The General's President (45 page)

He stopped and looked around the large table. "That's it in a nutshell," he said, and sat down.

"How is the white population taking all this?" Haugen asked him.

"The word is that the number of people trying to get air reservations or ship passage out of the country is way up. Apparently a lot of the moderates have decided it's time to leave. Of course, there's always the problem of selling their property, but a lot of them undoubtedly got burned out anyway. And property isn't going to be as big a holding factor as it's been in the past; I think we'll see a considerable white exodus over the next month or two.

"But the ordinary Afrikaner is probably more grimly determined to hold out now than he ever was."

"Val," the president said, turning to the Secretary of State, "what have you got to add to that?"

"Not much, Mr. President. A number of countries have registered official condemnation of what they've generally termed 'the genocidal response' to 'the black demonstrations.' That includes all the eastern bloc and African countries of course, and a lot of others."

"Umm. Anyone else have anything on this?"

No one did. The president meant meaningful contributions, and they knew it.

"All right. Val, is there anything you need from this conference now? Anything we need to talk about here?"

"No sir. I've sent the statement you approved. I believe that's as far as we should go for now."

"Fine. Barry, what's new on the Soviets that we should know?"

The CIA director stood back up. "Nothing everyone here hasn't seen in the intelligence summaries. There've been scattered mini-mutinies in the Soviet invasion army. Nothing overt: the 'sit down and pretend the equipment doesn't work' kind, At least sometimes with a little strategic sabotage to make the breakdowns convincing. It would be worse if the army hadn't been careful to transfer all Soviet Moslem troops out of the invasion units.

"And there was a major mutiny, an officers' mutiny, in their East Asian military district at Khabarovsk. We don't have any information on what inspired that, but it ended in a pretty respectable fight."

Haugen said nothing, but he was feeling a little more hope for his Gurenko plan.

"Meanwhile," Barry was saying, "the Kremlin continues to shift their mobile ICBM launchers around, and they've sent up eleven anti-satellite and anti-missile satellites in the past week, in contravention of the Wheeler-Gorbachev agreements." He shrugged. "It could be posturing, or they could be planning a nuclear strike, but even if they are posturing, it could turn into something real."

He sat down again. "Thank you, Barry," the president said, and turned to Cromwell. "General, anything to report on the strategic alert?"

Cromwell shook his head. "No sir. Even a yellow alert is something of a strain on personnel at first, but they get used to it. And after a while they get less alert."

"Anything more we ought to be doing?"

Only Valenzuela spoke. "I'd recommend you talk to Pavlenko."

"I'll get with you later on that." He turned to Paul Van Breda, his new defense secretary. "You too, Dutch."

It occurred to Haugen that Van Breda hadn't yet been told about the scalar resonance weapons. He should be. But not in front of all these people.

They went from the subject of the Soviets to the same old Malaysian troubles, and then to the renewed Moro uprising in the Philippines. The Malaysian situation was three-cornered, involving the Moslem government, a fundamentalist Moslem insurrection, and a Buddhist separatist movement. The Wheeler government's policy had been to help keep the government in power and get it to conciliate the Buddhists. Under Donnelly, Covert Operations had been phased out, and Haugen was disinclined to get them reinvolved.

The Moro uprising was simpler: The Moslem provinces in the southern Philippines wanted independence, though apparently they'd settle for autonomy within the Philippine republic. After brief NSC discussion, the president decided to confer on the subject, via telephone, with Ireneo Malaluan, the islands' reform president. Haugen had at least some common ground with Malaluan; he'd participated in the liberation of his home province, Batangas, half a century earlier, and had a speaking knowledge of Tagalog, gained partly there and partly from a Filipina housekeeper he and Lois had employed for several years.

After that, the conference reviewed ongoing projects and adjourned by 1120.

It seemed to Haugen that they were living a dual existence. In some respects, foreign as well as domestic, things seemed to be going better and better. They were going to hell in South Africa of course, but people had been expecting that, and it didn't seem to threaten the United States. On the other hand, the Soviet threat seemed more dangerous, if harder to evaluate, than during the Khrushchev-Kennedy confrontation in 1962.

