made him look every inch a chief of state, had mixed feelings about his
trips to the Big Apple. He relished the automatic media attention they
received (Caroline claimed that whereas $2-million-a-year network
anchors usually considered themselves above travel, in New York one or
two might deign to show up), but chafed at the mechanics--the
helicopters, traffic jams, awesome security. He also despised political
food, which was why Caroline had packed his own private breakfast of
shredded wheat and skimmed milk, to be downed discreetly while
everybody else was busy clogging their arteries.
He was speaking on worldwide nuclear disarmament, and he intended his
address to be a warm-up for one at the United Nations General Assembly
three weeks hence (which meant another damned trip to New York). Alter
opening with his standard stump remarks, all partisan digs excised, he
would then go on to assure his audience that the New World truly was
here--which always got everybody in a receptive mood. He would then
remind them that three years earlier (i.e., "When I assumed this
office"), America was still spending $7 billion a year on new nuclear
warheads. He had put an end to that, but now it was time to take the
next step. Total nuclear disarmament worldwide. It was a stance that
normally received polite applause at best, and stony silence at worst.
But it never failed to make the news.
This morning the broadcast networks and CNN had combined their
resources--after all, the space was limited--to provide pool coverage.
Although the usual ganglia of lights and wires were reduced to an
absolute minimum, the back of the room still looked like a makeshift
convention bureau. The broadcast correspondents all had their own
"instant analysis" cameras set up, and the print people were all next
to their own newly installed, dedicated phones.
Johan Hansen's acquisition of the Oval Office had come at the end of a
hard-fought election battle that saw several firsts in American
politics. For one thing, it proved, finally, that America truly was the
land of opportunity. He was a first-generation Danish American, and he
was Jewish--the latter being a part of his heritage that seldom, if
ever, got press play.
He scarcely noticed either. In truth, it was only on his father's side--
which in Judaism did not really count. Hansen's father, Joost, had been
a young Copenhagen college student in 1943 when the people of Denmark
one night heroically evacuated all the country's Jews to Sweden, out of
the looming grasp of the Nazis. Shortly thereafter he had married
Hansen's mother, a Swede named Erica who had helped in the evacuation,
and then, after the war, they had immigrated to America. Joost Hansen
had finished his doctorate in physics at Princeton--being a promising
physicist was one of the reasons he could so readily get into the
United States--and then had gone to work at Los Alamos.
On the liner that brought them, the birth of Johan Hansen was due any
minute, and one hour after it docked on the pier on the west side of
New York, he came bawling into the world--a brand-new citizen and
native-born, thereby eligible by a matter of minutes to be President
someday. Who could have known?
Young Johan remembered little of Princeton, New Jersey, but in Los
Alamos he had gloried in the clear air of the mountains, had loved the
old White Sands rocket test area where they vacationed, had loved
everything about America. He'd gone on to try engineering at M IT, but
he had soon realized he didn't have the makings to follow in his
father's technical footsteps. He cared too much about human affairs to
stay in the bloodless world of formulas and machines.
As a result, he shifted to political science, and after graduating he
became an aide to one of Massachusetts's liberal congressmen.
Eventually he ran for the House on his own. The Democratic primary was
a model of rough-and-tumble Boston politics, but he won a squeaker and
became a full-fledged member at thirty-one.
Thus began a career that continued through the Senate and, after two
terms, to the Presidency. He had achieved his ambitions, and his
soaring popularity was all the more amazing for accruing to a man who
had restructured the military during the painful transition of the
United States to a post-Cold-War economy. Turning swords into
plowshares was never as easy as it sounded, but America's excess
armaments capacity had gone back to reinvigorate her high-tech sectors.
If you could make an F-15, he had declared, you could by-God make
anything. Now retool and get on with it. America had.
In his most important contribution to history, however, John Hansen had
presided over the dismantling of more than half the world's nuclear
arsenal. It's easy, he'd declared to the Russians, we just do nothing.
And in so doing, the tritium in all those warheads will simply decay.
End of bombs. You monitor our plants at Oak Ridge and Savannah River;
we monitor you; and together we watch the nuclear threat to humanity
simply tick away.
It was working, he often noted with pride. Maybe we're not going to
melt the planet after all. Not only would future generations thank him;
there would be future generations. But would they know enough history
to appreciate what he'd done? he wondered ruefully. Only if the dismal
state of American education could be improved. . . .
