第 9 页

Moss was conducted to a jacaranda-framed bungalow, given half an hour to bathe and shave, then led to the man-sion and into a cool, leather-upholstered study. Two minutes later he was confronted by a tall, white-haired old man.

?Mr. Moss　 said the man. ?Mr. Irving Moss　

?Yes, sir,? said Moss. He smelt money, a lot of it.

?My name is Miller,? said the man. ?Cyrus V. Miller.?

?

April

The meeting was in the Cabinet Room, down the hall and past the private secretary?s room from the Oval Office. Like most people, President John Cormack had been sur-prised by the comparative smallness of the Oval Office when he had first seen it. The Cabinet Room, with its great eight-sided table beneath Stuart?s portrait of George Washington, gave more room to spread papers and lean on elbows.

That morning John Cormack had invited his inner Cabi-net of close and trusted friends and advisers to consider the final draft of the Nantucket Treaty. The details were worked out, the verification procedures checked through; the experts had given their grudging concurrence?or not, in the case of two senior generals who retired and three Pentagon staffers who had chosen to resign?but Cormack wanted last com-ments from his special team.

He was sixty years old, at the peak of his intellectual and political powers, unashamedly enjoying the popularity and authority of an office he had never expected to hold. When the crisis had enveloped the Republican party in the summer of ?88, the party caucus had looked around wildly for someone to step in and take over the candidacy. Their collective eye had fallen on this congressman from Connecti-cut, scion of a wealthy and patrician New England family who had chosen to leave his family wealth in a series of trust funds and become a professor at Cornell until turning to Connecticut politics in his late thirties.

On the liberal wing of his party, John Cormack had been a virtual unknown to the country at large. Intimates knew him as decisive, honest, and humane, and had assured the caucus he was clean as the driven snow. He was not known as a television personality?now an indispensable attribute of a candidate?but they picked him nevertheless. To the media he was a bore. And then in four months of barn-storming campaigning, the unknown had turned things around. Forsaking tradition, he looked into the camera?s eye and gave straight answers to every question, supposedly a recipe for disaster. He offended some, but mainly on the right, and they had nowhere else to go with their votes any-way. And he had pleased many more. A Protestant with an Ulster name, he had insisted as a condition of his coming that he pick his own Vice President, and had chosen Michael Odell, a confirmed Irish American and a Catholic from Texas.

They were quite unalike. Odell was much farther to the right than Cormack and had been governor of his state. Cormack just happened to like and trust the gum-chewing man from Waco. Somehow the ticket had worked; the voters went, by a narrow margin, for the man the press (wrongly) liked to compare with Woodrow Wilson, America?s last professor-President, and the running mate who bluntly told Dan Rather:

?Ah don?t always agree with mah friend John Cormack but, hell, this is America and I?ll flatten any man who says he doesn?t have the right to speak his mind.?

And it worked. The combination of the arrow-straight NewEnglander, with his powerful and persuasive delivery, and the deceptively folksy Southwesterner took the vital black, Hispanic, and Irish votes and won. Since taking office Cormack had deliberately involved Odell in decision-making at the highest level. Now they sat opposite each other to discuss a treaty Cormack knew Odell disliked profoundly. Flanking the President were four other intimates: Jim Donaldson, Secretary of State; Bill Walters, the Attorney General; Hubert Reed of the Treasury; and Morton Stannard of Defense.

On either side of Odell were Brad Johnson, a brilliant black man from Missouri who had lectured in defense stud-ies at Cornell and was now National Security Adviser, and Lee Alexander, Director of the CIA, who had replaced Judge William Webster a few months into Cormack?s incumbency. Alexander was there because, if the Soviets intended to breach the treaty terms, America would need rapid knowl-edge through her satellites and intelligence community with their in-place assets on the ground.

As the eight men read the final terms, none was in any doubt that this was one of the most controversial agreements the United States would ever sign. Already there was vigor-ous opposition on the right and from the defense-oriented industries. Back in 1988, under Reagan, the Pentagon had agreed to cut $33 billion in planned expenditures to produce a defense budget total of $299 billion. For the fiscal years 1990 through 1994, the services were told to cut planned expenditures by $37.1 billion, $41.3 billion, $45.3 billion, and $50.7 billion respectively. But that would only have lim-ited spending growth. The Nantucket Treaty foresaw big de-creases in defense expenditures, and if the growth cuts had caused problems, Nantucket was going to cause a furor.

