Ludlum held the door for Nicole Lawrence and came in behind Ramsey Douglass. “Okay,” and Belsky switched on the light.
Nicole said, “Where’s the john, Leo?”
Ludlum said, “Christ. We haven’t got time for you to powder your nose.”
“If you don’t want to get your shoes wet you’d better point the way for me.”
“Over there.” Ludlum pointed to a door; Nicole went through it and closed it without even nodding at the rest of them.
Douglass pulled out a chair and sat down at the poker table and said dryly, “What are the stakes and who’s dealing?” He reached into his pocket with thumb and forefinger and brought out a heart-shaped tablet which he popped into his mouth.
Belsky said, “Take care with those amphetamines.”
“I’ve had no sleep in two days. I can handle them. I’m not a pill freak.”
Belsky said to Fred Winslow, “Taking things in order. You’re now in command of the missile wing?”
“Temporarily. Until they send in a replacement for Colonel Sims.” Winslow looked full of bile; he wasn’t meeting anyone’s eyes.
Ramsey Douglass asked, “What happened to Colonel Sims?”
Winslow said very angrily, “His plane crashed on the way to Yuma. I understand they found indications that several sticks of explosive had been taped to the control cables of the plane. Altimeter-fused. I don’t like that, Dangerfield. You told me to get him out of the way temporarily and I did: we put some nonlethal poison in his wife’s coffee down in Yuma and he was on his way down there to hold her hand in the hospital. It wasn’t necessary to have him killed.”
“There was no way to be sure he wouldn’t return at the wrong moment,” Belsky said. “Don’t fight me, Vozshin, we haven’t time.” He turned to Hathaway. “What about Spode and that Senator?”
“Spode’s been seen here and there. The Senator hasn’t. He dropped out of sight after he left Professor Moskowitz at the university gate this morning. It looks like he’s gone to ground.”
Ramsey Douglass said, “I talked to Forrester’s girl friend and she hadn’t seen him. When I called her back later she’d gone.”
“Gone home?”
“Just gone. Maybe she’s with him. In any case she’s got instructions to keep him out of our hair. I talked to her brother but he doesn’t know much of anything, or didn’t a few hours ago. I can check back if you want.”
“Never mind,” Belsky said.
Hathaway said, “If Spode persuaded the Senator to go to ground it’s got to mean Spode made you, Dangerfield.”
“I know. Our cover is wearing thin but it can’t be helped.”
“You want us to take Spode out?”
“For the moment we’ve more important concerns. It’s just as well if the Senator has been scared off: he’ll be sure to stay away from the Air Base for a few days and that’s all we really require of him. As for Spode he can’t possibly know enough to interfere. At the worst he’s reported my presence to Washington and there are agents looking for me, but as long as I remain out of sight we’re in no danger. They have no way of knowing about the rest of you or the operation we’re executing. And if we ignore Spode they may begin to get the idea I’ve fled the area. No—leave them alone.”
The toilet flushed and Nicole emerged from the lavatory. “You ought to clean up that loo sometime, Leo.” She took the empty chair beside Ramsey Douglass, and Belsky saw Douglass move slightly away from her. It was one of the things that made Belsky uneasy, the relationship between Nicole and Douglass—uneasy because he had not been able to determine the nature of it. On the surface they gave the impression of a pair of mutually destructive organisms drawn together by some curious masochistic force—but there had to be some explanation for it. They were all needed, these people—he needed their faculties and it disturbed him whenever hints of neurotic weakness revealed themselves. Douglass appeared calm enough but there were signs that not far under the surface was a potential for violent hysteria; if the man was likely to come apart in a crisis it was no good.
“Eighteen-thirty hours. For those of you who don’t go by the military clock that’s half-past six P.M.” Belsky looked at his watch. “It’s now almost eight so we have forty-six and a half hours.”
They reacted mainly with alarm; several of them blasphemed quietly and Fred Winslow’s face took on the expression of a man about to burst into tears.
