Sacrifice

by Graham Masterton

  ‘It’s nothing. It’s none of your business. So forget it.’

  John waved his toast around airily. ‘None of my business? Well, that’s all right. It’s just my livelihood we’re talking about, that’s all.’

  ‘John!’ snapped Michael. ‘For Christ’s sake! Stop judging me! Stop judging the Russians! Just stop bloody judging!’

  John stared at him through the refracting lenses of his spectacles. He said nothing; but it was then that Michael realized how much John had fancied the idea of going to bed with Rufina himself. Rufina came over, smiling at both of them, and said, ‘You slept well, Mr Bee Shop? Kak pozhivayete?’

  John irritably spread his toast with acacia honey. ‘Zamyichyatyil’na.’

  Michael looked at Rufina and Rufina looked at Michael; and Michael wished to God he knew enough about this country to understand what he had done, and what risks he had already taken; and what tomorrow might bring.

  Eight

  That morning, across the shining curve of the world, several crucial messages were sent; by satellite link, by telephone, and by word of mouth.

  The President of the United States was eating breakfast outside on the sun-patio at Camp David when he was handed a message by Col. Henry Heinz of the Air Force, making it clear that the armed forces of the Soviet Union were now in a position of full strategic readiness.

  ‘The latest satellite pictures show that the 16th Air Army has now divided its forces into two, sir, and that just about completes the whole picture.’

  The President smoothed back his hair with his hand. On the other side of the sun-patio, his russet spaniel suddenly raised its head, and looked at him with sorrowful, inquisitive eyes. The President said, ‘How soon will General Cordwell be ready to implement GRINGO?’

  ‘Stuttgart says he’s ready now, sir.’

  ‘All right,’ the President nodded. ‘Tell him to issue the first-level instructions. But on no account is he to proceed to second-level until I authorize it.’

  Just then, the President’s National Security Adviser, Morton Lock, pushed his way out through the sun-flecked screen door carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and a briefcase in the other. ‘Ah, Morton,’ said the President. ‘It seems that the Soviets are now in the go mode. I’ve given Cordwell the word to start re-deploying the non-essential staff for evacuation.’

  ‘We still haven’t had any verification from Copenhagen yet, sir. You haven’t seen my sunglasses? A blue pair of Vuarnets, cost me $86.’

  The President gave a cursory look around. ‘There’s a pair on the swing, there. They’re not yours? Anyway,’ he said, easing himself up in his basketwork chair, ‘I’m not too concerned about Copenhagen now, except as a formality. The Kremlin warned me that it would take a little time to get agreement from the Cubans. Hot-spirited, that’s what they called them. Besides, I think it will probably help them to make up their minds if they know that GRINGO is already under way. And if they’re still stubborn, we can always put the evacuation on hold. Carrots and sticks.’

  ‘If you say so, sir.’

  ‘Well, Morton,’ said the President seriously, ‘I believe it’s important for us to show that we mean what we say.’

  One of the two white telephones on a small table beside the President’s elbow gave a discreet, almost apologetic bleep. He picked it up and said, ‘What is it, George?’

  ‘Deputy Commander in Chief, European Command, sir.’

  ‘Very well. Put him on.’

  It was General John Oliver, speaking from Frankfurt on a scrambled satellite link. The security of GRINGO was rated so high that part of his voice was bounced off one FLTSATCOM and the other part was bounced off another; the two parts only being reconnected through the central defence computer system at the Pentagon, before transmission to Camp David on a more conventionally scrambled landline.

  Despite a slightly metallic quality caused by the double-scrambling, General Oliver’s voice was loud and hearty. ‘Good morning, Mr President! I gather that Colonel Heinz has already apprised you of the Soviets’ condition of readiness. I thought you ought to know that as far as our ground and satellite surveillance indicates, there have been no major breaches by the Soviets of any of the pre-arranged tactical or strategic positions. We sent up two extra DSCS 11s on asymmetric orbits just to make sure. You know how the Soviets tend to freeze all troop activity to coincide with our satellite overfly timetable. Well, the same way we do with theirs, of course. But, as far as we can surmise, no problems.’

