Casing the Colors © Week 16

Casing the Colors © Week 16 • • • CHAPTER 30 • • During the night of February 21-22, effort and enthusiasm propelled the small group that had taken responsibility for deciding the fate of the United States. For the first time in a decade the political apparatus worked smoothly, even if it was in a desperate non-constitutional attempt to change the direction of America. At 10 a.m. on February 22nd, introduced by an obviously ailing but earnest President Harper, the Chief Justice began his short speech, turning over the protection of the Constitution and the defense of the United States to the unelected representative of American Agenda, a coalition patched together out of necessity and hope. "Today's events," he began, sitting black-robed beneath portraits of Washington and Lincoln, "are the result of many years of denial. Denial of our basic values as a nation. Denial of the hope that has inspired generations of immigrants to join us in expanding opportunity for all. We have come to believe that it is too late to undo our mistakes, that we must struggle, black against white, Asian against Hispanic, in a vicious battle to take from others all those things we demand for ourselves. "Today we see in dramatic silhouette the results of our national selfishness and fear. But when the very future of our country rests in our hands, we have the duty not simply to try to survive, but to strive heroically to regain our national promise by returning America to all its people. To be sure, there will be more violence. There will be death and displacement as we fight the forces trying to defeat us. But I will be watching, and the Court with me, as this great work goes on. "We have confidence in Stuart Wellford. He is a man of principle, of peace, and of compassion. If we come through the fire victorious, we will owe Stuart Wellford our undying gratitude for his courage and vision in this unequaled crisis. In a few minutes he will outline his plan for conquering our national malaise. The program may seem difficult but it is necessary. Stand with us, America, in this mighty work." Then, the Chief Justice solemnly led Stu Wellford to the Supreme Court Rotunda, where he administered the oath of office and Stuart Wellford became the non-elected US President. As the new President began his acceptance speech, a stunned America inhaled collectively and awaited the message of the man it trusted but had not tested in the tumult an election campaign. Stuart Wellford stood quietly, looking into the camera, searching the heart of every American. "We have been chosen for a great and difficult task," he intoned, his rich voice vibrating through the Rotunda. "It will require immense courage and faith and perseverance." In broadbrush terms, Stuart Wellford outlined General Gordon's plan for eliminating Miguel and Raqqa. He called for expat Americans to return from overseas. He announced the closing of the Mexican border and the redeployment of the worldwide US military presence to accommodate a renewed focus on eastern Europe and Russia. He outlined the coming campaign to rid American cities of islamic fundamentalist terrorists and their sympathizers. A palpable silence fell over the invited audience of families, political leaders and media representatives hastily called to the swearing-in ceremony. Their astonishment reverberated in the living rooms across America, where people watched, scarcely breathing, as the new President spoke. Stuart Wellford finished the factual part of his address and then paused, looking out beyond the Rotunda and past the TV cameras toward the Americans he wanted desperately to reach. Abandoning the final paragraph of the speech flickering on the prompter in front of him, he took a breath to calm his quivering stomach before launching into an extemporaneous personal appeal. "I ask you this morning to search your hearts and souls," he said. "Do not doubt that we are embarked on a crusade worthy of our heritage. Every human being deserves a better world and the opportunity to enjoy it. We can and we must undo our mistakes. On the road home we will suffer through a dark night of death. Death of the innocent as well as the evil, in a purgatory demanded by the betrayal of our heritage. Most human beings are not called upon to be martyrs or heroes, but we are being asked to be both in a battle for the right to survive and succeed as a nation." Then, Stuart Wellford reached out over the podium, his open hands extending above the Great Seal of the United States. "My hands are black, but they are American, through eight generations of slavery and freedom. Take my hands, America." Kate Gordon turned her face away from Pete Lowell. She felt Pete take her hand. She glanced at him and saw that tears also glistened in his eyes. The military, carefully absent during the swearing-in, formed a color guard of every service, lining the steps of the Supreme Court Building as President Stuart Wellford strode out into the late-morning sunlight. The street was crowded with Washingtonians, who had begun congregating around the Court as