They had been standing on the balcony of the disused control tower of the abandoned airfield at Glendale, outside Phoenix. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had stuck out his arm and pointed into the hazy distance to where a very big, virtually featureless blockhouse shimmered in the dusty haze.
‘The Air Force spent billions of dollars building air defense centers like that one before the Cuban Missiles War. That one wasn’t up and running that night but most of the others were; we shot down a whole slew of bombers but we couldn’t do a damned thing about the ICBMs coming in over the North Pole. Nobody told the American people that, although I think more of them figured it out than the politicians give credit.’ The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee had been dressed in a dirty boiler suit and his hands were ingrained with oil and grease. ‘The time is coming when being too close to The Big Cigar isn’t going to be a good thing. I’ll be fine. But this is the last time you and I will do business. Expect to get a call from the Air Force Office of Manpower Management before the end of the month. They’ll ask you to account for Project Homeward Bound; you just tell them whatever you want to tell them. They’ll take my boys out of your hands whatever you do, so don’t fight it. I know there’s nothing left for you up in Chicago but what you don’t know about combat fatigue and all its related stress disorders ain’t worth a mess of beans. The Air Force is changing. You and me both will be better out of it.’
She had left Phoenix in a daze with a letter in her hand, over LeMay’s signature granting her an honorable discharge with the substantive rank of Colonel, and for about a day she had not known what to do with the rest of her life.
Home had been a claustrophobic billet in a prefabricated Officers’ Accommodation Hut at Ent Air Force Base at Colorado Springs, where she also had an office. She had briefly contemplated going back to Ent; if only to ensure that her files were properly accounted for but if LeMay was right those files had, or were about to cease to be her files and any attempt to review them one last time might later be cited as evidence that she had something to hide.
She had no real friends in Colorado and her ‘team’ of counselors, military and civilian had been wasting away in recent months.
Going back to the West Coast had seemed like the obvious thing to do; that was not to say she honestly believed it was for the best.
Nevertheless, here she was back in Berkeley.
It would probably have been a little less scary if she had had the courage to wire ahead to Nathan Zabriski; although only a little less scary. Her last visit to Berkeley had left her confused, battered and mistrustful of her instincts and renewing contact with a man young enough to be her son was… reckless. Stupid also, possibly the manifestation of some desperate middle-aged existential crisis; exactly the sort of thing she would once have despised in another woman of a certain age.
Now as the cab drove away down Hearst Avenue she stood beside her big, clumsy case on the sidewalk in front of Nathan’s house asking herself if she was about to be completely humiliated. It was no consolation to know that if she ended up looking foolish, not to mention very sad, it would be absolutely her own fault. The October War had neatly bookended one phase of her life; and last week’s surreal meeting with Curtis LeMay another.
In retrospect she know realized the work on which she had been engaged since the October War must obviously have been some kind of off the record ‘command initiative’, one of LeMay’s private projects which was unlikely to bear close scrutiny when the commander in question moved on so he had, like the shrewd operator he was — notwithstanding his gung ho public image — started cleaning house before the axe fell. A lesser man would have left her — and presumably, many others serving in similar ‘less than wholly official’ roles — hanging; but not all great men were callous bastards. Even Curtis LeMay’s enemies had never accused him of failing to look after his boys, and it now seemed, his girls.
Fifty-one years of age, divorced, no job.
This was what starting over again must be like!
If it was daunting it was also actually… liberating.
If nothing else she was her own person again, and while the world might not exactly be her oyster she was free of practically every professional shackle which until a few days ago had dragged at her feet. Even if she had not been obsessed; no, that was wrong, she was preoccupied not obsessed with Nathan, she would have come back to California.
Apart from anything else if she had not come back she would always have wondered…
The war had changed California; how could it not have changed the state? That was a given. Every time she had swung through it in the last year she had tasted hope and optimism in the air, an absence of the angst and bitterness that was rife everywhere else and besides, there were big, prestigious schools of medicine in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. As soon as she found someplace to park her suitcase she planned to start paying house calls.
“Caro!”
The woman started with alarm.
“Is that you?”
The breathless call had come from behind her, some way down the street.
She swung around.
Nathan Zabriski had been running; he was dressed in shorts, a sweat-soaked t-shirt, his face was red and blotchy and he was gasping for breath as he eased down to a stop just out of arm’s length from her.
“I got sacked,” she explained ruefully. “Well, retired, anyhow. General LeMay as good as told me to make myself scarce. There are people I know at the San Francisco School of Medicine, former students and colleagues. I thought I’d start my job hunting in the Bay Area.”
The man was more out of puff than he had imagined.
He sucked in air, held up an apologetic hand.
Caroline Konstantis knew that before the October War Nathan had been a middle distance runner in the Air Force, not quite Olympic standard because of the demands of his ‘day job’ but capable of running a mile in around four minutes ten seconds. He had let that go after the war, only got back into training that spring.
Nathan had bent over and rested his hands on his knees while he recovered.
Having measured a street circuit that was, give or take a hundred yards, three miles he tried to run it a dozen times a week, mixing short sprints with long punishing sections where he focused on maintaining his stride length. Running efficiently, racing was the name of the game. Enrolled as a pre-college night student he had started training at Berkeley a couple of days a week and had put his name down for the fifteen hundred meters qualifying event on Wednesday, ahead of the main Track and Field Meet on Saturday. It was over three years since he had raced in anger, he felt strong and quick, although when he pushed himself it hurt more than he recollected from before; and the thing about actual racing was that you never actually knew how you matched up with the others until the starter’s gun went off.
“Because of me?” He asked, straightening.
Caroline shook her head.
“No. Yes, I don’t know. We should probably talk about that, but… Look, you’ll be hearing from the Air Force’s Office of Personnel Management in due course. My program has been shut down. I don’t know if it makes any difference but I’m no longer your doctor.”
Nathan had recovered.
He wiped perspiration from his face.
“I didn’t know if you’d want to see me again,” he confessed sheepishly.