“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 B! That’s how much we’ll pay to fill Polish gas tanks and heat Czech homes! Ten billion taxpayer dollars down an overseas drain instead of feeding American families, clothing American children, and creating American jobs!
“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 already on board. Together the three of them controlled the most important functions of the French government — the military, foreign policy, and espionage. Under the emergency decrees now governing France, they held most of the war-making and diplomatic powers ordinarily reserved for the head of state and commander in chief. Once they joined hands, the rest of the rump cabinet would trip all over itself falling into line.
On the surface, executive power in the European Confederation they were proposing would rest with a Council of Nations made up of officials from all member states. But the council would meet only two or three times a year. That and its very size ensured that it could never be anything more than a glorified debating society. In practice, real day-today decision-making would lie in the hands of permanent secretariats. And the leaders for those secretariats would be appointed by France and Germany.
Military matters would be handled through a NATO-like command structure. The Germans were prepared to accept French candidates for the top military and foreign policy slots. They were even willing to integrate their armed forces all the way down to the divisional level.
Those arrangements at least had Guichy’s unhesitating approval. Combining French and German troops in a unified army would act as a powerful check on any future German territorial ambitions. An existing Franco-German corps showed that creating such an army was possible, if not easy. Better yet, he would be the logical choice to head the new confederation’s forces.
“But what do the Boche get out of this?” The Defense Minister’s pleased look faded to a frown. “Germans don’t even piss without asking for a receipt.”