There was a pounding behind Dilman’s temples. His head ached. Then, suddenly, there was the relief of decision. The defensive value of DEFCON ONE was obliterated by the horrifying danger it invited-that of hastening the triggering of the first shot against the United States itself.
“No,” said Dilman, “too soon.”
The Secretary of Defense was worried. “They are on the move in Africa, Mr. President. Are you sure you want to hold back?”
He was sure. “For an hour, anyway, Secretary Steinbrenner. Stay in close touch with me.”
After he hung up, Dilman remained standing behind his desk. Shuffling the papers lying on his blotter to be signed, he told Nat Abrahams what was happening.
Before Abrahams could reply, there was a sharp knocking on the door leading to engagement secretary Lucas’ office, and then, without waiting for an invitation to enter, General Leo Jaskawich broke into the room.
Gone was the astronaut’s normally reassuring expression. Anxiety was written across his swarthy features.
“Sorry to bust in on you, Mr. President, but I think the fat’s in the fire,” Jaskawich blurted out. “Just heard from the Soviet Russian Embassy. They asked for an immediate appointment for Ambassador Leonid Rudenko, and before I could hang up and get to you, the southeast gate called in to say Rudenko’s car had just passed through. He’s coming straight in without an appointment. I guess there must be-”
“Looks like this is the showdown,” said Dilman.
“I can stall him,” said Jaskawich.
“To hell with protocol,” said Dilman. “Let’s get it over with. Get out to the South Portico, General, and bring him right in here.”
Jaskawich tugged down the brim of his officer’s cap and rushed past the President’s desk, and then through the French door.
Dilman was still on his feet behind his desk. He felt oddly calm, almost fatalistically calm. He saw Abrahams rise.
“Maybe I should get out of here,” Abrahams said.
“You stay where you are,” said Dilman. Abrahams nodded, and moved to the shabby Revels chair and sat. Dilman wet his lips with his tongue. “Well, they’re not only moving in Baraza,” he said, almost to himself, “they’re moving in Moscow, too. I guess it is one and the same.”
He looked off. He could see Jaskawich snappily leading the Russian Ambassador along the colonnaded walk, followed by two Secret Service men.
Jaskawich held open the screen door, and Ambassador Leonid Rudenko entered the Oval Office while the astronaut closed the French door and hung back in front of it.
Ambassador Rudenko was a small, muscular, middle-aged Russian with a perpetually glowering, unsmiling, pimpled face. He was the antithesis of the international diplomat. His English was exact and uncolloquial, his choice of words often sharp and uncivil, and he was famous for his use of a vituperative tongue in public.
He was unsmiling and gloomy this minute. He had removed his dark fedora as he advanced to the President’s desk, but he had not touched his maroon woolen scarf or mountainous overcoat. Under his arm he carried a wafer-thin attaché case.
“Mr. President Dilman,” he said, but did not offer his hand. “I requested my Embassy to telephone, but on the assumption that a matter of such urgency-”
“Never mind,” said Dilman. “Sit down.”
Dilman lowered himself into the high-backed leather swivel chair, but either Ambassador Rudenko had not heard him or was too preoccupied to accept hospitality, for he remained standing before the desk, pulling off his kidskin gloves, then unzipping his attaché case. He extracted three blue sheets of paper, laid his case on the desk, knocking over several pieces of miniature statuary, and then fixed his eyes on Dilman.
“Mr. President, I have received, as of twenty minutes ago, an urgent communiqué directly from Premier Nikolai Kasatkin in Moscow. I have been ordered to read it to you in person.”
“Go ahead,” said Dilman. His face was expressionless as he tensely waited.
Ambassador Rudenko cleared his throat and began to read the diplomatic note aloud.
“ ‘To the President of the United States, Douglass Dilman.
“ ‘Dear Mr. President. I have been in receipt of your note, communicated by your Ambassador, concerning the necessity of your intervention in Baraza. I did not reply at once, nor did I immediately discuss the matter with the Presidium, or anyone, except for one informal reference to it in a public speech, the contents of which represented my immediate reaction. I have continued to delay reply until I could investigate the Baraza problem, the African situation generally, through my advisers in the Kremlin and abroad, and until I could apply to it the full weight of my thought and judgment.
“ ‘Mr. President, now that the facts have been clarified for me, there is no doubt in my mind that you have been seriously misled by your militarist clique, pawns of a system that desires only to seize control of illiterate blacks in Africa and exploit them for capitalism. The so-called facts you have presented to me about the African Communist buildup on the Baraza frontiers, about the equipment and leadership supplied by the U.S.S.R., which you have received from your intelligence sources, are both faulty and vastly exaggerated. They were cleverly designed by your military and capitalist cabal to provoke you into a warlike act of aggression, and to frighten us into not responding to this aggression. It grieves me that you have fallen prey to advisers who would see colonialism continued, even at the risk of a worldwide catastrophe.’ ”
Ambassador Rudenko paused, peered more closely at the tightly spaced transcript, and then resumed reading.
“ ‘Mr. President, you have met me, and know me for one who will not be easily frightened. You know, too, the might of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, of our defensive strength, our unity of purpose, and our will for peace. What we seek for ourselves and every nation is peace, prosperity, and equality among all human beings. You know, too, that I believe the strongest secret weapon we possess is not our hydrogen bomb, but our Idea to free the world of the shackles of slavery and bondage, as we have freed our own people in little more than a half century. For our Idea to triumph, there must be a civilized and populated world to save. If there are only the embers and corpses of a civilization left, there is only a junk heap and a graveyard to save.
“ ‘All of this I had to consider and weigh, against our own national security, when you rashly moved a division of your armies into Africa in these last hours. Over a local and passive incident in Africa, you-a man of good will, I had believed, but a man at the mercy of advisers now persecuting you-have challenged the U.S.S.R. and brought the world to that minute that precedes eternal and total sleep, the sleep of death by suicide. Through dangerous aggression over a relatively unimportant and overvalued problem, you have challenged the U.S.S.R. to respond with like aggression, in the cause of self-defense, to respond thus, or to withhold its invincible arms and become the nation which, by its belief in an Idea, shall lead the way through nonviolence and good example to preserve humanity.