Fade Out

by Patrick Tilley

The President bypassed Garrison and glanced at the others around the table. ‘Is it possible for them to knock out our radar like this?’

  ‘You mean theoretically possible?’

  ‘I mean in any way possible, Arnold.’ Then as Wedderkind opened his mouth, the President added, ‘Within the known limits of science.’

  ‘Possible, yes, but in this instance not probable.’ It was Air Force General Clayson, halfway down the table. ‘The reports from our border surveillance units all indicate total disruption of Russian radar frequencies during the same period.’

  ‘I know that, Chuck. They also know we’re listening in. Supposing they put this whole show on for our benefit?’

  ‘You mean –?’ Admiral Garrison was still trying to get it together.

  ‘This could be a dry run – just to test our response. If it is them, then the next time they black us out, we could be in real trouble. Right, Bob?’

  Bob Connors was the President’s closest aide. Some people thought he was too close. Like Mel Fraser, who faced him across the table. Connors advised the President on a wide variety of subjects that ranged from defence and foreign affairs down to what tie to wear. The State Department hated him, and so did certain people in the Defense Department. Like Mel Fraser.

  Connors remained relaxed, with one arm over the back of his chair. ‘We could be, but there’s no reason why we should. We have a whole raft of trade agreements, our people at Geneva say they’re only a whisker away from a deal on nuclear weapons, you went to Moscow this April and only last week the Russian Ambassador confirmed that Leonovich would come to Washington next year.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the President.

  ‘Hell, don’t you remember – when we were over there – he said he wanted to bring his grandson and his daughter-in-law over with him so that they could visit Disneyland. I’m not saying they don’t need watching but since you came into office they’ve responded to our approaches in a reasonably positive manner. I really don’t see why they would want to pull a stunt like this.’

  ‘Well, it sure as hell shook me up. I know what these bastards can do.’ General Wills had helped put the original backbone into NATO. He’d been trying to keep ahead of the Russians ever since he’d faced up to them as a twenty-year-old lieutenant during the Berlin blockade back in 1948.

  Clayson came back in. ‘No one could dummy up an operation this big. They couldn’t risk it blowing back in their faces.’

  I’m right, thought Clayson. I have to be. The Civil Aeronautics Board had reported twenty minutes of almost total confusion as civilian air traffic control centres lost radar contact with the midmorning domestic airline flights. All the European air traffic control centres had had their radarscopes wiped out too. But by some freak-weather miracle, there was almost perfect visibility right where the densest traffic happened to be. By switching to emergency procedural control on the unaffected lower-frequency radio wavelengths, the Air Traffic Control Centers had managed to keep the ball in the air. All the same, there had been some hair-raising near-misses, and although there had still been plenty of daylight over Eastern Europe, the weather had been bad.

  The President sucked in his breath as Clayson described how a Moscow-bound Tupolev had sheared through an ageing Polish Airlines jet stacked up in ten-tenths cloud over Warsaw. ‘Nasty…’

  ‘Fortunately, they were only half full,’ added Clayson.

  Yeah, but they don’t have to make a profit, thought Connors irreverently.

  Clayson continued. ‘And Malev – the Hungarian line – lost one of their Ilyushins on a mountain top in Moldavia. Total – one hundred and ninety-five dead.’

  Admiral Garrison voiced what the President was thinking. ‘Is this what they say? Or have we had this checked out?’ Iron Curtain countries rarely, if ever, publicized airline crashes within their borders.

  ‘We had an air attaché on board the Tupolev,’ said Clayson.

  ‘Anyone I know?’ asked the President. Not that it really mattered. He was thinking about the people in those three airliners. Could the Russians have knowingly sent them to their deaths? Would they? Would any government? Still, look what the Russians had lost fighting the Germans in World War Two. What was it, ten, twelve – plus the civilians – twenty million?

