The Summer Garden (121 page)

The good crystal and Cristal was brought out. Tatiana knew Alexander was saving the champagne for their anniversary, but he opened the bottle gladly tonight, as they clinked and drank and congratulated their son and brother. Tatiana’s feeling for Anthony was unaffected by such things as pride in his new achievements. No accomplishment of his added or detracted from the unsplittable irreducible atom of what she felt since the moment she leaned over her wounded husband in that Morozovo hospital made so distant by time, and said: “Shura, we’re going to have a baby. In America.” Anthony was conceived in the ashes and under the stars, on doomed frozen soil and yet in hopeful fire. Nothing Anthony did with his life could stop Tatiana from believing that there was nothing Anthony could not do with his life. But looking at Alexander’s face, Tatiana smiled with pleasure, for Alexander was unconscionably and embarrassingly proud of his firstborn son.

Anthony himself, however, was only ostensibly pleased by the proffered chairmanship, muttering that of course he was honored to serve the President in any capacity, and yes, it was on the surface a tremendous achievement, and yes the responsibilities would be astonishing…but he was muted in his enthusiasm. Looking conflicted, he sat at the head of the wide multiangular island; Alexander and Tatiana sat across from each other so they could fully see each other’s faces. Harry was next to Alexander; Pasha was next to Tatiana.

“So where’s the bad news, Ant?” Pasha asked.

Anthony sighed. He said that next week would begin the closed Armed Services Joint Session hearings into his confirmation. He thought the hearings would present big problems for him and would cast clouds of doubt on the success of his nomination.

“You guys are not paying attention,” he said. “Did you read the press release? The part where the President is lauding my support of SDI? Operational Strategic Defense system, ho ho, ho.” He coughed. “Do you not see the one small problem?”

“You don’t know what SDI is?” said Harry.

“Shut up.” Anthony cleared his throat. “I think SDI is a big bunch of flaming bullshit.”

They laughed and said, “Ah.” They expressed surprise. Since the beginning of the eighties they had talked at length about the failing nuclear disarmament talks with the Soviets, but had not talked about the space shield.

“See my problem?” said Anthony. “The press and many people in Congress despise and criticize the President’s ridiculous idea, while the President is grateful I’m on his side. But in my heart of hearts I agree with the people who mock his plan. Quite a pickle, no?” He smiled. “And once I get inside that room, as Dad well knows, it’ll be very hard for me to hide my true feelings. I’m firmly with the President on every other policy on his agenda. But they’ll ask me two
sua sponte
questions about SDI and they’ll know where my abundance of the heart lies. Right, Dad?”

“Anthony, refuse to answer
sua sponte
questions, that’s all,” said Alexander. “But what the hell is wrong with you? Have you not been following what’s been going on with the Soviets? Have you not been reading any of my reports?”

Alexander was still pulling at least five days a month in Army Intelligence. The homebuilding business was running so smoothly, with managers and foremen and accountants and two architects and Tatiana overseeing the bookkeeping that Alexander was able to devote quite a bit of time to the nuclear question since the ABM treaty of 1972.

“Of course I’ve been reading them,” said Anthony. “But can I help it that I think SDI is a joke?”

Harry was shaking his tousled, strawberry-blond head. “Anthony, Anthony, Anthony.”

“Harry, honestly,” said Anthony. “Now is
so
not the time for me to listen to your crazy theories about impulse accelerators and rotary motors of zero curvature. I need to know in the next seven days if I can or should hide my heart on this issue.”

“Ant,” said Harry, “rotary motors is what it’s all about. If you knew about them, you wouldn’t have to hide anything. So if you don’t want the job, just thank the President and refuse the job.”

“That’s just it—I do want the job!” Anthony exclaimed. “Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? I do want the fucking job—excuse me, Mom, sorry. I just don’t want to defend this Star Wars crap. Nuclear disarmament, absolutely; conventional weapons reductions, yes; containing the Soviets everywhere they have their little grapple hooks in, bring it on, I’m your man. But Star Wars? No, thanks.”

“Anthony,” said Tatiana, “next time you get an urge to agree with the journalists, take a short trip to Vietnam.”

