Fail-Safe

by Eugene Burdick

  The President pressed a button on his desk and an aide appeared. Briefly the President instructed him about the line between Omaha and Kiev. Buck surmised that Khrushchev was doing the same thing.

  When Khrushchev came back on the line, the President picked up the conversation in an entirely different tone-calmly, almost idly, it seemed to Buck.

  “Premier Khrushchev, we know now that Soviet and United States bombers, and indeed our whole offensive and defensive apparatus, are almost mirror images of one another. But let me ask you a question. What sort of experimental work have your military and scientific people been directing at our planes as they orbit at the Fail-Safe point?”

  “Ah, ah, ah, that is a good one,” Khrushchev said. “That is something that I have just found Out about in the last hour.”

  Buck’s tongue translated, but his mind and his intuition were frozen. First, the President bad come to a hard attention; his eyes glittered like those of a mongoose before it closes in under the venomous muscular curve of a cobra’s body. But at the same time Buck realized that the President had already won some dim and obscure, but terribly critical, point. Khrushchev’s expressions were those of a man in a deep and fundamental turmoil. The words were still intact, the syntax irreproachable, but like an animal in its final cul-de-sac that wheels and faces its enemy, there was a note of ultimate calamity.

  “Yes, but what is the answer?” the President said.

  When Khrushchev spoke, his voice had steadied. He had made a decision.

  “Mr. President, in the last hour I learned of a piece of research which we have been undertaking but which was unknown to me,” Khrushchev said. “I am certain, Mr. President, that such things could take place in your country.”

  “Of course, Mr. Khrushchev,” the President said. “I am aware that I am unaware of a great deal.”

  Khrushchev laughed softly.

  “This particular experiment was undertaken by a joint research team of mathematicians, radar experts, computing-machine specialists and weapons-systems experts,” Khrushchev said. “We were aware of your general strategic approach, the system of planes aloft, planes on standby, and the rest of the procedure including the Fail-Safe point. This did not take much intelligence. But this particular team had orders from our general staff in Moscow to see if it would be possible to discriminate an actual attack from a routine Fail-Safe flight. Our observations told us where your Fail-Safe lines must be. We then established mathematically another line which, if penetrated by your planes, would indicate a true attack.”

  “What are you getting at?” the President asked. Buck could tell from his face that he already knew the answer. The President had gained some of the offensive.

  “Today. Mr. President, our analyzers calculated that a true attack might be imminent. They may have been wrong. But we figured our only chance to prevent it was to try jamming all radio frequencies so that your bombers would be unable to receive the ‘go’ signal ordering them through their Fail-Safe line. We bad to prevent you from changing the standard Fail-Safe control into an ordered attack. Mr. President, we may have succeeded. But who knows?”

  “Holy Jesus,” the words slipped from the President’s mouth. “What an irony. The whole operation was calculated on the basis of a trust in the infallibility of our Fail-Safe controls. We’ve both put too damn much trust in the system.”

  “Yes, Mr. President, and it is even more ironic than that. We don’t know whether our jamming efforts succeeded and were a contributing cause, and neither do you. But we do know that these are your bombers and they are attacking Moscow. All right, maybe accidents on both sides. But right now, what do we do? Now, quickly, Mr. President, how can you convince me that your planes are on an innocent mission?”

  “Just a moment, Mr. Khrushchev,” the President said. “From what you have just said it must be obvious that our planes do not bear all the guilt. Your own scientists have told you that they were trying to jam our radios. The guilt, if there be any, surely must be shared.”

  “Mr. President, there was no reason in the world why I needed to tell you that we had conducted, perhaps mistakenly, that jamming operation this morning,” Khrushchev said. “The fact that an obscure team of scientists may have miscalculated is of absolutely no relevance. In the eyes of the world you have wantonly and without provocation attacked the Soviet Union and may, in fact, destroy Moscow. What Indian or Thai or Japanese or African or European will believe that so monstrous a thing was really tripped by our jamming your radios? No one. More importantly, no Russian would tolerate for a moment the destruction of Moscow without retaliation. Forget the mechanical mistakes and traps and countermeasures. The mistake, you agree, started on your side. But we may suffer the consequences.”

