Trinity's Child (5 page)
Like most Presidents, in moments of trauma he felt a sudden dislike for this house. It creaked with ghosts. He felt Lyndon Johnson here, during Vietnam, sleeping fitfully, jolted out of nightmarish dreams by the roar of aircraft approaching National, certain that the planes were bombing the White House. Johnson had lunged out of bed night after night, the huge Texas frame dripping sweat, and stared out the window at the same haunting red eyes.
The President gripped the phone tightly and stared into the monument's tiny Orwellian orbs. The Emergency War Orders officer spread a file in front of him.
No one had told him it would be like this. No one told him he would have to trust computers that didn't work half the time. No one told him he might have to make a decision in four minutes, not knowing if the computers were working or not, not knowing if some fool Russian or some fool American had run the wrong tape again, not knowing if SIOP or the general was out of control. Not knowing, for God's sake, if he ever would know.
He felt Richard Nixon in the house, with a different kind of trauma, gesturing almost hysterically to a group of congressmen who wanted him to quit. He could go into the next room, Nixon said, push a button, and kill twenty-five million people. Too low, the President thought. Nixon's figure was too low. Button, button, who's got the button . . . dammit, there is no button . . . dammit, you've got the button.
The appointments secretary placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing slightly, seeming to nudge him, too.
The President sagged. He had pushed the Russians. Everyone knew that was the proper way to treat them. Push them and they backed down. He had run his entire life believing that, preaching that. It was gospel, part of his political liturgy. You didn't question truths like that. It was the wishy-washy Carters that got us into trouble, nibbled to pieces; the dilettante Kennedys with their first-step treaties.
He didn't understand. He had weapons so accurate he could lob them, as Goldwater had said years ago, into the can in the Kremlin. Weapons so awesome Russia could be a moonscape in half an hour. They couldn't possibly be so foolish. He didn't believe it. It had to be the goddamn computers. His palm had grown wet gripping the phone. But the voice at the other end continued.
“We need your authority, sir.”
The words rang woodenly in his ear.
“Authority,” the President repeated dully.
In Omaha, the general's hands had grown wet too. He was afraid now. Not of the white snake uncoiling out of Russian Arctic. He was afraid of the President.
“Time to earn your two hundred thou, sir,” the general said coldly.
He almost added: Time for the Preparation H, Mr. President. But he already had spoken more icily, more disrespectfully to his Commander-in-Chief than he had ever dared during his long career. He also had moved the alert status to Double Take.
“We need your authority.”
In the sitting room, the President looked around him. He saw the appointments secretary, an old friend and overweight political strategist who had advanced to the White House by virtue of his friendship and his penchant for remembering the name of every county chairman in the country. He saw the night duty officer from the Situation Room, a young naval commander he knew only as Sedgwick. He saw the Emergency War Orders officer, one of a faceless corps of shadows to whom he never had spoken, never so much as nodded. He was alone.
“The Secretary of Defense is not here,” he said into the clammy phone. “The Secretary of State is not here. The head of the National Security Council is not here.”
“They will not be there, sir. We anticipated this. SIOP has accounted for it. Confusion was expected. You do not have time for your advisers and you do not need them.” “A decision of this magnitude—”
“We do not need decisions, sir. We need your authority.”
“To nuke Moscow? To nuke Kiev and Leningrad and Vladivostok? You don't need my decisions?”
“We've been through this before, sir. You don't have to make those decisions. SIOP will make those decisions. We need your authority. In the codes. In the EWO's briefcase.”
“SIOP will make those decisions? A goddamn computer?”
“The goddamn computer has twenty-five minutes, sir. You may have less than four. The computer's brain registers data, evaluates alternatives several million times faster than your brain, sir. SIOP has all the options and has never lost.”
“Because it's against the goddam law!”
“Because we decided long ago we did not want to lose. Because we realized long ago that a single man or a group of men could not react quickly enough to the options. We placed the options, determined by the best human brains of two generations, under the authority and understanding of eight Presidents, in SIOP. We placed the Russian options in RSIOP. It is all there—even, I'm certain, this rather strange attack sequence.”
“Strange?”
“We're wasting time, sir. Your time.”
“Damn you, general, I want to know what is coming at us. If anything.”
“Sir, our readouts show a massive attack from submarines, directed almost entirely at our strategic-bomber bases. The exceptions are our Trident submarine base in Puget Sound, which is multitargeted, and the single small warhead directed at Washington. Soviet land-based silo doors are open, but only a handful of ICBM's have been launched. Their targets are Omaha, Cheyenne, and a token number of Minuteman installations at Malmstrom in Great Falls. Frankly, it is not a strategically sound attack. If I had more time, I would be puzzled.”
The President paused, exhausted.
The EWO thrust sealed packets at him. The duty officer talked on a second telephone. The appointments secretary looked at him plaintively.
“We have to get you downstairs, Mr. President,” the secretary said. “Quickly. Or aboard the chopper.”
The President stared at him in disbelief. He heard the whump-whump-whump of the giant helicopter landing on the South Lawn.
“Rat's ass bit of difference downstairs will make. And that chopper won't make it past those beady red eyes that are staring at me.”
“You are not secure here, Mr. President.”
“Secure? And I'm secure downstairs? The basement hasn't been secure since the fifties. It's about as secure as Omaha.”
“Secure from surveillance, Mr. President. The phone line is secure. We are not certain about the room.”
The President laughed, a harsh, crackling laugh. “You mean the Preme might be listening? That's rich. Well, fuck you, Preme.”
The duty officer interrupted, holding the second phone loosely at his side. “A message is arriving on the direct teletype from the Soviet Premier, Mr. President.”
The President's head started to spin. “What's it say?”
“Eyes only for you, Mr. President.”
