The premier raised his glass. “To your visit to our country,” he said.
“Thank you, sir,” the senator responded, “and to the pleasure of being here.”
“In these few private moments which we are having to share with each other,” the premier continued, “there are many things we can to say.”
“I agree, sir,” Fitzhugh said. “But I must remind you that I am only one of one hundred senators, and the Senate itself is far from being the final authority in the legislative process.”
The premier gave him a shrewd look. “What you say, it is true, but the reality — it is different. From the one hundred senators you are one of the most important. You have, what is it…?” “Seniority?”
“Yes, that is the word. We do not use it here. In fact, I will go further: your career, we have watched it for some time. I welcome you now as an important senator. I expect to welcome you before long another way — as the President of the United States.”
Fitzhugh flushed — he could not help it. To every elected official of the government above a certain level that thought of the White House was at times unavoidable. Fitzhugh knew that he lacked the glamor sometimes thought necessary for the big job, but experience and sober counsel, plus his known dedication to keep the nation out of war, could have a tremendous voter appeal in times of stress and trial. “Keep our boys at home,” could well be his campaign slogan. If he were to be called to that highest office, he would serve with unswerving devotion to duty, and there would truly be peace in his time.
The premier drew up a chair and sat down. With the care which befitted the dignity that might come to him, the senator also sat down and prepared to listen and to speak.
All that had followed he could not remember in total detail, only that he had upheld some specific ideas concerning which he had long been on the public record, and in turn the premier had been surprisingly frank about some of the internal matters within his own country. At one point he even had asked Fitzhugh for his advice and appeared to take deep note of the possible solution which had been presented to him. When at last they rose, the premier had made one final remark. “About our talk together I ask that you remember most one thing: there is no conflict between us simply because with different systems we are engaged. You do not desire our territory — we know this, it is elementary. And also you look first at the map of my country and you will then no problem have in believing that we are not desiring yours.”
That had been a totally practical statement, and a delineation of policy which upheld every thesis that the senator had supported for years. He had shaken hands warmly with the premier and they had drunk a final toast together before the private conference was concluded.
From that meeting Fitzhugh had gone home with his last doubts dispelled and a reenforced dedication to the work which lay before him.
At sixty-two years of age he sat in his chair, the sharp memories still acid-fresh in his mind, trying to make the pieces fit together as he wanted them to. Political expediency, the need to hold his own job against a tidal wave of internal opposition, could explain the premier’s astonishing change of attitude. The harsh, belligerent statements being made now simply did not fit with the man he had met and talked to in such a close and candid relationship. The refusal of Zalinsky to see him was a pinprick, brought on because the ridiculous administrator presently occupying the White House hadn’t been told about the personal relationship between his premier and the man who had proposed to call on him. When he did find out, it would be an altogether different matter.
Then through the senator’s sagging body an electric current of realization suddenly took hold; he physically responded and sat up straighter in his chair. All at once, in a sudden flash of inspiration, he saw the whole thing, he gulped in a deep lungful of air and marveled that it had taken him so long. His hands tightened, his jaw muscles started to work, and a fresh supply of adrenalin began to feed into his bloodstream. As the truth dawned, in its fresh strong light everything that had been troubling him so much stood clearly revealed. It all fitted together and it was right, as he knew it had to be. For the first time he understood what the premier had meant when he had said that he expected to welcome his senatorial guest back as President of the United States. Because now it could very well be.
He was so completely elated by his discovery of the truth that even the knowledge of his almost certain elevation to the presidency became secondary. The United States was not in any danger — it had never been. The premier was a man of great political sagacity; the whole world was aware of that. When he had taken office he had inherited a vast military machine, one which had been built up with almost ruthless singleness of purpose at the harsh expense of the civilian economy. And, most important, many of the men who had put the premier into power had been responsible for the almost intolerable burden of military costs.
That situation could not continue indefinitely, as the premier knew very well. Yet if he were to begin reducing the armed forces, as Fitzhugh himself had done, his supporters would have removed him without ceremony and installed someone else who would be more responsive to their wishes. Militarists were the same the world over.
Therefore the premier had made one of the boldest and most astute political moves in world history. He had had his strategists map out the stunning surprise campaign which had brought down the United States literally before the Air Force planes could get off the ground or the ground combat units brought into effective action. Some people had died on both sides, but compared to the staggering toll a real world conflict would have entailed, losses had been slight. That eliminated the superpower against which the enormous military machine the premier controlled had been aimed. With the United States no longer in a provocative military posture, the need for the premier’s armed might disappeared. The premier had been entirely truthful when he had said that his country did not desire to take over millions of square miles in America; the enormous territories he already controlled could supply all of his present and future needs for as far as any man could forecast.
The conquest of the United States had simply been a brilliant move to deny his own military establishment any further right to exist.
Japan had been conquered by the United States in a long and bloody conflict with intense hatreds generated on both sides. Yet after the peace had been signed, Japan had forged rapidly ahead in far better condition than if it had not been defeated in the first place. Now Japan and the United States were friendly powers, granted that restrictions had to be imposed to curtail low-priced imports from the Far East from entering the United States in sufficient quantity to compete effectively with the products of America’s far more advanced economy.
The war, such as it had been, was over. Zalinsky was a brief stopgap and nothing more — a futile figurehead. After war comes peace, the inevitable meeting of the two sides to agree upon the terms of settlement. The President of the United States had, for all practical purposes, abandoned his office. Furthermore, he had never met the premier. But Senator Fitzhugh, who sometimes liked to think of himself in the third person, had. He was in Washington, and what was far more important, he was-the undisputed leader of the peace movement in the United States government.
Then he knew. Within a few days time he would be summoned to speak for his country, for he alone knew the truth as it had just been revealed to him. He might meet the premier again in Europe or even on American soil — it made no difference. Between them the artificial dispute would be settled with a proper show of mutual negotiation. The premier would emerge as the man who had conquered America and his position would be unassailable before his own people. He would sweep the militarists out, reduce his armed forces to token units, and get on with the rehabilitation and development of his civilian economy.