William Stark saw clouds of white vapor drifting across the lawn toward the mansion. In the avenue, hundreds of figures were running about madly, their hands to their eyes, handkerchiefs to their faces. Some were retching. Screams of anguish and terror reached the President’s ears. He groaned: “My God.”
Down below, the television networks were recording the scene. Alex Barnett of CBA News was standing on a bench in Lafayette Park commenting to listeners across the country on the extraordinary spectacle in front of the White House. Around him the battle ebbed and flowed. Barnett was describing the state of the marchers, choking and gasping on the grass. His own eyes were watering badly as the gas trailed across the street toward him. While he stood on tiptoes to get a better view, someone tugged at the cuff of his pants. It was Henry Fuller, his mouth puffed from the blow he had received earlier. Fuller was nauseated not from the gas but from the destruction of his dream. He had dragged himself from the pavement and gone back to the front of the line to restore order. But his pleas had gone unheeded. Most of the protesters had been swayed by the ugly implications of the Stark directive. The men who had first passed them out had disappeared. Their handiwork had been examined and accepted as the truth or at least as sufficiently alarming to need further explanation by the Administration. Henry Fuller, tears filling his eyes, had been cast aside.
Fuller had gone to a bench in the park and watched helplessly. When the gas came, he put a handkerchief to his face and retreated to the back edge of the green. Then he saw Barnett recording the event for millions. Fuller ran to him instinctively and grabbed at his leg for attention. Barnett looked down and asked: “Were you gassed by the police, young man?”
Fuller nodded but hastened to explain: “I’m a group leader in the demonstration. This morning we began the march, intending only to file by the White House and offer a silent protest against the Stratton-Seligsohn bill.”
“And the police beat you up and gassed you?”
“No, well, yes. They gassed me, but you should know what brought it about in the first place.” Fuller was straggling to be intelligible through his broken lips. The camera focused on them as the lawyer betrayed himself to the public gaze. “My name is Henry Fuller. I work for a government organization and came here today not to condemn my country but to condemn a bill which will lead to destruction of all freedoms.”
Fuller was beginning to annoy Barnett, who wanted to concentrate on the frenzy eddying around them. He interrupted to ask, “Yes, and the Administration wouldn’t allow a peaceful protest?”
“No, you don’t understand. Somehow some radicals infiltrated us and passed out pamphlets …”
“Haven’t you seen it?” A slim woman standing nearby, her eyes bloodshot and blinking, offered Barnett the handbill. Alex Barnett read it aloud to the entire network while the camera closed in on a montage of clubs crashing against skulls and men and women lying in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue, their heads seeping blood onto the roadway. When Barnett finished, he turned to the camera and said: “This is Alexander Barnett, reporting from Washington, where events of the past two days suggest that something cataclysmic is about to happen.”
Six giant floodlights pinned the khaki-colored helicopter in their glare. Colonel Joe Safcek waited while his three companions boarded the craft. Luba, Peter, and Boris wore the uniforms of Soviet Army lieutenants. Their black boots were shiny with wax. Red epaulets decorated their shoulders. Safcek, impersonating a Colonel Dmitri Adzubei, put out his hand to Karl Richter.
“Karl, your briefings were superb. If we missed anything, it’s our fault.”
Richter’s voice was low, controlled because he did not trust it. “Joe, use the radio when you can. We’ll be listening in every minute.”
Richter was fumbling for a final word. “And we’ll be thinking of you. Good luck, Colonel.”
Richter released his hand from Safcek’s, and the colonel smiled and ran up the steps into the big Chinook helicopter. The door closed, and the blades whirred. Richter put his hands to his eyes to keep out the dust as the chopper leaped into the sky and disappeared to the north, its red lights blinking reassuringly.
Karl Richter watched it out of sight and suddenly the floodlights went off, and he was all alone on the runway.
Three hundred yards away, an American intelligence agent noticed a Pakistani worker at the base run furtively through the shadows to a car in the parking lot. The Pakistani got in quickly and drove to the main gate, where he showed identification and sped off toward Peshawar.
