The Mirror Maze Read online

  With its growing population, developing economy, and solid military capability, Egypt was the nucleus of the postwar Arab world. To hasten its development, Sadat’s predecessor, Gamal Nasser, had accepted aid from both the Soviet Union and from the U.S. and World Bank, endeavoring to play one side off against the other without becoming too tied to either. He was unable to maintain a neutral balance, however, and by the time of his death in 1970 Egypt had become a virtual Soviet client state economically and militarily, which influenced the entire region accordingly. Sadat’s first mission on taking office was to restore the balance, and in 1971 he purged his regime of its pro-Soviet elements, following up on this a year later with the expulsion from the country of fourteen thousand Soviet technicians and advisers on the grounds that Egypt had not received the modern weapons that it needed—a requirement that was later fulfilled by the West.

  The Camp David accords signed subsequently therefore represented not only a diplomatic triumph for the cause of stability, but a decisive shift westward of the entire Middle East power balance. Not only was the Soviet Union deprived of its main bases in the area and forced to turn instead to Syria and Iraq, which with their smaller cultural and economic weight added up to a far inferior substitute, but the Soviet-backed Palestinian revolutionary movement suffered a greater disaster, perhaps, than the maulings it received in the civil war in Jordan in 1971, and again in Lebanon in 1975. For in a closed codicil to the Camp David agreement, the Israeli and Egyptian premiers pledged that Mossad and GID, the two most efficient intelligence services in the region, would henceforth share information, depriving the Palestinians at a stroke of the support of the nation which, under Nasser, had armed, trained, and consolidated them.

  And now there was a grave risk that all of that might be lost.

  Henry Newell, leader of the Constitutional party and now president-elect of the United States, sat in a room in the Senate Offices Building across Constitution Avenue from the Capitol in Washington, D.C., reading again a copy of a report that the State Department had sent him a few weeks earlier from the ambassador in Cairo. It now seemed certain that Mehemet Kabuzak, currently the Egyptian foreign minister, would become the next prime minister, probably within six months. Kabuzak’s attitude toward the West had been cooling appreciably over the past five years as a consequence of some questionable policy decisions by the U.S., and he was even more dubious of the Constitutional party’s stated intention of cutting back ruthlessly on free-handout-style foreign aid, and eventually abolishing it. If the Constitutionals won the American election, he had declared on several occasions, he would take Egypt—and by implication the Middle East center of gravity with it—back to an alignment with the Soviets. Arab politicians were notorious for bombast and bluff, it was true, but according to the report that had been passed to Newell, there were strong indications that Kabuzak was serious.

  Newell’s whole campaign to an electorate grown cynical from years of duplicity and broken promises had been based on telling it straight. The single most important reason for the popular appeal that had brought his party from nowhere in a few years and swept it to the top of the polls had been the public’s realization that the party’s concerns went beyond looking good on prime-time TV, and it really did mean what it said. And that meant there could be no question of disillusioning the public now and allowing his to become another more-of-the-same-after-all-the-promises administration by reversing his stated position. Yet, to allow Kabuzak to go through with his threat as one of Newell’s first achievements after taking office would hardly be the best way of inspiring confidence for the future.

  Newell believed that most misunderstandings are caused by failures of communication. Accordingly, his first reaction—although he would have no official powers until after his inauguration in January—had been to suggest an informal meeting with the Egyptians to explore the implications in greater depth. The State Department had raised no objection, and the Egyptians had accepted. Accordingly, it had been agreed that Newell’s vice-president-to-be, Theo McCormick, would fly to Cairo with a small party early in January to prepare the ground. Newell himself would follow up later with an official visit in his capacity as president.

  The secure phone programmed to Newell’s personal number rang. He picked it up. “Newell here.”

  “Warren, returning your call.” It was Warren Landis, Newell’s head of party intelligence matters.

  “God, did you only just get the message?”

  “Right now I’m in my car, risking a ticket on the Beltway. Even dedicated lieutenants take a break sometimes, Henry.”

  “Okay. Look, about Theo’s visit to the Middle East in January…”

  “Yes?”

  “We’ve got a reply from Jerusalem, and they’ve confirmed that the fourteenth is acceptable.” That was a matter of protocol. To avoid offending anyone, McCormick’s party would also pay a courtesy visit to the Israeli capital before returning to the States. “We need to firm up the dates. Have you talked to Kirkelmayer yet about standing down?”

  “Yes, and it’s okay. He says he’s due for a vacation anyway after the election hysteria. We’ve found a nice place to hide him away.”

  “Good.” Newell smiled for a second, then his expression became serious again. “So what about the girl? Have we found her yet?”

  “Not yet. We’re trying everywhere. From the messages in the network box, it appears that the other side is having the same problem.”

