The Tashkent Crisis

by William Craig

  Stark asked: “Nothing further from Safcek himself?”

  “Nothing, sir. He must have been discovered.”

  Richter waited as Stark put his hand over the mouthpiece and told the grim news to Robert Randall and Martin Manson. Then he cut back to Richter saying: “I’ll be waiting right here.”

  In Peshawar Karl Richter poured a double Scotch, added an ice cube, and sat back, waiting for the remote possibility that the radio would come to life.

  The streets around the United Nations were jammed with pickets and the curious long before the Security Council meeting was due to convene. By 5 P.M., extra police details had been brought in to control the swelling masses who materialized from the caverns of the city to promote their own causes. Ambassador Tolypin’s 11 A.M. press conference had already had its desired impact on the American people. Worried families in the eastern time zone rushed through dinner in order to be at the television set when the fateful debate began at 6 P.M. Some network commentators had begun to make a connection between the forced evacuation of Washington and the Soviet intimation of a fatal breach among the world powers. A terrible uneasiness had filtered out to the suburbs and the prairies, to the high-rise apartments and country towns where parents wondered what tomorrow would bring for their children. Some people went into their bomb shelters, dug years earlier, to check stocks of canned foods and survival gear. Other cursed the fact that they had neglected to provide one.

  Everywhere, anxious anticipation was an almost tangible presence, for no word had come from the White House about the Soviet allegations. President William Mellon Stark had issued no response. His press secretary, Edwin Rast, continued to declare that Stark would not deign to reply to such gross insinuations. The American people could only wait for the debate to shed light on the menacing dialogue.

  Inside the UN the delegates’ lounges were filled with frantic diplomats trying to get concrete answers to their own governments’ frenzied cables. The British representative, Lord Harkness, an elegantly dressed, pinch-faced veteran of countless crises, had cornered the chief American delegate, Ronald Carlson, and was badgering him with less than subtle demands for information. Carlson had been able to parry most of these searching queries so effectively that the British statesman was losing his aplomb.

  Carlson’s greatest problem was his own lack of information. His only orders from the White House had been given that morning after Zarov announced his intention to expose the United States. Carlson, a former president of the World Bank, had been sent to the UN by Stark as a reward for his financial support during election campaigns. Unfortunately, Carlson found himself completely outside the mainstream of politics and policy-making in his new post. He was not called into cabinet meetings. He was merely handed directives to carry out. While he and Stark were still on the best of terms personally, Ronald Carlson intended to resign his position and go back to Kansas at the end of the General Assembly session. He had become tired of being an errand boy.

  Carlson was as mystified as anyone else and found it difficult to fend off impassioned delegates such as Lord Harkness, whom he had admired for years. Yet he had no choice. Stark had told him to remain mute and evasive, to deny the Soviet claims, whatever form they took, and to stall any Soviet attempts to censure the United States by vote of the Security Council. Ronald Carlson, faithful to his oath of office, had agreed to these conditions and now braced himself to meet the challenge.

  Lord Harkness was completely exasperated. “Carlson, I’ve known you a long time and always had excellent feelings toward you. And yet now I find myself disbelieving your words. You’re deliberately hiding something from me, and I resent it.”

  “Lord Harkness, I’ve told you the truth. The United States has no designs on the Soviet Union. Stark has already said the pamphlet yesterday was the work of cranks. And you know him better than to suppose he would ever intend to annihilate anyone. What more can I tell you?”

  Harkness was not so easily rebuffed. He looked reproachfully at his friend and said: “Why doesn’t Stark go on television and tell the whole world the Reds are playing their dirty rotten game again? His silence only makes people wonder what in God’s name is going on. I must tell you that my government for one is highly nervous over the situation. Stark has told the prime minister that nothing is amiss in the world. We are not children, you know, and you cannot treat us this way.”

  Ronald Carlson felt truly pained for Harkness, who stood with his Scotch and water in the middle of the lounge and begged for some morsel of hard information. He put his hand on Harkness’s shoulder.

