The Zero Option

by David Rollins

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Garret, moving to the couch opposite Meese. He caught the view out the window: the south gardens of the White House and the tips of the pencil pines screening the President’s swimming pool.

  ‘Are you a God-fearing man, Garret?’ Clark asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. I go to church regularly,’ he replied.

  ‘Then how do you think He feels about the Soviet empire?’

  Garret had never thought about the USSR in religious terms. ‘He probably doesn’t like it, sir, I’d say.’

  ‘And I’d say you’re right. We’re dealing with what the President likes to call the Evil Empire: 280 million atheists covering a huge swath of His earth, led by a regime hellbent on world domination. We believe that God has given us the mandate to once and for all rid the planet of the Soviet menace.’ Clark pounded his fist into his palm. ‘Ed and I think your paper provides us with a potential strategy to do just that. Or, at the very least, give the Soviets a heck of a shake.’

  ‘There are big plans afoot, Roy,’ said Meese, sitting forward, his elbows propped on his knees. ‘The President is not a fan of détente.’

  Garret had heard that.

  ‘The Soviets are envious of our wealth, our technological edge. It’s making them increasingly nervous. Right now, with their SS-20 intermediate-range missiles on mobile launchers roaming the East German countryside, they enjoy a window of superiority. The United States is vulnerable. They know it, we know it. And I’m sure you know it. As long as they have that window, we believe they might do the unthinkable.’

  Meese leaned further forward. ‘General Secretary Yuri Andropov has forced the KGB and the main intelligence directorate of the Soviet Armed Forces, the GRU, to cooperate in a worldwide intelligence operation codenamed RYAN. That’s an acronym for Raketno-Yadernoe Napadenie, which means “Nuclear Missile Attack”.’

  ‘Right now,’ Clark interjected, ‘RYAN has the KGB out hunting for the remotest confirmation that we’re about to go to war. They’re even checking our blood banks to see if they’re paying more for donations. They want to know if we’re stockpiling supplies to meet wartime demand. They’re looking at our religious leaders, taping their speeches and sermons, analyzing them for signs that Washington has brought the church into our warfighting loop. Andropov thinks that because we believe they’re about to push the button, we’re going to push it first and go for a pre-emptive nuclear strike.’

  Garret knew the Politburo had mobilized its agents in an urgent renewed drive to infiltrate the west, but he hadn’t known why.

  ‘We need to get our Pershings into Western Europe and restore that balance, offset those SS-20s, and we need to do it fast,’ Clark continued. ‘But as you know, the anti-war movement over there is strong and growing stronger by the day. It is now the most important tool of propaganda and disinformation in the Soviet arsenal.’

  ‘Those damn hippies are even poisoning the minds of the United States Congress,’ Meese added.

  ‘Roy,’ said Clark, ‘we need bills approved for the manufacture and deployment of the new Peacemaker missiles—’

  ‘I know you like that name, Judge—Peacemaker—but I don’t think it’ll fly,’ Meese chuckled. ‘The President wants to call MX the Peacekeeper.’

  ‘Just as long as it does the job.’ Clark stood, walked around his desk and sat on the corner. ‘As I was saying, Roy, what’s hanging in the balance is the development and deployment of America’s defenses into the future. Congress is baulking at the funds required for the new Bigeye binary gas weapon. And we need money to arm the Contras so they can help us stop the spread of communism in Central America. But those peaceniks in Europe are convincing everyone, even the folks at home, that Moscow’s evil intent is a figment of this administration’s imagination. People seem to have forgotten about Stalin, the Red Army’s push through Europe, the Cuban missile crisis. We’re being blamed for the arms race. But you understand that, Roy. From what you’ve written here, your analysis of the European peace movement, you see it with a clarity that has eluded even a lot of the folks Americans have elected to protect them.’

  The National Security Advisor flicked through the paper in his hand. ‘Ah yes, here it is . . . You wrote in your analysis that we need “a unifying calamity to regalvanize international antipathy toward the Soviet menace”. Beautiful. In one sentence you’ve managed to clarify and focus months of internal National Security Council confusion. “A unifying calamity”,’ he repeated, nodding and smiling.