The intelligence agent eased his own car onto the road and followed the worker through the darkness. As the two cars entered the downtown area, the Pakistani slowed and parked across from a movie theater. The streets were crowded. In the crush of bodies, the agent nearly lost the Pakistani as he opened the car door and crossed the street. Then the agent saw a man standing just inside the theater entrance, staring at glossy photographs of coming attractions. The man wore European clothes. His trousers were quite baggy. The Pakistani reached him and spoke a few words. The man nodded and walked down the sidewalk. The Pakistani followed ten paces back. At the intersection the Westerner crossed and reached the other side. The Pakistani stepped out into the road.
The American agent shifted into first and pulled out sharply, twenty-five feet from the worker. He gunned the motor into second and bore down upon the startled man, who turned toward him in sudden terror. The agent closed his eyes as he hit the Pakistani squarely. An anguished scream lifted into the night, and the agent heard the sickening thud as the body bounced under his car all the way to the rear. He gripped the wheel tightly and raced around a corner. Behind him, the broken body lay mute.
The Westerner lit a small cigarette with trembling hands and puffed deeply on it while an ambulance siren moaned nearby. Then he strolled away from the murder scene.
The chopper pilot took the large craft directly north into the mountains. Beside him, a radar operator stared intently at the blue scope recording the topography. The pilot was nervous, terribly afraid of the forbidding land thrusting up at them in the stygian night. He tried to pierce the gloom with his eyes. The radar man, hypnotized by the light before him, wiped streaks of perspiration onto his fatigues.
Five feet to the rear, Joe Safcek huddled with his team in contemplative silence. The roar of the twin jet motors prevented him from speaking clearly to the Russians, who had curled up in the cramped space. Luba had her eyes closed. Pete and Boris strained ahead watching the pilot for any sign of trouble. Safcek lit a Camel and studied its ruby glow. He thought of Martha and Tommy and the neat house on the side street at Bragg. The colonel wondered what they were doing at that moment.
Like most American women, Martha Safcek was sitting in front of her television. She was aghast at the rioting taking place in Washington. Coverage had shifted from the White House briefly to the Pentagon, where tear gas and rifle shots created a scene now all too familiar to viewers.
Sharon McCandless and Tom Samuels had not wanted to get involved in any fighting. When the troops from Fort Myer formed a solid line in front of the building, they joined hundreds of others in chanting over them: “Send us Erskine. We want an answer.” But that was all. The young couple did not expect anyone to come out and treat with them. If the pamphlet was a true copy, no one would admit it. If not, any denial would hardly have appeased the crowd. Sharon asked Tom to take her away. He told her to watch what happened when the time deadline expired. Thirty-one minutes after Colonel Shelton had disappeared into the Pentagon, a general emerged and asked the march leaders to disperse their people. The old man spoke through a bull-horn to the massed congregation and told them it was useless to demonstrate further. “Perhaps,” he suggested, “we can go by the White House and lodge another protest.” He was obviously unaware of the situation on Pennsylvania Avenue.
The crowd roared its disapproval and drowned out the old man’s pleadings to disperse. The general held his hand up and pointed it straight
out before him. The troops moved ahead in lock step, their bayonets thrusting at the first ranks. No one moved. The soldiers appeared irresolute, and the general shouted: “Use the butts.” The soldiers turned their guns sideways and pushed forward. Someone pushed back, and the first marcher went down. Fists swung, and the general ordered: “Bring up the gas.” Canisters fell into the close-packed mass, and Sharon McCandless felt pain and terror.
Like a wounded animal, SOUL dissolved into a mad stampede for safety. Rocks rained down on the soldiers. One of them, his nose broken, fired his rifle into the multitude. Sharon McCandless suddenly clutched her stomach and sank to the grass.
The girl moaned softly as Tom cradled her head in his lap. He called quietly to her, and she raised her head a little and said: “Tom, it hurts so much I …” The blond head fell back, and Tom Samuels hugged Sharon closer while blood soaked his pants.
