by Jack Mars
“I’m not a physicist,” the general said. “These are two-stage weapons. My understanding is it takes a lot of energy to detonate the first stage. Even if it happened, what do we lose? A town called Jalmeh? Which is infected with ISIS? I’d call that an inoculation.”
Susan shook her head. “There’s no way I’m going to—”
Kurt Kimball pointed at his aide. “Amy, we need an objective ruling on this, and fast. Get us an expert on the phone—someone from McDonnell Douglas, from Stanford, hell, even someone from the Pentagon.” He stared hard at the general, then slowly turned to look at Susan.
“We won’t bomb it if there’s one chance in a billion of an explosion, or even a leak. In the meantime, I think we need to have a talk with the Russian president. I’d leave it to the Secretary of State, but we are teetering very close to something bad here. When the Syrians or the Russians find our downed helicopter, they’re going to have even more questions than they already do.”
“It’s after midnight in Moscow,” the aide Amy said. “I doubt we’ll be able to schedule until tomorrow morning.”
Kurt looked at her now. “Well, give him a try. He might surprise us. Stolen nukes on your doorstep is the type of thing that keeps people up at night.”
* * *
Susan had lied to her husband.
She felt like a piece of saltwater taffy from when she was a kid—being pulled farther and farther apart, becoming a long, droopy skinny string. She had been serious for a long time. She had been chaste for a long time. She had been alone for a long time.
Pierre was on the west coast. When the going got tough here in Washington, Pierre had decided to run and hide.
She was trying all the different ways she could rationalize this to herself. None of them fit quite right.
She sat in the White House family dining room, at the small round table. The lights were dimmed, and candles burned in the centerpiece. The doors were closed, one Secret Service right outside, listening in on this conversation through an earpiece. The room was mic’ed. Of course it was. Everywhere in her life, she was never more than a few steps from the Secret Service, and never out of their earshot. She wished, for once, she could be.
Just across from her, and to her left, sat Tommy Zales, the Hollywood actor. They were eating a dinner of chicken, pasta with marinara sauce, and broccoli rabe. The chef had been going all out these past couple of days—the food was garlicky, tomatoey, impossibly good. The chicken melted on your tongue. The food reminded her of the meals she and Pierre used to enjoy together in the Belmont section of the Bronx—the old Italian neighborhood where once upon a time, a capella singers serenaded passersby on street corners.
There was a bottle of red wine on the table—sulfite free, organic Cabernet Sauvignon, which Tommy had brought with him. Susan had a few sips—she was on the job, after all. Tommy had already polished off half of it.
He was a handsome man. That was natural—Hollywood dealt in perfection, and physically, he was pretty close to it. His face had the angular lines and perfect right-left symmetry that she remembered artistic directors of magazines lusting over. He had a great body, well-muscled and defined in a tailored dinner jacket and slacks that showed off the reverse triangle of his broad shoulders tapering to his narrow waist. His head was slightly too large for his body—again, she knew all the tricks, and she knew big heads meant star power. His eyes were pale blue, like the waters of the Caribbean. His teeth were blindingly white and even. He was beautiful to look at.
And he was young. Thirty-three years old. With his three-day growth of beard, he looked like a man, but one who had left adolescence ten minutes ago.
She couldn’t believe she was doing this. The Secret Service knew he was here—they were the ones who had cleared him to come in. It was going to be impossible to keep it under wraps. But it wasn’t like she had done anything…
Yet.
“It seems pretty stressful, being President,” he said. “Is it?”
She shrugged. “It can be. Some days are worse than others.”
“Why do you do it?”
“I don’t know. It kind of fell into my lap.”
He nodded, and his face darkened, then pinched in sympathy. “Yeah, I guess so. That was rough. There’s been a lot of terrorism, hasn’t there?”
“There has. Yes.”
She thought about it for a moment. Truer words were never spoken. There had been a lot of terrorism. Way too much. She was learning that Tommy Zales was an idiot savant of current events.
