Code Word: Paternity, A Presidential Thriller (27 page)

Chapter 49

Rick had a few minutes before his meeting
with the congressional leadership. He glanced at the talking points, then
pushed them aside; it was gut-check time and talking points wouldn’t hack it.
Their half-dozen gatherings since Six-thirteen were all prelude to today’s,
although he would never have predicted it would come to this.

The horror of the order he might soon
sign nearly overwhelmed him. He didn’t want cool objectivity; he wanted
resolve. What had Morales said about his choice? “Because that’s better than
burying people who trusted you to protect them,” wasn’t that it?

He realized he was attempting to armor
his soul. Intellectually, he knew this armor had a chink: putting Own ahead of
Other was the root of the bloody history of the human race. He had resisted
that all his life. And yet . . . when faced with the choice of Own or Other on
this scale, how
could
he choose Other
at the cost of bloody disaster for Own?

 
‘A
man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.’ That phrase had always evoked his
disdain. It was a substitute for weighing the evidence, a triumph of
testosterone over thought. Now he realized it was also a fundamental to the
human condition, not just the evolutionary programming of the human male.

Rick smiled ruefully.
That’s what Ella’s been telling me. I
rejected her counsel, certain I could think my way past war. War is
not
the answer! But what
is
the answer? If I kept trying, would I
discover it? I’ll never know, because I don’t have time to keep trying.

The knife stabbed his gut again as he
permitted the thought that his next breath could be followed by news of another
ruined, radioactive city.

Rick had decided, sometime over a
sleepless night, to take the road that would almost certainly lead to the death
of Sinpo. He hadn’t told Ella because, in a way he knew but couldn’t describe,
he would have felt patronized by her approval; she had been certain since the
beginning that he must crush Kim. He realized she knew because she hadn’t asked
about his meeting with Morales.

Martin hadn’t made his decision in a
rigorous accounting of pro and con, or in a flash of conviction. No, it had
been a matter of accepting that all doors but this one had shut, one by one,
and there was no time left to find others—if they existed. Realizing he had
decided was frightening, but also comforting, because the strain of reexamining
his options was over.

Killing Sinpo was now the default. Unless
something new miraculously appeared, he would sign the order sitting within
that folder on his desk like a malevolent genie in a bottle. He stared at it.

“Mr. President, the congressional
leadership.”

 
“OK.”

Guarini ushered them in; Martin rose,
pumping hands and mouthing greetings automatically.
God
! How he wished some atmosphere of comradeship, of uniting to do
what was best for America,
had developed! Instead, there had been weeks of sterile role-playing that
depressed him deeply. He knew they were here to walk the tightrope again,
asserting Congress’ war powers authority without sharing any responsibility for
presidential decisions. Do it; we’ll see how it plays, and then we’ll say what
we
would have done. And of course,
amazingly, what
they
would have done
would look just about right. He didn’t resent this; it was just politics, but
he wished it were otherwise.

As they were getting coffee or water and
seating themselves, Easterly and MacAdoo entered. Martin felt the legislators
tense.

You
don’t know the half of it! I used to sit where you do and believed my job was
to make speeches and cast votes and let the chips fall. I didn’t feel
responsible for
accomplishing
anything, for final results. As long as I
could say I was doing my best under the circumstances, my conscience was
satisfied. If my best wasn’t good enough, well I’m only one among five hundred
legislators.

That’s
where you are.

Where am
I?
Like Truman said, I’m where the buck stops! How wrong I was to doubt Morales;
it’s my fellow politicians who don’t understand.

When all were
settled, Rick walked to a wingback chair and sat within the group, now
assembled in an oval of couches and chairs. They looked at him warily.

“Gentlemen, thank you for coming over
again. I think these meetings are important to allow us to informally exchange
ideas, and I certainly welcome your thoughts and suggestions. I want to share
my impressions of the present situation and hear yours, and then describe the
courses of action we see.”