A muffled cry of indignation spouted in a thousand throats: “They’ve killed her.” The soldiers, stunned by the words, hesitated and slowed their drive. The general screamed: “Get the man who fired that weapon.” It was far too late. Enraged men pounced on the troopers and wrestled them to the ground. While the dying girl’s life poured out through her cotton dress, her avengers sought solace in pummeling the men who had caused it. The general ran back inside the building, looking for an answer to the nightmare.
President William Stark thought he had found one answer. Profoundly shocked at the carnage out on the streets he had called an immediate session of the elite group that had helped him in the past two days. He handed them a copy of an FBI report just delivered at the White House. It stated that five members of the Soviet Embassy staff in Washington had been followed that day, and each one had joined the march at varying points. Agents had been unable to follow them precisely after that, but all agreed that the men had carried with them large manila packages, which could easily have contained the deadly pamphlets later circulated to the demonstrators.
Stark handed his advisors soiled copies of the pamphlets. He said: “It’s pretty obvious to me that the Russians are trying to cut my balls with this. That Krylov has thought of everything.”
When Martin Manson seemed not to understand, Stark continued impatiently: “He’s done two things with this pamphlet. First, if we retaliate to his laser threat, he can tell the world, ‘I told you so,’ and I’m the worst bastard since Genghis Khan. Second, if he uses the laser on Washington and elsewhere, he can excuse it by saying it was a preventive strike against our decision to go to war.” Stark pointed at the pamphlet in outrage. “This piece of phony junk will turn the world against me.”
Secretary of Defense Clifford Erskine, who had already once offered his resignation and been sidetracked by the riot from pursuing the point, raised himself up in his chair and icily confronted his Commander-in-Chief: “Mr. President, that piece of junk, as you call it, may be forged, but isn’t it true that you have issued an order today to prepare to bomb the Soviet Union within thirty-four hours?”
The others stiffened visibly. Unaware that Erskine and the President had had words earlier, they were unprepared for the direct challenge. Stark toyed with a pen for a moment, then glared down the table at Erskine. “Clifford, it’s apparent to me that you no longer consider yourself part of the policy-making in this Administration. You made that quite apparent earlier this afternoon.” Erskine stared back at him boldly.
“Therefore, I accept your resignation as of this minute.”
Erskine rose from his chair, a defiant smile etching his mouth.
“For the record, Mr. President, I cannot be party to any plan to initiate a nuclear war. I would rather surrender this great country.” He walked out of the room, his chin high.
President Stark did not know what to say. Sam Riordan looked at his shoes. Gerald Weinroth coughed self-consciously. Robert Randall broke the silence: “Has Safcek gotten off safely?”
Joe Safcek was riding through the most difficult terrain in the world. The Chinook helicopter was threading its way between mountains near the top of the world at an altitude of three hundred feet. Radar showed the danger clearly. Massive rock formations rose in sheer majesty on both sides of the frail craft. The pilot prayed that no violent wind drafts would throw him against them.
Safcek trusted his safety to the men up front. He smoked seven cigarettes one after the other. When he offered some to the Russians, they accepted gratefully.
Luba had never smoked before. She coughed badly on her first inhalation, and Joe pounded her back until she subsided. She smiled gratefully and shouted above the motors: “Colonel, this is the strangest way to have a homecoming. But then I never thought I’d see any of it again, so it’s better than nothing.” Her smile was warm and childlike. Safcek patted her on the arm.
“Luba, did you have a boy friend in Chirchiz?”
Her face became solemn. “Avram Gurewitz and I were to be married. He was an engineer for a hydroelectric plant, and his prospects were excellent. We talked about having a large family, maybe four children. But he made one mistake. He wanted to go to Israel with me. When the authorities refused permission, Avram rebelled and started demanding freedom to do as he pleased. First, they put him in jail for a month, but he refused to give in. The next time they sent him to a labor camp for ten years. I have not seen him since.”
She smoked the cigarette in quick, short puffs. “I could not stay in Russia after that. My heart was too filled with hate for those who stilled his voice.” She stubbed put the cigarette and added, “Now I do what I can to bring them down.” She laughed suddenly in a loud voice, which brought the other two Russians out of their restless nap.
“And what about you, Colonel? Tell me about your life.”