  ‘There’s a lot at stake,’ said Meese. ‘No less than security, peace, freedom. Recently, at a meeting of the full National Security Council, President Reagan gave us a vision to work toward—a missile shield encircling America and her allies. We think it will capture the nation’s imagination—a purely defensive shield to protect our loved ones against incoming missiles. It’ll be called the Strategic Defense Initiative—SDI. But if it’s to work, we’re going to need the Russians to take their intermediate-range missiles out of the Warsaw Pact countries. Those damn things fly too fast. An intercontinental ballistic missile gives you roughly thirty minutes from launch to warhead detonation, but, depending on the target, it’s down to a handful of minutes with intermediate-range missiles—too quick for any shield. The only way we’ll get Moscow to take their missiles out is if we get our missiles in. And the peace movement is our biggest impediment to making that happen.

  ‘Now, as you know, our Pershing II IRBMs are scheduled for deployment on West German soil in December. With the level of disquiet out there, we have no confidence that the deployment will go forward as scheduled. We’ve had a number of back channel conversations with our NATO allies and the whole deal is looking shaky.’

  ‘Your paper helps us formulate a clear campaign to achieve the President’s dream—a world at peace,’ said Clark. ‘The question for us now is how to put your strategy into practice. You don’t make any suggestions. I see in your record that back in the navy you were counterintelligence. Do you have any thoughts of a more practical nature that you chose not to commit to paper?’

  Garret’s heart was racing. As an analyst at the NSA, he was party to secret information, but mostly he had no idea how the fragments fitted into the overall picture. It was just information. But what he was hearing now encompassed the world. These guys sat on top of the mountain with an unobstructed view over the whole.

  ‘No, sir, I haven’t,’ he replied, then hurriedly added, ‘but whatever the incident, it would have to engender public outrage, even horror.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Clark, who had left the corner of his desk and was moving about his office, arms folded.

  ‘Something like an attack on the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin wouldn’t do it.’ Despite what he’d said, Garret had in fact given the notion of ‘a unifying calamity’ a lot of thought. The pretext under which the United States had committed itself heart and soul to the Vietnam War wouldn’t be enough in this instance. ‘A nuclear warhead accident might do the trick. That would outrage the world, but the Soviets are too careful to let that happen. As I’m sure you know, they’re actually a very conservative leadership . . .’

  ‘We agree with you wholeheartedly,’ said Clark, massaging his chin thoughtfully. He walked slowly into an adjoining room and around an antique Civil War-era conference table, before coming back and picking up where he had left off. ‘I’m even more confident now that we’re in complete accord. How about you, Ed?’

  ‘Yes, I think we’ve found our guy,’ agreed the counselor.

  ‘“Take now your son, your only son, whom you love . . . and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.” Does that quote mean anything to you, Roy?’ asked the National Security Advisor.

  ‘Genesis 22:2, sir. It’s God commanding Abraham. It’s about sacrifice.’

  ‘Do you think the nation would be prepared to make a sacrifice?’ asked Clark.

  Before Garret could ans
wer, there was a soft knock on the door. It opened and a bald head ringed with a thatch of white hair filled the gap. Garret had only seen this face on a wall in Langley. It was William Casey, director of the CIA.

  ‘How we doing here?’ Casey asked.

  ‘Come on in, Bill, and meet Roy Garret. He penned that analysis on the peace movement you read earlier.’

  ‘Really?’ said Casey, stepping into the room. ‘Let me shake your hand, son.’

  Garret stood and they shook.

  ‘NSA, huh?’ said the CIA director, looking Garret up and down. ‘If you ever want a real job, Roy, there’s always room in the Company for a bright young man with big ideas.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Garret.

  ‘Well,’ said Casey, addressing Meese and Clark. ‘You two old soldiers ready? We’ve got a meeting with the President in ten. Time to hustle.’

