Several of Gunther’s guys at Ent had ridden herd on the boffins and eggheads who had built the A-bomb back in the 1940s. Security on the Manhattan Project had been a nightmare, half the top men were foreigners and the only common language at Los Alamos was the fiendishly convoluted equations the ‘mad professors’ were prone to leave in open sight on their big blackboards. The SAGE project was not quite that bad; for one thing it was an American-Canadian deal — the British had their own version, a bargain basement air defence system called ROTOR — and for another the main contractors were paranoid about preventing their commercial competitors stealing a march on them. However, there was commercial security and there was national security. When a man like Carl Drinkwater admitted that he did not understand what had gone wrong with SAGE last night; that automatically became a matter of utmost national security.
Paul Gunther had already talked to his bosses in Washington and the Pentagon was sending a ‘hit squad’ to Colorado as soon as US airspace was reopened. They would crawl over the Burroughs Corporation men, their families, friends, and anybody who had had the misfortune to bump into a team member on the street since 1950. They would be all over the poor suckers like a bad smell for days and weeks.
Especially, Max Calman.
“With Mr Drinkwater in the base infirmary that makes you the Burroughs Corporation’s senior on site systems analyst, Mr Calman?” This the older man half-asked, half-stated in a level, growling voice.
Two Military Policemen remained in the room. If the crazy son of a bitch wanted to beat up on somebody else he could try his luck with the two MPs. Paul Gunther had a creaking back and several small pieces of shrapnel he had acquired on Guadalcanal periodically tweaking here and there in places he rarely discussed in mixed company.
“I was number three on the team,” Max Calman replied dully. His face was sallow and his eyes oddly dead. “Solomon is Carl’s deputy.”
“That would be Mr Kaufmann,” Gunther mused aloud, “who was called away to New Mexico a couple of days ago?”
“Yeah. His old man died.”
Paul Gunther hated coincidences.
“You weren’t scheduled to be on the base tonight?”
“My wife thought she was going into labour yesterday afternoon. It was a false alert. You already know that.”
“I know nothing, Mr Calman. I only know what you’ve told me. I’d verify what you’ve told me with your superior, Mr Drinkwater, but he’s…”
“Yeah, yeah. He’s in the hospital! When are you going to let me get on with my work?”
“Burroughs Corporation handed over the latest system modifications and the Air Force signed off on the technical acceptance trials two months ago. You and your colleagues are here in a purely ‘supporting role’. On call. I am unaware any member of the ADC staff has put out a call for your ‘support’?”
The Burroughs man scowled.
“That’s because they’re fucking idiots!”
Paul Gunther had been informed that the rest of Carl Drinkwater’s team had indeed been ‘called in’. Vehicles carrying armed MPs had been sent to collect every member of the team, most of whom were already at work in the Air Control Centre. NORAD’s hierarchy badly needed to get its story straight before the President started asking questions that neither the Air Force top brass nor the Chief Executives of the nation’s premier international computer corporations could presently satisfactorily answer.
He sighed.
“For the time being you will be held in military custody pending ongoing investigation into the attempted murder of Mr Drinkwater. Under the emergency judicial protocols determining the conduct of our business at this place you are not, at this time, entitled to seek legal counsel and you will not be permitted to speak to, or to communicate in any way with any member of your family or with any of your work colleagues until further notice. That is all.” Paul Gunther nodded at the two MPs.
Max Calman would have to explain himself to the Special Investigations Branch and the Federal Bureau of Investigations agents due at Ent Air Force Base later that morning.
He watched the analyst being led away, suddenly feeling very old.
His wife, Rosalita, and his two boys, Paul junior and Theo, aged nine and seven respectively, lived twelve miles from Ent Air Force Base. He had married late, almost as an afterthought and to his astonishment, found peace of mind and enduring joy in his marriage. When the kids had come along he had felt complete. Last night while the ICBMs were coming in over the Arctic he had prayed for the first time in his life — really prayed to a merciful God he desperately hoped existed — for the lives of his family. He did not care about Seattle or Buffalo or Chicago, Houston or Boston; he just wanted Rosalita and his sons to be protected from all evil.
Thus far God had been merciful.
Chapter 23
Mrs Nordstrom had brought two chairs out onto the porch so that the young people could sit down out of the rain which occasionally splashed, windblown onto the top step up to the house.
Neither Dan Brenckmann nor Gretchen Betancourt had spoken many words in the last hour. She had held his hand and together they had stared out into the darkness, listening to the rustling of the trees, and the flurrying of the squalls that swept across the otherwise peaceful Connecticut countryside. The pre-dawn twilight was brightening dully beneath a leaden, threatening overcast that perfectly matched their moods, thoughts and broken hopes for the future.
The man’s brooding was for the family he must have lost in Boston and Buffalo. There was no news on the radio about the West Coast other than the old news about Seattle and some place with the unlikely name of ‘Chilliwack’ near Vancouver just north of the Canadian border in British Columbia. His kid brother Sam — ‘kid brother’ was a misnomer, Sam was half-a-head taller than either of his ‘big’ brothers — had been a beach bum at Santa Monica the last time he had written to Ma and Pa. That was months ago. As for Walt junior; he was torpedo officer on a nuclear submarine, he could literally be anywhere. Here in Connecticut the World had ended with a whimper not a bang.
“You never said where your folks are, Gretchen?” Dan asked.
The twilight was now on the cusp of a dreary New England autumnal dawn.
“They go to Honolulu in the fall lately,” the woman replied, her voice was distracted and vague which was utterly unlike her. “I’m engaged to my cousin,” she added in a similar tone, “well, my cousin two or three times removed. It was sort of agreed between our families about eighteen months ago. His father is a banker. Joseph’s mother is cousin of Eleanor Roosevelt’s. Joseph’s family owns an estate in the Hamptons. My father has known Joseph’s father since before the war,” she corrected this, “before the forty-five war, that is. Our mothers can’t stand the sight of each other but I’m sure they’ll get used to the idea once they have two or three grandchildren to bounce on their knees.”