The Russian Affair

by Adrian D'hage

  ‘If you want a full briefing, Mr President, I can arrange for the Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to put one on for you?’

  ‘I don’t have time for any more bureaucratic delays, Major. Brief me. Now!’

  ‘Yes, sir, Mr President,’ said Major Hardin, somewhat bewildered. It had been several months since the Pentagon had provided the president with a full, classified briefing, and since then, President Travers had not shown the slightest interest.

  ‘As you’re aware, Mr President, the nuclear football that I carry for you contains the means for you to launch a nuclear attack if you happen to be away from a command centre like your Situation Room.’ The nickname for the black briefcase had originated in the early days when the Pentagon wrote a nuclear war plan and codenamed it Drop Kick. The plan needed a ‘football’ to put it into effect. The briefcase contained four items: a book listing classified site locations where the president could be safely accommodated during a nuclear attack; a Black Book with retaliatory options, ranging from a single cruise missile all the way up to ‘massive retaliation’, meaning a counterattack with intercontinental land- and submarine-launched nuclear ballistic missiles; a folder containing procedures for the president to communicate with the American people; and finally, ‘the biscuit’.

  Major Hardin outlined the contents of the briefcase before going into more detail on ‘the biscuit’.

  ‘The plastic card, which you need to have on your person, Mr President, and which we refer to as the biscuit, contains the gold codes arranged in columns. Those are the launch codes for nuclear weapons. As you can see, it has an opaque covering, and you simply snap the card in half to read it. The codes are generated every 24 hours, and ensure that you can identify yourself as the Commander in Chief.’

  ‘No one else has these codes?’

  ‘The vice-president has a set, in case you’re incapacitated, Mr President, and they’re transmitted daily to the Pentagon, Strategic Command and the strategic communications wings.’

  ‘So what happens when I want to launch an attack?’

  Hardin checked himself from reacting. He was well aware there were questions over this president’s method of operating, often outside Congress or the National Security Council, and he made a mental note to get a classified brief to the Pentagon for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs’ eyes only.

  ‘I would open the briefcase, Mr President, and you would decide which attack option you wanted, but you would naturally want to call a meeting of the National Security Council before you did that.’

  ‘That’s debatable, Major. I find the National Security Council is a contraceptive to the prick of progress. If it comes to me deciding to launch nuclear weapons, time is going to be of the essence, and we don’t want to be stuffing around with a bunch of bureaucrats – and that goes for the uniformed variety as well!’

  Hardin was getting more worried as the briefing went on and at risk of infuriating the president, he tried again. ‘Mr President, you might find it valuable to discuss the scale of your options before you decide, not only with your advisors here, but the Situation Room has the capability for you to talk to our most senior commanders and ambassadors around the world. They might provide valuable perspectives.’

  ‘And they might not,’ Travers growled. ‘What happens after I give the order?’

  ‘That order is immediately transmitted to the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon. You have sole authority to launch a nuclear attack, Mr President, but your order must be authenticated by the Secretary of Defense.’

  ‘If I’ve got sole authority, what’s it got to do with Corbett?’

  Again, Hardin had to check himself. ‘He can’t veto it, Mr President, but there is a “two-man” rule at all levels, starting with the White House, right down to our missile launch crews and submarines. In the case of the missile launch crews, for example, two operators have to confirm your order by matching the encrypted codes with codes they hold inside locked safes on the missile base. You have the sole authority, but once the Secretary of Defense confirms it’s you giving the order, no missile can be fired by a single person. That’s there, Mr President, to prevent a rogue submarine commander or missile commander from launching on their own.’

  Travers grunted. ‘So what happens with my order?’

  ‘The Pentagon has to comply,’ said Hardin, more worried than ever. ‘The senior officer in the National Military Command Center, which may be the Deputy Director of Operations, will challenge you with a code, and the reply code is on your biscuit. Within seconds of the Command Center issuing a launch order, our submarines and missile crews will receive it, and the missiles are launched, with catastrophic consequences.’

