ReUNION: What if the Civil War had never happened? by Harvey Ardman Read Free Book Online Page A

reveal?"
    "As soon as possible," Pickett said, ignoring Wang’s snide tone.
"He'll arrange his schedule to fit yours and he'll come here or anywhere
else you choose."
    Wang parked his arms across his chest, body language screaming absolutely
not, no chance, isn’t going to happen . "Hmmm," he said.
    But Callaway seemed intrigued. “The meeting must be very important to him, if
he’s willing to be that accommodating.”
    "Look, Mr. Pickett," said Wang, "this is something we're going
to have to discuss at some length. Give us a few days. We'll get be
touch."
    Pickett considered Wang's offer. "How about this," he said, finally,
"I'll talk to President Bourque tonight, see if I can convince him to give
you an idea of what he's thinking, then I'll come back tomorrow and fill you
in."
    Wang shook his head. "We're going to need some time..."
    "What am I doing tomorrow morning at, say, 11 o'clock," Callaway
asked Wang..
    "Meeting with the French Ambassador I believe," Wang said.
    "Reschedule him, Eric."
    "O-kay," Wang said, sounding a little put out.
    Pickett broke out into a broad grin. "Thank you very much, Mr.
President."
    They shook hands again.
    Wang pushed a button and a college-age young man appeared at the door, ready for
escort duty. Pickett said his goodbyes and departed.
    "Get hold of Arthur Schwartz," Callaway told Wang. "We need a
CSA polling data summary. On this desk by tomorrow morning at 9 a.m."

Chapter Three
    The old gentleman raised his hand to knock on the door, then paused. He
smoothed out his green uniform jacket, raised one leg at a time to shine his
shoes on the back of his pants and brushed back his mustache.
    "How's his mood this morning, Rosalita?" he asked the pretty,
dark-eyed secretary, who was busily filing an elaborately-decorated fingernail.

" 'Comme ci comme ça ,"
she said with a shrug. "I haven't heard any shouting yet, but you
know..."
"Yes," the old gentleman said. "I know." He drew himself up
to full height, took a deep breath and knocked timidly. There was no response.
He knocked again, louder.
"What?" a loud, gravelly voice called out. "Who's there?"
"It is I, Estavan Sandoval, your Excellency" said the old man,
"I am here for our weekly conference."
"Just a moment, Minister Sandoval."
Minister Sandoval obediently stood at the closed door, waiting for permission
to open it. After two humiliating minutes, it came. "You may enter,
Minister Sandoval."
The old gentleman nervously cracked open the door and peered inside. Twenty
paces away, a big bear of a man with a black eyepatch, wearing a uniform heavy
with ribbons and medals, sat behind a marble-topped desk the size of a ping
pong table. He was buttoning the top button of his pants. "Come, come,
come, Minister," he said. "I haven't got all day."
"Yes, El Presidente Garcia." He walked up to the President's
desk, across a rug so thick his shoes almost disappeared.
"Sit, sit, sit," said Presidente Garcia, impatiently gesturing
at a narrow, straight back wooden chair. Minister Sandoval swiftly obeyed.
"Tell me," Garcia asked, "At what price are we currently selling
oil to the North American Union?" It seemed a benign inquiry.
"Sixty-seven dollars," said the Minister of Petroleum.
Garcia spun around in his chair, so that he was facing a floor-to-ceiling
window, out of which, on a relatively unpolluted day like this, he could see Popocatépetl, the 17,800 foot tall volcano, Mexico's second
highest mountain. It had erupted quite spectacularly a couple of years ago and
was even now belching thick black smoke.
El Presidente twirled around to face his oil minister once more. "I
want you to raise the price, to $70 a barrel, starting next Monday."
The Minister of Petroleum blinked in surprise. "But Excellency, we are
already two dollars over the world price at the well head. There will be
protests."
"Oh, they will object, Minister Sandoval. They will squeal like pigs. And
so, after two or three months, we will slowly begin to reduce the price—but