Back Channel: A novel

by Stephen L Carter

  IV

  The storm had passed. Margo lay half awake in the lumpy twin bed. The apartment had two bedrooms. Before Margo’s arrival, each girl had her own. Margo shared with Hope, who told her, without going into detail, that rooming with Patsy would be awkward. Above Hope’s bed was a window. The blackness without was broken by a scattering of distant twinkles. Not long ago, Kennedy had promised the nation that an American would walk on the moon within a decade. Tom told her that the technology had been understood for years; all that was lacking was the money and the will. To the Toms of the world, the march of science was equivalent to the march of civilization. The future belonged to those who could build the best machines. But building machines capable of killing tens of millions of people in a single afternoon didn’t seem very civilized to her.

  Margo shut her eyes. Still sleep eluded her. She knew why. Blaming Tom or technology—those were excuses. It was Fomin who had gotten under her skin, with his clever insinuations about how history would judge her, as just another Kennedy woman. She hated the thought. She had hated it when Bundy explained it, and she hated it when Fomin made her face it, and she hated the President for forcing her to play to the role. Even though she knew why Kennedy made her kiss his collar and muss her dress, she felt filthy doing it.

  Worse, Margo had the sense that maybe, just maybe, Kennedy was enjoying the fiction a little more than was proper. It was as if he wasn’t just trying to fool the Secret Service into thinking they were having an actual affair: he seemed to want to fool Margo, too.

  She turned her face to the wall, opened her eyes, remembered the burning humiliation of that day back in tenth grade when Melody Davidson had read that horrible double dactyl to the class. She had fought back; but the years had taught her that no amount of struggle back quite banished the pain.

  There were many things in life that Margo hated or feared, but first on the list was humiliation—especially in front of white peers she knew she ought to best. Melody’s poem had hurt less than her classmates’ eager laughter. She had been fleeing their mockery ever since. Getting straight A’s didn’t help her escape the demons who pursued her, and she had a hunch that helping to save the world wouldn’t, either. She wasn’t supposed to lose to the Melody Davidsons of the world, but too often she did. Fomin was right. Margo was only nineteen, but even if the world survived, her own reputation would be destroyed. Half dozing now, she allowed her sleepy but agile mind to compose another double dactyl:

  Washington Poshington,

  future historians,

  trying to figure out

  who Margo was.

  Bound to dismiss her as

  extracurricular:

  Kennedy doing what

  Kennedy does.

  Margo smiled wanly through her tears. She’d long had the sense that she was called to do something special. She’d dreamed since moving in with Nana of leaving her mark on the world. Before this week, she would never have guessed that her footnote in the history books would expose her as the lowest kind of—

  She slept.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Premature Celebration

  I

  On Wednesday morning, October 24, Attorney General Robert Kennedy read to the ExComm the chilling letter from Khrushchev that Ambassador Dobrynin had handed him last night at the embassy. The blockade, said Khrushchev, constituted “outright banditry or, if you like, the folly of degenerate imperialism.”

  Kennedy smiled. “Well, he’s not the first man to call me a degenerate.”

  Nobody laughed. Bobby read on: “The Soviet Government considers that the violation of the freedom to use international waters and international air space is an act of aggression which pushes mankind toward the abyss of a world nuclear-missile war. Therefore, the Soviet Government cannot instruct the captains of Soviet vessels bound for Cuba to observe the orders of American naval forces blockading that island.”

  “I see,” said the President, his humor fading.

  “Mr. President, he concludes by insisting that the Soviet ship captains will protect their rights. He says they have—quoting again now—‘everything necessary to do so.’ ”

  “It’s practically a declaration of war,” said McNamara.

  Now other voices competed. Everyone had a suggestion. But Kennedy asked for quiet.

  “Okay. That’s the face Khrushchev has decided to put on. Is he just posturing, to keep his own fanatics in line? Or is this a real threat?”

  He was looking at McCone, the director of central intelligence, who cleared his throat and shuffled his papers. “Sir, as far as we can tell, work on the launchers isn’t slowing down. It’s speeding up.”