  “What do you intend to do, Mr. Khrushchev?” the President asked.

  “I am trapped, Mr. President,” Mr. Khrushchev said. His voice was riddled with despair. “I am perfectly prepared, Mr. President, to order our whole offensive apparatus to take action. In fact, I intend to do precisely that unless you can persuade me that your intentions were not hostile and that there is some chance for peace.”

  “Your experts should be able to tell you that I have ordered all American bombers to fly toward their bases and land,” the President said. “Not a single American plane, aside from those in Group 6, is making a hostile gesture toward you. Does that sound like the preparation for an all-out war?”

  “The military people have already told me that,” Khrushchev said and his voice, was tired. “On the face of.it you look innocent, but how do we know what else is happening? What other plots do you have up your sleeve? Where else will your electronic systems break down?”

  “We have no plots of any kind,” the President said. “Your people will be able to verify that in plain voice and with top priority I am sending a personal message to all Polaris submarines not to fire, not even to prepare to fire, their missiles, unless they receive a direct order from me.” His voice was not pleading, but he spoke with an urgency which even Khrushchev must detect. “I cannot give a guarantee against further mechanical failure. Neither can you.”

  Khrushchev sighed. From a long distance came the single word “No.”

  Buck almost groaned. He waved to the President, a sign that no more could be asked. Khrushchev had given everything.

  “Premier Khrushchev, I think it would be wise for you to remove yourself from Moscow so that you will be out of danger,” the President said. “That will allow us to continue to negotiate even if the worst happens and the bombers get through. I pray that it will not happen, but it may.”

  “I have already made arrangements to remove myself and some of my staff from Moscow by helicopter,” Khrushchev said at once, in a firm voice that suddenly toughened. “Moscow will not be evacuated. There is no time. It lies here innocent and open, defenseless. If it is destroyed there will be little time to talk, Mr. Press dent.”

  “I am aware of that,” the President said. “But I will do anything in my power to demonstrate our good will. I. only ask that you not take any irrevocable step. Once you launch bombers and ICBMs everything is finished. I will not be able to hold back our retaliatory forces and then it would be utter devastation for both of us.”

  “I know, Mr. President,” Khrushchev said. “We have been over that before; each of us has made the calculations endlessly in his own mind, has heard them from his advisers. But if Moscow is obliterated”—a kind of helpless rage shook his voice—“am I supposed to sit still, watch our biggest city destroyed, and then come hat in hand to you and ask that we reopen peace talks in Geneva? It would be absurd. I am not a man, we are not a people, that likes to look absurd.”

  “I agree with much of what you say,” the President said. For the first time Buck saw great physical tension, even pain, in the President’s face.

  There was a long hesitation. Then Khrushchev spoke again.

  “I will come back on the line when I am a safe distance from Moscow,�
� Khrushchev said. His voice was toneless, flat, empty.

  The line clicked dead.

  “Mr. President,” Buck said, “may I say that you handled him beautifully. He acknowledged the possibility that they might be wrong and-”

  Buck stopped. The President was not listening. His face was slack, softened by despair. He was staring at his scratch pad, searching the firm black cabalistic signs for some meaning.

  Again Buck had the sense that something had slipped by him, that in the literal meaning of the words he had missed some larger import.

  “You have broken him, Mr. President,” Buck said. “He is shaken.”

  The President looked up. His eyes were dark, but the pupils glittered like small pools of agony.

  “He is not broken, Mr. Buck,” the President said, “He has his back to the wall and he is suffering, but he is not broken. Unless we can show him that this is an accident, that we are not doing it deliberately, he will launch an all-out attack on us.”

  Buck felt his stomach knot. In the rush of translation, in the thrill of the negotiation, he had forgotten the stakes. He stared at the President.

