The General's President (50 page)

"I haven't read one since the weatherwar started," Haugen replied. "Morale may not be so good right now." He paused for a moment, then looked at the priest with surprising intensity. "But it'll bounce back. And d'you know why?"

Flynn shook his head.

"Because they feel, most of them, as if the country has direction now, that it has goals, that it's going somewhere they want to go. Even if they don't know just where that is, any more than I do. And they feel as if they're part of the movement. When you feel like that, hardships are likely to temper you, strengthen you instead of breaking you. Especially hardships you share with the rest of the country.

"That's why people put up with me, though probably not many have sorted it out for themselves. Our goals pretty much coincide. And that's why Congress hasn't shut me down yet, and why the media haven't really tried to scuttle me. I really honest-to-god believe I've been the man for the time."

Again neither man spoke for a bit.
He's right
, Flynn said to himself.
And that's been the key to what he's accomplished. He's a product of this nation, and through him it...

The president interrupted the priest's thoughts. "Stephen," he said, "I have something to confess to you. I don't feel as if it's a sin, but I murdered some people the night before last. Or maybe
murdered
isn't the right word, but I ordered some people killed: a room full. At least a dozen, and almost certainly more."

The statement startled Flynn, but he said nothing, merely nodded attentively. Then the president told him what had caused the west coast earthquakes—no surprise to Flynn, really—and what had happened to Pavlenko and his Politburo.

"It wasn't revenge," he went on. "I can tell you that with total certainty. It was a kind of war. I felt justified in cutting off the man who'd decided to escalate and attack with earthquakes, and might decide to escalate again. In a way what I did was
de-escalation
, but it was also a coldblooded ambush of a kind. No pun intended."

The president paused, examining. "The only one I really wanted to get was Pavlenko. The others just happened to be in the room with him, at the hour when I knew where he was—where he could be hit. But it was probably a good thing I got them all. It set it up for Gurenko."

"And it's possible to do that kind of thing now?" Flynn said. "Reach across the world and snuff lives out like that?"

"I'm afraid so. In this case though, it may have saved a lot of other lives."

"It's not this case that dismays me," the Jesuit said. "It's the instrument that dismays me."

"Me too," the president answered. "But there it is. I believe it was fore-destined, the day that man became man. It was inevitable that we'd learn to do this—do all these things.

"And it seems to me that humankind needs the same sort of mental breakthrough—or spiritual breakthrough if you'd rather call it that—that we've made in physics and engineering. A breakthrough comparable to nuclear fusion, scalar resonance, the GPC, the superconductor."

It struck Haugen then that that's what the Christian churches claimed had happened two thousand years earlier: the great spiritual breakthrough. But it hadn't worked, or hadn't seemed to. "Ultimately," he continued, "good government, decent government, can't solve our dilemma. At best it provides an environment in which it can be solved. And really, when I look at it, that's mostly what I've tried to do as president—provide the environment.

"And preaching can't solve it. Humankind's been preached at for longer I'm sure than any church that's still around."

The Jesuit nodded, and caught himself at it. There was
cynicism
again, the cynicism that sneaked too often into his heart, his mind, about the efficacy of the Church and the salvation of man. Yet there was also the
Revelation to John
, that troublesome book. Unless God changed his mind, someday the world would be destroyed. And all men would
not
be saved.
We must strive to save them all
, he thought,
but we must accept our failures as well as our successes.

The president wasn't done yet: After a moment's thoughtful silence he went on. "Eddie Wing's received three different research proposals," he said, "on what the Soviets call psychoenergetics; pretty much what the science fiction writers call psi. And remotely, I might even see a tie-in with the underlying field the GPC actually draws on.

"And there's hardly a snowball's chance in hell that any of them would be approved by any 'proper' university or 'well-administered' foundation, where the powers-that-be are too afraid of their reputations to fly anything like that." He paused thoughtfully. "Or maybe there is a chance, barely, with all the wild activity in physics lately. But I'm not betting on it. I've told Eddie to go ahead on all three.

"I'll be keeping close track of what they find, and I want you to. Look at it for tie-ins with religion, any religion; you're schooled in that."

The priest nodded. "Of course, Arne. I'll be glad to."
For God works in strange ways
, he added silently,
through strange and often secular instruments.
The Jesuit felt a chill flow over him, perhaps on omen of sorts.
And this is a good man
, he told himself.
Perhaps through him I have an opportunity here to do something very large in the service of God.

They talked of other things then: the economy's steady upward creep, the problems and successes of the new legal system, Haugen's ideas on education and what his task force was doing with them, and what might be accomplished in Zurich. And after a bit they said good night, the priest going to his room.

The president headed for a few more hours at his desk. There was so much to accomplish, sometimes it was hard to stop working and go to bed.
Maybe I should get more sleep
, he thought.
My energy level isn't what it ought to be.

FORTY-EIGHT

The Swiss were practiced, skilled, and diplomatic at coordinating foreign security contingents with their own police. Thus Zurich was as safe for Gurenko and Haugen as could reasonably be managed. From the airport, Zurich was a short drive south along the river Glatt, and small groups of military police were stationed along the way. The highway and city street on which the foreign entourages would travel had been briefly cordoned off, well before dawn, and the route carefully checked for mines and other devices. Reopened for morning traffic, it was kept under constant surveillance. Other vehicular traffic would be excluded during the passage of the official convoys, and as soon as the armored limousines had passed, the road would be opened for normal traffic again.

Both Soviet and American parties arrived at the airport in midmorning, when traffic was well past its peak. Then, under the watchful eyes of Swiss marksmen, some of them on roofs, they were driven, with police escorts, to the Zuricher Hilton, where the conference would be held.

