by Thomas Craig
He smiled to himself, hardly concerned with the importance of what he had done, except insofar as it impinged on his personal circumstances.
Impinged? Changed — utterly changed his circumstances. It was all that mattered. America. Money and America, money to live in America, to enjoy America. The thoughts chased in his head as he wrapped his scarf around his already cold cheeks and made for the exit.
He opened the outer door on the below-zero day and the high, pale sky. Manhattan. It was as if the famous skyline, which he had seen in films the scientific and technical staff were allowed to watch, lay before him now. Yes, Manhattan. He would request an apartment on the east side of Central Park — yes…
He blinked, and the buildings retreated from the pale Sunday morning, into the near future. A few days away, that was all. He would send that final signal. Tightness gripped his chest and stomach once more. It was so close! Come and fetch me, my American friends. Pay up!
Lines of high, tinted-glass towers. Fifth Avenue, Sixth. He would at last be leaving that block of workers' flats in front of which his mother had stood so proudly.
He made for the technicians' parking lot.
Before he reached his old, third-hand gray Moskvitch, his mood changed. The glow vanished, as if the outside temperature had robbed his body of all its heat. He was shivering with fear. Not simply in reaction to what he had done, now that it was over…:
… it was because of the two men in the car parked near the entrance to the parking lot. He knew they were the same two men, in the same car, who had followed him to work that morning. He had been so careful of late, so scrupulous in looking for any surveillance, all the time believing himself to be safe. Now he knew he wasn't. He fumbled his key into the stiff, cold lock. His gloved hand was shaking. He had managed to forget them, forget that he had been followed to work. His quick breathing clouded the car's window. He felt his stomach become watery, then tightly knotted. He wasn't imagining it. He couldn't cling to the fiction that he was mistaken, not now that he was about to summon them to come for him. He had to admit the truth — he was being watched.
"He's going on TV tomorrow — Monday," John Calvin announced heavily. "I've just had the ambassador here to inform me of the fact. The guy was almost laughing."
The President seemed not to have grasped the significance of Cactus Plant's final signal. The director of the CIA fumbled emotionally and mentally to catch Calvin's mood. The transcript of the signal from Baikonur lay on the President's desk like a piece of old and abandoned legislation, as unimportant as someone's grocery list. The director had hurried from Langley to the White House with it, his mood one or unqualified triumph. An edge of danger, of course, because of the drastic shortening of the time factor, but a real sense that they could win. But Calvin seemed concerned only with his television encounter with the Soviet president. They had to hurry. Kedrov was spooked, there was no doubt of that. This was the last signal. He might already have gone into hiding, and roused a search for him by the GRU. Time squeezed down and narrowed in every direction. Yet to Calvin it seemed less important than—
Four days away. Calvin already knew that, though — from the Soviet ambassador, of all people.
"Monday," Calvin repeated with a deep sigh that threatened to become both a groan and an accusation.
The director looked up from the briefcase still balanced on his knees.
"We still have time to get our agent out," he began.
"The guy's off and running!" the President accused.
"Mr. President, if you study his signal, he's confirmed where to pick him up. He knows how our people will come, what to expect. He can estimate times, that kind of—"
"Thursday! While we're all in Geneva, Bill, they're going to put the first of their laser battle stations into orbit, under the guise of a satellite placement mission and a linkup in orbit with our shuttle, Atlantis. They're laughing up their sleeves on this one, Bill — laughing at us." There was evident blame in Calvin's features and in his eyes. He had been let down, left holding the bag.
"We can get him out, sir."
"Bill, you're asking me to stake this country's future on a Russian technician on your payroll."
"He was always our only chance," the director replied softly, firmly. What had Calvin expected, some miracle? He was unnerved by the timetable, by the proximity of the signing of the treaty and the launch of the laser weapon. It was tight, yes, dangerous without doubt — but it could be done.
