The President stopped, took a drink of water, stared at them gravely for a moment, then asked for questions. A dozen hands shot up.

  “Mr. President,” the dean of the White House press corps asked in her direct and bluntly honest way, “is it true that this is basically just a personal feud between you and Sidi?”

  The President laughed. Everyone laughed. The tension broke a little.

  “Oh, my goodness!” he exclaimed with a humorous air. “What next?”

  “Well, is it?” she demanded.

  His expression turned grave.

  “I hope my approach to foreign policy has a little more substance than that,” he said. “In the first place, certain facts are unarguable. One, a fine young man, Creed Moncrief, has been murdered by the government of Greater Lolómé, quite possibly at the direct order of President Sidi. Secondly—”

  “Mr. President, does this government have proof that his death was ordered by Sidi?” the Times inquired.

  “We have reason to believe,” the President said, “that this was the fact, as confirmed by Bob Alexander in his CNN broadcast—”

  “Bob said circumstantial evidence showed that it must have been ordered by Sidi,” the Times objected. “He didn’t say he had any direct proof.”

  “That’s right,” the President said. “I am prepared to take Bob’s word for it”—his tone became sarcastic—“since he’s some three or four thousand miles closer to the scene than you and I are.”

  “Mr. President,” the Los Angeles Times said, as they all laughed a little uneasily at the President’s combativeness, “was Moncrief CIA?”

  “CIA!” the President exclaimed with comfortable scorn. “Poor old CIA, they get blamed for everything. In the eyes of the world’s suspicious minds, does the United States have anybody anywhere who isn’t CIA?”

  “But, Mr. President—” the LA Times began.

  The President laughed, scorn still in his voice.

  “Come on, Henry,” he said. “We know you’re not one of the world’s suspicious minds!”

  “Mr. President,” said the Post doggedly, “leaving aside Moncrief, what proof do we have other than Sidi’s word, which is not notorious for its truthfulness, that he actually has atomic bombs? Isn’t your administration overreacting to what may be just bluster or bluff?”

  The President became suddenly grave.

  “We do not feel that this is an area—or an era—in which we can ignore anything having to do with the possible proliferation of atomic weapons. It is not a subject or a period in which to take chances. If we are overreacting, as you put it, I assume time will disclose that. If we are not, then we are taking what would seem to be the prudent course. I would rather err on the side of overreacting than fall into the error of not reacting at all.”

  “You do have some private information that there actually are bombs, then,” the Boston Globe said.

  The President looked bland.

  “Presidents sometimes do have private information that even you bird dogs don’t have,” he said, “hard though I know it is for you all to acknowledge and bitterly as it upsets you not to be in on absolutely everything. Obviously,” he added, tone hardening, “I and my administration would not be taking this action if we felt we were dealing with a mirage.”

  “What action are you contemplating, Mr. President?” the Globe persisted. “This statement doesn’t seem to reflect any particular urgency. It all seems pretty casual to me. You’ll consult other governments and then you’ll get around in due course to calling for a Security Council meeting—and only then will you consider the possibility of asking the IAEA to investigate Sidi’s military facilities—and not even all of them. Doesn’t that give him a lot of opportunity for ducking and dodging and ultimately getting away with it?”

  The President looked annoyed but kept his voice down.

  “All I can say is, wait and see. We are prepared to take whatever steps are necessary and appropriate in this situation.”

  “Even to the extent of blockading Greater Lolómé again and perhaps even engaging in some sort of armed action?” the Wall Street Journal asked.

  The President shook his head impatiently.

  “You people!” he said. “Are you ever in favor of anything your government does?”

  The dean of the White House press corps gave her characteristic gurgle of laughter and remarked in her famously characteristic confidentially nonconfidential sotto voce, “Does our government ever do anything?”—and decided to end the conference on her colleagues’ burst of laughter even though she hadn’t received the standard high sign from the press secretary.