  Hardin had reached a stage where he wondered if the president was somewhat unhinged. Nearly 3000 miles away, on the west coast of California, crews at the Vandenberg Air Force Base were preparing to launch a Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.

  At Vandenberg, to the north of Santa Barbara, the dawn was breaking over a dark Pacific Ocean around Point Sal, on the mid-California coast. Air traffic had been diverted around the launch and a restricted zone declared for shipping. Security guards were doing a final check of the beaches. Five thousand miles to the west of Vandenberg, out in the Pacific Ocean on the Kwajalein Atoll, technicians were huddled over their radar and tracking consoles, waiting for the launch of the Minuteman III.

  The commander of the 576th Flight Test Squadron, Colonel David Brubeck was at his post in the Western Range Operations Control Center or WROCC, which was a smaller version of Mission Control at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Some distance away, in the Launch Support Center, the launch director, Major Sally Steenbeek was keeping a close eye on the countdown. The attractive brunette with a doctorate in astrophysics and 400 hours on F-15 Falcons was more nervous than usual. Every test launch would get her adrenaline pumping, but normally she would have been given two months’ warning. This time, President Travers had demanded an almost impossible time frame. Working around the clock, the 18-metre high, 35-tonne missile with a price tag of US$7 million had been readied for launch. Steenbeek shook her head. This president was like no other she’d ever served.

  The officers and missileers of the 576th Flight Test Squadron, as well as the civilian contractors, were all at their designated consoles, studying a never-ending stream of data flashing across their screens. Some were looking at the weather and radar feeds, others were getting input from the engines and sensors in the massive weapon. The digital clocks gave the countdown and a bar of lights beside them – red, orange and green – gave an indication of the launch status. The lights were at orange. One of two huge video screens showed the feeds from Kwajalein Atoll and the weather radar while the other was focused on the sealed 110-ton lid of test launch silo Lima Foxtrot 26 at the northern end of the base.

  Out in the Pacific, on the island of Maui, more technicians were studying the readouts. The Air Force Maui Optical Station, or AMOS, was located at 10 000 feet on the crest of a dormant volcano in the Hawaiian group. The station was equipped with telescopes and tracking radar to monitor the missile’s path nearly 700 miles above it. Further to the west, two Navy P3 Orion Bloodhound aircraft were airborne at 35 000 feet over the Marshall Islands, ready to provide both visual and digital analysis of the missile’s inert warheads as they descended toward their targets around Kwajalein at nearly 10 000 miles an hour.

  ‘T-minus 60 minutes. Prepare to initiate.’ Steenbeek’s voice was clear and confident, belying her inner turmoil. One by one, the controllers gave an ‘all systems go’ from their stations, including 1st Lieutenant Ray Broadbent and 2nd Lieutenant Michelle Walker. The ‘key-turners’ were located 6 miles away in a bunker 70 feet below the ground. They were part of the two-man rule. No nuclear missile could be launched without both keys being activated. Steenbeek waited until the digital clock ticked over.

  ‘T-minus 30 minutes,’ she announced. The ‘T-minus’ was used in all rocket launche
s, including the space probes from Canaveral. It simply stood for ‘Time’ to the launch. Broadbent and Walker reached for their keys.

  ‘Insert keys,’ Steenbeek ordered. Broadbent and Walker inserted their keys into their separate consoles and turned the triangular switches from ‘Set’ to ‘Launch’.

  ‘T-minus five minutes.’ The countdown was paused for a mandatory check of all telemetry, radar, missile and weather feeds, including those from the AMOS station on Maui, the airborne P3 Orion Bloodhounds and the tracking station on Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands.

  Steenbeek lifted the handset that gave her a direct line to the Launch Director in the WROCC. ‘All systems go, sir. Request permission to restart the countdown.’

  ‘Permission granted. Restart.’ Steenbeek switched the light bar from orange to green.