But with Tommy, the darkness never lasted long. She was learning that, too. Suddenly, his winning smile returned. “You know, I played the President once.”
She nearly laughed. “Did you?” When he first arrived, she thought it might be better if he didn’t speak at all. But now she was starting to have fun. His smile was infectious. Maybe it was him. Maybe it was the wine.
“Oh, yeah. Don’t you remember? It was called 45th. I’m the new President, and I’m aboard Air Force One. I’m on a trip to South America, but we get shot down by rebels over the mountains of Colombia. Now I have to survive, just me and a sexy female Secret Service agent, who are the only ones that lived through the crash.”
“I do remember that,” Susan said. “Did you shoot it in Colombia?”
“Nah. We did it in Canada. Tax breaks and all that.” He shrugged. “Hey, British Columbia.”
He sounded disappointed. Susan felt disappointed for him.
“Sure.”
A long moment passed between them. The smile was back.
“I want to tell you something,” he said.
“Hit me.”
“Susan, you are so beautiful. I’ve always wanted to tell you this. And don’t take it the wrong way. But when I was a kid, thirteen, fourteen, I was in love with you. You were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.”
She smiled. She was a lot older than he was. It was okay. Who really cared? “Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, right?”
He nodded. “Oh yeah.”
This time, she did laugh.
Just then, the door to the dining room opened. The Secret Service man outside the door poked his head inside. “Madam President? I’ve just been informed that they have the President of Russia on standby. He is awaiting your call.”
Susan smiled. “Uh… I have to take this. They told me he wasn’t going to be ready this soon.”
Tommy shrugged. “Can he wait?”
“Unfortunately, no. Nuclear weapons, the Red Army, all that. Mutual Assured Destruction. You know how it is. Look, don’t get up. And don’t run away. Stay right there, enjoy your dinner, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She glanced back one last time as she went out the door. Tommy Zales was pouring himself another glass of wine.
* * *
It turned out that Putin had been awake.
The Russians were on high alert and waiting for the call. They’d made it clear to Kurt’s aide that they had expected it a little sooner.
Susan walked to the elevator with Kat Lopez.
“He speaks English, but maybe not as well as he’d like,” Kat said. “In all likelihood, he will choose to speak through an interpreter. When it’s his turn to talk, he often makes long drawn-out speeches with barely a pause, and the person he’s speaking with has to wait to hear the entire translation. He is likely to be sarcastic towards you. Without directly saying it’s because you’re a woman, he has been openly dismissive of your leadership. On Russian TV, he routinely refers to you as the Fashion Model.”
Susan nodded. “I guess I knew that. Maybe I’ll start referring to him as the KGB Agent.”
She took a deep breath to steady herself. Susan was nervous. Five sips of red wine made it a little better, but the feeling was still there. She hated these calls.
She didn’t mind talking to world leaders who were on the same page as her. Olga Aker, the Prime Minister of Sweden, had been a world champion skier when she was young, and aft
erwards spent several years as a ski fashion model, mostly in the Scandinavian countries, but also in France, Austria, Italy, and Switzerland. Susan loved Olga. They talked nearly every week.
Susan also had a friendly relationship with the Prime Minister of England, and cordial working relationships with the heads of twenty other countries.
Putin? She’d had one five-minute conversation with him in the past six months. It was a weakness of hers. She didn’t want to talk to Putin, so she didn’t reach out to him. He made her uncomfortable, and it was easy to put him out of her mind. With no open dialogue, difficult calls like this one became even harder.
Somewhere deep inside, Susan lacked confidence. She suspected that people like Putin were the real hardball power players in the world, and she wasn’t up to dealing with them. Maybe it was because she had stumbled into the Presidency, while he had been working toward it, and gradually amassing power in a cutthroat environment, his entire life. Maybe it was just because he was a man, and an aggressive one at that. She didn’t know. One day, when she had some time to navel-gaze, she might figure it out. But that wasn’t going to happen now.
