Russian Spring (82 page)

Was that a ghost of recognition in the President’s eyes? “Little Moscow! Berkeley! Bobby Reed!” Bobby shouted desperately. “Now is the time for a futile gesture, remember, Nat?”

“You’re telling me!” the President groaned enigmatically, and he almost seemed to smile.

Two Secret Service goons had Bobby’s arms pinned behind him in a double hammerlock. The President’s escorts stepped in front of him, shielding him with their bodies.

“Nat! Please! I need your help!”

President Wolfowitz shoved himself between two of his Secret Service guards. “Stop!” he shouted. “I want to talk to that man!”

“Mr. President—”

“Do it!” Nathan Wolfowitz shouted. “You!” he ordered, pointing at the men restraining Bobby. “Bring that man here!”

No one moved for a moment. One of the President’s guards tried to step in front of him again. Wolfowitz shoved him back angrily. “I’m the fucking President, ain’t I?” he snapped. “You do as I say, or you can kiss your pensions good-bye!”

Bobby was shoved forward, with his arms still pinned behind his back. The President’s escorts had their hands inside their jackets. Wolfowitz turned on his heel, led the procession about ten feet down the corridor, turned, looked at Bobby, grinned strangely.

“That was crazy,” the President said. He studied Bobby narrowly. “I
do
know you, don’t I?” he said slowly. “Little Moscow . . . ? Berkeley? The Flag Riot . . . ? You’re . . . you’re . . .”

“The kid from Paris, remember, Nat?” Bobby said. “The Congressional campaign? The—”

“Bobby!” the President said, grinning. “I never forget a mark! You’re Bobby . . . Bobby. . .”

“Reed.”

“Right, Bobby Reed,” the President said. And he actually laughed. “Well, kiddo,” Nathan Wolfowitz said, “what’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this?”

Bobby heaved an enormous sigh of relief. He almost started laughing himself. This was the real Nathan Wolfowitz, the man who had once been his friend.

“I’m desperate, Nat,” Bobby babbled. “My father’s dying in Paris,
and I can’t get an exit visa, and you’re my only hope. Can I talk to you, Nat, just five minutes of your time, please, please. . . .”

“Let him go,” the President said.

The Secret Service men made no move to release Bobby.

“I said let . . . the . . . man . . . go,” the President said slowly and distinctly, as if talking to a small child. “I’m getting sick and tired of having to tell you people everything twice.”

Finally, reluctantly, the Secret Service men released Bobby’s arms.

“Okay, Bobby,” Nathan Wolfowitz said, “five minutes.”

“Mr. President, you have to—”

“What I have to do is take a piss!” the President said. “Where’s the nearest john?”

“Mr. President . . . ?”

“The
toilet
, goddamnit! We both have to take a piss, don’t we, Bobby?”

“My bladder’s bursting, Mr. President,” Bobby drawled.

The Secret Service men escorted them down the corridor, turned a corner, led them up another corridor to a men’s room door. One of them opened the door for the President, who gestured for Bobby to precede him. Bobby walked into the toilet, with the President following behind. As Wolfowitz started to close the door behind himself, one of the Secret Service men stepped halfway through the doorway, blocking him.

“Where do you think you’re going?” the President demanded.

“We’re not supposed to leave you alone with—”

“I think I can manage to hold my own prick, thank you,” the President snapped. “Now get the hell out of here and let us pee in peace!”

“Jesus, I’ve hated thugs like that all my life,” Nathan Wolfowitz said when they were alone in the toilet, “and now they’re all over me like flies on horseshit!”

He loped over to a urinal, unsealing his fly as he went. “I really
do
have to take a leak,” he said. “So tell me your sad story, Bobby. I only wish I could tell you mine.”

And so there, in a White House men’s room, Bobby unburdened himself to the President of the United States while the President unburdened himself into the urinal.

“Let me get this straight,” Nathan Wolfowitz said as he resealed his fly. “Your father is dying in Paris, you’ve got to get there to convince your mother to help him get his last wish by bullshitting her into believing that some funeral home in Palo Alto can revive him after they polymerize his brain, and the Central Security Agency won’t give you an exit visa. . . .”