Ramsey Douglass said, “Then we’ll need to know the targets. Right now. The cards have to be punched so we can reprogram the guidance consoles.”
“I’m quite certain none of our targets has been overlooked by American planners. It won’t be necessary to feed any new information into your computers: the targets are all in China.”
He let them babble a moment before he cut them off. “It’s no good asking me why. I don’t make policy and it doesn’t concern you. Now shut up and let me finish. You have eighteen missiles here, each containing three warheads—fifty-four nuclear devices. There will be forty-seven separate targets; the additional seven warheads will be used for secondary strikes on hard silos which need to be hit more than once. An hour ago I prepared this list—two copies.” He took the handwritten sheets from his pocket and unfolded them on the felt table cover; passed one of them to Winslow and said, “Well?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll have to check to be positive. But you’re probably right—I’m sure we’ve got all these programmed already. They’re logical targets in case of war. The nuclear installations, the big cities, some military bases. I see you’ve got more of a concentration on army bases along the Russian border than we’d probably figure on ordinarily, but I expect all these have been programmed.”
“Memorize that list. You can’t afford to be caught with it in your possession. The first thing you’ll do when you return to the base is check the computer files to be sure there’s a card for each of these targets.”
“Yes,” Winslow mumbled, staring at the sheet of Chinese words. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.
Belsky pushed the second copy across the table to Nick Conrad. “The same for you. It’ll be your job to provide the proper coded commands for these targets. The codes are scheduled to be changed tomorrow evening, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’ve got the better part of twenty-four hours. Substitute our codes for the real ones and distribute the bogus code envelopes to all stations. Then, prepare the proper code sequences for Captain Ludlum to use when he simulates the issuance of attack orders from NORAD and the President. You understand this perfectly? Are there any questions?”
Conrad brooded over the list. “The time factor’s tight but I don’t see why we can’t do it. But you’ve got to be damned sure there’s no way for a legitimate signal to leak in or out.”
“That’s not your job. Concentrate on your own assignment. Do you foresee any difficulty?”
“Difficulty? Sure. But nothing impossible.”
“Then we can rely on you for that.” Belsky turned to Nicole. “Your job is to assemble all Amergrad personnel at the municipal airport at precisely six o’clock Sunday evening—all personnel who are not directly involved in the final sequences of execution. The others will be Sergeant Hathaway’s responsibility. But it’s up to you to communicate with all our local personnel and get them here at the appointed hour. There are to be no exceptions; you understand that. If any member is unable to be present you will give me his name and location.”
“So that he can be liquidated, Comrade?”
“Yes. You can see what the result would be if even one of us remained behind to reveal what had happened here.”
“Makes sense,” Hathaway said. “But how do we work the getaway?”
“Colonel Winslow will arrange for the presence of a C-141 Starlifter jet on one of the alternate runways of the municipal airport at the appropriate time.” He turned to Winslow. “The plane must be fully fueled and manned by a flight crew drawn from
our own numbers. You may call it a training flight or whatever you choose. I am correct in assuming the aircraft is capable of containing two hundred and four people including crew?”
“It’ll be a hell of a squeeze. We’ll be like sardines in there.” Winslow’s face was tight with strain. “The number you’re talking about is the number of Amergrad agents in Tucson, isn’t it? Agents alone—not their children.”
“The number represents the surviving members, yes. Two arc dead.”
Nicole said, “That makes two hundred and three. I take it the two hundred and fourth passenger is yourself.”
“Correct.”
“I suppose that’s meant to convince me you weren’t planning to send us all crashing into a mountain.”
Winslow interrupted. “What about our families? Our children? We have to know, Dangerfield. What happens to them?”
“Nothing.”
Hathaway said, “We have somebody tailing your son around town, Colonel. Just to make sure you stay in line. But nothing’s going to happen to him unless you make it happen.”
Winslow wasn’t letting it go. “You mean we’ll just leave them behind. Never see them again.”
