David's Sling (23 page)

April 18

To win a war takes billions; to lose a war takes all you've got.

—Military aphorism

Nell studied President Mayfield with the professional calm and human horror of a psychologist listening to the confessions of a rapist. President Mayfield sat surrounded by the most advanced array of image projectors, monitors, and displays in the world. She could see that he refused to believe any of them. He refused.

CUT. Bright orange flames flare across the screen as jet fighters shriek from tree-top height in the background. Exploding ammunition supplies pound in the foreground. Through occasional gaps in the twisting smoke, the roofs of a small German town appear, oddly solid and squat in the red light of Hell.

Other cameras, computers, and panels sputtered terse messages throughout the room, communicating both the stupendous scale and meticulous detail of the slaughter. Mayfield never glanced at them. The tiny yet terrifying television screen hypnotized the president, as similar screens hypnotized millions of other men, women, and children throughout the country.

CUT. The screen sweeps to a picture of Bill Hardie, concerned yet calm. "We have an extraordinary bulletin for all our viewers. You just witnessed scenes from the sneak attack launched by the Warsaw Pact against Western Europe just minutes ago. It isnt World War III yet. It isn't Armageddon. But it could be."

Nell sat apart from the president, in a part of the room devoid of monitors. An invisible boundary separated the information-gathering area from the decision-making area of the White House Situation Room, like the boundary that separates the audience from the performer, the spectator from the athlete.

ZOOM OUT. A high-altitude picture settles on the screen. Brilliant thin lines overlay the photo, showing the national boundaries of Europe. "We have enhanced this image, taken from the French Spot IV satellite, to highlight the size of the attack. As you can see even from thousands of miles away, virtually the entire Soviet, Czech, and East German armies have mobilized and moved across the border into West Germany."

Flashes of terror and calm alternated in Nell's mind. She dared not panic, she knew. She could bear to see the displays and the images of war; these things were terrible but not mindshattering. But she could not bear to see the empty disbelief on Jim Mayfield's face. She looked away to regain control of her pounding heart.

ZOOM IN. The image speeds past the viewer, reaching into West Germany, expanding the view of the border area. Now, brilliant pinpoints of light all along the border fight with the artificial overlay as the brightest parts of the display. Bill drones on. "The thousands of small dots you now see in West Germany are the flashes from artillery blasts. Never in history have so many cannons fired so continuously."

Nell stared at the tiny clots of death, fighting to remember that these blinding explosions came from mere conventional explosives. She shuddered, thinking about how those points of light would blossom if the armies started using nukes.

CUT. "A Soviet spokesman stated that West German agitation had incited the East German riots. Because the Soviet Union could not get any satisfactory action from the West German government, their only recourse was to destroy the so-called 'infectious agents' themselves. The spokesman pledged that all Soviet forces would stop at the Rhine River. He further stated that Denmark had been invaded, strictly for limited, tactical purposes, and that those troops would be withdrawn as soon as the German issue was resolved."

With carefully even breathing, Nell addressed the president. "Jim. Jim, turn off the TV. We have decisions to make."

Earl Semmens sat next to Nell, as if huddling close to a campfire. The Secretary of Defense had been excluded from this meeting—a situation that might have struck Nell as odd, except that Mayfield showed such active hostility toward the man. She had wondered earlier why she herself had been summoned. Now she understood as Mayfield followed her orders, clicking the TV off.

What else could she do to help in this situation? Jim surely expected her to recommend drastic measures. Faced with his unyielding platitudes for years, she had found herself trapped in the role of unyielding hawk. She had never succeeded in demonstrating for him the difference between a hawk and a warmonger.

Now she had her opportunity. For once, Jim would be pleasantly surprised to hear her agree with his anti-military, anti-confrontational position. No matter how hideously the Soviet forces scarred Europe, she knew as well as he did that America dared not start a nuclear war.

With a twist of pain, Mayfield whimpered, "They can't attack us. They can't."

Nell paused a moment, having difficulty accepting Mayfield's rejection of reality. "Of course they can. They are."