The difference was, as Cormack stressed repeatedly, that the previous growth cuts had not been planned against actual cuts by the U.S.S.R. In Nantucket, Moscow had agreed to slash its own forces to an unheard-of degree. Moreover, Cormack knew the superpowers had little choice. Ever since he came to power he and Secretary of the Trea-sury Reed had wrestled with America?s spiraling budget and trade deficits. They were heading out of control, threatening to shatter the prosperity not just of the United States but of the entire West. He had latched onto his own experts? analy-ses that the U.S.S.R. was in the same position for different reasons, and put it to Mikhail Gorbachev straight: I need to cut back and you need to redivert. The Russian had taken care of the rest of the Warsaw Pact countries; Cormack had won over NATO?first the Germans, then the Italians, the smaller members, and finally the British. These, broadly, were the terms:

In land forces, the U.S.S.R. agreed to cut her standing army in East Germany?the potential invasion force west-ward across the central German plain?by half of her twenty-one combat divisions in all categories. They would be not disbanded but withdrawn back beyond the Polish-Soviet frontier and not brought west again. Over and above this, theU.S.S.R. would reduce the manpower of the entire Soviet Army by 40 percent.

?Comments　 asked the President. Stannard of De-fense, who not unnaturally had the gravest reservations about the treaty?the press had already speculated about his resignation?looked up.

?For the Soviets this is the meat of the treaty, because their army is their senior service,? he said, quoting directly from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff but not admit-ting it. ?For the man in the street it looks fantastic; the West Germans already think so. But it?s not as good as it looks.

?For one thing, the U.S.S.R. cannot maintain one hun-dred and seventy-seven line divisions as at present without extensive use of her southern ethnic groups?I mean the Moslems?and we know they?d dearly love to disband the lot. For another, what really frightens our planners is not a rambling Soviet Army; it?s an army half that size but profes-sionalized. A small professional army is much more use than a large oafish one, which is what they?ve got.?

?But if they?re back inside the U.S.S.R.,? countered Johnson, ?they can?t invade West Germany. Lee, if they shifted them back via Poland into East Germany, would we fail to spot it　

?Nope,? said the CIA chief with finality. ?Apart from satellites, which can be fooled by covered trucks and trains, I believe we and the British have too many assets in Poland not to spot it. Hell, the East Germans don?t want to become a war zone either. They?d probably tell us themselves.?

?Okay, what do we give up　 asked Odell.

?Some troops, not a lot,? Johnson replied. ?The Sovi-ets withdraw ten divisions at fifteen thousand men each. We have three hundred and twenty-six thousand personnel in Western Europe. We cut to below three hundred thousand for the first time since 1945. At twenty-five thousand of us against a hundred and fifty thousand of them, it?s still good: six to one, and we were looking at four to one.?

?Yes,? objected Stannard, ?but we also have to agree not to activate our two new heavy divisions, one armored and one mechanized infantry.?

?Cost savings, Hubert　 asked the President mildly. He tended to let others talk, listen carefully, make a few suc-cinct and usually penetrating comments, and then decide. The Treasury Secretary supported Nantucket. It would make balancing his books a lot easier.

?Three-point-five billion the armored division, three-point-four billion the infantry,? he said. ?But these are just start-up costs. After that, we save three hundred million dol-lars a year in running costs by not having them. And now that Despot is canceled, another seventeen billion dollars for the projected three hundred units of Despot.?

?But Despot is the best tank-busting system in the world,? protested Stannard. ?Hell, we need it.?

?To kill tanks that have been withdrawn east of Brest-Litovsk　 asked Johnson. ?If they halve their tanks in East Germany, we can cope with what we?ve got, the A-ten air-craft and the ground-based tank-buster units. Plus, we can build more static defenses with part of the savings. That?s allowed under the treaty.?

?The Europeans like it,? said Donaldson of State mildly. ?They don?t have to reduce manpower, but they do see ten to eleven Soviet divisions disappearing in front of their eyes. It seems to me we win on the ground.?

?Let?s consider the sea battle,? suggested Cormack.

The Soviet Union had agreed to destroy, under supervi-sion, half its submarine fleet; all its nuclear-powered subs in classes Hotel, Echo, and November, and all the diesel-electric Juliets, Foxtrots, Whiskeys,Romeos, and Zulus. But as Stannard was quick to point out, its old nuclear subs were already archaic and unsafe, constantly leaking neutrons and gamma rays, and the others scheduled to go were of old de-signs. After that the Russians could concentrate their re-sources and best men in the Sierra, Mike, and Akula classes, much better technically and therefore more dangerous.