After the meeting, the president and Secretary Valenzuela gave the new defense secretary a minibriefing on the UFOs and scalar resonance. Van Breda left looking even more sober than before.

***

At lunch, Father Flynn asked permission to teach a night school class in written English for some members of the domestic staff whose literacy was poor.

"Getting a little boring around here, is it?" Haugen asked.

"Not boring so much as—unproductive for me."

"Sure, go ahead. Sounds like a good thing to do. And I appreciate your company; I'm glad you didn't ask to leave."

Flynn nodded.

"President," Haugen mused.
"Emergency
president. Lots of death threats and assassination attempts, no speaking trips—I've never been so house-bound in my life! Tell you what, Steve. I'm still having fun, but I'll be more than happy to leave."

Yet even as he said it, and true as it was, it seemed to Arne Haugen that he'd never again have the freedom of movement he'd had before.

***

It was just a little after lunch when the president got a call from the CIA. The Kremlin had announced that, since the "Iranian genocides" had been driven from Iraq, Soviet troops were no longer needed there. The Soviet army was beginning an evacuation that would probably take it back across the central Zagros to the Iranian cities of Qom and Hamadan, and perhaps farther.

And the next morning, both his intelligence summary and his news summary informed him that a Syrian army coup had overthrown the pro-Soviet government.

Judas Priest!
he thought.
Things are happening fast!

A pang of anxiety struck him. He had such hopes for what he was doing! The nation
was
climbing out of the economic hole it had dug for itself. It
was
showing new morale. Manufacture of GPCs had begun, or soon would, by licensees in Greensboro, Detroit, Seattle, and three foreign countries. A number of corporations, including Ford, GM, Chrysler, and International Harvester were falling all over themselves to complete production designs for geo-powered cars, tractors, and trucks. Eddie Wing's summary reports told of intense excitement developing around the new research in what they were already calling Tesla matrices, and what it implied in fields as diverse as cosmology, "space" travel, and apparently, human consciousness.

The whole darn human species was promising to leap to a new and higher level!

And suddenly it seemed to him beyond bearing if nuclear apocalypse, or any apocalypse, should trash it all.

FORTY-ONE

The president's office phone buzzed. He reached, touching the flashing key. "What is it, Jeanne?"

"Mr. Guild is on line one, sir."

His legislative affairs assistant; he'd replaced Blake. "Thanks." He tapped line one. "What have you got for me, Manny?"

"Mr. President, I just got back from the Hill; I was talking with Speaker Lynch. He expects a new bill to be submitted today to repeal the Emergency Powers Act, but he doesn't expect it to get out of committee.

"He also commented that the repeal lobby is losing a lot of steam. The recovery is going so well, a lot of its business supporters have apparently decided to quit rocking the boat. He wanted you to know that."

"Thanks, Manny. Is that it?"

"Yes sir."

"Fine. Thanks for letting me know."

"You're welcome, sir."

Haugen tapped the key again, disconnecting. It still surprised him that Congress, as a whole, was agreeable to a president having so much authority. Of course, they were the ones who'd originated the Emergency Powers Act, and the vote for approval had been lopsided in both houses. And they had the power to repeal it! But still... He wasn't sure how he'd feel in their shoes.

He returned his attention to the intelligence summary. More than 60,000 white South Africans who'd applied for exit visas had been interned and their property confiscated. Presumably the Pienaar government considered it a matter of social discipline, but if you leave people no avenue of escape, you inspire mutiny, and if mutiny isn't feasible, then sabotage.

And 60,000 of them! A great time to be in the barbed wire business there, if you had a strong enough stomach.

He read on: Raiding out of the north had increased, mainly from Mozambique, and the raiders were routinely pursued across the border by South African defense forces without restriction. The South African air force had bombed and strafed raider staging areas in Mozambique. Several of their aircraft had been shot down by surface-to-air missiles.

