was business, and Basil would understand: “Exactly. I can’t have that man’s life on my conscience, Tony, and so I have to treat this information very carefully.”
“Quite so, Jack. I understand fully.”
“Will you support us on this?”
The PM nodded at once. “Yes, old boy, we must, mustn’t we?”
“Thanks, pal.” Ryan patted him on the shoulder.
CHAPTER 44
The Shape of a New World Order
It took all day, lengthening what was supposed to have been a pro forma meeting of the NATO chiefs into a minor marathon. It took all of Scott Adler’s powers of persuasion to smooth things over with the various foreign ministers, but with the assistance of Britain, whose diplomacy had always been of the Rolls-Royce class, after four hours there was a head-nod-and-handshake agreement, and the diplomatic technicians were sent off to prepare the documents. All this was accomplished behind closed doors, with no opportunity for a press leak, and so when the various government leaders made it outside, the media learned of it like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. What they did not learn was the real reason for the action. They were told it had to do with the new economic promise in the Russian Federation, which seemed reasonable enough, and when you came down to it, was the root cause in any case.
In fact most of the NATO partners didn’t know the whole story, either. The new American intelligence was directly shared only with Britain, though France and Germany were given some indications of America’s cause for concern. For the rest, the simple logic of the situation was enough to offer appeal. It would look good in the press, and for most politicians all over the world, that was sufficient to make them doff their clothes and run about a public square naked. Secretary Adler cautioned his President about the dangers of drawing sovereign nations into treaty obligations without telling them all the reasons behind them, but even he agreed that there was little other choice in the matter. Besides, there was a built-in escape clause that the media wouldn’t see at first, and hopefully, neither would the Chinese.
The media got the story out in time for the evening news broadcasts in America and the late-night ones in Europe, and the TV cameras showed the arrival of the various VIPs at the official dinner in Warsaw.
“I owe you one, Tony,” Ryan told the British Prime Minister with a salute of his wineglass. The white wine was French, from the Loire Valley, and excellent. The hard liquor of the night had been an equally fine Polish vodka.
“Well, one can hope that it gives our Chinese friends pause. When will Grushavoy arrive?”
“Tomorrow afternoon, followed by more drinking. Vodka again, I suppose.” The documents were being printed up at this very moment, and then would be bound in fine leather, as such important documents invariably were, after which they’d be tucked away in various dusty basement archives, rarely to be seen by the eyes of men again.
“Basil tells me that your intelligence information is unusually good, and rather frightening,” the PM observed, with a sip of his own.
“It is all of that, my friend. You know, we’re supposed to think that this war business is a thing of the past.”
“So they thought a hundred years ago, Jack. It didn’t quite work out that way, did it?”
“True, but that was then, and this is now. And the world really has changed in the past hundred years.”
“I hope that is a matter of some comfort to Franz Ferdinand, and the ten million or so chaps who died as an indirect result of his demise, not to mention Act Two of the Great European Civil War,” the Prime Minister observed.
“Yeah, day after tomorrow, I’m going down to Auschwitz. That ought to be fun.” Ryan didn’t really want to go, but he figured it was something of an obligation under the circumstances, and besides, Arnie thought it would look good on TV, which was why he did a lot of the things he did.
“Do watch out for the ghosts, old boy. I should think there are a number of them there.”
“I’ll let you know,” Ryan promised. Would it be like Dickens’s A Christmas Carol? he wondered. The ghost of horrors past, accompanied by the ghost of horrors present, and finally the ghost of horrors yet to be? But he was in the business of preventing such things. That’s what the people of his country paid him for. Maybe $250,000 a year wasn’t