  “I understand your predicament and your prime minister’s sense of outrage. But I have to repeat my earlier remarks. The Soviet machinations are just that, an attempt to put us in a bad light. They’ve been doing that for years and nothing has really changed, has it?”

  Harkness shook his head in impatience and abruptly walked away. While Carlson watched him leave, the chief delegate from Japan, Eisaku Ono, confronted him with the same questions. Sighing, Ronald Carlson repeated his defense of the American position.

  At the doorway, Ambassadors Zarov and Tolypin were immediately besieged by a flurry of diplomats who asked them the inside story of the pending council meeting. Both maintained grim faces while they urged patience until the actual debate. Zarov added: “Then you will see the extent of the conspiracy.”

  Commissioner Herb Markle had been unable to stay in his office. He went to the scene of the pipeline explosion and walked through the two blocks of misery. He saw the firemen digging in the rubble and began to weep. He was noticed by a policeman, who gently patted the distraught man’s shoulder.

  Wrenching away, Markle continued his anguished inspection past smoldering cars, until he suddenly turned and went back the way he had come.

  At Lafayette Park, he stood glaring across at the windows of the White House. He stayed there for a long time, smoking one cigarette after another. Then he moved swiftly toward the Presidential mansion. When the guard at the West Gate stopped him, Markle identified himself and asked to see Stark.

  Unaware of Markle’s previous encounter with Randall, Sam Riordan authorized him to enter.

  Stark shook hands warmly with his friend and asked immediately about the awful situation in Anacostia. Slumped in a chair, Herb Markle told him the gruesome details. When the President seemed too preoccupied to pursue it, Markle lost control and shouted: “How in God’s name can you sit there so calmly while the dead are in the morgues because of you? How can you be so callous?”

  Stark kept looking at the phone beside him. His thoughts went to Joe Safcek, lost and unaccounted for in the desert, to the Security Council meeting minutes away, to the laser that threatened to burn down the city in five and a half hours. He forced his attention back to Markle.

  “Herb, please calm down, I care very much about those people who died today. And I want you to stop tearing yourself into little pieces because you followed my orders. It’s not your fault.”

  The phone rang, and Stark grabbed for it.

  “NORAD, sir. Nothing yet from the Tashkent area.”

  Stark carefully replaced the receiver and, in what had become a nervous mannerism over the last three days, looked at his watch: 5:45. He turned back to his guest.

  “As I said, Herb, stop torturing yourself. I’ll explain things soon, and it’ll make some sense, believe me.”

  Markle exploded: “Some sense, for Christ’s sake. Can you make sense out of murder and blasted homes? Can you? Well, I can’t, and I won’t accept any of it. I’ll be goddamned if I’ll be saddled with this outrage for the rest of my life.”

  He was towering over Stark, who sat motionless, taking the verbal battering. In the next room, Robert Randall heard the uproar and rushed in.

  The Commissioner had not finished.

  “I walked through that place just now and saw what your orders have done to I don’t know how many families. And you keep on acting as though it was merely a regrettabl
e error. Well, let me tell you something: you’ve changed a helluva lot since you got in that seat. Is it power that’s done it? Power?”

  Randall spun Markle around and said in an angry undertone: “March out of here, Herb. How dare you do this to the President?”

  At the door leading from the Oval Room, Markle laughed scornfully and shouted: “Who are you planning to kill tomorrow?”

  William Stark had no answer. He turned away from his friend and looked out at the landing pad, where a helicopter carrying Michael Macomber was due momentarily from Dulles International Airport.

  The fifteen members of the Security Council were in their seats at 5:55 P.M. Some smoked pensively, others stared up into the television room where correspondents from the major networks supplied a colorful commentary to over 90 million watching Americans. In other parts of the world, satellites carried the broadcast live to other minions of anxious people trapped between the two major antagonists in the continuing cold war. In the Soviet Union, television programs did not carry any of the drama emanating from the UN.