“I know it sounds pretty crazy, Nat, but—”

“Crazy!” the President exclaimed. “You think
that’s
crazy?” His eyes seemed to unfocus, as if he were staring off into somewhere else, as if he were seeing something that made him shudder, made his shoulders slump. “I could tell you
real
crazy, Bobby,” he muttered. “But I can’t . . . I just can’t. . . .”

“Will you help me, Nat?”

President Wolfowitz seemed to snap himself back into focus by an act of will. He gave Bobby a sickly smile. He waved his hands like a stage magician.

“Consider it done,” he said. “I’ll get you a diplomatic exit visa to Montreal, you can catch a plane to Paris from there, I’ll make one of those Secret Service gorillas deliver the papers personally, yeah, I’d enjoy that. . . .” He smiled strangely. “How am I doing?” he said. “Is that Presidential enough for you?”

“Oh God, thank you, Nat,” was all that Bobby could manage to say.

“Mr. President! You’re already late for the Cabinet meeting!”

“Jesus Christ, can’t you guys even learn to knock?”

A Secret Service man had entered the toilet unbidden and stood there tapping his right foot nervously. “Mr. President . . . ?”

“Coming, Mother,” Nathan Wolfowitz drawled. He shrugged, turned, walked toward the door. He paused, looked over his shoulder at Bobby.

“By the way,” he said, “you might be interested to know that they’ve actually polymerized
Carson’s
brain,” he said. “Not that it hasn’t been dead for years anyway. I’m thinking of using it as the guidance system on the first missile we fire at Moscow, serve the bugger right. Though come to think of it, knowing Carson, the bastard would probably enjoy it.”

And with that exit line, he was gone.

SOVIETS CHARGE CLANDESTINE SHIPMENT OF
AMERICAN ARMS TO UKRAINE

—Reuters

KRONKOL DEMANDS RESTATEMENT OF CARSON
PROMISE

—Agence France-Presse

AMERICAN AIRPORTS SEALED BY PENTAGON

—
Le Monde

CONGRESS OF PEOPLES VOTES SUPPORT OF
UKRAINIANS

—
Libération

AMERICAN EMBASSY SACKED IN BUDAPEST

—
The Times
(London)

UKRAINIAN MILITIA SEIZES RUSSIAN OFFICERS

—
Die Welt

Bobby had never been on a Concordski before, and it was all a bit temporally disorienting. It had taken him five hours to fly from New York to California and two days to get to Montreal, with all flights out of the United States still grounded, and now here he was, less than three hours later, after having breezed through customs at De Gaulle, riding the
RER
into a Paris he had not seen since he was a teenager.

Things went from bad to worse after President Wolfowitz’s disastrous press conference. The jingo press came out with a story that he had tried to fire the secretaries of State and Defense and the Attorney General, only to be told by the Congressional leaders of both parties that if he did, impeachment proceedings would begin immediately. There were leaked demands from the Pentagon that he declare an emergency under the National Security Act and place the country under martial law.

Vadim Kronkol publicly demanded a policy statement from Washington on the “imminent Soviet invasion of the Ukraine.” Some maniac in Tbilisi declared Georgia an independent republic at an illegal rally in a restaurant, and a wild mass demonstration rampaged through the streets. Riot troops broke it up in a few hours, and hundreds of people were arrested, but not before the “Republic of Georgia” had been formally recognized by the “Republic of the Ukraine.”

Nevertheless, less than two days after the press conference, Bobby learned, somewhat to his amazement, that a President staggering through a nightmare had not been too distracted to keep a promise to an old friend.

He and Sara were having dinner when a Secret Service agent showed up at their apartment with a sour expression and an envelope bearing the Presidential Seal.

In it was Bobby’s two-week diplomatic exit visa to Montreal. There was none for Sara. There was also a handwritten note on a plain piece of paper.

Sara’s whole attitude had changed when she read it. “I guess this means you’re going, huh, Bobby?” she said quietly.

“I have to, Sara. I’ve got no excuses left.”

“I wish I could go with you. . . .”

“I know. . . .”

And she sighed, and smiled wanly, and reached out across the table to take his hand. “It’s okay, Bobby,” she said softly. “I do understand.”

“You do? But I thought . . .”

