Free Edge of Tomorrow by Wolf Wootan Page A

somewhere. Ah, this desk drawer here. A private two-line
phone?” West queried.
    “Amazing! Yes, that is my private phone. Most
people do not know about it.”
    “Well, everything else seems clear. May I sit
down, sir?” asked West.
    “Please do,” answered the President,
indicating a chair in front of his desk.
    “What I am going to tell you is for your ears
only. You must not tell anyone else; otherwise, the benefits you
can experience from what I reveal to you will be null and void. You
will be skeptical at first, but please hear me out.”
    “I feel like I am in an episode of Fantasy
Island, or the Twilight Zone.”
    West took what looked to be a blue cellular
phone out of his briefcase and put it on the President’s desk. The
President’s face acquired his practiced puzzled look.
    West continued, “This phone, which we will
refer to as the ‘Blue Phone,’ is a very special device which can be
your link to a very special problem solver. Without going into
technical details, this phone connects to a private communications
satellite system; it is fully encrypted and scrambled so that no
one else in the world, including your own NSA people, can intercept
and decode its signal.”
    “That’s hard to believe,” interjected the
President.
    “Take my word for it. Conversations you have
on this phone will be completely secure. Also, to insure against
the unlikely possibility that someone else finds out about the
phone and tries to use it pretending to be you, your voice print
will be entered into our system while I am here, so we will always
know it is you on the phone.”
    “This is all very interesting, Mr. West, but
why do I need this phone? I have more secure phones than anyone
else in the world! Are you some kind of phone salesman? I can’t
believe the DDI set up this meeting!” said a very irritated
president.
    “No! Bear with me, Mr. President. I am not
selling you anything! The Blue Phone is a gift, but its only
significance is its ability to connect you to a person with great
problem solving powers. You see this button? When you push that,
you will be connected to ‘Bob,’ not his real name, but a man who
will discuss your problems with you. He is apolitical, so politics
do not enter into his decision making process. You, however, must
consider the political impact, national and international, of every
decision you make.”
    “That is certainly true!” agreed the man
behind the desk. “But I still don’t see how that helps me in any
way.”
    “I will try and make that clear in a moment.
Another important concept to be considered here is that of
‘complete deniability.’ If you, let’s say, had a very difficult
international decision to make, and what you wanted to do was the
right thing to do, in your opinion, but was politically impossible,
what are your options? If you do the right thing and it is found
out it was you who gave the order, you commit political
suicide—maybe even start World War III.”
    “I have a few problems like that facing me as
we speak.”
    “Precisely. But let us suppose you could have
a private conversation, one that no one knows you had, with an
understanding person. No actions suggested, no orders issued, just
a discussion of the problem.”
    “You mean with someone like Bob,” suggested
the President.
    “That is perceptive,” smiled West. “After an
interesting discussion, you’ll feel better just talking about it,
and Bob says, ‘Sorry you have so many problems, Mr. President, but
call me anytime.’ Then he hangs up. Suppose, just suppose, that the
problem, all of a sudden, gets solved. The affected Nations are
screaming their heads off, but the U. S. has no involvement. You
have complete deniability. In fact, you have no idea how the
problem was solved, or by whom.”
    “This ‘Bob’ has the power to do things like
that?”
    “Some problems cannot be solved even by Bob.
Or he may decide he doesn’t want to be involved. But either way, a
quiet