The Machiavelli Covenant by Allan Folsom Read Free Book Online Page A

John Henry Harris moved slowly away from the German Federal Chancellery, leaving Chancellor Anna Bohlen and a large gathering of the world media behind.
    President Harris and Bohlen had met the evening before; had attended a performance of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra; and then, this morning, accompanied by a handful of close advisers, had had a long, cordial breakfast where world issues and the longtime German-American alliance were discussed. Afterward they'd preened for the press, shaken hands and then he had left, the whole thing nearly a mirror copy of what had happened at the Elysée Palace in Paris twenty-four hours earlier. In both situations the president had hoped to start smoothing over the still volatile situation concerning both countries' earlier refusal to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the United Nations and their continuing concerns now.

    But for all the seeming goodwill and cordiality during both visits, little or nothing had been accomplished and the president was clearly upset. Jake Lowe, his portly fifty-seven-year-old longtime friend and chief political adviser sitting beside him and quietly reading text from a BlackBerry nestled into his palm, knew it.
    "None of us can afford this damned ongoing transatlantic rift," Harris said abruptly. "Publicly they agree, but in reality they won't move a quarter of an inch in our direction. Neither one of them."
    "It's a difficult path, Mr. President," Lowe responded quietly. The president might characteristically be introspective but anyone who was as close to him as Jake Lowe knew there were times he wanted to talk things through, usually when he had come to a dead end in his own reasoning. "And I'm not sure it has an end that will make everyone happy.
    "I've told you this before and I'll say it again now. It's a cruel fact of history that more than once the world has been provided with leaders who are the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the only thing that corrects it is a change of régime."
    "Well those régimes aren't about to change. And we don't have the luxury to wait for the next. We need everybody with us and right away if we're going to put this Middle East Humpty-Dumpty back together again. You know it. I know it. The world knows it."
    "Except the French and the Germans."
    President Harris leaned back in his seat, trying to relax. It didn't work. He was angry and frustrated and when he was like that and he talked, everything showed. "Those are two steel-jawed, unbendable SOBs. They'll go along but just so far, and when we really get to it they'll pull back and let us dangle in the wind, all thewhile clapping their hands in glee. There's got to be a way to turn them, Jake, but the damn truth is I don't have a clue as to what it will take. And after yesterday and today, even how to approach it."
    Abruptly President Harris turned to look out the window as his motorcade moved through the Tiergarten, Berlin's dramatic two-mile-long city park, then continued along a widely announced route that would take them down the Kurfürstendamm, the main street of Berlin's fashionable shopping district.
    The motorcade itself was huge, led by thirty German motorcycle police with two massive polished black Secret Service SUVs traveling in front of three identical presidential limousines, preventing anyone from knowing in which car the president rode. Immediately behind were eight more Secret Service SUVs, an ambulance, and two large vans, one carrying the press pool, the other, the president's traveling staff. The rear was brought up by another thirty-strong contingent of German motorcycle police.
    Since they'd left the Chancellery every street and boulevard was massed with people, as if half of Berlin had turned out for a glimpse of this president. Some applauded and waved small American flags; others booed or whistled, shaking their fists and shouting in anger. Others held banners reading: U.S. OUT OF MIDDLE-EAST, HERR PRÄSIDENT, GEHEN