Belsky said, “Can you think of another way to handle it? The children are Americans. They know nothing of the truth. In Russia they’d represent a threat to us all. Here they offer no threat to anyone since they know nothing of value. Their parents simply disappear without warning. They’ll be upset, naturally; they’ll go to the police, hire private detectives, what-have-you, all of this assuming such institutions are still in operation following the nuclear disruption. The children will survive your disappearance if they survive the war.”
“The war,” Winslow murmured. “It’ll be that, won’t it? I mean, there’ll be retaliation.”
“To some extent. Once these missiles have exploded over China there won’t be a great deal of retaliatory capacity left in China.”
“But Russia will come to China’s aid.”
Belsky said, “I can tell you this much. Russia will not come to China’s aid. I have been authorized to disclose that much to you so that you won’t be unduly concerned about the likelihood of your children being killed in a nuclear holocaust. Russia will not bombard the United States unless the United States attacks Russia first, and that is most unlikely. There is a certain risk from Chinese counterattack, yes, but your children stand a good chance of escaping harm since the Chinese retaliation will most likely be directed at American bases in the Pacific and along the West Coast—their ICBMs haven’t the range to reach too far inland.”
Winslow said, “My daughter is in school in California.”
“I’m sorry, Comrade. But that’s no proof she’ll be hurt.”
Douglass said, “This jet plane. Where’s it going to take us? Cuba?”
“Of course,” Belsky said. “And from there to the Soviet Union on board an Aeroflot plane.”
Winslow, clearly, still had his mind on his family, but by evident effort he wrenched it away and said uncertainly, “There’s one thing we haven’t covered that bothers me. Our whole system is geared to a second-strike premise. That is, we’re set up to fire these missiles only in the event of enemy attack.”
“The enemy attack will be simulated. Your wing headquarters will receive all the signals it would receive in the event of a real red alert. That’s Captain Ludlum’s field of operation.”
“I understand that,” Winslow said. “But the missile squadrons aren’t the only units that get activated under a red alert. The Pentagon goes on DefCon One—Defense Condition One—highest alert status, like when JFK was assassinated. The DefCon One signal alerts not only the ICBM wing but also the rest of the base. The SAC planes get a ‘Batter Up’ order to get them airborne so they won’t be caught on the ground—all that kind of thing. Is that going to happen here?”
“Obviously not. Airplanes have radios. We couldn’t very well have a wing of SAC bombers take to the air and then request confirmation from NORAD on the open airwaves which we can’t control. To do that we’d have to take over the whole of NORAD and we can’t possibly do anything like that.”
“But then what happens when the ICBMs go on red alert and the rest of the Air Base remains on normal status? It won’t make sense to anybody.”
“There won’t be any contact between the two groups. Pay attention now because I haven’t time to repeat myself. The essential mechanical and electronic preparations will have to be done tomorrow night under cover of darkness. Mrs. Conrad, it’s your job to see that the sentries who are assigned to guard duty at the key points both inside and outside the missile silos are members of our group. That applies to the twenty-four-hour period beginning at six tomorrow evening. You have that?”
“It’ll take some reshuffling of assignments,” Adele Conrad said, “but I suppose the ones who suddenly find themselves with a weekend off duty won’t complain. I’ll have to get together with the officers in charge of these assignments.”
“Never mind the details now. But Captain Ludlum’s people will be working in the open and the sentries who see them must be our own people. We can’t have any alarms. You’ll have to see that the members of Captain Ludlum’s teams are off duty, or assigned to places where Captain Ludlum needs them.”
“We’ll take care of it.” She might have been talking about the installation of a television set in a ranking officer’s bedroom.
Belsky said, “The key to everything is to seal off communications. We’ve got to be certain there’s no leakage in or out.”
“It ought to work,” Ludlum said. “We’ve had twenty years to work out the details, and Douglass here keeps us up to date on everything new they install by way of equipment.”