  At precisely 5:59 P.M., Arndt Svendsen entered the chamber and went quickly to his seat. The Secretary General was not in his usual happy frame of mind and ignored greetings from old friends as he shuffled papers and peered over his spectacles at the council members. At 6 P.M. he rapped his gravel, and all noise subsided.

  Svendsen adjusted his spectacles and began: “Gentlemen, we are here tonight in reference to a rather unusual request from the delegate of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This morning he came to me urging that I call a special session of this body to discuss a most serious matter. We are here assembled, and I now propose to allow the distinguished Mr. Zarov to present his case for your consideration. Do I hear any objections?” Hearing none, he asked Zarov to speak.

  The television cameras panned in on the short, well-fed form of Yuri Zarov, the sixty-two-year-old bearer of orders from the Kremlin. Zarov had survived the frequent convulsions of power in the Soviet Union for the past twenty-seven years. A totally humorless man, he was well-known to Americans. Like an angry neighbor, he had frequently complained to them about U.S. indiscretions and ambitions. He scolded, threatened, and lied to the American people about its government’s chicanery and belligerence. His audience had come to enjoy his presence in their living rooms, anticipating his diatribes with a benign humor. The Russian provided a pleasant diversion from the ponderous debates that normally emerged from UN crises. Zarov was an enemy but surely not a bore.

  He sat at ease in his accustomed spot just to the right of the chief United States delegate, Ronald Carlson. Zarov began to speak in a soft voice, and the translators rushed to pick up his words and relay them in several languages to listeners.

  “Mr. Secretary General, esteemed members of the United Nations Security Council, I have asked you to come here to listen to a tale of perfidy so outrageous as to defy precedent. It affects all of us because it concerns an attempt by one of us to enslave the world.”

  Zarov reached for a glass of water and drank deeply while the amphitheater buzzed with an astonished reaction. Ronald Carlson, at his left, doodled with a pencil.

  Zarov put down his glass and continued his attack.

  “Perhaps it would serve everyone’s best interest if I explained the background to this treachery. The whole world knows that the Soviet Union has been attempting for decades to stabilize the various conflicts that have threatened to envelop us in total war. In the Middle East the reactionary forces of the state of Israel have fomented aggression against the peoples of the Arab world. We have tried to help the Arab nations by supplying Egypt and its neighbors with the proper means to protect their freedom.”

  Several of the members smiled self-consciously at Zarov’s statement. Ronald Carlson grinned widely and stared at the ceiling in amazement. Arndt Svendsen tried to conceal his absolute disbelief by studiously wiping his glasses with a Kleenex.

  Zarov ignored the amusement and continued: “In Southeast Asia, imperialist forces have made a shambles of the region between the Mekong and the sea in their ceaseless pursuit of resources and territory. For our part, the Soviet Union looked on in horror while innocents were being slaughtered and land devastated by the ‘democratic forces of liberation.’ Since we had no desire to plunge the world into war over this issue, we could only send supplies to our beleaguered friends who calmly withstood the fascist hordes.”

  Ronald Carlson was now wondering whether Zarov would have the temerity to include Czechoslovakia in his list of good deeds. Zarov did not disappoint him.

  “Even in one of our own socialist countries, we had to act to prevent a deterioration of the status quo. When imperialist reactionaries tried to subvert the government and inhabitants of that wonderful ally, we were forced to correct the situation by rooting out the enemy and exposing his deceits to the world. As you remember, the forces of the Soviet Union entered that country only at the request of true patriots who desperately sought our help. And as you know we neither murdered nor burned as Western nations have done countless times in recent history.”

  In the White House, Robert Randall switched off the set and went down the hall to the Oval Room, where William Stark sat in his big swivel chair. Stark was staring at a phone on his left which connected him with the tracking stations in California.

  Stark looked up as Randall entered and asked: “Has Zarov started to speak yet?”

