The War in 2020

again.

Parker did not know what to do. Then he remembered in panic: the President.

'Colonel Taylor, sir,' he said too loudly. 'Sir, the President is on the line. The President wants to talk to you.' Taylor looked up briefly. The fright-mask face was very calm, almost expressionless.

'Tell him I'm busy.'

PART IV The Journey's End

20

3 November 2020

Daisy listened. She wanted to speak, but could find no words. She wanted to act, but there was nothing to be done. Everything had gotten out of control. They had failed. She had failed. All of the careful intelligence analysis had turned out to be a joke. And the Japanese had kept the punchline hidden until it was too late. Now it was all over, and the only thing she could do was to listen.

'Mr. President, it's time to throw in the towel,' the secretary of state said. He was a dignified old man who consciously cheapened his speech whenever he spoke to Waters, employing catchphrases and slang otherwise foreign to his tongue. 'We gave it our best shot, and we missed. Now it's time to cut our losses. I'm certain we can negotiate a safe withdrawal for the remainder of our forces in the Soviet Union.'

Daisy looked appraisingly at the President. The smooth, photogenic face had gone haggard, and the man looked far older than his years. She knew that the President suffered from high-blood pressure, and it troubled her. The Vice President was an intellectual nonentity who had only been placed on the ticket because he was a white southerner from an established political family — the perfect counterbalance for Jonathan Waters, who was black, northern, and passionately liberal. The election ploy had succeeded at the polls, but Daisy dreaded the thought of a sudden incapacitation of Waters. For all his ignorance of international affairs and military matters, Daisy could not suppress the instinctive feeling that the President's judgment was sound, while that of the men who served him was increasingly suspect. The Vice President was, perhaps, the most hopeless of the lot. Even now, with the nation's armed forces in combat overseas, Vice President Maddox was plodding on with the original itinerary of a tour of environmentally threatened sites on the West Coast. He would not even be back in the District until early the next morning.

Daisy certainly did not agree with all of the President's decisions. But she was convinced that his incorrect decisions were made with the best intentions, while the motives of his closest advisers were too often shaped by self-interest or parochialism. Watching the man age before her eyes, Daisy hoped he would take the measures that had become so evidently necessary as quickly as possible, then rest.

The President slumped back in his chair. He seemed smaller than he had appeared to Daisy in the past. His suit rumpled around him like a refugee's blanket.

'And the Pentagon's position?' Waters asked, turning to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 'Give it to me straight.'

The general leaned in over the table. He looked tormented. The secretary of defense had collapsed from exhaustion during a hasty early morning trip to the Building, and the chairman had been temporarily left adrift to define the military's position. He was a big, barrel-chested man, and his heavy face had the look of thick rubber that had lost its elasticity. His eyes were shrunken and dark, surrounded by a discoloration as mottled as camouflage paint.

'Mr. President,' he began carefully, 'we would do well to remember that the balance sheet isn't completely in the red. If you look at the raw numbers, for instance, the Japanese and their proxies have suffered a grave defeat at the hands of the United States Army. We've lost a squadron. They've lost their most potent field forces, the key combat equipment out of several corps. If the Japanese hadn't had an ace up their sleeve, we'd be sitting here having a victory celebration. Our forces performed brilliantly. Unfortunately, the intelligence services missed a vital piece of information—'

Daisy felt Bouquette bristle at her side. But it was true. It was all too true. The intelligence system had let them all down. And she already knew that they would not suffer so much as a single broken career for it. She knew Washington. Since she was a woman, her job was particularly safe.

'— and we got caught with our pants down. Our boys… did their best. They did a damned fine job.'

'But?' the President said.

'Mr. President,' the chairman said, looking at Waters with a face stripped of professional vanity, 'I believe we should salvage what we can. It's not over. We can carry on the fight another day. But this round… Mr. President, this one's gone to the Japanese.'

President Waters nodded. He made a church of his touched-together fingertips.

'And what does it cost us?' he asked. 'If we just pull out?'

The secretary of state cleared his throat. 'Mr. President… naturally, the Japanese will expect some concessions. I don't see it impacting on the Western Hemisphere… but, the Siberia question… of course, that's ultimately going to be resolved between the Soviets and the Japanese anyway.'

Waters swiveled a few degrees in his chair, turning to stare down the table to where Bouquette and Daisy sat in the first row of seats beyond the table.

'Cliff,' the President said to Bouquette, 'is it the Agency's view that the Japanese will make repeated use of the Scramblers if we don't cut a deal?'

Bouquette rose. 'Mr. President, there's no question about it. If they employed them once, they'll do it again. If we provoke them. We suspect that they've already delivered an ultimatum to the Soviets.'

'And you now concur with the assessment of Colonel… uh, Taylor… that these are some kind of radio weapons?'

Bouquette pawed one of his fine English shoes at the carpet. 'Yes, Mr. President. Radiowave weapons, actually. Yes, it now appears that Colonel Taylor's initial assessment was correct. Of course, he had the advantage of being on the scene, while we had to work with secondhand information.'

'And these are weapons that could have been introduced into the U.S. arsenal a decade ago?'

'We can still build them,' the chairman interrupted. 'We could field new prototypes in six months.'

'I don't want to build them,' the President said. There was an unmistakable note of anger in his voice. 'If we had them, I would not order their use. Even now.' Waters slumped again, then smiled wearily. 'Perhaps, after the election, you'll be able to take up the matter with my successor.' He turned back to Bouquette. 'Do we have any idea whether the Japanese have other tricks up their sleeve? Do they have any more secret weapons?' Bouquette glanced down at his hand-sewn shoes. Then he took a breath that was clearly audible to Daisy. 'Mr. President, we have no further information in that regard. But we cannot rule out the possibility.'

Waters nodded his head in acknowledgment. The movement was rhythmic and slight, the equivalent of mumbling to himself. It was the gesture of an old man.

The President looked around the room.

'Does anybody have a different opinion? Another view? Is it the general consensus that we should run up the white flag?'

'Mr. President,' the chairman said quickly, 'I wouldn't put it in quite those terms.'

Waters turned to face the general. It was clear to Daisy that the President was having a very hard time controlling his anger. Despite his exhaustion.

'Then what terms would you put it in? What do you think the American people are going to call it? Do you think the man in the street's going to fish up some fancy term — what do you call it? — a strategic correction or something like that?' Waters looked around the room with harder eyes than Daisy had credited him with possessing. 'I want you to be absolutely clear about this, gentlemen.