The Tashkent Crisis

by William Craig

  The blaze in northern Virginia had eaten its way nearly to the Potomac. Its smoke had blown across the river and onto the clogged highways. Motorists were nearly blinded by the billowing clouds, which obscured the sun and caused a premature twilight.

  In Bethesda, the fires had finally been contained but only after sixty-five homes had been consumed in the inferno. Traffic was detoured northeastward into the Baltimore area.

  In the White House, William Stark could see the mountainous clouds of smoke drifting toward him from the Potomac. Herb Markle had called shortly before, deploring the extent of the damage, but Stark had quickly silenced him, warning him to keep his nerves under control and his story straight Markle reported that there were indeed several leaks in the pipelines and that his men were sealing them off as rapidly as possible. Markle did not think there would be any further trouble in the downtown area.

  Stark had brought his executive committee together for a hasty working lunch. Roarke reported on the requested standdown and confirmed that all stations had retreated from a war footing and were practically defenseless. Manson said that all friendly nations were besieging the State Department for further information on Tolypin’s charge at the UN that the U.S. was provoking a war. Randall announced that the Soviet naval task force was now one hundred miles due east of Montauk and slowing down to keep its proposed rendezvous at exactly 8 P.M. that night. Sam Riordan said Macomber was due in by suppertime. He also had a gruesome postscript on the blueprints story—Perkins had just called again from Paris to say that Maurice Debran had been found dead on the Métro tracks. Riordan had one other item. He mentioned that Krylov had not been seen publicly for two days. Perhaps he was holed up inside the Kremlin itself.

  “Sam,” the President commented, “Krylov may be staying put, but I think it’s about time we made plans to get out of town. I want all necessary personnel at their assigned places in the mountain by nine P.M. tonight. It’s imperative we have a working organization in case the Russians push their timetable ahead and let go before the deadline.” Then he added: “Or in case we have to go to war with them.”

  General Roarke pursued this issue. “Incirclik has the two SR-71’s ready to go. They’ve hidden them in a special hangar at the end of the field and posted armed guards around the perimeter. General Ellington says they can take off with fifteen minutes’ notice.”

  Stark acknowledged this information with a grunt, and changed the subject.

  “Now that Clifford Erskine is dead, you will not bother to report to John Dunham. Though he’s acting Secretary of Defense, I’m not going to delegate anything to him until this thing is over. Understood?” Roarke nodded happily, and Stark went on to discuss the state of evacuation. Randall estimated that by 8 P.M., the vast bulk of citizens would be across the river into Virginia and as far north as Baltimore. So far, the operation had gone quite smoothly with only minor traffic accidents.

  In the darkness, Joe Safcek and Luba drove through Tashkent. Because nighttime traffic was nearly nonexistent, Safcek realized his presence in the streets was unusual and drove accordingly.

  Luba watched the occasional pedestrian warily. On Navoi Street she noticed a policeman lounging on the corner. Out of the side of her mouth, she mentioned him to Safcek, who nodded and kept his face forward. The policeman ignored them, and they moved slowly past the Opera House and the islands of roses in the middle of the street. It was oppressively hot, and Luba rolled down the window and breathed deeply. They passed the Uzbekistan Legislature Building, where a huge statue of Lenin stared back at them.

  “Colonel, do we have to use the atomic bomb?”

  “I’m afraid so, Luba. It’s impossible for us to break completely through their screen by ourselves. It would take a task force with tanks to get into the compound and lay charges in that building. This way we can set it off in the gully that runs up to the main gate and neutralize the whole area.”

  “Well, why can’t we set it off here along the road instead of running the risk of being caught near the plant?”

  “We could, Luba, except that I have to be absolutely sure that the explosion will get the weapon. An atomic bomb is a very unpredictable thing. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some people who were only eight hundred yards from Ground Zero survived. Buildings remained upright at the same distance. So, the closer in I can get with this one, which isn’t as powerful as those were, the surer I’ll be that the place will go up completely. There are a lot of hills around here, and I can’t afford to let them deflect the blast away from the laser.”