It was easy to see why so many moderates wanted to get out. Things were sliding toward the day of final reckoning there.

He turned a page. Food riots in the USSR, even in Russia. And more sabotage. If it was true that the Kulish government had invaded Iran partly to stoke up Russian patriotism, what might the more militaristic Pavlenko government do? He wondered briefly what things might have been like if Gorbachev had lived. Gorbachev's reforms had gone even further than Khruschev's, and he'd been less reckless and more sagacious in foreign affairs. But Gorbachev hadn't lived.

He wondered where Kulish was now. Presumably still loose. If the Pavlenko government ever got hold of him, they were bound to make a big show out of it. It would be a distraction from the troubles there.

He read farther. The Soviets were still shifting their mobile missile launchers around. They hadn't orbited any more missile- and satellite-killer satellites for more than a week, but that could mean they didn't have more to send up just now.

Haugen became aware of physical discomfort: a weak watery feeling in his hands, and a knotted stomach.
Anxiety
, he told himself. He reached for his security phone and keyed Cromwell's Pentagon number. No answer. On the system line, Cromwell's secretary answered; the general, she said, was away from his desk. Could he call the president back?"

"Right," said Haugen. "On the security phone."

All he wanted to ask was if Cromwell had heard from Schubert/Bulavin. He could check with the OSS of course, but he didn't want them to know that the president was anxious. It'd be bad for his image.

***

Hammaker called him before Cromwell did. South African fighter planes had just bombed and strafed the government district in Maputo, Mozambique's capital. Haugen wasn't surprised; it was the sort of thing to expect.
So why
, he asked himself,
does it make me feel so ill at ease? And what the hell is going on with me anyway?
It seemed to him he'd never felt so negative before in his life.

Then Cromwell phoned him back. Schubert was still out of the country, and he hadn't heard from him.

The best thing for anxiety, Haugen told himself, short of resolving the problem, was work. Quickly, without further cerebration but simply recording mentally, he read through the rest of the intelligence summary. Then he began to outline his scheduled speech to the American Medical Association.

***

That evening, Gupta called the president. Immediately afterward, the president called an NSC meeting for 0800 the next morning. Pavlenko seemed determined to push him to the wall.

FORTY-TWO

The NSC meeting was as small as any had been during Haugen's presidency. Besides the actual council members, only three persons attended; Milstead, Gupta, and Father Flynn. There were no aides; the president had things to say that were best said to a minimum of ears.

The attendees came in looking more serious than usual, as if the president's mood of yesterday had infected them over the phone. Actually he felt better today. A shaft of winter sunlight reflected off Gupta's mahogany bald spot—like a sign from God, Haugen told himself. Too bad Flynn couldn't see it from where he sat. When they were all seated, Haugen opened the session. "Dr. Gupta," he said, "tell these other people what you told me."

Gupta got up. "That much and more, sir. Gentlemen, starting the night before last, there's been a marked shift in the jet stream. Certain characteristics strongly suggested that the shift was artificially induced; so I had instrumented aircraft sent to investigate. Our uncertainty level went to zero: The Soviet government has used scalar resonance transmitters to shunt the jet stream into a particular course, and it's likely to hold that course as long as they maintain their artificially induced high and low pressure cells.

"This has started an arctic air mass moving south through western and central Canada. Most of the plains, midwest, and east will be severely affected, all the way to the Gulf.

"From the Great Lakes southward, particularly southward, we can expect heavy precipitation along the front. From about the Ohio River south, snowfall accumulations will be very heavy..."

The president interrupted. "From the Ohio River
south
?"

"That's right, Mr. President. Farther north there'll be less moisture available, so less snow. South of Tennessee or northern Alabama, a lot of it will fall as rain, turning to snow later, and along the Gulf Coast the rains will be torrential. And then, when the front passes through, it's going to get cold. Damn cold!

"We're looking for at least fifteen inches of snow in Tennessee and maybe as much as twenty-five or more. And there'll be freezing temperatures all the way south through Florida. For as long as the pattern remains."