Fail-Safe

by Eugene Burdick

  He never recalled perfectly his feelings. It was too quick a mixture of self-revelation, of shame, of wonderful obscenity, of feeling a child under his hands and knowing she was a woman, of her words ending and her hoarse breathing beginning, of a savage pride that his softening body was capable of so much, of all this happening in the little universe ringed round by gear-shift and leather seats and instrument panel, of soft little hands that arched into claws, of the sound of cloth ripping, of expensive perfumes mixed with the smell of her, and, chiefly, that this was a complete surrender.

  When finally he placed her small body in the corner of the car he knew she was satisfied. But he was wrong. Her eyes still glittered and she came back across the seat at him. She took his hand and raised it to her lips. She kissed the palm of his hand and then taking his little finger in her mouth she softly sucked it and then bit it so sharply that he jerked.

  Suddenly, in a way from which he had always protected himself, Groteschele realized that in his own person, convoluted and intertwined, were two knowledges of death. In one way, the public way, he was a respectable high priest of civic death. This dialogue he had raised from a secretive conversation to a respectable art. It was a game at which he was exquisite. Almost by his own single-mindedness and wit he had introduced to a whole society the idea that a calm and dispassionate and logical discussion of collective death was an entertainment. By refinements and logical innovation he had made municipal death a form of style and a way of life.

  But now, with his body aching and sweat soiling his shirt, he realized that in him there was also a personal beast of death. He realized that he bad always feared women because in each of them there was the buried but inextinguishable desire to love a man to death. Evelyn Wolfe was simply more obvious and direct about it than the others. She would, without mercy and as if it were her due, draw the energy and juices and fluids and substance from his body through the inexhaustible demands of pure sex.

  Groteschele realized that he had never in his life distinguished between sex and love. And now it was too late.

  He pulled his hand away from Evelyn Wolfe’s mouth, started the car, and, accelerating wildly, shot through Rock Creek Park. He roared a single great peal of laughter as the car left the park. The black internal beast of death he would never recognize again. And he would not have to, for he had the other great and public death as his amulet. It was enough for any man. And it was more than most had ever had.

  When they got to Evelyn Wolfe’s house, she leaned toward him and invited him in. He reached over and gave her a short savage slap across her open mouth. She did not recoil, she did not cry, she did not even move. She simply sat silently for a moment, her eyes crystalline with a sense of loss. She waited a full fifteen seconds and then opened the door and walked firmly up to her house.

  At ten minutes to ten, Groteschele entered the Pentagon without haste or any sign either that he had exerted himself to get there or that he worried about what lay ahead. In the four hours and twenty minutes that he had been awake, he had organized the briefing he would give that day, anticipated the reactions of certain secretaries and generals, and decided upon the arguments he would hold in reserve to counter their possible challenges.

  It was going to be a more than usually satisfying day.

  The President was looking at his pencil intently. He held it up to the light, seemed to be studying the lettering on its side, to wonder at its six sides, to admire the point.

  Buck looked at his watch and felt a dull shock: it was only 10:88.

  As the time spun out, a long second after a long second, like half-frozen drops unable to separate themselves from a nameless mass, Buck became calmer. The pencil is like a totem to the President, he thought. He looks at it and thinks of other things.

  He quickly calculated the difference in age between himself and the President. It was only twelve years. For the first time he realized the maturity of the man facing him. Somehow it made Buck sad, gave him a sense of loss. There was no way, and he knew it deeply, that he could ever overtake this other man in experience, in toughness, in drive, in durability, in span. It gave Buck no great sense of regret and surely not of envy; it was merely that until that moment he had thought everything was possible. Not that he wanted to do everything, but he wanted it to be theoretically possible. But he knew that in ten times twelve years he could not become like this man across the desk.

