Trinity's Child (59 page)

Condor answered somewhat irritably.
“You
interrupted my prayers, colonel.”

“I have the answer to your prayers, sir,” the Librarian said.

“Didn't expect the answer by phone,” Condor replied drolly.

“Sir, I've reached the TACAMO planes. It's in the bag. You will have to come down with the authenticator card.”

The phone went silent for a moment. Then Condor asked, “How in the Lord's name did you do that?”

“Straight through a couple of Soviet satellites, sir!” the Librarian exulted. “How's that for shoving it to them?”

“Be right down, colonel,” Condor said, adding: “Man deserves the Medal of Honor for somethin' like this.”

The Librarian cradled the phone. It occurred to him ever so briefly that the award would be posthumous. But then, that is the most valorous kind. Still, the thought of death reminded him of the
Looking Glass.
He cast a hurried look at the clock—2024—and reached again for the phone, pushing the button for the cockpit.

“Where the hell is Alice?” he demanded of the pilot.

“Right on our tail, sir,” the pilot replied.

“You keep that bastard off us for another fifteen minutes, major,” the Librarian snapped. “If you want to win this war.”

In the cockpit, the pilot clicked off. A perplexed look spread across his face. Win
this
war? He thought the objective was to end it.

“Alice is calling, sir.”

The President lifted his loose hand, raising one finger and wagging it in a silent instruction to keep the general holding while he finished his present conversation.

“Afraid the culture gap is too great to give you any advice on that, Mr. Premier,” he said into the phone. “What we do here is pray. ... I understand. . . . Yes. . . . Thank you, sir. Thank you greatly. . . . Yes, he's on the line now. I'd best get on with it. . . . Good luck to you, too.” He handed up one phone and beckoned for the other.

“General,” he said, not wasting a second. “The situation?”

“Tough, sir. He's got a half-mile on us and he's evading expertly.”

“It's imperative that this happen fast now. Our situation's changed.”

“Sir?”

“We've found a way through to TACAMO—”

“Good God, sir,” Alice interrupted, “that means we can succeed.”

“I'm afraid it also means we can fail, general. The Premier, bless his black little heart . . .” He suddenly remembered the Soviet leader could hear his every word. “Uh, pardon me, Mr. Premier, that's American idiom—the Premier has found a radio routing. Unfortunately, someone in the
E-4
discovered the routing a few moments earlier. The
E-4
has made contact.”

“Shit!” Alice didn't bother to apologize. “Conflicting orders.” Alice's voice went quietly somber. “It dooms us, Mr. President.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. It's in your lap, general. The
E-4
got a locator message through. The TACAMO planes have asked for confirmation and codes. The messages don't move instantly. It'll take a few minutes to move the codes. Not many. Can you catch him in five minutes?”

In the
Looking Glass,
Alice's heart sank. He stared out the window at the tail section of the
E-4,
so close ... so distant. The plane's four huge contrails flooded past him, the vapor mixing with dark exhaust as if the man in the black eyepatch were stoking the furnace with everything now. Smitty hung on him, just above the contrails, following every swoop of the gleaming plane, chasing the huge tail into the fog of each cloud and then out again for a zigzag in the fading sunlight. The
E-4
yielded a little meaningless space here, a little there. Then the pilot, flying like the best, which he was, took the lost space back. It would take a miracle to catch him in less than twenty minutes, and he couldn't guarantee it even then.

“General?”

“I'm sorry, sir,” he replied with great sadness. “It is impossible.”

The President paused only briefly. “Try,” he said.

Alice shook his head dismally. “Of course I'll try, sir.”

“General, they should have stocked these damned places with braille watches. What the hell time is it?”

“2034, sir.”

“Okay, you call me back in two minutes—2036 on the nose. We're counting in seconds now, but I have to deal with TACAMO, too.” He paused. “Everything—
everything
—rides with you now, general,” he added quietly.

“Yes, sir. I know, sir.”

In the
Looking Glass,
Alice heard the disconnection. He reached over and grabbed Smitty's shoulder. “I want you to burn out every fan in those engines of yours, Smitty,” he said. “We've got five minutes. Or it's all over.”

Smitty turned and started to shake his head. But the general no longer was looking at him.

“Will somebody get me a fucking cigarette?”

The copilot offered him another Carlton.

He waved it away. “A
real
goddamned cigarette!”

Condor entered the communications room alone, unannounced, and almost completely without fanfare. Several heads turned briefly, because none of those present, with the exception of the Librarian, had seen the man before. One young officer saluted. He immediately felt awkward. Saluting was an unnecessary formality here, and he had done it out of nervousness.

The Librarian immediately ushered Condor to a telegraph operator. That somewhat surprised him, because he had expected voice communication. But those were the rules, and they were to be scrupulously followed. TACAMO wanted the message on paper and it would arrive in specific sequence or it would be ignored. Any suspicions about the validity and they might come back for voice confirmation. But voices meant nothing with the stakes this high. The message would be sent with word codes first, authenticator codes second, and message last. The message would be simple enough, being just three words: “
SIOP PRIME CONFIRMED.
”

The Librarian already had begun sending the word codes. Sending the information from the Sealed Authenticator System was slightly more complex. As Alice had done earlier, TACAMO had randomly requested several series of letters and digits rather than the entire list. This was a precaution against interception. If someone were listening—as indeed the Soviet Premier was doing in a cold sweat at this very moment—it would do the eavesdropper no good. For the next set of orders, if needed, a different series would be requested. The entire message would automatically be encrypted and decoded by computer—by eye and hand, if necessary—at the other end. It was cumbersome, but these were orders involving thousands of nuclear warheads. With the unconventional relay they were using, it would take perhaps five or six minutes. The Librarian and Condor embarked immediately on the difficult portion, the authenticator codes. The time was 2036 hours.

