The Ten Thousand

Ruff to have selected cabinet members and advisors listen in, though they said nothing during the conversation between the two national leaders. Besides Soares, Wilson had her Secretary of Defense, Terry Rothenberg, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Ed Lewis. With Ruff were his Foreign Minister Bruno Rooks, Defense Minister Rudolf Lammers, Interior Minister Thomas Fellner, General Otto Lange, Chief of the German General Staff, and Colonel Hans Kasper, Ruff's military aide.

From the very beginning of the conversation, initiated by an excited and fast-talking Ruff, he took every opportunity to remind Wilson that this current crisis was her fault. In between those condemnations, Ruff pointed out that the American habit of conducting unilateral and aggressive international adventures could not go unchecked or unanswered. All of this, plus his habit of cutting Wilson off in midsentence, left little doubt in Washington that Ruff had no intention of opening serious negotiations. Each time Wilson attempted to suggest a means of peacefully resolving the crisis, Ruff fell back to his initial position that no discussions between their two countries could even be considered until all American forces were either withdrawn from Germany or disarmed. Wilson, maintaining her composure, reminded Ruff that unfortunately she did not have at that moment the ability to stop the movement of the Tenth Corps. 'As I have told you before,' Wilson reminded Ruff, 'General Malin is a maverick, an unguided missile. We have attempted and will continue to attempt to bring him and his corps under control, but at this time neither he, his staff, nor his subordinate commanders are responding to our attempts to communicate with them.'

'And. Madam President.' Ruff responded, with great emphasis on 'madam,' 'as I have told you before, if you cannot control your own Army, the German Army can.' In Berlin this statement caused both General Lange and Thomas Fellner to flinch. Both men, though for different reasons, were working to avoid a confrontation between the two forces in their own ways, though neither man knew of the other's efforts.

Unruffled by Ruff's threat, Wilson waited until Ruff was finished and then, in a voice that reminded Soares of a grade school teacher lecturing an errant student, attempted to put the seriousness of the situation in its proper perspective. 'If I am to believe my own intelligence agencies, not to mention the international and German correspondents covering this situation, to date there have been no armed confrontations between your forces and mine. Except for a few unfortunate traffic accidents, no one on either side has been hurt. This fact alone, Herr Chancellor, leads me to believe that General Malin is doing exactly what he pledged he would?marching his command to the sea with as little disruption to the German public as possible.'

'No! No. You don't understand,' Ruff shouted. 'You don't seem to appreciate my position. German sovereignty and national honor are at stake here. If I allow your mad general to go marauding through the heart of my country unchecked, I?no, Germany?will lose the respect of the rest of the world. That is, to me?to the German people?intolerable.'

'And you must appreciate my position, Herr Ruff. The actions of General Malin and perhaps a few of his officers are his and his alone. There are thousands of good innocent American soldiers who are doing what they believe is expected of them, doing their duty and what they believe is right. Malin, and not the individual soldiers, must be brought to justice and punished. I have every intention of doing so at the earliest possible opportunity. If, however, you do not allow me that opportunity, and instead opt to use the German Army to stop the Tenth Corps by force of arms, you will be in a sense punishing the individual soldiers for the crimes of a handful of their leaders. That, Herr Chancellor, would be intolerable to the American public. Regardless of who was to blame in the beginning, regardless of who started this terrible sequence of events, I could not sit here and allow your military to butcher my innocent soldiers. I must tell you, Herr Chancellor, that if it comes to such a confrontation, and I pray that it doesn't, then I will have no choice but to bring down on Germany the entire weight of the American military in an effort to save as many of those poor misguided soldiers who are following General Malin that I can.'

As if they were two boxers who had just finished flailing blindly at each other and then backed off by mutual agreement in an effort to recover from the blows they had received and to assess the impact of their efforts on their opponent, both Wilson and Ruff lapsed into silence. From across the room Ed Lewis couldn't hide a self-satisfied smirk. Abby, he thought, was doing well. Ruff had played his hand as they, including Malin, had thought he would. And Wilson, prepared for him, had come back without hesitation, without flinching, a fact, Lewis was sure, that wouldn't be lost on those listening to the conversation in Berlin. There would be, Lewis knew, little doubt in Berlin that Abby was ready to meet each German action, whether it be for peace or for war, with an appropriate response.