  “Buck, this may all be over in the next few minutes,” the President said, turning the pencil slowly, looking away to see Buck. “It probably will be. The bombers will find out their mistake and turn around and head back or we will make radio contact and recall them. Right now we don’t know why they flew past their Fail-Safe point and.we can’t raise them by radio. By itself neither event is catastrophic. But this particular situation has never occurred before. The entire positive control system depends on our ability to maintain verbal contact by radio. That’s why we are here. Possibly it will get very sticky.”

  The President paused. Buck knew he did not have to respond, but he found himself speaking.

  “I don’t know about the details, Mr. President,” Buck said, surprised at his own words, “but if the military people were sure it was something they could solve themselves they wouldn’t have called you. You’re down here because they know it is a serious problem.”

  The President stopped turning the pencil. “You interested in politics?” he asked.

  Buck paused. “No, sir, not particularly.”

  “I remember. You’re studying law.”

  “Yes, sir.” Again Buck was amazed by the man’s memory, and profoundly flattered.

  “You’ve got a nice political feel,” the President said. “Bogan in Omaha has instructions to get through to me in a number of very specific and detailed situations.

  He also has one general instruction just in case something happens that the specific instructions don’t cover. You stated the general instruction just now: whenever anything occurs that looks serious get on the red phone.”

  The President paused again. He looked back at the pencil.

  “Look. Buck, If things get really serious we might have to use the ‘hot wire’ which connects me with the Kremlin,” the President said and paused. “For the first time.”

  Buck knew that late in 1962 Washington and Moscow had agreed to maintain a constant telephone connection between the American President and the Premier of Russia. It had promptly been labeled the “hot wire.” Buck also knew that it had never been used. For the first time since his phone rang that morning, a chill went through Peter Buck.

  “Most situations I can handle myself,” the President went on, “but I don’t speak Russian. You do. You might have to translate for me and the translation has to be not only literally perfect, but it should catch every emphasis I intend and the tones I use to convey meaning. Sb from now on you listen to every conversation I have on the phone. As soon as the conversation is over I will tell you what I think of it. Don’t argue with me, but just make sure you understand what I feel. All right?”

  “Yes, sir,” Buck said. “It’s new to me, but I’ll try.”

  The President leaned back in his chair and dosed his eyes. “That’s all you can do. That’s all any of us can do.” When he spoke again it was in an intimate and completely unguarded manner, a kind of verbal free-association.

  “I’ve talked to Bogan in Omaha twice since 10:80,” he said. “Good man. Old type flier. Not afraid of all the new equipment. If he’s worried, I’m worried. O.K. Then I talked to Wilcox. New Secretary of the Army. He’s tough, but too tough for a new man. Too sure. We listen to him, but we take his advice slow. Very, very slow. Now the switchboard is trying to get Swenson. You know Swenson?”

  The President did not open his eyes. Buck realized that he was both relaxing and giving instructions at the same time.

  “No, sir,” Buck said. “I know he is Secretary of Defense, but that is all.”

  “To Swenson we listen an
d if he gives advice we take it all,” the President said. “Unless I tell you otherwise, whatever Swenson says is what I think.”

  The phone rang and the President opened his eyes and nodded at Buck to pick up his phone also.

  “Mr. President, it’s Swensom at the Pentagon,” a dry small voice said. “I am in my own office, but have an urgent call to come to the Big Boardroom. There was also the word to call you.” The voice stopped. There was no apology or hesitation, merely that Swenson had conveyed all the information he felt pertinent.

  “It might be nothing, Swenson,” the President said. “It might be big trouble. One of our groups of Vindicators flew through its Fail-Safe point and is headed toward Russia. Positive Control has broken down. Omaha doesn’t know how it happened. I talked to Wilcox in your Big Board room and he doesn’t either, but he is talking tough. I’d like you to get down there and be ready for anything. Keep that college professor Groteschele there and don’t let the military boys drown him out. Also Blackie, General Black, is there. Keep him there whatever happens.”

  “Any particular reason, Mr. President?” the Secretary of Defense asked.

  “No. He is an old friend and a classmate. I know him and trust him in any situation,” the President said with no apology.

  “Yes, I understand,” Swenson said. “Anything else?”

