“You’re being too hard on yourself, Ant,” said Pasha, always conciliatory.
“You’re not being hard enough on yourself, Ant,” said Harry, never conciliatory. “You will disgrace your family if you don’t wrap your head around the possibilities of a nuclear deterrent that does not involve the Soviets developing new ICBMs and nuclear subs.”
“Ant,” said Pasha, “in this one instance, and only this one, I might listen to Harry. He knows nothing else but this.”
“Pasha, I treasure your vote of confidence,” said Harry, “but a defense system must be developed—”
Alexander put his hand on Harry’s forearm. “Son, excuse me. You’re missing the point.”
“I’m not missing the point,” said Harry. “That point is all the difference.”
“Yes, it is,” agreed Alexander, “but for completely different reasons than you think.”
“Well, wait, Dad,” said Harry, not raising his voice. Tatiana smiled. Confrontational with everyone—except his father. Harry did not argue with Alexander. Nonetheless...he had a quiet but vociferous opinion on the space shield. “In the beginning of his first term,” said Harry, “the President wanted to know if a system could be developed that would locate and destroy the Soviet nuclear weapons as they left their silos. He was told it could be, and would be.”
“It’s the most far-fetched thing I’ve ever heard,” said Anthony.
“What’s far-fetched?” asked Harry. “What about a dropped bomb exploding two sub-critical atomic masses in a microsecond and converting one gram of harmless mass into an equivalent of 20,000 pounds of deadly energy? That’s not far-fetched to you? You have been nominated to the highest military position in the United States and you have decided to draw your line not at titanium-armored vehicles that will stop a round fired point blank traveling 3000 feet per second, but at SDI’s multi-megawatt space nuclear power program with its open-cycle reactor concepts and terminal ballistics? Dad is right, what the hell is wrong with you? Frankly, I don’t think we should be judging SDI by your belief system. You still can’t believe the Spruce Goose flew!” Harry laughed.
“Oh, Harry, give me a break!” Anthony exclaimed. “Just look outside your box for a second. A computer network runs a series of detection systems that controls lasers and hypervelocity guns in space?”
“Yes!”
Now Anthony laughed. “A computer detects hostile missiles going off thousands of miles away and then space lasers intercept and destroy the missiles in flight? A computer? I can’t get my tax refund from last year because the computers keep going on the blink every five minutes!”
“Go ahead, yuck it up,” said Harry, completely unintimidated, “but the computers will detect enemy nuclear missiles and then superconducting quench guns will attack them from space and destroy them.”
“Ant, listen to Harry-boy,” said Pasha. “He knows his quench guns.”
“Forget it,” said Anthony. “Billions of dollars spent, billions of man hours invested, on an unsustainable, insupportable, nonsensical defense system, and all the computer has to be is in restart mode and the whole thing is moot. And this is exactly where the committee will catch me and yank me out of the water with a hook in my throat. Hence my conflict. You know,” he went on, “originally when I said I supported the President with respect to SDI, I meant, I agree with the President that the Soviets have been recalcitrant in negotiations and overweeningly militaristic, hell-bent only on the concept of mutually assured destruction and nothing else. I agreed wholeheartedly that something needed to be done. Just not this.” Anthony nodded as Tatiana poured him another glass of champagne. “Thanks, Mom. I know very well what our President has been going through. I know it pisses him off that the Soviets hide their military expenditures in pseudo-civilian manufacturing. I know he hates their vast superiority in conventional weapons and nuclear weapons, which they continue to build up without incurring international wrath. I just think that this is the wrong thing to invest our resources in.”
“I read in the paper,” said Pasha, “that the Soviets spend three to four times more on their conventional forces than we spend on ours. Is that true?”
Anthony glanced at Alexander and shook his head. “Don’t read the paper, Pasha, read one of Dad’s reports. The Soviets are spending much more than that. Every single steel plant and factory in the Soviet Union produces guns and ammunition and bombs and tanks. And we know this not just because we have inside information from our mother, the Kirov factory Soviet bombmaker.” He smiled lightly at his mother. “They make them in Kirov and then sell them to their little Vietnams the world over. Dad, do you know what was the NVA’s second weapon of choice behind the Kalashnikov? Your 1941 Soviet-made Shpagin sub-machine gun.”