"What does he have, Bill? Films, rolls of film. Is that going to be enough to convince the world it's being given the biggest shaft in history?" Calvin's confidence of voice, East Coast with Harvard overtones, had deserted him. It had begun to complain, almost to whine. His hand waved without vigor, dismissing Kedrov and his films and the glimpse of hope they offered. He shook his head. "It isn't going to be enough, Bill," he murmured vaguely.
The director brushed the dottle from his cold pipe off the leather of his briefcase. He pondered for some time, weighing the President's mood and his own words. Then he looked up and said, "Sir, you approved all of this. You believed, as I did, as Dick Gunther did, that this was the only way of obtaining proof in the time we had — four weeks maximum." He spread his hands. He reached up and took the Cactus Plant signal by its edge, pulling it from the desk onto his lap. He smoothed the paper. Calvin's shoes paced across the eagle and the scroll woven into the center of the deep-green carpet of the Oval Office. The director cleared his throat. From somewhere outside the thick green glass of the windows, he heard muffled church bells.
"The timetable's more crucial," the director continued, "because we now know it's Thursday for the launch. Before, working on Kedrov's estimates, we assumed another week to ten days."
"Time we no longer have."
"I know that, sir."
Calvin continued to pace, dressed in checked shirt and jeans, his hands rubbing through his mop of gray hair. His face was cleaned by shock, blank and tired. When his hands were not busy with his hair, they waved uncertainly, as if fending off the circumstances of the morning.
The winter's morning was bright even through the reinforced glass of the windows. He could still hear the bells. Midmorning services. Kedrov had sent his signal — oh, sometime early Sunday evening, his time. Ten hours ahead of Washington. Come and fetch me, my friends. I am afraid.
The director went on: "We have to bring Winter Hawk to immediate readiness, sir. Today. The mission profile has a forty-eight-hour maximum time span. That's two days, and the agent and the evidence can be inside a friendly border. Transmission, editing, anything you require done with the films won't be any problem. Sir, it's nine thousand miles to Peshawar from Nevada, a thousand to the target area, a thousand back. Those are the only parameters that really matter. Forty-eight hours maximum, once the mission clock starts running. That's Tuesday or Wednesday — you could blow this up in their faces on the eve of the signing, sir!" The director's hand was clenched into a fist. Unaware, he had screwed Kedrov's final signal into a damp, gray ball of paper. The sight of it shocked him quite out of proportion to the act. As if he had crushed, abandoned…
He shook his head, dismissing the idea. Kedrov was all they had, priceless and unique.
Winter light, aqueous through the tinted glass, fell chill upon Calvin's profile as he continued to pace the room. It gave his features the pointed, marble lifelessness of a corpse. The Washington Monument beyond the glass thrust like a spike at the pale morning sky. Or a launch vehicle, the director could not help thinking. Baikonur, Thursday — close, damn close.
As if to reassure himself as much as Calvin, he reiterated: "Forty-eight hours maximum. Gant and the other crew can do it, sir. Give me the authority to bring Winter Hawk to readiness."
"Are they ready, Bill? How long have they trained on those gunships? No more than a couple of weeks? Less? Are they ready?"
"They have to be, sir. They have to be." The director found himself struggling against Calvin's unmo
llified expression. He waded upstream against the current Calvin was giving the room. He had hurried there with anxious triumph, to find the party had ended and the guests moved on to another place. Calvin did not share his sense of success. "They have to be," he repeated once more, looking down.
Calvin was obsessed with the political coup the Soviet president had gained. Nikitin would coerce a promise to appear at the signing in Geneva, which would give Calvin no room in which to maneuver. He would have to promise the world, in advance, that he would honor the Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty in its present form—
— which excluded all reference to orbiting laser weapons systems, since they did not exist — had not existed until four weeks before, so far as the CIA and everyone else thought.
Calvin said urgently, "Damn your timetable now, Bill. It s fallen down behind the wardrobe. I am going to have to agree to meet him on Thursday. It wasn't supposed to be Thursday, Bill, it was to be in two weeks' time. I have to agree to meet him or Congress will crucify me, the American people will help them put in the nails, the press has the hammer, and the whole damn world is going to watch while they do the job!" He rubbed his hands through his hair. "We just ran out of options. They're calling the tune in Moscow right now. I'm hamstrung, Bill."