  Newell frowned. “I thought she was supposed to be reliable. And this is important… Look, get Ron Bassen’s people onto it, will you? I want top priority on this.”

  “Okay. I’ll talk to him as soon as I check in. I should get there in about twenty minutes.”

  “Fine. And come straight on over to the Senate when you’ve done that, would you, Warren? I’ve got some other things here that we need to go through.”

  “Will do.”

  Newel replaced the phone and settled back to read the next item. It was a quote by a religious leader in Louisiana who had interpreted a story in the Book of Numbers, telling how a donkey saw an angel and was able to speak to relay a message to its master, as a biblical injunction against the Constitutional party. Newell sighed and shook his head. To whom or what, he wondered, did an agnostic president pray for patience when the top got lonely? He held no religious convictions himself. In a paraphrasing of Voltaire, he had concluded that if there really were a God, it wouldn’t have been necessary for men to invent such an absurd one.

  CHAPTER 13

  Professor Paul Brodstein turned his hands palms upward in appeal to the packed tiers of seats rising to the back of the lecture theater. “When an industry starts pleading to government for special favors to protect it from competition, it signs its own death warrant,” he said. “And it’s society as a whole—you and me—that pays in the long run. Probably the most devastating blow that government can inflict is to impose tariffs or quotas on imports, supposedly as an aid to domestic producers. The first person to suffer is the general consumer. The reason why is obvious. Let’s imagine, for example, that Bongobongoland can ship T-shirts here and sell them profitably for five dollars, but American T-shirt makers need to charge eight dollars. So, in response to protectionist lobbying, a three-dollar tariff is imposed. But all that’s really happened is that everyone in the country who buys a T-shirt gets just that, when they could have had a T-shirt plus three dollars left in their pocket to spend on whatever they chose. Now add to that the fifteen dollars they could have saved on a pair of Indonesian shoes, two hundred dollars on a Japanese computer, over a thousand dollars on a French automobile, and so on for all the other items you could list… Now multiply that total by a hundred million consumers, and you can see that billions of dollars are drained out of the economy as additional government revenues, which could otherwise have been spent on goods and services that would have stimulated the creation of jobs. Every one of those evaporated dollars represents somebody’s hard-earn
ed wealth that isn’t being exchanged for anything of value—in other words, wasted investment in time, labor, capital, and other resources. And then the public is hit a second time with taxes to compensate for the unemployment that the government’s own policies have caused.”

  Brodstein paused and let his gaze run over the rows of faces to invite comment. A big-chested girl near the front chewed on the end of her pen dubiously while she thought this over, then looked up. “But what about the people in the factory back home, who can’t make a living at five bucks a shirt? They’re all out of jobs, aren’t they? Aren’t we supposed to care about them?” A few assenting nods from around the room endorsed the question.

  “Yes, we’re supposed to care about them,” Brodstein replied. “But I would argue that in the long run they, just like everybody else, will be better off if the market is left to itself. But tariff laws give an illusion of protection in the shorter term, and that’s what gets you votes.”

  “Would you explain how they end up better off in the long run if they’re out of a job?” a black youth in a red sweatshirt asked from the other side.

  Brodstein walked across to where he was sitting. “They won’t end up out of a job, but they might end up not making T-shirts,” he said. “And that might be for the best, anyway. If the industry was that marginal that it needed to plead for protection in the first place, it was probably declining and only able to pay marginal wages. The people will relocate into the other industries that are expanding because of those billions of extra dollars we’ve left in people’s pockets to spend. And since expanding industries are competing for labor, they’ll pay better than marginal industries, like the one that the ex—T-shirt-makers moved from. That’s why I say that in the long run they’ll be better off.” Brodstein stepped back to take in the whole room again. “And another thing… The T-shirt maker in Bongobongoland is now earning dollar exchange, which enables him to buy our products, which means we don’t have to hit the taxpayer a third time through subsidies for American exporters. And on top of that, since Bongobongoland is earning its own keep, we avoid hitting him a fourth time with foreign aid.”

  “Are you saying that a country like ours shouldn’t provide aid to the lesser-developed ones?” someone queried.

  “I’m saying that if that’s what you want to do, the most effective way to do it is to let them trade and compete equally across open borders. It may shrink some profits and paychecks, but it would cut everyone’s taxes, too. And it puts things on the basis I’ve been advocating, which is free individual choice.” He spread his hands wide again. “When lawmakers start interfering in economics, everyone else loses. The best way to make sure that crime doesn’t pay would be to let government run it.”

