The General's President (12 page)

"Let me talk more about that for a minute. Some of the more basic problems of this country carry a lot of agitated emotion—resentment, bitterness, distrust, anger. You know about those, Robert. Emotion generated by old injustices, old disappointments, broken expectations, broken promises.

"Not all those broken expectations were reasonable or even possible, but that doesn't lessen the emotion.

"And a lot of those basic problems are held in place by vested interests.

"Those are the major reasons I'll be talking to the people as much as I will: to defuse emotions, and for public support against vested interests. Those are the reasons I'm here talking to you less than two hours after Mr. Okada brought up the matter of a press conference.

"Next. The man with the salt and pepper beard."

"Alfred Johnson with the
Atlanta Constitution
. Mr. President, are you or are you not under the control of the Pentagon?"

Haugen's eyebrows rose. "Why do you ask that?"

"It's been speculated that General Cromwell declined the presidency because he thought he could run things more effectively behind a civilian front man."

"Sorry to ruin such a juicy rumor, but it's not true. Feel free to be skeptical, but when you've gotten to know me better, I think you'll accept that I'm nobody's puppet.

"Next."

The president answered three more questioners, then ended the session.

***

The president's phone buzzed. He answered it.

"Mr. President, I've got Secretary Coulter for you now, on line one."

"Thank you, Jeanne." A thick forefinger jabbed. The handsome features and thick white hair of the Secretary of State appeared on the phone screen. "Good morning, Mr. Coulter." The president's words were cordial enough, but the tone was crisply neutral.

"Good morning, Mr. President. I'm sorry I was out of the office when your secretary tried to get me before. How can I help you?"

"What have you heard from the Saudis since the Soviets invaded Iran?"

"Well, their principal communication was a request to have American fighter squadrons posted in their country."

"I see. Did you suppose I wouldn't be interested in knowing about that?"

"Not at all, sir. I intended to bring it up before the National Security Council tomorrow morning. And frankly, Mr. President, I'm rather surprised you didn't call a council meeting for this morning."

The president looked intently at the face on the screen. Coulter didn't seem to notice. "I considered it," Haugen replied, "and decided to allow the military situation there to develop further before we met. I saw nothing in either the intelligence summary or the military briefing that called for an immediate meeting. Now about the Saudi request: What do you recommend and why?"

"Sir, we have provided the Saudi Air Force with three wings of F-16Ds, two of F-111Gs, and a squadron of F-21Bs. I considered their request for Air Force squadrons an unjustified, knee-jerk response to the Soviet action."

"Mr. Coulter, that sounds to me like a military evaluation. That bailiwick belongs to Campbell and the Pentagon. Do you have any
diplomatic
reasons to send or not to send American squadrons to Saudi Arabia?"

Coulter's reply was slow, measured. "President Donnelly's diplomatic policy has been to avoid any further military buildup in the Middle East. The Iranian military machine was already inferior in equipment to the Saudis; they have mostly older, export models of Soviet equipment, and American equipment dating back to the Shah. The Syrians have been too concerned with the Israelis to worry the Saudis, and they've been on good terms with the Iraqis, as of course the Jordanians have been, and also with the Saudis.

"As regards the Soviet invasion of Iran, it is doubtful that they will go farther than to capture Teheran."

Haugen didn't answer at once, merely looked at Coulter's image thoughtfully. Was the bastard trying to confuse him? "Thank you, Mr. Coulter. I'll let you know my decision when I've made it. Meanwhile, for your future reference, I like to know promptly about things like the Saudi request."

Another key was already flashing when he disconnected. He touched it, and Martinelli's voice spoke to him. "General Cromwell is holding on line two for you, Mr. President. Can you talk to him now?"

"Sure." He touched a key, and the general's face appeared on the screen. "Good morning, Jumper," Haugen said.

"You asked for my comments on your press conference, Mr. President. I'm pretty good at keeping my temper, but I could hardly believe how cool you stayed, handling that turkey from the
Flag
. I'd have blown my stack at the sonofabitch."