Still, he conceded, 158 submarines were a lot of metal, and America?sAnti-Submarine Warfare targets would be drastically reduced, simplifying the job of getting the con-voys to Europe if the balloon ever did go up.

Finally, Moscow had agreed to scrap the first of its four Kiev-class aircraft carriers, and build no more?a minor concession, as they were already proving too expensive to support.

The United States was allowed to keep the newly com-missioned carriers Abraham Lincoln and George Washing-ton, but would scrap the Midway and the Coral Sea (destined to go anyway, but delayed to be included in the treaty) plus the next-oldest, the Forrestal and the Saratoga, plus their air wings. These air wings, once deactivated, would take three to four years to bring back to combat readiness.

?The Russians will say they?ve eliminated eighteen percent of our ability to strike at the Motherland,? groused Stannard, ?and all they?ve given up are a hundred and fifty-eight subs that were bitches to maintain anyway.?

But the Cabinet, seeing savings of a minimum $20 bil-lion a year, half in personnel and half in hardware, approved the navy side of the treaty, Odell and Stannard opposing. The key came in the air. Cormack knew that for Gorbachev it was the clincher. On balance, America won out on land and wa-ter, since she did not intend to be the aggressor; she just wanted to make sure the U.S.S.R. could not be. But unlike Stannard and Odell, Cormack and Donaldson knew that many Soviet citizens genuinely believed the West would one day hurl itself at the Rodina, and that included their leaders.

Under Nantucket, the West would discontinue the American TFX fighter, or F-18, and the European multi-role combat fighter for Italy, West Germany, Spain, and Britain, a joint project; Moscow would stop further work on the MiG-37. She would also scrap the Blackjack, the Tupolev version of the American B-1 bomber, and 50 percent of her air-tanker assets, massively reducing the strategic air threat to the West.

?How do we know they won?t build the Backfire some-where else　 asked Odell.

?We?ll have official inspectors stationed in the Tupolev factory,? Cormack pointed out. ?They can hardly start up a new Tupolev factory somewhere else. Right, Lee　

?Right, Mr. President,? said the Director of Central In-telligence. He paused. ?Also, we have assets in the key staff at Tupolev.?

?Ah,? said Donaldson, impressed. ?As a diplomat, I don?t want to know.? There were several grins. Donaldson was known to be very straitlaced.

The stinger for America in the air section of the Nantucket Treaty was that she had to abandon the B-2 Stealth bomber, an airplane of revolutionary potential, since it was constructed to pass unnoticed through any radar detection screen and deliver its nuclear bombs as and where it wished. It frightened the Russians very badly. For Mikhail Gorbachev it was the one concession from the States that would get Nantucket through ratification. It would also obviate the need to spend a minimum 300 billion rubles rebuilding from the ground up the Air Defense of the Homeland system, the vaunted Voiska PVO that was supposed to detect any im-pending attack on the Motherland. That was the money he wanted to divert to new factories, technology, and oil.

For America, Stealth was a $40 billion project, so can-cellation would mean a big saving, but at the cost of fifty thousand defense-industry jobs.

?Maybe we should just go on as we are and bankrupt the bastards,? suggested Odell.

?Michael,? said Cormack gently, ?then they?d have to go to war.?

After twelve hours the Cabinet approved Nantucket and the wearisome business started of trying to convince the Sen-ate, industry, finance, the media, and the people that it was right. A hundred billion dollars had been cut from the De-fense budget.

?

May

By the middle of May the five men who had dined at the Remington Hotel the previous January had constituted themselves the Alamo Group at Miller?s suggestion, in mem-ory of those who in 1836 had fought for the independence of Texas at the Alamo against the Mexican forces of General Santa Anna. The project to topple the Kingdom of Sa?ud they had named Plan Bowie, after Colonel Jim Bowie, who had died at the Alamo. The destabilization of President Cor-mack by a paid-for whispering campaign through lobbies, the media, the people, and the Congress, bore the name Plan Crockett, after Davy Crockett, the pioneer and Indian fighter who also died there. Now they met to consider the report of Irving Moss to wound John Cormack to the point where he would be susceptible to calls for him to step down and depart. Plan Travis, for the man who had commanded at the Alamo.