Ultimatum (56 page)

“My fellow Americans, when you gave me your trust last November I told you that I would dedicate myself to creating a new foundation for our country, a foundation based on health, education, relocation, and jobs. These goals haven’t changed. But a new challenge has arisen, a new understanding of the scale of the Relocation that we face, of which I was unaware when I asked for your trust. That doesn’t mean I back away from what I promised, it means I seek it all the more purposefully. But before we can lay the new foundation for our country, we must deal once and for all with the monster of emissions that terrorizes our world. We must control it, cage it, master it, and no longer pretend that it doesn’t run rampant around us. We must do this once and for all, and we must do it together. This is what the Carbon Plan will do. This now is my overriding goal, and I dedicate myself to achieving it.

“I have had the duty tonight to tell you difficult things. We are at the start of a journey. There will be sacrifices. We will face them together. I see the end of this journey. I see our economy growing again. I see prosperity across the land. I see communities that have been brought together by the great work that we must do, communities that have found in themselves once more the enduring spirit in which our republic was founded. I see the light that will shine upon us as we go forward. At the end of the journey, I do see the new foundation that we seek.

“God bless you all. God bless America. God bless our planet earth and all who inhabit her.”

The president was silent. The light on the camera went off.

Still silence.

At that instant, it felt to Joe Benton as if there was a hush not only in this room, this Oval Office, but in the city, in the country, in the entire world outside. His words still hanging, as if corporeal, in the air.

Words, just words, but the words he had spoken, he knew, had changed the world.

He caught a glimpse of Amy, staring at him, eyes wide. But then someone moved in front of her, and a second later, as people came forward from behind the cameras, as the silence was broken, it was as if he could hear the entire world shouting, screaming, howling at what he had done.

~ * ~

Tuesday, September 13

President’s Study, The White House

The National Security Council had convened at eleven. Admiral Paul Enderlich, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a military assessment. At the moment the president’s speech began the previous evening, the country’s security status had been upgraded from Orange B to Orange A, two steps below full combat readiness. So far there was no evidence of stepped-up activity on the part of the Chinese military. Lou Berkowitz, director of National Intelligence, gave an intelligence assessment. The Chinese government had not responded, either officially or unofficially. Stuart Cohen, CIA director, detailed the information situation in China. Chinese media hadn’t yet carried the speech or news of it. Official websites weren’t mentioning it, and commercial websites, required to comply with government censorship ever since Google and Microsoft capitulated to the Chinese government’s demands in the first decade of the century, weren’t taking a chance. The CIA had tracked a number of blogs discussing it, but they were being shut down by the regime’s web surveillance operation almost as soon as they appeared. The Agency was pumping the speech into China on its own websites, activating a number of sleeper sites it kept in readiness, but they weren’t lasting much longer. News must have been filtering through in one form or another, but the Chinese government was using all the power at its disposal to buy time before it reacted. When it did react, the Chinese people would be presented with Benton’s actions not in the way he intended them, but in whatever light the Chinese government chose to cast them.

Everywhere else, things had gone just about as wild as Joe Benton could have imagined.

It was almost disorientating, the chain reactions happening out there over which he had no control. Markets had plunged on the tone of confrontationalism in the president’s speech, then plunged further when the documents were released on the White House website and the economic implications of the Carbon Plan became apparent. Rumors were being reported and then denied of Chinese mobilization and the dispatch of American forces to the Pacific and of actual clashes between forces that were, in reality, thousands of miles apart. The Taiwan lobby was demanding an explicit statement that the United States would defend Taiwan from Chinese aggression. Leaders of the Chinese-American community in the United States called on the president to cease what they described as his vilification of China and remove the threat of sanctions. The AFL-CIO condemned the president’s action and said it would oppose any sanctions that cost Americans jobs. Every business and trade group in the country was issuing statements.

The U.S. media was divided. Overnight, it seemed, Joe Benton had become the darling of his political enemies on the right. They trumpeted his strong stance and his refusal to be sucked into the quagmire of multilateral negotiations. Simultaneously, he had lost his support in the liberal press, which castigated him for the very same actions. John Eales had the results of overnight polling that showed a similar shift among voters. Politically, Benton was moving into a dangerous position. The solutions he was offering, and particularly the additional government programs he would be proposing over the coming weeks to ease the pain of economic contraction, were going to set the right howling with rage. If he hadn’t recaptured the center and the left by then, he’d have no one backing him.

Kay Wilson, Don Bales, Cee Amadi and Val Birley had come in to see him. The movement of opinion mirrored what was happening in the media. Their conclusion was the same as that of Benton and his advisors—the risk was that over the next couple of months the president would get left with no substantial base of support. The president, Kay suggested, needed to speak to the Democratic Caucus, the sooner the better. He needed to launch a lobbying operation that would dwarf anything he had done so far. And he needed to get Angela Chavez, who was well regarded for her work on New Foundation in the spring, prominently involved.

Joe Benton also found time to speak to Marty Montag, the ex-senator whom he regarded, more than anyone, as his political mentor. Marty advised him that all he could do now was hold on while the dust settled. He had set his course and he would have to let the forces it unleashed play themselves out. But when Joe asked him what he thought about the course he had set, Marty’s response was evasive. He wasn’t privy to the full range of information. Joe pushed him again. He had never held executive power, said Montag, which was hardly an answer.

