Fade Out (6 page)

‘I don't think we can base any worthwhile estimates of Russian military intentions on a sense of smell,' said Samuels. ‘However acute that organ might be.' He looked round the table to see how well he'd done with that last bit.

Connors aimed a shaft of solidarity towards Wedderkind then turned a cold eye on Samuels. ‘Whether those figures add up or not remains to be seen. Until then, I
think we should cut out the speculation and the cheap shots and get back to basics.' He looked at General Chuck Clayson. ‘When did we get the last set of Big Bird pictures of the launch sites?'

‘Just under two weeks ago,' said Clayson. Big Bird was the Air Force's code name for a steerable photoreconnaissance satellite. There were several of them in orbit.

‘In that case, you or the DIA must have a picture of this thing standing around somewhere on the ground,' said the President.

‘There was a big rocket on the Number Two pad at Baikonur last week,' said Clayson.

‘It was still there on Friday afternoon.'

The President accepted this information from Wedderkind without demur. They all knew that he was tuned into a shadowy scientific network that passed on scuttlebutt about the Russian space program. It was one of the reasons why he was with them around the table.

‘How about the other launch sites?' asked Connors.

‘Plesetsk was getting ready to put up two standard sows,' replied Clayson. ‘All the other sites were clear.'

‘Perhaps now you can understand why I found it hard to go along with Mel's proposition that the source of the fade-out is SWAYBACK,' said Wedderkind.

‘Exactly,' said Connors. ‘Where did the Russians launch this thing from, Gene? A hole in the ground?'

Everyone except Fraser turned their eyes on the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Samuels looked as if he'd been hit by a custard pie. ‘It must have come from somewhere.'

Connors saw Fraser wince.

‘Mel,' said the President. ‘I'm not sure I know how, or why, or what it is that the Russians have put up there, but if you want to use it to bulldoze my foreign policy, your boys are going to have to do a lot better than this.'

As Samuels sank without trace, the phone behind Connors rang twice. He leaned back and lifted it off the hook ‘… Right. Put it through to the study.' Connors replaced the phone and put the front legs of his chair back on the floor. ‘The Kremlin's on the line.' He smiled at the President. ‘At least we don't have to pay for the call.'

The President leaned his elbows on the table, closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose with both forefingers. Connors had noted that it was something he always did at moments like this. Two or three seconds of intense concentration… He stood up, waving the others back into their seats. All except Connors. ‘Since it's your head, maybe you'd better be in on this.' His eyes took the edge off the words.

Fraser and the others watched the study door close behind the President and Connors. Wedderkind tore open a pack of cigarettes and passed them around. McKenna, like the President, didn't smoke. Clayson was trying to give it up.

Samuels lit Fraser's cigarette. ‘I'm sorry,' he muttered. ‘I really blew out on that. I just wasn't – '

‘We'll survive,' said Fraser. He had already made up his mind that the
real
problem lay in the fact that both he and Samuels were almost three inches taller than the President, while Connors…

Jerry Silvermann came into the Pine Room. ‘Some more dope has just come through on Lenin's Tomb.'

‘Lenin's what?' asked Clayson.

‘Lenin's Tomb.' Silvermann kept it deadpan. ‘Isn't that what they've got flying around up there?'

‘Save the jokes,' said Fraser. ‘Just give us the message.'

‘There's been thirty more seconds of spaghetti on the radar, and that Jupiter probe is now orbiting at just over a thousand miles up. It looks as if those British guys were
right.' Silvermann adopted a heavy Slavic accent. ‘Tzee Rooshee-anns hev probe-lemps.'

‘Jerry, 'said Wedderkind patiently, ‘go and put a new ribbon in your typewriter.'

‘No sense of humour. That's what's wrong with this Administration,' said Silvermann. ‘All the wire services have the story, by the way. NBC has already put it out as a news flash. Most of the dailies will probably give it a few lines tomorrow. Message ends.'

Wedderkind frowned as Silvermann left. ‘Why is it coming down?'

‘Maybe it
is
going to burn up,' said McKenna. He looked across at Fraser. ‘If it does, you may end up with a real nonevent on your hands.'

‘Not necessarily,' said Fraser.

Samuels puffed smoke. ‘There is, at least, one bright spot. This bum steer the British have given everybody will take the heat away from us for a while. It'll give us a chance to find out what it is. Yeah…' He puffed out more smoke. ‘It's a big break.'

‘It's better than everyone knowing we were caught flat-footed,' said Fraser. He wasn't looking at Samuels but his voice trod all over him.

‘Uh – yeh…' Samuels coughed. ‘Ah – Chuck, how soon can you have one of your SAINTS look this thing over?'

The word SAINTS stood for
SA
tellite Surveillance and
INT
erception System. It was one of the United States' closely guarded secrets – armed reconnaissance satellites, controlled from the ground, and capable of altering their height and angle of orbit. Disguised as research satellites, and ostensibly part of America's continuing ‘World Resources' survey program, each of the SAINTS was equipped with TV cameras and carried fifty tiny guided missiles with conventional explosive warheads.

Their task was to spy on the growing number of Russian satellites launched in secret, for purposes known only to the Kremlin. Twenty-four SAINTS were now in orbit at varying heights.

It was in June 1982 that one of the SAINTS recorded in secret a careful inspection by its first Russian counterpart. Since then, the Russians had put up a total of twenty ‘killer' satellites. The Defense Department, in line with their usual policy of denigration, had christened them with the code name sows – for Soviet Orbital Weapons System.