  “What do we do now?” Buck whispered.

  The President looked across the table at Buck. Re shook his head slowly as if to clear it.

  “We do what we must,” he said slowly. “Get General Black at the Pentagon.”

  While Buck put the call through the President leaned back in his chair. He put his hands over his eyes, his teeth clenched together, the muscles at the back of his jaw tightened into hard knots. Then he relaxed.

  “General Black, Mr. President,” Buck said. The President held out his hand. He took the phone without opening his eyes.

  “Blackie” the President said, his voice quiet and firm. “Do you remember the story of Abraham in the Old Testament? Old Bridges at Groton used to use it at least six times a year for chapel.”

  Oh my God, he’s cracking, Buck thought, cracking wide open, and the whole world with him. He found himself actually looking around for means to escape, for a door to run through. But the general’s voice came back calm and reassuring.

  “I remember, sir,” Black said. He stood awkwardly over Swenson, holding the red phone. The others around the table in the Pentagon War Room continued the discussion and also watched the board. Black felt a peculiar unreality about the situation. Simultaneously he sensed that this was, somehow, a time for first names, but he could not do it. The half-dozen times he and the President had met in the past few years, the President had always been warm but had called him “General Black” with a grin. But now there was a new tone in the President’s voice. Or perhaps it was the old intimate tone.

  “Blackie, keep the story of Abraham in mind for the next few hours,” the President said. Then he paused. “Are Betty and the family in New York?”

  “Yes,” Black said. A dread premonition came over him.

  “I need your help,” the President said slowly. “Get. out to Andrews Field immediately. Further instructions will be waiting for you there. Things are not good, Blackie. I may be asking a great deal of you.”

  “I’ll do what you say,” Black said. He paused. He knew the President was in some private agony. “And you do what has to be done.”

  “Good luck, Blackie,” the President said.

  Immediately Black wanted to call Betty-to talk with her, and with his two boys. But it was out of the question, he knew. Then he felt a wave of apprehension, vague and inexplicable. He remembered-Betty was spending the day across town with a friend. She and the boys would not be together until late afternoon. The knowledge was unsettling to Black. For a brief instant, memory of the Dream flashed back into his mind. No time. He shook the thoughts off and strode rapidly toward the door.

  After hanging up, the President sat perfectly still for a full minute, his eyes dosed. Then he swung his feet from the desk, and looked at Buck.

  “Tell the switchboard to get our Ambassador to Moscow and also the Soviet Delegate to the United Nations,” the President said quietly. “Put them directly onto the line which connectj us with Khrushchev. The moment that we can talk to Khrushchev open the conference line again.”

  As Buck talked into the phone he looked at the President. The President’s face had undergone a strange transfiguration. Some muscles had relaxed, others had tightened, his eyes were closed. A stranger could not have guessed the President’s age. Nor the meaning of his expression. Then Buck identified it: the President’s face reflected the ageless, often repeated, doomed look of utter tragedy. A tragedy which is no single person’s but the world’s, which relates not to One man’s misfortunes, large or small, but to the human condition.

  For The first time since he was a boy of fourteen, Peter Buck felt the need to weep.

  On General Bogan’s desk was a “touch” phone which had not been operated in all the time that he had been at Omaha. One operated it merely by touching a button, and out of a small square box the voice at the other end of the line came out magnified and enlarged.

  This particular “touch” phone was reserved for the possibility of direct communication with any potential enemy military leaders.

  A peculiar aura surrounded it. It was like a piece of contaminated equipment, oddly disconcerting, unnerving, contradictory. The men who tested it did so with distaste. While almost every other piece of equipment in the room was associated with some man, was his “personal” equipment, no one wanted to be associated with the touch telephone. It was almost like the physical presence of the enemy in the War Room. Everyone knew that the phone could not actually overhear them, that it had to be passed through a number of careful checks before it was actually operative, but even so it was a totem of the enemy, awesome, ill-regarded.