  “But what will be the effects of the bomb?”

  “I’m not sure. Back at the Pentagon, they said the total destruction by fire and blast should not exceed an area of eight square miles.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Luba groaned. “My mother lives in Chirchiz, and that’s only ten miles east of here.”

  “Oh, God, I forgot that!” The colonel tried to think of something to reassure her. “I do know this is a very clean bomb. The radiation effects are almost totally negligible.”

  Luba thought about it and sighed. “If anything did go wrong, she’d probably never know what hit her, and I’m sure if I told her what I was doing and why, she’d tell me to go ahead. I think my mother hates the state worse than I do, if that’s possible.” Luba stopped, and Safcek said: “I’m sorry it has to be this way, but I have no choice. You know that.”

  Luba reached across to him and squeezed his right arm tightly. “Please don’t think of it again.”

  He looked at her hand, and she pulled it away suddenly. In the silence that followed, Joe Safcek busied himself with the road ahead and the mileage gauge, which had clicked off three kilometers beyond the city.

  As car headlights loomed out of the darkness, Safcek’s hands tightened on the wheel. They came up in a blinding rush, bathed the interior with a bright light, then passed swiftly away to the south. Safcek’s hands relaxed.

  They tightened again, quickly when he saw a revolving ice-blue light beckoning him in the distance.

  “Goddamnit, a roadblock,” he said. Luba strained forward and saw the beacon at the side of the road about two hundred yards away. She saw two cars stopped and policemen walking around them inspecting the occupants.

  “What do we do, Colonel?”

  “Let me think.” Slowing down in response to a policeman’s waving hand, Safcek pulled up behind the stationary vehicles. Safcek shifted into neutral and left the motor running. “Take it easy, Luba,” He was watching two security officers as they ordered the driver out of the first car. “Let’s see how they act before we do anything.”

  The driver of the first car had produced some papers, and the questioner trained his flashlight on them. He apparently asked the man for further identification, and the motorist after a few moments produced more documents. With what seemed agonizing slowness, the security men looked inside the car, front and back. Next, they took the keys to the trunk from the man. They lifted the lid and poked around in it deliberately. After they had finished their fruitless search, they slammed the top down and gave the driver back his papers. He waved to them, and drove off past the patrol car with the revolving light on the roof.

  Safcek was reading his watch. “Jesus, we’re losing time fast.”

  The security police were at the second car, and three people were coming out of it and fumbling for their papers. Luba said, “The trunk again,” as one of the policemen moved to the rear and opened it.

  “I know, I know. We can’t let them near ours.” Safcek was trying to think of a solution.

  The three people ahead were now being searched by the police.

  “Is the AK-47 loaded?” Safcek asked.

  “Yes, but it’s in the trunk.”

  “If they ask us to open it, make sure you grab the gun and use it on them. Kill them both.”

  The second car was moving away. A policeman was at Safcek’s window, shining a flashlight on Safcek’s uniform. “Good evening, Colonel. Sorry t
o bother you, sir. Would you mind stepping out of the car for a moment and giving us your papers, please. It won’t take long.”

  Safcek and Luba got out and handed over their forged identification papers and travel orders.

  Safcek smiled at him. “What’s the problem, Sergeant?”

  “We have a little scare around here about enemy agents.”

  “Here in Tashkent?”

  “All we know is Moscow got a fragment of a radio report from somewhere around here. We’re just playing it safe.”

  Luba was smiling at the other sergeant, who was leaning against the hood.

  “Aren’t you a little late on getting to your next assignment, sir? These orders say that you must report in by midnight.”

  Safcek spoke in a low voice as the sergeant examined the papers with his flashlight. “Well, my friend over there,” he said, jerking his head toward Luba, “and I stayed a little longer than we planned in Tashkent. She wouldn’t let me out of the hotel room.” Safcek snickered, and the sergeant chuckled appreciatively.

