Casing the Colors © Week 31

Casing the Colors © Week 31 • • • CHAPTER 49 • • In the midst of her support for her husband's attempt to hold Russia together while his economic and political plans had time work, Katharine Gordon Katerinov was still embroiled in America's bitter fight for survival. She went to the American Embassy every day to be briefed and watch official videotapes. She often discussed with the ambassador what was happening and soon realized that he felt the same sense of separation from events in the West, caught up as they both were in Russia's struggle. One day, several months after her arrival in Moscow, the ambassador found her alone in an Embassy room reviewing videos. He had two cups of coffee with him. He pulled up another video. It had been compiled by the US military for a White House briefing and sent to Moscow for Kate by her father. Its visual impact was greater than any briefing or phone description. Kate watched as a camera panned over a refugee center near Tulsa. It was the size of a small city, with tents stretching in squared rows to the horizon. Mexican men were clustered in front of canteen tents, talking and smoking. Children chased each other around makeshift streets. Women washed clothes in a laundry inside a large tent that also housed a medical dispensary and what Kate could only think of as a company store, doling out free clothes, snacks and cigarettes. The camera focused on a large mess tent where a group of refugees were eating at long refectory tables. These large communal tents were the central points of each tent city neighborhood. The size of it all astounded her. As the camera continued to make its way through the camp, a narrator's voice intoned, "Every day, fifty thousand new refugees arrive. They have made this camp the third largest city in Oklahoma. The same story is being repeated in a dozen refugee camps stretching from Tulsa to San Francisco. Government authorities see no end to the northward flow of Mexicans, who are now being followed by a new wave of Central Americans taking full advantage of the weak spots on the border." The video faded to a view of downtown Tulsa. In the area around the oil towers in the center of town, tens of thousands of Oklahomans were angrily assembled to protest the invasion of their state by refugees. They shouted into the cameras, threw smoke bombs and waved pistols as they marched. Homemade posters demanded government action. The camera showed Army vehicles a few blocks away, waiting in ominous silence in the middle of broad streets where traffic normally flowed freely. The next scene was at the same time entirely different and eerily similar. Instead of Tulsa, the city was Hamburg, Germany. Instead of Mexicans, the German tent city was crowded with Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians and Poles, who had fled the menace of the Ukraine and Belarus military overtures along the western Baltic borders. North Germany was being flooded with refugees, not as many as in America, but just as destabilizing. The US military narrator reeled off statistics about the half million refugees in Germany, with more on the way. The German government was providing tent cities, social services and, as in the United States, trying to keep angry protesters from taking vigilante action to clear their country of the unwanted refugees. "The problem is spreading in Germany, as in America," the narrator warned, "with camps now filling up in Berlin and Hanover. Some refugees are moving south toward Frankfurt and Munich. Germany has asked for assistance from the US 3rd Infantry Division based in Germany, but no one knows how long the German government will be able to hold its frightened and angry citizens in check. Neo-nazis congregate wherever refugees appear. It is much the same as in the United States, where Americans are organizing to eliminate Mexican refugees. "We are witnessing the march of the rest of the world into the West, with the predictable rise of radical leaders on both sides. Raqqa has not shown himself yet, but our intelligence indicates that he may be preparing for his first public appearance." The video went black. "Do you have any later information?" Kate asked the ambassador. "No. The Army and Rangers seem to be holding things at a status quo. For how long? We don't know." • • Kate waited for Alexei to return to their apartment that evening. It was almost midnight when he appeared, tired and troubled, but despite his fatigue, Kate recounted her day's experience. "I know what's going on, Darling," he said. "We are all trying to stop it. But, as long as Ukraine continues its border action, refugees will flood into Germany. Frankly, at this point, I don't think they would stop even if the borders were not threatened. It is just what your military narrator called it, a march West. Perhaps it is simply a necessary part of the new economic balance we are searching for." "Alexei," she responded sharply, "what are you saying? Surely you can force Ukraine and Belarus to stop. They must understand the consequences of a German political collapse and civil war." "Katharine," he said wearily, "remember that the United States and Russia gave them the green light to move into the Baltics. We are trying to build an efficient European and world order. If we stop now, everything will be lost." "Do you mean you are going to do nothing?" she asked in frustration. "Just let it continue?" "No, Darling, but I have to consolidate Russia's power again and give the western Republics a reason to stay with us instead of allying themselves with the Russian hard-liners. It is what President Wellford and your father agreed to. It is the same rationale they are using in the southwest, giving up some territory to keep the rest of the country together." "That's not how we planned it, Alexei," she replied. "We were trying to save the United States. We had no intention of destabilizing the southwest or giving it away. I said as much to Carlos Miguel. But, Russia is deliberately destabilizing Europe." "Katharine, terrorism takes many forms. It can be a Raqqa dedicated to peasant revolt, but it can also be entrenched politicians and military, determined to force compliance with their ideology. In either case, terrorism often wins and the rest of us are forced to submit. If Russia and America don't find a way to root out this evil, we will lose the world to these terrorists." "What are we going to do, Alexei? What's the next step?" "Well, if you don't think it would be too mundane, I suggest sleep. I am exhausted."