Joe Haldeman Tool of the Trade

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."She looked out over the city with her mouth set in a stubborn line."Look," I continued, "they don't even have to get the watch.Don't have toknow the frequency.If they just deduce the simple fact that there is a noisethat will make people do what you say-""I know.They'll find out what the noise is.""In no time.Especially since it's a pure tone.If it were a chord or amixture of harmonics, or if it had to be a certain amplitude, it could takethem forever.Trial and error.But hell.They could deduce that it was eitherultrasonic or subsonic, and they'd just run up and down the scale.Probably find it in a couple of days' systematic searching.""Yeah, maybe.I'm going to open that bottle of wine.Toss the salad." With aposture of resignation, perhaps calculated, she headed for the kitchen.Thisis the way she normally wins arguments with me.Halfway conceding that I'm right, and letting me talk myself over toward herposition.Of course I also had a certain amount of guilt pushing me into a desire to usethis power for good, or a change.Not so much the trail ofdead pushers, pimps, and muggers; that disturbed me, but more because I didn'tunderstand it than out of feeling remorse for them.No, the main source ofguilt was Valerie's suffering.I'd proceeded with such a slow pace supposedlyto protect her-but had to come in with all the subtlety of a firestorm anyhow.I could have done that the first day I'd seen the message in the paper.Icould have done it the night I came home from Paris.Besides, I'd accepted a small risk of exposure every time I'd used the watchdown in the Zone.What if some undercover cop had witnessed me asking a pimpto throw himself in front of a speeding bus? The power would have wound up inthe hands of the authorities that way, just as surely as it would if theyPage 67ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlcaught me whispering into the president's ear.And the payoff could be so muchgreater, the potential to change things.Virtually the whole plan came to me in an instant.Valerie returned with thewine and salad, and we served each other in silence.Finally Ispoke up."I've been thinking about what you said.""So?""Leningrad is beautiful in the spring.We should go there."CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVEPRESIDENT NIXON MET the Russians in Moscow andPresident Ford met them in Vladivostok, and then for a long time the twocountries' leaders stayed off each other's soil.They communicated bydiplomatic pouch and phone in the best of times, and in the worst, onlythrough inflammatory rhetoric inPravda and theNew York Times.President Gideon Fitzpatrick wanted to change that.A neoconserv ative withimpeccable anti-Communist credentials, he was safe including in his platform aproposal to get together with the Russiansand "try to talk some sense into them." Their meeting would be more symbolicthan substantial, but it would open a new round of formal talks on armslimitation, cultural and scientific exchange, and the possibility of restoringto the Soviet Union "most favored nation" import-export status-which not incidentally would put the fear of God, or at leastthe Almighty Dollar, into the Chinese and Japanese.President Fitzpatrick did have one important emotional tie withRussia and, not too indirectly, with the new Soviet premier.On 25April 1945, as a very young and green lieutenant in the 69th InfantryDivision, he waded ashore on the eastern bank of the Elbe, to be greeted bycheers and incomprehensible gibberish and a canteen cup full of vodka.By dawnhe could almost understand Russian.At least he could sing the first few barsof the Soviet national anthem.He was not so happy with the Russians in subsequent years and decades, thoughnot even the McCarthy era could permanently affect his preference for vodka.(A very junior senator at the time, in public he did drink bourbon for acouple of years.)Premier Sergei Vardanyan was also a soldier in the Great PatrioticWar, a private even younger than Fitz-patrick, and they may possibly have comein sight of one another that April.Vardanyan's unit arrived at the Elbe theday before Fitzpatrick's moved on, and they were stationed barely ten milesapart.The plan was for them to meet again at the Elbe (now part of EastGermany), on the anniversary of the historic occasion, and deliver speechesand lay wreaths.Then Fitzpatrick would make pro forma visits to variousEuropean allies, leading up to his meeting withVardanyan on April 30.The next day, he would be the first American presidentto observe May Day on Soviet soil.To be fair to his predecessors, most American presidents since1918 couldn't have stood in that reviewing stand-not with a bellicoseprocession of tanks and guns and missiles rolling by.But sinceBrezhnev's time, May Day has been quite the opposite, a gentle celebration ofpeace.Every factory and school has a float done up with doves androsy-cheeked girls, papier-mache globes; all presided over by the benevolenthammer and sickle and the word for peace:mir.(Nowadays the guns don't go on parade until they celebrate thePage 68ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlOctober Revolution, in November [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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