The Pinocchio Syndrome. David Zeman

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СКАЧАТЬ The handwriting was on the wall. Yet we did nothing, and look where it has gotten us.’ He smiled patronizingly. ‘In sports there is an old saying, ‘The best defense is a good offense.’ I wonder if the vice president and his administration have ever really understood this.’

      ‘There’s something about your analogy I don’t like,’ Everhardt said tentatively. ‘For one thing, in this civilized world we don’t solve our problems by taking out guns and shooting people.’

      ‘On the contrary,’ said Goss. ‘We use force to defend ourselves when the adversary doesn’t understand reason. Perhaps the vice president doesn’t remember how we defeated Hitler and Saddam Hussein.’

      He leaned forward again, his eyes darkening. ‘But the situation is even simpler now. This is not a territorial struggle, as it was with Hitler or Saddam. These terrorists have only one aim. They want to kill Americans. They’ve said it over and over, they don’t make any bones about it. To kill Americans. And our response has been to sit here waiting for them to attack. That response is worse than cowardice. It is insanity.’

      At this point Dan Everhardt made a crucial error.

      ‘But how would we know who to attack?’ he asked. ‘We don’t know who was behind the Crescent Queen.’

      There was an audible intake of breath among those present. Everhardt had admitted his administration’s weakness, both intelligence gathering and in retaliation.

      Colin Goss’s lips curled in disdain. ‘If we had the right leadership in Washington,’ he said, ‘we would know who to attack.’

      The silence that followed this remark was deeply embarrassing for Everhardt and those who supported the administration.

      ‘Well, I …’ Dan Everhardt stammered.

      The moderator came to his rescue. ‘We have another special guest via satellite. The junior senator from Maryland, Michael Campbell, has accepted our invitation to join in this debate. Senator Campbell, how would you respond to Mr Goss’s analogy?’

      Karen smiled again as she sipped at her coffee. The Goss camp must be pissed off to see Campbell come to Everhardt’s rescue. Campbell was a good speaker and a good debater.

      ‘I agree with Dan Everhardt,’ Campbell said. ‘I think Mr Goss’s analogy is faulty.’ The contrast between Campbell’s handsome face and Goss’s jowly middle-aged countenance was immediate. So was the contrast between Goss’s angry gaze and the reflective, almost tender eyes of the young senator.

      ‘I do agree,’ Campbell said, ‘that there are mad dogs in the world, but I think that our system of laws and of international covenants is an instrument designed precisely to fight those enemies. Let me put it this way: when a rancher’s property is threatened by wolves he sits down with his fellow ranchers and they discuss together what must be done to control the wolf population and to protect their collective properties. By working together they solve the problem. No one rancher, by simply charging out onto the prairie with his rifle, can solve a problem that concerns everyone.’

      The force of this argument made itself felt. Campbell, despite his youth, had been able to articulate the mature, wider view that was needed to combat Colin Goss’s bloodthirsty metaphor.

      Colin Goss looked at Michael Campbell with well-concealed dislike.

      ‘And what happens,’ Goss asked, ‘if the rancher and his friends can’t agree on precisely what should be done to fight the wolves? What if the larger ranchers and the smaller ones don’t see eye to eye on the matter? What if their negotiations drag on for months or years? How many sheep must be lost before something positive is done to stop the wolves?’

      This was an undisguised allusion to the Bilateral Agreement of last year, which followed a summit conference that included Israel, the United States, and leaders of the major Arab nations. That agreement had promised a united front against terrorism. But the terms of the agreement were so vague that in its final form it was hopelessly watered down.

      Nine hundred students and teachers aboard the Crescent Queen were bombed into vapor exactly six months after the signing of the Bilateral Agreement.

      Dan Everhardt had no answer to this. Michael Campbell, though, seemed to have anticipated the question.

      ‘Again I don’t think the analogy is quite right,’ he said. ‘The purpose of collective cooperation among the ranchers is to use every appropriate method, including deadly force, to stop the wolves that are killing the sheep. I’m sure Mr Goss remembers that it was a collective effort by a coalition of countries that forced Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait. The campaign in Afghanistan that defeated the Taliban was also an international effort.’

      ‘I agree with Senator Campbell,’ threw in Dan Everhardt. ‘We can’t use vigilante tactics to fight terrorism. It’s the civilized world we’re trying to protect. We have to go about it in a civilized way.’

      ‘There’s one more thing I’d like to say,’ Michael Campbell said. ‘Many of my ancestors were Irish. What happens if you are attacked by a terrorist group, and you fight fire with fire, bombing one of their schools for every one of your own schools that is bombed? Assassinating one of their leaders for every leader of your own who is assassinated? You get Northern Ireland. Is that what we want for our children and our children’s children? There has to be a better way.’

      ‘Smart,’ Karen said aloud. Campbell was modest, he deferred to older and more established politicians. But he had a knack for putting the case in such a way that ordinary people could understand it.

      In the last couple of months the administration had discovered Campbell as a powerful weapon against the strident Goss forces. Campbell was too young to be identified with the late-twentieth-century policies that had failed to control terrorism. He was handsome, well spoken, and – most important of all – a living embodiment of great physical courage. As a teenager he had developed a serious curvature of the spine that required a lengthy hospitalization. As part of his rehabilitation he took up competitive swimming and became an all-American at Harvard. A second operation became necessary in his junior year, and he came back from it to win two gold medals at the Olympics as a first-year law student at Columbia.

      Campbell’s political career had derived immediate momentum from his Olympic triumphs and the pain he had overcome. He won his Senate seat from Maryland in a landslide. He was admired by men for his courage and coveted by women for his handsome looks. Voters of both sexes admired his beautiful wife, whose face appeared every month on the cover of Vogue or Cosmopolitan or Redbook.

      Karen yawned and took a bigger swallow of the sour-tasting coffee. She had to admit that Campbell was a handsome man. The body that had made him famous as an Olympic athlete was still hard and attractive. He had a clear, youthful complexion that went well with his crisp dark hair. The combination of his youth and his arguments for moderation was powerful.

      On the split screen Colin Goss seemed aware of this. He was looking at Michael with a condescending smile. His personal dislike of Campbell was well known. He considered Campbell an ambitious punk, wet behind the ears where the issues were concerned, a matinee idol trying to make a career out of his looks and charm. Yet he realized that Campbell was now a dangerous enemy, politically speaking.

      Mercifully Karen’s three Advil were beginning to work. She got up, poured another cup of coffee, and headed for the shower. Leaving the coffee on top of the toilet where she could reach it, she stood for a long time under the steaming water. СКАЧАТЬ