In the cockpit of the
Looking Glass,
the communications officer also snapped an unnecessary salute. But she did it intentionally, with tears in her eyes, a smile on her face, and a single Pall Mall cigarette proffered in her other hand. Alice accepted the cigarette, snorted through his nose as if he were catching a cold, snapped his hand to his brow in a flawless West Point tribute, and quickly turned away so she would not see the real him, as if she had not already. He stared through his own mist at the other aircraft, still too distant. His people had given him everything. But they were not going to make it. His watch read 2036. He snorted again, trying to cover that tribute to them, too, by giving Smitty an unusually brusque order to futilely push the
Looking Glass
beyond limits already reached. Then he grabbed the cockpit phone to the President, placing the cigarette behind his ear.

On the flight deck of the
E-4,
the pilot with the black eyepatch turned his head away from the wispy clouds ahead of him and probed the shadows in the rear of his spacious cockpit. The Secret Service agent stood at the door with his Uzi, still symbolizing his protection against madness. With a shiver of sadness mixed with surprise, the pilot suddenly saw madness in a different perspective.

“I have the Premier on the other line, Alice. His people are monitoring the transmission. The
E-4
has begun the authenticator codes. You have three, maybe four minutes. That transmission must be interrupted.” The President paused, hoping he did not have to ask. “Can you do it in that time?”

Alice stared straight ahead. The
Looking Glass
flew slightly above the
E-4,
Smitty avoiding the five-mile copper trailing wire normally used as a VLF radio antenna. It was out as a snare now, whipping dangerously beneath them. The heat warps from the command plane's giant engines rippled the air between them, causing the massive tail section to wobble like a ghostly mirage, always beyond his grasp. On the side of the stabilizer fin Alice could see the American flag fluttering in the heat rivulets, painted stars wobbling in triumph, stripes flowing as if the nation's proud emblem had been planted atop a hill taken. The hill remained more than a quarter-mile away, and it remained secure.

“No, Mr. President, I cannot,” Alice said.

On the phone the silence seemed endless and deafening. Alice could hear his own pulse pounding in the earphone. The President finally spoke, and Alice shuddered at the eerie calm of his voice.

“You understand what this means?”

“All too well, Mr. President.”

“It's hopeless?”

Alice held his eyes unflinchingly on the
E-4.
“Another ten minutes, sir . . .” he said quietly. “Another twenty. If the pilot made one false move, one small slip . . .” The general's voice also was eerily calm. “Any man could make that slip, Mr. President. Any man would. Eventually. But I know the pilot. I helped train him. He's good. When I place myself in his position, I . . . I . . .”

Alice fumbled only briefly, his voice catching. Then he continued. “If I place myself in the cockpit of the
E-4,
sir, I see myself pursued by a madman. I see the President of the United States pursued by a madman, with only me between the two.” He paused. “I would not slip, sir.”

The President's voice turned pensive. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I can see that. Madness takes many forms, general. I'm afraid I can see that more clearly now, sightless, than I did with both eyes. It's a heavy burden to carry out of this world.”

Alice said nothing. The floor vibrated beneath him, the engines screaming in the torture of their impossible reach for the giant plane cutting through the clouds just ahead of them.

“General?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Against your wishes, I am going to thank you.” The President paused and Alice thought he heard a sniffle on the other end. “Not all our people programming was that faulty.”

Alice swallowed hard, blinking his eyes against the increasing mist. He was unable to reply, reaching behind his ear for the cigarette instead. He fondled it, as he might a fine Havana.

“The people,” the President began again, his voice curious, as if he had found one truth too late and now sought another, “the crew aboard the bomber that turned . . . who were they?”

The general swallowed again and took a deep breath. They had time now. Not much. But they had no better way to use it.

“I don't know what to tell you, sir,” Alice responded painfully. “ The pilot was very good. The copilot was the daughter of one of my best friends. You knew him. General Moreau. Devoted his life to this, convinced like all of us that we could prevent it by keeping it ready. That's a tough mistake to take upstairs, too. . . .” Alice found it almost impossible to continue, his voice dropping off to a whisper. “What can I tell you? They weren't average, whatever the hell that means. They weren't that special, whatever that meant in our world. . . . Does it make any difference?”

The clocks ticked past 2038.

“Why?” the President asked. “Why did they do it? Scared—?”

Alice suddenly flared in uncontrollable anger and hurt. “Scared? You're damned right they were scared! Just like I'm scared! Just like you're scared, the Premier's scared, the whole fucking world is scared out of its wits! You want me to say they were cowards? Cowards, sir? Heroes, sir? Mad, sir? Sane, sir? How the hell do I know?!” Alice broke it off just as suddenly. “They gave us a glimmer of hope, Mr. President,” he added softly.

“That's why I wanted to know, general.” The President sighed. “They gave us, for whatever reason, more than I gave. That's a heavy one to carry, too.”

Alice paused. Suddenly he felt as if he had no time and all the time in the world. “Mr. President?”

“Yes, general.”

“I saw General Moreau a month ago. I thought he was growing senile. He said we were losing.”

The President bristled slightly. He had built every weapon the military wanted. He drew a deep breath. Every weapon you wanted, too, buster, he said to himself. “Losing,” he said quietly. “To the Soviets?”

“To the system, sir.”