  Set against this scale of sacrifice, what was another one hundred and ninety-five people? It would depend, he supposed, on what was at stake. The Russians had proved they were prepared to bite the bullet with the shoot-down of KAL 007. Faced with the violation of a highly sensitive segment of Russian air space they had not baulked at blowing the off-course South Korean Jumbo jet out of the sky, killing all 269 passengers and crew. With luck, he would never find himself in a similar situation. If he did, he hoped like hell that somewhere down the line was a hatchet man who would make that kind of decision for him.

  Bob Connors’ voice cut through further speculation. ‘I think we can reasonably take the Soviet Premier’s message at face value. From what he said over the hot line, it seems pretty clear they thought we had pulled out the plug on them.’

  ‘Did you all read the transcript?’

  Everyone nodded at the President.

  ‘As I remember it,’ said Connors. ‘You ended up reassuring him.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Then it backs up General Clayson’s theory.’

  ‘Which is?’

  Clayson leaned back on to the table again. ‘A temporary, total disruption of radar and ultra high-frequency radio waves on a worldwide basis caused by some as yet unknown solar-generated phenomenon.’

  ‘Arnold?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll go along with that.’

  ‘Mel?’

  ‘Chuck could have the right answer,’ said Fraser. ‘But I don’t think we should preclude the possibility of some technological breakthrough by the Russians.’ He eyed Connors briefly. ‘Even though they are making the right diplomatic noises.’

  Connors stared back at him. ‘How come they had the same kind of foul-up?’

  Fraser shrugged. ‘It could have been a test transmission from a secret research unit – that even the armed forces don’t know about.’

  That’s all we need, thought Admiral Garrison. Ordinary Russian secrets are bad enough.

  The President beat him to the punch line. ‘How do you propose to check this out?’ asked the President.

  ‘The whole of Eastern Europe and Asia is covered photographically by Air Force satellites,’ said Fraser. ‘We’ll just have to go over every inch of the ground and re-evaluate each installation.’

  ‘That’s a big chunk of the map. How long is that going to take?’

  ‘I’m gonna have to come back to you on that.’

  ‘Okay, but let’s keep it on a short line.’ The President turned to Wedderkind. ‘Do you have any ideas how we can follow up this geophysical angle?’

  Wedderkind replaced his thick-framed spectacles. ‘General Clayson and I have already got a study group together on this. The top Air Force physicists are talking it over with people from Cal Tech, MIT and NASA right now.’

  ‘Pull in the best men, Arnold. Get whoever you need.’

  ‘And let’s hope they come up with something,’ growled Wills. ‘We don’t want to get caught in this kind of mess again.’

  Wedderkind felt honour bound to defend the cause of science. ‘If we are, the one thing you can be sure of is that the Russians will be in big trouble too.’

  ‘Arnold,’ said Wills, ‘don’t ever confuse Russian scientists with Russian soldiers. They can still fight without all this electronic shit. And if they ever run out of guns and ammunition, they’ll try to beat us to death with their mess tins. Take it from me, Arnold, we’re the ones who need the radar.’

  ‘Point taken,’ said the President, perversely pleased to see his trusty friend put down. ‘Looks like the ball’s in your court, Arnold.’

  It was indeed. Wedderkind didn’t say anything, but a sharp increase in his blink rate signalled a dir
ect hit.

  After the others had gone, Connors poured out two cups of coffee. Both he and the President were on artificial sweeteners. Connors had gone off sugar after reading somewhere that it was destroying his brain cells.

  The President was back behind his heavy blue leather-topped desk. He had swung his chair around to gaze out of the window.

  ‘Would you like a roll with it?’

  ‘No.’

  Connors put the coffee down on the desk. ‘I like Wills. He knows where it’s at.’

  ‘Yes, he’s a good man. It’s Garrison that gets me. The Navy ought to ship him out.’

  ‘He’s okay. You just didn’t have time for him today.’ Connors’ support for Garrison stemmed from the fact that he too had briefly been a sailor. He had interrupted his college education to join the Navy as a trainee carrier pilot during the Vietnam War. The day he’d soloed at San Diego, they had begun air-lifting people off the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon.