soon as they realized what was happening inside. Their silence became a tumultuous roar of applause and joyful cheers as the new President emerged. Secretary of State Stevens attended the ceremony, his stature attesting to its legitimacy, while at the State Department his aides were sending the message of America's new President around the world. The Joint Chiefs simultaneously delivered the same message to the western world's military organizations. Pete Lowell, concentrating on the impact the morning's events would have on the consciousness of America, arranged for General Bennett to be interviewed by a major TV network immediately after the swearing-in. The General's skillful explanation of events gave comfort to the millions of Americans who were not only frightened by the terrorist activities, rioting and racial unrest, but now also by the prospect of an unelected black President. "President Wellford has my absolute support," Scott Bennett said to the interviewer. "He understands the severe problems facing the nation and he knows they demand immediate and efficient action. The Joint Chiefs and I are committed to finishing our work quickly. Today, with a strong, healthy President and the support of the American people, we have every opportunity to succeed." There were no parties or parades to celebrate Stu Wellford's inauguration, only messages pouring into the White House from Americans hoping that he could save the country from anarchy and pledging their help. As the phone calls and emails rolled in, the American Agenda team was hard at work, using the governmental power they finally could control openly. But they fully realized that without the support of the military and its control of the transition, the orderly and rapid takeover could not have occurred. • • Miguel and Raqqa didn't miss the opportunity to send an inaugural message. In the first hours of the new administration, they began a systematic shelling along the Rio Grande, noticeably avoiding the long lines of Mexican refugees as they shattered the fitful quiet of small towns in southern Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, destroying water towers and roads and occasionally killing residents unlucky enough to be in the path of the unpredictable scud missiles. The effects of the attack were felt in Tucson and Houston where many frightened Americans packed their families into cars and pickups to head north away from the invading chaos. Other Americans gathered in more remote locations, arming themselves and securing their families for what they viewed as an imminent holocaust in the age-old battle for individual freedom. • • • CHAPTER 31 • • The world was as stunned by the quiet and efficient swiftness of America's new governing coalition as it was by the fact of it. President Wellford's inaugural address caused the West, which in the years since World War Two had become accustomed to relying on the United States as its protector of last resort, to consider the possibility of an America so preoccupied with its own domestic problems that it would be reluctant to deploy its military resources as lavishly as before. Even France, ever determined to be, notwithstanding NATO and America, the leader of a united Europe, expressed concern. Germany, clinging to France for validation of its acceptability as a legitimate European state and to the United States for support in its precarious position between East and West, gave cautious recognition to the coalition. Great Britain, accustomed to and generally preferring regal isolation, thought it understood the decision and quickly supported it. Americans living abroad, straining to comprehend the message the new US government had sent to them, were faced with the agonizing decision whether to return to the United States immediately or confront the prospect of a tenuous future beyond the active concern of their government, whose attention was riveted on its own survival. As lines of repatriates formed at airport counters all over Europe and Africa, frayed nerves often snapped with the realization that the standard baggage allowance was not sufficient. The ugly scenes that often followed were captured by TV cameras recording the trauma. One outraged American, gray-haired and in his late fifties, waved his passport at a reporter and shouted plaintively, "Christ, I'm a citizen. I've got rights. They can't do this to me." But like all the others choosing out of fear of the unknown to return to the United States, he finally abandoned his personal treasures to the mounting piles of silverware, oriental carpets and clothes being left behind for lucky scavengers. General Gordon had chosen Scott Bennett to represent him in Europe for the difficult task of evacuating needy Americans and coordinating Western defenses in preparation for the expected onslaught from the islamic terrorists. Scott and Kate Gordon flew together as far as Paris, leaving Washington late in the evening of the momentous inaugural day. He was buoyant with the euphoria of the power rushing into the new administration. As the State Department plane took off