Forbidden Area

by Pat Frank

  Simmons nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid it’s coming—and very soon. I haven’t quite finished. Two weeks ago, as you know, the Russian ambassador left Washington for Moscow. The announcement was ‘routine consultations.’ He took quite a staff back with him, of rather unusual composition. Only a few were of high rank or proven diplomatic quality. The others were all assistant military attachés and obscure vice-consuls who we have reason to believe are either high in the Party, or agents of the MVD.”

  “How about their ambassador to the UN?” Katharine asked. “He’s still here, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, and he undoubtedly will remain here. He has been treated for cancer at Memorial Hospital, and told he cannot get well. Now, based on these facts—”

  Felix Fromburg spoke. “Just a minute.” Katharine realized that they had all forgotten Fromburg, as usual. Fromburg looked like a younger Harry Truman. He looked like her postman and like one of the guards at the AEC main entrance and like Ed Salinger, her English professor at Sarah Lawrence, and like Mr. Kippel, the patient clerk at Brentano’s on F Street. He looked like everybody.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Felix,” said Simmons. “Didn’t mean to leave you out.”

  “I may have a little something,” Felix said. “One of the Tass men in New York is a Party wheel. He flew to Mexico four days ago. His girl, an American, quit her job in a dress shop and went with him. It was quite a good job. She can’t marry him because he’s already married. His wife is still in New York. There has been a quiet exodus of other Russians, not counting those who left with the ambassador’s party. Scandanavian Airlines and BOAC have been doing a very brisk business. All the tickets are one way.”

  “What about the people from the satellites?” Raoul asked.

  “Oh, they’re still here. For that matter, so are the majority of the Russians. They’re necessary sacrifices. And I doubt that any of the people recalled know what’s up. I can imagine a meeting in Moscow, and somebody checking off the names of those who for one reason or another were considered worth saving. These people were simply ordered home. A few others, like the Tass man in New York, may suspect something is coming and have decided to get out from under, or at least save their families. There were twenty-eight Russian women and children aboard a cruise ship for the Caribbean last week.”

  While he listened, Jesse Price’s chair had been tilted back, his pipe pointing at the ceiling. Now his chair cracked to the floor. “I think Christmas Eve,” he said.

  “Christmas Eve!” said Simmons. “Why?”

  “Because I don’t think anybody can bring himself to get excited about Russia with the holidays coming up. Not in this country, except maybe in this room and a few other rooms. Just as Sunday morning was the right time to hit Pearl Harbor because so many officers and men were ashore or off base, weekending and curing hangovers, so Christmas Eve is the right day to destroy the United States. All the cities will be jammed with shoppers. Everybody in uniform who can get leave will be at home. There’ll be skeleton crews at every command post and duty office and interceptor field and AA rocket emplacement. Key men in government will be scattered all over the map. Every Navy captain will try to have his ship in port, and liberty for his men. That right, Steve?”

  Commander Batt smiled. “That has been the custom,” he admitted.

  “Who wants to fly long range search on the day before Christmas?” Price continued. “What about the men in the radar huts up on the DEW line? Are they thinking about mail, and families, and girls Christmas Eve, or watching their screen for pips? Which do you think?”

  “It’s a horrid conception,” Katharine said.

  “Perhaps I’m a horrid man,” said Jesse, “but it fits in with Steve’s estimate of the Baltic flotilla’s cruising time to the Gulf ports. And I’ll bet his thirty missing subs, at this moment, are somewhere up there in the fog and winter storms, heading west and south, about a hundred feet submerged and doing eleven or twelve knots. Think of the confusion if it came Christmas Eve. There wouldn’t be any Christmas Day, only confusion, only chaos and savagery.”

  Simmons spoke, very quietly, “This is your true, considered opinion?”

  “It is.”

  “Good. It is mine also. Is there any dissent, any flaw in the reasoning?”

  No one spoke.