  In the long term, it had been a good career move but in the short term it had proved a social disaster. Resuming his studies at UCLA, Connors discovered that vets from ’Nam and would-be heroes like himself were as welcome as dog-turds on the living-room carpet. Patriotism was a dirty word, draftcard burners were the new elite. It had taken a good ten years for the scars to heal, for the dead to be honoured, for the survivors to walk tall again and for the flag to be carried aloft with pride.

  The President, who had seen action as a pilot in the Pacific, had ended up as a full colonel in the California Air National Guard. On bad days in the State Department, Connors and the President were referred to as Snoopy and the Red Baron. The practice had spread to Mel Fraser and his cronies in the Department of Defense. Oddly enough, although flying was about the only thing the two men had in common, it was something they had never discussed.

  ‘Bob – ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you think the Russians could be putting something over on us?’

  ‘No.’ They can’t be, thought Connors. Not after all the hard work we’ve put in.

  The President swung his chair away from the window. ‘I hope Arnold and Chuck are right about where this interference is coming from. But what the hell do we do if it happens again? The next time, the radar may be knocked out for hours, not minutes.’ The President shook his head. ‘And how do we know this isn’t the beginning of some major change in the earth’s environment?’

  We don’t, thought Connors.

  The President stood up. ‘It’s incredible. The whole of our defence system depends on radar. If that doesn’t work, nothing works. We have no early warning, we can’t track hostile aeroplanes or missiles or compute interception courses. Our own ground-to-air and air-to-air missiles can’t lock on to their targets, our ships and planes can’t find their way around – ’

  ‘Oh, hold on. We have plenty of planes and missiles fitted with inertial guidance systems. And there’s always astronavigation.’

  ‘Yes, and in daytime, they can always fly along the railroad tracks. Come on, Bob. You know what I mean. What are we going to do if it is the Russians?’

  The Russians. Always the Russians… ‘The first thing we have to do is stay loose,’ said Connors.

  The President waved his hand impatiently. ‘Just give it to me without the bullshit.’

  ‘It’s not the Russians. Don’t ask me why. I don’t have any proof. I just know it isn’t them. Call it a gut reaction if you like.’

  ‘Okay. What happens if Fraser – ’

  ‘If Fraser finds something, ask me again.’

  ‘If he does, I may not bother.’

  Connors shrugged. ‘Everybody’s allowed one mistake.’

  ‘Not about something like this.’

  ‘You’re the boss.’ As he said it, Connors thought, If the Russians have cracked us wide open then we’ll all be out of a job…

  The President sank back deep in his chair and pressed his lips together. ‘Do you think I still ought to go to Houston?’

  ‘Yes. Everybody’s expecting you. If you don’t turn up, people will start to worry.’

  ‘I think we were right to keep the alert secret, don’t you?’

  ‘Hell, yes,’ said Connors. ‘With what happened to the airlines yesterday, the papers have got enough to chew on for one weekend. The press statements we’re putting out will all play up the solar-flare angle until we can come up with something better. The vital thing is to keep the Russians out of it.’

  ‘Yeah…’ The President closed his eyes, massaged the bridge of his nose for a few seconds, then looked up at Connors. ‘Okay, we’ll go to Houston.’

  ‘Good.’ Connors checked his watch. ‘If we leave in – let’s say half an hour, we can still make Houston in time for your lunch date. Then we can go on to Dallas for dinner. Sunday as planned, the Western White House. We can have some of the boys take pictures of you hooking a sailfish out of the Pacific. Monday morning, back here. Check with Clayson and Arnold to find out how far their boys got over the weekend. How does it sound?’

  ‘Fine. Call Marion and have her tell my wife that the trip is on.’

  Marion Wilson was the President’s private secretary.

  ‘She knows,’ said Connors. ‘She’s all packed and ready to go.’ He tried hard not to smile but his mouth gave way at the edges. ‘We, ah… both kind of guessed what your decision would be.’

  ‘In that case,’ said the President, ‘we’d better not keep her waiting.’

  Connors ignored the deadpan look. It was one of several they had rehearsed to help the President deal with difficult interviewers on face-to-face TV shows.