Alexander whistled.
“That’s some serious economies of scale,” said Tatiana, ironically impressed.
“Indeed, Mom. And furthermore, Dad estimated last year that the Soviets spent 60 percent of their GNP on defense and not their stated 14 percent. While we spend 6 percent.”
“Ant, look,” said Harry, “their GNP is a hundredth of ours. They have to spend more to keep apace. But stop deluding yourself with conventional weapons expenditures. Shpagins, Kalashnikovs, Studebakers left over in the Soviet Union from Lend-Lease that are now being peddled to Angola and Vietnam. It’s just small fry. It’s the nuclear threat that worries the President most of all. Every time the Soviets say they’re going to think about arms reduction, they go and build a new nuclear sub. Our last negotiation in the sixties gave us ICBMs. The ABM treaty in the seventies increased both our arsenals by twenty percent. That’s what keeps the President up at night. He wants to prevent nuclear war, in which—in the best case scenario—a hundred and fifty million Americans will die. And he is right when he says that mankind has never invented a weapon that they did not use sooner or later. That’s his fear and his argument for SDI—that in 1925 the world got together and banned the use of poison gas. But we still kept our gas masks.”
Pasha nodded, looking quite favorably across the island at his younger brother. “Personally that alone is enough for me to weather the doubts regarding SDI.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you should’ve been nominated instead of me,” said Anthony. “In the meantime, while Harry mocks me, I’m going to have to sit in front of those men and defend something I can’t, despite his particle physics bombardment.”
During most of this Tatiana and Alexander refrained from speaking. While their sons squabbled, they listened, sat, drank their champagne, considered each other. Reaching across for Tatiana’s flute, Alexander poured her what was left of the champagne and got up from the island.
“Dad, where are you going?” said Anthony. “We’re not close to done.”
“Don’t I know it,” said Alexander, and left anyway.
Tatiana turned to Anthony. “Ant,” she said, “you know how you can tell what your father thinks of your nomination? Because he went to get another bottle of Cristal.” She nodded. “He really believes. Now, do you want to smoke? You can smoke in the kitchen, it’s fine. I’ve put the filter on.”
Anthony gratefully lit a cigarette. He’d become quite proficient at functioning one-armed, including lighting his own cigarettes. “Why are you and Dad so quiet? You don’t agree with me?”
Tatiana didn’t say anything at first. “Let Dad come back,” she said softly. “He’ll talk to you.”
They sat quietly until Alexander returned, popped the cork and poured everyone another glass of the best champagne ever made. They raised their flutes, and Alexander said, “Anthony, this one I drink to you. All our chosen roads, your mother’s and mine, and yours, have led you here to where you now stand. I want you to stand tall, and say with no hesitation, Thank you, Mr. President, it will be my honor and privilege to serve you. And so we will drink to the clarity of your purpose, which seems to be so sorely missing.”
Anthony put his glass undrunk on the island. “My clarity of purp
ose is missing?” he said, bristling.
“Oh, yes,” said Alexander, himself less abrupt, but no less direct. He drank fully. “In this it is.”
“Dad! I’ve been working with the President on ratifying SALT II for the last three years!”
“Well, then, you haven’t been paying attention to what’s been going on with SALT II in the last six months,” Alexander said calmly.
“Are you kidding me?” said Anthony, slightly lowering his voice.
“You absolutely have not. There have been twenty nuclear disarmament talks with Soviet Union since 1946—twenty, Ant! And to the one, they were all ended by the Soviets, who refused to make a single concession, a single even cosmetic reduction in their nuclear arsenal. The only thing we agreed on even in the lauded ABM is that we wouldn’t make any more defensive missiles to protect our East Coast from their offensive missiles!
“That’s right, but because of our efforts, SALT II has a very good chance of being signed!” said Anthony.