  ‘Sixty seconds.’ Steenbeek’s voice was still clear and confident, but there was tension and everyone in the control center could feel it. In the underground capsule, Broadbent and Walker’s eyes were fixed on the digital clock. Five . . . Four . . . Three . . . Two . . . One . . . Ignition. Together they turned their keys and deep within the Lima Foxtrot 26 silo, four ballistic gas actuators fired, their vapour trails streaming into the cold pre-dawn air. In an instant, the 110-ton hatch blew to the side and the launch center shook. The first of the three solid rocket fuel stages ignited in an explosion of white and orange flames and smoke and the massive Thiokol TU-122 engine lifted the 35-tonne missile from its home. Slowly at first, then gathering speed toward an eventual 17 000 miles an hour, the Minuteman, leaving a trail of fire and smoke, described a surreally graceful arc into the heavens, reaching for its target.

  Ten thousand kilometres away, the duty officer in Petrov’s National Defense Control Centre, a brand-new hardened headquarters on the banks of the Moskva River just 2 kilometres from the Kremlin, responded to an alarm.

  President Petrov strode into Russia’s new National Defense Control Centre, the NDCC. The chief of the General Staff, the commanders in chief of the Navy and Air Force and the strategic missile commander were in their assigned positions and they rose to their feet. Petrov motioned for them to sit and took his position at the head of the command table. The heavily guarded command and control rooms had been designed for just such crises as this. Petrov and his generals and admirals were seated at an inner circular table, not unlike that in the Security Council of the United Nations. Half of the huge wall opposite was taken up by massive seamless video screens. Less senior generals and admirals were accommodated in the outer circular seating, each equipped with classified computer links. A short distance away, hundreds of staff officers and analysts were bent over their computers in the main command centre, examining the minute by minute feeds coming in from submarines, deployed units and embassies around the world.

  ‘Update?’ Petrov demanded, looking at his chief of Operations, Colonel General Feliks Dostoyevsky.

  ‘The Americans have tested another of their Minuteman III missiles, but as of five minutes ago, Mr President, our ambassador in Washington is reporting there is some confusion as to who is in charge in the White House. As you’re aware, Vice-President McCarthy and a majority of Travers’s cabinet voted to remove Travers’s powers. McCarthy took over as acting president and cancelled the DEFCON One alert. President Travers then wrote to the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate, declaring he is fully fit and reinstated DEFCON One, whereupon the same majority of the cabinet again wrote that he wasn’t fully fit and as a result, Congress is in disarray. DEFCON One, as I’m sure you’re aware, Mr President, puts the American forces, including their submarines, on the highest possible alert status and that has never before been ordered in the history of the United States.’

  ‘Travers is barking mad,’ Petrov observed. ‘McCarthy, I can deal with. Travers is off his trolley. We go to full alert,’ Petrov ordered, his face grave. The old Soviet USSR had adhered to an agreed ‘no first strike’ policy with nuclear weapons but in November 1993, that policy had been cancelled. President Petrov and the Kremlin had told the world that if threatened, Russia reserved the right to strike with nuclear missiles.

  The chief of Operations nodded to his deputy. Minutes later, Petrov asked for more updates.

  ‘Navy?’

  ‘All submarines have been brought to high alert, Mr President,’ the chief of Navy confirmed. ‘Our commanders are awaiting your order to launch their missiles. The locations are on the screen.’ Normally, the locations of submarines would have been kept in a highly classified compartment, but at a time of imminent nuclear war, the positions of Russia’s submarine fleet had appeared on one of the wall screens. Of the 45 boats in the submarine fleet, not all were at sea, but there were more than sufficient numbers of the big Delta and Typhoon Class, as well as the smaller but newer and more powerful Borei Class. All of them were equipped with between ten and 20 nuclear ICBMs with multiple warheads.

  ‘As you can see from the screen, Mr President,’ the chief of Navy said, ‘we have two Boreis deployed off the US west coast targeting American missile bases in Wyoming, in North Dakota and in Montana. Another two Delta Class are submerged off the east coast, ready to target Washington and a now radioactive New York, as well as key cities like Chicago and Philadelphia.’ Petrov nodded with approval as the Chief of Navy ticked off the readiness of the rest of the Navy, including the Arctic bases for the Northern Fleet.

  ‘And the land-based missiles?’

