MAMista. Len Deighton

was glum: ‘An LAPD spokesman estimated close on one hundred thousand angry demonstrators packed into MacArthur Park today … Young and old, men and women: protesting the announced cutbacks in the aerospace industry that could make a quarter of a million workers jobless by Christmas.’

      There were hand-held TV camera shots of angry demonstrators shouting and struggling with the police at several places on the route. Their big banners were easy to read, and easy to chant: ‘Save your sorrow: Your turn tomorrow’; ‘Cut-backs today will kill L.A.’ One home-made sign, scrawled on a sheet of brown cardboard, said, ‘Where is Joe Stalin now that we need him?’

      The time difference between Washington and the West Coast did not prevent the news from airing a few vox-pop interviews with demonstrators as the speeches ended and the people began to disperse. Articulate union leaders, and cautious middle management, agreed that America should not dismantle its defences just because the USSR was adopting a less belligerent posture.

      The following news item was about the US Coast Guard’s latest haul of drugs. ‘Five million dollars street value,’ said the commentary. The President pushed the button on his control. The picture went dark. ‘I wish these half-witted TV people would stop glamorizing that poison: “Five million dollars street value.” Holy cow! It’s like a recruiting campaign for pushers.’

      Curl stood up and fidgeted with his file cards.

      ‘MacArthur Park,’ said the President. ‘They would choose skid row! As if the demonstrations aren’t losing me enough votes, I have to have cameras panning across derelict houses and drunken bums.’

      Curl said, ‘No real violence, Mr President. We have to be pleased the demonstrators were so disciplined and well-behaved.’

      The two men sat looking at the blank screen for a moment. They both knew that this was just the tip of the iceberg. The cuts had started on a small scale. They were to be far more extensive than had yet been made public. Aerospace meant California, and California had become a vital centre of political support. California now had a bigger proportion of the House of Representatives than any state had had since the 1860s. The President’s visit there, and the one thousand dollars per plate dinner, was only a month away. ‘The aerospace boys – the management – are using these demonstrators to shaft us, do you see that?’

      ‘Management thought it was all over,’ said Curl. ‘We let them think that last year. They thought they had taken the bloodletting. They were breathing a sigh of relief when this hit them.’

      ‘The opposition will make the most of it,’ said the President dolefully. ‘You can bet every liberal pinko, every half-baked anarchist and every rabble-rouser in the land will schlepp across there to the land of fruits and nuts. They’ll all be there to join in the reception for me when I arrive.’

      Curl would not permit such paranoid illusions. He was always ready to step out of line: that’s why he was so valuable. ‘These are all middle-class people, Mr President. Skilled workers, not hippies. That’s why there were no clashes with the cops. They are frightened family men. Frightened family men.’

      The President nodded. He hadn’t missed the implication that he too was a frightened family man sometimes. Curl was right. ‘Did you see what the rumours have already done to the stock market?’

      ‘Yes, I saw that.’

      There was a silence. Then: ‘So what do you have, John?’ The President looked up at him, keeping his finger in place in the 500-page unedited draft of the Congressional Joint Economics Committee report. He had reached the page that had sobering projections about what job losses the changes would bring in the coming four years. Now he let go of his place in the report and put it on the floor. He would have his morning call advanced an hour. In the morning he would be able to glean enough from it to be ready for the men from the Government Accounting Office. But already he got up at six. The President closed his eyes as if to sample sleep for a moment. Curl hesitated to continue but, with his eyes still closed, the President said, ‘Shoot, John.’

      ‘Spanish Guiana. A US prospecting team has struck oil. A lot of oil.’

      ‘A lot of oil?’

      ‘It was a personal off-the-record call from Steve Steinbeck – it’s Steve’s company of course – and he wouldn’t talk numbers. Presently it’s on their computer at Houston.’

      ‘He called you?’

      ‘He wouldn’t have called unless it was big.’

      ‘Why you?’ he persisted.

      ‘We had a kind of line to the prospecting team,’ admitted Curl. ‘I left a message for him to call. Steve guessed what was on my mind.’

      The President still hadn’t opened his eyes. ‘I worked in oil when I was young. I’ve seen it all before: a million or more times. These field workers are just telling Steve that they have found the right conditions. Maybe an anticline, a fold in the strata with a sealing formation that would capture oil or gas, if there was any.’

      ‘They seem pretty certain. I cross-checked with Steve’s head of Latin America exploration.’

      ‘Some graduate palaeontologist has gathered a basket of fossils, and they’ve fired a few shots, and got a sexy little seismogram for the head office.’

      Curl unzipped his leather case. From a pocket inside it, he unclipped a long strip of paper. Six timer lines went the length of it. At each explosion the pen had fluttered wildly according to how far the tremor had reached before bouncing off the reflecting beds deep in the earth. The President took the strip of paper and studied it as if he could make sense of it. It was like an electrocardiogram from an agitated heart. The President stroked the paper and smelled it. ‘This is the real thing, John.’

      ‘I told Steve you wouldn’t find any kind of photocopy convincing.’

      ‘Well maybe …’

      ‘They have seepage, Mr President.’

      ‘Seepage? Are they sure?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘That’s different, John.’ He looked at the paper and his mind went back to his youth. A seismogram like this was then the height of his ambition. He’d wanted to be an explorer but his Dad had kept him in that lousy office. ‘Funny to think a piece of paper like this could change the world, John. Seepage! That’s the piece of pork they used to put in the can of beans. That’s what every oil man dreams of: seepage. So Steinbeck got lucky again.’

      ‘They’ve been renewing licences to prospect down there for ten years or more.’ Discreetly Curl produced a map of South America. He wanted to refresh the President’s memory about exactly where Spanish Guiana was situated. ‘But if it’s really big, Royal Dutch Shell are sure to want a piece of it … and maybe Exxon too.’

      ‘The word is out?’

      ‘Not yet. But Steve is screaming for exploratory drilling. When he moves in a lightweight rig, it will raise some eyebrows.’

      ‘Without drilling there’s no proof it’s anything but a dry hole.’

      ‘And after the drilling it’s too late,’ said Curl.

      ‘Too late for what?’

      John Curl shrugged.

      ‘Tell me how you see it, John.’

      ‘The Benz government has been a good and reliable friend to America. But the real truth is that he’ll only stay in power as long as there is a literacy test for voters.’ He waited for that to sink in.

      ‘A literacy test for voters,’ said the President. ‘If only we had a literacy test for voters, John.’

      John Curl was not to be deflected from his explanation by bad jokes. ‘Remove the literacy qualification and the Indian population would vote Benz into obscurity overnight. The sort of landslide that even a South American election can’t fix. Even as it stands, he sits