Three Minutes to Doomsday

by Joe Navarro

  “Incontrovertible?” Susan says when I show her the teletype. “Who uses words like that?”

  “It’s German,” I tell her, “for fuck you, stop wasting our time, stronger message to follow.”

  * * *

  A FEW DAYS LATER, I am in Orlando on other business, so I ask Rod if we can have a quick meeting at the Embassy Suites, just to talk all this over.

  “Sure,” he says, but when he gets there, nothing has changed. He’s knocking himself out, he says, trying to remember the address, the network of streets and alleys that got him there, landmarks, anything, but it’s all blank. He’s never had anything like this happen to him before.

  “Just keep trying,” I tell him, knowing that I’m asking in effect that he hand me the rope that will hang him. “Up in Washington, they’re all over me about this. They think maybe the apartment doesn’t really exist.”

  I have to excuse myself for a few minutes after that. For a guy who eats so little, I’ve been dealing of late with a lot of gastric discomfort. When I come out of the bathroom, Rod has slid back the glass door and is standing on a tiny balcony, not even large enough for a folding chair.

  “Joe,” he says, “I’m willing to jump if that will make them believe I’m telling the truth about the apartment. I don’t want anyone to think you’re lying to them.”

  I’m touched—how could I not be?—but for multiple career and personal reasons, the last thing I want on my record (and replaying hour after hour in my head) is a suicide.

  “Rod,” I tell him, “please come back in and sit down. Please. We’ll find a way to make good on this.” And, thank God, he listens.

  Later, after he’s gone, the surveillance agent in the parking lot tells me that he all but pissed his pants when he saw Rod leaning out over the balcony railing. He says that he momentarily wondered if I’d had enough of Rod and was going to make him jump—a comment that horrified me.

  * * *

  WHEN I GET BACK to Tampa that day, I head straight to Rich’s office.

  “Get on the horn and talk to our assistant legal attaché in Germany,” I tell him. “We’re not waiting to go through HQ channels anymore. Tell him this is personal for me. Tell him how frustrated we are with both the army and WFO and have him find an aerial photograph of Bad Kreuznach.”

  “Where is he going to find one of those?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care. Get him on it.”

  Three days later, the legal attaché, Ed Beatty, calls me late in the morning our time.

  “It’s on its way to you,” he says.

  “What is?”

  “I thought about your predicament, and I remembered that after high school I worked on a road crew. We always had aerial photos. I went to the Office of Public Works and bought a photo of Bad Kreuznach, for thirty-seven deutsche marks. You’ll have it in a day or so.”

  “God bless you, Ed.”

  “Forget God,” he says. “Just subpoena me to testify. That should be good for at least a week in sunny Tampa. It’s colder than a witch’s tit in Bonn this time of year.”

  “I’ll keep you here for a month,” I assure him.

  “Take care, Joe. Glad I could help.”

  “A million thanks.”

  One phone call to one guy who cares and is willing to get off his ass. Why is it often so hard to find people who want to help?

  * * *

  AS SOON AS THE aerial shot arrives in Tampa, we have the photo unit in the office blow it up to poster size. Then Susan and I roll it up and dash to the Embassy Suites and another Rod meeting that I promise will be short in the extreme.

  Short, in fact, it is. Rod stands for maybe two minutes, hands on hips, studying the map, then puts his finger at the front gate of the base and begins tracing his walk, calling out street names and familiar points of interest as he goes. Finally, he takes the grease pencil I’m holding, stares, circles what looks like a residence in a quiet neighborhood of houses and apartments, and says, “This is it—Josef Schneider Plaza number four,” and with that we all exhale.

  I give him a hug and so does Susan. “Are you sure?” I ask.

  “Sure as can be,” he says. “Now can we get something to eat?”

  * * *

  TWO DAYS LATER, THE Germans grudgingly send an undercover car to drive by Josef Schneider Plaza #4. As they roll slowly past, certain they’re on the trail of yet another bogus lead, an elderly man, puttering in his garden, steps forward to greet them, identifies himself as Carl Gabriel Schmidt, and then knocks them completely off their feet.