“Being signed is not arms reduction,” interjected Harry. “But whatever. One of the reasons SALT II has a good chance of being signed is because this President approved the deployment of the MX missile and the installation of the Pershings in Europe to bring the Soviet Union to the negotiating table by telling them in no uncertain terms that their arms build-up was not going to fly with him. Four wars this century was all this President was going to go for.”
“The MX and the Pershing were instrumental, Harry,” said Alexander. “They brought the Soviets to the table. But the SDI is what’s making them stand on this table on their heads.”
“Oh, what does SDI have to do with SALT?” Anthony exclaimed, struggling to keep his voice low.
“This is what I mean by completely missing the point!” returned Alexander, not keeping his low at all. He put his glass down and turned to his son. “Don’t you get it? SDI is everything! And it’s not about what Harry thinks about SDI, or what you think and your journalist supporters think about SDI, or even what our President thinks about SDI. It’s only about one thing—what do the Soviets think about SDI?”
“Who the fuck cares? Sorry, Mom.” Anthony barely apologized—as if she needed it, having lived with a soldier for 44 years.
“Anthony.” This was Tatiana and her voice was mild, and Anthony took a breath, and took a drink and, shaking his frustrated head, turned his face to his mother. “Don’t get defensive. You’re not listening to your dad. Listen. He is saying it doesn’t matter if you think SDI can’t work— no, Harry, let me finish,” she said across the island to her son, who was already opening his mouth in protest. “I know you think it can. I’m saying that for Anthony’s purposes, it doesn’t matter if it can. The only thing that matters,” said Tatiana, “is whether the Soviets think it can.” She gazed at Alexander across the island. “Shura, tell me, do the Soviets think it can work?”
“Fuckin’a they think it can work,” said Alexander, slapping the island with the palm of his hand. “The Soviets have panicked so thoroughly, it would be funny if it weren’t so shocking. Ant, the Soviet Union has bent over to accommodate the United States with regard to SALT II. Just in our preliminary discussions, they have agreed to dismantle a whole range of their atomic weapons, which as you know they have not agreed to do in forty years. They have agreed to move their ICBMs out of Europe! I mean, that’s fucking astonishing,” said Alexander, not apologizing to anyone for anything. “They’ve agreed to almost all of our other demands with respect to reducing their nuclear arms. And do you know what they want in return?” Alexander paused and stared intently at his son. “All they want in return is that we do not pursue SDI.” Alexander laughed. “I mean, come on! I have never heard of a louder bell ringing for supporting anything.”
Tatiana laughed, too.
“Yes, Dad,” said Harry, “but just one small addendum—”
“Yes, son, I know, I know,” said Alexander, putting his paternal, affectionate arm around Harry. “Our resident nuclear physicist thinks it will work. That’s great. It doesn’t matter. The Soviets think it will work, and that’s all that matters.”
Anthony sat quietly. He smoked. He finished his drink. Alexander poured him another. He looked at Pasha, at Harry, who mouthed to him, It will work, rolled his eyes, and said in a thoughtful voice, “I’m hearing something from you here that I’m not quite sure I’m understanding.” He looked at Alexander. “Tell me this. SDI is slated to be a defense system, right, but this is the part I don’t get: how is development of our nuclear defense system supposed to promote their nuclear disarmament? How is SDI going to help spur the Soviets to want to disarm? I would think it’d be just the opposite. They’ll just be developing new weapons that can penetrate the shield, no?”
Alexander was very quiet. Tatiana was very quiet. They looked only at each other. Then it was Tatiana who spoke. “No. They’ll just be trying to build their own SDI, Ant.”
“Excuse me?”
“Son,” said Alexander, “do you know why the Soviets are so frantic? Because they think we are not building a defense system but an offense system. That we’re hiding behind words like disarmament, and SALT, and treaties, and accommodation, just as they hide behind their civilian steel plants while using those plants to produce a hundred thousand tanks to invade Afghanistan. They think that we’re going to hide behind the shield of SDI and nuke them back to the stone age as soon as it’s operational. This is why they want us to abandon working on it. If they didn’t think it could be successful, they wouldn’t care how much money we poured into it. But they sense our imminent superiority of nuclear weapons systems that their pride and sense of self-preservation simply cannot allow—the same way that at the end of World War Two they killed an additional million of their men to get to the enriched uranium factories around Berlin just days before the Americans did, and then engaged in feverish espionage to develop their atomic program.” Alexander narrowed his eyes at Anthony. “And you know I know something about that, having been at the forefront of those million men, pushing my penal battalion into Germany.”