He turned his back on the director and pressed a buzzer on his desk. Almost immediately, as if he had been hovering at the door,
Dick Gunther entered. National security adviser to the President. His smile at the director was brief, gloomy, his eyes studying Calvin like those of a concerned wife.
"Well?" he murmured, moving close to Calvin, behind the huge desk, near the windows.
Calvin shook his head. "No change," he muttered. The director felt like a terminal patient in a hospital room. Calvin and Gunther turned lugubrious looks on him. He felt very young, irresponsible, seated in his chair.
"Dick, you explain it to the director," Calvin said. "I can't make him see we're fresh out of options." The President's tone was sharp, almost vindictive.
He walked away, opened a small door that led to a washroom, then closed it behind him on a glimpse of white towels, gold faucets, dark wood gleaming like satin. The director dimly heard running water, then turned reluctantly to Gunther, who merely shrugged.
"Bill, I think he's right," he said eventually. His tone attempted to soothe, but the director felt lumpy and uncomfortable in his suit, as if his mood had creased and soiled it. He shook his head, staring at the crumpled transcript and the briefcase on his knees. "We re fresh out of options. There's nowhere to go with this."
In the director s briefcase was the entire Laserwatch file: a thin and now outdated collection of signals from Baikonur, reports and assessments from DARPA, presidential demands for action — demands, orders, pleas. When he had received Kedrov's last signal, he had felt the peril of the moment, but also its possibilities. Now they could act, use the gunships to go in and get Kedrov. But he had been upstaged, outsmarted. Nikitin wanted the treaty signed on Thursday. How they must be laughing at his country. Suggesting a rendezvous in orbit, a party up there, for Christ's sake, after they'd launched their first laser weapon!
"He's on the hook," Gunther continued. "Nikitin isn't fooling around on this. He's going on TV to dare the President not to appear in Geneva next Thrusday. The man can't not be there, and Nikitin knows that."
The director sighed, spreading his large hands.
"Dick, I understand all that. There's no answer, nothing but Winter Hawk. Dammit, the President has to let us try." He glanced at a group of small, silver-framed photographs ranged near him on the desk. Calvin as college football player, Calvin as naval officer, Calvin receiving an honorary degree in England, Inauguration Day, waving beside the First Lady. The roles the man had played. 'There's no other way the agency can help, Dick."
"You have to, Bill."
"How? You want a solution to this mess? Five weeks ago we didn't have the faintest idea the Soviets were within fifteen years of developing a weapon like this and placing it in orbit. We never had an agent at Semipalatinsk — all we had was Cactus Plant, a low-grade agent-in-place at Baikonur, useful for tipping us off when a launch was about to happen and for telling us what kind of satellite they were putting up. Then, he stumbles on — this. We're four days away from the launch date of the first of a dozen satellites, and we haven't even gotten our second wind on this thing." His voice was firm, but tight and small in his throat; angry, guilty, and maybe afraid, too. "We're four days away from this country becoming a third-class power, and the President wants a nice neat answer?" Calvin would be listening, of course, but he had to hear it was hopeless unless they relied on Winter Hawk.
Gunther's voice was soothing when he replied, but it rubbed like sandpaper, the implacables of the situation scoured.
"All that's history, Bill, already history. He's delayed as much as he possibly can, but no one can work miracles. We can't get the ring of Nessus surveillance satellites into operation in time to detect the launching of these weapons. Nessus and everything else is going to be at their mercy. That's why Nikitin is hurrying everything forward. The President can't be seen to be dragging his feet now — it's his treaty, dammit. Once the document is signed, there's a two-month ratification period, and by then every ICBM we have left, every satellite — Big Bird, Navstar, Milstar, the whole bag of tricks — will be at the mercy of the laser battle stations. The man is terrified he's going to go down in history as the President who gave his country away on a silver plate. Give him some room to maneuver, Bill — a little elbow room. Work a miracle."