"Thanks." Haugen smiled. "He was pretty hostile, wasn't he? And apparently a little crazy. But he did me a favor; he made me look good."

The answer threw Cromwell for just a moment before he went on. "And the question about whether or not you were a front man for me—you defused that nicely too."

"Thanks. Listen, Jumper, while I've got you on the line, Emerson has asked to be replaced as National Security Advisor. Who would you suggest I name for the job?"

"May I think about that, Sir? Frankly, I'd like it myself, but as vice president I won't be eligible."

"Okay, I'll ask you again tomorrow. Jumper, my intercom's flashing; Martinelli's trying to tell me Ed Wachsman's here for our lunch meeting. He's head of the Bureau of Economic Analysis."

"Right. Good luck on understanding him."

The president smiled. "Wish
him
luck. I'm going to make him justify everything he says."

TWELVE

The president's phone buzzed, and as he reached for it, his eyes moved to the clock: 1402:21. Bulavin was reasonably prompt, if that's who it was.

"What is it, Jeanne?"

"Colonel Schubert is here for his appointment."

"Send him in."

The man who entered looked like a career army officer. Seeming about fifty, he appeared lean and fit. About five-feet ten, his weight might have been 160. His face was lined and hard-looking, but humor lurked in the eyes and around the mouth. His cropped hair was in the zone between blond and brown.

He stopped in front of the president's desk and saluted. "Mr. President, General Cromwell tells me you'd like a briefing on the Soviet government."

Haugen answered in Russian. "That's right. Best you give it in English though." He grinned. "My Russian vocabulary may not be up to the subject."

The Russian nodded.

"I'll be recording this briefing," Haugen went on. "So if you need to say anything that might compromise your cover, let me know. I'll turn off the recorder. The tape will be for my use only, but we might as well be careful."

Bulavin/Schubert's smile was rueful. "I'm used to being careful. It's been necessary most of my life."

"I can believe it." Haugen reached to his computer console and touched a short sequence of keys. "All right, we're recording. This is a briefing by an intelligence specialist on the subject of the Soviet government." He looked up at the Russian. "Start."

Bulavin contemplated for a moment, then began. "What I'm going to do, Mr. President, is give you a brief sketch of the recent history of the Politburo, to give you an idea of how it functions, and of the men and the situation there. Mainly I'll deal with the period since Mikhail Sergeyvich Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Party Chairman for short.

"But now and then I'll look back before that, for perspective. And I'll leave a much broader written review with you, with maps, statistical tables, and a glossary."

Nikita Bulavin sat back in his chair and stared unseeingly above and past Haugen's head.

"Comrade Gorbachev took over the chairmanship in much less then a position of full power. Symbolic of this, he was given neither the office of premier nor that of president, although Nikolai Tikhonov, who held the premiership, was unquestionably and notoriously senile, while the presidency was vacant! In the Soviet Union, the post of president is ornamental, of course, honorary, and the functional importance of the premiership is not great. But both had symbolic meaning: It had been the stamp of true power when a chairman attached the premiership to himself, and to also hold the presidency signified that power was complete."

Bulavin's eyes focused again, and for a moment met Haugen's. "Actually, when Gorbachev first became Party Chairman, the heart of power still lay with the KGB, as it had since the death of Yuri Andropov. And indeed since Andropov had become chairman. For Andropov had commanded the KGB prior to becoming chairman—had used the KGB to make himself chairman—and in a sense, when he ruled, the KGB ruled.

"You may recall that it was during Andropov's tenure as chairman that international terrorism so greatly expanded. That was no coincidence. Some western so-called experts talked about Andropov as, hopefully, a liberal. With experts like those..." Bulavin shrugged, smiling wryly.

"At any rate, by appointing other top KGB men to the Politburo, Andropov put the KGB in a position to continue its rule after his death, at least during Konstantin Chernenko's brief tenure as Party Chairman.

