knox, “at the moment I’m damned if I know how I’m going to stop them.…”
“A great deal will depend on what you find in Peking, won’t it, Mr. President, sir?” the Speaker inquired into the silence that followed. “Hadn’t maybe we’d best wait and see what we find there, instead of worryin’ too much about it right now? Isn’t there somethin’ might happen there that will show us the way? Aren’t we mebbe worryin’ too much?”
“That’s a comforting thought, Jawbone,” the President agreed with a certain dryness, “and I’d like to believe it if I could.”
“You got anything better to believe, Mr. President, sir?” Jawbone inquired quietly. “You got anything better to believe, now?”
For a long moment Orrin studied him thoughtfully. Then he nodded concession.
“No: you’re right, Jawbone. I haven’t got anything better to believe.”
“Then let’s hope, Mr. President!” the Speaker cried triumphantly. “Let’s hope! Let’s don’t be mopin’ and moanin’ ’cause they’s been a li’l ole temporary setback, a li’l ole temporary hostility, mebbe, in Moscow. They’ll come around, Mr. President, they’ll come around! Wait until they see you cozyin’ up to the Chinese, Mr. President. Wait until they see that! They’ll come around, mighty fast!”
“Is that what I’m really going to have to do, Jawbone?” he inquired moodily. “Is that what it’s really going to take?”
“You said yourself,” Bob Munson pointed out with equal moodiness, “that men don’t change. They still understand the balance of power, even now.”
“Power politics!” Hal exclaimed bitterly. “Power politics! The same old thing! Is that what he’s got to do? Who’s going down the same old path, then? Who’s subverting peace and endangering the world and flirting with war, then? Can’t we ever do anything better, either—even now?”
“I pray we can,” Justice Davis said with a desperate gravity into the silence that abruptly fell again. “I pray we can.”
“Don’t you think, Tommy,” the President asked quietly, “that I am praying too?”
And that, essentially, was all that he or anyone could do, although their inconclusive talk went on for another half hour until he finally pointed out firmly that it was past midnight, they wouldn’t get much sleep at best, and they had better try to get at least a little.
After they retired to their seats and he to the President’s private cabin, he sat for a long time staring out into the blackness that enclosed the three tiny cylinders of light hurtling his party and the press toward Peking. They were on a far-northerly course to avoid passing over the major war areas, and only once was the blackness broken in the more than two hours that he sat sleepless and brooding.
Far below he saw a minuscule illumination, hazy, obscure, almost hidden: the fires of a village or hamlet, he supposed, somewhere in the vast empty reaches of Asiatic Russia. Hello down there, he thought. Do you know we are passing, and are you praying too? But no answer came back, and swiftly the pinpoint vanished.
Presently he buzzed for the White House physician, asked for a sleeping pill, received it. Presently he slept, as did, he hoped, most of his companions on this strange fantastic voyage into the future—or the past, as the fates might eventually decree. Very soon would come Peking, and they would need their strength.
2
This time they were not met by an escort. Their captain reported contact with Peking when they crossed the border, rousing them from fitful, uneasy sleep. But no exuberant jets sailed up to meet them in the growing light, no cheerful young voices cried out an innocent enthusiasm soon to be subverted by cold and calculating elders. At regular intervals impersonal voices contacted them, at regular intervals the captain reported the contacts. It was all very businesslike, and in a way it was more encouraging and more heartening than the puppy-dog effulgence with which they had been met when they entered Russia. At least they were not being misled, however innocently, about the mood they would find when they landed.
“There’s one thing to be said for starting at dead level,” Bill Abbott remarked finally. “You know the only place you can go is up.”
An hour and a half later, somewhat groggy from lack of sleep but shaved, dressed, decently fed and in a reasonably optimistic mood, they saw beneath them the endless drab roofs and occasional shining temples and palaces of Peking; and presently, to further terse commands from the airport, their convoy came down, the doors opened, from the press planes the reporters and photographers swarmed forward, and at the top of the steps the President of the United States appeared and stood for a moment, silent and unsmiling, looking out into the gray, hazy, ice-cold morning.