  ‘Thank you, general,’ said the President, and without any further discussion, put down the phone. He picked up a piece of Melba toast from the table, and noisily munched it, all the time keeping his eyes on Morton Lock. ‘Well, then, Morton,’ he said, after he had swallowed, and taken a sip of coffee, ‘As soon as we get word from Copenhagen, this is it.’

  ‘Historic days, sir.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the President, as if he didn’t care very much for history. He threw a piece of toast to his spaniel. The dog sniffed at it, and then ignored it.

  Colonel Heinz was still waiting, his cap tucked under his arm. ‘Is there anything further, sir?’

  The President frowned at him, as if he couldn’t remember who he was or why he was here. ‘Yes, colonel,’ he said, at length. ‘You can tell your children one day that when the future of America was finally and completely secured for all time, and when the threat of nuclear devastation was at last expunged from the face of the earth, you were there.’

  ‘Yes, sir. It’s an honour, sir.’ He didn’t have any children, but refrained from saying so.

  The President picked up his coffee-cup, and then peered into it and realized it was empty. ‘I should say it is,’ he muttered.

  *

  In London, at almost the same moment, the Defence Secretary was just sitting down to lunch at the Savage Club with William Wright, the flamboyant literary agent, who was known as much for his loud suits as for the advances he managed to secure for his authors.

  ‘And Auberon said—’ William Wright was declaiming; when the porter came hurrying through the high-ceilinged dining-hall to touch the Defence Secretary’s arm and tell him in a low whisper that Mr Vaudrey wanted to see him, if he could, and that he could use the secretary’s private office.

  The Defence Secretary took one sip of the chilled Sancerre which had only just been poured into his glass, and stood up. ‘Excuse me. Bill. It’s probably Aldershot, complaining that they’ve been issued with fifteen thousand left boots.’

  He walked across the dining-hall, buttoning up his elegant dark-blue Huntsman suit. He was tall and lean, with fair hair that was rather too long for a government minister. The porter showed him through to the office, where Hubert Vaudrey was waiting for him, inspecting the framed cartoons on the wall. Hubert Vaudrey always reminded the minister of a Harley Street psychiatrist, smooth and swarthy, although in fact he was deputy head of liaison between British and NATO intelligence services.

  ‘Sorry to cut into your lunch, sir,’ he said, shaking the minister’s hand. ‘I’ve just been given the message GRINGO.’

  ‘Have you indeed?’ asked the Defence Secretary. ‘Any further word from Copenhagen?’

  ‘Nothing yet. But my feeling is that the Yanks are trying to speed up a settlement by preparing to pull out their non-essentials ahead of the agreed schedule. A demonstration of good intent, so to speak. Weisenheimer tells me the Cubans are still proving a little obstreperous.’

  ‘I’m having lunch with Bill Wright, as a matter of fact,’ said the Defence Secretary. ‘He’s trying to persuade me to write a book on rhododendrons.’

  ‘Well, we don’t have to do anything straight away. In fact Moxon would rather we didn’t.’

  ‘What about the PM?’

  ‘Lunching with the Argentinians, of course. God knows how long that’s going to take. Some bright spark ordered lamb as the entrée, instead of beef.’

  ‘As long as they didn’t call it Agneau aux Malvinas.’<
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  ‘Wait till after lunch, then?’ asked Hubert Vaudrey.

  The Defence Secretary nodded. ‘And personally, I think the Americans are being rather premature. I’d rather hold off until we get the absolute final word from Denmark.’

  ‘We did of course give Stuttgart the impression that Cornflower would be actioned as soon as they actioned GRINGO.’

  ‘Let me take care of that. Drake waited until he’d finished his game of bowls. I’m going to wait until I’ve had my lunch. Bill says this book could be quite a little winner. Besides, they’ve got sea-bream on the menu, and I wouldn’t miss that even if the Russians were marching along the Champs-Elysees with snow on their boots.’

  ‘All right, then,’ said Hubert Vaudrey. ‘What shall I say if Weisenheimer starts nagging?’

  ‘Be nice, that’s all.’

  ‘Righty-ho.’

