Raoul Walback, of Central Intelligence, said, “I’ll buy that. As you know, all our reports from escapees show stepped-up production in the past eighteen months. Particularly in the Angara River area near Irkutsk, where their new hydroelectric plant is operating. There’s another new plutonium complex on the Ob, near Novosibirsk. Big. Real big.”
They absorbed Walback’s words with respect. Raoul was Princeton, had served in Paris headquarters of the OSS during World War II, and rejoined the government during the Korean War, after OSS became CIA. Espionage and intelligence on a high level were more fascinating to Raoul than finance. It had been easy for him to make easy money. He was unmarried, but he too had personal considerations. He was a rich and thoroughly civilized man, a perfectionist in his manner of living, and he hoped to remain that way.
They talked through the lunch hour and into the afternoon. They brought into their discussion every fact—military, political, and economic—known in their departments. They had been chosen for this job because of imagination plus background. Because they were all young, as years are now measured, they were sometimes considered brash in a military community where a ripe age is often mistaken for wisdom. Their forecasts at times had proved uncannily accurate—so accurate as to embarrass certain of their elders and superiors with contrary views. They received encouragement and backing from a few ranking officers, a few aggressive and inquisitive members of the congressional Armed Services committees, and, on rare occasions, from the White House itself. Their powerful friends regarded them as a useful catalytic agent in a compound that preferred to settle down in an orderly and comfortable manner, the way a military organization should. The group dreamed up logical moves for the enemy to make, and stirred Washington to meet them. When the enemy made such a move, military or political, the Pentagon was already alerted. Sometimes the Kremlin crossed them up, and the Intentions Group was branded a wild-eyed crew of sensationalists, soothsayers, and worse. Yet their prophecies were reliable enough so they could not be ignored.
At last they talked themselves out, and Simmons, his face lined and weary, said he would try to sum up their conclusions. The Russian announcement, coming after several unusual years of peace, indicated another shift in policy, and perhaps a reshuffle of command. Russia’s tactics changed, but strategic objectives always remained the same. One group, while in command, might steer the Soviet ship-of-state on the tack of peace while other leaders, in the background, planned war. When progress towards world hegemony was no longer possible on the peace tack, the second crew took over and changed course. This was nothing new. It had happened before. The announcement indicated such a change. The H-bomb tests, probably unnecessary for scientific reasons, simply emphasized the warning, as when an angry man pounds the table. The warning, sinister as a rattlesnake’s whir, was to Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and Germany. It said: “Stand clear!” At the same time it was designed to spread fear and doubt in the United States, and encourage appeasement and dissension.
“But most important,” Simmons said, “is its effect on the Russian people. For a long time—ever since December of ’fifty-four when they cut down on civilian goods and increased the production of guided missiles and aircraft and nuclear weapons—it has been tough on the Russian people. Now they are heartened, and at the same time they are steeled for what is coming. They are told that this is what their sacrifices have accomplished. Now they need fear no one, and an end to their austerity is in sight. Since all their efforts and sacrifice have been for war production, the end can only mean an enforced peace, with the collapse of the Western alliance—or victory by arms.”
Simmons made two small marks on the pad before him, and crossed one out. “Since we haven’t knuckled under, not at the Summit or anywhere else, and since the alliance stands, they must proceed towards the other alternative.”
Raoul Walback was impatient. Walback often thought Simmons as prissy as an old maid aunt. “Why don’t you say war?” he challenged.
Perhaps because of his baldness, his weariness from the long session, Simmons suddenly looked sixty, rather than forty. “I hate the word!” he said. Simmons had spent all his adult life in study of Eastern Europe, which meant study of Russia principally. He had served two tours of duty at the embassy in Moscow. He explained, “You cannot know a people very well—any people—without finding much to admire in them. I hate to say war between my country and Russia but I have to say it. War. Oh, they haven’t made the decision yet. They’d much rather have us appease them. But that we’ll never do and so they move towards war. I don’t know why this insanity, just when things seemed to be shaking down.”
“If we’d had another depression,” said Walback, “war wouldn’t be necessary. I think they counted on a depression. We cut down on production of aircraft and guns, but we built roads and schools instead. We fooled ’em.”
Fromburg, who as usual had said little, and who was so inconspicuous it was hard to remember whether or not he attended meetings, spoke up. “I want to ask a question.” Fromburg was their skeptic. While others concocted adventures, military and political, for the enemy to attempt, Fromburg decided whether such moves were feasible. “Just one question—why war now?”
“I think I can answer that,” said Jesse Price. “It’s now—or never.”
Katharine Hume was surprised. The Air Force major had been sitting in with them for a month, but this was the first positive opinion he had volunteered. He had asked and answered questions, made statements of fact, but he had offered no opinions. The major kept three pipes on the desk in front of him and smoked them in rotation. Now he picked up number three, filled it, and continued. “‘Never’ will come on the day we have perfected the ICBM, and enough of them are emplaced and aimed so that our retaliation will be automatic—and nothing can stop it.”
ICBM meant Intercontinental Ballistics Missile. Speed: 8,000 miles an hour. Range: 5,000 miles with a thermonuclear warhead. Its aim could be pre-set, like that of a cannon, or it could be guided by radar stations on its path. Eventually its more intelligent siblings would take their own star sights and solve their own navigation problems. All of them, there in the conference room, knew that a prototype had been tested at Patrick Air Force Base on Cape Canaveral. It had soared up and out into space, down the range of islands, past San Salvador, past the Dominican Republic, past Puerto Rico, even past Ascension Island, the rock with an airstrip carved through its middle in the distant South Atlantic. This first ICBM had carried no payload, and like all new weapons it doubtless had bugs. But the bugs would be eliminated, and the ICBM, whose German mother was named V-2, was on the way. Katharine Hume couldn’t help asking, “How soon will never day come?”
Jesse Price frowned and his teeth clamped down on his pipestem as if determined to dam any careless flow of words. “I know,” he said hesitantly, “that all of us here are cleared for Top Secret and most of you have Q-clearance to boot, and yet I’m not going to give you an exact answer. Anyway, all I could tell you would be the target date of our research and development people. I’m not going to do that without their permission. I can tell you this, though, Miss Hume. Your never day can hardly come sooner than eighteen months, and I hope not later than five years.”
Katharine was instantly angry. This was the first time that a fact had been withheld from the conference, and since she had asked the question she felt that the rebuff was aimed at her. While other girls were getting married and having babies and settling down to homes, she had been absorbing and storing and even creating secrets. She had never been indiscreet. Her clearances meant not only that her patriotism, loyalty, and discretion were above suspicion, but her past and present personal life spotless. It meant that she had never been arrested, befriended a person of bad character, or joined a questionable organization. She had no close relatives on the wrong side of the curtain. Her drinking stopped after the first cocktail, and she always paid her bills. She didn’t gamble, associate with homosexuals, and she was not a drug addict. She neither gossiped, nor was gossiped about. Her neighbors in Georgetown had attested to her rectitude. Her personnel files and report cards, back to grammar school, had been scrutinized for any trace of unstable behavior. None had been found. She said, “That isn’t much of an answer, Major.”