Armageddon is about to happen, but it's not what you think. This war is not going to blow anything up; it's just going to turn everything off . . .
The beam is an explosion inhibitor . . .
Arlington, Virginia:
In a sub-basement conference room checked out to Colonel Kenneth Gustafson of
the Joint Chiefs, thirteen people were seated around an oval table. The only
light came from a low floor lamp in the corner. The occupants of the room were
all male, all middle-aged or older, all white, all fairly prosperous looking.
Most were somewhat overweight. The tone of the meeting was, for the moment at
least, spiritual:
“How
long, O Lord, how long?” Secretary Murdoch was cranking up his voice to the
level of Medium Oratorical. He would soon be on his feet, they all knew, and in
full swing. Lesser orators could use their eyes and hands and voices to make a
statement; Murdoch, when he really got going, could also sweat dramatically. He
was beginning to glisten now, greasily. “How long has it been, my Brothers,
that we’ve been gathering together in these very rooms to pray, and plan for a
brighter Tomorrow?”
There
was a murmur of response, no one quite sure whether to reply with a number of
years or the usual “Amen.” Marine Captain Courtenay simply echoed Murdoch’s
“How long?”
“How
long indeed, gentlemen? It has been long years. But they have been good ones
too, years in which we have transformed the face of this wicked city. When we
began, we were nobodies, powerless and out of favor. But we had Faith!”
“Faith!”
Courtenay again.
“We were
imbued with His Fire, the Gift of Tongues…” He lumbered to his feet.
“Yes,
that’s good, Bill. We had the gift.” Nolan Gallant interrupted. The secretary
gaped, jowls still quivering. But Gallant was not about to let him go on. There
were things to get done and no time right now for endless Holy Roller
preaching. Besides, it was Gallant who was the ordained minister, not Murdoch.
“We had the gift of tongues and all that. And now we count among our numbers a
special assistant to the President, a service Secretary, and a significant
presence in the Joint Chiefs…plus others of you gentlemen who have risen to
positions of authority and trust. We all know that.”
Gallant
paused to look at each of the twelve, the twelve disciples as he thought of
them. It was one of those pauses that invited no one else to speak. He stared
them down. Bill Murdoch was still on his feet, reluctant to give up the floor.
Gallant addressed him directly, “It’s time, I think, Mr. Secretary, to leave
off the praying for a bit and get on with the planning for a brighter tomorrow.”
“Just my
thought, Nolan. My thought exactly. I was just going to go on into the Lord’s
intentions in this Time of Trouble, and the ways in which His plan for each one
of us…”
“Yes.
I’m sure you were.” The Reverend Gallant displayed one of his famous
Inspiration Hour television smiles. He had a repertoire of such smiles from
Delighted to Deeply Disappointed. This one was cordial but a tad strained.
Murdoch took his seat. Gallant paused again. Off camera, as on, the Reverend
Gallant had the air of a kindly and wise high school principal. His sandy hair
and apple-cheeks made him look like a character right out of Norman Rockwell.
He had a natural, fatherly authority, so that those around him tended to take
on automatically the role of children awaiting instruction and correction. When
he stopped to think his important thoughts, they just waited. At the moment, he
was thinking of an old Jimmy Durante line, “Everybody’s always trying to get
into the act.” Was it possible that being a preacher was so much more amusing
than being Secretary of the Navy? How else to explain that Secretary Murdoch
and even some of the others were inclined to try their hands at evangelical
oratory whenever he let them? They were a bunch of frustrated revivalists. What
a bore. He had to keep reminding himself that everyone in this room was useful
and necessary to the grand plan. Otherwise he could have gladly dispensed with
these now daily meetings. A glance at Rupert Paule of the White House staff.
“Rupert?”
“Thank
you, Nolan. Yes.” Paule picked up the sheaf of papers in front of him. He
cleared his throat. “Well, nothing really. I mean just nothing has happened
since this time yesterday.” He put the papers down again. “The President is…I
think the right word is ‘depressed’ by the option we’ve put in front of him. I
don’t want to psycho-babble you, but the truth is that he is using evasion
tactics to avoid facing up to the responsibility. We had some Cub Scouts come
through the White House yesterday, and the President had a few photos taken
with a scout from Florida who had saved this little girl from drowning. The
whole thing was booked for five minutes on the schedule. An hour and a half
later he was still talking to those twenty cub scouts about American liberties
and I don’t know what all else. He gave them almost the whole of the Abraham
Lincoln at the Crossroads speech. I had the O.F.D. team waiting in his office,
all ready to talk turkey. And he knew it. He held onto those kids until it was
time for the Dutch ambassador. He just doesn’t want to think about what we’re
saying.”