  *

  In Manchester, 180 miles to the north-west, the President of the National Union of Mineworkers, Albert Grange, had just arrived at the Great Northern Hotel to meet a delegation of Polish mineworkers for a buffet lunch and a round-table discussion on cheap coal imports. He paused for a moment or two on the pavement outside the hotel while new photographers took pictures, then went inside the hotel lobby, laughing loudly at some rude remark made by his Scottish deputy Stuart McLaren.

  Albert Grange was short and stocky, and not even his tailor-made suits could hide his miner’s shoulders. He had a ruddy face and wiry grey hair, and a permanent smile. He smiled even when he was angry.

  He was on his way through to the conference room when a black-haired woman in a grey suit and a white ruffled blouse made her way through the union officers surrounding him, and said, ‘Mr Grange?’

  ‘That’s me, love.’

  ‘I’ve got a message from Rodney.’

  ‘Oh, good old Rodney!’ said Mr Grange, in a cheerful voice. He gripped Stuart McLaren’s elbow and said, ‘You go ahead, Stu. I won’t be a moment.’

  The woman in the grey suit led Mr Grange through to a small private interview room next to the toilets and firmly closed the door. Mr Grange offered her a cigarette, but she declined, with a shake of her head. ‘Well, well,’ he said, lighting up with a gold Dunhill lighter. ‘So Rodney’s been in touch, has he? I was wondering when we were going to hear from him.’

  The woman’s face was expressionless. She could have been a librarian or a school-teacher; grey-faced, middle-aged, spinsterish. In fact she was a ‘sleeper’, and had been for nearly 21 years, in preparation for this one assignment, contacting the British trades unions and telling them that at last the proletariat revolution was imminent.

  ‘You must be aware that the military preparations in Europe are now complete,’ said the woman, in a flat South London accent.

  ‘Well, I’ve been reading the newspapers.’

  ‘All we are waiting for now is the final signal. This will be in days, rather than weeks. Meanwhile your own union is to start strike action on May 17.’

  Albert Grange said, ‘That won’t be difficult. We’ve already locked horns With the Coal Board over pit closures in Derby.’

  ‘The TGWU will be coming out two days before; the railwaymen and footplatemen will be coming out the day after. The following week the Civil Service unions and the electricians will come out.’

  ‘This is really it, then?’ said Albert Grange, blinking at her through his cigarette-smoke.

  ‘I am allowed to tell you that this not just a simulation.’

  ‘When will I get my full instructions?’

  ‘Not until very much later. You are cautioned to have patience, and to take no further action other than normal strike action until you are specifically told to do so. You are particularly advised not to be inflammatory in anything you or your members say or do, but to be creatively obstructive to the mining and movement of coal, and to encourage mass peaceful picketing that will absorb as many police resources and as much police time as possible.’

  Albert Grange listened to this, nodding, and then said, ‘Supposing they bring in the Army?’

  ‘That, of course, is the ultimate aim. If the Armed Forces are brought in to handle the movement of essential services, they will be wrongly positioned and wrongly deployed when the time eventually comes.’

  Albert Grange said nothing more for a long time. The woman watched him, and at last said, ‘I must go now. You will not see me again. Any further instructions will come to you by other means.’

  ‘Is there anybody I can get in touch with, if I’ve got any problems?’ Albert Grange asked.

  ‘Talk to Comrade Philips, as you usually do. He will pass on any information you require.’

  The woman opened the door, and left. Albert Grange sat in the interview room and finished his cigarette. So, here it was at last. An end to the class struggle, the final defeat of capitalist oppression.

  He thought of his father, all those years ago, sitting at the kitchen table in their miner’s cottage in South Yorkshire, reading aloud from Karl Marx. ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.’

  He also wondered, in a peculiarly heretical flash of lateral thinking, whether the Russians would allow him to keep his country house, and his Jaguar.

  *

  About an hour and a half later, while he was working out in his home gymnasium on his Haden Dynavit Aerobiotronic exercise-cycle, the junior senator for Connecticut, David Daniels, was interrupted by his housekeeper Cora, who was the only person he ever allowed to interrupt him when he was exercising. An hour a day of advanced aerobics, cycling, weight-training, all on the most advanced and expensive equipment.