  “Yes, but so far it’s the usual baloney about our imperialistic excesses. I couldn’t concentrate too much on him. Has Macomber arrived from Paris yet?”

  “He’s landing on the pad now,” Stark waved toward the window facing onto the South Lawn behind him.

  The two men went directly to the Cabinet Room, where the special Committee waited. Gerald Weinroth was there, too, brought from Walter Reed Army Hospital by ambulance to be present when the documents arrived. Sitting up on a hospital stretcher, Weinroth, though uncomfortable, was anxious to get a look at the material that would unlock the mystery threatening the lives of the entire population of the world.

  William Stark shook hands with Michael Macomber and thanked him for his timely arrival. Then he asked Weinroth to study the blueprints. The professor propped himself up on the cot and studied the plans carefully for several minutes without a word. He turned the pages one by one with what seemed agonizing deliberateness. The other observers dared not interrupt his concentration. General Roarke paced up and down the thick red carpet. Stark himself sat in his swivel chair and stared intently at the scientist.

  Weinroth seemed about to speak. But he plunged again into the mass of technical details and ignored the waiting group. Robert Randall spoke softly to Macomber, asking him again how he came to possess the documents. Sam Riordan listened carefully to Macomber’s story, then passed on the news from Perkins about Debran’s death. Macomber appeared shaken. Riordan asked, “Did Debran mention anything Rudenko said the last time they met?”

  “No, sir, except that he seemed quite nervous and agitated.”

  Riordan said: “I can imagine he was.”

  Weinroth interrupted: “Mr. President, I believe these blueprints are genuine. They are a complete description of the weapon itself.

  “The gun is three hundred and fifty feet long and has a bore of, let’s see, sixty-six feet; it has semireflective mirrors at either end. The power comes from a nuclear generator plant that’s six stories down and about a quarter mile away. That must be the place Intelligence pinpointed from the photographs. The energy is piped to the weapon through massive conduits into electrodes and then thick supercooled cables that run the length of the laser. When the energy is built up to the required level of intensity, the scientist just presses a button, and the beam fries a city like an egg.

  “Oh, and one other thing. Sam, you caught the fact that the Russians sent up a whole series of satellites in August. Well, they were all part of this operation. The Soviets set up a string of grapefruit-sized spheres in orbit, and th
ese act like navigational aids for the laser. It can bounce off one of these balls at exactly the angle needed to redirect it to a target on earth.

  “That’s about all we need to know at this moment. Our program is amazingly similar to theirs in most details. The only problem is they are operational right now, and we aren’t, thanks to lack of money.”

  William Stark rushed to him. “That’s fantistic, Gerald! Just fantastic! Can we adapt this information to our own gun right away?”

  Weinroth looked away, cast his gaze around the room for a while, and then met his President’s eyes again.

  “I can say positively there is no chance. Our contraption is only slightly different from theirs, but the biggest problem is that they have their nuclear generators working, and we won’t have ours going for three months. Without them, we can’t get any power to the weapon. Besides that, we don’t have the spheres in orbit to direct the beam back to earth.”

  Stark was crushed. “You mean having this material doesn’t really help us at all?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Goddamnit, to have these plans and not be able to use them!”

  “Maybe we can,” Randall said. “Why not let the Russians know we have the blueprints and have worked out an operational laser? It’s a bluff, but maybe they’ll buy it and hold off.”

  Gerald Weinroth weighed the suggestion. “It depends on what they know of our progress on the gun up to now. If they’re in the dark, it might work.”

  Randall scribbled a brief hot-line message and handed it to Stark for comment. The president read it and said: “Go ahead, Bob. It just might set their clocks back for a while.”

  It was 6:45 P.M. in Washington. The deadline was four hours and thirty-three minutes away.

  Joe Safcek opened his eyes and saw bright early-morning sunlight streaming in through the window. A nurse in white starched linen was at the foot of the bed.