December Ultimatum (10 page)

The helicopter turbine screamed at near full power, waiting for the pitch of the blades to lift. The President reached out and grabbed the supports of the door to pull himself up. He saw the first flakes of snow on his overcoat sleeve and, on the back of his hand, a cross drawn in red. He remembered the pocket tape recorder needed new batteries.

LONDON

‘The Americans are going stronger’

The Foreign Secretary smiled back as the policeman saluted, a habit of many years acknowledging subordinates. His face dropped again as the door of Number Ten shut firmly behind him. He walked the twenty yards across Downing Street, through the arches of the Square and into King Charles Street. Usually at this time of night, when the last bus had left Whitehall and the traffic had faded into the London suburbs, he would hear the clip of his steel-capped heels on the cobbles, but tonight there was a soft crunch of snow and by the time he had reached the wide swing doors of the Foreign Office his head and shoulders carried a layer of it. He stood still and to attention while the night porter brushed it away. He wiped his spectacles dry with the yellow duster that hung by the radiator for just such emergencies.

The Foreign Secretary was neither a tall man, nor as young-looking as his press photographs and reputation indicated. His photographs also showed a smiling, pleasant man, genial almost, with humorous owl-like eyes behind the bi-focals. He was none of these things either.

He was short-tempered and vindictive. He came from a long line of aristocrats, an illustrious English family who had been bequeathed thousand of acres of fertile Norman England by a generous and grateful Conqueror, wealth compounded many hundreds of thousands of times since.

The tea tray was already on his desk. By it was the vacuum flask of hot water and next to that the small black plastic travelling clock. It was thirteen minutes to midnight and the Foreign Secretary stood dripping by the two-bar electric fire, tired after a four and a half hour Cabinet meeting followed by two hours with the Energy Committee. His office was cold and smelt damp and he was irritated.

‘We must get some cocoa powder, Simmonds.’

‘Drinking chocolate?’

‘Get some. Difficult taking tea this late at night and we’re going to have a lot of late nights.’

Simmonds poured hot water from the flask into the floral- patterned china pot and stirred, as the Foreign Secretary eased himself slowly into his chair. Simmonds covered the teapot with its knitted cosy and pushed it carefully towards him on the tray.

‘Bad news, sir?’

‘It’s not good.’

‘Unanimous?’

‘Absolutely.

‘How long do we have, sir?’

‘Tonight. Just tonight. She’s going to announce it at ten tomorrow morning, won’t even wait to do it in the House. Shame. It would have given me something to work on, something for the French especially.’

‘She’s not afraid of expulsion, sir?’

‘She’s afraid of bugger-all. Couldn’t care a tinker’s! Wondered tonight whether she wasn’t delighted at the prospect. She’s never been very keen. But whatever they do doesn’t matter. We keep our oil to ourselves until the Saudis sort themselves out.’

‘Or the Americans sort them out for us.’

‘Meaning?’

‘The Americans might use military action. Go and take the fields.’

‘Wouldn’t dare. They’d have the world on their backs. They’d do nothing unilaterally.’

‘The President is new, sir.’

‘And rash?’

‘Yes.’

‘Checks and balances, Simmonds. Essential to the American Administration. He may shout. But he can’t do. This is awful!’

The Foreign Secretary pushed the tea tray away and wiped his lips with a large white monogrammed linen handkerchief.

‘Will there be a vote in the House, sir?’

‘No. No vote. We can’t go through that kind of palaver at a time like this. She’ll do an Order in Council. Privy Councillors will meet at nine, statement released at ten.’ Simmonds moved in closer with relish.

‘King Fahd is safely in the Lakes, sir.’

‘Damn! What bloody news! As if we haven’t enough. Why on earth did he pick us?’

‘He does own a lot of England, Sir. And Scotland. And you did promise.’

‘What?’

‘Eight months ago, sir. In Riyadh, during your visit. You said you would—’

‘Be delighted to be host in return. God! Did he ever think we would? He was the Almighty then and we could buy his oil. Now he’s not and we can’t. Will he stay long?’

‘Hard, sir. It’s an immense estate, the whole east side of Ullswater. And very secure, which is what he wants. There’s a risk, of course, sir.’

‘Risk?’

‘That they’ll do to us what the Iranians did to the Americans over the Shah. Take British hostages. Demand Fahd back.’

