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SEVEN

Transcript from the evening news, NBC-TV, October 10. Read by Elliot Blanchard.

"Washington was startled, earlier today, by White House press secretary Lester Okada's announcement that President Donnelly had named a new vice president and then resigned. Our new president is Arne Eino Haugen of Duluth, Minnesota.

"The most common response has been 'Arne Who?'

"We have put together the following information about Arne Eino Haugen, and it provides a very unusual and interesting picture.

"Arne Haugen was born on April 3, 1924, reportedly in a log cabin, on a backwoods homestead in Koochiching County, Minnesota, only a few miles from the Canadian border. He was the third of four children, three boys and a girl. His parents were Karl Oskar Haugen, a Norwegian immigrant, and Eila Salminen, a Finnish immigrant, and the children grew up speaking both Norwegian and Finnish. The family had very little money.

"Arne Haugen grew up working for his father on the farm and in the forest, and a few days after his eighteenth birthday, entered the army in April 1942. There, following infantry training, he volunteered for the parachute infantry and was assigned to the Eleventh Airborne Division.

"On completion of parachute training, he went with his division to Australia for jungle training, later participating in the liberation of New Guinea from Japanese occupation. Later, as a platoon sergeant, he took part in the liberation of the Philippines, including the capture of the Los Baños prisoner of war camp on Luzon, behind the collapsing Japanese lines, rescuing the hundreds of American prisoners there before they could be removed or possibly killed by their Japanese guards.

"Both of Haugen's brothers, Kaarlo and Martin, were killed in World War Two, Kaarlo with the 101st Airborne in Normandy, and Martin with the marines on Okinawa, in the last great battle of the war.

"After the war, Haugen worked for a time at logging. Then, on the G.I. Bill, he attended the University of Minnesota, where he studied electrical engineering, participated in intramural wrestling, married Lois Hedstrom of Thief River Falls, Minnesota, and graduated summa cum laude—with high honors—in 1952.

"After graduating, Haugen was employed briefly with the Koochiching County, Minnesota, Electric Co-op, which supplied electricity to farm settlements. In 1954 he opened a television repair shop in Duluth, Minnesota, and began spare-time research that, by 1957, had led to several profitable patents in electronics.

"In 1957 he founded Haugen Electronics, Inc., to manufacture and market products based on his patents. He, a cousin, and his father-in-law were reportedly the sole shareholders. By 1961, when he changed the firm's name to Duluth Technologies, Inc., it was reputedly worth two million dollars. It has grown vastly since then, with factories in several locations, and is said to remain family owned.

"The Haugens have two grown children—a son Karl and a daughter Liisa—and seven grandchildren.

"Reportedly, Arne Haugen is a voracious and rapid reader who is respectably informed on a wide variety of subjects. Apparently he will be by far the best linguist ever to occupy the White House. Both he and Mrs. Haugen are said to have studied one language after another for years, and to be at least modestly proficient in about a dozen of them, including Russian, Spanish, Japanese, German, French, Swedish, Tagalog and, not surprisingly, Norwegian and Finnish. Spoken Chinese is reportedly a recent project. Nothing was said about Arabic and Hebrew.

"The president is said to be very healthy, still strong and active, and to have a good sense of humor. All of which he will need. He is also said to be nonpolitical, which will certainly be unusual in a president.

"In a time of domestic troubles unequalled since the War Between the States, the nation will watch this new leader with what undoubtedly will be unprecedented interest and attention, and the interest of the rest of the world will hardly be less."

***

Party Secretary Boris Alexeevich Kulish sat presiding over the morning meeting of the Politburo. Copies of the previous day's intelligence summary, printed late the night before, were routinely set at each man's place before the members arrived. Normally its review was the first piece of business. This morning though, it lay so far unexamined, except for what it had to say about the new American president.

In the Soviet hierarchy, listening to the BBC, the Voice of America, and Deutsche Welle, are regular, albeit illegal, practices. The night previous, the Politburo members had listened with particular interest for what they could learn about Arne Eino Haugen.