He registered that their faces were
carefully neutral, then continued: “I asked you over this morning to tell you
that international examination of the Baltimore
bomb positively identified it as North Korean. I intend to announce that
tonight, and you must keep it to yourselves until then. The
scientists—American, Chinese, and IAEA—are unanimous.

“So here we have it: Kim Jong-il
destroyed one American city and attacked another, after being warned we were on
to him and the consequences of further attack would be severe. I believe this
is intolerable and Kim must now give up, or be removed from, control of the
DPRK and its nuclear weapons. That’s how I see it.”

The Speaker, a twelve-term congressman
from Minnesota,
said, “I’m with you on that conclusion, Mr. President, but as they say, the
devil’s in the details.
How
do you
propose to get Kim out?”

Well,
here we go,
thought
Rick. “We’ve attempted negotiation, using all channels. Kim has turned
everything down, even President Ming’s offer of comfortable sanctuary in China. He has
continued to deny any connection to the bombing of Las
Vegas and the attempt on Baltimore.
Yet, any moment, perhaps before I complete this sentence, Kim could attack us
again. We have no more time.” Martin felt perspiration pop on his forehead.

Looking as if he couldn’t believe
Martin’s words, the Speaker said, “Mr. President, you’re saying diplomacy is
over. Many Americans, most of them in
our
party, won’t accept that. You haven’t made the case for war!

“When you announce, backed by
international scientific investigation, that the Baltimore bomb is North Korean, Kim may
become more amenable. We don’t know yet. And what about continuing to work
through the UN? We should give sanctions and the quarantine more time to work!”

Irritation shredded the fog of Rick’s
fatigue.
More
time?
Am I the only one here who hears the clocks
ticking?

“Ron, if I do that, which do you think
would happen first—the sanctions bite, another city goes, or the Martin
administration gets impeached?”

 
“Mr. President, if you think impeachment talk
is because you’re using diplomacy, you’ve been poorly advised! That talk isn’t
driven by your methods; it’s fueled by the ineffectiveness of your
administration in protecting American lives! It will really gather momentum if
you turn from diplomacy to killing.”

It required all of Martin’s extraordinary
self-control to send his rage away to its place, to listen rather than erupt at
this heedless fool.

Agitated, the Speaker continued. “You’ve
seen those videos! A lot of Americans believe war is
not
the answer; the president doesn’t have to kill Korean
 
kids to protect American kids. They want and
expect your administration to protect them but don’t believe for a moment that
you have to start another Korean war to do it!”

“And what do
you
believe, Ron?”

“I believe it’s
your
job to use all the vast powers of the presidency prudently, to
protect America
with a scalpel, not a meat cleaver. We don’t need another ill-conceived war of
choice!”

Seeing that his boss could not contain
his anger, Guarini jumped in: “Mr. Speaker, you fear another bloody war in Korea. What I
fear is the bloody war in
America
,
begun by Kim on Six-thirteen!” Glancing at each of them, Guarini continued:
“What about the rest of what the president said; what if we lose another city
while we’re talking? Is it
prudent
to
risk that? Is it
moral
to risk it?”

The senate minority leader responded.
“I’m glad that’s on your mind, because it damn well should be! Listening to the
Speaker, I thought maybe I’d missed the announcement of a foolproof defense
against nuclear terrorists so that we could consider at our leisure how to deal
with Kim.

“After Baltimore a lot of Americans are scared to
death. They don’t believe the Martin administration is doing what it takes to
protect them from Kim’s bombs. That’s why they’re camped out, away from cities!
That’s why our economy is in free fall! And that’s why a lot of them are
telling their senators and congressmen to give you the boot, Mr. President.
They’re saying ‘OK, you’ve had your chance to do this and you didn’t get ’er
done.’
That’s
why Bart’s counting
potential impeachment votes!”

The Speaker growled, jowls quivering “So,
Jesse, you and your NRA crowd want to bomb them back to the Stone Age? Nuke ’em
til they glow? Will that give you more courage? Will that jump-start our
economy? Are more mass graves OK with you, so long as they aren’t American?”