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” she said dryly. They all echoed it and began to file out, but not before someone at the back of the room shouted out one last parting shot.

  “Are you contemplating military action against Sidi, Mr. President?”

  The President paused.

  “Not at this time,” he said calmly. “Not at this time.”

  “Does that mean, Mr. President—”

  “Not at this time,” he repeated, and turned away.

  “I thought they might ask Ray and me something,” Arlie McGregor said in a disappointed tone as the President took his arm and the Secretary of State’s and led them from the podium.

  “Thank your stars they didn’t,” the President said lightly, good humor apparently restored. “That’s what I’m here for. It was my turn this evening. Yours will come. Before that, though, we all have a lot of work to do.”

  Following them back down the long central hall, the Deputy Secretary of State and the director of the CIA, who had been standing on the sidelines, gave each other a thoughtful look.

  “The cancer’s begun,” she said.

  He nodded grimly.

  “It’s in the words. It always starts in the words. And from there, it spreads.”

  They both knew, as veteran observers of their country’s often erratic course in foreign affairs, that the word-changes in official statements, the carefully managed casual back-downs from officially stated brave positions, might at first appear small and quite innocuous; but often they were, as Eulie Montgomery and Eldridge Barnes were well aware, the first indications of policy carcinoma.

  They knew, with a glum sense of foreboding and inevitability, that it would spread in this instance, as in so many before, unless it could be reversed forthwith; and there had been no indication, from the President or in the questions from the media, that anything would stop the process now.

  * * *

  For some days, however, things seemed to be proceeding with reasonable speed and firm resolve. In the NSC statement they had decided not to make mention of aircraft carriers, but in actuality they had been ordered sent and were already being put in a condition of readiness at the time of the press conference; by midnight that night they were on their way. Simultaneously the behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts began, and simultaneously, inevitably, the reports in the media grew and flourished.

  Tim Bates was not the only one to launch into reportage, speculation, approval, or condemnation. As with everything of major import in the hemorrhaging world of the closing years of the twentieth century, sooner or later the general gist of it saw the light of day. Where facts were not available, shrewd speculation and intelligent guesses furnished the fuel. “The matter of Sidi,” as it was soon referred to at State, was dubbed “the crisis” by the media; ergo, it became one. “I think, therefore I am” became, as always, the media’s “We think, therefore it is.”

  SIDI CRISIS GROWS, said the Times.

  SIDI CRISIS GROWS, said the Post.

  SIDI CRISIS GROWS, said the Washington Inquirer and all the rest.

  And so it did.

  Meanwhile the work of diplomacy, the production of news, and the attempts to influence public opinion on both sides of the issue went on.

  2

  “Mr. Ambassador,” Ray Stanley said, gesturing his visitor cordially to a seat facing his own enormous desk, “you know why I have invited you to come here this morning. I want your invaluable advice on how we should best proceed to defuse the situation created by the President of Greater Lolómé.” He passed a hand across his forehead to wipe away mock sweat and smiled at his guest with knowing, between-us familiarity that he hoped would induce some sense of fellow humanity. “It is most difficult.”

  His visitor, who was Vladimir Novotny, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the recently proclaimed Second Soviet Republic, gave him one of his small, smug smiles in return and accompanied it with an elaborate, rather bored shrug.

  “It does pose a problem,” he agreed. “For you. We admire the way you are volunteering to solve it for us all. Without the leadership of America, where would we be?”

  And his smile broadened into a comfortable, aren’t-you-people-in-a-mess-now grin that did not augur well for any Washington hopes that Moscow might be willing to assist in this latest crisis. Almost a decade of wishful yearnings for friendly cooperation was being swept away by the fast-reviving party machinery. Old empires die hard, and this one, the Secretary of State often reflected with an inward sigh, was unfortunately far from moribund. It was, in fact, reviving by the hour.