  Simmons leaned forward. “Would each of you stake your life that this is what’s going to happen?” He paused. “I know you think that a strange question. But if we send along an appendix to our forecast, saying that the attack is coming Christmas Eve—and if we are believed—then many others will stake their reputations, yes, and even their lives, on our judgment. There will be mobilization, alerts, the movement of thousands of aircraft and hundreds of ships, and enormous expense. In such a drastic upheaval casualties will be inevitable. Martial Law will be necessary. In some cities, the news may inspire panic buying or even disorganized exodus. The Stock Market will fall on its face. There may be runs on banks, for people may be moved to withdraw all their cash and buy commodities. If we are wrong, not only will we personally be through, forever, but the careers of all who supported us in the past, and believe in us now, will be finished. The United States will be the laughingstock of the world. It’ll be Orson Welles’ invasion from Mars all over again, but much more serious, multiplied a thousandfold. The Administration will be disgraced, and nobody will ever believe a similar alert in the future.”

  Jesse Price knocked out his pipe in a glass ash tray. In the silence it sounded like a hammer. Yet when he spoke he was calm, even smiling, for he had made his decision. “I don’t mind laying my life on the line for a sufficient reason, and I consider this sufficient. In my heart I know we are right.”

  “We would be taking an awful chance, though, now wouldn’t we?” Raoul said.

  Katharine looked across the table at him. Raoul, she realized, was essentially conservative. Simmons had called for unanimity, and she felt impelled to back him up. “Jess is right, Raoul,” she said. “It is like mathematics. There can only be one correct answer to an equation, and this is it. Oh, I know we take a chance, pinpointing the day. But we need shock effect. If the forecast is to be useful, it must be distributed and read—now.”

  “It used to be that you could get anything read around here,” Batt said, “by stamping it top secret, or ‘eyes only.’ Now everything is top secret and it doesn’t attract attention.”

  The single door to the conference room was flung open, and General Clumb entered, rumbling in his throat like the exhaust of a medium tank. His cropped gray head was down and his wide shoulders held low, as if he expected to tackle someone. His face, rigid and cragged like rough terrain, was scarlet. In his right hand, rolled up as if for swatting flies, and encased in the red plastic jacket that indicated top secret documents, was a sheaf of paper. Katharine knew it was FORECAST OF RUSSIAN MILITARY ACTION, Copy No. 1.

  4

  General Clumb had been assigned to the Pentagon, duty which he detested, two years before his date for retirement. Clumb was a field general, and more specifically a general of cavalry, or, as it is now called, armor. As commander of one of Patton’s regimental combat teams, he achieved the summit of his fame in the sweep across France. He was photographed, just before the liberation of Metz, standing in the turret of a point tank, tommy gun under his left arm, his powerful right hand flourishing an 1870 sabre he had discovered in a French farmhouse. It was a dramatic photograph, seeming to symbolize the union of Custer with a helmeted Superman, widely published, and perhaps responsible for his first star. Clumb remembered World War II with nostalgia and preferred not to think of wars tanks couldn’t win. Oh, he believed that nuclear weapons would work, all right (although not against armor properly dispersed), but he pretended to ignore their existence, in staff discussions, as a gentleman avoids mention of social diseases in mixed company. If pressed, he announced that neither side would use bombs, A or H. “Just like poison gas in the second World War,” he always said. “Both sides had g
as but neither used it.”

  Clumb was in command of a NATO division when the atomic cannon and Honest John rockets and Matador pilotless jets began to arrive in Europe. Since he could not seem to find a place for such weapons in his formations, Army was forced to make a decision. Either Clumb or the atom had to go, and it was Clumb who was shipped home. Army assured him that duty in the Pentagon, especially in the august company of the Joint Chiefs, would be a fitting close to a glorious career.

  He became Chief, Special Projects Section, Planning Division, Joint Chiefs, a post that carried no specific authority. It was an administrative clearing house for studies and functions that the Joint Chiefs believed essential, but which were still of a quasi-military nature. The Pentagon hoped only that General Clumb would keep his desk reasonably clear, and see to it that papers and reports flowed to the sections where they could be useful. At the bottom of his table-of-organization chart was a small box, Intentions of the Enemy Group. He didn’t understand exactly why it was there, but he was suspicious of that little box from the very start.