‘Possible. But improbable. The Shah was a crook and unloved. Bloody shame, though. Used to go to Ullswater myself once. Lovely place. Disgraceful it should go to an Arab. His brother’s with him?’

‘Sultan’s dead, sir.’

‘What about Yamani?’

‘He was out of the country during the coup.’

‘The clever ones always are.’

‘The President’s televised address is coming live from the White House.’

‘Be saying the same as us. Conserve stocks, domestic restrictions, rationing, possible new impetus for alternative energy research. Usual thing. Always the same solutions to the same repeating crises and never venturing beyond a promise of intent. It’ll hit the Americans hard even if this Saudi thing ends in a month or so. But it’ll do them good. Austerity. No harm in it.’

‘They’ll ask for our oil to bide them over.’

‘Maybe. But I’m not certain they’ll get any. It was talked about tonight but we couldn’t see how we could suspend oil exports to Europe and then sell to Washington.’

‘All our exports?’

‘All. As of ten tomorrow morning not a drop will be sold. All pumping operations will be suspended. The
PM
will order it to be left in the sea. Royal Naval patrols in all areas, and the military aboard the rigs, until the Saudis come to their senses. We have enough oil already ashore for two months, once domestic rationing is imposed.’

‘When is that, sir?’

‘Tomorrow, too. All be in the same Order in Council.’ ‘When will the Community know?’

‘The
PM
wants it done tonight. Has to be. They all know we’ve been in Cabinet They’re all expecting something, probably guessed already. Hate to think of the revenge being planned at this very moment in Bonn, Brussels and Paris. You take Paris first, then the Germans. I’ll wake up the Community Chairman. Tell them there’s a temporary suspension of contracts pending clarification of the Saudi embargo. We renege on the Treaty of Rome—with mortification of course, but national law, like national interest, is paramount.’

‘They will expel us?’

‘Possibly suspend membership. But we’ll survive. We can do without them but we can’t do without oil and that’s our message tonight. We’re keeping it until further notice.’

It appealed to him. The traditional, routine diplomatic protocol had always appalled him despite his apparent subscription to it. It belonged to another age—if it had ever belonged to any, and he doubted even that. The Age of Diplomacy had been when ambassadors and emissaries had needed to talk and present credentials in time-consuming pomp and ceremony because, while they were doing that, battalions and fleets could be moved slowly and laboriously to new advantage and new adventures. Diplomats parried and delayed in foreign ministries to give their own generals time to outflank in the field and their politicians time to design alternative strategies, prepare new ultimatums. In the age before the intercontinental ballistic missile and the neutron bomb, diplomatic manoeuvres were essential preludes to war or peace, but the Foreign Secretary thought such luxuries were no longer relevant today, and it surprised him that there were still people in government and the Foreign Service who were only now just beginning to complain that the traditional rules of international conduct could no longer be taken for granted. The world is changing, they’d say, as if it was something sudden, new and momentous, and their naïveté appalled him. The world was not changing. It had changed. The metamorphosis was already complete. There simply were no rules any more, the unpredictable had become commonplace The world was a gangster.

The description appealed to him because he knew that privately many of his colleagues and as many of his opponents considered him also to be outside the rules. But then, he would argue, how effective was a man who used yesterday’s techniques today? Oil was the newest and most efficient fulcrum of power so why shouldn’t the British Government use it as such? Thankfully he and the Prime Minister were in accord. It had, after all, been very much her idea.

The red telephone, the direct line to the
PM’s
private secretary, began its soft buzzing. He picked it up and grunted. Then, very suddenly, he sat erect and grabbed his pen. His lips pursed inwards and his yellowing teeth began chewing them. For one full minute the room was silent except for the faintest buzz from a faulty bar of the electric fire and the pattering of snow on the windowpanes outside.

Slowly he kneaded the loose folds of skin in his neck, pulling at the ridges with his finger and thumb, the pen in his hand moving as if he was writing, though it did not touch the paper.

Without a word of acknowledgement, the Foreign Secretary replaced the red receiver, leaned back in his chair, rested both hands on the table, his spectacles reflecting the red in the glow of the fire.

‘Simmonds,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘The American President is making his address in ten minutes. Make sure you record it.’

