Secretary of State, Soares had been looking for a way to distance himself from Wilson's administration. That he was using her recent decisions as a pretext for leaving it was both logical and, after his recent lack of support for her, a relief. 'Do you, Mr. Secretary, see any reasonable alternatives?'
Like a slap in the face, Wilson's response caused Soares to recoil. The expression on his face changed in an instant from one of anger to a blank, almost embarrassed look.
Without asking for an explanation or making even the slightest effort to pursue the subject with him, Wilson looked down at some papers before her. There was, as she began to speak, the slightest hint of satisfaction on her face. 'I find it strange, Mr. Secretary, that the same man who less than a month ago came into this very room and campaigned vigorously for this administration to invade a sovereign nation in pursuit of a more ambitious objective should, in the throes of an international crisis, back away from an operation which is aimed at doing nothing more than saving the lives of our fellow countrymen. This just doesn't make sense to me.'
Soares resented having Wilson turn on him like this. He had watched her treat other men of power as if they were children, embarrassing them and making them so angry that they reacted in a manner that made them look like fools. In the past he had enjoyed watching his political enemies squirm under Wilson's subtle and manipulative attacks. He had on many occasions engineered such scenes during Wilson's climb to power. Now that he had become the target of just such a setup, Soares couldn't deal with it. 'Madam President, I will let the American voters be
That Soares at a time like this should put this issue into political terms was to her distasteful. How could someone, she wondered, even think about elections and politics when the lives of Americans and the role of the United States as the leader of the free world hung in the balance? There were times, Wilson believed, when leadership, true leadership, demanded that hard decisions be made, political consequences be damned. Leaning forward with her arms resting on the table and her hands joined before her, Wilson responded with a voice that was clear and confident. 'I, Peter, will trust to God to be my judge.'
From the end of the table, Ed Lewis, who had been watching this outbreak building up for several minutes, finally added his own fuel to the flames that Soares was fanning. 'You do understand, Mr. Secretary, that both the British and the French, not to mention the rest of NATO, agreed to support our expanded operations in Germany only if we would go in and secure the nuclear weapons that we lost control of after your failed adventure. Though we would have preferred to wait until the Tenth Corps had made it to the coast, it was decided that?'
With fire in his eyes, Soares leaned across the table and turned to face Lewis. 'Who in the hell do you think you are, you little bastard, to come in here with these half-assed schemes and act as if you were the Secretary of State?'
Unable to resist the opportunity to take a slap at Soares, Lewis leaned back in his chair and smiled. 'Well, it seemed to me, Mr. Secretary, that someone needed to act like the Secretary of State.'
With that, Soares's face flushed with rage. Before Wilson could say anything, he was on his feet and shaking his fist at Lewis. 'You bastard! You little slimy bastard!'
Wilson, upset by Soares's reaction, slammed the flat of her hand down on the table. 'MR. SECRETARY! I will not have this meeting turned into a locker-room brawl. Now sit down and let's get on with this. There is much to do.'
Eyes still wild, Soares turned on Wilson. 'If there's more to be done here, you'll do it without me. My resignation will be on your desk within the hour.'
With the measured control that had seen her through tough elections and had made her an effective governor, Wilson pushed her anger aside. Without any hint of disappointment or regret, she looked up at Soares. 'I am sincerely sorry that you find it necessary to leave this administration
Without so much as a second glance at Soares, the Chairman responded to Wilson. 'Yes, Madam President, he has. I was on the phone to him just before we adjourned and…'
While the general spoke and everyone at the table listened, Soares realized that somehow, somewhere, he had lost control. He had suddenly fallen from being the power behind the throne to becoming an object of scorn. As the conversation went from one member of the Security Council to another, Soares's heart sank. He had for the moment lost. Now all that remained was to play out this hand, sit back, and watch what happened, hoping that somewhere along the line Wilson would stumble and leave him free of stain to pick up the party's political leadership and in a few years nomination for President. Without another word and with no one except Ed Lewis paying any attention to him, Soares left the room.
There was a light knock on the door, followed by the appearance of his aide's head. 'General Malin, General Prentice has returned, sir.'
Malin, who had been mechanically reading a stack of messages and requests for information with no great enthusiasm, looked up. 'Great. Tell him I would like to see him as soon as possible, if not sooner.' Then he added, 'And tell the chief I need to see him after I finish with General Prentice.'
Knowing that the first thing the corps chief of staff would ask was if the aide knew why Malin wanted to see him, the aide asked, 'Sir, any particular subject you want to discuss with the chief?'
With a sweep of his hand across the scattered messages and reports sitting on his desk, Malin grunted. 'Yeah. I want him to do something about all this bullshit the Pentagon dumped on us after we reopened our channels with them. Half of this stuff is pure crap that has no relevance to what we're doing, and I have no intention of providing a response.'
The aide, who had organized the general's incoming correspondence, knew exactly what Malin was talking about. Though 'officially' the Tenth Corps had severed communications with the National Command Authority when Malin had declared himself a renegade and begun his march north through Germany, selected channels had been maintained. In this manner, intelligence from the Defense Intelligence Agency freely flowed into the Tenth Corps and had given Malin information he needed that his own corps couldn't gather. Since this intelligence was sent out over a network that the Tenth Corps, like all the other major American commands scattered across the world, had access to, there was no compromise of Wilson's administration. The only direct two-way communication was between Malin himself and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and was limited to a single phone conversation made each evening after Malin had received his last formal update for the day. This timing allowed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to report to the President in the late afternoon every day. The number of people who were involved in this chain was held to the bare minimum. Though no one had any doubt that the Wilson-Lewis-Malin conspiracy would eventually come to light, the longer they maintained the renegade corps commander story, the better, especially when dealing with other nations.
The commencement of hostilities, the refusal of the German Chancellor to open reasonable negotiations with Wilson, and the internal German conflict, with the Parliament demanding that Ruff accept a UN-mediated armistice and his refusal to do so, had altered the international political landscape. Careful manipulation of the stories fed to the media and well-worded press releases, not to mention round-the-clock discussions with members of NATO, were slowly shifting popular and official thinking. Malin, rather than being an insane and uncontrolled maverick, was now being viewed by many as a hero, a man with the foresight and courage to stand up against an aggressive and resurgent German leader bent on altering the political, military, and nuclear balance in Europe. This, coupled with Wilson's pledge to the American public that she would not sit idle while the Germans destroyed the Tenth Corps, allowed her to broaden the conflict with the consent of the American public and all major NATO allies.
Hence, the commitment of the 17th Airborne to secure Bremerhaven, round-the-clock air cover from bases in Great Britain, and the dispatching of a Marine expeditionary force to the Baltic to threaten the German coast became possible. Along with these operations came the opening of all communications nets and channels, followed by a virtual avalanche of messages, requests for information, directives, and helpful advice from Pentagon staff officers who were far removed from the trauma of the battlefield. Tasked with updating their own charts and briefings, well-meaning Pentagon staff officers immediately inundated the Tenth Corps staff with message after