“Which does not include Latvia,” the National Security Advisor added. The President looked at him in surprise. “Joe?” he said. “Latvia?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. President,” the Secretary said. “I must have been unclear. The paramilitaries are also moving into Latvia. We presume they will attempt to cause civil disturbances which the Russians can profitably exploit. A few years ago the Russian military ran war games in the region of the Baltics, in which they simulated taking over a small country. They called it ‘Operation Return.’” The President tried to focus on this problem. It seemed to require more than his current level of concentration could quite absorb.
“Latvia is only a little more than fifty percent ethnic Latvian,” the National Security Advisor said. “The rest are mostly Russians or Belorussians. We presume that the Russian infiltrators will attempt to provoke conflict between the Latvians and the minorities, who will then ask for Russian protection…”
“Latvia and the other Baltics are within the West’s sphere of influence,” the Secretary said. “They’re candidate NATO members, and the only reason they are not fully within our defense umbrella is that we have tried not to offend Russian sensibilities. The Baltics were part of the USSR, and the Russians would be very sensitive about these nations being made part of a Western military alliance.”
“The Baltics are militarily indefensible,” added the advisor. “Latvia’s nothing but a plain with rolling hills—Russian tanks could be in the capital in a matter of hours. I have to question whether NATO
should commit itself to defending that which cannot be defended.”
“Enrolling the Baltics in NATO is the best way of protecting them,” the Secretary countered. “Let the Russians know that if they roll their tanks over that Latvian plain, there will be consequences, that they’ll have to take on all of Europe and the U.S. at the same time…”
The President’s head whirled. The Secretary’s vehemence was making his head ache. He pressed his palms to his temples. “Gentlemen,” he said. “It’s a little late to debate the NATO issue now. The question is, what can we do in the current situation?”
“Sorry, Mr. President,” the Secretary said. “But this is a clear challenge to the West and to your leadership. They want to discover whether we still possess the will to defend our commitments in light of the tragedy that has befallen us.”
Will seemed to the President a perfectly absurd thing to want to possess. What did will matter in a world that could wipe you out without thinking? That could open a crevasse in your path and leave you a burnt cinder on the runway?
Will was meaningless. An absurdity. It flew in the face of Nature. And for a nation to possess will—that notion was even more ridiculous.
Still, the holder of the office of the President was presumed to possess something called will. The President supposed that he was obliged to pretend that something like will existed. And then an idea occurred to him.
“Do you suppose the Russian President knows what his people are up to?” he asked. He himself, after all, hadn’t known there were American soldiers in Georgia; perhaps the Russian President was similarly uninformed. Or indifferent.
The Secretary seemed interested in this idea. “It’s very possible,” he said. “The Executive over there has uncertain control over some of its departments, let alone things like paramilitaries. It wouldn’t be the first time some ambitious minister or general blindsided his own leadership.”
“Perhaps you should tell our ambassador to inform their President on the QT,” the President said. “Point out what a PR disaster the whole thing could be if it went wrong, like in Chechnya.” He turned to the Secretary. “It was Chechnya where they really screwed the pooch, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell them that this isn’t a public issue yet,” the President free-associated. “But that it can be. Tell him, hey, his people have already screwed up their little operation, everyone’s onto them, if he acts quickly, he can save face.”
“But if the Russian President is the person behind it…”
“It won’t make any difference,” the National Security Advisor said quickly. “It’s a way of saving his face whether he’s a part of it or not. Just tell him the jig’s up. There’s no need to make a public issue of it.”
“Not unless we need to,” the Secretary said. Calculation gleamed in his eyes. The President rose from behind the desk. “Let me know what the Russian President says,” he said. “I’m interested.”
I’m interested in knowing why he cares, he thought.
The others, startled, rose from their seats. “I have a big day tomorrow,” the President said. “I’ll leave the details to you gentlemen.”
Maybe his idea was useful. Maybe it wasn’t. He would probably never know.
The world could open at his feet and swallow him up, and it wouldn’t make a difference to anything. He left the room, made his way out through the West Office Wing into the White House proper, and went up carpeted steps to his own private apartments. He sat on his bed for a long while and tried to decide whether or not he really wanted to lie down.
He really couldn’t tell. So, after thinking about it for a while, he did nothing. Jason hadn’t had a good day. Most of it was spent cleaning out a feed store. The roof had fallen in, but a team of grownups had cleaned up some of the wreckage, and propped up the roof so that it was safe to go inside. The Samaritans were employed in hauling out fifty-pound feed sacks, twenty-pound sacks of dog food—Jason hoped he wouldn’t be eating it later—and sacks of useful seeds, which apparently people hoped to plant for food. Most of the Samaritans were older, bigger, and stronger than Jason, and the work was easier for them. Sweat dripped in his eyes and he panted for breath in the humid air. The roof creaked and groaned to aftershocks. By the time lunch break came, all he wanted to do was throw himself to the ground and try to sleep. Mr. Magnusson had to badger him into eating his peanut butter sandwiches.
During the lunch break, three of the other Samaritans asked him if he’d brought a nuclear reactor into camp with him. They pronounced it nu-cu-lar. He always told them yes. After lunch Jason went back to hauling sacks, but shortly thereafter a call came on Magnusson’s radio, and everyone was loaded into the truck to go somewhere else and harvest fish. Whatever a fish harvest consisted of, Jason thought, it had to be better than hauling feed sacks.
The fish emergency was across the road from Frankland’s camp. When Jason stepped up the earth embankment onto the edge of the catfish pond, he looked at the pond in stunned surprise. There were acres of still water glinting silver in the sun, all divided into smaller ponds by earthen barriers. All of the water was choked with fish, tens of thousands of them.
And all the fish were dead, floating belly-up. They were so closely packed in places they formed shoals. A number of adults, Jason saw, were gathered around a man who lay on the earthen bank by one of the ponds, next to a large, bright blue machine that looked like an oversized outboard motor. Jason was sufficiently exhausted that he didn’t realize right away that the man was dead.
“Right,” Magnusson said. “We’ve got to harvest all the fish, okay? So we can eat them, okay?” He grinned. “Big fish fry tonight!”
Jason’s head reeled. The fish were dead. He were supposed to eat poisoned fish for dinner?