“Your plan is satisfactory, but there’s one vital thing it doesn’t take into account. We may get orders to abort from Moscow at any time—we’ve got to be prepared to react exactly as you would react if an actual countermand came down from the President.”
Ludlum said, “You’ve got to be above ground with your radio receiver, is that it?”
“Yes. So you’ve got to maintain one thread of contact with the outside—contact with me.”
“Well, we’re disconnecting the antenna systems. We can wire an independent receiver into one of them and hook it into one of Fred Winslow’s scrambler phones. That’ll give you direct voice contact with Colonel Winslow and he’ll have his finger six inches from the countermand button.” Ludium’s blunt head turned. “We can test it as soon as we’ve wired it up. I don’t see any big flap about the technical end but Nick’s got to get the codes to us in time. How soon can I have copies?”
Conrad said, “We’ll start printing right away. Sometime tomorrow morning be all right?”
“It’ll do.”
Belsky shifted his seat on the hard chair. “About personnel—we don’t have enough trained people to handle all the message traffic that will come through; after all we’re throwing a red alert at them and they’ll be firing back requests for clarification and verification. Unfortunately there’s no way we can simulate incoming rockets on their radar screens and they’ll want to know why they don’t see anything on radar if there’s an attack under way. We’ve got to convince the launch personnel that NORAD and the Pentagon and a few other sites are under attack by Chinese missiles. That will explain to them why they’re being ordered to fire on China, and they’ll attribute any foul-ups in communications to the confusion of the attack.”
Ludlum said, “The easy way’s to act as if the Chinese are dumping enough megatonnage on NORAD to dig Cheyenne Mountain right out of the ground. Then all orders will appear to come from Looking Glass—the airborne headquarters—and if a lot of it gets garbled by static the launch people won’t get suspicious.”
Nick Conrad stood up, looking at his watch and shooting his cuff. “Listen, I’d better get going—we’ve got to set up the codes and start printing.”
Nicole said, “Yes, let’s not keep the Kremlin w
aiting.”
Belsky had left his rented Ford in a pay-parking lot and torn up the ticket; he was driving a dark Dodge hardtop that belonged to one of Hathaway’s men. The car smelled of tobacco and there were big fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror. He drove up the Sabino Canyon road and made a left turn into a vague dirt track that ran back into the hills. On the tall weeds between the road’s ruts the headlights picked up fresh dark grease that had rubbed off the bottom of a recent vehicle.
The place had been a farm. It had been abandoned for several years; the windows were smashed, the shingles cracked, the barnyard overgrown.
When Belsky stopped the car he blinked his headlights on and off twice before he got out. Culver appeared in the barn door and waved. “Hi there, Mr. Beldon. Right on time.”
“Everything all right, Culver?” Belsky carried the transceiver in his left hand.
“Got everything you ordered. Come see for yourself.” Tim Culver had the quick restless eyes and the mouth-corner speech of an ex-convict. He backed up to make room in the doorway and when Belsky came inside Culver slid the big door shut and switched on a big multicell flashlight. The beam played over the ton-and-a-half truck. It had U.S. Air Force blue paint and a variety of stenciled white identification markings. The barn smelled of old hay and fresh paint, and the glass and chrome of the truck were stripped with masking tape; the truck was still aglitter with wetness. Near the back of the steel-enclosed bed there was a patch of Army olive-drab paint that hadn’t been covered yet.
“I just got a little left to spray,” Culver said. “I took care of the stencils up front first because that white stuff’s tricky; you got to dry it just right or it runs.”
“Looks good, Culver.”
Culver went back and got the spray canister and resumed work on the back of the truck. Its loading doors stood open; Belsky looked inside. The small steel tanks had been fitted carefully into soft-lined wooden frames to prevent their being jarred. Belsky made a quick count—twenty-four pressure tanks, each with valve and hose. They were smaller than aqualung tanks and looked vaguely like fire extinguishers.
Deep Cover Page 30