The
words came out as a whine. Paule was used to squashing people who didn’t do
what he wanted. He was adroit enough at coddling the President, but it could be
frustrating work for a man of his natural inclinations. The White House advisor
was taking out his frustration as he spoke on the metal clip of a ball point
pen, working it back and forth in his hands. There were teeth marks as well,
Gallant could see, on the end of the barrel, and now that he noticed, there was
a tiny blue ink spot in the corner of Paule’s mouth.
“He is
still agonizing over the way the Honduras affair backfired,” Paul went on,
continuing to twist the pen. “He told me he has nightmares about it. I had to
listen to the whole thing again yesterday. I swear he had tears in his eyes. He
said it was supposed to be just like the Libyan incursion, just a nice simple
surgical strike. BOOM—in and out before anybody even knew it was happening. One
little hill town and a whole headquarters full of radical terrorists wiped off
the face of the earth. And then he would be on television saying that the
Gloria Verde leaders were big boys and they had to realize they were risking
consequences when they fooled around with a superpower nation. They should have
known we weren’t going to let them go moving into new territory and thumbing
their noses at us forever. He had his speech all written. And then before the
TV crews could even set up, there’s this obscene thing on Prince Edward Island.
Prince Edward Island, for gods sake! What a stupid place for Texaco to have its
stupid directors meeting anyway. It’s not even in America. We had to call the
CIA just to find out where the stupid island is. So our goddam strike force is
not even home yet and all of a sudden we’ve got the whole board of directors of
Texaco blown away by a bomb.”
“Made to
look like it was planted by some group of environmental crazies,” Gallant
filled in the now familiar details. “Only it wasn’t an environmental group that
set the bomb, of course. Was it?”
“Of
course, it wasn’t. It was just made to look that way. It was the Cubans. As if
we couldn’t guess. Same as the October incident. We take some action they don’t
like and they hit back somewhere else, but all covered up so the public doesn’t
see the connection. Only we know what they’re up to. A little slap on the wrist
to make us stop. They’re goddam training us. We could eat them alive if they
ever stood up to us directly, but who the hell was even thinking about Texaco?
And our beautiful surgical strike simply ruined by…”
“That’s
all water over the dam, Rupert. The President has just got to look at the
future now, not the past.”
“That’s
easy to say, Nolan. But it really shook him up. He’s going to go down in the
history books as ‘the man who lost Texaco.’ That’s what he’s thinking.”
“He’s
going to go down in history as the man who stood up to Evil. If, that is, if he
does what is required of him now. It’s up to us to make sure he does what is
required of him.”
He pause
to scan the faces around the table. “We find ourselves at a rare moment in
history, gentlemen, with our enemies in disarray. Of course they’re not
helpless. But they’re weak. It is this country and this country alone that has
capacity for strategic action. It is essential that we use this very temporary
moment of ascendancy to cement our power. Because our enemies are not likely to
be weak forever.” Gallant looked over at Colonel Gustafson, who obviously had
something to say. “Ken?”
“It
hurts me to say this, Nolan: The President is the shakiest part of our Cuba
plan. He’s our President and I love and respect him, but I wonder if he’s up to
it. The man gets all fired up when he talks about the heroes of America’s past,
particularly Lincoln. Only you get the feeling that he really doesn’t aspire to
be a Lincoln, he would be content to be a Tyler or a Fillmore. We’re asking him
to make some hard decisions. What he’d really like to do is muddle through
without making any decisions at all and then retire to write his memoirs.”
There were
sad nods around the room. “We’d all like to avoid these decisions,” said Nolan.
“They are the bitter cup that will not pass, in the words of Our Lord.”
Gustafson
once more: “We’ve just got to stiffen his resolve. I think you’ve got to go in
yourself and talk to him again, Nolan. The man has got fervor that needs to be
brought to the surface. You can make him see the inevitability of what he has
to do. Inevitability is the key. That will be very comforting to him, to see
that he is being steered by the hand of God. It won’t be his decision at all.
The last time you got to him, he was a David, looking for a Goliath to slay. He
had lights in his eyes.”
“That
was, unfortunately, just when he gave the go-ahead on Honduras,” said Paule
sourly.
