Forrester was looking at Ronnie. “You’re right—I had my mind on something else.”
Spode shrugged into the slicker and Forrester turned to him. “Pay attention before you go—there was a reason I felt I ought to be the one to talk to the Agency people. If we call in the Agency we’ve got to do it discreetly and make sure the Agency keeps the lid on it.”
“I’m not sure I get that. We don’t know what Belsky’s orders are but I’d say the odds against tomorrow were damned high. We may need to call out the troops before this is over—what do you mean keep a lid on it?”
“I mean our primary objective is to get to Belsky and neutralize him and get these undercover people of his out of this country.”
“Go on.”
“If we put everything we know in the lap of the authorities they’ll put out a net—and you can only use a net when you can afford to have a lot of innocent fish swim into it. But if that happens the word will get out. You see?”
“You’d better go a little slower for us country boys.”
“If the public finds out the Soviets are intriguing in our own back yard the result could be catastrophic. We’ve got to keep the Cold War cold, but it won’t stay cold if we start a full-scale witch hunt. Another round of McCarthyist paranoia. If we can avoid that we must.”
“But maybe we can’t. They’re planning something big for tomorrow night and it’s all bound to come out.”
“Not from what Les said. Remember? ‘The world will know what happened but it can’t be allowed to find out how it happened. If the truth came out you’d have a global war.’ All right—first implication, if the truth doesn’t come out we won’t have a global war.”
“Are you saying it’s better to let them go ahead with what they’re doing than to stop them?”
“Not at all, Top. I’m saying we want to stop them without anyone knowing we’ve stopped them—without anyone knowing there was anything that had to be stopped. We don’t want to crowd Belsky into a corner where he’s got no choice. If this news gets out it’ll wreck whatever slim chance we may have to negotiate a withdrawal of these people in secret. If we can reach Belsky before tomorrow night we need a bargaining position and we won’t have one if the public is onto it. We’ve got to leave Belsky an exit—convince him we won’t expose this thing if he’ll back away and get his people out of the country without attracting attention. When he sees the alternative—a likely war between our countries—he’ll have to abort his program and pull his people out. And the public never needs to know a thing about it.”
“It’s a contradiction,” Spode said. “It won’t work unless we can reach Belsky, and we can’t reach Belsky unless we get the whole world out there hunting for him.”
“We’ve got to try it, Top. That’s why I wanted to be the one to talk to your people at the Agency. They’ve got to realize the urgent need to keep this under wraps.”
“They’ll be hard to convince. I mean, what the KGB wants is to keep it covered up and if we played along with that we’d be accused of talking treason. In this game the first rule is never do what the other guy wants you to do.”
“Once Belsky knows we’re onto him it’s no longer a question of what he wants us to do.” Forrester shook his head. “I could get the President’s ear, Top, but if there’s any chance at all of our neutralizing Belsky it’s better if the President doesn’t know a thing about it until after it’s done.”
“It’s a hell of a long shot you want to try.”
“It’s the only shot I’ve got, isn’t it?”
Spode’s eyes widened slowly. “Now I see what you’re doing. You don’t want me to make any phone calls at all, do you? Because right now the Agency only knows Belsky’s here, they don’t know anything else about it, and you’d just as soon it stayed right inside this room because if you can reach Belsky and get him to call if off then nobody at all has to know about it. Nobody. You’d rather never have the President find out at all. The President or anybody else outside of you and me.”
Forrester nodded. In the hall mirror he glimpsed his own face and saw the hard glitter of the yellow-flecked eyes. “You had to see that for yourself, Top. The Agency is already looking for Belsky and maybe they’ll find him and maybe they won’t. I don’t think we’d improve the chances of finding him by telling the Agency what we know. It would increase the risk of exposure without increasing the chance of success.”
“But you’re ready to let me walk out the door anyhow and call them if I want to, if I think it has to be done. Why? Because I’ve got Les’s gun in my pocket?”
“No. Because it has to be your decision, not mine.”
“I don’t see that,” Spode said.
“If you thought you could head off a world war by walking out that door, and if I told you not to walk out that door, and if I told you I was right and you were wrong and by walking out that door you would be starting a world war, not stopping one, and if after all that you were still dead certain you could prevent war by walking out that door, what would you do?”
“Hell, I’d walk out the door.”
“Then if I meant to keep you here against your own judgment I’d have to kill you, wouldn’t I. Because if you thought the fate of the world was at stake you’d take every chance to get away and spread the alarm. The only way I could insure your silence permanently would be to kill you.”
Spode was watching him with fascinated alarm. Forrester said, “It simply isn’t in me to kill you, Top, and that’s why it has to be your own decision.”
There was a long interval with the rain clattering on the porch steps and thunder crashing around the house and finally Top said, “Christ people are always after me to make the stinking decisions.”
“It’s up to you. I can’t decide for you.” Forrester walked away from him, toward Ronnie.
Spode said, “There’s the alternative. Bring Ronnie around. She’s the only thing we have to get close to the rest of them. Try ammonia. Slap her if you have to.”
Forrester looked up and saw Spode belting the slicker on.
Forrester’s head dipped. “You’re going, then.”
“Not to blow the whistle.”
“Then where?”
“Outside. On the hill. I’ll dig a hole for Les. If I bury him before it quits raining the storm should wash away the signs of digging. All right?”
Forrester inhaled deeply and slowly, let it out tightly and said, “All right.”
Chapter Nineteen
Lieutenant Colonel Fred Winslow left his underground headquarters at four o’clock Saturday afternoon and said to the First Lieutenant in the Outer office, “Just going to have a look around. Page me on the PA system if I’m needed.”
“Yes, sir. You’re not going off the base.”
“That’s right,” Winslow replied dismally and went out into the corridor. To his left it sloped upward toward the above-ground entrance a hundred yards and two forty-five-degree bends away. He turned to the right, into the long ringing concrete tunnel that went nearly three hundred yards to the hub from which a spider of side tunnels gave access to the several ROG commands and beyond them the silos. Enlisted men in hard hats saluted him as they went by, holding their ID badges ready for the checkpoints. It was hermetically cool and dry but sweat rolled freely along his flushed face and dark circles stained the armpits of his shirt. Fatigue was gritty in his eyes; he walked flatfooted, his physical exhaustion compounded by the strain. Twenty-six and a half hours yet to go; he popped a go-pill into his mouth, knowing it would make his tongue dry and screw his nerves to a jittery tautness, knowing he would need more pills before it was done, knowing he would survive them (if he survived nothing else) because gradually he was learning that he was capable of doing and suffering things he could barely imagine.