Below he saw a red carpet, a group of men as drab and gray as the morning. He stared at them, they stared at him: no false exuberance, no artificial welcome here. The only sounds and the only signs of life came from the photographers shouting and tumbling over one another in their frantic competition. He suddenly found the atmosphere as stagy, in its way, as Moscow’s false and phony airport camaraderie. He permitted his face to register annoyance, holding the expression long enough for the cameras to record it. Then he lifted his head with a sharp impatience and started down the steps. As if on signal a rickety band off to one side began playing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and suddenly smiling men were stepping forward to hold out their hands and welcome him in polite and carefully modulated phrases.
A minute later, standing before the inevitable microphones alongside the lean-faced, impassive man to whom the rest deferred and whom they introduced to him as “President Lin Kung-chow,” he heard words of greeting that immediately presented him with the problem he faced.
“Mr. President,” Lin said in a smooth and thoroughly adequate English, “on behalf of the peoples and the new democratic government of the United Chinese Republic, we greet you and welcome you gratefully to our land.
“We are pleased that you take the time to visit us, and we hope your stay will be fruitful for China, for peace and for the world.
“We are especially pleased,” he said, and his voice, still smooth, turned subtly harder and more emphatic, “that you have first visited Moscow and then have come to us, because it has given you the opportunity to find out the attitude there. That attitude, Mr. President, does not promise well for the future of world peace.
“Here in China, where we have suffered great casualties and devastation because of the unprovoked sneak atomic attack of the former Russian government, we had hoped that the new government would be as dedicated to peace and understanding between our two countries as we. Alas, Mr. President, we do not find this so. We have followed the results of your visit to Moscow with great interest. They have not encouraged us, Mr. President. We feel a deep concern for the world because of the way you were treated there. We feel little has been learned by the new leaders of Russia. We regard this as a great tragedy for us and for the world—but most of all, for the great Russian peoples, who will only suffer further if their new leaders do not permit them to make peace with us.
“Mr. President”—he turned and looked directly at Orrin, who with considerable effort was managing to conceal his concern and remain impassively listening—“we pledge you the full cooperation of the United Chinese Republic in your great journey for peace. We will work with you, Mr. President. Together we will lead the world back to sanity. Together w
e will make peace. You may rely on that.”
And with a grave little bow he gestured to the microphone and stepped back. Orrin stepped forward and stood for a moment as calm and impassive as his host. There and wherever men watched his face and heard his voice, a profound hush fell. There raced through his mind several courses of action. He decided, characteristically, upon one as blunt and straightforward as his host’s.
“President Lin,” he said, his words booming through the misty air while a wan sun struggled unsuccessfully to break through, “my colleagues and I appreciate your cordial and constructive greeting.
“We, too. Mr. President, have been profoundly disappointed by the attitude we found in Moscow.” There was a movement of satisfaction at his side, a sudden intake of breath from many in the media. “We, too, had hoped to find a more open and more willing approach to the problems of peace. We, too, had hoped there would be more understanding of the true situation that faces the world, more genuine willingness to give up old attitudes and forge new approaches to it. We came away, like you, disturbed and apprehensive.
“But, Mr. President”—and though he was speaking to the Chinese he knew his message would not be lost upon Shulatov and his colleagues, to whom it was really addressed—“we are not discouraged. We are especially not discouraged now that you have spoken. We are, in fact, much heartened by your willingness to cooperate with us and with all the peoples of the earth in our great universal search for peace. We are glad you are with us. Together, as you truly say, we will achieve our goal.
“It is my intention, Mr. President,” he said, and now he was again addressing his host and the message was not lost there, either, “to return to Moscow after I leave here. I shall convey to the leaders of the United States of Russia the results of our talks. I shall relate to them the examples of your willingness to cooperate. I shall tell them of your unselfishness, your vision, your statesmanship. I shall tell them of the sacrifices you will gladly make for the common cause of humanity. I shall tell them how China has rejoined the world of sane and responsible nations. I will tell them of her sane and responsible leaders.