“Well, get the fucker.”
“Two more minutes, Mr. President.”
The President placed both his palms against his forehead, running his fingers roughly through hair that suddenly felt unnaturally oily. “Did you hear that, general?” he finally said into the phone.
“Yes, sir. Nastygram on the hotline. Shrewd buggers, aren't they?”
“What is your superbrain saying now about the Premier's earlier message for me?”
“Three minutes, twenty seconds to impact. Trajectory still uncertain. Wobbling slightly. Forty kilotons. Ground burst likely. Ten-ninety on Andrews. Still fifty-fifty on White House.”
The President stiffened now, ignoring the trajectory and target odds, focusing on a nagging human question that SIOP never would compute. “I'll wait,” he said.
“You'll what?”
“I'll wait, general.”
“Mr. President, you are playing with the fate of millions.”
“That's how I earn my two hundred thou, general.”
“They're mousetrapping you.”
“I'll wait.”
Icarus paused, feeling the heat of the sun. “You will accept my resignation, Mr. President?”
“Strange time to run, general.”
“Effective in twenty-five minutes, Mr. President. I want it on the record.”
“The record. Very well.”
“Good luck, Mr. President.”
“Thank you, general. And to you.”
“You fully realize, sir, that under my authority I launched the B-52's when I moved us to Double Take?”
“You what?! God damn you, general.”
0608 ZULU
After two weeks working in this crazy place, the Vietnamese counter boy just wanted out of here as fast as he could every night. At ten o'clock sharp. This was a place of dragons and malevolent spirits. It had no soul. It was a place to play war. Crazy war. When the Americans had no place to fight a war, they made a place to play war. He would never understand them and he would never like this place.
The counter boy unlocked the cash register to add the last penny the American had bounced off his counter. He hurriedly locked the register again, still unhappy that the visitor had kept him here past the ten-o'clock closing. He rubbed one last smudge off the stainless-steel counter and turned to leave.
Down the hallway in the game room, Kazaklis kicked the Space Invaders game in frustration. “Fucking machine,” he muttered. “Life's run by fucking computers that don't work.” He kicked the machine again, watching the game flare in rebellion after eating his last quarter. He turned to catch Halupalai grinning at him.
“You laughing at me, you over-the-hill beachboy?”
Kazaklis leveled his heaviest stare at the gunner, but his eyes gave themselves away with their twinkle. He liked Halupalai. Everybody liked Halupalai.
“Or you laughing at Moreau? Got her a good one, didn't I, old buddy?”
“You're hopeless, Kazaklis. Why don't you let up on her?”
“Me?” the pilot protested. “Don't lay that one on me, pal. This joint's been like a damned sorority house since Moreau showed up.”
“No, you'd like that. Your problem, captain, is that our hard-nosed Vassar copilot won't let you romp through her fortress like it was a sorority house.”
“Worst mistake the Air Force ever made, letting broads into SAC.”
“That's not what you thought when she first showed up.”
Their eyes locked. Then the twinkle returned. “That's what broads are for, Halupalai. Typin' or screwin'. Wasn't much typin' to do around here.”
“Not much of the other, either.” Halupalai paused. “As it turned out.”
“Fuck off, old man,” Kazaklis said sharply.
Halupalai watched Kazaklis closely, for the pilot seemed genuinely irritated this time. “That's okay, Kazaklis,” he finally said. “I evened it up for you.”
“Yeah?”
Halupalai paused again, wondering briefly if he was being unfair to Moreau by continuing. He thought not.
“You know how point-blank she was when she first came here. Had to know everything about everything and everybody. She was a real pisser. But she learned how to fly the Buff faster than anybody I ever crewed with.”
Kazaklis grunted.
“Well, after your little . . . uh, failure, Moreau comes up to me the way she does—sticking her chin out a foot and boring those laser-beam eyes straight through to the inside of my skull—and asks what's with Kazaklis. I say whaddaya mean. And she says, very seriously, 'Everybody's got a skeleton in his closet, Halupalai.' I says, are you serious, and she says, yep, she's serious, she wants to know what skeletons Kazaklis has got in his closet.”
“No shit?” Kazaklis said, surprised.
“So, I look at her,” Halupalai continued, “and say, just as seriously, 'I wouldn't open his closet door, Captain Moreau.' She asks why and I says, 'Cuz you'd be smothered in pelvic bones.'“
Kazaklis erupted into volcanic laughter. “Pelvic bones!” he roared.
“You know something, Kazaklis?” Halupalai continued quietly. “She laughed as hard as you just did.”
Kazaklis stared at the floor and frowned. His lips puckered outward and his face took on that flagrantly fraudulent double image of little-boy pout and pool-hall hustle that Halupalai had seen so many times it no longer was fraudulent.
“She still walks around here like she's got cramps twenty-eight days a month,” Kazaklis grumped without looking up. “You think you can trust somebody with nukes if they're on the rag?”
Halupalai went quiet, wishing he had not told Kazaklis the story.
“You old fart,” Kazaklis said after a moment, his twinkling brown eyes lifting off the floor and out of their pout. “I think you're in love.”
Halupalai said nothing. Not true, he thought sadly. He felt his stomach, once taut and flat, bulging against his flight suit. He felt his bronzed face tighten into furrows that never quite disappeared now. He felt old and he felt Kazaklis sensing it, too. Their moods changed simultaneously.
“Why don't you get out of this shit, Halupalai?” Kazaklis said abruptly. “How old are you? Forty-three? Forty-four? Been through Nam. Been in these airplanes for twenty years. Why don't you just retire and lay in the sun on those islands of yours? This is such bullshit. Sitting here in this godawful overheated bomb shelter waiting for something that will never happen and if it does we couldn't handle. Get out of it, man.”