  ‘All our missile crews are at their stations, Mr President, awaiting your order to fire.’ The president listened attentively as the strategic missile commander ticked off the status of the 27th, 31st and 33rd Rocket Armies and their missile divisions. ‘The Sarmat missiles are also ready to fire, and as you know, they will reach the United States in under 12 minutes.’

  ‘We stay on full alert. At the first sign of a missile launch by whoever is in charge over there, I will give the order to fire.’ Petrov turned to his chief of Operations. ‘Any news on that traitorous Dragunov?’

  ‘Yes, Mr President, if you will follow me, we have a briefing for you.’ Colonel General Dostoyevsky led the way to one of several small ‘cone of silence’ briefing rooms.

  ‘We have confirmed that Dragunov chartered a yacht, the Printsessa, and it is berthed in the southern Georgian port of Batumi.’ Petrov listened intently as his chief of Operations brought him up to speed on the likely whereabouts of Dragunov and Bartók.

  ‘The castle is in a remote part of the gorge, and will not be easy to assault,’ Dostoyevsky concluded.

  ‘Nevertheless, I want Dragunov to face trial for treason, and I want Bartók and his research. You are to mount a special forces operation to capture them both, and I’m placing General Rabinovich in command.’

  ‘Of course, Mr President.’ There wasn’t a senior general in the Kremlin who had not noted Rabinovich’s promotion, accompanied by the sort of campaign the Kremlin had long ago mastered: a heavy PR blitz. The Russian public had been informed that the previous media reports on Rabinovich had been completely false. It was the fault of rogue FSB agents and no one, the releases had stressed, was more patriotic than the motherland’s most trusted nuclear physicist, now promoted to general in the Spetsnaz.

  The President pro tempore of the Senate, Nathaniel J. Whittaker, sat by the fireside in his elegant panelled office and re-read the original letter signed by eight members of Travers’s cabinet declaring the president unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. He then re-read the letter from the president. It was just one paragraph long.

  Whittaker then re-read a second letter from the same eight members of the Travers Cabinet, who again declared the president unfit to serve. Whittaker shook his head in disbelief at what American politics had come down to – psychiatrists’ opinions on the president’s mental state. The 50 states in the Union were each entitled to two senators, but the number of representatives was determined by a state’s population. California, the mos
t populous state with a population of nearly 40 million, had 53 representatives, but the least populous state, Wyoming, with a population of just over half a million was entitled to just one. Under the 25th Amendment, for Travers to be ousted permanently, both the lower House of Representatives and the Senate would need two thirds of their members to vote in favour of removal. In the House, with its 435 members, the magic number was 290. Amid uproar, that vote had already been taken and 292 members had voted that Travers was unfit. Whittaker knew it was now up to the Senate where two thirds of the 100 Senators would have to vote in favour of removal.

  As he made his way to the chamber, Whittaker knew the numbers in the Senate were on a knife edge. Wyoming, the state Whittaker had represented for over 30 years, where the Rocky Mountains met the Great Plains, was fiercely Republican. As word got out of the impending removal of a democratically elected Republican president, Senator Whittaker’s offices in both Washington and Wyoming’s capital, Cheyenne, had been inundated with texts, emails and calls from angry constituents threatening dire consequences if he supported the move. Whittaker had thought long and hard before making up his mind. The Republican Party held a small majority in the Senate and Whittaker knew that several Republicans would have to be convinced Travers was unfit if the president were not to resume his duties.

  The members of the Senate filed into the chamber and took their places at their desks. Arranged in a semicircle, some of the desks went back to 1819, when the Senate was smaller and forty-eight desks at a cost of US$35 each had been ordered from Thomas Constantine, a New York cabinet maker. Additional desks had been built in the same style, and over the years Senators had carved their names inside the drawers. By tradition, the Republicans sat on the presiding officer’s right and the Democrats on the left. Whittaker entered amid a hubbub of tense conversation. For the first time in the history of the United States, the Senate had been asked to vote on dismissing a sitting president through the rarely invoked 25th Amendment.