the British and Norwegian prime ministers, pronto. By satellite hookup if possible, but I’ll fly if I have to.”
“Of course, Mr. President.” Thurman’s own earlier misgivings were nowhere in sight. He was an old hand at reading the way the White House winds were blowing.
Clinton Scofield leaned forward. “You’re planning to ask them for North Sea oil and gas?”
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
Scofield nodded. “Makes sense.” Hoping to import supplies from the Arabs, the Poles had built an oil and gas port at Gdansk way back in the 1970s. Pipelines already ran to Warsaw, the other big cities, and south to the Czech and Slovak republics. Better still, the North Sea’s vast oil and natural gas reserves lay just a few hundred miles west of Poland. Shorter tanker round trips would mean lower transportation costs.
“And how will we pay for all this petro-largess?” The Treasury Secretary’s skepticism was undiminished.
“The Poles and the Czechs will pay us what they can — in hard money or in kind. The rest?” He shrugged. “We’ll have to pick up the rest ourselves. First we’ll try squeezing some new money into a supplementary appropriation. Maybe we can buy Congress off by backing a few more pork-barrel projects here at home.” The President’s mouth turned down as he spoke. He’d fought hard against wasteful spending for years. The fact that he would even consider reversing himself on that score showed how committed he was to aiding the Eastern Europeans.
He went on. “If we can’t get new funding, we’ll have to try reprogramming money that’s already appropriated for foreign aid.”
Harris Thurman’s face fell a bit at that. As Secretary of State, he’d be the one explaining to various governments why their promised assistance packages failed to materialize.
“Congress won’t like it, Mr. President,” the Treasury Secretary warned.
“Congress? Congress, Madame Secretary, can go to…” He paused and smiled sardonically. “Gdansk.”
Huntington nodded to himself. The President was committed now. America would stand by her friends in Eastern Europe.
CHAPTER 10
Combustion
The televised images were gripping and strangely beautiful.
A giant, red-hulled oil tanker slid quietly through the narrow waters between Denmark and Sweden, gliding past Copenhagen’s stone jetties, houses, and somber church spires at a steady ten knots. The tanker dwarfed its nearest companions — the two tugs and pilot boat shepherding it through the channel to the Baltic Sea. A ragtag swarm of tiny sailboats draped with protest banners lined the tanker’s route, kept at bay by police patrol craft steaming back and forth along the sound. Chants and blaring air horns carried faintly across the water.
“Our top story this hour: rescue on the way for Poland’s oil-starved economy.
“With Polish refineries running almost on empty, the first tanker carrying North Sea oil crossed into the Baltic — dogged by radical environmentalists most of the way. No arrests were reported by the Danish police, despite earlier rumors that a Greenpeace-led coalition would try to block the ship’s passage before it reached Gdansk.”
The cool, collected features of the network’s Atlanta-based anchor appeared, replacing the footage shot earlier that morning several thousand miles away. “In other news from the region, French Minister for the Environment, Jean-Claude Martineau, expressed his grave concerns about the massive oil shipments destined for the Polish port. He pointed out that meeting Poland’s needs would require nearly two hundred tanker trips a year — even without counting the oil being shipped for the Czech and Slovak republics. With the area’s sea lanes already, overcrowded, he predicted a catastrophe that could ‘utterly destroy the fragile Baltic ecosystem.’
“In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Millicent Fanon delivered a blistering response to the French official’s remarks, labeling them ‘a calculated attempt to mislead and panic’ people in the nations bordering on the Baltic Sea…”
The U.S. House of Representatives was in session, and common sense was out of fashion.
“Mr. Speaker, this President is out of control and out of touch!” The tall, silver-haired congressman from Missouri pounded the lectern in front of him, ignoring scattered boos from the seats to his left. “This Baltic boondoggle is just another example of an administration that cares more about foreigners and foreign politics than it does about the American people!”
Majority Leader James Richard “Dick” Pendleton was in fine form, playing perfectly to the cameras focused on his rugged, All-American profile. He was a master of the one-minute speech, the congressional contribution to the age of television politics. Dozens of House members routinely took the floor at the beginning of each legislative day, speaking for sixty seconds or so on any and every subject that might win them national or local airtime. Used intelligently, it was a potent political weapon.
“Ten billion dollars, Mr. Speaker! That’s billion with a capital
“Well, 1 say that’s wrong. Downright wrong. In hard times like these, we should be looking after our own people first — not squandering billions like some kind of global Santa Claus! America deserves more, not less, Mr. Speaker. And America deserves a president who understands that.”
The majority leader was confident that very few American voters would realize that the “huge” energy aid program he’d attacked so vigorously represented just one-half of one percent of the total federal budget. When government spending soared into the trillions, it soared beyond comprehension for most people.
Pendleton left the House floor wearing a satisfied smile. He’d done a good day’s work. Millions of Americans would see sound bites from his speech on the evening news, and their support for the President and his party would slip a little bit more. Not much. Just a percentage point or two in the polls. But that would be enough for the congressman’s tastes. Undermining an incumbent president was always a long-term process. Although the next presidential contest was still more than two years off, Pendleton was already planning to win that election.
Like most of his colleagues, he never considered the impressions his intemperate, ill-chosen words might create outside the United States.
For the better part of five days Nicolas Desaix, Schraeder, and other would-be architects of a new European order had been meeting inside the lavishly appointed conference rooms of the old Parliament building. After weeks of preliminary discussions by lower-level officials, the French and German leaders were in Strasbourg to finish hammering out the basic military, economic, and political mechanisms needed to make a new continent-wide alliance work. Once they were satisfied, the array of related treaties would be presented to Europe’s smaller countries as accomplished facts open to acceptance but not to amendment.
With the talks recessed for the afternoon, two men, Nicolas Desaix and Michel Guichy, the French Minister of Defense, trudged through the snow-shrouded Orangerie — a park adjacent to the towering red, bronze, and silver Palace of Europe. Aides and assistants trailed them at a discreet distance — out of earshot but close enough to run errands.
“I’m still not sure about this scheme of yours, Nicolas.” Michel Guichy shook his head slowly. “So much change so fast. It seems unwise.”
“When you’re on a tiger’s back, my friend…” Nicolas Desaix left the rest unsaid. The other man knew the risks they were running. The French people seemed willing to endure martial law for the moment, but that could change quickly enough once the weather warmed up. Political unrest and spring sunshine were a familiar and unwelcome pairing in France. Even worse, Bonnard, the republic’s half-senile President, was in failing health. If he died, he’d take the Emergency Committee’s paper-thin veneer of legality with him.
No, Desaix thought, they didn’t have time for second-guessing. That was why he’d buttonholed the barrel- chested Defense Minister before the evening negotiating sessions began. He was determined to win Guichy’s support for the treaties he and Schraeder were crafting. Jacques Morin, his handpicked successor at the DGSE, was