Not that they believed what they heard. In a subculture where lies in politics are essential not only to success but survival, under a philosophy which states unequivocally that lying is an important tool to be used without hesitation, it is assumed that anything is likely to be a lie.

GRU agents in America would even now be gathering more details on Arne Eino Haugen. Meanwhile, all that the Politburo knew with any confidence was that Haugen was a capitalist-industrialist and a technologist. Obviously his reported background as a poor country boy and laborer had to be felse—an artifact manufactured by publicists for public consumption. Very probably, claims of his skill as a technologist, and his youthful experience as a parachute trooper in the Great Patriotic War, were also lies.

And most important, his inexperience in government, at any executive level, was proof that he was a Pentagon puppet.

So now the American president not only had dictatorial authority; America also had a president who might prove effective in using that authority.

It was not at all clear what would ensue, but it could hardly be favorable to Soviet interests. Heretofore, their own greatest advantage over the Americans had been the sometimes unbelievable discoordination and incredible security weaknesses of American government; but now, under Pentagon control, presumably these would be much reduced. The GRU would have to intensify its efforts to monitor and analyze the activities of the American government.

Meanwhile, just now the Politburo had a war and its own serious internal problems to see to, and it was no time to generate unpredictable major complications. Thus it would be well not to move, just then, to capitalize on American social unrest; that could spark unpredictable responses.

Of course, if the new government in Washington should begin a serious anti-Soviet program, perhaps to divert the American people's attention from their troubles at home, that would be something else.

***

Dave Fiori touched a key, and the flashing light on his phone turned steady white, the beeper stilling. "What is it, Millie?"

"It's Mr. Haugen for you on line three."

"Thanks."

The chief. Everybody's chief now! Fiori touched the button marked 3, and his phone screen lit up. Haugen's face looked through at him, Haugen's voice talking to him from the speaker.

"Dave, I guess you know what's happened back here."

"Right, Mr. President." He grinned. "I'm not sure whether it calls for congratulations or condolences though."

"I'm not either. But it changes some things. I want you to get together with Laura and Morrie and make the final selection of GPC target communities, and then activate the release program, but only for the U.S. Same basic timetable as the original, but set to start tomorrow."

Fiori nodded. It had first been scheduled to start four days ago, then postponed until the civil scene got sorted out.

"Any questions?" Haugen asked.

"Nope. I'm glad it's on again."

"Me too. Have fun with it. I've got a ton of stuff to do here, and I've never given a state-of-the-nation address before. Gotta get at it. So long."

The screen went blank, and the light on the key pad blinked out. Fiori unfolded from the chair and left his office, long legs scissoring down the hall and across a heatable skywalk that led to the new assembly plant.

There was no need to go there. He just wanted to look once more before calling Laura and Morrie. He liked looking at it. Simply, it excited him.

In the plant, from a catwalk, he peered out across the assembly line. It was cleaner than it needed to be; the manufacturing conditions necessary for the GPC were not especially demanding. Men and women there wore white coveralls; the place was nearly spotless, and thoroughly and softly lit without noticeable shadows. Silent circulators cycled the air, removing dust electrically.

The activity here was not intense; the chief wasn't big on intensity, just on production and quality. He preferred things calm and businesslike. Thick ceramic housings—head-high cylinders with one end open—lay on low electric jack trucks along one side, then ranged trackless down an assembly line on the other side in a sequence of increasing metamorphosis. They looked like maroon culvert sections with bases. On feeder lines that ribbed the space, workers assembled modules which other workers installed in the housings.

None of them knew what they were making, though they thought they did. Not even the U.S. Patent Office knew what they really were. The designs and models had them in miniature as part of something else entirely.

A nearby warehouse stood half full of the devices, ready for freight cars. And assembly lines were being installed in new buildings at International Falls, and at Fort Frances, Ontario.

Phase Two, to be financed by Phase One, would produce small, lightweight units in several sizes.

As he turned and started back for his office, Dave Fiori had both a sense of exhilaration and a nervous stomach. This time, he told himself, it's really on. This time we're going to do it.

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