As the elevator dropped through the earth to the Situation Room, she could feel her body beginning to tremble.
Kurt Kimball was ready as they entered. Kurt was always ready. He was the definition of tireless. He was the poster boy for it. He worked long days, often seven days a week, but it seemed to have no effect on him. It wasn’t that he got tired and somehow bulled his way through it. He never seemed tired at all. He was a great big bald-headed wall of endurance.
He stood at the front of the Room, with his pointer.
“Ready, Susan?”
There were only about ten people in the Room. Kurt and his aides, Haley Lawrence and a couple of aides, General Loomis and one aide, Susan and Kat. Even so, all eyes were on her. Not only would she have to talk to Vladimir Putin on the phone, she would have to do it in front of an audience.
That part used to bother her, but really didn’t anymore. Being President was like visiting the proctologist every single day of your life. And the proctologist worked at a teaching hospital, so the gallery was full each time he examined you—everybody was in your business.
She sat down at the head of the table. The red phone of legend was in front of her—the direct line to the Kremlin. It really was red. And it was heavy, and old. They had rebuilt the entire White House, but decided to keep the same telephone.
“Couldn’t they have made it a princess phone, or something just a little bit fun? I mean, look at this thing. Where did they even find one of these, in their grandmother’s cellar?”
“Susan?”
She nodded. “Yes, I’m ready.”
“Okay,” Kurt said. “Before we make the call, here’s the one-minute data dump on Putin.”
Several photos of Vladimir Putin appeared on the screen behind Kurt. Here he was a young man, somewhere with snow on the ground, and he wore a heavy overcoat and a tall furry hat. Here he was maybe thirty years old, in a uniform jacket and a dark dress shirt with a tie, a badge pinned to the breast of the jacket—the up-and-coming KGB spymaster. Here he was, shirtless, virile, fly-fishing in a mountain river. And here, as the late middle-aged leader of his country on a dais at a state event.
He was not smiling in a single photo.
“You know the drill on Putin. Sixty-five years old. As the modern era goes, about as hard a case as you’ll come across. Raised and came of age during the time of the Soviet Union. An exceptional student and athlete as a child. Joined the KGB right out of university. A consummate and ruthless political player. Got his first break in politics as an aide to the mayor of St. Petersburg. By the time Boris Yeltsin became President, Putin was an aide and close confidante to Yeltsin, and, some say, encouraged Yeltsin’s alcoholism.
“Putin is a complete autocrat. As far as we can tell, he has total authority to take whatever actions he deems necessary—the rest of the Russian government exists to rubber stamp and carry out his directives. But don’t confuse him with a madman like Hitler or Mussolini. He rules with an iron hand at home, but on the world stage he treads lightly and carries a big stick. He positions his pieces and makes a bold move only when his opponents have no good counter-moves.”
Kimball paused.
“Under Putin’s rule, the Russians have crushed the Chechen rebellion, demolished the Georgians in a war over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, encouraged left-wing resistance to the government of Ukraine, and annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine. They have intervened in the Syrian Civil War, and are systematically annihilating all opposition to the Assad regime, including ISIS and al-Nusra Front, but also including what we consider legitimate resistance, like the Free Syrian Army. Two months ago, the Russians annexed three Turkish-held islands in the Black Sea, which has ramped up tensions between those two countries. This has probably contributed to the current unrest in Turkey—the President there is seen as weak in the face of Russian aggression.”
Susan stared at the red phone. It loomed there on the table, large and menacing. This was the person she was about to call to explain how the US had misplaced some nuclear weapons?
But Kurt wasn’t done.
“Finally, at Putin’s order, Russia has developed the largest and most dangerous nuclear missile ever devised—the RS-28 Sarmat, also known as the Satan 2. It can deliver a fifty-megaton blast—roughly fourteen hundred times the size of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined. A single successful strike from the Satan 2 would wipe out an area the size of Texas. Five such bombs could kill all life on the East Coast from Washington, DC, north to the Canadian border. Moreover, the Satan 2 can fly six times the speed of sound, and employs advanced stealth technology to beat radar and missile defense systems.”
