Thomas Winter, President
Then Franklen opened the door and went in, confidently. He greeted the man behind the desk, who looked up worriedly from a maze of paper work and bade Franklen to sit down.
Winter said: "Trouble, Franklen. Bad trouble."
Franklen nodded. "I know," he said. "I've been following it. I gather that the fools are getting worse?"
Winter agreed with a slight nod of the head and replied: "I can't imagine what they're up to. Yet they continue to rattle the saber and make demands. The Central Power is not ignorant of the ramifications of their acts. Not after we've made point-blank statements. But they continue to get rougher and bolder, just as though they had the world in the palm of their hands."
"They know that they can't win, don't they?" asked Franklen.
"They should—they've been told, and they have been shown exactly what will happen, how, and why. The proof is irrevocable, undeniable. Still they continue."
"I understand we've been watching them closely."
Winter smiled bitterly. "I've got so many men watching their separation plants and their atomic stockpile that even the janitors must find UN Representatives looking up out of their coffee cups in the morning. There's no activity there that can be construed as dangerous, even admitting that we're leaning way over backwards and would be suspicious of a single gram of missing fissionable matter. Of course, they have the standard United Nations stockpile; the safety value that all nations hold against possible aggression. They're also aware that this quantity is also a fraction of what the rest hold all together."
Franklen looked at the big flag on the back wall of the office. "The United Nations," he said bitterly. "With one member slightly disunited." He turned back to the president of the Weapon Council. "Have they, by any chance, made secret pacts with other nations?"