He stood up. Tm going back to the PM. She’s just had a call from our Ambassador in Washington. He knows what’s in the President’s speech.’

Simmonds helped him on with his heavy overcoat and, for the cold return to Downing Street, the Foreign Secretary put on a knitted woollen scarf and wrapped it around his neck and head. At the door he turned to speak again, and Simmonds thought he looked ridiculously like an old granny.

‘Don’t bother with those calls to Europe,’ he said. ‘They’re not important for the moment.’ He paused. ‘Things have changed, Simmonds. Drastically. Appallingly. The Americans are going strong. The President is issuing an ultimatum as a prelude to a military invasion.’

In the four minutes it took the Foreign Secretary to walk from the swing doors of the Foreign Office to the shiny black door of Number Ten, snow covered his scarf and water dribbled from his long, thin nose. The policeman, now a snowman, saluted again, but this time there was no smile, and the door opened to the Minister without a knock.

THE PRESIDENT’S SPEECH

‘An assault will be repelled’

‘The light’s gone.’

‘What d’you mean, gone?’

‘I mean gone. Out. Bulb in the left back flood’s busted.’ ‘You’ve got five lights up—Christ! you can manage.’

‘I can manage on one, but the President of the United States is going to lack something behind.’

‘So we’ll have a dim Stars and Stripes. You should worry.’ ‘I should worry? I’m not worrying. It’s your problem. You’re the director. You want the President shot in half-light you got it. The networks will think they’ve bought themselves a Fellini on the cheap.’

‘Don’t be crude!’

‘Fellini, crude. Not fellatio. He’s Italian, uses natural light—Christ! You should know these things—you’re supposed to be in the picture business.’

‘I’m in television. That’s not the picture business.’

‘So where’s a new bulb?’

‘So where’s your assistant?’

‘He’s parking the van.’

‘Move one of the lights round.’

‘And lose his shoulders? The President will have head, flags and no support?’

‘How come he’s still parking the van? We’ve been set up an hour already.’

‘So he’s having problems. He brought someone with him. They’re saying goodbye.’

‘That’s sad.’

‘Sure it’s sad. They’ve been together a long time. He came home last night and found another man in the apartment. Coming out of the bedroom. Just his socks on.’

‘That’s bad.’

‘Sure it’s bad. Real friendships are a treasure.’

‘
Schmaltz
!
Where d’you pick up that crap? Anyway he’ll find another bit of tail. There are plenty of nice girls around.’

‘Girls? Who said anything about girls? C’mon, you got him all wrong. He’s not like that.’

‘Turn that second flood around a bit, spread it. It’ll cover shoulders and the flags. No problem.’

‘Problem? So who says there’s a problem? Hilton Smilton in Yonkers says the President hasn’t got shoulders. So we shouldn’t worry about the customers?’

‘Christ! Where is he anyway?’

The President was running late. His live insert into the Network was timed for forty-five seconds after the early news shows had finished, forty-five seconds made up of four ten-second advertisements and a five second introduction off-air. There were now three minutes and those forty-five seconds to go. On the television monitors in front of the floor manager, the three separate national news shows were moving into the last of their reports. Don Rather, in his own nightly address to the nation, was summing up the day’s events and promising viewers that
CBS
would extend their late-night news bulletin for analysis and comment of the President’s speech ‘if it was so called for’.

Peter Jennings,
ABC’s
anchorman in London, was reporting a demonstration by Saudi Arabian Islamic extremists outside Buckingham Palace demanding the return of King Fahd to face trial in Riyadh. And
NBC’s
Gavin Uckley was reporting on the anti-American demonstrations by Libyan students outside the besieged United States Embassy in Tripoli.

The floor manager looked over his shoulder at the director and shrugged. The President had still to be made up and he would want to read his script through a couple of times, they always did. They hadn’t even got the auto-cue script yet. Presidents had run late before, but never like this. Network master-control always insisted that Presidents were in their chair, ready to go, five minutes to insert time. The floor manager checked his watch with the director. They were on in two minutes and forty-five seconds. Over his intercom he could hear the master-controller in New York screaming abuse at the White House director, which was where the buck stopped. He knew well enough that to cue the President of the United States live into the Network was a coronary risk. To cue a President who wasn’t there would cause national hysteria and a million heart attacks.

