Tool of the Trade (25 page)
Then I went back in and sat with him, giving Vardanyan time to get to his press site across the river.
“I suppose you do mean well,” he said. “But I don’t think you’re aware of the potential for disaster in this… speech.”
“Why don’t you outline it for me?”
“I can’t give you an education in geopolitical realities in the space of thirty minutes.”
“You don’t have to. I’ve already spent thirty years thinking about it. Peace and war and what could be done. And spare me the old-soldier bit—I was in the
war, too, and hurt a great deal worse than you were.”
“You can’t be old enough.”
I grabbed a pinch of the firm skin under my chin and! wiggled it “Plastic surgery. They can work wonders.”
“That’s why…”
“Yeah. I haven’t been myself lately.” He argued with me for about fifteen minutes, appealing variously to common sense and patriotism and arithmetic. Then he fell silent and read the speech through a few times. When he delivered it, he actually made some improvements.
This is what he said:
I am aware of having some few shortcomings, and one that doesn’t normally bother me much is a lack of oratory ability. I think the shorter the speech, the better, and don’t have much patience for politicians who go on and on just because they have the floor.
But this is one occasion where I could wish that I had the gift of eloquence. Nothing I will ever do or say as president of the United States of America can be as important as what I am going to say to you now. Forgive me for saying it plainly.
Everybody knows that the large and fairly equal nuclear stockpiles held by the United States and the Soviet Union have been for half a century rather a “mixed curse,” paradoxically threatening the survival of the entire world while apparently preventing a catastrophic world war from starting. The key phrases our politicians have traditionally used to describe
this curious situation are the frightening ones “the balance of terror” and “mutually assured destruction.”
Its also well known that these stockpiles are, and have been ever since the sixties, much larger than they would need to be if their function were simply military. Grotesquely large. Both the Soviet Union and the United States possess more than a hundred times the megatonnage required to obliterate the other’s civilization totally. It’s hard to imagine: more than a hundred times.
Most of the presidents and premiers from Truman and Krushchev to Dr. Vardanyan and myself have agreed that these weapons must never be used, and pledged that we would not initiate the use of them. Pessimists in their turn, from the 1950s to the present day, have pointed out that this may be fine for the next week or year, or ten years or a thousand, but sooner or later there will be a man or woman in charge who will suffer a lapse of judgment, a lapse of sanity, and actually use the weapons. That will be the end of civilization, or at least all that we hold civilized. Perhaps, some of our scientists warn, it would be the end of all life on this planet.
The problem with idealistic solutions to this situation, where we simply wave a magic wand and all the bombs go away, is twofold: One, as I said, the bombs with their threat of apocalypse have brought comparative peace to the second half of this century. Two, the United States and the Soviet Union are not the only ones with bombs.
Dr. Vardanyan and I were both soldiers in the
last world war—what we hope will forever remain the last world war. No one who lived through that catastrophe could take lightly the obligation of preventing his children and their children from having to relive it. And if it takes the fear of nuclear Armageddon to keep buried in history the specter of whole continents turned into battlefields, of whole generations of men decimated and decimated again, then that fear does serve a noble purpose. If Dr. Vardanyan and I
could
wave some magic wand and rid the world forever of nuclear weapons… well, I won’t say we wouldn’t do it. But we certainly wouldn’t do it in ignorance of the possible dire consequences.
What we have agreed upon is a mutual bilateral reduction in the size of our strategic nuclear forces. A drastic reduction, conducted simultaneously, under the supervision of observers from countries aligned with neither the United States nor the Soviet Union.
The third largest nuclear power in the world is Great Britain, with two hundred and ninety-eight warheads capable of delivering ninety-nine megatons of destruction. That is the level to which Dr. Vardanyan and I have agreed to reduce our forces. Nearly a thousandfold. By May Day of next year, both the United States and the Soviet Union will control only two hundred and ninety-eight warheads apiece, yielding a total of no more than ninety-nine megatons.