Gunther had perched himself on the edge of the desk, leaning intently toward the director as he spoke. Now he stood up and walked to the window as he continued speaking. The director felt no slackening of the tension and depression throughout his body.
"He blames everyone, Bill — you, me, our agencies, the chiefs of staff, just about everyone — like he's been betrayed." The chill light of the windows palsied Gunther's cheek. "This was his treaty from the beginning. He blames all of us for not guessing what the Soviets were doing at Semipalatinsk. He blames us for advising that he agree to the Soviet suggestion not to bother to include orbiting weapons systems in the treaty. Neither side had them or could have them inside fifteen years, so what the hell, we all said. It was science fiction two years ago, Bill."
"And now its not. It's a reality."
Gunther turned from the window. "Bill, give him something," he pleaded.
Gunther had raised his voice, as to give a theatrical cue, and Calvin reentered the room. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans and walked to the desk. Gunther moved to one side.
"Have you explained?" he asked Gunther, his voice clipped and hard. The winter daylight was again cold on his face.
"I have, Mr. President."
"Well, Bill, well?"
The director nervously and with great reluctance shook his head. Then he said: "We have Winter Hawk, Mr. President, and that's all we have. If we initiate now—"
"It won't work!"
"It has to."
The silence was stormy, the director's temples throbbed with the beginnings of a headache. Calvin slapped his hand on his desk, then slumped into his swivel chair. He stared out at the White House lawns, deep in snow, at the pale spike of the monument. Stared into a close and ugly future.
He announced to the window: "I have to have irrefutable photographic evidence that these weapons exist. With that much, I can go to Geneva and denounce the Soviets — get their laser weapons included in the treaty. If I don't have it, world opinion will break me and this country." He turned to face the director. "OK, Bill," he added, raising his palms outward in what might have been surrender. "Do it. Initiate Winter Hawk today — now. Get those guys off their butts in Nevada and into the air before this afternoon. Forty-eight hours maximum, you said. Bill, I'm holding you to that. Tuesday, on my desk — proof!"
Sunday nights he was always drunk. Just like now, but not usually her
e, in his own flat, because he was afraid to go out, or be seen anywhere. Filip Kedrov looked at his shaking hands, quivering in front of his face. His eyes filled with a leaky self-pity, his body was possessed by an ague of terror. Christ! He'd tried not to drink any more after he returned to the flat, because of what he knew lay ahead of him, but it had been no good. He'd had to calm himself down, or try to — he was so frightened! He'd been back an hour and he was still shaking like a leaf. He had literally fled from the officers' club they allowed people like him to use on weekends, fled because of that telemetry officer opening his big mouth in the toilet while Filip was in one of the cubicles. Christ, why had he had to listen? It was terrible, terrible.
His fear was real and deep, in every part of his body like a fever. He clutched the hand he had been inspecting beneath his arm as if he had been caned in school. He folded his arms.
He knocked over his half-filled glass. Beer foamed on the thin carpet, then soaked into it.
Sick with fear, he wandered toward the window, avoiding the low coffee table. It wasn't in a sensible position, but it disguised a threadbare patch in the carpet. He reached for the curtain, knowing he would not pull it aside because of the watchers out there.
He walked away. His eyes scanned the room as if he were making an inventory for some insurance claim. Hi-fi, bottles, a cupboard, cheap dining table and chairs. Some pieces that had belonged to his mother, but mostly standard-issue furniture appropriate to his status. His eyes flitted, unable to settle, like his body. He'd tried not to drink anymore, to keep the remains of a clear head.
Not drunk. Just terrified. Tomorrow he would have had to evade the people outside anyway, so he'd gone out to the club because he always did, so as not to show he knew they were watching him. But he shouldn't have gone. Now he knew he must leave tonight, at once. The big-mouthed officer had seen to that. They'd be looking for him, and when they discovered who he was, they'd be right over to shut his mouth — for good. God, they'd kill him for what he'd overheard.