Alternities

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  A month would be soon enough to call on the PM personally. A month would be time enough for Robinson to decide.

  But Somerset, making a habit of the unexpected, clearly thought it more urgent than Taskins did that they meet. So they would. And the preeminent question now was not what would Somerset do, but what did he know.

  The embassy car was waiting at the end of the walk, motor purring, tiny American flag fluttering from the fender. Taskins settled in the back, clutching his leather case on his lap, and nodded to the driver.

  “The Admiralty,” he said hoarsely.

  Throughout the fifteen-minute drive, he gazed trancelike out the side window as the myriad dimensions of the dilemma arranged and rearranged themselves in his head. Stony faces and stone figures flashed by equally unnoticed.

  Taskins was met at the curb by a young lieutenant, who caught the car door and then ushered him inside with brisk efficiency. They moved past the security post unchallenged, then entered an empty lift. The lieutenant’s bronze key passed them through to the third floor.

  “This way, sir,” the lieutenant said with a gesture.

  “Where are we? Whose offices are these?” Taskins said, following.

  “Admiralty offices, sir,” was the unilluminating reply. “Here we are, sir.”

  The unlabeled door opened to a dark-paneled room which he would have called a study had he found it in a private home. There were three men in the room. The only one Taskins knew by sight was Somerset.

  The Prime Minister was standing by the heavily draped window, arms crossed over his chest, the ash from the cigarette in his left hand threatening to drop to the thick carpeting. He had the workingman’s build, the masculine good looks of a cinematic union leader or infantry first sergeant.

  Somerset turned as Taskins entered. “Thank you, Robert,” he said, walking two steps to a pedestal ashtray and crushing out his cigarette. “My Home Secretary, Benjamin Caulton,” he said, nodding toward a man seated a few feet away in a high-back leather chair.

  Caulton had a pillowlike belly and a round, perpetually flushed face, but his eyes were steel-blue and catlike. The third man, slender and hawk-faced, seated in one of the dim corners of the room, went unintroduced. Taskins assumed him to be a functionary, most likely there to take notes, and ignored him.

  “Of course,” Taskins said. “What can I do for you, Mr. Somerset?”

  “I wonder if you would answer a question.”

  “Certainly, if I can.”

  Somerset waited until he had performed the minor ritual of retrieving and lighting another cigarette before continuing. “Does your government have nuclear warheads in the British Isles?”

  His tone was casual, but the question rocked Taskins back on his heels. Indecision made him hesitate, and when he did, Somerset went on.

  “I hardly expected a direct answer. Let me attempt to discourage any evasions by telling you about a most interesting report I received yesterday afternoon from MI-5. Four times in the last year, it seems, various of our agents have made reports suggesting that American agents might be trying to smuggle some sort of nuclear armaments into the country.”

  “Mr. Somerset, I—”

  “The most interesting part of this is that K was instructed by the Home Secretary to seal the reports and not pursue the matter,” Somerset continued. “I assume that this was done with the PM’s knowledge and consent—”

  Taskins stared at the man in the corner with new realization. The director of MI-5, the British Security Service, had gone by the code name “K” for more than sixty years. But the changing faces that went with that name had always been hidden behind a high wall of secrecy.

  “—so tell me, Mr. Ambassador, if you will: Did you have an arrangement with my predecessor that he would look the other way while you brought nuclear weapons into the British Isles? Or to put it plainly, what the hell is going on?”

  Instructions be damned.

  “Yes,” Taskins said, meeting Somerset’s direct gaze. “Yes to both. We had such an agreement. And there are nuclear weapons in the British Isles.”

  Caulton grunted in surprise and stirred in his seat. K did not react at all.

  “You see, Bennie, they are that untrustworthy,” Somerset said casually. He flicked the ash from his cigarette into the bowl, then looked back to Taskins. “How many, and what type?”