The distribution of these weapons as to size and type will be worked out according to the defense requirements of each country, but the total number and total yield will be the same. Both
countries will undergo continual inspection by neutral observers. In agreeing to this, Dr. Vardanyan has of course departed drastically from the policies of all his predecessors, and the world owes him a vote of heartfelt thanks.
The disarmament process need not be frozen at this level. If Great Britain wishes to reduce its nuclear forces below their present capabilities, and if they will do so under the same conditions of supervision and inspection that Dr. Vardanyan and I have agreed to, then the United States and the Soviet Union will also reduce, to maintain parity. If the British consequently fall below the strength of the fourth nuclear power, which is currently France, with two hundred and two warheads yielding ninety-two megatons, then France will be responsible for setting the benchmark. Then China, then India, and so on down the line.
It isn’t a perfect solution; there is no perfect solution. A lot of voices will be raised, and some heads will doubtless roll, in the process of turning this, our mutual pledge, into diplomatic and legal language satisfactory to all concerned. But the principle is clear, and we will not back away from it.
At this moment Dr. Vardanyan is delivering a speech to the Supreme Soviet in Moscow, via a public television link from the Summer Palace here in Leningrad, outlining our agreement. Journalists are present from all over the world, and the message is being broadcast live on every Soviet television channel.
We want to give the world some breathing space. The principle we’ve set down here will
certainly be elaborated and refined by leaders of our countries, of all countries, in the future. What we have tried to do is to ensure that there will
be
a future.
They’d set a rostrum up right in front of the meeting-room door. I stayed in the room, with the door open a crack, so I missed seeing the president’s face and nuances of gesture. But I could see the expressions on the audience’s faces, which was amusing, and Valerie’s, which was gratifying.
A small room full of hardened pols and newspeople, with a scattering of Secret Service, KGB, and CIA folks. When he said the words
mutual bilateral reduction
, a lot of jaws dropped open. When he elaborated on it, some people looked like they were going to faint. At the end of his speech, about half the audience burst into wild applause. The other half clapped politely and belatedly and looked at each other in wild surmise.
JACOB
Without ceremony, Vardanyan walked up onto a hastily erected podium, into a glare of television lights, to the exact spot where Lenin had stood the day the Soviet Union was created. That was what the man beside me told his companion, at least. I wondered whether Lenin had also spoken from behind bulletproof glass.
Vardanyan’s speech may not have been more important than Lenin’s, but it certainly was more surprising to the audience. Not so surprising to me. So Foley had gotten to him.
I wondered whether Fitzpatrick had said the same thing, as advertised. There was an American television team on the other side of the square; I meandered over there and eavesdropped. It was true, according to what their opposite numbers at the Leingrad had told them. Foley had flummoxed the two most powerful men in the world into renouncing the main basis of their power.
What the Politburo and the Congress would have to say about their agreement was yet to be heard. Maybe Vardanyan was headed for a long rest cure. Maybe Fitzpatrick, too.
There were no taxis, but then I guessed there was no need to hurry, either. I walked back down the river toward the bridge to the Leningrad, a mile or so. I was passed by groups of people running in both directions, a lot of happy talking and shouting and passing around of bottles. A lot of
mir
in the air. Even though it was still light, several barrages of fireworks went off over the river, setups, I suppose, that were supposed to wait until tomorrow.
I checked my watch, subtracting seven hours for Eastern Standard Time. The
Today
show and
Good Morning America
would be on in twenty minutes. Their staffs were probably quite busy.
I was tired and wired. I put my last No-Doz between two back teeth and crunched down. The over-whelming gall taste always reminded me of undergraduate days.
Nobody paid any attention to me as I walked up to the Leningrad Hotel entrance. Security people had formed up in a double line so that the luminaries could make it to their limousines, running the gauntlet of photographers. I overheard something about Fitzpatrick staying on in Russia for a few days. Probably a good idea. Probably a number of his compatriots will suggest that he take up residence permanently.