Few international leaders were prepared to talk with him. Throughout the day, Ben Hoffman’s team tried to set up calls. Prime Minister Nakamura of Japan agreed, and Benton spoke with him for twenty minutes. Nakamura wouldn’t commit to the Carbon Plan and managed to drop heavy hints about support on the Kurils against Russia. The president told Hoffman to keep trying to get to other leaders. Hugh Ogilvie, at least, would surely be prepared to have a conversation.

~ * ~

The president took the call in his study on the residence floor of the White House. It was six p.m. in Washington, eleven o’clock in London. Bill Price, one of the president’s political aides, was listening in to take notes.

“Hugh,” said Benton, when the British prime minister came online. “Good to talk with you.”

“Joe,” said Ogilvie. There was silence. Then Ogilvie laughed briefly. “That was quite a speech you made yesterday. One doesn’t quite know where to start.”

“I guess it must have come as a shock,” replied Benton cautiously.

“Well, it would have been nice to have been ... I won’t say consulted, because it’s clear that consultation isn’t uppermost in your mind. Let’s say it would have been nice to have been warned.”

“Would have loved to, Hugh. Just wasn’t possible.”

“Well, there we are.” Ogilvie sighed. “Look, I have to tell you— Secretary Olsen will be getting an official response, of course—but I have to tell you, Joe, I don’t think that was the best way to do things. I know you didn’t ask me, but I’m going to be blunt.”

“I respect your views, Hugh. Tell me why it wasn’t the best thing to do.”

“Right now you need allies, and you don’t keep your allies onside by blindsiding them. I think you’ve thrown away whatever international goodwill and credibility the United States had managed to recover for itself. After Iraq it took both our countries years to get that back, and with Colombia, I’m afraid President Shawcross threw a lot of it away again. But I have to say, Joe, now you’re looking like the biggest unilateralist of the lot.”

“You know I’m not a unilateralist.”

“I know you’re not,” replied Ogilvie. “That’s what makes this so depressing. Maybe there’s something about being the American president that would turn any person into a unilateralist.”

“Just hold on there, Hugh.”

“I’m sorry, Joe. But I’m . . . frankly, I’m shocked.”

“Well, I’m afraid I just couldn’t consult, Hugh, much as I wanted to. The situation didn’t allow it. It wouldn’t have worked.”

“You need allies, Joe. I’m saying this to you as the prime minister of the United Kingdom, which is the best friend the United States has. If I’m saying these things, imagine what everyone else is saying. Have you stopped to think what will happen if you get no support for this from anyone else? What will happen if you end up trying to go it alone?”

Joe Benton shook his head impatiently. He glanced at Bill Price. Price’s face was grim.

“Hugh, put yourself in my shoes. Something has to happen here. I’ve been trying to make it happen but that hasn’t worked. Now, what would you have done?”

“I would have used the mechanisms that are available.”

“Kyoto? We both agreed the very first time we met Kyoto’s a busted process.”

“Then set up your own international forum, for God’s sake, if nothing else will work. But to come along and lay down the law and say, here it is, here’s my Carbon Plan, take it or leave it. Well, I just—”

“That’s what we’ve all been doing for the last forty years. Forums. Channels.” Benton was exasperated. “Where’s it got us? Into this godawful mess! Have you seen the figures we released today? Have you seen them, Hugh?”

“Not yet. My people are still—”

“Well, you look at them. Look at them! And
then
tell me whether this isn’t the right thing to do!”

There was silence.

“Hugh. Listen to me. Much against my own will, it’s my honest judgment that this is the only way to get something to actually happen. And God knows we need that. We can’t just keep talking about it. And to your point, maybe that is why American presidents turn unilateralist in office. Maybe you’re right. Because everyone will just talk and talk until someone does something, and the only person who can do anything—the only ones with the credibility to do it—seems to be us.”

“That’s a very U.S.-centric way of looking at the world, if I may say so,” replied Ogilvie. “Reminds me of a certain attitude that was common during the days of the British Empire. White man’s burden, they used to call it.”

“I don’t think that’s fair, Hugh.”

“Granted, the parallel isn’t exact. Yet it’s not entirely inappropriate.”

“Hugh,” said Benton solemnly, “my number one, my number one absolute priority, is to deal with this issue. If that’s all I do as president, I’ll count myself a success. And I’d like to know, what’s wrong with that? It has to be dealt with. You look at the figures. Go look at them and come back and tell me something different.”

“I’m sure that’s true. But my fear, Joe, is that by taking this step, you move yourself further away from achieving what you want. What we all want. After this, it’s just going to be all the harder for everyone to come back to the table.”

“Maybe you’re right. On the other hand, if I didn’t do this, I know I’d never succeed. So I guess it’s a gamble. It might not work, but it’s the only card I can play.”

“We differ there,” said Ogilvie.

“I guess we do.” The president paused. “Hugh, now that I’ve laid my cards on the table, I need help to make this gamble work.”