Things were slightly better in Moscow, which was only an hour off Tehran time, and in the same time zone with Baghdad, but here for once the RVS, successor to the KGB, was in the same unhappy position as CIA, with nearly all of its networks wiped out in both countries. But for Moscow the problems were also somewhat closer to home, as Sergey Golovko would find out when his aircraft landed at Sheremetyevo.
The largest problem at the moment would be reconciliation. Morning TV in Iraq announced that the new government in Baghdad had informed the United Nations that all international inspection teams were to be given full freedom to visit any facility in the country, entirely without interference—in fact, Iraq requested that the inspections be carried out as rapidly as possible—that full cooperation with any requests would be instantly provided; that the new Baghdad government was desirous of removing any obstacle to full restoration of their country’s international trade. For the moment, the neighboring country of Iran, the announcement said, would begin trucking in foodstuffs in accordance with Islamic ancient guidelines on charity for those in need; this in anticipation of the former nation’s willingness to reenter the community of nations. Video copied at PALM BOWL from Basra TV showed the first convoy of trucks carrying wheat down the twisting Shahabad Highway and crossing into Iraqi territory at the foot of the mountains which separated the two countries. Further pictures showed Iraqi border guards removing their obstacles and waving the trucks through, while their Iranian counterparts stood peacefully aside on their side of the border, no weapons in evidence.
At Langley, people ran calculations on the number of trucks, the tonnage of their cargo, and the number of loaves of bread which would result. They concluded that shiploads of wheat would have to be delivered to make more than a symbolic difference. But symbols were important, and the ships were even now being loaded, a set of satellite overheads determined. United Nations officials in Geneva, only three hours behind the time, received the Baghdad requests with pleasure and sent immediate orders to their inspection teams, which found Mercedes automobiles waiting for them, to be escorted to the first entries on their inspection lists by wailing police cars. Here they also found TV crews to follow them around, and friendly installation staffs, who professed delight at their newfound ability to tell all they knew and to offer suggestions on how to dismantle, first, a chemical-weapons facility disguised as an insecticide plant. Finally, Iran requested a special meeting of the Security Council to consider the lifting of the remaining trade sanctions, something as certain as the rising of the sun, even late, over the American East Coast. Within two weeks, the average Iraqi’s diet would increase by at least five hundred calories. The psychological impact wasn’t difficult to figure, and the lead country in restoring normality to the oil-rich but isolated nation was its former enemy, Iran—as always, citing religion as the motivating factor in offering aid.
“Tomorrow we will see pictures of bread being distributed for free from mosques,” Major Sabah predicted. He could have added the passages from the Koran which would accompany the event, but his American colleagues were not Islamic scholars and would not have grasped the irony terribly well.
“Your estimate, sir?” the senior American officer asked.
“The two countries will unite,” Sabah replied soberly. “And soon.”
There was no particular need to ask why the surviving Iraqi weapons plants were being exposed. Iran had all it needed.
THERE IS NO such thing as magic. That was merely the word people used to explain something so cleverly done that there was no ready explanation for it, and the simplest technique employed by its practitioners was to distract the audience with one moving and obvious hand (usually in a white glove) while the other was doing something else. So it was with nations as well. While the trucks rolled, and the ships were loaded, and the diplomats were summoned, and America was waking up to figure out what was going on, it was, after all, evening in Tehran.
Badrayn’s contacts were as useful as ever, and what he could not do, Daryaei could. The civilian-marked business jet lifted off from Mehrabad and turned east, heading first over Afghanistan, then Pakistan, in a two-hour flight that ended at the obscure city of Rutog near the Pakistani-Indian-Kashmiri border. The city was in the former country’s Kunlun Mountains, and home to some of China’s Muslim population. The border town had an air force base with some locally manufactured MiG fighters, and a single landing strip, all separate from the city’s small regional airport. The location was ideal for everyone’s purpose, as it was a bare 600 miles from New Delhi, though perversely the longest flight came from Beijing, nearly two thousand miles away, even though the real estate was Chinese-owned. The three aircraft landed a few minutes apart, soon after local sunset, taxied to the far end of the ramp, and parked. Military vehicles took their occupants to the ready room for the local MiG contingent. The Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei was accustomed to cleaner accommodations and, worse, he could smell the odor of cooked pork, always a part of the Chinese diet but quite nauseating to him. This he put aside. He wasn’t the first of the faithful who’d had to treat with pagans and unbelievers.
The Indian Prime Minister was cordial. She’d met Daryaei before at a regional trade conference and found him withdrawn and misanthropic. That, she saw, had not changed very much.