There were eighteen technicians and seven production assistants in the room and everyone of them now realized, with one minute and forty-five seconds to go, that such a thing was suddenly a probability.

The tension would not help the President. Tension was infectious, it even affected the pro’s who did it live every night. He would look anxious on the screen, he would peer at the auto-cue and fluff his lines and people wouldn’t remember anything he had said, just the dismal way he had said it. The floor manager bit his lip and smiled at the camera operator and the lighting man and his production assistant who stared blankly back. Ninety-five seconds. There was sweat on the top of his nose and he took off his headphones and wiped the moisture from the pads. Network master- control was now threatening to pull out. The director screamed abuse back.

The floor manager pulled out the plug on the intercom cable and began speaking quietly to himself. ‘There’s going to be cosmic disaster, millions sitting out there, waiting to see the President, and then they don’t. They’d know it was assassination just like the other two, Christ!’

‘Lights back on . . .’

‘Fuck your lights,’ he shouted and looked up into the face of the President.

‘Evening, gentlemen—how long have we got?’

‘Fifteen seconds, sir. Jesus!’

But the President was already in his chair with make-up girls dabbing his face with powder puffs as he adjusted the tiny earpiece of the pocket tape recorder.

‘Five seconds.’ The floor manager held up his hands. ‘Quiet please. Three, two, one . . .’

‘Good evening. You will have seen on the television news, you will have read in your newspapers and you will have heard on the radio reports from the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh of what has happened to that country in the past forty-eight hours. You will also know how Americans working out there for the Government and for private corporations have just been evacuated by the US Air Force and who, with the co-operation of the Egyptian government and President Mubarak, are on their way home.

‘You will also know that the Revolutionary Council in Riyadh has closed down the oilfields and has placed a moratorium on oil supplies to the West for at least one year. Tonight I want to tell you what the consequences of that decision will be for the United States and the free world.

‘The problem that faces us now is as grave as any America has faced since World War Two. It poses a national security threat of such scope, of such complexity, that it threatens to radically transform our economy, our political consensus, our accepted way of life. Jeremiahs are already speaking of an inflation-plagued recessionist economy for a generation to come, with drastic fuel shortages that will stake city against suburb, farmers against truckers, East against West, North against South, in a regional, racial and economic divisiveness not seen since slavery and secession.

‘This country, the greatest and most powerful nation in the history of the world, runs on oil. That was never a problem when we had plenty, but since the first oil embargoes in 1973, our problem has been our dependence on an uncertain monopoly source, a dependence on that thin line of oil tankers stretching from the Persian Gulf, one of the world’s most politically volatile regions. And as you well know since the Shah of Iran was deposed and Iranian oil denied us, that dependence and that uncertainty has rapidly grown.

‘Now, with the benefit of hindsight always available to us too late, we realize that we should not have depended so much on such people. That years ago we should have served notice on the Arab oil producers that we, the world’s biggest oil consumer, were no longer willing to soak up their production at any price on any condition. But we didn’t and that failure has cost America a terrible price.

‘Let me now tell you just how much. In the last ten years, the nation’s bill for Arab oil has risen from three billion dollars a year to nearly fifty billion. That’s an increase of at least fifteen hundred per cent. To pay this price, there has been a massive taxation on your consuming power which in turn has reduced economic growth, spurred inflation, sent the balance of payments deficit into orbit and subjected the US dollar to regular and humiliating depreciation. Until yesterday we were importing just over four million barrels of Arab crude every day, an unbelievably staggering five million dollars an hour, twenty-four hours a day—three hundred and sixty-five days a year. The Arabs have had us on the rack and little by little they’ve been tightening the screws, selfish little people who would clip the wings of the American Eagle to feather their own nests. Tonight I address myself on your behalf to them and say Enough! We will not be made fools of any longer.

‘This evening I’ve been given the list of twenty-seven American dead who were murdered by mobs as they were driving out of Riyadh. Men, women and children, innocent non-combatants, shot down by savages pretending to be disciples of Mohammed. American families who had gone to that land to help build a better and more prosperous life. Tonight those families are on their way home in coffins.