  “I understand, sir.” He moved suddenly toward the trunk and said, “May I have the keys, please?”

  Joe Safcek began to shout. “Sergeant, I think you have enough proof of my identity in your hand. Your comrade has not complained of any discrepancies in the lieutenant’s papers, and you are just delaying me now.”

  The sergeant kept walking to the rear. On the other side of the car, Luba casually moved down to meet him at the trunk.

  “Sergeant, I’m speaking to you. If you don’t give me back my documents and let me pass, I’ll put you on report with your commanding officer.”

  The security man hesitated at the rear bumper and said: “I have my orders. Please give me the keys.”

  Safcek pursued him and said: “Your name and unit? I’ll have you broken.”

  The sergeant looked over the top of the car at the other security man, who shrugged back. In the reflection from the blue light the sergeant’s face was a blend of resentment and doubt. He stared at Safcek, who was poised in indignation.

  “Here are your papers, sir. Please forgive the inconvenience. I was merely doing my job.”

  Safcek sagged as he accepted them. Without another word, he returned to the driver’s seat and waited for Luba to join him. The sergeant hurried up to the window and added, “Colonel, please accept my apologies for the delay.” Safcek slammed the car into gear and sped away. In the rear-view mirror, he saw the two security men talking animatedly. The sergeant Safcek had bullied was spreading his hands in the air in dismay.

  Safcek shifted his gaze to Luba. “Close, huh?” She was pale and her hand fluttered as she asked, “Can I have a cigarette?”

  He laughed in a low voice as he handed her one. “I hooked you on these, didn’t I?”

  She nodded and dragged deeply. Safcek watched her out of the corner of his eye. The strain appeared to be getting to her. Luba’s eyes darted right and left as she watched the road. Her cheekbones seemed to bulge out of her face. She smoked the cigarette down to the end, and Safcek did not interrupt her attempt to compose herself. He himself was not immune to fear. Out there in the darkness, the enemy was waiting for him. His stomach was churning but his mind was operating at maximum efficiency. He had been to the mountain before and looked down at the land beyond. It no longer terrified him. He only wanted to get the job done.

  “Okay now?” he asked gently. She nodded and threw the butt out the window.

  They were now an hour and thirty-five minutes behind schedule.

  It was not yet 1 P.M. when the IL-62 parked at the regular commercial gate for deplaning passengers at Kennedy Airport. Only six men got off the huge jet from Moscow. Because of their diplomatic passports, they passed swiftly through customs and entered a long black limousine for the ride into New York City. In the rear seat, Mikhail Darubin was reading a copy of The New York Times. He finished the story of Clifford Erskine’s sudden death at the Pentagon and poked one of his companions in the ribs. “This could not be better for our purposes.”

  Darubin was in great good humor. So far, everything he and Moskanko had planned had been going right.

  As the car passed over the Triborough Bridge, Darubin looked for a long moment at the sharply etched New York skyline and said: “Tonight all that will be ours! Stark will never have the nerve to unleash a big war. And then I will quietly ease poor Krylov into retirement and give him a year’s supply of his favorite hashish to dream with.”

  His companions chuckled appreciatively.

  “The premier lost something, I think, when the Egyptians let us down in the Six Day War. He never regained his spirit. Now all he can do is dream about the old days when he was full of ideas and guts. But at least he did what we wanted in backing the army. Now we can let him graze in a pasture until the drugs sap his brain.”

  Darubin patted the newspaper against the upholstery reflectively. “Ten hours more.” His serene face gazed out the window as the limousine pulled off the FDR Drive and eased into the heavy crosstown traffic on its way to the headquarters of the Soviet Mission to the UN on East Sixty-Seventh Street.

  In Washington’s sprawling black ghetto, hundreds of yellow buses moved up and down the streets picking up families and individuals waiting on street corners. Government cars roamed side streets. Drivers spoke through bullhorns urging residents to leave the danger zone.

