Ben Bova - The Multiple Man

“Meric,” he said with a patient grin, “I am informing my press secretary. I just made up my mind about it a few minutes ago. And Laura thought it’d been quite a while since we broke bread together, quietly and informally. Can you make it or not?”

“Yessir, I can make it. Of course.”

“Good. Seven o’clock. Bring an appetite.”

“Right. Thank you.”

I wish I could say that the first thing I did after clicking off the phone was to check my office for electronic bugs or call Vickie and tell her that if anything happened to me she should break the story to the media. I didn’t. I tore madly out of the office and down the hallway to catch Greta before she got into the elevator and away. I needed her to start the machinery of informing the press corps about the President’s change in plans. Otherwise they’d have my hide on the door by morning.

I just missed her. I had to grab a couple of the younger workers and draft them for the emergency. It took more than an hour to make certain that the entire press corps had been informed.

Even before Halliday had turned the White House into his almost totally private preserve, tourists had never been allowed up onto the second floor, where the President and his family had their living quarters. Halliday was obsessive about his privacy, to the point where foreign dignitaries were no longer even occasionally put up in the White House. They stayed at Blair House or some other nearby building. Tourists still plodded through the ground and first floors of the Presidential mansion, but the second floor was sacrosanct, even to Cabinet members and most of the President’s personal staff.

That’s why on Saturday I took my usual route through the underground slideway to the West Wing and came up just outside the Oval Office. Saturday or not, Mrs. Bester was at her desk; the rumor among the staff was that she never budged from her post, and her swivel chair had a potty under it. She was a tough old broad; at least she looked that way. But on the inside, she was even tougher. Which is what the President wanted in his private secretary.

I could hear voices coming from inside the Oval Office.

“Is he in there?” I asked cautiously. Somehow she always intimidated me.

“Yes,” she said. Nothing more. She never volunteered information. She just sat behind her fortress-sized desk, gazing at me through steely eyes.

“He… uh, he’s expecting me.”

Looking as if she’d never believe such a transparent lie, she buzzed on the intercom. I couldn’t hear what the President was saying to her; the receiver was jewel-sized and tucked into her left ear.

“You can go in,” she said at last, still looking as if she were very dubious about the whole arrangement.

The President was looking very grim, sitting ramrod straight in his desk chair, his hands flat on the desk top. Admiral Del Bello, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was sitting equally stiffly in front of the desk. The Admiral was in civvies, but you could still see the gold braid all over him.

“Meric,” the President shot before I could get the door closed, “what would be the public reaction to our sending the Third Fleet into the Persian Gulf?”

I blinked.

“Not just the Third Fleet,” the Admiral said, in a voice like steel cable twanging. “With all our budgetary cutbacks, the Third’s more of a paper fleet than a real one. We’d need—”

The President cut him off with an impatient gesture. “Come on, Meric. I don’t want a computer analysis. Just your gut reaction.”

My gut reaction was to take a deep breath first. Then, “Well, Mr. President, I think you’d get a strong split in public opinion. A lot of people will be dead-set against our getting sucked into the Gulf war again, and a lot of others will think we ought to go in there and grab the oil fields while we can.”

“You see?” Admiral Del Bello crowed. “There would be substantial public support… sir.”

“And considerable casualties,” The Man retorted. “And we’d turn Iran into an enemy once more, Shah off the throne and let the Russians overthrow all our diplomatic successes in the area. The entire Middle East would hate us. Even Israel.”

“But we’d have the oil!” The Admiral said, clenching his fists excitedly. “Mr. President, we’d have the oil fields! We could take the entire Arabian peninsula.”

The President cocked an eye at him. “Like we took Southeast Asia? No, thank you, Admiral.”

Del Bello was not one to surrender gracefully. “Mr. President, I really think you should allow the Joint Chiefs to have their day in court. They’re waiting for you in Camp David.”

He shook his head.

The Admiral’s face reddened. “Mr. President! It is our duty to advise you on military matters. The plan we have worked out—”

“What happens to the Third Fleet if the Saudis use nuclear weapons in the Persian Gulf? You can’t disperse your ships widely enough to keep the casualties down to an acceptable rate, can you? The fleet would be demolished.”

“Mr. President…”

“Well? Isn’t that true? Or am I wrong?”

Shifting in his chair, the Admiral said, “But if we…”

The President leaned forward and jabbed a finger at his top military adviser. “The fleet would be demolished, would it not?”

“There’s always that possibility. Yessir.”

“And what happens if we succeed in taking the Kuwait fields and knocking out the Iranian forces? What will the USSR do? Invade Iran? Attack our men? The Russians won’t allow us to gobble up the Middle East.”

His face red-splotched, the Admiral said, “Sir, I’d rather not discuss such highly classified matters with your press secretary present. There’s more information that I want to present to you, and…”

The President eased back in his chair and smiled at me. “All right. Meric, would you mind letting us finish this in private? Mrs. Halliday is upstairs having a cocktail. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep her company for a few minutes more.”

“Certainly, Mr. President,” I said.

I got as far as the door before he asked, “Oh, Meric. One further question. What would be the public reaction to a Russian ultimatum that we either quit the Persian Gulf or suffer an ICBM attack?”

I turned back. The Admiral’s face had gone purple. The President seemed quite cheerful. “Never mind,” he told me, waving me out the door. “You don’t have to answer that one. I know what the reaction would be.”

Only a cretin could fail to find his way down the West Wing corridor, into the main elevator, and up to the second floor. But I had a security guard escort me all the way. Standard operating procedure. The man was as silent as a well-oiled robot. The guard ushered me through the Yellow Room, with its Dolly Madison furniture, and out onto the Truman porch.

Laura was sitting there alone, stretched out on a recliner in shorts and halter, watching the sunset and listening to the birds getting ready for nightfall. She had a tall drink beside her.

She looked up at me. “Hello again, Meric.”

“Hello,” I said. “The President said he’ll be tied up a few minutes more with Admiral Del Bello.”

With a smile she asked, “The Admiral hasn’t had a stroke yet?”

“He’s getting close to it.” I pulled up the nearest webchair and sat next to her.

“You need a drink,” Laura said. “Tequila and lime, isn’t it?”

“Dry sherry… amontillado, preferably.”

She looked at me, and I tried to stay cool. “You’ve changed,” she said.

“That’s right.”

Laura touched the phone keyboard on the serving table next to her recliner. “You look uptight, Meric.”