  “I knew you’d be by to see me eventually,” he says. “Come inside.”

  Conrad, he confirms, rented the apartment and changed the locks, and afterward he and a “young friend” (whose description fits Rod Ramsay to a tee) spent a lot of time up there, always with the lights on, very bright lights.

  And with that singular confirmation of something no one knew before—not the Germans, not the army, certainly not WFO, not even the Swedes—this investigation takes on a whole new, more serious perspective. Rod Ramsay can no longer be ignored. Neither, I hope, can I.

  17

  HOLY SHIT!

  Two things:

  Number One, Rod wasn’t bullshitting about the document he recited for me from memory. I fired his version off to the army, which has the original in inventory, the very night I wrote it down. When the army finally gets back to me, the teletype begins: “This is beyond incredible . . . ” Every word, the page number, the page placement—Rod got it all dead on. When I show Koerner the long paragraph Rod apparently memorized while he stood over the copier at the Eighth ID and the army’s confirming reply, he damn near falls out of his chair. He knows: This kind of capacity doesn’t come along more than once or twice in a lifetime.

  Number Two, I and whoever is going to be able to help me (Langford, Moody, or perhaps someone else) have been green-lighted to go all-out over the next week to see what else Rod has to tell us. The Able Archer stuff clearly alarmed any number of Washington desk jockeys. Rod’s astounding feat of memory has begun circulating through high circles, too. And although we don’t yet know for sure all the documents that were littering its floor (and probably never will), Josef Schneider Plaza #4 has proved to be exactly the place Rod described.

  “If this, then what?” seems to be the question of the day at Fort Meade, Langley, and even in that dead-between-the-ears zone on Pennsylvania Avenue known as FBIHQ. Oh, that and “Why are we learning about this only now, four freaking years after the Conrad investigation began?”

  First, though, some practical business: Back in November when he blew through the Tampa office, Director Sessions tasked me with providing round-the-clock surveillance on Rod, one more load on my plate but a reasonable request. Here’s the downside, though: 24/7 surveillance is a hugely expensive operation, not just for the raw numbers of people involved—more than a dozen in this case—but also for the infrastructure they need, such as motel rooms, meals, gas, etc.

  In the real world of commerce, businesses get around such problems by issuing credit cards to their employees. Not the FBI, though. Our agents are expected to use their own credit cards and then put in at the end of the month for expenses. Normally, that’s not a huge problem, but when you add to the tab an operation of this size, systems tend to break down and invoices lag. That’s what has happened here. All of us involved have pretty much maxed out our personal credit cards when HQ finally pulls its act together long enough to send the Tampa office a wire transfer of exactly a quarter of a million dollars.

  To facilitate distribution, Koerner hands me the wire-in paperwork and orders me to get the funds from the bank in small bills, but I’m not alone. She-Moody has been ordered to follow me, with instructions from Koerner to “bring him down if he looks like he’s going to bolt with the dough.”

  All the way back from the bank, Terry walks a few steps behind me and off to the side.

  “Why don’t you walk beside me?” I finally ask. �
��This feels weird.”

  Her answer: “It’s easier to shoot you in the back this way.”

  Honestly, you really can’t make this shit up.

  It’s not until we’re in the car late that afternoon, heading to Orlando once again, that Terry drops her own bomb on me. Her ob-gyn has moved up the no-travel date. A week from now, she has to go on desk duty full-time.

  * * *

  DINNER IS A SORRY affair. Rod claims that he filled up at lunch, but when Terry excuses herself early on for the bathroom, I let him know that she’s in her stretch run—that, in fact, this might be her last trip with me to Orlando—and as I anticipated, this puts him in the dumps. The question is how to use that to our advantage, and I’m hoping I have an answer.

  Upstairs, I’ve reversed the usual seating order. Moody and I are at either end of the sofa. Rod is in Terry’s place, the easy chair, facing both of us. I want him back in the role he likes best: Professor Ramsay, Mr. Smart Guy.

  “Rod,” I say when we’re all settled in, “tell us about the Pershing missiles. What were they doing in Germany?”