Last to arrive was Zhang Han San, whom the Indian had met as well. He was a rotund, seemingly jolly man until one watched his eyes closely. Even his jokes were told with an aim to learn something of his companions. Of the three, he was the only one whose job was not really known to the others. It was clear, however, that he spoke with authority, and since his country was the most powerful of the three, it was not regarded as an insult that a mere minister-without-portfolio was treating with chiefs of state. The meeting was conducted in English, except for Zhang’s dismissal of the general officer who’d handled the greetings.
“Please forgive me for not being here when you arrived. The ... irregularity in protocol is sincerely regretted.” Tea was served, along with some light snacks. There hadn’t been time to prepare a proper meal, either.
“Not at all,” Daryaei responded. “Speed makes for inconvenience. For myself, I am most grateful for your willingness to meet under such special circumstances.” He turned. “And to you, Madam Prime Minister, for joining us. God’s blessing on this meeting,” he concluded.
“My congratulations on developments in Iraq,” Zhang said, wondering if the agenda was now entirely in Daryaei’s hands, so skillfully had he posed the fact that he’d convened the assembly. “It must be very satisfying after so many years of discord between your two nations.”
Yes, India thought, sipping her tea. So clever of you to murder the man in such a timely fashion. “So how may we be of service?” she asked, thus giving Daryaei and Iran the floor, to the impassive annoyance of China.
“You’ve met this Ryan recently. I am interested in your impressions.”
“A small man in a large job,” she replied at once. “The speech he gave at the funeral, for example. It would have been better suited to a private family ceremony. For a President, bigger things are expected. At the reception later, he seemed nervous and uneasy, and his wife is arrogant—a physician, you see. They often are.”
“I found him the same when we met, some years ago,” Daryaei agreed.
“And yet he controls a great country,” Zhang observed.
“Does he?” Iran asked. “Is America still great? For where comes the greatness of a nation, except in the strengths of its leaders?” And that, the other two knew at once, was the agenda.
“JESUS,” RYAN WHISPERED to himself, “this is a lonely place.” The thought kept returning to him, all the more so when alone in this office with its curving walls and molded three-inch doors. He was using his reading glasses all the time now—Cathy’s recommendation—but that merely slowed down the headaches. It wasn’t as though he were a stranger to reading. Every job he’d held in the past fifteen years had required it
, but the continual headaches were something new. Maybe he should talk to Cathy or another doc about it? No. Ryan shook his head. It was just job stress, and he just had to learn to deal with it.
Sure, it’s just stress. And cancer is just a disease.
The current task was politics. He was reading over a position paper prepared by the political staffers across the street in the OEOB. It was a source of amusement, if not consolation, that they didn’t know what to advise him. Ryan had never belonged to a political party. He’d always registered himself as an independent, and that had managed to keep him from getting solicitation letters from the organized parties, though he and Cathy had always ticked the box on their tax returns to contribute their one dollar to the government slush fund. But the President was not only supposed to be a member of a party—but also the leader of that party. The parties were even more thoroughly decapitated than the three branches of government were. Each of them still had a chairman, neither of whom knew what to do at the moment. For a few days, it had been assumed that Ryan was a member of the same party as Roger Durling, and the truth had only been discovered by the press a few days before, to the collective oh, shit! of the Washington establishment. For the ideological mavens of the federal city, it was rather like asking what 2 + 2 equaled, and finding out that the answer was, “Chartreuse.” His position paper was predictably chaotic, the product of four or so professional political analysts, and you could tell who had written the different paragraphs, which resolved into a multi-path tug of war. Even his intelligence staff did better than this, Jack told himself, tossing the paper into the out basket and wishing, again, for a cigarette. That was stress talking, too, he knew.
But he still had to go out to the hustings, a word whose meaning he’d never learned, and campaign for people, or at least give speeches. Or something. The position paper’s guidance hadn’t exactly been clear on that. Having already shot himself in the foot on the issue of abortion—higher up and more to the centerline, Arnie van Damm had remarked acidly the previous day, to reinforce his earlier lesson—now Ryan would have to make his political stance clear on a multitude of issues: affirmative action at one end of the alphabet, and welfare at the other, with taxes, the environment, and God only knew what else in between. Once he’d decided where he stood on such things, Callie Weston would write a series of speeches for him to deliver from Seattle to Miami and God only knew where else in between. Hawaii and Alaska were left out because they were small states in terms of political importance, and poles apart ideologically, anyway. They would only confuse matters, or so the position paper told him.
“Why can’t I just stay here and work, Arnie?” Ryan asked his arriving chief of staff.
“Because out there is work, Mr. President.” Van Damm took his seat to commence the latest class in Presidency 101. “Because, as you put it, ‘It’s a leadership function’ —did I get that right?” Arnie asked with a sardonic growl. “And leading means getting out with the troops, or, in this case, the citizens. Are we clear on that, Mr. President?”
