Third World War (20 page)

West pulled open a drawer under his desk, unplugged a video mobile from its charger, flipped down one name in the address book and punched in a call. He kept only two numbers programmed in. One was his son Chuck's in Oakland. They talked about once a week now, but never about politics. Chuck thought harshly of the government's policies which had forced him to shut down two depots and lay off hundreds of drivers and staff. The other number was his daughter Lizzie's roaming global mobile, which would find her anywhere in the world.

He sat behind the desk and set up the camera, waiting as Lizzie answered the call. When the screen flickered on, all he could see was her red hair splattered over the tiny lens while she tried to hook up the phone. Lizzie was walking with a weatherboard building behind her and a Chevrolet four-wheel-drive roaring past.

Once clear of hair, her face broke into a huge grin when she saw her father. 'God, Dad, you do choose the best of times,' she said sarcastically, stepping down what looked like a side street, and giving West a sudden and welcome drop in traffic noise. 'But hey, you look like you're about to address the nation. Loosen up, it's me, Lizzie.'

West loved Lizzie like nothing on earth. Lizzie had Valerie's wildness and independence: it was hard not to compare.

'How'd the conference go?' he asked, half-knowing the likely answer. His call had found his daughter in Jamaica, where she had been a keynote speaker on sustainable development. Some of the networks had run a short piece on her berating her father's own policies towards the developing world.

'It was great,' said Lizzie. West could see her secret service agents stepping back to let her talk in private. Word in the service was that an assignment with Lizzie was the best around. She was fun, yet disciplined, and she got to go to interesting places. The only country West had banned her from was Cuba, where the legacy of Fidel Castro teetered on. The US President's vivacious daughter heading there to look at health projects would not have gone down well with his party faithful.

'You should have been here, Dad. You would have got splattered with rotten tomatoes and I could have cleaned you up.' West laughed as Lizzie brushed her hair away from her long neck so she could signal to a car drawing up on her left. 'Give me a couple of minutes,' she shouted to the driver with a smile. 'Dad's on the phone.'

'Lizzie,' said West, as his daughter's attention returned. 'I don't know how to put this, and I don't know if I've ever asked you something like this before--' Even as he spoke, he recognized on the screen a soft sympathy flowing into Lizzie's eyes. Lizzie teased him and cajoled him, but never let issues get in the way of their relationship.

'I know,' she said with glint of mischief. 'You want me to join an oil company.'

'No, not quite,' he said slowly. 'It's getting a little lonely up here. You know, the place is pretty empty. You wouldn't have a couple of days--'

'Oh, my God,' she interrupted, putting her hand up to her mouth. 'I haven't been thinking. I've been so engrossed in the conference. That terrible attack. Everything that's going on. You must be-- Forget it. I won't blabber. I'll be on the next plane.' She turned to onlookers whom West couldn't see on the high-definition but tiny phone screen. 'Smile, boys,' she shouted. 'We're going home.' Then in a flash back to her father. 'See you tonight, Dad, and just make sure there's no red meat on the menu.'

He returned the phone to the drawer and locked it. He would never tell anyone, save perhaps Lizzie, but it had been Vasant Mehta, calling him earlier that morning, who had persuaded him to call in his daughter.

The conversation with the Indian leader had begun routinely, but quickly became difficult when West asked Mehta to show restraint towards Pakistan. 'Don't go down that line right now, Jim,' said Mehta. 'I'm too raw for it. I'm in a "you're either with us or with the terrorists" mood.'

'We'll do everything we can to handle Pakistan,' pressed West, trying to wring out a signal that the world was not about to be plummeted towards nuclear brinkmanship. He heard Mehta's sigh down the line.

'It doesn't work like that, Jim,' he said wearily. 'We trusted you with Pakistan after 11 September 2001. We trusted you as President Musharraf passed law after law legitimizing his dictatorship. We trusted you to keep a check on Pakistan's nuclear programme. The United States has let us down on all of those points, and more. We cannot trust you any more. If necessary, we will go it alone. But we would like to have your support in whatever we choose to do to safeguard our borders.'

'I'm with you,' said West. This was not the time to quibble. 'The American people are with you, Vasant. Believe me, we are. But don't take us by surprise.'

'You have my word,' said Mehta, and West thought he was about to end the conversation when Mehta went on. 'Jim, do you have any family with you there in Washington?'

Like most of the newspaper-reading world, West had seen the paparazzi photographs of Geeta Mehta on the ski slopes of St Moritz, and he had chosen not to mention it to the Indian Prime Minister. Mehta and West had only met once when both happened to be passing through London, but they had got on immediately.

In fact, they had shared West's most enjoyable evening since Valerie had died. In Downing Street, Stuart Nolan had dismissed his staff, kicked off his shoes, torn off his tie and opened a bottle of single malt whisky. Lizzie and Meenakshi had both been in Paris at a conference. They had met, liked each other, and when they heard their fathers would be in London, got on the Eurostar and hailed a cab to Downing Street. West had been on a whirl around Europe with Peter Brock and Mary Newman. Nolan played host to them all with his wife Joan. Mehta dropped by around 10 p.m. after a dinner at the High Commission, and no one got to bed until after 2 a.m. It was on that evening that Mehta had confided in West about the loneliness of high office.

'I've got a good staff around me,' answered West, a little too defensively, because Mehta picked him up straight away. 'It might get a bit rocky over the next couple of weeks,' he advised. 'Get Lizzie back there with you. She'll keep your feet on the ground.'

Outside the window, West saw the upright figure of his oldest friend, Peter Brock, wrapped up in a cashmere coat and scarf - both given to him by Valerie as Christmas presents. Brock stomped through a snowstorm, impatiently brushing the flakes off his shoulders as if there were no more to take their place. He needn't have gone outside to get to the West Wing, but he would have wanted the air and the distraction of the cold to freshen his thoughts.