Alexander poured everyone the rest of the champagne. “The Soviets have asked our President to stop, and he said no. SDI will continue. In their panic, the Soviets are at this very minute figuring out a way to plunge every resource they have into creating an SDI of their own.” He spoke slowly and very deliberately. Tatiana knew he wanted Anthony to understand fully what he was saying. “But how do you think the Soviets will manage this? Where are they going to find the money for SDI?”
“Where are they going to find the money for SDI?” Anthony repeated incredulously.
“Yes, ask your mathematically-minded mother, Ant. What is her opinion? We’d like to know.” Alexander smiled at Tatiana. “Tell your son, Tatia—to achieve perceived offensive nuclear parity with the United States, will the Soviets risk bankrupting their country, or will they do the prudent thing and not pursue crazy scientific notions, but instead believe our President—who has pledged that once he develops the technology, he will share it—disarm their missile heads and save their country?”
Tatiana smiled and said nothing. “Your father is just presenting all sides, Ant, all actions, reactions, weights, counterweights, measures, countermeasures, points, counterpoints. He is balancing the scales for you. It is your choice entirely what you do.”
Anthony groaned, his father laughed, his brothers laughed.
“Tatiana,” said Alexander, “don’t be coy. Don’t tell him the choice is his. Answer my question. Help your son.”
“I think, and I could be completely wrong,” said Tatiana—her palms down on her granite island that her husband built for her so they could sit around it and discuss matters of their life, large and small, like this— “that the Soviets will bankrupt their country to develop their own SDI.”
In disbelief, Anthony shook his head. For a minute or two he didn’t speak. “Look, you’re my mother,” he said at last, “and I—forgive me if I remain skeptical.
You can’t tell me that the Soviet Union, one of the richest-resourced industrial countries won’t have the money for a little research and development! They have plenty of money. And if this is important to them, they’ll come up with the money, the way they came up with it for the atomic bomb during Dad’s time. They didn’t go bankrupt then. They’ll just do what they have to; they always had, they always will. They’ll rearrange their priorities, they’ll divert their resources, as all countries do—including our own—to pursue their agenda.”
“Ant, son, they can and they absolutely will do just that.” Tatiana looked at Alexander. “But you know, perestroika, glasnost, solidarnost, they all cost money. And I’m not saying they don’t have the money.” Tatiana paused. “I’m saying they’re going to have a hard time coming up with it.” She paused again and then said, “They’ll have to divert their resources.”
Anthony was quiet himself. “What are you two are telling me?” he asked. “Just so we’re straight here. Are you telling me to stake my career and reputation on the belief that the Soviets will break their country to develop their own SDI?” He stared at his mother.
“We’re just laying it out in front of you, Ant,” said Tatiana.
Anthony, looking exasperated with his mother, turned to his father. “Dad, I’m going to be the principal military advisor to the President of the United States. He is going to need my head to be on straight if I’m going to counsel him to relentlessly develop SDI. You know how I feel about it. Do you think it’s viable for the Soviets to pursue their own? And if they do, is Mom right? Will it matter in the long run?”
“Those are very good questions, son,” said Alexander. “I’ll try not to be as oblique as your mother. She really has been beating around the bush too long. Tania, you must learn to be more direct so your children and husband can understand you.” He grinned at her, and turned his face to Anthony. “Let’s see,” Alexander said. “Yes, I think the Soviets will pursue developing this unfeasible system. Harry, please!” he exclaimed. “What I meant was, this feasible, workable, fabulous system. Is it viable for them to do it? Viable? That I don’t know. Probably not. They’re already stretched to the limits in the war in Afghanistan they’ve been fruitlessly fighting for six years. Not just stretched to the limits, but they’ve been borrowing from World Bank to pay for their little war. They owe more money to the World Bank than 172 other countries. There are only 175 countries in the world.”