"We have a treaty." The president's face flickered for just a moment, from disbelief to hatred, then back.

"Jim, in the past, the Soviets have attacked Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, and Poland—and, Jim, those places were run by their
friends
." Nell realized she sounded like the one-note warmonger again. How did Mayfield always do this to her? With a shrug, she offered counterpoint. "Of course, we did similar things in Vietnam. Treaties are political tools. We've always known that. " She stressed the ending of her sentence with sudden worry: Mayfield
had
always known that treaties were tools, hadn't he?

The soft, curved lines of Mayfield's mouth straightened. "But we have a—" he stopped on a sob. "All our
treaties
. They made life better for both of us. Why have they thrown them away?"

Nell shook her head helplessly. "Germany, I guess. Jim, we're dangerous to the Soviets, even when we don't do anything. Just by existing, we create a constant threat to their empire and their ideology."

His eyes wandered. "My God, what will the polls say?" he asked quietly. Sudden anger shattered his smooth face, like a hurtled rock shattering a windshield. "They lied to us.

Nell sighed. "Of course."

"We have to teach them not to lie."

Nell sat forward with new alertness. She had never seen or heard Mayfield quite like this; this was no time for surprising new behavior. Cautiously, she asked, "How, Jim? How should we teach them?"

"We'll nuke the mothers!"

"All-out nuclear war?" Nell shuddered in disbelief.

Mayfield looked her in the eye, then looked away. "No, of course not. We'll shoot just one, just to let them know we're serious. That'll look good."

Nell forced herself to breathe. From the corner of her eye she could see that Semmens looked as scared as she felt. "If we shoot just one, what will they do? They'll nuke us back. At least one, probably more—to show us that they're serious. You know that, Jim."

"
We can't stand around as if we were helpless!
" Mayfield fumbled at his inner jacket pocket, brought out the Gold Codes card. "Get Johnson." Johnson carried the "football"—the device used to select among the many nuclear options.

Nell sat rooted in her chair. Semmens twitched several times, then froze in numb paralysis. Nell spoke with the overly calm voice of a nurse talking a suicidal patient back from a seventh-story window ledge. "Jim. Jim, think about what you're doing."

"No!" Mayfield leaped from his chair. "Don't you see that that's what they're counting on? They expect us to think so long and hard about all the possible consequences that we'll be paralyzed with fear."

"Jim—"

"Shut up! We can't let them scare us now! We have to—" As he swept across the room, the floor slipped suddenly out from beneath him. His head thumped dully against the shiny tiled floor.

"Jim!" Nell jumped from her chair, then knelt beside the gasping president; Earl followed. "What's wrong?"

His only answer was a pair of explosive gasps as his eyes bulged from their sockets.

Through the shock, Nell realized that Mayfield had a more serious problem than a bump on the head. She remembered his periodic wince, his occasional clutch at his chest, his fear of doctors. She flew toward the door. "I'll get the doctor."

Earl rubbed Jim's head helplessly. "Jim!"

Another gasp. "Kill the mothers," Jim coughed.

Nell stopped in mid-flight. Images flashed in her mind, each too brief to capture fully—a series of flashbulbs popping with stroboscopic speed.

She remembered her first trip to Washington—a trip by bus from Bennettsville, South Carolina. It was her senior year; this was the senior-class trip. She remembered her friends' laughter as they danced through the traffic. They formed a terrifying, uncontrolled weave of high-speed cars and teenagers, running to reach the Tidal Basin amidst the monuments. She remembered how she, too, had laughed with her friends, walking beneath the trees clad in white and pink blossoms, till they reached the bottom of the white marble steps of the Jefferson Memorial. She remembered her moment's pause there, and the hallowed stillness that grew deep within her.

She remembered her sober walk to the top of those steps. She remembered standing by the statue of Jefferson himself in the center of the dome. She remembered looking up. High overhead, Jefferson's words encircled her, suffusing through her as she read.

With a nudge at her best friend, Lisa, she had pointed to the beginning of the inscription. "Isn't that a great thought?"