“Mom, you’re right,” said Anthony. “Vietnam is extremely clarifying. Out of balance and unreconciled to the universe.” He smiled. “But
that’s
exactly my problem with Star Wars. We
should
be dealing with Vietnam—and El Salvador, and Nicaragua, and Angola—not playing with laser guns in space. I can’t hide my skepticism. The President is going to withdraw his nomination as soon as he sees what a fraud I am, and I will have disgraced myself and my family.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself, Ant,” said Pasha, always conciliatory.

“You’re not being hard enough on yourself, Ant,” said Harry, never conciliatory. “You
will
disgrace your family if you don’t wrap your head around the possibilities of a nuclear deterrent that does not involve the Soviets developing new ICBMs and nuclear subs.”

“Ant,” said Pasha, “in this one instance, and
only
this one, I might listen to Harry. He knows nothing else but this.”

“Pasha, I treasure your vote of confidence,” said Harry, “but a defense system must be developed—”

Alexander put his hand on Harry’s forearm. “Son, excuse me. You’re missing the point.”

“I’m not missing the point,” said Harry. “That point is all the difference.”

“Yes, it is,” agreed Alexander, “but for completely different reasons than you think.”

“Well, wait, Dad,” said Harry, not raising his voice. Tatiana smiled. Confrontational with everyone—except his father. Harry did not argue with Alexander. Nonetheless…he had a quiet but vociferous opinion on the space shield. “In the beginning of his first term,” said Harry, “the President wanted to know if a system could be developed that would locate and destroy the Soviet nuclear weapons as they left their silos. He was told it could be, and would be.”

“It’s the most far-fetched thing I’ve ever heard,” said Anthony.

“What’s far-fetched?” asked Harry. “What about a dropped bomb exploding two sub-critical atomic masses in a microsecond and converting one gram of harmless mass into an equivalent of 20,000 pounds of deadly energy?
That’s
not far-fetched to you? You have been nominated to the highest military position in the United States and you have decided to draw your line not at titanium-armored vehicles that will stop a round fired point blank traveling 3000 feet per second, but at SDI’s multi-megawatt space nuclear power program with its open-cycle reactor concepts and terminal ballistics? Dad is right, what the hell is wrong with you? Frankly, I don’t think we should be judging SDI by your belief system. You still can’t believe the Spruce Goose flew!” Harry laughed.

“Oh, Harry, give me a break!” Anthony exclaimed. “Just look outside your box for a second. A computer network runs a series of detection systems that controls lasers and hypervelocity guns in space?”

“Yes!”

Now Anthony laughed. “A
computer
detects hostile missiles going off thousands of miles away and then space lasers intercept and destroy the missiles in flight? A
computer
? I can’t get my tax refund from last year because the computers keep going on the blink every five minutes!”

“Go ahead, yuck it up,” said Harry, completely unintimidated, “but the computers
will
detect enemy nuclear missiles and then superconducting quench guns will attack them from space and destroy them.”

“Ant, listen to Harry-boy,” said Pasha. “He knows his quench guns.”

“Forget it,” said Anthony. “Billions of dollars spent, billions of man hours invested, on an unsustainable, insupportable, nonsensical defense system, and all the computer has to be is in restart mode and the whole thing is moot. And this is
exactly
where the committee will catch me and yank me out of the water with a hook in my throat. Hence my conflict. You know,” he went on, “originally when I said I supported the President with respect to SDI, I meant, I agree with the President that the Soviets have been recalcitrant in negotiations and overweeningly militaristic, hell-bent only on the concept of mutually assured destruction and nothing else. I agreed wholeheartedly that something needed to be done. Just not this.” Anthony nodded as Tatiana poured him another glass of champagne. “Thanks, Mom. I know very well what our President has been going through. I know it pisses him off that the Soviets hide their military expenditures in pseudo-civilian manufacturing. I know he hates their vast superiority in conventional weapons and nuclear weapons, which they continue to build up without incurring international wrath. I just think that this is the wrong thing to invest our resources in.”

“I read in the paper,” said Pasha, “that the Soviets spend three to four times more on their conventional forces than we spend on ours. Is that true?”