One advantage to being thin is that you can slip through crowds. It only took me a minute to make my way to the edge of the police line. Various people walked through the television lights, looking important. Then came Secretary Froelich, whom I recognized, and then the president, looking at the sidewalk with a sad smile. Behind him was a stranger. The
stranger passed within two yards of me, looked straight into my face, and suddenly flinched and turned pale.
It was Foley, by God. It didn’t look like him, but who else could it be?
I smiled and gave him a half salute, then watched the back of his head as he followed Fitzpatrick to the limo. He looked back once, and I was still smiling. Let him fidget.
I wasn’t going to blow the whistle on him. Twice he spared me when he could have greatly simplified his life by killing me, at no danger to himself. Besides, it might work.
His cockeyed scheme might work.
NICK
Epilogue
It was Valerie’s idea. Where was the best hiding place for someone who could be history’s richest and most powerful man, independent of any government? A haven of poverty and insignificance, of course, in the swollen heart of the bureaucracy itself: the Peace Corps.
For ten years, she and I toiled in the drought-scourged villages and farms of Rwanda, helping scrape irrigation systems out of the hard crust of the land, teaching English and numbers and our own version of The American Way. She was in her natural element, helping people. For me it was a long decade. As penance, though, I suppose it worked. The bad dream went away, and so did the killing. Though I don’t think I would ever have tried to kill anyone without the watch, and it was in a safe-deposit box on the other side of the world.
Curiously, at the very end time of Valerie’s fertility,
she became pregnant. (When she stopped menstruating, we thought it was menopause. It was Nick, junior.) She delivered him in an American hospital, because of the possibility of complications, but we returned to Rwanda and raised Nickie in relative poverty. Being poor didn’t impress him, of course, given his surroundings and companions; and we have tried to raise him in such a way that when he eventually finds out he has millions, that won’t impress him, either.
I came back from Rwanda old and leathery but fit, weighing about what I did in Basic Training. We found a suburban community with good schools and bought a carefully modest house. I took one certificate of deposit out of the safe-deposit box and spread it around several local banks. I took the watch out, put a fresh battery in it, and hilariously tested it on Valerie. Then I returned it to the box, along with the millions in CD’s and securities that lied grown from the cash left over from our second round of plastic surgery in Zacatecas. It looks as if this twenty-first century may turn out better than the previous one. The four largest nuclear powers playing a reverse Mexican standoff, just as Valerie had predicted. Usually it’s France who ditches a warhead, just to make the others scramble. It’s always a small warhead. But every year there are not quite as many bombs around as there were before.
Of course there are still wars, and rumors of war, and we may yet live to see nations consumed in nuclear fire. At least it won’t be the whole planet burning. Not so long as they follow the rules of the game.
But treaties are only promises, and promises are only as good as the people who make them. The war
head factories can be started up as quickly as they were shut down.
This boy of mine is twelve years old. He speaks Russian and French as well as his native English and Swahili, and he keeps the ability secret. His childhood tempered with poverty, he owes allegiance to no god or country or culture; he doesn’t even think of himself as white.
Most people get a watch when they retire. He’ll get his when I think he’s ready to start work.
Joe Haldeman is a renowned American science fiction author whose works are heavily influenced by his experiences serving in the Vietnam War and his subsequent readjustment to civilian life.
Haldeman was born on June 9, 1943, to Jack and Lorena Haldeman. His older brother was author Jack C. Haldeman II. Though born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Haldeman spent most of his youth in Anchorage, Alaska, and Bethesda, Maryland. He had a contented childhood, with a caring but distant father and a mother who devoted all her time and energy to both sons.
As a child, Haldeman was what might now be called a geek, happy at home with a pile of books and a jug of lemonade, earning money by telling stories and doing science experiments for the neighborhood kids. By the time he entered his teens, he had worked his way through numerous college books on chemistry and astronomy and had skimmed through the entire encyclopedia. He also owned a small reflecting telescope and spent most clear nights studying the stars and planets.