It was now 8:40 A.M. and the television lights had been switched on,
turning the fake gold leaf on the ceiling into an intense white. The
TelePrompTer had been readied, and the Secret Service detail was making
last-minute checks around the room as unobtrusively as conditions would
permit. Correspondents, for their own part, were poring over an advance
copy of the text that Caroline's aide had just passed out, making notes
for the brief question period scheduled to follow.
The time was 8:41 when she walked up behind him and laid down a large
gray envelope marked Top Secret. It was, she whispered, a couple of
pages fresh off the secure fax that had been installed in the room just
down the hall.
What was it? he wondered. Some eleventh-hour revisions by Jordan
McCormick, a young new speechwriter from Harvard who liked to tinker
till the very last minute? Puzzled, he ripped open the envelope. The
first page was a covering memo from his personal secretary, Alicia
Winston. Miss Winston, as she insisted on being called, was a spinster,
fifty- eight, who guarded access to Johan Hansen with the ferocity of a
pit bull. Get past her, junior members of Congress often declared, and
you're home free. It was, however, more often a dream than a
realization. Seduction was frequently discussed.
Alicia's note was brief and pointed. The second page, it said, was a
copy of a fax that had just arrived on her desk from Ed Briggs, head of
the Joint Chiefs. Hansen's chief of staff, Morton Davies, had asked her
to fax it on to New York immediately. They both knew Morton was not a
man to squander time.
Hansen glanced over to see a white phone, complete with scrambler,
being nestled next to the official text of his speech. When he scanned
the second sheet, he knew why.
"He's on the line," Caroline said.
He nodded and checked his watch. Eight forty-three. Shit. "Caroline,
tell them there's been a five-minute hold. And see if you can have them
kill those damned lights."
"You've got it." She signaled to the pool producer, pointed to the
lights, and made a slashing motion across her throat. With a puzzled
nod, he immediately complied, barking an order to his lighting
director.
Hansen picked up the phone. "Ed, what the hell is this about? I'm
looking at the fax. You say this happened over six hours ago?"
"Mr. President, that came in about ten minutes ago from naval intel.
They've been trying to get the story straight. The BBC was carrying a
rumor, but it was soft. We wanted to get all the facts before--"
"It was in the Med?" Hansen impatiently cut him off. "Why so long--?"
"They claim they took all this time trying to nail down who's
responsible, and they still don't know for sure. All they've got that's
hard is what I sent you. A frigate under contract to NSA got hit. About
fifty known casualties. It could be our friends the Israelis, up to
their old tricks, or it could be somebody who wants us to think it's
them."
"Ed, I'm staring down half the press in the country right now, as we
speak. I can't do anything till I get back. But check with Alicia. I
think I'm scheduled in around noon, and I'd like to try and have a
statement out by three today."
"All right, Mr. President, we'll do what we can. Let me secure-fax
Morton everything I've got so far, and he can forward anything he
thinks might help. But we've got to talk. This could be a tough call."
"What are the Israelis saying?"
'Their military intel told Morton they don't know a damned thing about
it. But their embassy here's already on red alert, getting ready to
start pushing out smoke."
'Typical." Hansen had no love for Israel. In his view, their
intransigence had caused the lion's share of America's problems in the
Middle East. They never told the truth about anything until three days
later, when it was too late to matter. In the meantime, they just did
whatever they wanted.
"Well, this time I almost think they may be straight," Briggs said. "It
doesn't have any of their trademarks. For one thing, it had their name
all over it--not their style."
Hansen scanned the fax again, noting the large-print Top Secret across
the top, and tried to make it sink in. Concentration was difficult,
considering the expectant stirrings in the room, the clank of
silverware. But this was nothing short of a major episode. What did it
mean?
"Okay, Ed, I want to see you first thing. And bring Bob with you"--
Robert Barnes was his assistant, Navy--"in case we need to scramble out
of Crete."
"Roger, sir. I'll have Alicia get everything we need set up in the Sit
Room."
"Good." Hansen hung up the phone and looked around the room. Damn. Who
was trying to screw up the Med? Already he had a bad feeling it might
involve terrorists, but where did they get the Soviet helicopter?
Okay, he told himself, time to call in all the heavy guns, all the
advisers who get paid so much to do your thinking.
He would face his first problem when the press got hold of the story.
He could already see the cartoons, that bastard in the Moonie-owned
Washington Times who was always accusing him of being a pansy on
defense. They'd want blood, an eye for an eye, while he was trying his
best to change that way of thinking.
This latest stupidity damned sure wasn't going to make it any easier.
With that grim thought, he smiled his widest smile and signaled
Caroline to alert the pool producer to switch on the television lights.