  “How far back do you want to go?”

  “As far back as you think necessary. Right, Agent Moody?”

  Terry nods in agreement as Rod shakes a cigarette out of his pack and pops open a Coke from the small cooler I’ve left by his side.

  “Welllllll,” he says, with a little dramatic flourish, “the story really begins with the Soviets. Beginning in the late 1970s, they started deploying SS-20 ballistic missiles along their western border, threats not only to Europe’s major cities but also to key NATO air bases in Great Britain. Jimmy Carter believed that we should first negotiate with the Kremlin to get them to roll back the SS-20s, then, if that didn’t work, respond in kind by deploying missiles along Western Europe’s eastern border, aimed at the Soviets’ major cities, air bases, etc. Are you with me so far?”

  “Right there,” I say, as Terry chimes in: “This is very useful.”

  “Good. Good. Ronald Reagan, of course, had a different plan. He was less interested in negotiating with the Soviets than in forcing them to their knees. In mid-1983, NATO, at Reagan’s urging, announced it would begin deploying US cruise missiles to Italy and Britain, and Pershing II ballistic missiles to West Germany. Finally, on November 22—twenty years to the day after John Kennedy’s assassination [Rod adds, as if he were dispensing dimes to indigents]—the West German parliament approved the deployment, and the next day the Pershing IIs began arriving on German soil.”

  “How did the West Germans feel about that?” Terry asks, honestly unaware, I think, of just how pissed off many of them were. Rod would have chided me for being naïve if I’d asked the same question, but this is Terry. She’s a short-timer now, maybe a last-timer, and Rod is nothing but tolerant tonight.

  “I’m sure, Terry, you won’t be surprised,” he responds magnanimously, “that many West Germans were less than thrilled to find themselves on the front edge of the Western World’s nuclear shield. Even if the Soviets didn’t launch a first strike, mistakes happen. Signals get tripped up, missiles launch that aren’t intended to leave their silos, volatile materials get mishandled, and . . . ”

  “And?” More alarm in her voice, but alarm now that I recognize as intentionally feeding our guest lecturer’s needs.

  Rod: “There’s no dialing history back then.”

  My turn to jump in, the voice of reason: “Of course. Of course. We’ve all seen Dr. Strangelove. The wingnuts take over. Slim Pickens rides a nuke right down the Kremlin chimney. But in the real world, Rodney [stretching it out], all these weapons are ass-deep in fail-safes, are they not?”

  “True, Joe,” he answers, stretching my name out just as long, “very true. You’ve done an excellent job with your homework.” He pauses for a laugh, his own, before he goes on. “Nuclear missiles like the Pershing IIs have two key safeguards, to be exact: permissive action links—PALs to their pals [another ha-ha]—and SAS nuclear authenticators, also known as SNAs or ‘cookies.’ But not exactly Oreos [yet another ha-ha, looking primarily at Moody this time]. What’s more, at military bases with operational command over nuclear-weapons materials, PALs and cookies are kept in the innermost sanctum: the Emergency Action Center, a small room—think of the movies, Terry, cinéma noir—where red-alert messages are received that deal with the utilization of nuclear material.”

  Me: “And that would include the Eighth Infantry HQ at Bad Kreuznach?”

  Rod: “Yes, of course. The Eighth ID had responsibility for the deployment and use of nuclear satchels and artillery munitions along the Fulda Gap to stop Soviet tanks.”

  Terry: “Satchels?”

  Rod, waving his hand grandly: “Nuclear mines, Terry, that have been parceled out through German villages along the frontier, not that the villagers have been told about them.”

  “My God!” Terry says with a slight gasp.

  “Basically, it’s a suicide defense concocted in Bonn,” Rod explains, “just in case NATO lacks sufficient tanks to stop a Soviet advance. The Germans, you know, have vowed they’ll never be occupied by Russians again. Never again,” he says for emphasis.

  In truth, I have no idea where this is going, and I can see that pregnant Moody desperately needs to pee again, but Rod is clearly so vested in the subject by now that I don’t want to stop.

