Ultimatum (57 page)

There was silence. Benton waited. Ogilvie didn’t take the cue.

“What are people saying?” asked Benton eventually. “Have you spoken with anyone?”

“Koslowski, Gorodin, Ingelbock, de Silva. Rumain wouldn’t talk. I think he wants to work up a full Gallic head of steam before he speaks to anyone.”

“Great. What did the others say?”

“They’re outraged. They say, even if the measures are sensible, the way you’ve done it makes it impossible for them to accept.”

“Yeah, right.” Benton glanced at Bill Price and rolled his eyes. “What about Gorodin? What did he say?”

“The same. Joe, what happens if they all say no? Are you going to apply sanctions to everybody? Are you going to shut down world trade? Do you have any idea what that will do to the global economy?”

“Well, I guess that’s one way to deal with emissions,” quipped Benton, and it was only half a joke.

“That’s funny,” said Ogilvie, without a hint of humor in his voice. “You’re the ones who’ll suffer more than anyone. Everyone else can still trade together even if you cut access to your market.”

“Only if no one joins us.”

“That’s what I’m trying to say!”

Benton knew he needed support. He knew it way better than Ogilvie. That’s what this call was about.

“Hugh, I know what effect these sanctions will have. I can send you a whole bunch of models my people have done and not one of them looks pretty. But that’s the point. That’s how important this is. That’s the size of what we’re facing. The effects of a global shutdown for a few months—if that’s what we have to go through —are only a fraction of what will happen in the longer term if we don’t get this thing dealt with. So maybe people will have to have a taste of that. And you know what, if they do, they do. That’s okay.”

“Maybe it’s okay for you.”

“We can’t think in the short term!” Benton knew what was on Ogilvie’s mind. As British prime minister, Ogilvie had discretion over when he called an election, but he couldn’t go more than another year now. It was common knowledge that he was intending to run in the spring. The last thing he needed was a global economic recession brought on by an American president with whom he had been notably friendly. “Hugh, that’s always been the problem. I will not think in the short term. And if that means I don’t get a second term, I don’t. If I get this done and the American people throw me out, I don’t care. I’ll have got it done. And you know, I’m sorry if that affects you. I really am. That’s not what I want, Hugh, but this is just too big.”

Ogilvie didn’t reply.

“I’m sorry, Hugh. I’m really sorry. But I can’t fit in with every electoral cycle in the world.”

“Of course not,” said Ogilvie quietly.

“So what are you going to do? Are you going to come on board?”

“My people haven’t had a chance yet to look at the proposals properly,” said Ogilvie.

“Fair enough. But they’re fair. They’re equitable. At the margins, of course, you can always quibble. And the United States will be taking pain. Believe me, we’ll be taking pain.”

“My people will have to look at them, Joe.”

Benton frowned. He needed support early. He needed a critical mass of countries to get behind him so he’d have momentum. The longer things drifted the harder it would be to get anyone else on board.

“We need someone to say yes, Hugh. I need someone to break out of the flock and say yes. I need someone to show leadership. Right now—not in a month’s time.” Benton waited, listening tensely for Ogilvie’s reply. Nothing came. He spoke again. He said it as plainly as he could short of begging. “Hugh, I need someone to be strong on this. This is a moment when the United States needs the United Kingdom. I’m telling it to you straight. Now’s the time. We need your support.”

There was silence again.

“My people haven’t had a chance to look at the proposals yet,” said Ogilvie plaintively.

Benton didn’t reply.

“Jesus Christ, Joe! It’s the way you’ve done it. Makes it so bloody hard.”

~ * ~

After the call, Price left. Benton stayed at his desk, working through a summary of international reaction that Larry Olsen had provided. When he looked up again, Amy was standing in the doorway.

“Hey, honey,” he said.

Amy didn’t come in.

Benton smiled. “Just got off the phone with the Prime Minister of Britain. I sure hate to see a grown man squirm.”

Amy watched him with angry, accusatory eyes. He hadn’t seen her since he gave the Carbon Plan speech. She’d had a whole day to brood on it, to talk with people, to hear what they were saying.

“What is it?”

Amy shook her head, almost trembling.

“Amy?”

“What have you
done
?” she said suddenly. “How could you do that? How could you say the things you said last night?”

“Amy, you heard my reasons. I have to do what I believe is best for this country—”

“Best? Best for this country?” demanded Amy. “You’re no better than Gartner. You’re no better than Bush! You’re George W. Bush!”

Joe Benton couldn’t quite keep the smile off his face. Amy hadn’t even been born when Bush was in office.

“Don’t look at me like that! You said you were going to be different, but you do exactly what everyone else does. Once you get your finger on the button, all you can think about is how you can use it.”

“What button?”

“What are people going to think? They’re going to think what they’ve always thought about America. We don’t listen, we don’t care. We make demands and if someone disagrees we nuke the hell out of them.”