  “That’s all,” the President said.

  The phone dicked dead instantly and without a farewell salutation.

  The President grinned at Buck.

  “Wastes no time,” the President said. “I wish I liked the sonofabitch a little better. All I can do is respect him. But that’s enough.”

  Buck had seen Swenson from a distance, but had never heard him talk. Even so he knew a good deal about the man. He was something of a legend, a fable, in a capital which was accustomed to unusual men. Swenson looked like a clerk who had come to power by mistake. He was thin, shy, easily embarrassed, and at the same time abrupt, incisive, and cold. Socially he seemed to be a man who wanted to blend into the gray background, who shrank from contact. He dressed with an unmistakable flair for the totally inconspicuous, almost as if his clothes were camouflage. A Time cover story had stated, “He is the only self-made millionaire in the United States who looks as if his clothes were bought by his wife off the racks at a discount house.” In high school and college class photographs Swenson was the person no one could remember. Meeting him face to face it was impossible to conceive of Swenson as a bold administrator, a courageous innovator.

  It took powerful and sensitive men only a few minutes, however, to realize that when they faced Swenson they faced an equal. If they were especially perceptive they sensed that in a peculiar, understated and almost eerie way Swenson was their superior. He had a calm, steely mind that would, if Swenson had allowed it full swing, have been dazzling. But he went to great pains to conceal his extraordinary intelligence. Swenson listened carefully to everyone in whom he had confidence, his head tilted to one side carefully evaluating what was said. The moment there was a flaw in logic or a missing piece of evidence he asked a quiet question.

  Talking to Swenson was not a task that the average man liked. It was too much like a quiet and merciless interrogation. In his months in the Pentagon Swenson had quietly shifted dozens of admirals and generals out of important positions on the basis of a five-minute conversation with them. Men of the first quality, men who possessed the capacity for real power and a deep intuition, responded quickly to Swenson. Lesser men never quite understood Swenson. They were not around him long enough. Quietly and without injury to their reputations, they were disposed of. Swenson could not tolerate incompetence.

  The President picked up the red phone. He nodded to Buck to pick up his phone.

  “Get Omaha again,” he said.

  The big clock on the wall showed 10:40.

  Early that morning, while it was still dark, Lieutenant Colonel Grady, the commander of Group 6, had stood beside his Vindicator bomber and examined it in the cold, harsh, unblinking floodlights of the airstrip.

  It is a dream bomber, Grady thought. On the ground it looks ungainly. Its wings droop. Its landing gear is very high to allow a great sleek pod to be slung under the regular fuselage. The pod contains extra bombs, or fuel, or air-to-air missiles, or deception apparatus. The pod is beautifully streamlined and makes the Vindicator look somewhat more muscular. On the ground, however, motionless and quiet, the Vindicator has the flamingo look of long improbable legs attached to a powerful body.

  Once aloft, however, the Vindicator is sheer beauty. The wings rise, the landing gear retracts, and the Vindicator has a graceful jeweled lapidary look. Inside it is even more sophisticated and elegant. Although it is an enormously intricate piece of machinery, it is flown by only three men. Everything has been miniaturized, transistorized, servo-reinforced, and automated. It is flown by a pilot, a bombardier, and a weapons operator. In fact, the plane has been so mechanized that it could fly, fight, and drop bombs served by only a single man.

  There was more than an aesthetic and mechanical reason why older men like Grady who flew the Vindicator loved the plane. They realized, some of them, with all the agony of a doomed love affair, that it was probably the last of its type. Maybe the RS-70 would be something like the Vindicator, but the old-timers knew they would not fly them. For them the Vindicator was the last plane. The Vindicator had pushed the cooperation between men and machinery to its uppermost limit. The next plane would surely be so fast, complicated, and intricate that it would be flown without humans aboard. The plane would, in fact, be a guided missile.

  But the Vindicator crew, Grady thought proudly, still exercises judgment, the plane still responds to our bands. Our eyes scan the countless instruments. We must bring her screaming and protesting in for taut landings.

