FORTY-SIX
It was after one o'clock the next morning that the president got back to the White House. During the day, he'd made repeated use of the communications equipment on Air Force One, and Valenzuela and Milstead were waiting for him at the White House helipad with Valenzuela's top interpreter. And with Grosberg and Lynch; it was time for the leaders of Congress to know what was going on.
At the president's radioed instructions, Milstead had alerted the Hot Line office, which had alerted its Moscow counterpart. Haugen excused the interpreter, then gave the other four a fifteen-minute mini-briefing on scalar resonance, the weatherwar, the source of the earthquakes, and what had happened in the Kremlin. They were four very sober men when he'd finished.
"So you fought a war and assassinated an entire cabinet without recourse to Congress," Lynch said.
Grosberg glanced sharply at the Speaker of the House, but there'd been no antagonism, nothing accusatory, in Lynch's words. They'd been thoughtful; even awed.
"Right," replied Haugen. "And it's something the American people need to be informed about. I started work on a press release flying back to D.C., but it may be a couple of days before I'm satisfied with it. Meanwhile Congress needs to know, or that part of Congress you decide on. I'll send over the complete text of the press release shortly before I give it to the media. You'll have time to comment before it's released."
Together then they went down to the bomb shelter, to the Washington-Moscow Direct Communications Link. The President of the United States took a chair in front of the video pickup, then signalled the duty officer. An image flashed into being.
The man who looked out at him reminded the president of Bulavin, and seemed little if any older than the defector. The face was broader, but like Bulavin's, lined and hard-looking, tempered in the harsh and relentless school of Soviet military intelligence.
"Good morning, Premier Gurenko," Haugen said in Russian. His tone was carefully serious and not quite impersonal. "My congratulations on your success."
Gurenko nodded curt acknowledgement. "And my congratulations on yours." His American English was almost unaccented. "I have taken a few minutes this morning to watch television coverage of the earthquake areas in your west coast states. And of your visit there. It is regrettable, but perhaps inevitable, that things had to go so far."
And that, thought Haugen, was quite a statement for a Soviet premier. "It is indeed." The president was still speaking Russian; now he paused. "Here I am speaking your language while you speak mine. I'm quite willing to continue like this, but you're more accomplished in English than I am in Russian. It might be best if we both continued in English. With your agreement, of course."
Gurenko nodded. "Your Russian pronunciations are quite good. But you are an engineer; your Russian vocabulary may not extend to matters of government."
So they both spoke English, their courtesy constant but matter-of-fact. They conferred for more than an hour, and before they had finished, they'd agreed to meet in Zurich in ten days. Ten days would give Gurenko time to establish fuller control of his nation, and it would give the Swiss government, and the Russian and American embassies in Switzerland, time to set up the demanding machinery, including security, that a summit meeting required.
In a reversal of the usual procedure, there would be no preliminary conference of diplomats to set things up. In Zurich, they themselves would work out a broad agreement, and a general agenda for subsequent conferences at the foreign ministry level, which would work out the details.
They did not talk about relaxing their military stance. After what each government had done to the other in the last twenty-four hours, it wasn't surprising. But there'd been no sense at all of truculence or suspicion.
Valenzuela would have preferred a longer lead time than ten days. There were various other governments to consider, and he'd have liked to confer with them in advance about their various interests. But he sat quietly. Now was the time to move, he knew, while things were fluid. And Arne Haugen had displayed genius at making things go right.
When it was over with, Haugen, Valenzuela, Grosberg, and Lynch, along with Milstead, went to the Oval Office and relaxed with their choice of bourbon, Scotch, or something hot, discussing briefly what had to be done soonest. In the morning, Grosberg and Lynch would inform their minority party counterparts, and the chairmen of their respective foreign affairs committees, of the forthcoming summit meeting. Okada would release a brief announcement of the upcoming summit to the press at noon.
Also tomorrow morning, Valenzuela would talk to the ambassadors of China and Iran, who were bound to feel twitchy about any possible meeting of minds between Washington and Moscow. He'd assure the Chinese that there was no possibility of agreements infringing on their interests, and the Iranians that they would be conferred with on anything that came up about Iranian interests. If anything did.
He was to stress that the President of the United States wanted the maximum of possible worldwide satisfaction with whatever results the conference might produce, and that the ultimate goals were peace and national self-determination.
The British ambassador would also be contacted; the United Kingdom had been America's firmest foreign policy supporter for a dozen years, in times as embarrassing as Iran-gate and as tense as the showdown between Wheeler and Gorbachev. If the prime minister wanted a quick informal meeting, in say Ottawa or Vancouver, that could be arranged, although privately the president couldn't visualize what they might talk about before the Zurich meeting. Afterward there'd be plenty to talk about.
The five of them dispersed then, and Haugen walked slowly up the stairs, his bodyguards following. Their day had been as long as his.
"When are they going to relieve you guys?" he asked.
"There's a new shift waiting upstairs," Wayne said. "They'll take over when we get there."
There was, and his traveling bags stood beside the door, deposited there by John Zale when they'd gotten back. The president shook hands with Wayne and Gil, then tossed a salute to their replacements before he went into the second floor Center Hall, into the family area, leaving them behind. He felt now as if the air had gone out of him, the starch. He was tired but also relaxed and enormously gratified with the day. It occurred to him that he wasn't fully feeling yet the impact of all that had happened; that later, perhaps in a week or month, this day would loom bigger than any other in his life. Maybe, he thought as he opened his bedroom door, I'll even get to read about it in a history book before I dieāsee what posterity will make of it.
Lois was not in bed. She'd fallen asleep in her favorite wingbacked chair. Gazing at her, she was as lovely to his fond eyes as on the day they'd married. Her skin was no longer smooth and snug, but there was a softness to it. And paler, he thought, than he'd ever seen it; she'd been an outdoors person all her life, till they'd come to the White House. It occurred to him that the restrictions on life here, in this difficult time, had been harder on her than on him.
He'd intended not to waken her if he could help it. But she'd be stiff in the morning if she spent the whole night in the chair. He touched her shoulder, spoke quietly to her, and as she stirred, he bent and kissed her cheek. Her eyes opened.
"You're home," she said, and smiling, straightened, then got up and kissed him, a kiss that was tender but also sensual. For a moment it seemed to the president that she might be making a pass at him, but if she was, she sensed how drained he was, and let the moment go by.
"Would you like some tawny port?" she asked. "I'd have made hot buttered rum if I'd known when you'd get home."
"Port would be fine," he said. "I'll be getting into my sleeping shorts."
They shared a drink while he summarized for her his talk with Gurenko. He'd already told her, very briefly the night before, about the hit on the Politburo, wondering at the time how Father Flynn would take it when he told him.
Lois in turn described the TV coverage of the earthquakes and his visit to the disaster areas.
She didn't mention her visit to the White House physician, and her husband didn't think to ask. He was starting to nod off before he'd finished his drink.