  Few balked. Leaders of the militant African Nationalist Movement had held a council of war in the morning and discussed defying the Administration’s request to evacuate. After a vote, they had decided to obey the edict, since if any explosions did occur in the ghetto, the African Nationalists would be saddled with the blame. At noon, the council had driven off to Baltimore in a convoy of private cars. Behind them they left a padlocked office and a Doberman pinscher to protect their records and arsenal.

  Workers at the Pentagon began to leave by 1 P.M. Only absolutely essential personnel remained to direct the military affairs of the country. In huge underground working areas, men and women kept their hands on the pulse of the strategic and tactical units around the world.

  Cabinet officials had quietly told their families to seek safety elsewhere. Martin Manson’s wife flew off to Miami; her husband told her she might as well take the excuse of the evacuation to have a vacation at the same time. Sam Riordan called his wife in Georgetown and suggested she visit the family estate in upper New York.

  National Airport and Dulles witnessed the departure of an increasing number of important people. Mary Devereaux passed through at 1:15 P.M. Bob Randall had met her at lunch and given her the money for a week in Acapulco. When he told her he would join her in a few days, she went away happily.

  Randall went on to his home briefly, packed two suitcases, and took them with him to the White House.

  On Embassy Row, the order to leave the city had caused no great alarm. But in almost every beautiful mansion, skeleton staffs remained in residence to oversee the affairs of their respective governments. Stark knew this would happen and did not make a fuss over it. Aware that some people would always manage to stay behind in the forced departure, he was satisfied that most residents would be gone if the Russians carried out their threat.

  In the Pentagon, General Stephen Austin Roarke sat in conference with the acting Secretary of Defense, John Dunham. Roarke was much more comfortable with the new man than his predecessor, Erskine. Dunham never had cause to argue directly with the head of the Joint Chiefs and did not share Erskine’s jaundiced view of the military. He was convinced the American people had been continually misinformed about their government’s activities in Asia and that the armed forces in particular had been held up to ridicule.

  Roarke was a satisfied man on the eve of the ultimatum deadline. When Stark had given him the signal to prepare a mission from Incirclik, he had ceased his criticism of the Safcek operation. Now he merely awaited the order to launch the preventive strike at Tashkent.

  “Dunham, when Stark says g
o, we’ll call the Reds’ bluff. How long has it been since we did that? It’s incredible how we’ve let them bamboozle us over the past twenty or thirty years. Remember in Korea when we gave the Chinese their privileged sanctuary across the Yalu? And everyone agreed that the next time we would go all out. Then came Vietnam and Laos, and the Commies had their privileged sanctuaries in Cambodia and on the Ho trail. It was utterly fantastic that we could get sucked in again. There was no way to win there with them coming down the trails and sneaking back and forth across the borders whenever they wanted. And, of course, when we did something about it, the army got blamed for the mess. We were inept, war-mongering, and finally just butchers of innocent people.

  “And those goddamn liberals in this country, those myopic bastards refused again and again to see the menace for what it was. Jesus Christ, they forced us to cut back, strip our defenses, cut our research and development programs. I’d like to go on the air and tell those creeps that this whole business of the ultimatum came about strictly because of their blind stupidity, their absolute refusal to recognize that the Russkies and their friends intend to blow our brains out as soon as they get the chance. But if I did, they’d have me committed for being Dr. Strangelove. They’re incredible people, so goddamn self-righteous and humanitarian. They actually think the Reds have no aspirations for anybody else’s territory!”

  Dunham agreed and added: “It’s the same right here on the homefront. The radicals, black and white, have been telling them straight out for years that they’re going to destroy the country, bring the war to the suburbs, and take everything. And they don’t believe it, just play the fool to these people who are fascists masquerading as defenders of morality. Nothing but fascists.”

  Roarke sighed disgustedly and turned to some papers on his desk. “To hell with them. Any word from those Russians in Cuba who are supposed to come here after the ultimatum?”

  “No, but I suspect they’ll be chiming in shortly with a little psychological muscle. The Soviet ships in the Atlantic are directly east of Montauk and heading for it at ten knots.”