Gallant exploded.
“Don’t give me this ‘unfortunately’ shit! The whole Honduras / Texaco incident
has worked out exactly right for our purposes. We couldn’t have planned it
better if we’d tried. If the Cubans had just stood back and let us get away
with wiping up their surrogates, we could end up pussy-footing and surgical
striking for the rest of our lives. Meanwhile the bleeding hearts would be
plundering the defense budget. We’d never get on with our mission.”
Captain
Courtenay had his hand up. Courtenay was part of the White House security team,
and for some reason was also something of a confidant of the President. During
his bouts of insomnia, the Chief Executive would wander down to the little
dormitory that had been made up in the basement for security people, and wake
Courtenay up and pour out his thoughts to him, sometimes for hours at a time.
These conversations were dutifully reported back to Nolan Gallant and the
disciples. Gallant gave him the nod.
“Thank
you, sir. The President is depressed, just like Mr. Paule said, sir. You might
think that what has got him down is the carping of the press or of the left
liberal Democrats. But he doesn’t really bump into very much of that. I mean,
the summaries he receives in the morning have been pretty well cleaned up, and
he doesn’t read them anyway. What gets him down is anything from inside the
administration that contradicts what we’re telling him. If we could keep the
State Department people out for instance…” There was a grumble of annoyance
around the table. “Well, that would be a help. There is also this Cornell
business. That’s really got him down.”
At least
half the people in the room looked blankly at Courtenay. They weren’t all in
the know about the Cornell project. Gallant looked to Colonel Gustafson again
to fill them in.
“The
Cornell Project,” Gustafson began. “Right. Simula, they call it, a big computer
program that is supposed to guide us through disarmament negotiations. They
designed it to tell us how many MXs, for example, it’s worth giving up if we can
get such and such a number of SS-24s destroyed in return.” Gustafson was
shaking his head. “I still can’t believe we did this to ourselves. It’s our own
goddamn project, the brainchild of one of General Buxtehude’s young hotshots.
The guy goes off to a seminar on the wonders of computing and comes home
convinced that we have to build ourselves a computerized ‘crystal ball.’ He
says it will be able to predict the relative strength of all the powers for any
given level of reduction. Anyway, Gordon gets this professor at Cornell to
undertake the project. The professor had submitted a funding request for a
couple of million dollars for a computerized study of…oh, I don’t know what,
the sex life of beetles or some such thing. But Gordon makes him accept this other
project too. Because the guy is an expert on simulation. Anybody else would
have taken the money and never bothered us with any results, but, just our
luck, this professor actually builds the crystal ball.
“What he
comes up with is a kind of computerized war-game. We tell it what weapons are
left at each stage of reduction, and then it figures out whether we come out
ahead or behind if there is a conflict just then. It simulates all the possible
ways the weapons might be used. We get a printout of each scenario it
considers. The printouts are very detailed; they show losses of people and
equipment and cost. Some of them are really grim. The purpose of the program is
to evaluate the balance of power with changing force levels, but it can also be
used to test out any kind of strategic hypothesis.”
Murdoch
looked perplexed. “So what? What does that have to do with anything?”
“The
trouble is that the program is a hell of a lot more inventive than any of the
real players. It imagined up this whole idea of strategic arms being
transferred to off-shore groups. Suppose there’s a nominally independent
terrorist group, it says, and some old Red Army generals slip a few missiles to
it. Suppose they let the group be controlled by the Cubans, just to obscure
responsibility. Then the old generals drop a hint to the Cubans and the Cubans
drop a hint to the proxies, and the proxies act. The result is that there is an
effective counter to actions that we might take, just like the old days. And
the generals and the Cubans retain some power.
“Of
course, there’s no proof that the groups have strategic capability,” Gustafson
went on, “but it is possible. The program assumes it’s true and then simulates
what kind of response there might be to any action we take. It used to be the
President would ask Gordon or ask me when he wondered what kind of grief we
might get from the other side for doing X, Y, or Z. And we would tell him, ‘no
sweat.’ But now he looks at the scenarios that the Cornell program prints out.
The result is that the President is increasingly unwilling to do X, Y, or Z.
He’s unwilling to do much of anything, because of the projected responses.”
“Can’t
we get them to stop sending in the results?” This commonsensical piece of
advice came from Paule’s assistant, Taylor Hodge.
