‘I’ll make no promises,’ Caitlin replied. ‘Other than to assess the intelligence without bias. I’ll report to Mister Culver. What he puts in front of the President is up to him.’
‘Fair is fair,’ Blackstone said, reaching for the coffee pot. ‘Musso, you up for a fresh cup? You look like you’re drifting off, old man.’
In fact, he looked like he was lost in some old memory. ‘No, I’m fine. Thank you,’ Tusk said once he’d rejoined them.
‘Kate?’
She demurred. ‘We have all of the data you’ve cited so far, sir,’ she said. ‘None of it implies a need for urgent policy or resource action. Not given the way our forces are already overstretched. Is there some other reason you’re concerned about the Federation?’
Special Agent Monroe had little interest in his answer. But she had her role to play, and Colonel Murdoch would not have been impressed with Blackstone’s case thus far. The Governor and his aide exchanged a glance. McCutcheon excused himself and left the office.
‘You read much history, Kate?’ asked Blackstone.
‘Some, sir. In college. Mostly course-related.’
‘Of course. But you would be familiar with the big picture, between the wars last century. The rise of the absolute tyrants and the superstates. Hitler’s Germany. The Soviet Union. And the little Hitlers here and there. Saddam. The interchangeable ayatollahs.’
She indicated some familiarity with the twentieth century.
‘That’s good,’ said Blackstone. ‘Because I think we’re living through something similar. The 1920s and ‘30s, Kate. They were an historical discontinuity, by which I mean the orderly progression of history was shattered. By the slaughter of the Great War. It destroyed empires, re-fashioned the world, swept away an old order and for three decades, and arguably for more, there was no sense of continuity. You change a few decisions here or there, and you change what comes afterwards forever. There was no reason we had to win in 1945. No reason why it had to be the Soviets who lost in 1989 either. It seems inevitable looking back, what the commies used to call “the correlation of forces”, but it was really just one day after another, one decision here, an action taken or not taken there. FDR dying of polio. The Depression running much deeper for longer. Nixon not getting caught and poisoning the well for ever after.’
The Governor looked as though he was enjoying himself with his free-ranging lecture, right up until the point when Musso interrupted him.
‘Are we going somewhere today, Professor?’
A hint of annoyance crossed his face but he composed himself. ‘Ever the literalist, eh Musso?’ he sighed. ‘A common failing of the Jarhead. A lack of imagination and a refusal to learn from history. My service commenced all the way back in Vietnam and you know what I learned there, Kate?’
‘No, sir.’
‘The United States Marine Corps was the finest implement ever crafted for getting young American lads killed for no good reason at all.’
She felt Musso radiate waves of hostility and sensed the tension that suddenly strained at every muscle in his body. Blackstone, meanwhile, seemed to be enjoying himself again, grinning like a cat in front of a big bowl of cream.
‘I learned lessons in Vietnam, Kate. But I learned even more later, including the most important - which was to never stop learning, to never stop questioning your basic assumptions. Colin Powell, God rest his soul wherever it may have been taken, used to be fond of lecturing us about the lessons of Vietnam and the limits of power. But he never questioned himself about whether those limits had changed in the years between our ignoble defeat in Vietnam - for that is what it was, and the revisionists be damned - and the moment of half-achieved victory he engineered in the First Gulf War. If he had asked himself that question, I don’t believe we would have been sitting in the desert in 2003, waiting to finish the job, when the Wave swept everything away.’
‘I don’t recall you being in the desert in ‘03, Governor,’ said Musso, as though he was actually racking his memory. ‘Weren’t you in … Fort Lewis? Yes, that’s right. I seem to recall something about a military junta you were trying to impose there.’
None of the anger she had seen flash in his eyes was evident in Blackstone’s reaction to the taunt. He laughed.
‘Indeed, I was not in the desert, Tusk. Nor you, as I recall.’
Caitlin was certain this was a cue to revisit the subject of Musso’s surrender of Guantanamo to the Venezuelans, and prepared to intercede before the meeting descended into a shambles. But the Governor waved off Musso’s diversionary attack.
‘I suppose we should cherish the memory of Powell for not finishing the job the first time around. It meant we were lucky enough to have so many of our forces outside the Wave in March ‘03. But what I really wanted to say, Kate, is that I believe we are living through a time of shattered, discontinuous history, and I have come to the conclusion that it will fall to us, as it fell to our grandfathers, to resist a tyranny, to prevent it establishing itself in our world.’
‘You see yourself as Winston Churchill, then, Governor?’ Musso deadpanned.
‘No, but I see us facing the same question Churchill faced in the years when he alone stood before the truth of what was coming.’
McCutcheon returned with a steel briefcase before his boss could build up another head of steam. He placed it on the table around which they sat, careful not to scratch the surface. After entering separate combinations for both locks, he snapped open the lid and took out two folders, which he handed to Caitlin and Musso. Inside hers, Caitlin found transcripts of interviews and photographs of four men.
‘What you have here,’ said Ty McCutcheon, ‘is a record of the interrogation of the surviving members of a Federation special forces squad captured by long-range TDF patrols in central Florida -‘
‘Wait a minute,’ protested Musso. ‘Florida?’
‘Hey, I said long range,’ McCutcheon replied.
‘You’re not supposed to be in Florida.’
‘Neither are they.’
Caitlin could see the exchange getting off topic. This incident was obviously why Blackstone had sought to mend his fences with Seattle. This was why he thought he needed help. A point of weakness.
‘Gentlemen,’ she said, in Katherine Murdoch’s best warning voice. ‘Perhaps you could give us the Reader’s Digest version, Mr McCutcheon?’
Blackstone’s aide checked with his boss, who nodded.
‘These four men were captured in the St Teresa area, an hour south of Tallahassee. They were part of a six-man squad, but two of their number were killed during the encounter with our lurps.’
Long-range recon patrols, Caitlin reminded herself. An old Vietnam term. Nowhere in her briefing papers had it mentioned the TDF pushing lurps all the way into the Florida panhandle. That was still pirate-controlled territory.
‘Long story short, Roberto knows it will be a good ten or fifteen years before he’s consolidated his power and built up his military forces to the point where he can go head to head with us,’ said McCutcheon. There was no trace of the drunken frat boy who had entertained everybody in the bar last night. Not much trace of a hangover either. ‘Our residual power is considerable, for now. Meanwhile, he’s trying to weld together a transnational force from the bits and pieces he cherry-picked from the carcasses of the South American states he took over.’
Caitlin glanced across at Musso, who had lost interest in butting heads with Blackstone and was now immersed in the documentation.
‘But Morales understands that we are completely overstretched in the three areas we do control. The Pacific Northwest, the New York-New England enclave and Texas. From the debriefing of his special forces guys, we’ve ascertained that he is interested in seeding colony settlements well outside our area of influence and direct control. That’s what these guys were doing. Forward recon. The idea is they grab up the turf, establish squatters’ rights, and dare us to do something about it when we eventually discover them.’