Author: Jed Mercurio
Category: Other
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Naturally the matter of the missiles preoccupies the President throughout his morning schedule—with the latest Last Man in Space and his family, followed by a short walk across the hall to the Fish Room, where he meets with members of the Panel on Mental Retardation, and then to a luncheon in the Residence in honor of the Crown Prince of Libya—and he remains preoccupied, even while he plays for a short while with Caroline, who shows him pictures she has drawn before sitting for a while on his knee to ask when the new baby will be ready to be born, if it will be a boy or a girl, if it will be good, like her little brother, or naughty, like her little brother, until the aides and advisors begin to assemble in the Cabinet Room. He kisses her goodbye, reluctantly handing her over to an aide to escort back to the Residence, before the committee sits, every member receiving the same briefing on the presence of the missiles, which have been established on the orders of the Soviet Premier, in league with his Cuban counterpart, not merely for the defense of that island, but to establish a devastating offensive threat against the United States. While the President challenges the intelligence advisors on every point they make regarding identification of the missiles and the establishment of their readiness for action, he cannot help but imagine that the Soviet Premier is once again testing him, that he has known for some weeks now that the day would come when the American President would wake to this monster in his backyard and thereafter never sleep soundly again.
By the end of the first meeting, the President has made clear that he will not receive any information or advice without giving it the most forensic interrogation and insists on every point of policy being discussed in a collegial atmosphere. A clear understanding forms among the President’s committee that the missiles might be launch-ready within a few days, probably ten, this timeline limiting options to a surprise air strike to destroy the weapons, full invasion, or direct confrontation with the Soviet Union, while protracted diplomatic efforts might inadvertently provide time for the weapons to be made operational and possibly used in defense of an air strike or invasion.
The President gives initial orders for further reconnaissance of the missiles and Cuba’s air defense systems and for planning to commence on air strikes and invasion, yet, lest the press and the Russians become alert to these deliberations, the appearance of normal political life must be preserved, with scheduled meetings and engagements continuing uninterrupted. Hence the President motors to the Department of State Auditorium to give a speech and then returns to the White House for talks with the Crown Prince before reconvening the Ex-Comm meeting for another couple of hours into the evening, after which, still on edge, he finds himself hosting a dinner in the Residence with the First Lady.
As he small-talks with dignitaries, consuming bland fare and avoiding the wine for fear of reigniting a peptic ulcer, one track of his mind considers the appalling consequences of a failed air strike: such an action might precipitate deployment of those nuclear missiles when otherwise they would have slept in their silos, and, while the Soviets would be compelled to use weapons of mass destruction in this region on account of the over-whelming superiority of our conventional military, precisely the converse situation applies in Berlin, where any Soviet retaliation by their vastly stronger conventional forces could only be resisted by a rapid escalation to nuclear exchange.
These remain his thoughts as the guests depart, oblivious of the perilous affair unfolding across the Gulf, and then the President and First Lady go up to bed, where he takes his regular medications plus a sedative to break his mental fever, and, as he tries to sleep, finally, he thinks of Mary, and the Intern, but in the morning the latter is nowhere to be seen about the West Wing, even though he keeps a lookout for her during the arrival of the West German Foreign Minister.
Instead the President invites Mary to join him for “lunch” in the pool, after which he returns to the committee’s next session in rebalanced mood such that some members who don’t usually see him more than once in the same day compliment the refreshing properties upon his personage of a midday dip.
Later, in the Oval Office, while the President prepares to go to the airport for a scheduled campaign trip, he spies the Intern flitting between Mrs. Lincoln’s office and the Press Office, but, before he can calculate a pretext on which to intercept her, Adm. B. enters to check on his physical condition.
“Acute stress can have a dangerously destabilizing effect on your endocrine status,” the Admiral says.
He feels the presidential pulse and listens to the presidential heart.
“We must increase your corticosteroid dosages,” he says, after which he presses the presidential belly, and then he checks off the medication ingested today, administering the testosterone shot himself, and before he leaves he says, “We can’t have you cracking under the pressure, can we, Mr. President?”
Then the President’s aides arrive to accompany him in the limousine. The President glimpses a pair of military uniforms slipping into the vehicle behind, the Football swinging in their hands, and then he sees it again on the airplane, and then it waits inside as he gives a short speech to the press on the tarmac at Bridgeport, Connecticut, and follows him on the next two stops on the stump before he returns to Washington later that evening, going straight back into the Cabinet Room because the NPIC have analyzed the latest batch of aerial photographs.
The President is told the analysts have detected forty-two medium-range nuclear missiles in the process of being rendered operational by a labor force working day and night, as well as additional sites designed for intermediate-range nuclear missiles capable of reaching every major city in the United States bar Seattle. The Defense Secretary puts it most bluntly when he states, “Those missiles could hit Washington D.C. forty-five minutes after an order from Moscow. The Cubans have got weapons of mass destruction that pose a threat to the security of the United States.”