  Swallowing hard, the Ambassador forced himself to answer. “Ten at the moment, with five more to come. Weasels.” When Somerset’s face showed no flicker of recognition, he went on. “Thirty-four-foot solid fuel intermediate range missiles, on mobile carriers. They have a maximum range of fifteen hundred miles—just enough to reach Moscow.”

  Somerset was still unreadable, his questions measured, his demeanor calm. But Caulton was growing more agitated with every word.

  “Let me understand this,” Caulton sputtered. “You’re not talking about bombs that can be carried by our Hawkers or missiles for the Vigilance frigates. You’re talking about a guerrilla nuclear force owned and controlled by the American military but hiding on British soil.”

  “Not hiding. Granted shelter,” Taskins said.

  “Madness! Not only do you take it on yourself to violate our treaties with the Soviet Union, but instead of doing it in a way that provides us with strength in times of crisis, you embark on… on rocket terrorism. Have you no respect for us, for our sovereign rights, for our historic partnership—”

  “Enough, Bennie,” Somerset said calmly. “Where are the missiles, Ambassador?”

  Taskins regarded Somerset with curiosity. There was something going on here that he, Taskins, did not grasp. But the cues he was receiving as the discussion progressed were beginning to dissipate his alarm.

  “I don’t know the specifics, and in any event, they’re always changing,” he said. “They’re mobile, after all. But I believe that most of them are somewhere along the eastern coast—Bridlington, Lowestoft, smaller coastal towns. They’re camouflaged as heavy-haul tractor-trailers—lorries.”

  “What is their strategic purpose? Why did McLeod allow them in?”

  Taskins took a moment to find a chair while he composed an answer. “Mr. Somerset, I’m the Ambassador to the U.K., not the national security advisor or President Robinson, and I don’t know that I have either the knowledge or the right to speak for them. But if I can remind you that there’s Communist missiles in Guiana, six minutes away from American soil—”

  “What is that to us?” Caulton interrupted caustically.

  Determinedly, Taskins continued. “Moscow has us on a very short leash. If we can adjust the balance by putting a few kilotons on their doorstep, I say it’s a good thing to do. I’m sure Prime Minister McLeod recognized that and did as much as he felt he could to aid us.”

  “Does Moscow know what’s on their doorstep?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Do you intend to tell them?” Caulton asked. “Or just start a war without warning?”

  “Hold on to reality, Bennie,” Somerset said gently. “No American President is mad enough to invite a thrashing from the Red Bear.”

  “They’re of no value unless the Russians know they’re there,” Taskins said. “Of course we’d tell Moscow. But not until the Weasels are all in place. And not unless the British government is prepared to take the heat and let them stay.”

  Extinguishing what was left of the second cigarette, Somerset walked to the window. “It seems to me that the French are as shaky now as the West Germans were in ’fifty-three. It must look very tempting to Secretary Kondratyev. Especially when they’re certain that we Brits won’t intervene because of promises made two decades ago.”

  “Their Parliament is forty percent Communist already,” Taskins said, wondering at the change of focus. “I don’t think there’d be much point to fighting over France.”

  “Perhaps not. But if Paris becomes another Red capital, John Bull is going to start wondering where it ends. I can hear the screaming in Pa
rliament already. They’ll expect some strong action, some unambiguous warning to the Soviets to leave us be.” Somerset paused to blow a perfect smoke ring, then turned to face Taskins. “Very well. I have a message for you to relay to Washington. Tell Peter I like his style. The Weasels can stay.”

  Taskins released an audible sigh of relief. “I—”

  “In fact, I think we want more than the numbers you talked about Squadron strength, perhaps. I’ll get back to you on that. And we must discuss operational control,” Somerset said. “But the most important thing is that this has to be absolutely quiet.”

  “Understood.”

  “I don’t know if you do understand. K, what about using MI-5 as a—what’s the word I want, a test, to measure how sharp the Yank security is.”

  “Tiger team,” K said.