from Andrews Air Field, Scott loosened his tie and offered Kate a scotch. Relaxing in the dim emptiness of the plane, he said, "We've finally got the reason we need to muscle Europe into agreeing to a new US military presence there. We have the opportunity to replace the installations we dismantled during the last quarter century, but in a network suited to the West's new profile. With Russia's cooperation, we can plan for the 21st century without worrying about its former obstructionist reactions." "What'll it cost us?" Kate asked. "Neither Russia nor France will agree to anything without extracting something big," she said, thinking of Alexei Katerinov's plans for a renewed Russian presence in eastern Europe and France's traditional resistance to any interference in its military apparatus. "Angel," Scott answered, "we simply hold our fleet in the Med, re-open our southern European installations and force France to agree to US troops along its southern borders. They can't afford to gamble that they'll be strong enough alone to prevent another catastrophic wave of unwanted refugees from flooding in if the terrorists really target Italy and drive people northward. Don't worry about France. As for Russia, its military can handle the job we assign to it." "Where are you going to get the troops to cover Europe?" Kate asked. "We've dismantled many units that used to be assigned to NATO." "We'll accelerate Japan's takeover of eastern Pacific defenses. It fits together. We trade away some of our military presence in Asia for greater stability in Europe. Both France and Japan will agree because they're boxed in. Of course, we keep sufficient naval presence in the Pacific to deter Chinese aggression." Kate settled back in the semi- darkness to think about Scott's vision of the future, wondering what Alexei would say. It made her uneasy to realize that the two men might have the same evaluation of the opportunity presenting itself. She needed to see and talk to Alexei again, and not just about their political goals. While she was thinking about the afternoon in Alexei's dacha, she felt Scott moving toward her. "Angel," he said, easing onto the arm of her chair, "this is the first chance we've had to be alone in God knows how long." His lips moved over her face as his hand found the edge of her dress, slid under it and caressed his way up toward her thighs. She started to move away but suddenly felt aroused by Scott's renewed passion. His fingers slipped under her bikini and began to stroke her. She felt herself being concentrated into a core of physical desire. In an effortless movement, Scott reached around her with his free arm and pulled her with him onto the floor of the 747. They pressed themselves together in a burst of physical need that they hadn't felt for each other in a long time. "My dear General," she said, "I'll reserve a plane for us more often." He laughed at the joke she had made of the moment, but she wasn't pleased by his action and was even less pleased by her own reaction. Why in the hell did he pick tonight, after so long, she wondered, as he poured himself another scotch. Alexei's face formed in her mind and she closed her eyes to try to collect her thoughts, her loyalties and her emotions. From somewhere in her head, she heard Stu Wellford's voice, the elegant voice of the man she would always love, saying, 'yes, Sweetie, enjoy every second and don't let anything get away. It makes me feel good to know you're enjoying yourself.' She cursed the love for Stu that gnawed at her constantly and she swore to get away from Scott while she could still feel anger at being alternately used and neglected by him. • • Arriving in Paris in early morning, they were scheduled to call on former French President LeNoir to brief him personally, in the hope it would hasten his agreement to the military program. As they waited in the American Embassy for their appointment with LeNoir, Kate walked aimlessly around the great public room, leaving Scott and the Ambassador to their endless analysis. She looked south from a set of windows along one wall, toward the Egyptian obelisk in the Place de la Concorde and then north toward the Madeleine, the landmark Greek-style temple started by Napoleon and later set apart as a church by Louis XVIII. Between the two reminders of French world power, luxury shops sat in elegant opulence in the Faubourg St. Honoré. It was a microcosm of the world that was being squeezed by ancient cultures pushing against the West. President LeNoir, a French politician of extraordinary intellect and political savvy, would have understood the melange in Kate Gordon's head. His world was French to its outermost wisp of airspun logic. His sense of history and extraordinary political skill had combined to hold together the Fifth Republic and its allies in Germany and Britain through the wrenching economic and political changes of the 1990s, changes in which Europe was nearly engulfed by a massively popular will to eliminate all that was foreign or exotic. During the campaign for the French presidency in 2007, President LeNoir