I thought I could serve out this second term in peace, retire once and for all in another five years, finally to teach, to write, to enjoy the summer cottage on the shore of the Inland Sea, not far from where Ogunquit had washed up close on to thirty years ago.
“Pat?”
His friend looked back, features pale, as if an infinite sadness had at last crept into a soul that had without care enjoyed life prior to this moment.
“Pat, we have to figure out what in hell we are going to do.”
“Based on the word of one boy?”
“He’s not a boy, Pat. He’s five years older than most of the cadets who graduated. He grew up in the lower depths of hell and survived. I think he is turning into a leader we can count on. I trust him.”
“Well, I for one don’t.”
“Damn you, Pat!” He slammed the table with his fist. “This is no time to think of yourself! This is no time to think about what the hell you should have done for your son when you had the chance.” He hesitated for the briefest of moments and then pressed on. “Consider him dead,” and his voice was cold, remorseless.
Pat opened his mouth, but was unable to speak.
“I’m sorry, Pat. We have to focus on the issue, not on what we cannot change.”
“I thought you, of all people, would understand, Andrew.”
“When I can, I will.”
Pat looked at him sadly. “Andrew Lawrence Keane, I’ve counted you a friend since the day we shared our first drink. What has happened to us?”
“Pat, nothing, other than we are older, and when I walk out of this room I have to be president. That must come first. Your being a senator has to come first. Later we can mourn for all that we’ve lost.”
“Fine then, Andrew. I see.” He sat down woodenly in the chair across from Andrew.
Andrew lowered his gaze. Now that he had Pat’s attention, what next? Since the end of the war the problems had been political, holding the Republic together, suppressing the Chin separatist movement, passing the language-unifi-cation laws, but this was different. And Pat was right, any plans they made would be based on the word of one lone officer who many would find suspect.
“Where’s Vincent?” Pat asked, finally stirring.
“Still out on the frontier. This report from Cromwell explains the tension out there. The Bantag are in touch with the Kazan, and something is afoot. If war comes with the Kazan, it will explode with the Bantag as well.”
Pat nodded. “You should get Hawthorne out of there. With a lone regiment he’ll be overwhelmed.”
“I’ll send a recall message immediately.”
Andrew didn’t mention that he wanted his own son out of there as well. If a war was about to ignite, he didn’t want Abraham to be two hundred miles inside Bantag territory. “And the fleet?”
“Based on what happened to the Gettysburg, it doesn’t sound good. Their smallest class of fighting ships are obviously a match for our armored cruisers. Against their ships of the line it will be suicide.”
“Withdraw them up the Mississippi?”
Andrew turned and looked at the map above the display case. The river was a deep-channel all the way up to the Inland Sea; back home, more like the Hudson than the Mississippi. Would they pursue? Undoubtedly. From Cromwell’s report, one of their main ships of the line could lay off the mouth of the Neiper and shell Suzdal to pieces.
No, there’d have to be a blockade set up. The narrows below Cartha would be the best place, but it would take time, weeks, more like months to build the proper fortifications, lay in the guns, and build up a garrison that could resist a ground-based attack.
“For the moment I’ll let Bullfinch think about the response. That’s what we’re supposed to be paying him for anyhow. Hell, I was a line officer. Things with ships I could never quite understand.”
“Fort Hancock,” Pat muttered.
Andrew looked back, wondering if there was a mild rebuke there. In that debacle the Bantag had successfully launched a surprise amphibious attack and cut off Pat’s army on the Shenandoah River.
No, he was just remembering.
“What about the Bantag?” Pat asked.
Andrew sighed, still gazing at the map.
“They’ll join. If the Kazan land on the coast south of them, and they come with what Cromwell says they have, the Bantag will join. Hell, if the roles were reversed, wouldn’t you?”
“Punitive strike now, Andrew.”
“What?”
“We could mobilize a hundred thousand men within a week and move them to the frontier. We have over two hundred aerosteamers and five hundred land ironclads. Throw that force at them now, drive a wedge between them and the sea.”
“Oh, damn,” Andrew sighed, and he slowly shook his head.
“Why not?”
“What did you just tell me ten minutes ago about how people will react to what Cromwell said? Pat, I can’t preemptively start a war with the Bantag based upon a sole report.”
“And Hawthorne’s report, what about that?”
“The same there, It’s merely a surmise, a reading of intent. We have no proof other than a single revolver. I can’t go to war over that.”
“Then provoke them.”
He thought about that. It could be done, but wouldn’t Jurak figure out as well what Andrew was trying to do? He was no fool, and he had a million square miles to fall back into. A band of a few thousand Bantag, fighting in their own territory, could run rings around the fresh recruits the army now had.
Too many variables were beginning to close in, and now, after the first rush of excitement over what Cromwell had reported, a cooler voice was whispering to him.
I’m overreacting, he thought. Perhaps the boy is wrong after all. There could even be a plot within a plot, that he was deliberately let go to provoke us into a first move.
The first move, that was the problem here. If we are wrong, the Separatists’ Movement will have a golden opportunity; they could even bring on another constitutional crisis. The Chin would use any pretext to attack the Bantag and, if let loose, it would be a debacle. The Greeks might very well ally with the Chin in order to leave the Republic, and then everything fractures.
Yet to wait, to do nothing, was repugnant to his nature. He had a window here, a month perhaps, six weeks at most before the onslaught hit, according to what Cromwell had said. And yet all that was based upon a lone report.
“Damn,” he sighed, clenching his fist, looking back at Pat.
“We’re stuck. I can’t order an unprovoked attack on the Bantag without clear evidence that they actually are allying with the Kazan.
“As for the Kazan, we know nothing. Absolutely nothing. We have one report from a pilot to whom I’d give anything if he had changed his name, and on that, our fate might rest in the weeks to come.”
Andrew stood up, returning to the window. The stock market was still at it. A scribe was furiously running back and forth on the catwalk above the Cannon Tavern, writing the latest prices on the huge chalkboard that ran the entire length of the building. A jade merchant with a particularly annoying whine, who had leased a crucial corner directly in front of the White House, was chanting about the beauty of his stones. Off in the distance, beyond the smoke billowing from the steel mill stacks, he caught a glimpse of an aerosteamer lazily circling, then turning, cutting figure eights in the sky, a student learning his art.
“Pat, nothing is to be said as of yet. Nothing.”
“How long do you plan to keep the lid on?”
“No one knows that Cromwell has reported here other than the admiral and the crew of the ship that brought him in, and Bullfinch wisely had them quarantined. We have a couple of days before the rumors begin to circulate. I want you to line up senators you can rely on, Gracchus, Petronius, Valincovich, and Hamilcar.”
“Alexandrovich,” Pat added, “he’s an old vet, we can count on him.”