  “Just to make sure I understand, Rod,” I say, jumping in. “These nuclear satchels can’t really be activated without these permissive action links and authenticators . . . ”

  Rod manages to nod approvingly while also furrowing his brow.

  “Am I missing something?” I ask.

  “A little something, yes.”

  “And that would be?”

  “It’s not just the satchels, Joe. All the nuclear weapons in Europe operate under the same command-and-control structure. The same code that activates the satchels also activates the Pershing missile and, of course, vice versa.”

  “I see. And these PALs and cookies are stored in the Emergency Action Center in what I assume is probably a vault of some kind?”

  Another approving nod, this time without the censorious brow.

  “And that’s basically the nuclear firewall? Sounds a little porous.”

  “It does,” Moody agrees.

  “I’m afraid, Joe and Terry, that you’re missing one final element.”

  “And that would be?”

  “The PALs and cookies are kept inside a safe that can be opened only by two people operating two separate lock combinations that are themselves changed every time new EAC custodians rotate in.”

  “Ah,” I say, “now that does sound fail-safe. There are a lot of mean dogs between those little puppies and anyone trying to get to them without authorization.”

  Rod agrees. “It’s as fail-safe a system as humans can design.”

  This all sounds nice and compact as I tell it here, but when I look at my watch, four hours have gone by. The back of my shirt, I realize, is soaked clear through. (Another thing I should probably see a doctor about: I seem to be sweating far more profusely than usual.) Rod, I can see, has to pee so badly his eyeballs are all but floating in their sockets.

  “Time for a bathroom break,” I announce. “Terry, why don’t you go first. I’ll follow.”

  * * *

  WHILE ROD’S IN THE bathroom, I drag the furniture back into its old configuration. Rod will be on the sofa once more, Terry in her usual easy chair off to his side. I move Rod’s cigarettes and ashtray to the end table beside where he’ll be sitting but keep the cooler on the table next to where he was. I’m just wheeling my swivel chair in from the bedroom when Rod reemerges with his face still damp.

  “Terry needs the chair,” I explain, waving him toward the sofa. I wait till he’s settled in and shaking a fresh cigarette from the pack to begin.

  “Why don’t you tell Agent Moody, Rod?”

  “Tell her what?”

  “How you clipped the PALs and cookies.�
��

  It’s a guess, a hunch, nothing more. If I’ve screwed it up, we’ll be back to square one, or worse. But something about that last response—“as fail-safe a system as humans can design”—sounded to me as if Rod was walking up to the edge of his own vanity. And who better to bring his narcissism to full bloom than Terry Moody, on what might be his last chance to impress her?

  Rod needs me—I’m his friend, his father, his confessor, his life coach, for crissake. But Terry validates his manhood. Her interest in him is proof that he’s not a multifaceted loser who’s been cuckolded for months in his own camper. That’s why he got so blue when I told him she was being pulled off the case—I see that now—and I’m hoping that he won’t be able to resist validating himself forever in Terry’s eyes with this, his greatest coup (if, indeed, it was). And right on cue, he lays it at her feet, like the most precious present ever bestowed on anyone.

  “They were stupid,” he begins, speaking directly to Terry. “Lazy.”

  “They?” I ask.

  “Maybe, Rod,” Terry says in a softer voice, leaning his way, “this would be easier if you took it from the beginning.”

  Rod pauses again, nods in agreement, then restarts in earnest.

  “The Hungarians and Czechs had both let us know that the Soviets were extremely interested in the nuclear capability and technology of the West, especially when it came to command, control, security, and release procedures,” Rod says, with what I take to be relief in his voice, a burden of memory soon to be lifted. “Clyde had been grooming me to be promoted to Heidelberg, where I’d have access to even more sensitive material. I told you that the other day, Joe.”

  “I remember,” I say. “The Central Europe HQ.”

  “Exactly, but I didn’t want to go. I liked Bad Kreuznach. I liked being near Clyde. He was teaching me so much, and the Eighth ID had plenty of nuclear secrets of its own, so . . . ”