  They were a weird bunch, including a one-eyed pilot and, of all things, a woman. Four of them were civilians, and their senior member was a State Department striped-panty. It was General Clumb’s conviction that civilians should keep their noses out of military matters until they were called up, in due course, by the draft. As to the military members of this organization, none of them had any rank, really, the Army representative being only a reserve colonel. What useful function this group could perform he could not imagine. They churned around a good deal, and some of them seemed to have influential friends whom they consulted, in person, outside proper channels. He had been waiting for months to put them in their place, or erase the troublesome box from his T.O. entirely, and now the time had come. He had devoted hours of study to their so-called forecast, an abominable and cheeky thing, and now he knew he had ’em.

  Clumb charged into the conference room and rapped the rolled-up report on the edge of the table. Colonel Cragey, Commander Batt, and Major Price rose, as military courtesy required. The civilians were either rude or totally untrained in military matters. They all kept their seats. “You may be seated,” General Clumb said, his voice rasping like metal tank treads on concrete. “What I have to say isn’t going to take long. In all my years as an officer, this is the most preposterous and outrageous document that I have ever seen. Rejected!” He tossed the forecast on the table, where it slowly unfolded, as if of itself attempting to regain shape and dignity.

  Simmons stood up. “General,” he said, his voice controlled, but loud enough to match Clumb’s, “do you mind explaining what you mean by ‘rejected‘?” Simmons had once faced down a Russian marshal. He was not terrified by rank.

  “I mean,” said Clumb, “that there will be no distribution of this document under my name. In other words, there will be no distribution whatsoever.”

  “We have been working on this forecast for more than a year. It is our opinion—and I am sure that I speak for all of us—that it is of utmost importance, and should be distributed immediately. This thing is not only going to happen, the facts indicate that it is happening this instant.”

  “Ridiculous!”

  “Not only that,” Simmons said, “but we have been discussing intelligence received by all the departments and agencies we represent—including State and CIA—over the last twenty-four hours. We have reached the opinion that the United States will be attacked, in exactly the manner outlined in the forecast, on Christmas Eve.”

  The general was certain that they had lost their collective minds, and that he could now get rid of them, swiftly and with impunity, and he allowed himself to smile. “Do you mind telling me what time?” he said.

  Very casually Jesse Price, half slouched in his chair, said, “I should say at the crack of dawn.”

  “Are you being insolent?”

  “No, General, I am absolutely serious.” Although his manner was undoubtedly insolent, his voice was still subdued, and very grave, “The enemy submarines will surface, pick up bearings, and launch their missiles at first light.”

  Katharine Hume had to speak. Psychologically, they were going at it the wrong way. They had to get Clumb talking. Perhaps if he talked enough he might talk himself into changing his mind. Nobody else, under the rank of lieutenant-general, was going to change it for him. “Sir,” she asked, innocently as a college girl asking for clarification of a lecture, “do you mind telling us what your objections are?”

  “What they are? Gad, girl! I wouldn’t know where to start!”

  Katharine rose. She was the youngest in the room, and the general was more than twice her age, and it would be politic to offer him her chair. “Do sit down, sir, and tell us about it. After all, we realize your experience outweighs ours.”

  Uncertainly, as if doubting the tactic, the general sat down. “All right,” he said, “I’ll tell you. Your plan is full of holes. Now I don’t doubt that the Russians would attack us if they could get away with it, but what do you think our NATO forces would be doing while all this was going on over here? I’ve been reading the intelligence summaries also. The Russian divisions, including armor, are pulling back from all the frontiers. Does that sound like they’re preparing for war? No, sir! When you’re ready for war you mass for an attack. You don’t retreat.”

  Colonel Cragey shifted in his chair, looking unhappy. “General, NATO is prepared for defensive action—not attack. The Russian divisions are pulling back simply to remove themselves from the range of NATO’s atomic cannon and missiles.”

