"Yes," the President said. "Very good." The wall clock showed eleven thirty-six. The sands were running out fast now, too fast. "Steele," he asked, "supposing we get the correct code group, how long is it going to take to get the word out to the bombers?"
"Two or three minutes," Steele said confidently. "At the maximum."
"So if we got the group by, say, twelve hundred hours, we could still prevent the attack?"
"Well, not really," Franklin interposed. "It’s true the average bomb time for the wing is a few minutes after twelve. But there’s a period allowed each side of the bomb time, four minutes actually. Some of the bombers would bomb exactly two hours after turning from their X points. Probably most of them would try to bomb at the earliest possible time. That’s only natural, they wouldn’t want to prolong the flight any longer than they had to. I would say the big majority of the crews, when they turned in at ten hundred, planned on two hours to bomb time."
"I see." The President showed no trace of discomposure, but he was beginning to feel an increasing certainty that they would not be able to recall the bombers now. Quinten’s planning had been first class, he thought. The 843rd was going to catch the Russian bombers before they could get off. Or at least before they could get off fully armed and briefed. Everything was working out as Quinten had probably calculated it. He couldn’t believe that the general would have slipped up by allowing officers who were present at the briefing to remain on the base. The last hope now was that when Quinten heard the President’s information about the devices which threatened the whole world, he would grasp quickly that he must allow his bombers to be recalled.
The light on Keppler’s phone glowed. Keppler snatched it up. "Mackenzie? Sure, Keppler here. He what?… Sure, I get it… They aren’t?… Well look for them, goddam it… Yeah, we’ll keep a line open to you." He slammed the phone back on its rest.
"Well, what did he say? Have they found the officers?" Zorubin’s voice was high pitched, frightened.
"Quinten has shot himself," Keppler said heavily. "No-one knows where the two officers who attended the briefing are. Their wives say they left on a hunting trip last night, and there seems no reason to doubt that. They’re looking for them, but Mackenzie doesn’t sound hopeful they’ll find them."
"Bogou moiou!" Zorubin’s face was a deathly white. "Then it is finished. Everything is finished." He lit a cigarette with hands that shook badly as he applied a match to the tobacco.
The President thought for a moment. So the last hope had gone. At the back of his mind from the first had lurked the fear that Quinten might kill himself when he saw he would be taken. It was logical, and if Quinten had been sick enough to believe in his original action, then he would not have hesitated to do anything in order to ensure his action continued. Now it was necessary to communicate the news to Moscow. He turned and spoke for a short while to the Secretary of State. Then he said to Zorubin, "I’m going to talk to the Marshal again."
The president spoke quickly and simply. He told the Marshal that it seemed all efforts to recall the bombers had failed. They would go on trying, but he did not think they would succeed.
"Sookin Sin!" The President winced as the coarse obscenity crashed from the speaker. He listened in silence to a torrent of Russian lasting half a minute or more.
"Murderers," Zorubin translated. His voice was filled with fear, causing him to stumble over words, and mispronounce others. There was no trace now of the cultured elegance which normally characterized his English. "Swinish aggressors. You have launched an unprovoked attack on a peaceful country. Up to now I have kept my bomber force on the ground. I have refrained from any action which might be thought to be warlike. But now you will pay. The Soviet people will take their just vengeance on the capitalist imperialist murderers."
The President said calmly, "We acknowledged our fault. We have done all we can to stop it. We supplied enough warning for the cities to be evacuated and the people saved. Let the Marshal consider that if his Government had ever ceased their world-wide aggression, this would never have happened. For years they have forced a terrible economic strain upon us so that we might have weapons to defend ourselves against an attack which he knows he has planned. Not only our economy has been strained, but our minds and our nerves. Now, one of our commanders has reached breaking point. Would the Marshal deny that his own acts of aggression have contributed to the commander’s breakdown? But this is no time for an exchange of insults. We must consider what we can yet do. Your cities will be destroyed, or a few of them, but most of the targets are not near cities. You have no doubt evacuated your cities, so loss of life should not be high. For the damage we do, we will pay. We will pay, even though it reduces us to economic poverty. That is only right. We can promise there will be little radioactive fall-out from the bombs. Let the Marshal remember that all is not yet lost. And I repeat my solemn promise. For whatever damage is done, we will pay."
There was silence in the room while the President’s speech was translated at the other end of the radio link, thousands of miles away. A minute went by. The President thought he had never known a longer one. Then the speaker crackled with two short, sharply spoken sentences, and was silent.
Zorubin’s voice was empty of hope. "You couldn’t afford it," he translated. "But you will certainly pay." He turned to face the President. "It is the end," he said resignedly. "I can tell it from his voice."
"You know him so well?" the President asked.
"He is my oldest friend," Zorubin said simply. "If those targets are destroyed he will be a man without power, a man who has been defeated. He will not endure that. He will take certain action. I do not know whether even now I should tell you…"
The President interrupted him. "We know," he said. "We know about the devices in the Urals."
"So? But perhaps you do not know for certain if they would be used?"
"My guess," the President said slowly, "is they will."
Zorubin nodded. "You are right, they will. And you know what it means?"
"We do."
"So that is it." Zorubin shrugged. His face was slowly returning to its normal colour. There it was again, the President thought, the peculiarly Slav acceptance of fate.
"You know, Mr. President," Zorubin said almost lightly, "a little while ago General Franklin said that when the planes turned in from their X points there was two hours to bomb time. I can put it more accurately than that. Not just two hours to bomb time. But two hours to doom."
Chapter 17
The grim roll call was over. The bodies of Goldsmith, Minter, and Mellows, had been laid on the floor of the cabin near the rear bulkhead. Each of the surviving crew members had thought for a few brief seconds about the dead men, then got back to work and the difficult job of getting the bomber to the position where it could avenge their deaths and the deaths of millions more back home.
Maybe the dead were lucky, Brown thought. At least they did not have to carry the shapeless weight of pain whose torturing fingers were pressing ever heavier on his back. They did not have to carry the responsibility of taking a crippled bomber in to its bomb point, and muster the determination to get there, which alone would enable the heavy odds against success to be beaten.