  First had come the popular election of the New Stalin—or the New Hitler—or the New Whatever-He-Was—certainly the new World’s Champion Demagogue, Ray Stanley thought grimly now, vividly aware that almost every morning’s news brought some new, wildly hysterical salvo against the West, new ominous demands for the return of former Soviet satellites to the Soviet fold, new massings of an enthusiastically cooperating Soviet Army on their borders, new demands that Russians originally sent abroad to subject states to strengthen the grip of the old empire devote themselves actively to strengthening the new, constant, terrifying evidence of a mind out of control rushing himself and his tragic country toward—what …? And of iron dictatorship descending once again, in all aspects of life, upon peoples who could not comprehend, and therefore impatiently opted out of, the slow, awkward, patient, and painful sacrifices necessary to a successful transition to a democratic way of life.

  Then had come the final remuzzling of the media—the rewriting of history, at which the new leaders of the state had become so adept during the years of tyranny—the wiping out in the official “histories” of the ill-fated attempts by two blundering leaders to bring political and economic freedom to Mother Russia after so many black decades and centuries of Communist and czarist rule—and so, finally, the shrewd renaming, which, as the Secretary had summed it up in a recent article in Foreign Policy, “in three clever words brought transition, obliteration, confirmation, and reaffirmation.”

  The Stalinist period had now officially become “The First Soviet Republic.” The failed time between had become “The Interim Period.” The two ill-fated leaders and their deputies of that period had been reduced to one line each in the official records. The new regime had been given a title carefully chosen to echo the past and reestablish it in the minds of their peoples and the world’s peoples, who had scarcely had time to absorb the “Interim Period” before the new dispensation returned triumphantly to power.

  It was now the “Second Soviet Republic,” with nothing except a very hazy, ill-defined, officially forgotten “Interim Period” between it and its predecessor. The name in English slid easily from one into the other: “USSR”—“SSR” Few nowadays referred to the Interim Period at all. It was almost as dead and forgotten as its leaders.

  Not for the first time in forty-eight hours, the Secretary wondered if Sidi had received secret encouragement, perhaps even the A-bombs themselves, from the resurgent Soviet state. It would fit the seventy-five-year pattern that so many of America’s most fashionable leaders of journalism, academe, Hollywood, and politics had so loudly and fervently—and perhaps a trifle prematurely—proclaimed to be over.

  “I am sure America would welcome any assistance the SSR wishes to give us,” the Secretary said. “Or, at the least, Moscow’s forbearance from any interference that would seek to upset any negotiations leading to a peaceable solution. Russian interventions,” he added smoothly, “however well-intentioned and peace-loving would, I am afraid, provoke a rather”—he hesitated deliberately—“awkward—reaction from this government.”

  “What would you do, Ray?” Vladimir Novotny inquired, leaning forward with a genuine, if subtly mocking, show of interest. “Not, you understand, that my government would do such a thing—we have abandoned all that ill-mannered stuff in favor of a more civilized approach. But just as a curiosity, what would you do?”

  “We should regard it as a most unfriendly act,” the Secretary said, “with all the consequences that would flow from such a miscalculation by your government.”

  “Yes,” Vladimir said, “that is all very well, Ray, and all the world trembles at American disapproval, as you know—or rather,” he said with an extension of his grin, “perhaps I should say, all the world except Sidi bin Sidi bin Sidi, which, we do completely sympathize with you, is embarrassing. But even so, what would you do? Impose sanctions upon us, perhaps? Call a meeting of the Security Council to condemn us, which we would veto? I mean, Ray, what?”

  “I would not advise finding out,” the Secretary said, air of amicability unruffled. “There are methods available to this government—”

  “Yes,” Vladimir agreed, “you are full of little tricks. So,” he sighed elaborately, “we must go ahead blindly, not knowing what the consequences of our actions might be, and trembling in fear thereof.”

  “Only if they are contrary to the interests of the United States in this most difficult situation,” the Secretary said. “For the rest, there is no reason for any disruption of our usual cordial relations.”

