There was no dissension. Clark was sure, however, that there were doubts and fears. Most would center on the ice.
‘We’ve been diverting ninety percent of our resources to the staging areas,’ General Dekker briefed Gordon Davis. ‘That’s put a real strain on the troops in contact with the Chinese. Quite frankly, they’re all pretty close to the breaking point. And it’s not like they’re going to be relieved when the counter-offensive kicks off. We plan on using them for flank and rear area security.
‘We have, to date, lost over eight thousand killed and twenty thousand wounded. Those numbers could double before the end of the counter-offensive.’
‘Will General Clark’s planned counter-offensive win this war?’ Gordon asked.
He was putting the man on the spot. Clark had not consulted Dekker before approaching Gordon. It left Dekker free to criticize — to second-guess — Clark’s warfighting plans. That was good. It gave Gordon a professional check against overreliance on Clark — a man whom he barely knew.
Dekker looked Gordon straight in the eye. ‘It has risks. It’s aggressive, but it’s sound. We’re satisfied we’ve built up the men and materiel to execute the plan. The biggest wild cards are the ice and any counter-attack they may launch out of the Beijing area. If the ice starts to flow before we get at least a corps across the Amur, the Chinese south of the river will regroup. They could also stabilize the front by counter-attacking with their strategic reserve. They’ll surely move up from Beijing. How we stop them depends on where they head and what the battlefield situation is at that moment.’
‘You didn’t answer my question. Will Clark’s counteroffensive through northern China so totally demolish the Chinese army that I won’t have to cut deals with Beijing?’ The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs took a deep breath. ‘If that ice holds up just long enough — but not too long — and we can fend off their counterattack, then yes. We’ll not only destroy most of their armor and transport, we’ll hack up their extensive military infrastructure in Manchuria in a Sherman’s March to Korea Bay.’
‘Have you seen General Clark’s objectives and timetables?’ Gordon asked. Dekker nodded slowly. ‘And?’ Dekker arched his eyebrows. ‘They’re aggressive. Very aggressive. If the Chinese south of the Amur resist ridge by ridge, stream by stream, then we’ll get bloodied like we haven’t been since the Ardennes Forest in 1944. And they will be fighting for their homeland.’
‘They’ll be fighting for communist octogenarians in Beijing,’ the Chief of Naval Operations countered. ‘And those soldiers are all third-rate conscripts. We’ve already seen the best the Chinese have to offer.’
The room now fell silent. Everyone had said his piece. None of it had done anything to change Gordon’s mind ‘All right, I’m ready to authorize the launch of the offensive as planned — on April 14th.’ No one raised a voice of objection. No one commented on the rigid timetable.
But Dekker did ask, ‘What about the Congressional deadline, sir? We’ll just be cracking their lines when the clock runs out on our funding. If Congress doesn’t…’
‘You let me take care of Congress,’ Gordon interrupted. ‘All you’ve got to do is win the war.’
The door opened. Celeste entered alone. When Gordon’s daughter saw him looking at her, her gaze dropped to the floor. She crossed the large room with her hands clasped in front of her. ‘Hi, daddy,’ she said. She kissed him.
‘Did your mom pick you up at the airport?’ Gordon asked. She nodded. ‘Where is she?’
‘Oh, she had to run some errands,’ Celeste replied. She still wouldn’t look at him directly.
‘You mean,’ Gordon translated, ‘she wanted you to come in here by yourself.’ Celeste nodded. ‘Honey, is this about that demonstration at school?’
She hugged him. ‘Daddy! I never meant to do anything to hurt you!’
Gordon winced in pain as she squeezed him. ‘It’s nothing, darling. Trust me.’
‘But it was supposed to be just, like, a student memorial. And the newspapers and television just blow my picture up like I was… Daddy, I left as soon as they started saying all those things about you! The press made it sound like I was part of that, but I wasn’t!’
Gordon just smiled and stroked her hair. He reassured her repeatedly. He soothed her feelings. Elaine had told him how upset Celeste was. When his daughter’s tears finally dried up, Gordon said, ‘Have I ever told you why we’re fighting this war?’
‘You don’t have to explain yourself to me,’ Celeste replied.
‘Yes, I do. I’ve got to explain myself to everybody in this country… and I will. And it’s all right to be against the war, Celeste. I’m against the war — any war. But life presents you with a limited selection of options, and you’ve got to pick one of them. Sometimes you wish you had more or different choices. Only life isn’t always fair. You just make the best decision you can under the circumstances.’
‘Is this about my weekend trip to Cape Cod?’ Celeste asked sheepishly.
‘No. This is about the war. What trip to Cape Cod?’
She loosed a high-pitched giggle. ‘Oh… never mind. I thought maybe — you know — this was some sort of father-daughter advice thing. Like… in code?’
Gordon was confused. ‘You went to Cape Cod for the weekend?’
She waved both hands as if to erase her earlier comment. ‘We don’t need to go into that now. I told mom all about it… when I got back. She’s okay with it. Everything’s cool.’
Gordon didn’t raise the subject again. They chatted about school. About whether she could have friends hang out in the White House that summer. About the limited number of available roles for her in the drama department’s productions of Chekhov, Ibsen and Wilde. They talked about anything but the war… and whether there’d been boys on this road trip to Cape Cod.
‘Mommy,’ Mashenka said in her girlish pitch, ‘could you read this bo-o-ok?’
‘I can’t reach it, kissa,’ Olga Andreev replied. Masha held the book up over the railing. But in the hip-to-toe cast she couldn’t put it within reach. Olga was confined to her own bed. She’d been warned not to strain the stitches. She thought about pushing the call button. But she’d already overtaxed the nurses’ patience. She resisted making such a petty request.
Oksana lay in the portable bed opposite Masha. As usual she was disturbingly quiet.
‘Where’s daddy? Masha asked in frustration.
‘I don’t know, kissa,’ Olga said for the hundredth time. In Pyotr’s brief absences, the girls had been unmanageable. Or — more correctly — three-year-old Masha had been unmanageable. Oksana hadn’t said ten words since the shooting. ‘Are you all right, sweetheart?’ Olga asked the six-year-old for the hundredth time.