“He sounds like a very nice man,” Susan said. “Shall we talk to him?”
The room was quiet.
“Amy, what time is it in Moscow?”
Amy consulted her tablet. “It’s after five in the morning.”
“The man never sleeps,” Kurt said.
Susan took a deep breath. She had that nervous feeling, butterflies fluttering in her stomach, as if she were going on stage. That was fine. She had been on stage many, many times. Normally, she was there to whip up the crowd. Today, she was going to… what? Convince Vladimir Putin that these missing warheads were no problem?
“Okay,” she said. “Are we ready?”
“The line is open,” an aide said. “We can put you on anytime.”
Susan nodded. “Now is good.”
“Your speaker is on,” Kurt said. “All other phones are muted.”
She picked up the receiver to the red telephone. The handset was big and attached to the phone by a spiral cord. It made her hand seem small, like an Alice in Wonderland telephone. She held the handset to the side of her head.
“The President of the United States is on the line,” a male voice said.
“Hold one moment for the President of the Russian Federation,” came another voice.
Susan looked at Kurt. He was standing with a remote telephone to his ear. All around the room, people were holding remote phones.
Several seconds passed.
“Hello? This is Vladimir Putin.”
“Mr. President,” Susan said. “This is Susan Hopkins. It is a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you for receiving my call so late at night.”
“Madam President,” Putin said. “My English… You will forgive me if I speak through my trusted interpreter Vasil.”
“Of course.”
Putin began to talk. After a few phrases, Vasil jumped in. Vasil had a deep, gravelly voice, which at the same time was clipped and cultured. He spoke slowly, and enunciated each word carefully, as if his very life depended on the perfect pronunciation and total understanding by the person listening to him. Maybe it did.
“It has come to our attention that nuclear weapons belonging to the United States have been stolen from a mili
tary base in Turkey, and have yet to be recovered. Many things about this situation concern us. For one, it is clear that the weapons were not safeguarded properly, and were in fact left in the custody of the Turkish regime, who have demonstrated again and again that they are unreliable and faithless partners in the most elementary endeavors, never mind in matters of utmost importance.”
Susan nearly spoke, but Putin was still going, and Vasil plunged on.
“For another, we learned of this security breach, not from the United States government itself, but from news media reports in countries throughout the world. The reports began in what are considered the most ridiculous and least dependable news sources, and the coverage from country to country and outlet to outlet has been inconsistent and conflicting. We have no way of knowing what the real truth is, because we have not, until this moment, received any contact from the United States.”
Susan looked at Kurt and shook her head. She waited a beat. Putin was still talking. This wasn’t a conversation. It was a lecture. It was the scolding of a wayward child.
“For yet another, it is our deep concern that the warheads have fallen into the hands of Muslim extremists, who are active very near our borders, who have attacked our friend Syria, and who are an existential threat to the people of Russia. Indeed, these elements have sworn to destroy Russia, if only their loving and benevolent god will permit it.”
“Mr. President?” Susan said. “Mr. President.”
“One moment, please,” Vasil said. “Please, I will finish.”
Vasil himself took a deep breath. Susan could feel the man’s anxiety. On the one hand, Putin could launch into this tirade, but to Susan, it sounded like a wall of gibberish. Vasil actually had to say the words that she would understand, the words that would likely anger her.
“Finally, there is the little matter of a provocation that occurred in Syrian territory during the past several hours. A Russian military helicopter lending aid to the Syrian army in that country’s fight against these same Muslim extremists, was shot down and destroyed, either by an American military helicopter or a robot drone. Six crewmen were aboard our helicopter, all of whom lost their lives. Each man had loved ones who are now bereft. Between them, these men leave eight children behind.”