  ‘Senator, Ms Modena says she has to speak to you urgently.’

  David nodded, his forehead bursting with perspiration as he completed his eleventh mile.

  ‘She says it’s very urgent indeed, senator.’

  David slowed the cycle down, and stopped. Cora handed him a towel, and he buried his face in it, then patted at his underarms. Eventually he dismounted from the exercise-cycle, touched his toes four or five times, shook his arms and his legs to loosen out the muscles, and walked on squeaking Nikes to the door of the gym, Cora following behind.

  It was a warm sunny day out here in Darien. The patio doors of David’s split-level house were wide open, and the lace curtains rose and fell in the slightest of inland breezes. Through the white-carpeted living-area, out on the red-brick patio, David’s personal secretary Esther Modena was waiting, a tall pretty girl with a fashionably tangled mane of dark hair, in a white Indian-cotton dress. David walked through the lace curtains, and stepped outside into the sunshine, his towel around his neck.

  ‘This has got to be real urgent,’ he remarked. ‘Do you want a lemonade?’

  She shook her head no. She watched him as he went across to the white-painted cast-iron table and poured himself a drink from the big glass jug. Sound of ice-cubes clanking in lemonade. She knew he was angry, she could tell by the way he wouldn’t look at her directly. Usually, he was warm, and open, and communicative.

  ‘You know my friend Wally, the one I was telling you about?’

  ‘I remember. The guy you wanted a hundred bucks for, just to take to lunch.’

  ‘I think the hundred bucks may have paid off,’ said Esther.

  David could detect something unusual in the tone of her voice, and he turned around and looked at her, focusing his deep-set eyes. He was a well-built, good-looking man, broad-faced, sharp-nosed, strong-jawed, with brown wavy hair. His only physical failing that he was a little overweight, for all of his workouts, and that had given him a jowly, slightly debauched look, as if Superman had been eating too many cream cakes and drinking too much Coke.

  ‘Wally called me about an hour ago. He said there’s a strong rumour going down that Fidel Castro is preparing to stand down in Cuba, and institute free elections.’

  David drank his lemonade and said nothing, but watched Esther over the rim of his glass.

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nbsp; ‘He said that he’s also seen confidential reports from Nicaragua and Ecuador that Communist guerrillas have ceased all hostile activity, and that many of them have already surrendered and handed over their weapons.’

  David said, ‘What’s his source? On Castro, I mean?’

  ‘He won’t say any more, just that it’s a rumour.’

  ‘Some rumour. Do you think he’s really got something, or do you think he’s simply trying to earn himself a little extra scratch?’

  ‘Come on, David, I said before that Wally’s sincere.’

  ‘Even sincere people have to eat.’

  Esther sat down on a white cast-iron chair next to a brick tub of red fluttering begonia flowers. ‘He says that it’s obvious that something really important is happening. Office doors are being closed; and there’s an incredibly heavy increase in secret communications traffic. He says that somehow the Castro thing and the Nicaraguan thing seem to be connected, but he’s not at all sure how, or why.’

  David sat down, too, and shook his head.

  ‘I can’t believe that Castro’s contemplating a free election. After 25, 26 years? It doesn’t make any sense. And if he is, why hasn’t Zucker made a huge great publicity splash out of it? You know what Zucker’s like. Diplomacy by circus.’

  ‘I can only tell you what Wally said.’

  ‘Can he find out more?’

  ‘I asked him,’ said Esther. ‘He said it wasn’t going to be easy. C Street’s like the Kremlin at the moment.’

  ‘Still, ask him to dig.’

  Esther said, ‘Can I pay him? Maybe a couple of hundred?’

  ‘Okay. Make it two-fifty. But that has to include some clarification. If I’m going to raise this in the House, I’m going to want to give some facts; maybe some Xerox copies if he can lay hands on them.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like him to get into trouble.’

  ‘He won’t get into trouble. I’ll make sure of that.’

  Esther made a couple of quick scribbled notes on a spring-bound pad; and then she looked up and said, ‘There’s one more thing.’