  “Right. A tiger team. I’d like to think we can spot leaks before the GRU can, give you a chance to recover. I do believe that our boys are sharper than theirs. It is still our country, after all.”

  “I think that would be a valuable check.” Taskins said.

  “But, Robbie—understand that we won’t take your punishment for you. If we’re caught at this, I intend to blame McLeod as loudly as I can, and I’ll expect you to pull the Weasels out of the country as fast as you can. I want your missiles in my pocket. I don’t want them thrown in my face.”

  Taskins gathered his feet under him and stood. “I understand,” he said.

  Somerset touched a flaming match to a new cigarette. “It doesn’t matter that you understand,” he said. “See that Robinson understands.””

  South-West Africa, The Home Alternity

  The small twin-engined cargo plane had been flying low over the empty lands for nearly four hours. Taking off from the tiny airfield at Baia dos Tigres, at first it had followed the Atlantic coastline south, passing Cape Fria and skimming the desolate salt pans, dunes, and bare rock of western Etosha.

  Presently the spectacular eight-thousand foot mass of the Brandberg, thrust upward out of the plain like a granite invader from a world below, slid past out the left-hand windows. Then it was dead east by compass across the Namib Desen, to avoid the South African enclave at Walvis Bay and the string of tiny towns along the railroad which ran northeast into Damarland.

  West of Okombahe, the Angolan pilot took his plane off the deck, climbing a thousand feet above the hardveld until he had spotted the dry bed of the Omaruru River. For nearly five minutes, they were on the radar at Rooikop Airfield, and possibly at Windhoek as well.

  That was the most nervous time for the lone passenger, a moustachioed white man who wore khaki shorts like a tourist and never initiated a conversation except with an order. The name he used was Kendrew, though it was understood that it was not his real name. Real names were for realities which contained morning newspapers and traffic jams.

  Kendrew knew that there were no military aircraft based at either field and that the plane would not linger long enough for the supersonic interceptors from Cape Town to hunt it down. But still, he worried. It was exposure, and Kendrew hated exposure like a finicky housewife hates water spots on the crystal. Even when the flaw went unnoticed, it irked him that he had not found a way to eliminate it.

  Suddenly there was the truck, sitting square in the middle of the riverbed less than a mile ahead. A half-dozen Freedom Now soldiers milled about near it. One of them would be Xhumo.

  The pilot buzzed the truck playfully, dipping down until the plane roared by a mere dozen feet above the canvas canopy. Then he brought the high-wing Fokker around in a tight turn, scanning for the markers the guerrillas had laid out across the ground for him. The landing seemed to take forever, the Fokker floating down, crabbing in a crosswind, flaring.

  Then the wheels touched, the cabin bounced, and the drone of the engines waned for the first time since Baia dos Tigres. It was replaced by the noise of the FN truck roaring up out of the wash to chase down and draw alongside the plane.

  Kendrew bounded out of the cabin, but neither Xhumo nor his men needed direction. The plane’s crowded cargo area was unloaded with brisk efficiency: eight long boxes containing French automatic rifles, twenty cases of ammunition, and the treasure—three crates containing a dozen American-made shoulder-launched antiarmor rockets.

  The Buzzsaw launchers had been a special request, with a special target—South Africa’s deep-water port facilities at Walvis Bay. Loss of the port would add to the pressure already created by raids on the Luderitz-Port Elizabeth railway and Upington road. Already sentiment was growing in Johannesburg for abandoning the half-century trusteeship of the old German protectorate. Let them go, went the thinking. There’s nothing there worth this much fighting. Let them have it.

  When that happened—and Kendrew thought inevitably it must—the FN could focus their efforts on the real prize, toppling the Soviet-backed white government of South Africa. For the black majority it was a war of liberation. For the United States it was a chance to regain access to the awesome mineral resources capricious Nature had hidden in the tip of the African continent.

  “You understand that you have to crack the storage tank,” Kendrew said to Xhumo when the unloading was done, “or the fuel won’t burn. Go for the kerosene first. HE, HE, then incendiary. Save the antiarmor rounds for the motor pool.”