had decided not to run for re-election, a decision based on his judging correctly that he could not succeed in harmonizing his liberal pragmatism with the demands of the current French conservative political will. But during the campaign it became clear that, despite his announced retirement, Jacques LeNoir's skills were still badly needed. In the fumbling attempts of rightist candidates to move France back toward a Gaullist ideal, they could not keep the reasonable distance from the extreme right that General de Gaulle had always managed to manipulate to his and France's advantage. After a predictable win by a Gaullist, and a very rocky start to a Socialist presidency, in one of those rare moments of French pragmatic self-understanding and with the usual French aplomb, the Socialist simply suggested publicly that former President LeNoir would be one of his advisors. LeNoir was in a sense re-elected by the men who should have been his political pallbearers, men who were afraid of wrecking on the treacherous shoals of fragmented French special interests, massive immigration problems, and the French people's exquisitely honed love of personal liberty. The French realized that the potential excesses of the left could be blunted by Jacques LeNoir's balancing presence and so they accepted him as the elder statesman who represented France before the world. He was not the day-to-day leader of the French government, which continued to search for tactical answers to the myriad and often violently expressed demands of the French electorate. He was the symbol of France's never-abandoned belief in its destiny as the leader of Europe. He was, Kate Gordon thought, the one person who might be able to act as the coalescing moral force needed to save Europe and the rest of the world from its present antagonists. • • Kate arrived with General Bennett at the Elysée Palace late in the morning and were shown into a small but elegant salon close to the spot where Napoleon signed his second abdication after Waterloo. The former president, almost ninety but with a commanding presence despite his physical fragility, appeared with the leftist president at his side. A servant followed with a tray holding Dom Perignon and Baccarat champagne flutes. "My dear Miss Gordon," the president said, responding to her brief explanation of the reasons for their visit, "we will agree to a program for a renewed European defense system, but only if it makes sense for France. We understand the gravity of America's internal crisis and we will do everything we can to assist you, but European defenses are a matter for Europe." "Monsieur le President," she said, turning slightly away from the new man in a motion sufficiently overt to infer her preference for President LeNoir, "the United States agrees, but it will become clear in the next few days that Europe is also threatened by Raqqa and Miguel and their fundamentalist forces." "Ah, these African terrorists," Jacques LeNoir said in his soft but punctilious French, "they come and they go. We handle them. France remains. We are accustomed to them. Do not be sidetracked by such matters," he added, moving his hand upward in his graceful signature flourish. He smiled enigmatically, watching her as he sipped his champagne. The conversation continued during lunch, as Kate and Scott mounted an intense effort to persuade the French government to join in the common defense. But Jacques LeNoir was unbending, observing that he hadn't come out of retirement to save France from the threats of dying consensus only to sell the Republic's independence. In a final effort to engage him in their plan, Kate Gordon asked if France would agree to a summit conference to hammer out a mutually acceptable plan. "I need two days in Russia," she said, "then I could return to Europe for the meeting." Much to General Bennett's surprise, Jacques LeNoir nodded his agreement, raising his glass in a toast to America's and France's mutual love of freedom and republican ideals. Scott Bennett believed that the door had been opened to a negotiation that France could not win, if winning meant an independent response to the terrorists. Kate understood that she had been given another opportunity to persuade the French to join the West in a common defense and that, whatever President LeNoir's motives in agreeing to the meeting might be, she and her political colleagues would use them to put the American plan into place. After lunch, they talked to the British prime minister by telephone. He agreed to host the meeting, to be convened in three days. Before she left for Moscow, Kate arranged for the American ambassador to the Court of St. James to work with the British prime minister on the details of the allied meeting. Scott, the untested American diplomatic card in the scheme, left Paris to follow his meeting schedule with the heads of government of the western Europe. Would he, Kate wondered, be wise enough to play to Europe's sense of its unique place in the world, or would he baldly impose the American solution of a re-commitment to a massive American presence in Europe?