The Air Force Chief of Staff says, “My advice to you, Mr. President, is that we cannot stand by and let these missiles become operational. The threat must be eliminated, not just now, but permanently, by destroying the Cuban military and invading the island. You wouldn’t be in this hell of a fix if Cuba One had been followed through.”
The President flushes with anger but says calmly, “You’re in this fix with me, General, in case you hadn’t noticed,” which wins sufficient laughter around the table at the general’s expense to rescue the situation.
After further discussion, the President calls for a show of hands in favor of air strikes. Without hesitation, all the men in uniform thrust their arms in the air. The President says, “God help us all if the Soviet missiles go up that fast,” to quiet chuckles, giving a second to scan the faces of those men who wear fruit salad on their chests, and he sees eyes eager for the fight. Further hands go up, giving a majority in favor of a military offensive.
But the President says, “It would constitute a surprise attack against a smaller power, which goes against everything for which I believe this country should stand. We had the moral high ground when we suffered the attack on Pearl Harbor, and we would do so again were a tragedy of that scale ever to be visited upon this nation in the future. I would like to explore another method of preventing those missiles becoming operational. With our domination of air and sea in this region, can we not cut off the supply of military matériel to the island?”
“A blockade,” says the Defense Secretary.
When the President returns to the Residence, the First Lady is already asleep. He limps into his son’s room, where he finds John sleeping. Caroline, in the next room, has bundled her blankets into a heap with her legs sticking out at the bottom and her chest at the top, so he spreads the covers over her again, and she turns with a snort and buries her face in the pillow. He brushes her hair and kisses her cheek. She smiles a semiconscious smile. “I love you,” he whispers, and she whispers back, “I love you too, Daddy,” and continues to slumber.
The valet helps him out of the back brace so as not to wake
the First Lady. The valet checks off the numbers as the President counts out rows of tablets and adds another line of tiny white cortisone pills in accordance with the higher dose prescribed by his physicians, which he swallows with slugs of water, then, after the valet has withdrawn, he doubles the dose of antidiarrheal and anti-indigestion medication because his stomach has been in turmoil for about forty-eight hours, ever since he saw the photographs of the missiles, and when he lies down in bed, he feels his stomach acid roll up into his gullet, stinging so strongly it makes him gasp.
He watches his wife’s dark outline rise and fall with her slow breathing, and then he reaches out briefly to lay a hand on the bulge of their unborn child pushing up through the blankets. He needs an extra sedative to put him to sleep, before his eyes close against visions of their baby being born into a world of ash and radiation.
The following morning, the President flies to the Midwest for more campaigning on behalf of the Party, starting in Ohio and then proceeding to Illinois, where he takes time out to place a wreath at Lincoln’s Tomb.
Fall has stripped the green off the trees, making them skeletons gathered around the memorial. They say President Lincoln foresaw his own death ten days in advance, in a dream that began with the sound of weeping emanating from somewhere in the White House, which he followed to the East Room, where he found a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments, and around it were stationed soldiers and a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered. “Who is dead in the White House?” Lincoln asked one of the soldiers. “The President,” was the answer, “killed by an assassin.”
In the crypt of Oak Ridge Cemetery, the President considers his counterpart of one century past, as oblivious in Ford’s Theatre, moments before the bullet blasted the back of his head, as the smiling, deferential faces here today. Meanwhile, all over the globe, nuclear triggers click.
The President remains in constant contact with aides en route to Chicago, receiving hourly bulletins on the state of preparations for the blockade, troop build-up and reconnaissance reports, which he endeavors to put out of his mind during his address this evening to the Cook County Democrat Party, after which he rushes to the telephone once again, speaking to his closest circle one by one, ensuring every single one is examining the situation critically and furnishing him with candid opinions, because, though we are a democracy, in periods of international conflict the leader of our nation becomes a de facto dictator, all too eager to imperil our soldiers’ lives.
When the President retires to the Blackstone, Dr. T. and Adm. B. await, concerned that today’s schedule may have upset the delicate balance of the Commander-in-Chief’s medication, so they prescribe muscle relaxants for his back, inject painkillers into his sacroiliacs, and administer a combination of pills and emulsions to combat his nausea, dyspepsia and diarrhea.
In addition, the subject is back on antibiotics, following an exacerbation of prostatitis, which has flared up recently owing to the lack of drainage that accompanies his wife’s pregnancy, and he must pop a couple of headache pills, because it’s two days since his postpool shower with Mary and he dreads suffering a crippling headache tomorrow, which is inevitable, given his quartan toxemia.
The Intern has been invited to accompany the presidential excursion, ostensibly to furnish her with experience of the campaigning duties of his office as Leader of the Party, and so it occurs to him at this hour, one before midnight, to invite the staff for a nightcap in order to position her where he can engineer a private encounter. As it happens, the matter is simplicity itself, as the Signal Corps has transferred a folder of photographic reports from Washington for his perusal, which he directs the Intern to convey to the presidential suite, and to wait therein while he finishes a short briefing with his press secretary, after which he takes the elevator with a Secret Service agent to the twenty-first floor, finding the Intern guarding the folder from the NPIC.
