Ambassador Yevgeny Yakolev was escorted through the executive mansion to the Treaty Room. The French President was in the Oval Office, and it simply wouldn't do to have the ambassador run into the Gallic chief of state.
As Yakolev entered, he found the President and the Secretary of State waiting to receive him. The Defense Secretary was absent, indicating the American saber had been put back in its sheath — for the moment.
"Mr. President," said the portly Yakolev.
The President nodded in reply and said, "Mr. Ambassador, please sit down." The old professor did so.
"Now then, Mr. Ambassador, do you have a response to my query of yesterday evening?"
' 'Indeed I do, Mr. President. The Foreign Ministry submitted your supposition to the Defense Ministry, and I am happy to report that the matter was investigated thoroughly and found to have no substance whatsoever. In fact, my colleagues arrived at the same conclusion I did — that you are most likely experiencing some malfunction with your spacecraft and wish to, if you will forgive me, fabricate a rumor that the Soviet Union is somehow responsible for these problems. As I mentioned, such a rumor was attempted after your Challenger disaster. It is painful for me to bear such a distasteful message as this, Mr. President, but there you have it."
The Secretary of State saw the President's jaw muscles start flexing.
"Mr. Ambassador," said the chief executive through his teeth. "I told you last night that there is no malfunction or mistake. Someone inside the Soviet Union is talking to our space shuttle, and I want to know what it's about." Toward the end of his rejoinder, the President's voice started to rise.
Yakolev gave an exasperated sigh, thinking this American reminded him of an obstinate graduate student. "Mr. President, please try to understand. In my message to the Foreign Minister I conveyed your very real concern about this matter. The Foreign Minister personally called the Defense Minister, who personally investigated the matter himself. I have known these men for many years and I have the assurance of the Foreign Minister that there is absolutely no substance to your allegations, and we consider the matter closed."
The pugnacious President was about to explode when the Secretary of State lifted a hand to cut him off. "Very well, Mr. Ambassador," said the diplomat. "The President and I appreciate your timely response to our inquiry. We emphasize that our position remains unchanged and we can only wait to see how the situation with our spacecraft develops. Please convey our regards to the Foreign Minister and Defense Minister, and thank them for their attention to this matter."
The President gave his Cabinet officer a funny look, but decided to keep his mouth shut.
Yakolev nodded, and rose. "Very well, Mr. Secretary. I shall leave it at that. I would like to convey my personal wishes that no harm has come to any of your crewmen aboard your spacecraft. I have always admired the courage of the space explorers— of all nations. Mr. President, I bid you good morning."
The President only nodded and the ambassador withdrew. After the door closed he turned to his Secretary of State. "And just what was that all about?"
The Secretary rose and began pacing the room. Finally he muttered, "Something's screwy here, Mr. President."
The chief executive gawked. "Well, no screamin' shit, Winston. Even / knew that. I was fixing to read Yakolev the riot act when you cut me off. Why?"
The diplomat leaned over the table.' 'Consider this, Mr. President. First of all, as we've already noted, Yakolev is a lousy liar. Plus he's an independent cuss. We know he's personally very close to the Foreign Minister and the Defense Minister, and those two are heavyweights on the Politburo. It's highly unlikely that those two would try to pull Yakolev's chain and send a false message through him. If they did, Yakolev probably wouldn't carry the message himself. He'd push it off on a subordinate. And even if he did bring in a phony story himself, he'd have been squirming in that chair."
The President shrugged. "Okay. Keep going. I'm listening."
The Cabinet officer started pacing again. In his well-tailored pinstripe suit he really did look as if he'd stepped off the cover of Gentlemen's Quarterly. "Mr. President, the single hardest thing for any American diplomat to do is to get inside the Russian mind. I know. I was posted in Moscow for four years. That's because Americans are brought up in a culture of strict laws, protected rights, venerated institutions. By comparison, the Soviet government is such a Byzantine enterprise that I doubt Machiavelli himself could survive in it today — especially within the Politburo. It's nothing like an elected senate or parliament with predetermined terms of office. No. It's more like a confederation of Mafia bosses, all of them constantly jockeying for position."
The President's hackles went up over the reference to the Mafia. Less than one percent of Italian-Americans were a part of organized crime, yet it was a stereotype with which all of them— including himself — had to contend. "So, what are you saying?"
"What I'm saying, sir," continued the Secretary, "is that it's not unprecedented for conflicting, yet genuine, messages to come out of the Kremlin. During the Cuban fnissile crisis, President Kennedy received conflicting letters from Khrushchev almost simultaneously."
The President scratched his head. "You mean the ministers of Foreign Relations and Defense in the Politburo don't know what's going on in their own government? That's a pretty big pill to swallow, Winston."
The Secretary had to be careful now. There was a very fine line between reasonable conclusions and pure speculation. "I'm simply saying it's… possible."
The President's nostrils flared. "Jesus Christ, Winston. Anything is possible. I've got the deadliest weapon ever produced by man floating around in space, and some Foggy Bottom supposition isn't going to get it down for me. I think we should've given it to Yakolev with both barrels to warn the damn Russians off. Mafia bosses understand muscle, you know."
Now it was the Secretary who got his hackles up. "Mr. President, have you ever been fired?"
The former auto executive gawked again. "Huh?'-'
"I asked you if you'd ever been fired."
A scowl crossed the President's face. He'd once been canned in the messiest, ugliest, most publicly humiliating corporate termination in American industrial history. Although he had landed on his feet with an ailing car company and achieved a spectacular turnaround, and then gone on to capture the Presidency, the episode was still a sore subject with him. "You know damn good and well I've been fired before, Winston. Every mother's son on planet earth knows that. What's it got to do with anything?"
The Secretary was pacing again. "Well, I've been fired, too," he said in recollection. "After graduation from Dartmouth I joined the foreign service. My first embassy posting in Saigon got cut short. You see, after a long day's work at the embassy I'd hang out with some of the reporters in town. But back then I was so damn naive I didn't even know what a 'leaker' was— until I turned out to be one. The ambassador found out and didn't care for it much. He personally administered the ax." The Secretary sniffed, allowing himself a moment of reflection. "Having self-destructed my foreign service career, it was at that point I decided to enter law school at Columbia. If Dr. Kissinger hadn't rehabilitated me several years later, I'd probably be probating wills in Buffalo right now."
The President shrugged again. "So? I don't understand what point you're trying to make."
The Cabinet officer leaned over the table again. "The point is, Mr. President, that out of that whole episode, the one thing that I vividly remember is those final days before I was summoned into the ambassador's office and given the ax. Think back to your own experience, Mr. President. Remember? Your company had just gone through a friendly takeover. It looked like you would be made chairman of the surviving company. You thought everything was rosy until you walked into that board of directors' meeting — then the people you thought were your friends pulled the rug right out from under you and threw you out on the street. You didn't see it coming, did you?"