Lisa turned away from John, giggling. "What? Oh, yeah. But ya know, I heard he owned slaves. I'll bet he didn't even believe it when he said it."

"I'll bet he did believe it. I know I believe it," Nell replied simply.

But Lisa had already rushed off after John. Nell stood alone, turning slowly as her lips moved in a silent affirmation of Jefferson's vow:
I have sworn, upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
She had felt a bond across the centuries to the man whose purpose she now shared.

The flashbulbs skipped across the years to her last conversation with a man she had once admired, a man who had been her employer for many years.

Philip had told her about the contract for the National Person Identification System for Egypt. Philip had just won the contract, the biggest job in his company's history. The success was doubly important because of a slight kink in the company's current situation: they had just lost their two other largest contracts. Egypt's ID system had saved them from bankruptcy.

Nell had studied the happy, almost carefree lines of her superior's face with resignation. "I will not work on this job," she had told him.

"What?" Philip had continued to smile, still reveling in the salvation of his company.

"I will not work on this job."

He had snapped his chair upright. "Why not?"

"Philip, it is immoral to build an ID card system for the Egyptian government. If we help them track the movements of all their citizens, you know what they'll use it for—to clamp down on every person they don't like."

Philip had been an engineer; he had an engineer's honesty. "Granted. But it will also be used for good purposes, like maintaining people's medical records so that in an emergency, they can get proper treatment, no matter where they are."

Nell shook her head. "With every invention, there are both good and bad results. But the occasional good use of this system comes nowhere near to compensating for the thousands of abuses it will allow the government to commit against its own citizens."

Philip had looked away to collect his arguments. "Nell, you've worked with us on fundamentally evil things before. You've worked on weapons of tremendous destructive power. Why are you having this sudden attack of morality?"

Nell had paused. "You know, I would not object to developing weapons for the Egyptians. Weapons can be used in two different ways: they can be used to harm a nation's citizens, but they can also be used to ward off enemies. Philip, this ID card system can really only be used for harm." She had sighed. ''I'm not even sure we should have a system like this in the United States. And the Egyptian government is far more dangerous to its citizens than our government is to us."

Phil had sat quietly. Nell could see that many words came to him, but none of them quite fit.

"Philip, I'm sorry. But I took a vow many years ago." Slowly, succinctly, Nell repeated the words of Jefferson. "Philip, you're asking me to create the kind of system that I swore to destroy. You're asking me to increase the weight of the burden I'm striving to throw down. I will not do it."

The flashbulbs in Nell's mind winked out. She remembered the man dying on the floor—the man who could destroy the world; the man who now refused to think of consequences.

Nell understood that you could pay too high a price in the fight against tyranny. Why fight against tyranny, if the people you vowed to free died in the process?

Slowly, with the syrupy grace of underwater ballet, Nell turned back to the Secretary of State. "Let's get him some water first. " She spoke so slowly, it felt as though she was in a movie shown from a projector that needed the speed reset.

Earl looked up at her with pale horror. He opened his mouth, but no words came as his expression transformed with understanding. A single short gasp punctuated the silence, then died. "Yes, water," he choked out.

With robotic precision, Nell stepped to the desk, retrieved the water pitcher, and went to the president's side. His face and hands had turned a purplish gray. She paused a moment, then said, "I don't think the water will help. He needs a doctor."

"I think you're right."

Nell turned slowly, then picked up speed as she ran to the door. "The president's having a heart attack! Get the doctor!"

A dozen men hurried into action. Nell crossed quietly to the place where the Gold Codes card lay on the tiled floor. She picked it up.

Pale blue skies, deep blue seas, and an occasional crest of white foam greeted Admiral Billingham as he gazed through his binoculars. The waters were as calm as they ever got in the north Atlantic.

He turned slowly, observing the proper placement of each ship in his fleet: the frigates in the lead, the cruisers port and starboard. Behind him, he knew, a similar pattern held, though he could not see the ships from his battle management center.