“Amy, I don’t believe we’ve ever nuked the hell out of anyone because they didn’t agree to our demands.”

“All right, we attack them, then.”

“I haven’t said I’m going to attack anyone.”

“What about sanctions?”

“Amy, have you read the plan? It’s carefully—”

“Sanctions are an attack. And the worst kind of attack, an attack on poor people. Poor people are going to suffer because of your sanctions.”

“Not if their governments do the right thing.”

“But they won’t, will they? They never do. And who is it that suffers? Not the guys in the big mansions. Poor people. And you
know
that, Daddy. It’s like you’re taking the food out of their mouths with your own hand.”

“Amy, do you really think the guys in the mansions would do anything differently if I invited them all over here and asked them to sit down and help me come up with a solution?”

Amy stared at him.

“Do you really? I’m doing this for you and—”

“Don’t say that!”

“I’m doing it for you and Greg and every other person who’s going to be living on this planet long after I’m gone.”

Amy shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

Joe Benton got up. He started to come toward her. “What don’t I understand?”

“You make me ashamed to be an American!”

Benton stopped. “Amy, how can you say that? This should make you proud to be an American. Didn’t you hear what I said last night? This country is taking a lead. Finally, this country is living up to its responsibilities and showing the rest of the world how they can as well.”

“This country is wielding a big frigging stick and beating the crap out of everyone else!”

Amy turned and headed down the corridor.

“Where are you going?” called the President.

“I’m going back to New York.”

“I thought you’d finished in New York.”

“Then I’ll go back to Stanford.”

“Isn’t it a little early—”

“I’ll go somewhere else! I’ll stay with a friend! I don’t care. This place makes me feel unclean. I feel like I need to take a shower!”

Benton went to the door. Amy was already across the hall and disappearing into her bedroom. The door slammed.

He hesitated. The phone rang in his study. He stood in the hall. The phone kept ringing. He went to answer it.

Amy was gone within the hour. Joe Benton didn’t see her again before she went.

It disturbed him when he found out that she had gone. He had parted angrily with Greg, often, but never with Amy.

Amy would come around, he told himself. She was too smart not to. When she thought about it, she’d understand this was the only way. And yet the way she had gone troubled him deeply, unsettled him, almost more than anything else that had happened as a result of his speech.

~ * ~

Friday, September 16

Situation Room, The White House

The full complement of the National Security Council was in attendance: the president, Angela Chavez, Alan Ball, Larry Olsen, Ben Hoffman, Defense Secretary Jay MacMahon, Treasury Secretary Bob Colvin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Paul Enderlich, National Intelligence Director Lou Berkowitz, Homeland Security Secretary Anne Montgomery, and Counsel to the President Josh Singer. In addition the president had asked for the attendance of Jackie Rubin, Andrea Powers, Commerce Secretary Paul Sellers, Attorney General Erin O’Donnell, CIA Director Stuart Cohen, and Oliver Wu.

Cohen began by giving a summary of the domestic Chinese response. It wasn’t until Wednesday that the official Chinese media began to carry reports of the president’s speech, presenting it as an act of warmongering in a line of Western aggression going all the way back to the Opium Wars. They had also taken action. Travel of Chinese students to the United States for the fall college semester had been prohibited. An exceptional tax had been slapped on American-affiliated financial service providers, which would affect every bank on Wall Street. And they had announced a more rigorous licensing regime for foreign-language and foreign-owned websites with immediate blocking of those that didn’t comply.

Larry Olsen gave an update of the responses of foreign governments to the Carbon Plan. China had called for a UN Security Council session at which they were certain to introduce a resolution opposing it. The only explicitly supportive statements for the plan had come from Lobinas of Colombia and Badur of Pakistan, which carried no weight. Otherwise, there was almost universal condemnation. Even Britain and Japan, normally dependable allies, had described it as unhelpful or unfortunate. The complaints focused on the unilateral approach Benton had chosen to take and his sixty-day deadline. No one, so far, had engaged with the content of the documents or the Carbon Plan’s apportionment of emissions cuts. In Olsen’s opinion, it was only a matter of time until they did. There were skeptical glances around the table when Olsen said that. He maintained that at some point after the initial outrage leaders would have to engage with the content.

Colvin gave an economic summary. The dollar was down. The markets had come up a little from their lows on the day following the speech, but uncertainty was high and volatility extreme. The Federal Reserve had cut interest rates by a half percent at an emergency meeting and this had helped somewhat. It was too early to identify the effects on the real economy. The first sanctions, for which the president had already signed executive orders, would be implemented on Monday and would affect imports of Chinese steel, cement and other industrial materials. The administration was working with the relevant industries to identify alternative sources of supply, but forward prices for commodities were already sharply higher.