  The President turned to Maxwell Taylor, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “General?”

  “Mr. President, our naval forces on station inform us that the trawlers headed for Cuba are now being escorted by submarines.”

  Kennedy turned back to McCone. “Are their missiles ready for launch?”

  “No, sir. Our best estimate is at least three more days.”

  Somebody from the State Department asked how good the intelligence was. McCone said it was excellently sourced and deemed highly reliable, but Bundy wondered. The arrest of Penkovsky left in limbo all their Soviet sources.

  “So, in three days, they’ll be able to hit our cities with nukes?” asked someone else.

  “They can hit our cities already,” growled General LeMay.

  “Well, in three days they’ll be able to hit us from a lot closer,” a worried voice put in.

  “Exactly,” said LeMay.

  As Bundy watched, the mood in the room began subtly to shift. Before, only the Joint Chiefs had seemed to favor invasion. Now the entire table was moving in that direction.

  The President evidently sensed the change as well. He waved the others silent. “I don’t want to put Khrushchev in a corner from which he can’t escape.”

  But Bundy wondered. On Monday, the President had briefed congressional leaders, who, almost to a man, wanted swift military action. Kennedy had been stunned by their belligerence, but Bundy hadn’t. He worried that the President he served, in his determination to listen to every argument and consider every option, was missing the response of the man in the street. Millions were leaving the cities, afraid of war; but many of those same millions considered war inevitable, even desirable. If their President decided to take military action against the missiles in Cuba, the great majority of the American people were angrily ready to support him.

  The President asked what would happen if a submarine were to fire on an American vessel.

  “What do you think?” one of the military men near Bundy muttered, but too softly for the commander in chief to hear.

  Bundy made a note of his name.

  There were small depth charges, McNamara answered, that could be dropped and even hit a submarine without doing damage. The captain would interpret this as an order to surface or be destroyed.

  “How can we know for a fact that we won’t damage the submarine?” asked Bobby. “It’s not like we’ve tested these things on Soviet hulls.”

  “We know,” said McNamara, jaw thrust forward belligerently.

  The President, still driven by a concern about retaliation, answered that he would rather attack a merchant vessel than a submarine. McNamara corrected him gently. Maritime warfare could never be entirely accurate. He was skeptical that the Navy could put enough separation between the cargo ship and its submarine escort to take on one without fighting the other.

  “Okay,” Kennedy said, but he didn’t sound persuaded.

  The conversation turned to various ways to stop the Soviet ships if they refused to turn at the quarantine line—warning shots? taking out their rudders?—and it was left to Robert Kennedy to ask whether anybody had bothered to make sure that each American ship had a Russian speaker on board.

  Silence.

  Just before the meeting broke up, an aide handed McCone a note. “Mr. President, the Soviet
ships are slowing. They are not challenging the blockade line.”

  There was a moment of disbelief; then, if not a cheer, at least a relaxation of tension. A smiling Dean Rusk went so far as to say that the other side had blinked.

  Bundy was reluctant to join the celebration. Khrushchev had slowed the ships to gain time to consider his options. The ExComm seemed to have forgotten McCone’s earlier report that work on preparing the missiles had actually accelerated. The Soviets were not backing down. Sooner or later, they would send at least one ship toward the line. They had to. Until that happened, neither side knew how far the other was prepared to go.

  Nothing had changed.

  They needed GREENHILL and the back channel more than ever.

  II

  Margo Jensen had not so much settled into a routine as come to experience her life as a single unbroken nightmare. Some of the girls were going out after work and invited the newcomer along. Her polite refusal only added to their suspicion that she was in town for the pleasure of someone powerful, especially after her furtive telephone conversation earlier in the day. A man had called the office looking for her—that’s what they said when they came down to her cubby to get her, “a man”—and as Margo made her way along the hallway to the reception desk, she sensed the curious and disapproving scrutiny of everyone she passed. The receptionist was a thickset, unpleasant woman named Sylvie who wet her lips constantly with her tongue. She held out the phone and told Margo that she had almost hung up, so please don’t take so long next time. Margo asked politely whether it would be possible to transfer the call to an empty office.