The control and deployment of the SAINTS was the responsibility of the Air Force – which may have explained why Clayson had to clear his throat a couple of times before he could answer.

‘I regret to say that at the present time we are unable to put this craft under surveillance.'

‘Why?' asked Fraser.

‘Because the latest operational status report indicates a total malfunction return from all SAINTS currently in orbit.' At moments like this, Clayson tended to lapse into Pentagonese.

Fraser stared at him. ‘You mean to say
none
of them are working?'

‘That's correct. We're getting zero response to all signals that normally trigger off the transmission of visual and telemetric data, and we've been unable to activate the backup circuits that are designed to take over in the event of a primary malfunction.'

‘Fucking hell,' said Fraser. ‘When did all this happen?'

‘Over the last forty-eight hours,' said Clayson.

‘And that's not all,' said Wedderkind. ‘We're not getting transmissions from anything we've got up there. Research, navigation, weather, communications satellites – the whole civilian network's blown a fuse. Intelsats,
Comsats – everything.' He shook his head. ‘I hate to think just how many millions of dollars' worth of investment that represents.'

‘Yeah, well, thanks for telling me,' said Fraser. ‘How come I didn't get any indication on the extent of these breakdowns before now?'

‘I didn't start to get the whole picture myself until this morning,' said Clayson. ‘This was a progressive failure. Before I got on to this, there had been several determined efforts at lower command levels to get on top of the situation. A lot of this satellite circuitry is very temperamental. Often what looks like a major breakdown clears after you sidetrack or shut down some of the circuits for a while. I tried to contact you before we left the East Coast but you were, uhh…'

‘What about the Russian satellites?' asked Samuels.

‘No one's heard a bleep from them since Friday,' said Wedderkind. ‘It confirms what Chuck and I have been saying all along. Everything points to a colossal burst of X-ray or gamma radiation as the cause of the breakdown. It would affect their satellites too.'

‘They've been shut down,' said Fraser.

‘What about the cosmonauts aboard Salyut 7 and the Mir space-station?' asked McKenna.

‘There's been no word from them since Friday morning,' said Wedderkind.

‘Of course not,' said Fraser. ‘They've been told to stay off the air too.'

McKenna frowned. ‘Why?'

‘To keep us in the dark,' said Fraser. ‘While those sons of bitches in the Kremlin work out what to do next.'

Samuels closed his file of intelligence digests. ‘Who's going to tell the Old Man about this?'

‘I will,' said Fraser. It would be a moment he would relish.

In the study, Connors listened in on the line as the President talked to the Soviet Premier.

Apart from having, as Fraser firmly believed, the advantage of being a good half inch shorter than the President, one of the other things that had put Connors ahead was his ability to speak fluent Russian.

After a stint at UCLA, he had continued his Russian studies at Harvard where he'd collected As in everything except popularity. A year's postgraduate work at Oxford University had been followed by another living with a White Russian
émigré
family in Paris. His European stay had been followed by a five-month affair with a ballerina who had defected from Leningrad's Kirov Company during a tour of the USA. While this last stormy period of tuition had put the final gloss on his Russian, it had done absolutely nothing for his marriage.

Connors monitored the Moscow translation of what the Soviet Premier had to say and relayed the President's reply in Russian. All in all, Moscow was on the line for about twenty-five minutes. It wasn't the bad news Connors had half-expected to hear, but it wasn't good news either. It left him with a momentary feeling of helplessness.

Connors put down the extension as the President hung up. They looked at one another thoughtfully, then the President closed his eyes and again massaged the bridge of his nose. With his eyes still shut, he said, ‘Who do you think we ought to bring in on this?'

Connors tried to collect his thoughts. ‘Ah, hell, uh – right now, I'd say as few people as possible. Otherwise it could get out of control.'

‘Yeah… '

It was an interesting situation, thought Connors. After all the arguments, he and Fraser had both been right – but in a way neither of them could possibly have expected.

‘I think we'll have to tell all those guys in the other room.'

‘Yes,' said Connors. ‘I think you will.'

The President squared himself up in his chair. ‘Okay, wheel them in.'

McKenna was the last one through the door. As he shut it behind him, the President said, ‘Maybe you'd all better sit down.'

Clayson, Fraser, Samuels, and Wedderkind each took the nearest chair. McKenna chose one end of the wide ledge of the window facing the sea. Connors took the other corner. As he settled back against the glass, he caught Fraser looking at him warily.

‘The talk I've had with my friend in Moscow,' said the President, ‘and the unequivocal nature of the reassurances I have received make it quite clear that our preliminary conclusions about this spacecraft are based on a fundamental error.'

‘You mean it's not a weapons system?' Fraser sounded disappointed.

‘I mean it's not Russian.'

The reaction, predictably, was one of stunned disbelief.

‘Or anyone else we know.'

‘You mean,' said Clayson, ‘it's –?'

Extraterrestrial. The thought exploded like a star-shell inside Wedderkind's brain. Sentient life, perhaps. Some kind of artefact, at least. From another planet. Another solar system. Maybe even from another galaxy. Here. Overhead. Within his own lifetime. It was…

Fraser looked at the President. ‘Do you think they're telling us the truth this time?'

‘What would be the point of lying to us about a thing like this, Mel? They know we're going to check it out. I
didn't call you in here to feed you some Russian fairy tale.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Fraser. ‘It's just that this is one hell of an idea to have to take on board.'

‘You can say that again,' said Clayson.

‘I know,' said the President. ‘I'm still having trouble believing it myself. What do you think, Mack?'

McKenna raised his eyebrows. ‘It had to happen sooner or later. But even so, it's – '