  The bombardier and weapons operator walked by Grady and climbed into the plane. Like most of the younger airmen they did not glance at the Vindicator. They squeezed into the plane, map cases in their hands, eager to get into their burrows, fasten on their helmets and set about their tasks.

  Grady looked up once more at the molded perfection of the Vindicator’s shape, ignoring her ungainly landing gear, and climbed aboard. Two minutes later he had her screaming down the runway. Behind him five other Vindicators leaned into the takeoff. Three hours later they were 60,000 feet in the chill air over Alaska. It was just turning daylight.

  Once seated and strapped into the Vindicator, the three-man crew cannot move about. The plane is so full of machinery that the three tiny places which the men occupy hold them as tightly as individual burrows. They can talk on the intercoms and they can, if they wish, also talk normally to one another by removing the lower part of their face plates. But the crew almost never talk except over the intercom; in fact, the crew members make very little small talk with one another, partly because their training has discouraged it, and partly because they are seldom close friends.

  It had recently become SAC policy to circulate crew members at random among planes. The objective was to get identical performance from all men so that they acted as identical units of a class rather than as individual personalities. Given the cost and the speed and the importance of a Vindicator, no one wanted to count on camaraderie or crew morale for a mission to be successful.

  There were no brothers-in-arms aboard a Vindicator, Grady thought. He had met his two crewmen before, but had never talked with them at any length. He would not, he knew, talk much to them while aloft. Each man’s burrow was also his duty. Within eyesight were hundreds of dials to watch, gauges to check, knobs to turn.

  In case of a fatal emergency each man’s burrow would be automatically catapulted out from the plane at an enormous speed and, containing its own oxygen and control system, would bring the crew member safely to earth, or sea. At least that was the theory, but no one had yet been catapulted at maximum speed from a Vindicator without sustaining grave injuries. At maximum speed the ejection capsules were traveling
faster than bullets, and the air, so soft and gentle when still, was suddenly hard and brutal. When ejected a man was whacked around unmercifully in the tumbling, spinning capsule. It was something Vindicator crews tried not to think about.

  For all these reasons the crewmen of the Vindicator were a proud and highly qualified lot. Even in their loneliness they took a pride, for the great glistening smooth-packed machinery they flew also gave them a sense of self. The fact that they were locked into the mechanism, embraced by it, yet in control while at their positions gave them a feeling both of individuality and of being bound tightly to an organization.

  At 0580 the flight of Vindicators was topped off with jet fuel from two huge jet tankers. They performed the operation flawlessly, sucking thousands of gallons of fuel from the tankers in a matter of minutes. They continued their orderly flight plan, each plane locked into the V-shape of the group, not varying position by more than a few feet although they were flying at over a thousand miles an hour. Beneath them the darkness of the land began to break, immense chains of mountains shouldered up into the faint light, a glacier glittered icily.

  They received the radio order to fly toward their Fail-Safe point without comment. They had all done it before. Grady led the group in a great sweeping arc through the sky. They picked up speed and still maintained flawless position. Grady felt the pride of a perfect performance as they completed the change of course. They flew in a nonevasive arrow straight line. Evasive action was useless at this point and merely expended fuel.

  Captain Thomas, the bombardier, handed Grady a form which said “Fuel range past Fail-Safe estimated 8,020 miles.”

  Grady came up on the intercom and acknowledged the written form.

  “Thomas seems all right,” Grady thought to himself. He looked over at the captain. All he could see was a pair of fine brown eyes, dark eyebrows, and a few square inches of white skin. The rest of Captain Thomas’ face was covered by. a helmet, oxygen mask, and microphone. Grady looked back at Lieutenant Sullivan, the weapons operator. Seeing only the eyes, he realized with a shock that their acquaintance was so slight he could not even reconstruct in his mind what Sullivan looked like. But he was impressed with Sullivan’s hands: they had long sensitive fingers and when they moved, to touch a knob or control, they moved with an absolute precision and a definite and utter mood of assurance.