Chernobyl

'Oh, reallycried Emmaline, unable to help herself.

'Yes, really,' Stark said firmly. 'Mr. Mishko is quite correct. You have the opinion, I am sure, that the Soviet Union has become more 'liberal,' as you would say, in the past ten years or so. And who brought this about? First Andropov, himself a former head of the KGB. Now Gorbachev, Andropov's proteg6. You are quite mistaken if you think the KGB are all cold warriors, like your own spies and operatives. They—'

He hesitated, then shrugged, smiling again. He took the botde out of the freezer again, with four new icy glasses. As he poured, he said, 'And so we see how quickly we move from small things to big ones!'

The big things got quickly bigger. Emmaline knew what was coming, and yet was surprised when old Mr. Mishko moved at once to Star Wars. 'Since it is my turn, I ask why America is more interested in building new weapons in space than in nuclear disarmament?'

Pembroke turned his empty glass around in his hand. 'Does Mr. Mishko think Star Wars will work?' he asked.

The answer came back quickly: 'As a 'nuclear umbrella' to protect that pretty little girl we see on American television, no. Of course not. Our scientists say such a total defensive shield is quite impossible, and our scientists are quite intelligent. For that matter, most of your own scientists say the same.'

'Then why do you oppose it?'

'Because, first, if it worked even partially, it would be an excellent adjunct to a first strike, made without warning — and your country has always refused to abjure any first use of nuclear weapons. Second, in the course of working on it, you will come up with some very troubling new weapons. These

X-ray lasers with which you propose to destroy our missiles in flight, for example. If they can shoot down a thousand missiles in five minutes, then surely they could, for example, set fire to all of our cities. Is that an effective way to wage a war? Ask the people of Dresden or Tokyo! But,' Stark went on, raising a hand as Pembroke was about to speak, 'Mr. Mishko asks me to point out that he has answered your questions, but you have not answered his. Why?'

This time Pembroke didn't hesitate. 'Americans are afraid of you,' he said. 'They're afraid that if there's a treaty you'll cheat.'

Emmaline's nerves jumped. She had not expected so explicit a word as 'cheat.' But when Stark translated, Mishko only said, 'Yes, we have been accused of cheating. But is it not your rule that even one who is accused is considered innocent until he has been proven guilty?'

Pembroke said stubbornly, 'That works only when you have a judge and a jury — and a sentence passed on a person found guilty. There is no international criminal code.'

'We have a World Court, which has found America guilty of, for example, mining the harbors of Nicaragua.'

Pembroke hesitated. 'I'm not in favor of the Contras, and I'm not too crazy about underhanded acts of war. I don't like the CIA much better than the KGB. But that World Court is a joke. It may be biased, as my President claims. It is certainly toothless. It can condemn, but it has no way to punish.'

'Because it has no power. Would you give it the power to punish a country such as your own?'

'Would you?'

Mishko took his own turn to think for a moment. 'It is not up to me,' he said through Stark, 'but if it were, I don't think I would. You see, we don't trust Americans, either. You had a treaty that obligated you never to invade the territory of any other American state, but you broke it when you attacked Grenada. You bombed Libya without any declaration of war. Was that any different from Pearl Harbor? You condemn hijacking, but your own Air Force hijacked the civilian plane of a friendly nation over international waters in order to capture the people you blamed for the Achille Lauro—that is defined as piracy—'

'Now, wait!'

'A moment, please,' said Stark, in the middle of translation. 'There was one more thing. Your CIA overthrew the government of Chile, and didn't even have the decency to do it in the open. Now,' he said pleasantly, 'what was it you wanted to say, Pembroke?'

