Douglass said, “You could hang meat in here.”
“I know. Mr. Burgess likes it cold.”
“Look, it’s on the urgent side.”
“Yeah. You wanted Nicole Lawrence?” The man picked up his telephone and pushed buttons. “Hi, Gene. Nicole back there? … Well did she come in yet? … Guy out here wants to talk to her, says it’s real important. Okay, if she isn’t, then she isn’t.” He hung up and tipped his head back. “She came in a little while ago but she’s not here just now. You want to wait?”
“Not particularly. No idea where she went?”
“You might try the coffee shop around the corner on Stone.”
Douglass left without thanking him and walked down to the corner. There was a motel coffee shop down the block, the only one in sight; he found Nicole at the counter brooding over a glass of tea full of crushed ice. When she saw him in the mirror she made a face and spoke without turning her head. “One if by land and two if by sea.”
“Let’s go.”
“My if we aren’t manly and domineering this morning. I’m busy.”
“Come on, we’ve got things to do.”
Nicole sighed and turned her small creased face toward him. Since when has anything had any importance for you before eleven o’clock in the morning? Whence cometh thy serious mien?”
Douglass dropped a quarter on the counter and took her elbow. When he had steered her outside she laughed aloud. “The waitress must have taken that for a lovers’ quarrel.”
“My car’s around the corner,” he said and took her up the walk, still gripping her arm. “We’ve got a little disciplinary problem and that’s supposed to be your department.”
“Has Fred Winslow been wetting his bed or what?”
“We’ll talk about it in the car.” They turned the corner and he went around to the driver’s side without opening the curb-side door for her. When Nicole got into the Volkswagen she said, “Someday you really should take a few lessons in elementary etiquette.”
“I always adjust my manners to the company I’m in.” He turned the key and the engine started with a pop and a hum.
“Where are we going?”
“To the courthouse.”
She nodded. “I thought we’d get around to that—it’s time we straightened her out. You’d have thought she’d have learned her lesson the first time.”
“Apparently not.”
“And those who do not learn from history,” Nicole drawled, “are doomed to repeat it. But this time we could hardly leave him behind a bowling alley with his head crushed in.”
He circled the block and made the left turn into Stone Avenue. “Actually it’s a little late in the day for her personal entanglements to matter. If it were just that I’d let it ride. But somebody’s got to get to Forrester and persuade him to quit meddling at Davis Monthan for a while.”
“She doesn’t know about the activation yet, does she?”
“No, I tried to reach her but she was at Forrester’s ranch and they must have taken the phone off the hook.”
They went through the railroad underpass and got caught in the coagulation of morning traffic between Main and Pennington. Nicole said, “I wish to hell this Dangerfield bastard had stayed home.”
“So do I. But we can’t do anything about it.”
“Do you think they’ll really go through with it? Or is it just part of some international bluff they’re trying to pull off?”
“I have no idea. You’re supposed to be the political expert—what do you think?”
“I think we’re in a son of a bitch of a mess,” she said. She stretched indolently on the seat and adjusted herself with her legs loosely apart. “I guess we asked for it. You can’t stand in the middle of the freeway and not expect to get hit by a truck.”
He fished out a cigarette. “We’ll just have to do the job and get out.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“They’ll have to get us out afterward. It would be too embarrassing for them if we were left behind and discovered and forced to talk.”
“I thought of that,” she said, “but let’s face it, if they want us to start pushing buttons it’s got to mean the big war and by the time it’s over with I can’t seriously believe there’ll be much left of Tucson but a big hot hole in the ground.”
“No. That’s what I thought at first but it doesn’t make sense that way. Figure it out. The targets have to be one of two kinds—Western or Communist. If the targets are in the Soviet bloc it could only be for one reason—Moscow wants the United States to start shooting first, so that Moscow has an excuse to ‘retaliate.’ But I don’t buy that because it’d be just too high a price to pay. We’ve got fifty-four warheads in this complex of silos and even if all of them landed on reasonably uninhabited areas the fallout would wipe out half the population of the Soviet Union. No, I think we eliminate that.”
“What about Europe? West Germany?”
“I can’t conceive of any reason to bomb Europe, can you? And the prevailing winds are westerly so you’d have the same problem—fallout over Russia. What’s left? The third-world countries? Israel? None of them’s big enough to justify using nuclear ICBMs.”
“You’ve just about ruled out everything.”
“It narrows down to home base. They’re going to have to shoot at targets in the United States. NORAD, maybe, the big SAC bases, the Pentagon, that kind of thing. It’ll leave the nuclear subs and a good deal of other firepower but it’ll damage this country’s military strength enough to discourage the United States from shooting at Russia, because the United States would lose. Besides, NORAD will see the missiles coming in, they’ll know where they were launched from—they’ll know they’re not Russian missiles. They’ll be confused; they won’t know who to hit back at. What can they do? Bombard Tucson with hydrogen warheads?”
“Why not?”
“Once these missiles are fired Tucson’s arsenal will be exhausted. Why bomb it then? No, all they can do is pick up the pieces and start an investigation to find out what happened down here. By that time we’ll all have to be out of the country—probably in Mexico on our way back to Russia. It’s either that or kill all of us and Dangerfield’s only one man, he can’t wipe out three hundred of us.”
“Once they get us all out of the country and in one group they can kill us easily enough.”
“But once we’re that far they’d have no reason to. As soon as we’re beyond the reach of the American authorities we’re no longer a threat to Moscow.”
“You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you? But I still don’t see it the way you do. I still feel like a punchcard that’s been programmed to do a job without knowing why. We’re supposed to think it’s necessary just because a stranger comes in and says it’s necessary.”
“It’s not a hoax. I checked with Moscow—Dangerfield’s legitimate.”
“I never thought he wasn’t. That’s not the point.”
They had crawled two blocks in the traffic and a truck in front of them was gnashing its gears; they got stuck at the light.
In a different tone Nicole said, “I’m frightened out of my wits.” She turned and reached across the seat and put her hand on his thigh. “Ramsey?”
“Stop it. Christ you’ve got a one-track mind.”
The light changed and he put the car in gear and whipped it brutally out into the left-hand lane, nearly clipping the tailgate of the stalled truck. The car behind him screeched and he heard the angry yelp of its horn. When he was clear of the traffic snarl he floored the accelerator and took the Pennington Avenue turn too fast, clipping the curb and rocking the car violently on its springs. Nicole was laughing unpleasantly and when he pulled into the courthouse parking area he slapped her viciously across the face.
She stopped laughing but her mouth was still twisted with mockery; it turned itself inward now; she was bitter with herself. “Of all the impotent bastards in the world I had to pick you to fall for.”
“One of these days I’ll ream you out,” he said in a weary mutter. “You God damned supercilious bitch.”