Anthony glanced at Alexander and shook his head. “Don’t read the paper, Pasha, read one of Dad’s reports. The Soviets are spending much more than that. Every single steel plant and factory in the Soviet Union produces guns and ammunition and bombs and tanks. And we know this not just because we have inside information from our mother, the Kirov factory Soviet bombmaker.” He smiled lightly at his mother. “They make them in Kirov and then sell them to their little Vietnams the world over. Dad, do you know what was the NVA’s second weapon of choice behind the Kalashnikov? Your 1941 Soviet-made Shpagin submachine gun.”

Alexander whistled.

“That’s some serious economies of scale,” said Tatiana, ironically impressed.

“Indeed, Mom. And furthermore, Dad estimated last year that the Soviets spent 60 percent of their GNP on defense and not their stated 14 percent. While we spend 6 percent.”

“Ant, look,” said Harry, “their GNP is a hundredth of ours. They have to spend more to keep apace. But stop deluding yourself with conventional weapons expenditures. Shpagins, Kalashnikovs, Studebakers left over in the Soviet Union from Lend-Lease that are now being peddled to Angola and Vietnam. It’s just small fry. It’s the nuclear threat that worries the President most of all. Every time the Soviets say they’re going to think about arms reduction, they go and build a new nuclear sub. Our last negotiation in the sixties gave us ICBMs. The ABM treaty in the seventies increased both our arsenals by twenty percent. That’s what keeps the President up at night. He wants to prevent nuclear war, in which—in the
best case scenario—
a hundred and fifty million Americans will die. And he is right when he says that mankind has never invented a weapon that they did not use sooner or later. That’s his fear and his argument for SDI—that in 1925 the world got together and banned the use of poison gas. But we still kept our gas masks.”

Pasha nodded, looking quite favorably across the island at his younger brother. “Personally
that
alone is enough for me to weather the doubts regarding SDI.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you should’ve been nominated instead of me,” said Anthony. “In the meantime, while Harry mocks me, I’m going to have to sit in front of those men and defend something I can’t, despite his particle physics bombardment.”

During most of this Tatiana and Alexander refrained from speaking. While their sons squabbled, they listened, sat, drank their champagne, considered each other. Reaching across for Tatiana’s flute, Alexander poured her what was left of the champagne and got up from the island.

“Dad, where are you going?” said Anthony. “We’re not close to done.”

“Don’t I know it,” said Alexander, and left anyway.

Tatiana turned to Anthony. “Ant,” she said, “you know how you can tell what your father thinks of your nomination? Because he went to get another bottle of Cristal.” She nodded. “He really believes. Now, do you want to smoke? You can smoke in the kitchen, it’s fine. I’ve put the filter on.”

Anthony gratefully lit a cigarette. He’d become quite proficient at functioning one-armed, including lighting his own cigarettes. “Why are you and Dad so quiet? You don’t agree with me?”

Tatiana didn’t say anything at first. “Let Dad come back,” she said softly. “He’ll talk to you.”

They sat quietly until Alexander returned, popped the cork and poured everyone another glass of the best champagne ever made. They raised their flutes, and Alexander said, “Anthony, this one I drink to you. All our chosen roads, your mother’s and mine, and yours, have led you here to where you now stand. I want you to stand tall, and say with no hesitation, Thank you, Mr. President, it will be my honor and privilege to serve you. And so we will drink to the clarity of your purpose, which seems to be so sorely missing.”

Anthony put his glass undrunk on the island. “
My
clarity of purpose is missing?” he said, bristling.

“Oh, yes,” said Alexander, himself less abrupt, but no less direct. He drank fully. “In this it is.”

“Dad! I’ve been working with the President on ratifying SALT II for the last three years!”

“Well, then, you haven’t been paying attention to what’s been going on with SALT II in the last six months,” Alexander said calmly.

“Are you kidding me?” said Anthony, slightly lowering his voice.

“You absolutely have not. There have been twenty nuclear disarmament talks with Soviet Union since 1946—twenty, Ant! And to the one, they were all ended by the Soviets, who refused to make a single concession, a single even cosmetic reduction in their nuclear arsenal. The only thing we agreed on even in the lauded ABM is that we wouldn’t make any more defensive missiles to protect our East Coast from their offensive missiles!

“That’s right, but because of our efforts, SALT II has a very good chance of being signed!” said Anthony.