  “No,” said Sylvie with cruel satisfaction.

  Defeated, Margo took the handset. An unfamiliar male voice began talking some nonsense about how a book she had requested from the Library of Congress had gone missing, and it would likely be weeks or more before they could find another copy.

  “It wasn’t that important,” she said, because the code word was library, and meant an unscheduled meeting tonight. “I can wait.”

  Sylvie took the phone back. She licked her lips. “Everything all right, sweetie?”

  “Fine, thanks.”

  “He can’t make it?”

  “There isn’t any he.”

  “We’re both women here.” A horrendous wink. “Don’t you worry. That’s how men are. It doesn’t mean he’s tired of you. He’s probably just busy.”

  Walking back to her cubicle, Margo kept her head high. She was now more puzzled than embarrassed. This was Wednesday. She had been in the city only since Saturday night. She had made no friends, confided in nobody, least of all her roommates or fellow interns. Despite that, everybody seemed to think she was in Washington at the command of a powerful man.

  The rumor had spread awfully fast.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Premature Panic

  I

  On that same Wednesday, at about the same time that Margo was receiving her call, a scene of a different kind was playing out a mile away, in Foggy Bottom. “Comes to all of us sooner or later,” Gwynn was saying as he perched against his desk, studying Harrington’s separation papers. His voice was almost kindly, but dripped with malicious respect. “You’ve compiled a remarkable record, Dr. Harrington. You’ve sacrificed a lot for your country. Nobody could possibly ask you for any more. Time to get out there and enjoy life.”

  “You already fired me, Alfred.” She sat easily in an armchair, projecting far less turmoil than she felt. “You’ve given me my thirty days’ notice. I no longer have a security clearance. Frankly, I’m not entirely sure why you wanted to see me.”

  But Gwynn was having too much fun to slow down. “We’ve worked out the details,” he continued happily. “Terms of severance will naturally be generous. And of course we’ll be indulging the usual festivities to mark the occasion—formal dinner and so forth. Testimonials from old friends.” Subtle emphasis on old. “You’re a legend,” he added, pressing the knife more deeply into her soul. “Irreplaceable. Well, you’ll hear all of that at the dinner.”

  “Sounds glorious.” Harrington knew that he was relishing this final opportunity to gloat before her departure. But she was buoyed by the knowledge that, although she herself might no longer be in the game, her chosen agent was still in play; and, although she would never admit it, the fact that her titular superior knew nothing of the revived operation constituted a source of particular pleasure.

  Gwynn put the papers down. He smiled placatingly. “You’ve had a magnificent career, Doctor. So few of us can truly be called legends in our own time. You are certainly among that fabled few.”

  She found a little of the old fire. “Is there an actual purpose for this meeting, Alfred?”

  But she could not shake his good humor. “Relax, Doctor. I’m not as wicked as you seem to think. I just wanted to make sure that you understand how much everyone here admires you.” A wise nod, as though she, rather than he, had made the point. A folder on the Cuba crisis was open on his desk: a breach of regulations, given her lack of a clearance, but likely placed there intentionally, to remind her of who was who. “Now, it’s true, if you were to press me, I suppose, given the committee’s findings, we could have dismissed you for cause. SANTA GREEN was a mess. We nearly lost two people, and poor Ainsley at the consulate had his cover blown and had to come home. That could all be laid at your feet, Doctor. Your operation, your competence, your charter.” He sounded positively jolly. “Nobody wants that. You’ve done yeoman service for your country—yeowoman—and I think I speak for the entire committee when I say that we would rather see you retired with every honor you deserve. There’s even talk of an Intelligence Cross, and, as you know, that’s as high as you can get.”

  Harrington, as it happened, had been awarded her second cross years ago. She opened her mouth to deliver a suitable rebuke, and that was when the alarm klaxon sounded.

  And went on sounding.