Back in the Oval Office, West flicked on the television. The networks still seemed obsessed with the Yokata tragedy, which kept the political focus on Japan and North Korea. Britain's recapturing of Brunei had fired the public's imagination, but only briefly. The attack on the Indian Parliament caused cries of outrage and comparisons to Nine Eleven. A military takeover in Pakistan was a mere footnote, particularly as no one knew who was running the country. All West knew was that Pakistani Vice-President Javed Bashir Zafar had arrived in Dubai, asking for asylum in Britain and claiming to have been taken from his vice-presidential bedroom at gunpoint.*

*****

On his desk were files from Mary Newman and Chris Pierce, both of them read and endorsed by Brock.

Newman had pulled a brilliant diplomatic manoeuvre by persuading the South Koreans to issue a sympathetic statement over the murder in Panmunjom. The killer had, after all, been in South Korean uniform and drew a salary from the government. At the United Nations an agenda was being drawn up for official talks involving the US, China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan and Russia. Newman had got an agreement on the formation of an organization called the East Asian Economic Forum, and installed an extra vote on it by pulling in the bankrupt but compliant government of Mongolia.

Chris Pierce had delivered him a chilling war plan. It involved taking out North Korea's own military strike capability in a period of fifteen minutes. With amazement, West had looked at the ground-penetrating radar images deep inside the missile sites. The mouth of each silo was identified, meaning that the missile guidance could be programmed to strike exactly that spot. On impact, a chemical foam would be released to seep into the mouth and other crevices and gaps left after the explosion. Within three minutes, it would seal as hard as concrete. There would be no way in or out of the bunker.

Pierce would also use a high-intensity firebomb specially designed to warp rail tracks. The purpose would be to destabilize rail-based missile launchers. The bomb would send out explosive dust and liquid, like a detonator, for up to a mile from the target area, depending on the weather conditions and slope of the terrain. A fireball would develop, heating and twisting the railway track and rendering it unusable for up to ten miles in each direction. One aircraft dropping a single guided bomb at intervals of ten miles could easily cripple two hundred miles of track.

According to Pierce's satellite photographs, there were rail links to three missile sites, and tree cover affected only a small section of line. Pierce was convinced that any rail-based missile launch threat could be neutralized in a first strike.

On the border with South Korea, he would use thermobaric bombs at the mouths of the caves which housed aircraft, armoured vehicles and artillery. Devastating shock waves would destroy everything, and everyone, in their path, as they swept through. At high altitude, he would deploy unmanned Global Hawk and Predator surveillance planes, which would call in missile strikes and relay back the successes and failures.

West regarded both his Defense Secretary and his Secretary of State as doing superb jobs, particularly as it was Pierce who wanted peace and Newman who believed in a pre-emptive strike. But still there was no answer to fundamental questions. How to stop the deaths of thousands of Americans in the human wave of North Korean troops that would cross the demarcation line? And how to keep China onside and stop her becoming a formidable enemy? Pierce suggested calling China's bluff, but West was not convinced.*

*****

Jenny Rinaldi's voice bounced out of the intercom. 'The Secretary of State is here, Mr President.'

'Thanks, Jenny,' said West. 'What happened to the National Security Advisor? I saw him fighting the snow-storm a couple of seconds ago.'

'He's taking a phone call from Langley. He'll be through in a moment.'

'And the Secretary of Defense?'

'Caught in traffic, but drawing into the driveway now, Mr President. This weather's snarling everything up.'

The door edged open and Mary Newman stepped in, patting down her hair which had been blown about in the wind outside. West was about to speak but he stopped himself when he spotted a flicker of regret cross her face. Her hand hesitated on the handle, before closing the door softly behind her.

Newman smiled, but also cast her eyes down, as if contrite or shy. The President's earlier rebuke had altered the atmosphere of their personal relationship. For a moment it seemed she was guessing how much of his anger lingered; how much he was trying to hide; how much he regretted the way he had spoken to her; how much he thought she deserved it. It was rare that they were alone together, and the Oval Office was not the best setting for picking up the pieces.

'Good morning, Mr President,' she said, lifting up her head. 'Hell of a day out there!'

West stepped out from behind his desk, walked over and clasped both her hands in his. 'Morning, Mary. And you did one hell of a job with your diplomacy. It reminded me why I chose you as my Secretary of State.' He squeezed her hands, let them go, then leant towards her with feigned conspiracy. 'Now, before the others come, what's your gut feeling on India and Pakistan?'

She glanced at him sharply. 'With Zafar in exile, Pakistan is toppy.'

'To say the least,' agreed West.

'India is wounded,' she continued, stepping over to the floor-to-ceiling window at the side of the President's desk. It was being lashed by snowflakes which melted fast, leaving imprints of crystal on the bulletproof glass. 'My gut feeling is to hold back, Mr President.'

'And if India finds evidence of Pakistani--'

Jenny Rinaldi's voice interrupted. 'The National Security Advisor, Mr President, and I see the Secretary for Homeland Security and the Defense Secretary coming down the corridor.'

'--involvement in the attack?' continued West.

'Sure,' said Newman. 'They might. But look at South-East Asia. The last of the rebellions have been put down. Kota Kinabalu, Kuching and the main centres are back in government hands. But a rotten idea has spread there and will keep it dangerous for generations. It's the same idea as has destroyed Pakistan. It has turned people against us all over the world. Pakistan is a viral scab. Scratch it and the disease pours out. In North Korea, there's no virus. Whatever lethal doctrine Park Ho is preaching, it sure as hell isn't infectious.'

John Kozerski opened the door to let in West's inner circle, then stepped in himself and closed the door.