‘Some fuckin’ general back in the Pentagon thinks we’ve been fuckin’ off around here,’ Patterson said. ‘Thinks maybe Uncle Sam ain’t gettin’ a fair day’s work outta us.’
Stempel shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘We got “The Word.” We’re puttin’ on our full battle rattle and goin’ over the top.’
‘What?’ Stempel said. ‘Like a patrol?’ That didn’t sound too bad.
But heads were shaking. ‘We’re goin’ on the offensive,’ McAndrews said with a faraway look in his eye. ‘Tomorrow morning before first light we’re packin’ up and pushin’ south.’
‘Toward the border?’ Stempel asked — incredulous. ‘Toward China?’
No one answered his question. But they didn’t need to. The looks on their faces told all.
‘Hey!’ Patterson said. ‘Look at that!’ He pointed back toward the Air Force pukes.
A loadmaster was walking backwards down the angled rear ramp of a C-17. He waved his two flashlights like batons. In the dim light of the cavernous cargo bay you could see the metal tracks. Into the sunlight rolled an armored fighting vehicle. A white-painted Bradley with its 25-mm chain gun and four TOW anti-tank launchers.
‘Son-of-a-bitch?’ McAndrews slowly intoned.
A ripple of excitement quickly spread through the small group. ‘Guess we’re ridin’ in style? Patterson chirped. There were high fives of celebration. They hurried toward the perimeter — stopping along the way to pass news of this latest development.
Despite the late hour, Kartsev paced the office nervously. His glowing but muted television was tuned to the National Broadcasting Company, but he’d seen no reports from Miss Dunn. The other reports on the war meant nothing to him. The course of the war was what it was, and it affected him little.
That’s the problem, he thought. I’ve become disengaged. I’m no longer an actor, but an observer.
‘But that’s the whole point!’ he said out loud. As a scientist, his role was to observe and record. Introducing a catalyst was one thing. You must apply the proper stimulus to propel the system into action. But if you intervene thereafter, you alter the very dynamic you’re attempting to analyze. You become a part of the process, not its chronicler.
The entire debate depressed him further. For it was not new, it was stale. They were words he’d already written. He was simply tilling the same soil as before and not plowing any new ground.
Kartsev caught himself standing in the center of the bright red oriental rug. His eyes focused and he looked at his surroundings. He was always alone. But he occasionally got the sense of how he would appear to some omniscient eye. He moved quickly to the bookshelves beside the fireplace and began to idly peruse his eclectic collection of treatises.
But there was nothing new to be gleaned from them. They were as detached from modern-day life as he was. He might as well have lived in the nineteenth century. It was really a time that better suited him. A time when people tackled the broader questions. But if he’d lived back then, his insights would now be collecting dust on some shelf like those of Marx and Malthus did on his. He shook his head and frowned. Besides, my studies would’ve been impossible in their time, he thought. They didn’t have the technology necessary to conduct them.
Kartsev returned a book to the shelf. ‘I’ve got to…!’ he began, but he didn’t know how to finish. With grinding teeth he grew determined to climb out of his box. He marched over to his desk and hit his intercom button. ‘Hello?’ he said, and then waited.
Nothing.
‘Hel-lo-o-o!’ he repeated impatiently.
Still nothing.
With eyes darting all about, Kartsev could wait no longer. He stormed toward the door — half terrified at the unknown that lay beyond, half furious that some aide was asleep on the job. As he neared the door… it opened.
Kartsev’s heart leapt into his throat. But it was only a disheveled aide. Not yet, Kartsev thought. ‘I want…’ he began. But he wasn’t sure what he wanted. He cocked his head and searched for the elusive thought.
The aide stood there watching him like the omniscient eye. Kartsev looked up so abruptly that the man recoiled noticeably. The reaction was interesting. It was human and involuntary. Kartsev smiled. The man swallowed — his Adam’s apple bobbing.
I need more contact like this, Kartsev thought as the words began to fill his head. Words he would write down. Words about the power and purpose of terror. ‘Let them hate, so long as they fear,’ he recalled. ‘Who said that?’ He vaguely remembered the Latin, so he knew the author was Roman.
‘Sir?’ the ashen aide said out of the blue.
If I can get this kind of material from just one human interaction… Kartsev thought. He looked up. ‘I want to hold a rally,’ he said.
The man screwed up his face and cocked his head. ‘Sir?’
‘A rally. You do speak Russian, don’t you?’
‘Y-yes, sir, but… What sort of rally?’
‘A large one. In Red Square. I want Red Square filled from end to end.’
‘With people?’
‘No, you idiot! With goats and chickens!’ The man looked more uncertain than before. More frightened. ‘Yes, with people! I want to address a gathering of our people in Red Square. I will talk to them about the historic times in which we live. The… the fascinating opportunities we all share in writing the history of the Twenty-first Century!’
The aide was terrible at masking his thoughts. His face was an open book. Kartsev could almost hear him recite a list of practical problems in getting crowds to turn out.
‘Offer them bread,’ Kartsev said almost dejectedly. ‘And vodka.’ He turned. It was always so disappointing to come face to face with the undeniable apathy of his people. He walked around to his desk. To his computer on whose screen glowed a waiting, half-written page. Future historians will write volumes about these times, Kartsev thought in annoyance, and all those louts are interested in is bread and vodka!
The aide still stood in the doorway. ‘Well?’ Kartsev asked. The man cleared his throat. ‘You want me to organize a large rally in Red Square. And offer bread and vodka to draw people there.’ Kartsev waited, then nodded at the dimwit. ‘And… and you will address the rally?’
It wasn’t really a question. It was an opportunity for Kartsev to change his mind. The impudent son-of-a-bitch was second-guessing him. Kartsev glowered back at the man… but he hesitated. He ruled, as he had written in Chapter Twelve, through a complex system whose main underpinning was based upon the ‘principle of coincidence of interests.’ This man — whoever he was — owed all he had to Kartsev. His comfortable apartment, his food and drink and luxury, the girls or boys that amused him sexually. Everything. Therefore any risk to Kartsev was a threat to him as well. That was why the system worked as it did with very little maintenance required by Kartsev.
And the man clearly sensed danger. Kartsev had to admit it wasn’t risk-free. But he needed something — something big — with which to finish his manuscript, and this had a certain symmetry to it. After all, Chapter One had begun with a rally in Red Square.
‘May Day!’ Kartsev blurted out — instantly grinning with pleasure. ‘We’ll have a good, old-fashioned May Day Parade, only with no parade — just a rally. All right? Now go! Make all the preparations.’