  “Many thanks. Soon we give a party in Walvisbaai,” Xhumo said, his smile a yellow crease across his face. “You tell President Robinson he is invited.”

  Kendrew grunted. “You throw a party in Johannesburg, and I promise you he’ll come.”

  Washington, D.C, The Home Alternity

  Peter Arnold Robinson was a congenital early riser. Though his family had moved off their Hazelhurst farm when he was twelve, his father trading the tractor for a wartime assembly line in Rockford, the habit had stayed with him. A reliable internal alarm usually woke Robinson within a few minutes of five A.M.—winter or summer, White House bedroom or Minnesota lake retreat.

  He awoke not only early, but clear-headed and energetic. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the Washington world did not, including his wife Janice. It was the one serious mismatch in their natures, intruding as it did on the more intimate parts of their lives. He would gladly have traded their late-night “sleep-making” for a morning tumble with the sheets warm and the fire high.

  On rare occasions, wakened by a dream or his movements in bed, she would turn to him in the early hours. And from time to time, if the hunger stayed with him, he would keep his first appointment of the day, then excuse himself to return to bed and Janice nearer her natural waking time. From time to time, and time and again. In college, his sexual appetites had earned him the hated nickname Peter Rabbit. In his five years in the White House, those appetites had made his “9:00 A.M. conferences” an insider’s knowing joke.

  But most mornings, he would lie quietly beside his wife’s sleeping form. Staring at the ceiling with folded hands tucked behind his head, he would compose his plans for the day, his remarks for an appearance, his thoughts about an unresolved problem.

  Some mornings, like this one, he would he there and simply enjoy looking at her.

  It was a tribute to his own appeal that he had been able to overcome the liability of an attractive wife in a national election, where the well-kept but mature look was ever synonymous with responsibility and respectability. At forty, Janice still had real beauty, the kind that survives the removal of makeup and morning-after tousledness. Not like the plastic beauty so many Washington wives sport, whale-oil and flower-squeezings pasted half an inch thick—

  A mercy, considering his drives, that she still excited him. A mercy, considering his position, that he could satisfy so much of his need at home. Opportunities and alternatives were there for a President as they had been for a Congressman. But the back-door romance that had destroyed the Vandenberg administration was too fresh a memory for Robinson to give himself permission to indulge.

  At six o’clock, he left the bed to
soak the knotted muscles of his neck and his eternally stiff right knee—blown out ten years ago during a family softball game—in a long, near-scalding shower. He reached the private dining room a minute before his breakfast of scrapple and French toast did.

  A single place had been set, and his short stack of newspapers was already there, carefully culled of those sections Robinson had no interest in reading. There was that morning’s New York Times, defiant leader of the eight or ten rebellious dailies not subscribing to the Federal News Service. And the Washington Post, flagship of the FNS and, in Robinson’s mind, symbol of what responsible journalism was all about. And on top, yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, to which he turned first, eager to measure his own thoughts against its sports columnists. Trade talk was in the air in the wake of the Bears’ fourth straight loss, and Piccolo was clinging to the coaching job by his teeth. At the very least, he has to give the kid quarterback from Stanford a shot—

  Robinson expected to finish both his breakfast and his reading without interruption. It was understood by family and staff alike that this time, this room, belonged to him. So when the knock came halfway through, Robinson knew that it foretold something serious.

  “Come in,” he called out, folding his paper and setting it aside.

  The door opened to admit William Rodman, Robinson’s bald-headed White House chief of staff.

  “Good morning, Peter. Sorry to disturb you—”

  “That’s all right,” Robinson said graciously. “What’s happening this morning. Bill?”

  “There’s been another submarine contact off New York harbor. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “When?”

  “Within the half-hour, just after dawn. The ship involved is the freighter Castle Point, American registry.”

  Robinson folded his hands, elbows resting on the table. “Any details?”