  Ed Meese got up off the couch and reached for his suit jacket, plucking it from the coat stand. Clark’s was hanging off a hook on the back of the door.

  ‘It’s been great to meet you, Roy,’ said Clark as another round of handshaking ensued. ‘We’ll speak again soon.’

  ‘Looking forward to it, sir,’ said Garret.

  ‘Take care of this man for us, Hank. He’s valuable government property,’ said Meese.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ replied Hank.

  ‘Oh, and Roy,’ said Clark, pausing mid-stride, ‘why don’t you stay around for a while longer. I’d like you to have a word or two with Des. He has a few thoughts he’s going to take you through.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Garret.

  The National Security Advisor gave a final wave as he closed the door behind Meese.

  ‘Please . . .’ said Bilson, stepping into the vacuum left by Clark’s and Meese’s departure and motioning at Garret to retake his seat on the couch. ‘So tell me, Roy, what do you know about commercial aviation?’

  January 3, 2012

  Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. Yuudai Suzuki lay dying, monitors beeping metronomically to the rhythm of his last moments. His body was light, consumed by cancer, yet he felt heavy, so heavy. His long bony fingers were like sticks of dried bamboo. They held a letter—stamped and addressed—which had been written three weeks ago when he still had the strength to guide a pen. In it was everything he had agreed on with Curtis, everything that needed to be said.

  Ah, Curtis, you beat me to it, he thought. Warm the sake. I will be with you soon.

  A nurse entered the room. She inspected the equipment, read the chart and departed. She never acknowledged Yuudai. He was a DNR and therefore her relationship was solely with the machinery, not the patient. It was the machinery that governed her responses. If the beeping became a continuous drone, she would simply turn off the machines and pull the sheet over his sightless eyes. This is what happens, Yuudai told himself, when your line ends with you; when you are all that is left.

  He gathered his strength, lifted his head from the pillow and raised his hand, the one holding an old, creased newspaper clipping, yellowed like his skin. His fingers shook, the clipping fluttering like a frightened bird. He managed to smooth it on the bedclothes without tearing it, and slide it into the envelope. He knew the article by heart. It had been cut from the Hokkaido Shimbun, the local newspaper, in September 1983—a follow-up on the crash of the airliner, a human interest piece. The headline read, ‘The Tragic Survivors’. The article discussed the plight of husbands who had lost wives, wives who had lost husbands, of brothers separated from their sisters by death, and best friends who would never meet again. Mostly, though, it focused on a girl, little Akiko, whose mother had been one of the passengers. The story included a photo taken at Anchorage airport shortly before the flight boarded. It showed Akiko asleep in the arms of her mother with the husband standing beside her. Both parents were smiling. It was a photo that belonged in a private album, or on the fridge, or even in a wallet. Instead it was on the front page of a newspaper, highlighting the anguish of loss.

  Yuudai closed his eyes and that awful night came to life. The blips on the screen. The panic in the radar room; the horror that came with the realization that the blip was a 747, a civilian plane, 200 miles inside Soviet airspace, heading toward Sakhalin Island and its hornet’s nest of fighter planes.

  ‘I could do nothing,’ he whispered.

  The machines beeped.

  Yuudai squeezed shut his eyes so tightly that they burned, but the pictures and the sounds remained in his head as he saw the 747 once again dive from 35,000 feet. What must it have been like inside that plane, rushing toward the sea, death accelerating toward them, the airframe screaming?

  The machines beeped.

  The blip flickered. And then it disappeared. It was on his screen and then it wasn’t.

  ‘Airman Suzuki. Airman!’

  Yuudai was suddenly aware that he was being spoken to. He turned and announced, ‘They’re going to make it. They’ve got a chance.’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ said a lieutenant colonel, an American.

  ‘Yes, we do. Didn’t you see?’

  ‘I didn’t see anything,’ the colonel insisted.

  The metronomic beep was now a continuous tone, triggering a silent alarm at the nurses’ station. Yuudai’s last breath leaked away like a slow puncture.