  Some minutes before, General Bogan had received a call from one of the President’s aides telling him to activate the touch phone as arrangements were being made for direct radio communication with Soviet tactical officers in Russia. Now the light below the touch button glowed red. General Bogan quietly reached forward and pushed the button. There was utter silence in the room. Even those men who were out of hearing range watched tensely.

  “General Bogan, Strategic Air Command, Omaha, here,” General Bogan said.

  There was a slight static, then a voice spoke in flawless English.

  “I am the translator for Marshal Nevsky, Soviet Air Defense Command,” the voice said. “Marshal Nevsky sends his greetings. He tells you that reception here on our end is five by five. How do you read us?”

  “We read you five by five,” General Bogan said. “I have no instructions on what we are to discuss. Have you received instructions, Marshal Nevsky?”

  The translator spoke Russian very rapidly. An even, strong voice replied.

  “We have received no instructions, General,” the translator said. “Only that we should set up communications with your headquarters.”

  Then there was silence. Colonel Casdo moved his eyes from General Bogan’s face to the touch phone. He seemed mesmerized, fascinated, by something enormously seductive, but also revolting. The red phone rang.

  “General Bogan, this is the President and I should like you to put this call on your intercom so that everyone in the room can hear what I say,” the President said. “I should also like you to open your, touch phone to the Soviet Air Command so that they also can hear me.”

  “One moment, Mr. President,” General Bogan said. He turned to Colonel Cascio and gave instructions. The arrangements took only ten seconds.

  “Mr. President, when you speak your voice will be beard by everyone,” General Bogan said.

  “Gentlemen, this is the President,” the President began and his strong young voice rang through the room, drowning out the endless hum of the machines. The men had, quite unconsciously, all come to attention, their thumbs neatly lined alongside the seams of their trousers, their eyes staring straight ahead. “What I am saying can be heard by the Soviet Air Command, Premier Khrushchev’s pers
onal staff in the Kremlin, our Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, our SAC group in Omaha, our Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and the Soviet delegate to the United Nations. Whatever orders I give to American military or civilian personnel are to be considered as direct personal orders from the Commander in Chief. They are to be obeyed fully, without reservation and instantly.”

  The President paused. General Bogan looked around the room. He had a sense of unreality, a kind of smoky twisting in his mind, a surrealistic sense of things dissolving. The whole thing was dreamlike, but it was iron hard and inescapable. There was no possibility of awakening to something else.

  “We are caught in a desperate situation,” the President said slowly and emphatically. Over the touch phone General Bogan could hear small hushed Russian voices translating. “By some sort of error, probably mechanical, a group of American bombers has penetrated Soviet air space. It is our best estimate that they will try to press home an attack on Moscow. Each of the bombers is equipped with two 20-megaton bombs. Though all of the planes are under heavy attack from Soviet defenses, in all probability at least two of these bombers will get through. This is a tragic mistake. It is not, I repeat, not, our intention to engage the Soviet Union in warfare. Premier Khrushchev is, at this moment, en route to a headquarters located outside of Moscow. When he again contacts me I will do everything in my power to persuade him of our sincerity.”

  Again the President paused. When he resumed speaking his voice was so slow that each word seemed to dangle.

  “Those of us on this hookup are the only people who can save the world from an atomic holocaust,” he said. “We must all do everything possible to prevent our planes from attacking Moscow. At the same time, we must make it absolutely clear to the Russians that this is an accident and in no way part of or prelude to an American attack. Already I have done everything I can by myself to achieve these two goals. Recall of our planes has proved impossible, but it has been constantly attempted. All other American offensive and defensive forces have been withdrawn from Condition Red. This the Russians were able to verify on their monitoring systems. The Russians now concede that their Air Defense Command may not be able to intercept our Group 6. They have a momentous decision to make: should they order a retaliatory attack against the United States? Premier Khrushchev tells me that some of his military leaders favor such an attack.” The voice paused or faltered and then came on again. “This is understandable.”