“Well,
that’s the idea,” said Gustafson. “We are dropping some broad hints. But you
know how these things work. The universities tend to be pretty independent. We
obviously can’t assassinate the professor and his staff.” A long silence. He
looked around the table uneasily, sensing that this might not be obvious to
anyone in the room except himself.
Captain
Courtenay picked up again. “Anyway, the results of the Cornell simulations are
really taking the stuffing out of the President. We could tell him to ignore
the reports, we could say that they aren’t accurate, but unfortunately, they
ran a simulation of the Honduras strike just before it happened, and the
computer predicted almost exactly what happened. It said the Cubans would act
immediately to discourage us from such actions. It predicted they would use an
independent group, probably an extremist environmental organization, to attack
some part of our private sector. The public would think it had been the radical
greens. But we would know. It would be a message to us that this is the kind of
thing that will happen whenever we move onto their turf. Just our luck, the
State Department had a copy of the simulation scenario and was looking at it
prior to the attack. The Secretary of State keeps reminding us of that,
reminding the President, I mean.”
“The
Secretary is a coward,” Murdoch muttered. He seldom missed a chance to say a
bad word about State.
Gallant
agreed. “He is a coward and an atheist. Maybe those two terms are synonymous.”
The twelve chuckled dutifully. “I think I know what you’re going to say next,
Captain Courtenay. But go ahead and say it.”
“Yes
sir. Well, there are all these scenarios that Cornell has sent in since
Honduras. They project the response to our Cuba Libre plan…”
“Of
course the Cornell people don’t know anything about Cuba Libre. I am right in
assuming that, aren’t I?”
“Yes
sir. They don’t. But they have some ideas of their own for what we might be
considering, and one of them is nearly bang on. When the President sees what the
projected response is to our plan, well he is…” Courtenay paused at the
distasteful word, “frightened.”
“Mmmm.
What is the projected response, if I may ask.”
“Uh…”
Captain Courtenay hesitated. He was having a moment of doubt about the
propriety of sharing the details.
Gallant
snapped at him. “What is the response, Captain? Let’s have it.”
“Yes
sir. They’re projecting that if we did proceed with Cuba Libre or its
equivalent, one of the off-shore groups would react. They would, um, target a
small nuclear missile on one American city. They’d tie it directly to our
action and give a long enough warning to empty the city. It would be a kind
of…of punishment.”
The room
had the uneasy feel that comes when people stop breathing all at once. Gallant
hurried to fill in the silence. “I don’t doubt that this is what the Cornell
group is predicting. It will never happen, however. The response to Cuba Libre
is going to be total confusion in Havana. We all know that in this room, no
matter what the little professors are saying. I wish the Cubans would try to
take out one of our cities. That’s when they’d get a rude shock. They have no
idea what state the Shield is in.”
The
words effected a sudden transformation of their mood. The reminder of the
Shield, their secret triumph, brought on a righteous gladness to replace the
tension of the last few minutes. Murdoch settled back with a contented smile
and folded his hands on his ample stomach. “A rude shock indeed. One minute an
attacking missile, armed and soaring, and the next minute nothing. And then…”
“And
then…” Gallant took over, “then, how the world is changed, my friends. From
that moment on, it’s 1950 all over again. We can strike and nobody can strike
back. That’s hegemony, gentlemen. With us in control. And the forces of Evil
made impotent.” Gallant was still smiling. He was always smiling. Yet everyone
in the room knew that he was angry. He spit his words and still did not stop
smiling. “They will feel our wrath. In the words of the Lord to Moses, I will
spend my arrows upon them; they shall be wasted with hunger and devoured with
burning heat and poisonous pestilence. What a different world that will be,
gentlemen. Triumph for our beloved nation, and ‘burning heat and poisonous
pestilence’ for our enemies. Not just for Cuba, but for all our enemies. And we
are going to make it happen.”
“Hegemony,”
Murdoch rolled the word off his tongue. It had a narcotic effect on him and on
the rest of the room. “Jesus. We really are going to turn this poor old world
around after all. Put it back the way it was intended to be. We really are.”
There
was a chorus of agreement, a swell of sound as they all began talking at once.
Several of the disciples were on their feet. Edmund Tolliver from the National
Security Council had his hand on Gallant’s arm. Gallant smiled on solidly. He
hated to be touched. Tolliver was grinning like an idiot. Gallant looked him
square in the face and the man blushed. He mumbled ‘Amen’ and turned around
looking for his chair. Over the years, you learn the techniques of prying their
hands off you with nothing more than a look.
