The President frowned at her. "I'm in conference."
"We can't afford all these troop deployments. Are you insane? It'll bust the budget. What will that do to our reelection?"
"My reelection."
"You get reelected, I'm reelected. If the voters toss you out on your fat can, I'm back to doing pro bono work. I'm too important to go back to the working world."
A sheet of paper fell on the Presidential desk. He looked at it. "What's this?"
"A list of emergency budget-cutting options that will balance out what we're squandering on this non-crisis."
The President's puffy eyes skated down the page. At the very bottom was typed a .tempting target. The Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"Didn't we slash FEMA's budget last year?"
"So? Slash it again. The Cold War's over. FEMA is an albatross."
"They're pretty handy for hurricanes and earthquake relief and stuff like that."
"Leave enough to manage natural disasters. But cut off all Cold War survival stuff. We don't need it."
"If we're invaded by Mexico, we may need to go to that hardened FEMA site in the Maryland mountains."
"It's already built. It's not going away if you freeze their funds. Besides, if we don't have FEMA hard-sites, neither does Congress. Maybe that'll make Speaker Grinch think twice the next time he sends over his damn regressive legislation."
"How many times do I have to tell you, don't call him that. If the media gets it on tape, we'll have a real problem."
"Just sign it. I'd do it myself, but it wouldn't be legal."
"Okay," said the President, signing the paper. "There. Their funds are frozen for the duration of this crisis."
The First Lady snatched the paper off the desk, said a frosty "Thank you" and marched out with her heels clicking.
The President of the Unites States sighed wearily. "Why does that woman always get her way?"
The chief of staff opened his mouth to say the obvious. But decided that "Because you let her" wasn't something the beleaguered President needed to hear right now.
Chapter Fourteen
When word reached Anwar Anwar-Sadat that Mexican armed forces were massing on the U.S. border, he thought he was dreaming.
In fact, he had been dreaming in his Beekman Place high-rise apartment. He had been dreaming of his namesake, Anwar al-Sadat.
Anwar Anwar-Sadat had served under Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat. It was a very confusing time because in those days, Anwar Anwar-Sadat's name had been simply Anwar Sadat. Two Anwar Sadats could be confusing, even in the Byzantine inner circles of Egyptian government, where any number of men bore identical names. It was easier to shift blame that way.
President Anwar al-Sadat had called the then-Foreign Minister Anwar Sadat into his sumptuous office and suggested that it was time for a change. "One of Us must change his name," had said President Anwar al-Sadat.
And so great had been Foreign Minister Anwar Sadat's ego in those days that he naturally assumed it would be the president who changed his name. After all, had it not been his idea?
Fortunately Anwar Sadat's diplomatic training saved him from saying so. So he sat in strained silence as the president went on to say, "And of course it must be you."
This struck Anwar Sadat like a cruel blow. He was proud of his name. He had striven mightily to make it a name to contend with in diplomatic circles. Now he was being stripped of it by this runty little despot with the wooly-worm mustache.
But being a diplomat, he didn't air his grievance. He merely said, "As you wish, my President."
"Then it is done," purred the Egyptian president.
"It is agreed," said the other Anwar Sadat, which sounded to the first like agreement but was actually temporizing.
A week passed and Anwar Sadat remained Anwar Sadat. Two weeks soon became three.
The Egyptian president had taken to becoming very testy with his namesake as he saw his foreign minister drag his feet. But he said nothing. This was Egypt, after all. Change came slowly.
On the day the president of Egypt was slaughtered in a reviewing stand by his own disloyal troops, Anwar Sadat was seated two rows behind him and four seats to the left. And survived with no more than a spattering of blood on his starched shirtfront. Other persons' blood.
In another culture this might have relieved a subordinate of his half promise to change his name, but not in Egypt. The very next day, tearful of eye and stony of visage, Anwar Sadat announced to a mourning nation that only a short time before, he had promised to change his name to please the martyred leader of Egypt. And now he would.
"I have taken my beloved leader's full name as my last name," he said. And when the people's assembly rose in thunderous applause, he took his seat behind a nameplate that bore the legend Anwar Anwar-Sadat.
From that day on he was Egypt's rising diplomatic star.
It was a magnificent gesture, one applauded the world over. But it had a downside. Comedians made fun of his name. Others misspelled it constantly, or placed the hyphen between the two Anwars instead of between the second Anwar and the only Sadat. It became especially acute when he assumed the exalted title of UN Secretary General, an office often held by men of unusual names. What was U Thant if not an odd name? Or Dag Hammarskjöld? Even when a secretary general was unmasked as a former Nazi, there were not such jokes.
And then there were the dreams. In his dreams the late President Anwar al-Sadat forever chased him through the red desert sands, screaming that he could not rest in the afterlife among the pharaohs and khedives of old so long as the upstart diplomat dragged his proud name through the headlines.
Anwar Anwar-Sadat was rudely awakened from his latest such dream by the ringing of the telephone.
"Another of those dreams, my General?" asked the obsequious voice of the under secretary for peacekeeping operations.
"It is nothing. I was glad to be roused from it, for the dead one had me by the ankles and held me prostrate as jackals circled."
"Jackals are a pharaonic symbol of the dead."
"I am not dead, I assure you."
"The army of Mexico is massing on the border."
"Which border?"
"Why, the United States border. What other border would interest them?"
"This is wonderful news!" burbled the secretary general, for a moment wondering if he hadn't slipped from the valley of nightmare to the realm of dreams come true.
"I thought you would see it this way," purred the under secretary.
"We must convene an emergency meeting of the Security Council and call for peacekeeping forces to be deployed between the two belligerent nations."