Ultimatum - Meyer, Bill by Unknown Author

Author:Unknown Author
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 17

WASHINGTON—DECEMBER 24

The President sat and looked at Colonel Darb. Generally he took Darb for granted, like the Secret Service man who drove his limousine, or the other Secret Service men who allowed him the minimum of privacy. Suddenly he realized that Darb was the only human being to whom he could speak freely.

“Damn you, Darb,” he said, “I would give five years of my life to change places with you right now.”

Darb was accustomed to almost anything, but he was not accustomed to being sworn at. He realized, suddenly, the vast gulf between his own sinecure and what a poet has called a bad eminence. Because, at that moment, the President’s eminence was indeed a bad one.

“Mr. President,” said Darb, “I wouldn’t change places with you for ten more years at the end of my own life.” Then he rose, walked to the liquor cabinet, mixed a drink that was mainly bourbon, and silently handed the glass to the President.

Canfield took the glass mechanically, without any acknowledgement, and just as mechanically, sipped the strong liquor as though it were water. Suddenly he put the glass down on the table with a bang.

“Damn it, Darb, I don’t need a crutch. I need someone I can talk to.”

“Well, I’m here,” said Darb helpfully.

“I suppose I should be grateful for small favors. Do you realize that I have to brief the Secretary of State and 1 can’t? He has to take me on faith, which is asking a lot of any Secretary of State. I have to rely on the English Prime Minister. I have to let this country go on its happy way while the whole damned burden is on my shoulders. It isn’t fair, Darb, it isn’t fair. Whoever said that command was a lonely job must have been through something like this.”

“But what about the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister?” asked Darb.

“That—that—I’m not going to tell you. It’s all on me. It’s all on me!”

“Then you have a solution?”

“A solution? No—a desperate gamble. I have to arrange for what can happen if these bastards think they really have us. How do we know Roberts will come through? What odds would you give? Anything can interfere—a Russian patrol, a slip into a crevice, a mechanical breakdown. Good God, do you realize what a long shot this is? And suppose Roberts had no imagination—How do we know whether this thing actually gets off the ground? A hundred and ninety million people and all their future riding on a hundred and fifty guys in a sub run by a commander. A commander, no less! How old is he? What experience has he had? How do we know if he can carry this through? Could Laughton himself do it?”

The President got up and walked to the north window, his eyes looking upward as though his vision could follow the curve of the earth and come to rest somewhere, far in the north, where a jerry-built sled carried on its makeshift runners the fate, the future, the existence, of the Western world.

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