“Are you enjoying this?” Jack closed his eyes and rubbed them under the glasses. He hated the goddamned glasses, too.
“About as much as you are.” Which was an altogether fair comment.
“Sorry.”
“Most people who come here genuinely like escaping from this museum and meeting real people. Of course, it makes people like Andrea nervous. They’d probably agree with keeping you here all the time. But it already feels like a prison, doesn’t it?” Arnie asked.
“Only when I’m awake.”
“So get out. Meet people. Tell them what you think, tell them what you want. Hell, they might even listen. They might even tell you what they think, and maybe you will learn something from it. In any case, you can’t be President and not do it.”
Jack lifted the position paper he’d just finished. “Did you read this thing?”
Arnie nodded. “Yep.”
“It’s confusing garbage,” Ryan said, quite surprised.
“It’s a political document. Since when is politics consistent or sensible?” He paused. “The people I’ve worked with for the last twenty years got this sort of thing with their mother’s milk—well, they were probably all bottle babies.”
“What?”
“Ask Cathy. It’s one of those behavioral theories, that New Age stuff that’s supposed to explain everything about everything to everybody everywhere. Politicians are all bottle babies. Mommy never nursed them, and they never bonded properly, felt rejected and all that, and so as compensation they go out and make speeches and tell people in different places the different things they want to hear so that they can get the love and devotion from strangers that their mothers denied them—not to mention the ones like Kealty, who’re getting laid all the time. Properly nurtured infants, on the other hand, grow up to become—oh, doctors, I suppose, or maybe rabbis ”
“What the hell!” the President nearly shouted. His chief of staff just grinned.
“Had you going for a second, didn’t I? You know,” van Damm went on, “I figured out what we really missed when we set this country up.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Jack said, eyes still closed, and finding the humor in the moment. Damn, but Arnie knew how to run a classroom.
“A court jester, make it a Cabinet post. You know, a dwarf—excuse me, a male person with an unusually large degree of vertical challenge—dressed in multicolored tights and the funny hat with bells on it. Give him a little stool in the corner—’course, there isn’t a corner here, but what the hell—and every fifteen minutes or so, he’s supposed to jump up on your desk and shake his rattle in your face just to remind you that you have to take a leak every so often, just like the rest of us. Do you get it now, Jack?”
“No,” the President admitted.
“You dumbass! This job can be fun! Getting out and seeing your citizens is fun. Learning what they want is important, but there’s also an exhilaration to it. They want to love you, Jack. They want to support you. They want to know what you think. They most of all want to know that you’re one of them—and you know what? You’re the first President in one hell of a long time who really is! So get the hell off the bench, tell the air scouts to fire up the Big Blue Bird, and play the damned game.” He didn’t have to add that the schedule was already set sufficiently in stone that he couldn’t back out.
“Not everybody will like what I say and believe, Arnie, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to lie to people just to kiss ass or get votes or whatever.”
“You expect everybody to love you?” van Damm asked, sardonic again. “Most Presidents will settle for fifty-one percent. Quite a few have had to settle for less. I tore your head off over your abortion statement—why? Because your statement was confused.”
“No, it wasn’t, I—”
“You going to listen to your teacher or not?”
“Go ahead,” the President said.
“Start off, about forty percent of the people vote Democrat. About forty percent vote Republican. Of those eighty percent, most wouldn’t change their votes if Adolf Hitler was running against Abe Lincoln—or against FDR, just to cover both sides.”
“But why—”
Exasperation: “Why is the sky blue, Jack? It just is, okay? Even if you can explain why, and I suppose there is a reason some astronomer can explain, the sky is blue, and so let’s just accept the fact, okay? That leaves twenty percent of the people who swing back one way or another. Maybe they’re the true independents, like you. That twenty percent controls the destiny of the country, and if you want things to happen your way, those are the people you have to reach. Now, here’s the funny part. Those twenty percent don’t especially care what you think.” This conclusion was delivered with a wry smile.
“Wait a minute—”
Arnie held up his hand. “You keep interrupting teacher. The hard eighty percent that votes the party line doesn’t care much about character. They vote party because they believ
e in the philosophy of the party—or because Mom and Dad always voted that way; the reason doesn’t really matter. It happens. It’s a fact. Deal with it. Now, back to the twenty percent that does matter. They care less about what you believe than they do in you. There is your advantage, Mr. President. Politically speaking, you have as much place in this office as a three-year-old has in a gun shop, but you have character up the ass. That’s what we play on.”
Ryan frowned at the “play on” part, but this time kept his peace. He nodded for the chief of staff to go on.
“Just tell the people what you believe. Make it simple. Good ideas are expressed simply and efficiently. Make it consistent. That twenty percent wants to believe that you really do believe in what you say. Jack, do you respect a man who says what he believes, even if you disagree with it?”