Gallant
slapped the table for their attention. When they had quieted themselves, he
went on. “The Shield, gentlemen, the Shield that we have labored so long and
hard to see to its current state of efficacy, it is the Shield that will be the
instrument of His hand. The Shield that you have breathed life into will be for
our generation the Ark of the Covenant.” He was aware of some excess of
metaphor there, but the others were caught in the enthusiasm of the moment.
Courtenay repeated, “The Ark!”
Only the
day before, the Reverend Gallant had picked up a slender handbook of meeting
management at the People’s Drug Store on Wisconsin Avenue. He had read it cover
to cover before turning in last night. The book emphasized shaping each meeting
to its objectives, and Gallant went over his objectives again now as the others
waited. He lifted his hands, palms upward. “We are the Bearers of the Shield,
my friends. They laughed at our ‘Star Wars’ defense, but we did not flinch.
They canceled our funding, but we persevered. We did without and steered secret
funds into the project. We steeled ourselves against their rebuke, against
their ridicule. And now we have placed into orbit three truly Heavenly Bodies.”
He
paused for them to appreciate the nice turn of phrase that described the Hard
Body laser interceptor satellites as ‘Heavenly Bodies.’ They chimed in their
sounds of approval. In truth any allusion to the HBs would have gotten a warm
reaction from this group. Even Congress did not know that the HBs were in
orbit. But the disciples knew. The knowledge made them feel important and
powerful. They purred at the very thought of the HBs.
“Those
three bodies, as you know, are the protectors of our great nation. But what
does it avail us to have the Shield if we are fearful of using it? The mood in
this country is one of appeasement. People are giddy at the prospect of living
in peace and harmony with the other side. As though that were ever possible.
The Soviet Union has collapsed, but have its weapons gone away? No. They are
still there, still controlled by the same hands that controlled them a decade
ago. A year from now or less, our own strategic strength will be tragically
weakened. If we are to act, it must be now. That is what Cuba Libre is for. If
the forces of evil submit, so be it. If they resist, we will show our hand,
show them the Shield. And then, having rebuffed their piddling attack, we will
strike back. In the words of Jeremiah, Her cities shall become a desolation,
with no inhabitant in them. The destroyer shall come upon every city, and no
city shall escape; the valley shall perish, and the plain shall be destroyed…”
.
“All
that is required of us now is to keep to our resolve. To persevere, gentlemen,
in the path of righteousness. To stay the course: Cursed is he who does the
work of the Lord with slackness; and cursed is he who keeps back his sword from
bloodshed. That is written in Jeremiah: 48, 10, and I know it to be true. It is
written for us.”
Gallant
had learned on the stump over three decades ago that there is a doubting Thomas
in every audience. You can always count on him to raise a timorous voice, just
as the most glorious vision of a new order has been spoken. If you’re ready for
him, you can use him like a shill. The doubting Thomas today was the young
fellow Paule had recruited from Treasury, Gallant could never remember his
name. He had a high whining voice:
“I’m
just wondering about our timing, fellows. That’s all. I mean, I don’t doubt
that the HBs will work eventually when we’ve got them perfected, and when we’ve
got enough of them in place. But the press was always going on about how the
whole notion of the Shield was flawed and how it couldn’t work at all, or at
least not with the current state of technology. And I’m just wondering if this
might not be a bit early to start goading anyone. I mean, we could be wrong,
couldn’t we? We’re only human, aren’t we? Maybe the Shield won’t hold…well, I’m
just thinking about all those lives.”
Gallant
smiled tolerantly. “We are only human. How true. We can be wrong. How profound
are those words. But the Lord is not only human and He cannot be wrong. What
are we afraid of my friends? That we may act as the unwitting workers of His
will? That we might be the tools of His perfection by fire of human society?
Can Armageddon come without His permission? And if it comes, and behind it the
second appearance of Our Savior, then which of us, looking back, will be able
to regret the enabling actions we are taking here today?”
He
affected a sudden tiredness. “But who am I to give you strength if you are
weak? I am just a country preacher from the hill country, a child of poor
humble people. I’ve held the floor for too long, my friends. Perhaps I was wrong
to speak up at all. Perhaps our senior member, Secretary Murdoch, could favor
us with a short passage from the good book, and then, Mr. Secretary, you might
give us your own instruction, inspired by that passage?”