Days earlier, after their staffs had presented them with what they considered the needs and problems involved in such a meeting, Gurenko and Haugen had talked twice more on the hot line, establishing ground rules. And when they arrived in Zurich, it was with modest staffs of subject-matter specialists—smaller than their advisors had urged.

They met in person for the first time at 1100 on the day they arrived. Gurenko began by speaking Russian, and Haugen English. But then, on a whim, Haugen switched to Russian, and as if by agreement, Gurenko to English. In confused embarrassment, the Russian interpreter suddenly realized he was translating Haugen's Russian into English for Gurenko.

From that point, the interpreters did little except, mainly in Haugen's case, clarify terms. (Haugen had been practicing his Russian. On his daily visits to the hospital, he and Lois had spoken little else, and he'd had a State Department Soviet specialist come over for a half-hour each day to discuss technical matters with him in Russian.)

Gurenko and Haugen even took lunch together, separate from their advisors, talking mostly about things outside the conference agenda. Supper involved the two heads of government and their staffs, and at Haugen's and Gurenko's insistence, everyone was required to talk. As the vodka, Scotch, and bourbon flowed, some talked a little loudly.

There was a Mrs. Gurenko, Xenia Federovna, and she'd come to Zurich with her husband. Based on an inspiration someone had voiced at the first supper, on the third day she flew to Washington to meet with Lois Haugen at the hospital, and stayed for two days.

So far as any of them knew, there'd never been a summit conference even remotely like it before. The American and European media covered it like a festival, with unprecedented access to the principals and their consultants. Not at the meetings themselves, of course, but outside the meetings. And the Soviet media were allowed a degree of reportorial freedom that at first they hardly knew what to do with. But they got the feel of it quickly enough.

After six days it was over. To world television viewers, its ending left a vacuum almost like the closing of the Olympic games. The event was over; all that was left were the results, the agreements.

The Soviet Union had been in the poorer bargaining position, partly because the industrial-transportational machinery was scarcely operating, partly because parts of the empire were not safely under control, and partly because the Russian people themselves, the backbone of the empire, were in a sort of passive noncooperation that could turn violent, given the problem of food shortages. And there was a real prospect that troops would refuse to fire on civilians if massive rioting developed in Russia itself. If that happened—chaos.

So while there might be grumbling in the Soviet military council that Gurenko had been soft, had given up too much, presumably there'd be nothing more than grumbling. The generals could see that the nation's resources had to be focused on the internal situation.

In America, the far right would call Haugen a communist sympathizer because he hadn't insisted on the impossible dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the Soviet military, while the left-wing was already complaining that Haugen had thrown away most of the gains of the past sixty years. But neither wing had wide support.

The existence of the scalar resonance transmitters was made public in a joint statement, saying nothing of their recent use and only generalities about their physics. (Colonel Paul Fairbairn's previously ignored book,
Tesla's Unknown Legacy
, became an instant best seller. Based only on speculative analysis, it had the principles remarkably correct, though of course it lacked the technical details.) Each great power would retain two scalar resonance transmitters, to be staffed by joint crews. They'd be used to ameliorate or divert seriously damaging weather, such as severe droughts or major hurricanes. Requests would be channeled through the World Meterological Organization, an affiliate of the United Nations.

All Soviet military forces would be removed from East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. All American military forces would be removed from the continent. This agreement was contingent on Britain and Canada also removing their remaining forces, but there was no doubt at all that they would.

The question of Soviet forces in Iran was only touched on. The United States took no position on it other than to commend the stated Soviet intention of withdrawing entirely north of the pre-invasion border as promptly as conditions permitted, and surely by mid-April.

The Soviet Union felt serious concern over the possibility of political and military unification of the two Germanies, in the train of the Soviet military pullout. Russia, after all, would lose much of its leverage on the buffering Warsaw Pact nations. The United States therefore agreed to co-sponsor a conference of the Warsaw Pact and NATO nations, to ensure the development of no new military threat—the two Germanies were not specifically named—in central Europe.

A plebiscite, supervised by Australia, India, and Egypt, would be held in the Afghan SSR, as "a state whose incorporation within the Soviet Union had been a coercive act by the disgraced, imperialist Kulish government." The Afghans would be given a choice of remaining in the Soviet Union, or independence under temporary UN assistance, with all Soviet forces withdrawn. This, more than anything else, impressed the world of Gurenko's good intentions.

It was much the most daring and dangerous agreement Gurenko made—it could inspire demands for independence in SSRs that were integral, instead of peripheral, to the empire. But insurrection was flaring in the Afghan countryside and towns alike, and problems with military morale and discipline had convinced Gurenko that the risk was necessary.

The United States and the Soviet Union would hold an NCB (nuclear-chemical-biological) disarmament conference, to be seated no later than April 1. Other nations could be jointly invited to participate. First-order objectives and ground rules for the convention were agreed upon; the objectives included on-site inspection procedures, and both Haugen and his conference staff felt that real progress might be made this time.

Several other subject areas were discussed; it was agreed to put them on hold for the time being. Gurenko insisted privately that the commitments he'd already made had put him at a significant degree of risk with the Soviet army.

Privately, "off the record," Gurenko told Haugen of two internal reforms he intended. That summer there would be a new Soviet constitution, and he would announce a new level of Soviet statehood—"
Associated
Socialist Republic." In these, the Communist parties would be independent of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with separate and largely independent bureaucracies and their own domestic policies. The native language could be used as the language of government, with Russian as a secondary official language to be taught to children in the schools. The three Baltic states—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—would be granted this status first, both as showcases and to debug the system; other Soviet Republics could earn the status by accomplishments in production and education.