  WASHINGTON DC-HOUSTON-DALLAS/TEXAS

  Despite the fact that the big Sikorsky helicopter was as safe as human ingenuity could make it, Anne, the President’s wife, hated every minute of the short trip to Andrews Air Force Base. She preferred, as she put it, ‘things with wings on’.

  Connors watched the brief moment of almost fussy attentiveness the President accorded his wife. One could almost believe they were still in love with each other. It was an idea that hadn’t really occurred to Connors before.

  Safe aboard Air Force One and climbing skyward, the First Lady relaxed while her husband went back to work. The Secretary of the Treasury and the Congressional Party Leader had joined the Presidential party at Andrews Field and most of the inflight time was spent putting the finishing touches to a fiscal aid package designed to rescue the newly impoverished Texas oil barons, many of whom were down to their last Learjet.

  At his lunch with Houston businessmen and industrialists, the President vigorously outlined his plans for a renewed effort to insulate America from the destabilizing effects of the latest round in the price/production war between the member states of the crumbling OPEC oil cartel. Judging by the applause, it seemed to be what everyone wanted to hear.

  The dinner in Dallas was a fund-raising affair. Texas was a state the President wanted to win over. Connors watched him at work among the Party faithful, cheerful, smiling, attentive, handshaking, backslapping, shouldergripping. The man was great on body contact. An ear and a word for everyone, and great on names too. There was nothing more wonderful than to feel insignificant and then find your presence acknowledged, your face recognized, your name remembered.

  At 22:30, the Presidential jet lifted off the runway at Love Field and headed westward for the seventeen-hundred-mile run to Hamilton AFB just north of San Francisco. Up front, over the Rockies, the sky was a deep purple. The setting sun had got a head start, but with an air speed of over six hundred miles an hour, they would be chasing it all the way to the coast.

  In the staterooms, most of the staff were dozing. Jerry Silvermann, the White House Press Secretary, had a small card game going at one of the tables. The President’s wife was lying down in their private suite. Connors went through to see the President. He found him slumped back in a window seat, his chin cupped in one hand. He had taken off his shoes and dimmed the cabin light
s. A wad of briefing papers lay pushed aside on the table in front of him.

  ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Yes, fine…’ The President turned his attention back to the darkness outside the window. Connors carefully chose an armchair that was not too close and sat down. He yawned silently, stretched a little and loosened his tie. Beyond and below the starboard wingtip, Las Vegas glittered diamond-bright against the black sand.

  In the three years he had spent working his way upstream to his present position, Connors had become finely attuned to the President’s abrupt shifts of mood. Connors was devious enough to appreciate the intricate structure and infinite variability of their relationship. He knew just when to be dominant, subservient, reassuring, knowledgeable, or blandly innocent. Now was a time for being near and saying nothing. Connors found himself wondering yet again if he had really finagled himself into the job or whether, in fact, the President had masterminded him into accepting it.

  We all have a death wish, he thought. If we hadn’t, I wouldn’t be where I am, and you wouldn’t be thinking of running for a second term.

  JODRELL BANK/CHESHIRE/ENGLAND

  Situated some twenty miles south of Manchester, Jodrell Bank is the home of what was, at one time, the world’s largest fully-steerable radio telescope. Operated by a research team that had pioneered many of the present techniques in radio astronomy, the 250-foot-diameter Mark One ‘Big Dish’ stands surrounded by rich farmland, studded with oak trees and grazing cattle.

  Jodrell Bank began operations in 1957, contributing valuable research data to the first co-ordinated global research program – the first Geophysical Year. Soon afterward, the original installation was augmented with a 125-foot-long oval Mark Two dish. Mark Three, a smaller, circular dish, took over the job of tracking satellites.

  Following the Friday fade-out, which had hit England in the early evening, the team on the big Mark One dish decided to run a quick calibration test to check out the installation on Saturday morning.

  The test consisted of bouncing pulsed radar signals off the surface of the moon and checking the measurements obtained against previously recorded data. To the team’s surprise, in the middle of the test transmission, one of the pulses bounced off something much nearer.