“Well,
of course, Nolan. Of course.” Murdoch reached for his bible.
“If I
could just suggest, Bill, starting with the 6th verse of Exodus 15?”
“An
excellent choice, Nolan,” said the Secretary, though he had not the foggiest
notion of what Exodus 15 might have to say. “I couldn’t have chosen better
myself.” The Reverend Gallant closed his eyes as Secretary Murdoch began to
read:
“Thy
right hand, O Lord, glorious in power, Thy right hand, O Lord, shatters the
enemy. In the greatness of Thy majesty Thou overthrowest Thy adversaries; Thou
sendest forth Thy fury, it consumes them like stubble.”
The
Secretary checked it again to be sure he’d got it right. “Well. Yes, ‘stubble,’
as it says. That was…Nolan, that was, I think, just the right choice. Stubble.
Well. Reflecting on that passage in these Times of Trouble, might we not be led
to ask aloud, How long, O Lord, how long…”
Gallant had set out
four objectives for the meeting. The first three had been no trouble at all.
He’d given direct instructions to General Archer’s attaché and to the
undersecretary for Defense. They had enough influence in the Pentagon to pull
off nearly anything in the short run. The fourth objective was a rather
delicate one, though. He was going to have to go himself, as Gustafson had
said, to talk to the President, to put some backbone into the man. Getting in
was not a problem: Rupert Paule had control of the President’s schedule. It
would have to be on the QT, as the press would howl bloody murder at the
President lending an ear to Nolan Gallant just before the Vienna talks. But
leave it to Paule to take care of that.
The
difficult part was to figure out just what to say to the President. He was sure
the man didn’t have the gumption to flirt with Armageddon. As the others were
leaving, Gallant took Paule and Hodge off into the adjacent office and
explained his concerns. Hodge was a born intriguer. Gallant put the question to
him directly. “Taylor, tell me, what is the best way to approach the
President?”
Hodge
reflected a moment. “It’s the judgment of history that is on the President’s
mind now,” he said. “His nightmare is that history will view him as a blunderer
who muddied the waters and let a major American corporation be blown away in
the confusion of his own ill-advised adventuring. But if you could just plant
the suggestion that it’s the Cubans who have muddied the waters, that history
will see that an adroit President acted swiftly and courageously to profit from
their ill-advised adventuring…”
“I see.
I see. It was our side that was just waiting for them to provide the opportunity.
The cowardly attack on Texaco was our opening.”
“Exactly.
Operation Cuba Libre was ready for them. And he will be remembered as the man
who got Cuba back for us.”
“But
it’s been weeks since the Honduras strike and the counterattack on Texaco. Our
action now is hardly a lightning response.”
“Who’s
to say that? Cuba Libre could be pulled off within ten days. The plan is
simple. It requires almost no people, and damn little equipment. From the
perspective of next month it’s going to look like an instantaneous response.
And it’s going to catch our friends in Havana flat-footed.” Hodge looked
relaxed and confident. He had no doubts at all. “They’re going to…how shall I
say it, to…”
“…piss
in their britches,” Gallant finished up.
“Nicely
put,” said Hodge.
In the back of his
black limousine, Gallant went back over the meeting. The ways of the Lord are
beyond the comprehension of mere mortal men. He leadeth us to lie down with
total idiots, to suffer the Murdochs and Tollivers of the world, the fawning little
people placed upon earth for reasons that no man could discover. He calleth
upon us to take some surprising steps. On occasion, He even leadeth us to tell
a few Whoppers.
He
considered options for discrediting the Cornell simulations. Little lies, he decided,
are for little men. He would look the President right in the eye and tell him
that the Cornell data was fudged, that they had concocted their Honduras
‘simulation’ after the fact and postdated it. He would say that the Secretary
of State was a party to the forgery. The implication would not be lost on the
President: The State Department was trying to increase its power by using these
counterfeit scenarios. They were trying to frighten the President, to make him
incapable of acting in a time when courageous action was called for.
It would
work. The President might try to weasel out of his duty, but would be no match
for Gallant. He had the man by his spiritual balls. Within two weeks Cuba Libre
would be a fait accompli.
Power
politics is heady stuff. It can have a positively erotic effect. The moving of
troops, the plotting of bold strokes, he knew, would give some men an erection.
For Gallant, the effect was different; it only made him hungry. He tapped on
the glass screen of the limo and signaled the driver to turn in at Kentucky
Fried Chicken just ahead.