Joe Safcek began to talk about Martha and Tommy. It pained him to think of them so much, but he talked nevertheless.
In front of him, the pilot turned sharply and said: “Sir, we have just crossed the Soviet border.”
In a concrete bunker nestled into a hillside near the Volga River at Saratov, the Southern Soviet Fighter Defense Command plotted all activity in an arc from Greece to Pakistan. At a giant control map laid out on a table, a major nearing the end of his tour of duty monitored aircraft on the perriphery of his country. Six American jet bombers had been recorded over Ankara, Turkey, heading southwest, probably to Incirclik. Three Iranian night fighters were evidently practicing scrambles just north of Teheran. Nothing else had appeared on the board. The major yawned, glanced at his watch, and resumed his vigil.
In Moscow, it was a little after midnight, and Mikhail Ivanovich Darubin had retired for the night. A dispatch from the Soviet Embassy in Washington had reached him shortly before, telling of riot conditions in the enemy capital. Darubin had called Marshal Moskanko to tell him the good news, but the defense minister had given word to his secretary that he was asleep to all callers. Mikhail Darubin’s last official act for the night was to order a cable sent to the embassy in Washington over Premier Krylov’s name. The timetable called for it.
In his Kremlin apartment Premier Vladimir Krylov, however, was not asleep. He had put on a bathrobe and kissed his wife good night before going into the sitting room to do some paperwork. Krylov pulled a small box down from a bookshelf and took out a long-stemmed clay pipe and a compact mound of a brown substance. He flaked off several pieces of the mound with a knife and put them into the bowl of the pipe. Then he lighted it and lay down on a sofa to relax. As he sucked on the stem, inhaling deeply, Krylov began to feel light-headed. The room swam drowsily around him. The lamplight turned into a kaleidoscope playing in his head. He felt suddenly twice his normal size, and he was accepting the plaudits of a crowd in Red Square. They were waving their hands up at him, and he was acknowledging their adulation with sober dignity. To Krylov, the Presidium members standing beside him were midgets, obsequious and fawning. He did not like them.
The euphoric Krylov inhaled steadily on the pipe, and the sweetish aroma wafted through the roo
m. His eyes glazed, and the pipe drooped in his fingers. Atop Lenin’s tomb in his reverie, Vladimir Nikolaievich Krylov did not notice when the pipe filled with hashish fell to the sofa and from there to the floor.
Mounted policemen had taken over Pennsylvania Avenue. The clouds of tear gas had been dissipated among the trees of Lafayette Park. For two blocks around the seat of government, men with guns barricaded all approaches to William Stark. Casualties had been taken to the hospital. Fourteen policemen had been badly beaten. One was given the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church. Henry Fuller had helped pick up some of the marchers. The priest who had earlier defied trim had been found in a gutter, his skull fractured by a horse’s hoof. At least fifty men and women had shed blood. Hundreds were gassed into violent sickness. A depressed Fuller had urged his people to go home and forget their crusade for the time being. Most laughed at him, but they wandered away from the arena, cursing the man behind the draperies in the Executive Wing. For his part, William Stark cursed their gullibility.
It had brought the wrath of millions down on him. Telegrams were flooding into the White House from irate Americans, condemning him for allowing the marchers to be beaten and demanding the truth about the pamphlet. The president of France had called, seeking Washington’s position. So had London and Bonn. The premier of Japan had cabled for clarification.
At 4:27 P.M., four men emerged from the White House and were accosted by reporters. They were the leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives. Representative Jonas Ingram spoke for the group and said the President had assured them that the pamphlet was the work of cranks, intent on spoiling the march. His face grave, Ingram refused to say any more. The white-haired statesman did not mention the awesome news he and the others had been told in the Oval Room. William Stark had shown them the Soviet ultimatum and explained the desperate mission Colonel Safcek had been sent on. Stark had told them the pamphlet was undoubtedly the work of Soviet intelligence trying to paralyze both the country and Stark. Jonas Ingram and the Congressional delegation went away from the besieging reporters with heavy hearts.
The Tashkent Crisis Page 12