‘I have also, within the hour, received a signal from one of our ships at present in the Persian Gulf. I want to read it to you: “Tonight at 18h30 Greenwich mean time twenty-two Soviet vessels sighted by radar proceeding northwards towards Strait of Hormuz, Persian Gulf. Speed constant at seventeen knots.” That was sent by the Captain of the
USS
Okinawa
and it confirms our satellite surveillance reports which has identified them as warships of the Soviet Seventh Fleet. The Soviet aircraft carrier
Minsk
and the assault ship
Ivan Rogov
are in that fleet. Both those warships have vertical take-off aircraft, both are equipped with missiles, both carry combat troops and helicopters to carry them to land. Furthermore, we have established by satellite observation and from our intelligence sources that this fleet, which was conducting operational training exercises a hundred miles south, received their new orders two days ago to enter the Persian Gulf. That was before the Saudi Arabian coup. Our conclusion is that Moscow knew what was about to happen there—indeed may have been directly instrumental in its success.

‘Further reports from our Embassy and Military personnel in Saudi Arabia confirm that the weapons to overthrow King Fahd were Soviet built and were used by Marxist Palestinians and Marxist South Yemenis.

‘Now, according to my advisers, Rahbar, former Crown Prince Abdullah, abhors Communism as much as we do. I’m told that his coup against the King succeeded because of the Saudi people’s faith in him and their belief that Islam was being contaminated by the West. But I say this. Whoever is now in charge of that country, whatever the religious credentials of the Islamic People’s Democratic Republic, Communist ambition will attempt sooner or later to take it for itself. Because it is the Soviet’s economic and military strategy to deny the United States Saudi oil. They know in Moscow what so many of us here in the United States refuse to face up to, the harsh and unpleasant fact that American oilfields are dying. They are running dry.

‘You should know that according to all the specialist data available to us from the Department of Energy, the American Petroleum Institute, Data Resources and others, our oil will run out in less than ten years’ time at the present rate of our consumption. And when the last barrel is filled, the United States will be entirely dependent on imported oil. From Venezuela. From Nigeria. From Mexico. From the Arabs. Is it hard then to understand why the Soviet Union should do everything in their power to prevent us getting it? Without that oil the American Eagle is crippled. It will not fly again.

‘But there is another reason for the sudden Soviet activity in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. It is this. Moscow needs that oil as much as we do.

‘The Soviet Union is the biggest oil producer in the world. Once it was pumping six hundred million tons every year, but in the last two years its production has fallen by half and it is now buying all that Libya and Iraq and other pro-Soviet Arab states can provide. It has cut its own oil exports to dependent Soviet block Comecon states in Europe to conserve stocks. But despite this, its industry has been reduced to a three-day working week because of fuel shortages and the Soviet government has been forced to introduce severe petrol and diesel rationing.

‘Moscow has read the writing on the wall. It must have more oil, for its factories, for its farms, for its ever-expanding war machine. Arab oil has become as essential to the Soviet Union’s survival as it has to ours.

‘It is for these reasons that I believe the Soviet Seventh Fleet is now sailing towards the Persian Gulf. It is for these reasons that we in the United States, as leaders of the free world, must be prepared to act.

‘As your President, I believe that it is not our power but our will that is being tested. And the question all Americans must ask and answer tonight is: does the strongest nation in the history of the world have the character to meet a direct challenge by people who ignore our warnings, trample on agreements and violate innocent people? If, when the chips are down, this powerful nation acts like a pitiful helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten us and all free nations throughout the world. If we fail to meet this challenge, all other nations will be on notice that, despite its overwhelming power, when the real crisis came the United States was found wanting.

‘But tonight, let it be known that the United States will no longer tolerate deception or offence from any nation, large or small.

‘Events now force a change, and I quote, with respect to his memory, the words of John F. Kennedy. “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.” I will not be made impotent. I will not sit back when our oil supplies are cut off and watch Soviet warships sail into the Persian Gulf to lay claim to it.’

‘Fellow Americans, tonight I have sent a message to Rahbar, leader of the Islamic People’s Democratic Republic, telling him that the United States is resolved to preserve peace. I have also told him of our resolution to have the oilfields reopened and oil supplies to the United States resumed forthwith, and that contracts regarding those supplies signed in good faith by American corporations shall be honoured, notwithstanding the new political situation that now exists. And I have told him that my Government expects full and early reparation for all damage to American property sustained during the fighting there.