  The nurse walked into the room, her efficient steps squeaking on the linoleum. She checked Yuudai’s pulse, switched off the machinery and noted the time of death on his chart. As she pulled the sheet over his face, a letter slipped out of the folds and dropped onto the floor.

  June 7, 1983

  Sheraton Hotel, Seventh Avenue, New York City, New York. Roy Garret was taking a breather, looking down on pedestrians from a fifth-story window, having a smoke. This wasn’t the hotel that Korean Air Lines used for flight crews, and neither did any other carrier, which was just the way he wanted it. Most important, it was central, comfortable and discreet.

  He drew back on his cigarette, cheeks hollowed, as he watched a woman with three children and an armful of shopping bags brave the afternoon traffic snarl. They made a run for it across Seventh Avenue. A cab screeched to a halt, but not before it hit one of the kids and knocked him to the road. A horn blared, distant, beyond the double glazing. Garret raised an eyebrow. The fact that the sound reached him at all way up here was surprising.

  He glanced over his shoulder. The air in the suite’s dining room was thick with smoke. Korean Air Lines 747 captain Chun Byung-in had started to pace. First Officer Sohn Dong-hwin and Flight Engineer Kim Eui-dong sat hunched over the dining room table holding their heads in their hands. Kim was making an odd humming noise, like catgut before it snaps.

  In the adjoining lounge room, a couple of spooks from the Korean Central Intelligence Agency were sitting on the couch, chain-smoking and flipping through magazines on the coffee table in front of them. The one named Pak was fat. The other, Lee, was rake thin. Both had faces flat as ironing boards.

  The mission lead, Colonel Eric Hamilton—a retired USAF full colonel now working for the CIA—sat at a writing desk in one corner of the dining room reviewing his notes, the overhead light bouncing off his polished bald head.

  Suddenly, there was an unexpected knock at the door. Everyone froze. The KCIA agent Pak, the fat one, slid his hand to the pistol in his shoulder holster. A ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign had been placed on the external door handle. Calls had been made to reception and housekeeping to make sure it was heeded. Watergate was still fresh in everyone’s mind and there were parallels: they were in a hotel room; they were talking conspiracy; the trail led to the highest levels of government. Garret went to the door, tensing for whatever was behind it, and threw it open.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Hank,’ he said, breathing hard.

  ‘Who were you expecting? Miss February?’

  The KCIA guy with the trigger finger shrugged and said something to his compatriot. They shared a laugh followed by a pack of Lucky Sevens, each plucking out a cigarette.

 
Garret led Hank to the privacy of a connecting suite for a hurried conference.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he whispered.

  ‘Always good to see you, too. How’s it going?’

  ‘It’s going well, all things considered.’

  ‘Considering what?’

  ‘Considering what we’re asking them to do.’

  ‘Which group do we have here?’ Hank enquired.

  ‘Group Delta—I think these are the guys we want.’

  ‘Are they putting up any resistance?’

  ‘Some.’

  ‘But they know they have to do it, right?’

  Garret nodded. As citizens of the Republic of Korea, what choice did they have? The Soviet empire was close, hanging over them like smog. North Korea was next door. And over their back fence were the millions of commies in the People’s Liberation Army itching to help the North have another crack at moving in. No doubt about it, the ROK was in the middle of a pretty crummy neighborhood. If you could relocate, you would. So of course Chun Byung-in and his crew would do it, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t have to be convinced.

  Hank followed Garret back into the dining room. He chose a chair next to Hamilton, spun it around and straddled it.

  There were no handouts, just slides, and they’d be destroyed at the conclusion of the briefing. A map of the mission area was projected onto one wall. Clearly identified were the landmasses of Alaska, Japan, the Korean Peninsula, and the Soviet territories of Kamchatka and Sakhalin Island. Threading them all neatly in international airspace was Romeo 20, one of the five commercial aviation routes connecting South East Asia with Alaska. The normal course taken by aircraft flying from Anchorage to Seoul along Romeo 20 was marked. A dotted line indicated another course, one that diverged from Romeo 20 and over-flew the USSR on a course roughly parallel to Romeo 20.