  Gwynn looked around in panic. “What is that?” he shouted over the piercing din.

  “Evacuation,” said Harrington calmly. She stood. “Come on, Alfred. We have to get to the bomb shelter.”

  II

  The President was in his helicopter, heading for Site R, the command post tunneled out of Raven Rock Mountain in Pennsylvania. Jackie and the kids had already enplaned for a more distant location.

  “What do we know?” he asked Bundy, seated just behind him. This was the first chance they’d had to talk since the Secret Service barged into Kennedy’s meeting with Commerce and Treasury on trade negotiations and all but carried him out the door, heading first for the bunker, and then, at a crisply radioed order, changing direction and rushing him onto the lawn as the helicopter landed.

  Bundy leaned close. Two other aides and four Secret Service agents were with them. A Marine captain sat near the cockpit, handling communication.

  Bundy spoke in a furred but clear whisper. “Mr. President, approximately twenty minutes ago, one early-warning satellite and two ground stations detected what appears to be a detonation in near space. The track suggests that it was a man-made vehicle, launched from inside the Soviet Union.”

  Kennedy’s face was slack and gray. “You’re saying it’s an ICBM?”

  “I’ve told you what we know, sir. The other DEW stations aren’t reporting any activity, but three of them are off-line.” The communications officer handed him a tear sheet. “General LeMay has the fighters and bombers at Homestead ready to take off on your order.”

  “Are the missiles in Cuba—”

  “There was an overflight this morning. There’s another U-2 in the air now. If they shoot the plane down, it’s a good bet that we’re at war.”

  The President turned to the window. Bundy sympathized. Maybe he was worrying about his wife and children; maybe his brother and his family; maybe the many ways he must surely feel he’d failed the country he served. As for Bundy, his own calm was a growing surprise. At Harvard they used to say his heart was an IBM computing machine
. Only now did it occur to him that they might be right.

  The communications officer handed over another tear sheet. Kennedy glanced across expectantly.

  “Sir, warning site Laredo is tracking two possible inbound missiles over the Atlantic Coast. The Joint Chiefs recommend you set DefCon One and activate Emergency War Warnings to all commands.”

  The President was ashen. One of the Secret Service men overheard, and his hand moved instinctively toward his gun.

  “My family—”

  “They’ve been transferred to a second plane, Mr. President. They’re heading for the dispersal site in Wisconsin.”

  Kennedy digested this. “Where’s Bobby?”

  “I believe he should be at Mount Weather by now.”

  “Can we get him on the radio?”

  Bundy was irritated. The President’s brother was smart and tough, but he wasn’t in the chain of command. The Joint Chiefs would have been furious to learn that Kennedy couldn’t make up his mind without talking to Bobby. Nevertheless, Bundy dutifully conferred with the communications officer. “Mr. President, I am advised that the channel isn’t fully secure. The recommendation is to wait until we land to contact Mount Weather.”

  “If the missiles are nearing the coast, we can’t wait that long.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s why we—”

  The helicopter banked hard. Bundy peered down but saw only trees. They couldn’t be over Pennsylvania yet. The craft described a half-circle and headed back the way they had come.

  The communications officer tore off another message. Bundy scanned the first few lines, then leaned close to Kennedy. “It was a satellite, Mr. President. Launched this morning, exploded as it reached parking orbit.”

  “What about the two missiles?”

  “Believe it or not, sir, two more satellites. They didn’t explode. Their observed motion happened to match predicted missile tracks. A remarkable coincidence, Mr. President, but a false alarm.”

  III

  “Well, that was an unusually embarrassing episode, I must say.” They were in the elevator, heading back up to Gwynn’s office on the fifth floor. Three or four other functionaries were crowded in with them, and Harrington noticed how they avoided looking at her. The same thing had happened in the shelter. Word, it seemed, had gotten around. Gwynn, meanwhile, raved on, not caring who overheard. “Crowded into a sardine can with the secretaries and the messengers and goodness knows who. Can you imagine weeks or months like that? It staggers the imagination.”