30 PRESS
THEY DID IT FOR THE morning news, so pervasive had become the influence of television. This was how reality was defined, changed, and announced. A new day had surely dawned. The viewer was left in little doubt. There was a new flag hanging behind the announcer, a green field, the color of Islam, with two small gold stars. He started off with an invocation from the Koran, and then went into political matters. There was a new country. It was called the United Islamic Republic. It would be comprised of the former nations of Iran and Iraq. The new nation would be guided by the Islamic principles of peace and brotherhood. There would be an elected parliament called a majlis. Elections, he promised, would be held by the end of the year. In the interim there would be a revolutionary council comprised of political figures from both countries, in proportion to population—which gave Iran the whip hand, the announcer didn't say; he didn't have to.
There was no reason, he went on, for any other country to fear the UIR. The new nation proclaimed its goodwill for all Muslim nations, and all nations who had friendly relations with the former divided segments of the new land. That this statement was contradictory in numerous ways was not explored. The other Gulf nations, all of them Islamic, had not actually enjoyed friendly relations with either of the partners. The elimination of the former Iraqi weapons facilities would continue apace so that there would be no question of hostility to the international community. Political prisoners would be freed at once—
'And now they can make room for the new ones,' Major Sabah observed at PALM BOWL. 'So, it's happened.' He didn't have to phone anyone. The TV feed was being viewed all over the Gulf, and in every room with a functioning television the only happy face was the one on the screen—that is, until the scene changed to show spontaneous demonstrations at the various mosques, where people made their morning prayers, and walked outside to display their joy.
'HELLO ALI,' Jack said. He'd stayed up reading the folders Martin had left, knowing that the call would come, suffering, again, from a headache that he seemed to acquire just from walking into the Oval Office. It was surprising that the Saudis had been so long in authorizing the call from their Prince/Minister-Without-Portfolio. Maybe they'd just hoped to wish it away, a characteristic not exactly unique to that part of the world. 'Yes, I'm watching the TV now.' At the bottom of the display, like the captioning for the hearing-impaired, was a dialogue box being typed by intelligence specialists at the National Security Agency. The rhetoric was a little flowery, but the content was clear to everyone in the room. Adler, Vasco, and Goodley had come in as soon as the feed arrived, liberating Ryan from his reading, if not his headache.
'This is very unsettling, if not especially surprising,' the Prince said over the encrypted line.
'There was no stopping it. I know how it looks to you, Your Highness,' the President said tiredly. He could have indulged in coffee, but he did want to get some sleep tonight. 'We are going to place our military at a higher state of readiness.' 'Is there anything you want us to do?' Ryan asked.
'For the moment, just to know that your support has not changed.' 'It hasn't. I've told you before. Our security commitment to the Kingdom remains the same. If you want us to do something to demonstrate that, we're ready to take whatever steps seem reasonable and appropriate. Do you—'
'No, Mr. President, we have no formal requests at this time.' That statement was delivered in a tone that made Jack's eyes flicker off the speakerphone and to his visitors.
'In that case, might I suggest that you have some of your people discuss options with some of mine?'
'It must be kept quiet. My government has no wish to inflame the situation.'
'We'll do what we can. You can start talking to Admiral Jackson—he's J-3 in the—'
'Yes, Mr. President, I met him in the East Room. I will have our working-level people contact him later today.'
'Okay. If you need me, Ali, I'm always at the end of the phone.'
'Thank you, Jack. I hope you will sleep well.' You'll need it. We all will. And the line went dead. Ryan killed the button on the phone to make sure.
'Opinions?'
'Ali wants us to do something, but the King hasn't decided yet,' Adler said.
'They'll try to establish contacts with the UIR.' Vasco took up the conversation. 'Their first instinct will be to get a dialogue going, try to do a little business. The Saudis will take the lead. Figure Kuwait and the rest of the lesser states will let them handle the contacts, but we'll be hearing from them soon, probably through channels.'
'We have a good ambassador in Kuwait?' the President asked.
'Will Bach,' Adler said, with an emphatic nod. 'Career FSO. Good man. Not real imaginative, but a good plugger, knows the language and culture, lots of friends in their royal family. Good commercial guy. He's been pretty effective as a middleman between our business-people and their government.'
'Good deputy chief of mission to back him up,' Vasco went on, 'and the attaches there are tops, all spooks, good ones.'
'Okay, Bert.' Ryan took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. 'Tell me what happens next.'
'The whole south side of the Gulf is scared shitless. This is their nightmare come true.'
Ryan nodded and shifted his gaze. 'Ben, I want CIA's assessment of the UIR's intentions, and I want you to call Robby and see what kind of options we have. Get Tony Bretano into the loop. He wanted to be SecDef, and I want him to start thinking about the non-admin part of the job.'
'Langley doesn't have much of a clue,' Adler pointed out. 'Not their fault, but that's how it is.' And so their assessment would present a range of potential options, from theater nuclear war—Iran might have nukes, after all—to the Second Coming, and three or four options in between, each with its theoretical justification. That way, as usual, the President had the chance to choose the wrong one,and it wouldn't be anyone's fault but his own.
'Yeah, I know. Scott, let's see if we can establish some contacts with the UIR, too.'
'Extend the olive branch?'
'You got it,' the President agreed. 'Everyone figure they need time to consolidate before they do anything radical?'
There were nods with the President's assessment, but not from everyone.
'Mr. President?' Vasco said.
'Yeah, Bert—by the way, good call. You weren't exactly right on timing, but damned if you weren't right enough.'
'Thanks. Mr. President, on the consolidation issue, that's about people, right?'
'Sure.' Ryan and the rest nodded. Consolidating a government meant little more than that the people got used to the new system of rule and accepted it.
'Sir, if you look at the number of people in Iraq who have to get used to this new government, compare that number to the population of the Gulf states. It's a big jump in terms of distance and territory, but not in terms of population,' Vasco said, reminding them that although Saudi Arabia was larger than all of America east of the Mississippi, it had fewer people than the Philadelphia metropolitan area.
'They're not going to do anything right away,' Adler objected.
'They might. Depends on what you mean by 'right away, Mr. Secretary.'
'Iran has too many internal problems,' Goodley started to say.
Vasco had come to like presidential access and attention, and decided to seize the floor. 'Don't underestimate the religious dimension,' he warned. 'That is a unifying factor which could erase or at least suppress their internal problems. Their flag says it. The name of the country says it. People all over the world like a winner. Daryaei sure looks like a winner now, doesn't he? One other thing.'
'What's that, Bert?' Adler asked.
'You notice the flag? The two stars are pretty small,' Vasco said pensively.
'So?' This was Goodley. Ryan looked back at the.TV and the announcer. The flag was still there behind him and—
'So, there's plenty of room for more.'
IT WAS A moment such as he had dreamed of, but the culmination of such a dream is always better than its contemplation, because now the cheers were real, striking his ears from the outside, not the inside. Mahmoud Haji Daryaei had flown in before dawn, and with the rising of the sun he'd walked into the central mosque, removing his shoes, washing his hands and forearms, because a man was supposed to be clean before his God. Humbly, he'd