He invites her to mix a daiquiri while he speed-reads the reports, once again finding himself let down by the Farmington syllabus as she requires instruction in the recipe and combines the constituents so tremulously he fears there’ll be more rum on the rug than in his glass, then he invites her to sit and wait with a notepad, and, on completing the folder, he dictates, “POTUS examined material period no change in course period,” and then he smiles, work finished, and offers her a drink, which she politely declines. Her skin is pale and unblemished, her hair thick and straight, but she is quite nervous.
“Are you sure?” he says. “Maybe we both need to relax at the end of a day like today.”
“I don’t know, Mr. President,” she says. “Well, I certainly need to relax,” he says.
She gazes at him for a few seconds, unsure of his meaning. He thinks she must be worried she’ll be asked to mix another drink.
“You must be tired, Mr. President,” is her eventual reply.
His fingers drum on the armrest of his chair. He decides to say, “Do you think you could do something to help me relax?”
She is shaking with nerves. “I’ll see what I can do, Mr. President,” she says, and exits.
He awaits her return, a little perplexed, but hugely excited. The presidential rocket starts its countdown.
The telephone rings, Room Service, saying one of his aides has asked them to send up a masseur. He declines, pleading tiredness, and phones Fiddle (or Faddle), whom the Beard thoughtfully packed as backup, to be broken out of her wrapper in an emergency.
Campaigning in the Midwest is scheduled to continue through the weekend, but the President becomes anxious about being away from Washington during the crisis, so his press secretary issues a statement that he has come down with a cold—not rhinitis or sinusitis or urethritis or prostatitis or any of the infections he does have at this particular time—to facilitate abbreviating the trip without arousing suspicion.
In the morning, he motors to O’Hare, flies to Andrews, boards the helicopter for the hop back to the White House, and then limps across the South Lawn into the Oval Office before proceeding through his secretary’s office, saying “Good morning” to Mrs. Lincoln, and into the Cabinet Room, where the Executive Committee stand to attention waiting for the President to sit before they do so themselves, and around the table they go straight to work on the fine details of strategy.
The session continues intermittently over the whole weekend and through Monday, with breaks for lunch and dinner, plus any long-standing diary commitments the President must meet, such as talks with the Ugandan President, to maintain an air of business as usual. Once again in the debate, he faces strong calls for air strikes and invasion. The Air Force Chief of Staff suggests planning a preemptive strategic nuclear strike against the Soviet Union.
In meeting with senior senators of both parties, the President outlines the discovery of the missile bases and his proposed response. Almost to a man, they insist he abandon restraint and order our forces into action in Cuba and Berlin.
Meanwhile, in his time away from the Ex-Comm, the President hurries to his wife and children. He glimpses them in the playground, so he shambles out into the south grounds to join them, as countless fathers must also be doing across the country on this apparently unremarkable Sunday in October.
The President has appreciated having his family close by over this tense period, yet he has become accustomed to a regular Sunday evening assignation. Routinely he would have a snack with the Beard and the girl, and then use her quickly in the Lincoln Bedroom, ensuring the Beard had her off the premises by 7 p.m., before his wife and children would return from out of town. Tonight the four-poster lies empty, and the President’s toxemia simmers.
The following night, he goes on air. Gloom has settled in the windows of the Oval Office by the time he’s installed behind his desk, cleared of all documents save speech notes, even the photographs of the First Lady and their children having been scooped into a box. He fixes his eyes on the middle camera of three and sa
ys:
“Good evening, my fellow citizens. This Government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet Military build-up on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island …”
The President outlines the evidence, the strategic threat posed by the missiles, and the proposed naval blockade. He takes a breath. His stomach aches. If he were capable of producing adrenaline, there’d now be a cold sweat trickling down his brow. Instead he appears cool and controlled. His tan is flawless and his hair splendid.
“My fellow citizens: let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out. But the greatest danger of all would be to do nothing. Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right—not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world.”
Once the cameras cut, the President gives thanks to a few members of the television crew before slipping into the head to vent stinging poison from his knotted gut. Adm. B. and Dr. C. are waiting in the sitting hall when he comes out.
“Fine speech, Mr. President,” says Adm. B.
“Very fine, sir,” says Dr. C.
“Thank you,” he says, admitting them to the Oval Office.
“How are you tonight, sir?” says the Admiral.
“My belly’s on fire,” he says.
“That will be down to the corticosteroids,” says the Admiral.
“The increased dose will upset your gut metabolism,” says Dr. C.
“Then shouldn’t you reduce the dose?” the President says.
They shake their heads simultaneously. “Now we’ve increased it,” they say, “it would be catastrophic to reduce it.”
The doctors have instituted an even stricter regimen of bland food and passed their orders to the chef, so, while the First Lady enjoys an appetizing repast that evening in the Residence, the President’s plates bear wan offerings scarcely distinguishable from the china.