“That was when Carson was President. If you’d gotten out then, they would have never let you back in, but now . . . we can trust Nat Wolfowitz, there’s going to be an end to all that fascist shit now. . . .”

“If there isn’t an end to
everything
first,” Bobby blurted, and was instantly sorry, as Sara’s face darkened. “I mean . . . if I go, we might never . . .”

“Don’t say it, Bobby! We’ll get through it. You’ll go to Paris for a couple of weeks, and by the time you get back, it’ll all be over.” Sara gasped and squeezed his hand. “I mean . . . I mean I trust Wolfowitz to see the whole thing through. . . .”

“After that press conference, you can still say that?”

“Come on, Bobby, you know that Nat Wolfowitz will never start pushing the red buttons, no matter what.”

“Yeah,” Bobby agreed sincerely, “but if Gorchenko does, the Pentagon’s liable to yank them out of his hands.”

“Gorchenko won’t do it either. Why should he? The Red Army certainly doesn’t need nuclear weapons to walk all over the Ukrainians!”

“True enough,” Bobby said. “But if they do invade, we’re committed to—”

“We’re not committed to do anything now!” Sara declared forcefully. “That crazy bastard Carson’s dead, remember! Wolfowitz isn’t committed to anything.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Bobby had said, and he really had felt better about leaving her alone. “But . . . but you weren’t there, Sara, he was so . . . he seemed so trapped, so off center, so . . . so terrified himself. . . .”

“Who wouldn’t be? Only an asshole like Harry Carson.” And Sara had smiled a brave little smile that went straight to his heart. “There’s something to be said for a President who’s willing to stand up there freaked-out like any sane person would be and tell the American people in words of one syllable that it’s time for the bullshit to stop, now isn’t there?” she had said.

They had both managed to laugh at that, and Sara had been a rock to the end. She didn’t even cry when she saw him off at Grand Central Station. She smiled, and she kissed him, and she waved good-bye from the platform with the same fixed smile on her face as the train pulled out.

And Bobby had ridden the train to Montreal and the Concordski to De Gaulle with hope in his heart. Sara, after all, was right. It was Harry Carson who had brought the world to the brink in the first place, and Carson was dead. Wolfowitz had just been in a state of shock at the press conference, that’s all. He had been the old Nat Wolfowitz in the toilet, more or less, hadn’t he?

It was a whole new hand of cards now, and who better to have playing them than the old poker master himself?

But now, sitting in the
RER
, glancing at the haggard faces of his fellow passengers, and reading the European version of the situation in
Le Monde
,
Libération
, and
Europe Today
, Bobby found that hope beginning to evaporate again.

Things looked much darker from this perspective. The Europeans were not under the umbrella of Battlestar America. If American missiles fell on the Soviet Union, Europeans were going to catch the fallout.

And even if a war was somehow averted, enormous political damage had already been done to Common Europe. If Gorchenko did not suppress the Ukrainian secession, the Soviet Union would disintegrate, and every ethnic minority in Europe would start declaring independence from the stable nation-states.

Libé
had a story about clandestine American arms shipments through Odessa, yet at the same time quixotically supported Ukrainian independence in the name of popular democracy.
Le Monde
actually
supported a Soviet invasion of the Ukraine as necessary to maintain European stability.

What everyone here seemed to agree on was that the whole thing had at least begun as an American plot to destabilize Common Europe and fragment the world’s dominant economy. And while no one in Europe mourned the death of Harry Carson, no one seemed to take Nathan Wolfowitz seriously either.

From the European point of view, a maniacal adventurer had been replaced by a cypher who was a captive of the Pentagon, the
CIA
, and the Central Security Agency, which had been running the United States for years anyway. C’est normal, was the attitude. C’est l’Amérique. C’est la même merde.

Left, right, and center, the hatred of America now seemed far worse than anything Bobby remembered from his boyhood. When he changed to the Métro at the Gare du Nord, he saw anti-American graffiti scrawled everywhere. The magazine covers on the kiosks were more of the same. The faces of the people on the Métro were grim and angry-looking, staring into space, more like a New York crowd than his memory of Parisians, and such was his paranoia, that it seemed to him that everyone could see the American passport tucked into his jacket pocket.