"For Chernenko was never more than a figurehead. He was appointed because there were two strong contenders for the position, Grigori Romanov as well as Mikhail Gorbachev. And someone was needed to occupy the throne without controlling power, until one of the two vanquished the other. The world is fortunate that Romanov did not win."

Bulavin looked intently at the president. "There is a key relationship that is important to know, for anyone who wants to understand Soviet politics. During the sixty years of Soviet rule prior to Andropov's chairmanship, the power structure had been three-cornered, the corners being the Party, the army, and under one name or another the KGB. The army had much the greatest sheer power, enough to destroy either of the others. To prevent this, the Party had early installed a system of political officers within the army, to indoctrinate the troops. There was a political officer in every unit, down to company level.

"Meanwhile the Party had also created the KGB, and one of its major functions was to help keep the army from taking over the government. The KGB did this by having literally thousands of spies within the army, monitoring personal associations and political conformity; by openly investigating and passing on the political attitudes of all army candidates for promotion; and by assuring the removal of any senior officers, or anyone else the Party decided might be dangerous in some way to the Politburo.

"For the Politburo was the Party's ruling organ. And it was also the top level of the vast bureaucracy which controls the Soviet Union to a far greater degree than your government controls here. The bureaucracy that the Politburo controlled was very much larger than the army, although unarmed and far less disciplined.

"The Politburo's main
source
of control in this three-cornered power structure has been the power of patronage, of appointment—that and its position as the source of political ideology. Its main
tools
of control were the army and the KGB. It used the KGB to control the army, and at times it used the army to control the KGB. And of course, the cadre section of the Party secretariat researched and appointed KGB officers.

"At times the Politburo had been controlled by a single man—its chairman; most notably for almost thirty years by Joseph Stalin. At other times its leader had often been constrained to some extent, sometimes to a rather large extent, by other members of the Politburo. But with the sole exception of Chernenko, the chairman was the most powerful Politburo member. Chernenko had too little force, personally, to use the reins when they were handed to him."

Bulavin paused to evaluate his listener. Haugen seemed to be absorbing the information without difficulty; he nodded to the Russian to continue.

"The Politburo had created the KGB to curb the people and the army, and so this serpent, the KGB, also had to be powerful. Nothing less than powerful, ruthlessly powerful, could have controlled the army and the ethnic/national mix of the empire with its many languages and affinities. So in the tradition of Russian security police, it had been brutal as well as powerful, more brutal than any Czarist predecessor.

"Now this brutal creation of the Party was quite willing to eat bureaucrats. The Politburo had used it repeatedly to purge the government, the army, and the Party itself. By Stalin in particular, but later also by Andropov, it was used even to purge the Politburo. Thus the government cadres had a fear and horror of the KGB."

Haugen listened engrossed.
I wonder
, he thought,
if Bulavin realizes that, as he talks about this, he begins to sound Russian?
It wasn't a matter of accent but of diction—of word selection and sentence structure.

"When Gorbachev took power," Bulavin went on, "Gromyko was more than foreign minister; he wielded important political power within the Party apparatus, which is to say, the bureaucracy. As did several other Politburo geriatrics to lesser degrees.

"But time had weakened their ranks, and the KGB had decided they must go. Thus less than five months after Gorbachev became chairman, he 'promoted' his sponsor, Gromyko, into the vacant presidency. Which in fact meant he retired him. And replaced him as foreign minister with KGB General Eduard Shevardnadze. This, in fact, had been one of the conditions the KGB had exacted before agreeing to Gorbachev as Party Chairman.

"The KGB also began, bit by bit, to replace the GRU—Soviet military intelligence—in all of its peacetime foreign roles except that of espionage. Which of course was its major peacetime role anyway, outside the Soviet Union."

"Just a minute," Haugen interrupted. "Isn't the KGB the Soviet espionage organization?"

"Not primarily. The GRU, military intelligence, has always held the foreign espionage role. But it maintains a very low profile. Some experts have even assumed that the GRU is a branch of the KGB, but nothing could be further from the truth. Each has been used to purge the other, and they have a long tradition of mutual hatred, a tradition carefully nurtured by the Politburo."