Pembroke was scowling. 'I was going to say that the Achille Lauro people were terrorists, but I've got a better idea. Let me run through a little list of my own. Your country has not lived up to the Helsinki declaration on human rights. You built a radar at Krasnoyarsk that violates the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Your jolly, sweet KGB operates a gulag archipelago that—'

But Stark was holding up his hand. 'Can I translate that much before you go on, please? I don't want to get it wrong.' And when he had finished, and Pembroke was ready to continue with his list, Mishko grinned broadly and leaned forward to gently slap Pembroke's knee.

Emmaline was astonished to hear Mishko say directly to Pembroke, in slow, thick English: 'I speak to you 'Vietnam' and you speak 'Afghanistan.' I speak 'El Salvador,' you speak 'Poland.' I speak 'Bay of Pigs,' you speak 'Hungary.' So for that cause — for cause—' He shrugged and abandoned the attempt at English. He finished in Russian, and Stark translated.

'Therefore, Mr. Mishko says, we might as well stop hurling epithets at each other and talk seriously of problems. He thought the discussion of Star Wars was quite valuable. Have you a question you would like to put to Mr. Mishko?' And before Pembroke could speak, he went on, caressing his gold medallion as he spoke. The tone of his voice didn't change, but there was something in his expression — a tightening of the jaw, a narrowing of the eyes? — that made Emmaline sit up as Stark spoke. 'I remember the other day you were asking about some rumors about a secret document. Miss Branford, too, I think, has asked some questions. Would you like to ask Mr. Mishko to comment on it?'

Mishko's demeanor changed too. He didn't scowl. He simply listened very attentively, nodding encouragement to continue each time Stark translated a sentence or two of what Pembroke was saying. 'What I heard was a rumor, secondhand at that. Of course, I'd rather not say where I heard it.' He went on to describe what he had heard, with particular emphasis on the most revolutionary aspects — the ending of censorship, the free elections with even separate political parties.

When he was finished, he waited while Stark and the man from the Central Committee talked back and forth for a while. Then Stark turned to the Americans. 'He asked what I had answered you when you first brought the subject up,' he reported. 'I told him that I said, as you remember, that I had no personal knowledge of such a thing and wondered if it might be a fake originating with anti-Party emigre elements in the West.'

'That's what you said to me, all right,' Pembroke agreed. 'What does Mr. Mishko say?'

'I'll ask him,' said Stark, and reported the result sentence by sentence. 'First, Mr. Mishko says that free elections can happen without any change in Soviet laws, and in fact they do. He mentioned what we discussed earlier, Miss Branford, the results of the elections in the filmmakers' union today, where the membership simply rejected the proposed list of officers entirely and elected a whole new opposition slate. So such things do happen in the USSR, though of course they are rare—'

'I'll say,' Pembroke grunted.

He got a scowl from Stark for that, but then Stark continued. 'Mr. Mishko points out that the possibility that an anonymous document is a fake cannot be excluded. Also, persons in high positions have quite adequate means of arguing cases without resort to samizdat. However, the leadership of the Party and the nation does not wear blinders. It is constantly examining all possible alternatives. All of them can be proposed and discussed. Those that have merit are adopted. But the leadership is not a string of paper soldiers. All sides of a question may be argued, and some people propose projects that are rejected. So, even if the document is a forgery, it is possible that some parts of it do in fact represent the views of certain high officials — but, Mr. Mishko says, not a majority' — Stark smiled—'or else it would have been printed in Pravda instead of in samizdat.'

As Pembroke waited with Emmaline for her bus, she said thoughtfully, 'Johnny Stark knew I'd been asking questions about that manifesto.'

'Does that prove he's KGB?'

Emmaline shrugged. What she thought was that it proved two people were KGB — both Stark and Rima, the person she had hinted to about it — but she didn't say that. She only said, 'You know, at first I thought it was very indiscreet of him to invite us to talk to this Mr. Mishko — I've absolutely got to look him up, first thing in the morning, and find out who we were talking to! But I don't think Stark's ever indiscreet.'

'So what do you think was happening up there?'

'God knows! It looked like somebody was trying to score some points off somebody else. About what?'