  “Good!” Vladimir Novotny exclaimed, mockery again evident and not so subtle this time. “As long as we are assured that our relations will remain cordial, we can certainly surmount any little awkwardness caused by this stinking camel-lover from the desert. He is a piece of excrement, that one.”

  “Not a nice man,” Ray Stanley agreed with a smile.

  “But of course,” Vladimir observed, “we can understand his position.”

  “In what regard?” the Secretary demanded. “In the murder of one of our embassy staff—”

  “CIA,” Vladimir interrupted. “What can you expect?”

  “We expect our people to be respected,” Ray Stanley said, permitting his voice to acquire an edge of sharpness. “Do you support Sidi in his treatment of Creed Moncrief?”

  “Of course we do not condone that,” Vladimir said. “Still …”

  “And do you support his proposed aggression against Lesser Lolómé?”

  Vladimir shrugged. “It might be well to liberate some of the oil the old man is sitting on.”

  “Or choke it off from the West by working through Sidi if Sidi defeats him,” the Secretary suggested. “Oil is always a good weapon, when it is permitted to flow and when it is not permitted to flow. Either way can be effective in the wrong hands.”

  “‘Wrong hands!’” the Russian ambassador echoed. “There you go again, American morality! By whose judgment ‘good,’ by whose judgment ‘bad’? You force these arbitrary categories on the world, Mr. Secretary. It makes life so uncomfortable for us innocents who just want to get along and lead our national lives without worrying about living up to America’s standards.”

  “What are your own, Vladimir?” the Secretary inquired dryly. “They don’t seem very well defined, to us.”

  “And there you go again!” the ambassador exclaimed. “Defining, defining! Why do you not just let things happen, without ‘defining,’ Ray? ‘Defining’ is not a help. It just confuses the issue. In fact, it confuses everybody. My government would like to assist you in defusing this crisis—if it is a ‘crisis’—but how can we, when you persist in putting up arbitrary barriers against us?”

  “Now, Mr. Ambassador,” Ray said, permitting himself a certain sharpness, “stop trying to divert the argument by attacking America. That is an old, old game we thought had been disposed of along with many other errors of the Soviet system, some years ago.”

  “Fools!” the ambassador said darkly. “All fools. What did they know of Old Russia and what is best for it? It was inevitable that they fall, in spite of Washington’s silly efforts to support them.”

  “Well,” the Secretary said, “I am not going to get into an argument with you about what happened in Russia. That is your problem.”

  “Your then-President attempted to make it his problem,” Vladimir Novotny said, and added with deep satisfaction, “That turned out to be his problem.” His voice sailed up to grandiose levels. “We are a sovereign state! We decide our own fate! We have decided our own fate!”

  “So there!” the Secretary could not resist, which brought an angry scowl in response. “Anyway,” he added smoothly, “this is all very much beside the point. What we want to know now is, are you or are you not going to help us eliminate this new threat to world peace that has developed in Greater Lolómé?”

  “Threat to peace of mind,” the ambassador remarked. “Your peace of mind. Why should we?”

  “Because it is in your interest as well as ours to prevent any new outbreak of hostilities in the region,” Ray Stanley said. “That is why.”

  “We will determine whether it is in our interest,” Vladimir said. “Not America. Why is it in our interest?”

  “The maintenance of world stability is in everyone’s interest,” the Secretary said calmly. “That seems elemental—or should seem elemental. Even to a state”—he paused, appearing to be giving his next words considerable study, which he had indeed done, but some hours previously—“which may deliberately have contributed to the threat of instability by furnishing the means of instability to a notoriously erratic and unstable individual who may yet turn upon his sponsors.”

  “We are not among his sponsors!” the ambassador replied angrily. “We did not furnish him with the means of instability! I give you the word of the government of the Second Soviet Republic that this is not true! We did not give him bombs! The government of the SSR deeply resents any such implications!”