  “And you’re a colonel!” said General Clumb, sadly. “Do you mean to tell me that the Russians are going to leave the NATO armies intact?”

  “What good is an army without a country?” Cragey asked.

  The general sucked in his breath and straightened. “Colonel, I consider that remark insubordination!”

  “Well, what good is it?” Cragey insisted.

  The general ignored him. “And another thing. Suppose the Russians were capable of turning two-thirds of this country into a desert—which of course is as preposterous as all the rest of it—how would it benefit them? Wars are won by occupying the territory of the enemy. That’s the first rule of warfare. You take this territory with tanks, nowadays, and hold it with infantry. What would the Russians want with a radioactive America?”

  Katharine saw that all was lost, anyway, and that there was no possible point of compromise, or meeting of minds, between them. She said, quietly, “Perhaps they’ll just put a fence around it and stick up a sign reading, ‘Forbidden Area.’”

  The general got to his feet. “I have nothing more to say. Except this. In my opinion this whole outfit is a dangerous boondoggle.” He reached across the table and picked up Copy No. 1. “Every copy of this so-called forecast, except this one which I will keep for presentation to higher authority at a suitable time, will be burned. Meanwhile, duties and activities of this group are suspended. Military members of the group will report to their immediate superiors for such assignment as may be found for them. As to civilian individuals, your further employment is the problem of your respective departments and agencies. Good day.”

  He left the field, victorious.

  After he was gone, Felix Fromburg was the first to speak. “Don’t get too excited. We’ve licked this sort of thing before. We’ll have to go over his head, and it may take time, but—”

  “Time is what we haven’t got,” said Simmons. “Let’s not think about saving our jobs, or the group. Let’s think about saving the forecast. Somebody at the top or near the top has got to see it. I know what I’m going to do. I hope all of you have similar plans, although I cannot, of course, ask you to do anything contrary to the general’s order. I guess we’ve been adjourned, sine die.”

  Walking down the main corridor towards the taxi loading ramps at the far side of the building, Katharine Hume saw an unusual sight. A leggy Air Force lieutenant, clutching a sheet of p
aper in his hand like a relay racer’s baton, sprinted past her at top speed. She considered stopping in at Jess Price’s office to find out if anything important had happened. But Price, like all the others, would be busy. Her curiosity could wait. As for herself, she doubted whether she could enlist a powerful ally within the AEC, although she would try. Only the AEC commissioners would have sufficient prestige to influence the Joint Chiefs and she knew that the commissioners—even if they agreed with the group’s findings—would hesitate to interfere with what was primarily an internal affair of the Pentagon. If help came, it would have to come through the military. All the way home she wondered about the Air Force lieutenant, recalling how his hair bounced on the back of his head with each long step. She had never seen anything, even one of the three-wheel carts pedaled by messengers, move that fast in the Pentagon before.

  5

  Airman 2/c Smith awoke at three that afternoon, showered, put on his pressed blues, and caught a base bus to Orlando. He sauntered through the lobby of the biggest hotel, the Angebilt, bought an evening paper, and went into the bar to kill time. Betty Jo Atkins, his girl, wouldn’t get home until five-fifteen. She was a waitress at the Sea Trout Inn, and her hours nine to five.

  He ordered a bourbon and water and glanced at the single black headline. FOURTH B-99 IS MISSING! The story was out of Lake Charles, Louisiana. The bomber had taken off that morning on what was described as a routine training mission over the Gulf. Circumstances were identical with the B-99 that had vanished from Hibiscus in November, and the two others that disappeared Monday. Since all available air-sea rescue planes were already occupied in searches, the Air Force had sent out tactical planes, called on the Civil Air Patrol and airlines for help, and was bringing down an additional air-sea rescue squadron from Alaska.

  Smith read the story, in its entirety, with relief. At least one of his three companions was on the job. The heat would be off Hibiscus. He felt neither pity nor exaltation. He was certain the crews were dead, just as he was certain that the crews of the first three B-99’s had died, quickly. They were soldiers, as he was a soldier.