  Laughter came from a few places. Then a Cuban girl at the back raised a hand, checked her notes, and began, “You said earlier, Professor, that increases in real wealth can only come from improved productivity. Now, in the case of labor laws that…”

  Near the center, halfway from the front, Mel clipped more sheets of paper into his ring binder. Eva was sitting a short distance to his right and a few rows father forward, her hair trailing down over a sheer, off-white blouse that buttoned down the back and showed her bra strap, becoming virtually transparent where it touched her body. With it she had clinging green slacks stretched tight and hugging her hips as she leaned forward, arms folded on the desk in front of her, to follow what was being said. For some reason, he would have expected it to be Stephanie that wore bras and Eva that didn’t, but it was the other way around. He wasn’t sure what the significance of that was, if there was any.

  As he watched her, he began undressing her in his mind. It would be slowly, gently, he decided, with nothing rushed that might disrupt the exquisiteness of the moment—although in his fantasy, of course, there was no need for haste to allay uncertainty, because she was delightfully eager… He pictured his hands exploring the contours of her back through the blouse, enjoying the firmness and warmth before opening the buttons one by one to expose the smooth skin and release its odor. And then, the catch unhooking to let the straps fall free, his fingers stealing softly around below her arms to slide inside the loosened cups… He felt himself growing erect and distinctly uncomfortable beneath the desk at the thought of it.

  “If better technology is bringing the free-market price of food down to the point where fewer farmers can make a living, then the best thing is for the less efficient producers to get out,” Brodstein was saying at the front. “The worst thing you can do is try and prop prices up with guaranteed government purchases. All that does is attract more producers into the business because of the guaranteed profits, which creates surpluses. And the surpluses are made worse by the reduced demand that results from the artificially high prices. Eventually you get a massive price collapse—the exact opposite of what you set out to achieve. That brings further demands for the government to do something, which leads to the kinds of absurdities we’ve been seeing, with farmers being paid not to produce, and crops and livestock actually being destroyed…”

  With an effort of will, Mel returned his attention to his notes. Sex was like money, he told himself. Everybody thought there was more of it around than there really was, and that everyone else was getting a bigger share.

  • • •

  All the same, he made a point of noticing from a distance that after class she headed for the cafeteria on the ground floor of the building, accompanied by a chubby, fluffy-haired girl who had been asking questions about how pro-union laws protected privileged classes of labor. He had been intending to stop by the cafeteria himself, which would enable him to get through the rest of the day without more than a snack. However, to avoid looking as if he were following her around—as if anyone else would have noticed or cared—and to prove to himself that he wasn’t, he walked past the cafeteria entrance and out onto the campus, deciding to stop at a Perkins pancake restaurant on the way home instead. But halfway across the lawn, he remembered that it would be two days until Brodstein’s next class. Suddenly it seemed a long time.

  He circled the lawn in a vaguely unresolved state of mind and found himself going back into the economics building again. In the self-service area at the cafeteria entrance he selected chicken, beef, and cheese with a bun and gamishings to make a sandwich, added an apple, a soda, some cutlery, and a napkin to the tray, and carried it over to the line at the register. Moving nonchalantly, he scanned the tables ahead furiously. Eva and the chubby girl were sitting at a table near the windows to one side. Mel passed through the cash desk and began heading uncertainly in more or less that direction, frantically trying to think of an opener to join them. For some reason, a simple “Hi, can I join you?” didn’t occur to him. But Eva had already spotted him and waved. He veered toward their table.

  “Have a seat,” Eva said. Mel sat down, feeling quite pleased with his initiative. “Mel, do you know Sadie? This is Mel. He’s Brett’s roommate.”

  “Brett? You mean your sister’s boyfriend?”

  “Right.”

  “Hi,” Sadie said to Mel.

  “Hi.”

  “You just joined us a week or two ago, didn’t you?” Sadie said. She had alert, attractive brown eyes, and a pretty face that would have been better still if she lost a few pounds.

  “I decided to extend myself from computer science,” Mel said. “A broader outlook on life.”

  “Great,” Sadie said.

  “So, how do you like Paul’s class?” Eva asked him.

  The translucency of her blouse was even more tantalizing from the front than from the back. “It’s… interesting.” Mel looked away hurriedly and busied himself with fixing his sandwich.

  Sadie had a tuna salad on her tray, and Eva, just a glass of iced tea. “Have we recruited Mel as a Constitutional yet?” Sadie asked as she peeled the foil off a pat of butter for her roll.

  “We’re working on it,” Eva replied, smiling.

  “Are you one too?” Mel ask
ed.

  “Isn’t everybody?” Sadie said. “They will be by 2000, anyway.”

  “Brett’s not so sure about that,” Mel said. “He thinks you’ve got no chance. But he’s more worried about government putting religion back in the schools than legislating economics.”

  “Make the whole school system private,” Eva said. “Get the government out of it. Let parents send their kids to get whatever education they choose. The market can decide what’s wanted.”

  “You mean everyone has to pay fees?” Mel said.

  “Why not? They do anyway, through taxes. But this way they’d have more say in how it gets spent.”

  “Wouldn’t that penalize kids from poorer families?”