Pete Soares missed Lewis's expression. His attention, like everyone else's in the room, was riveted on Wilson. They all marveled at the manner in which she was handling Ruff. It seemed to them as if she and she alone had anticipated every word Ruff hurled at her and was ready with a sound, effective response. This, of course, should not have surprised Soares. He had seen Wilson use the same calm, easy manner in dealing with crisis after crisis in her long uphill fight to become the first female President. That she was now working from a base of strength and had a plan hidden away just out of view from even her closest advisors, just as she had done as the governor of Colorado and during the race for the White House, didn't dawn on Soares. This situation was beyond his comprehension. Everything about it was so foreign, so staggering to the imagination. For Wilson it was simply another challenge in a life full of the challenges that all women face when trying to deal with men in the world of politics as equals.

When Ruff finally broke the long pause, he seemed a little winded and slightly subdued. Taken aback by the fact that Wilson had so quickly responded to his threat of force with her own, without the slightest hesitation, put him at a temporary loss. In the exchange of verbal blows, Ruff had been bested and he knew it. 'Well, Madam President,' he stated slowly, still searching for an appropriate response that would soothe his bruised ego but preparing to break off the conversation, 'you understand my position and the position of the German people. You have forty-eight hours to bring your mad general to justice or I will.'

Knowing that this act was coming to a close, Wilson made sure her voice was smooth and calm yet showed firmness and resolve. 'I will, as I have stated from the beginning, continue to work toward that goal. I do hope that, regardless of where this situation stands at the end of those forty-eight hours, we can continue to talk and work to resolve this without causing unnecessary deaths, civilian or military, or devastating your beautiful nation. To that end I will always be available to meet you or representatives of your government anywhere, anytime.'

The mention of civilian deaths, which could only be German, and the devastation of Germany itself had its desired effect on the audience in Berlin. Even Lammers and Rooks, who were integral parts of Ruff's plans and dreams, flinched, for every man in that room had lost relatives in the last war. Every man there had vivid memories of growing up among the mountains of rubble that the allies had reduced Germany's cities to during World War II. Though the people gathered about her in Washington listening had a basic comprehension of what Wilson was really saying, everyone in the Chancellery's operations room knew only too well what she was telling them.

Stymied by Wilson's sharp response, it took Ruff several seconds to frame his thoughts. When he did speak, Ruff could produce nothing more than a subdued and halting reiteration of his previously stated position. 'Germany cannot sit by idly while foreign armies move through it with impunity, endangering its people and sovereignty.'

While Ruff groped for the appropriate words to follow this statement, General Lange wondered who in reality was endangering the German people. There was much that was being left unsaid by Ruff and Bruno Rooks, the Foreign Minister. Each time Lange or a member of the General Staff had been called in for consultation or to brief either man, their responses seemed to be preordained, already decided upon. Lange suspected that Colonel Kasper, Ruff's military aide, was overstepping his bounds and rendering advice that was beyond his assigned duties, but didn't know this for a fact. What Lange did know was that the Bundeswehr was being torn apart by raging debates. At every level of command, no one, including him, was sure what to do in this situation.

The first commanders to feel this uncertainty and indecision were the reserve unit commanders. Few reserve battalions, which accounted for two of the four battalions assigned to every combat brigade, were able to muster anywhere near their authorized strength. The men, one commander pointed out, refused to answer the call to the colors until the Chancellor and the Parliament were able to resolve their differences and come up with a solid, intelligent policy. A few put the matter in very human terms, stating that, as they saw it, it was the leaders in Berlin, and not Washington, that were the real danger. In an angry conversation between Lange and the territorial region commander in Stuttgart, the region commander told Lange that he could fill the ranks of the units in his area in a matter of hours if he announced that their objective was to march against Berlin and not the Americans. And to complicate Lange's position, this opinion was shared by more than a few of the division and brigade commanders now scrambling to shift units from Germany's eastern borders around Dresden back south to Bavaria.