The sheets were white but they were linen; the springs didn’t make a sound as he lay her down. On the night table beside it she saw a copy of Orbis, open face down, the only sign here of what he did or what he was.
Then he switched off the reading lamp and sat quietly beside her, in the breeze that might be killing them as he stroked her and she found herself rising to meet his hand, her tears drying, and her hunger for him erasing all her fears.
As he bent down to her, lowering himself carefully but in such a way that his knee was between her thighs, he told her, “Now you’re going to forget about all this bullshit, all your troubles and my troubles and the world’s troubles. You’re going to relax and let me prove to you that there’re still some things worth living for,” and guided her hand onto him.
“Christ,” she muttered, clasping him.
His knee tight against her crotch, he said, “Now, rookie agent, if you’ll just turn over and let me drive, you’re going to find out there’s not a damn thing to be afraid of when you’re with me.”
He was very good at it, so good she forgot to pump him about his real reasons for inviting her on his suicide mission, and everything else except the feel of his strong hands on her buttocks and the life he was pouring into her.
Chapter 3
The following day, Beck earned his keep: he called in every marker he had out among the Israeli intellectual community and convened a classified meeting of expert climatologists, physicians, geneticists, plasma physicists, mathematicians specializing in catastrophe effects, and military scientists who couldn’t have talked to anyone but him and his under the kind of security he could promise.
He handed out masks and badges and everyone put them on, so that they looked like a bunch of medical students, until a climatologist remarked that he didn’t really feel the masks were necessary because the jet stream was blocked—the plumes of short half-life radiation were locked into a pattern over the strike zones and the poles. There was an audible sigh of relief and the meeting began in earnest not, as Beck had expected, with his pathetic precautions-at-hand lecture, but with the climatologist’s cheerful assessment that thermals had caused the jet stream to block and, if the jet stream stayed blocked for a week or two, Israelis would be exposed to no more than three or four Rems per hour and no less than one and one half Rems, for the three or four months it would take for the count to drop to point four Rem—a survivable level, certainly, if people minimized exposure of skin and lungs to unfiltered air.
Then a genetic engineer named Morse, whose specialty was cancer research, picked up the ball, and the meeting was alive and rolling.
At the end of that session, the joint report wasn’t published; it was delivered by Beck and his opposite number from the Israeli government to Dickson verbally and concisely: “We think the jet stream will block—we think it has blocked,” said Beck to Dickson, who didn’t know what the hell he was talking about but had learned that, with Beck, if you kept your mouth shut long enough, you found out. “So the salvage operation is feasible, with enough Israeli support,” and Beck’s glance flicked to the Slavic-looking Israeli beside him.
“And that support we are willing to give,” the broad-faced Israeli said grimly. “This blocking of the jet stream, everyone agrees, will mean that the worst radiation effects will be locked into an area relatively small for you, though gigantic by our standards.”
“That’s right,” Beck said with equanimity. “When the initial blast occurred, the thermal effects—superheated columns and so forth—caused the jet stream to freeze in place. Now the weather conditions everyone was bitching about… fierce cold up north, from Washington State to Moscow… are doing us a favor. If the jet stays blocked, the updrafts severe, then the worst of the radiation hazard will be limited to the American and Soviet north, where the plumes blowing downstream are dirtiest because the missiles were going after hardened sites.”
The Israeli pulled a map out of his pocket and, saying, “With your permission, Mister Secretary?” spread it on Dickson’s desk.
On the map were wide yellow lines like a stylized snake in mid-slither which covered the upper northern hemisphere in such a way that certain areas were free of what Dickson rightly assumed to be the radiation hazard: the yellow line dipped down across Alaska, covered Utah and Kansas, snaked on to loop around Cuba and Washington and up toward Greenland; then it swooped down again over the Urals and undulated toward the Sea of Japan before rearing its head again toward Alaska. The Middle East, South Asia, the southern hemisphere, and NATO’s southern components would be spared the worst of it, if the projections were accurate.
“And if you’re wrong?” Dickson said, his voice sick and brittle to his own ears, his eyes darting from his sealed windows, the filtration unit Security had installed to purify his air, to his little film badge, then to the Israeli.
“Then we shall all glow in the dark,” said the Israeli with an air of fatalism. “Radiation goes where God sends it; after seven hours, it is one-tenth as severe; after seven times seven hours, a tenth of a tenth; after three days, the hazard decreases somewhat more; after fifteen days, it is down by a factor of ten. God is good; soon we will know for sure…” His eyes were welcoming Dickson like a new brother to the family of the holocaust, fond and understanding.
Beck said, “Look, Dickson, we’re not pretending that this is the best news you’ve ever had. We’re talking about initial, low-half-life radiation. When the polar caps melt—which they’ll surely do at a higher rate than normal this year—everybody’s going to give up fish and there’ll be a run on Halazone tablets and whatever other precautions people think will help. The cancer rate’s going to be astronomical. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do whatever we can.”
“And since we Israelis understand your loss as no other people, and have our own interests in seeing America through this most trying of times, all the resources of the State of Israel are at your disposal,” said the Israeli Dickson knew as Netanayhu, who wore khakis as if he’d been born in them and probably grew up on some kibbutz playing cowboys and Indians with real guns and Palestinian kids as the Indians.
“That’s very white of you, Mister Netanayhu,” said Dickson, “especially since Lockheed and the rest of our military-defense establishment built, serviced, and just about gave you people everything you’ve got.” Dickson hated Jews when they got superior, and that was all too often. To Dickson’s way of thinking, Beck and his crew were just marking time until their hair started falling out.
“Not all of it, Chief Dickson,” Beck said with an insubordinate edge to his tone, but didn’t elaborate. When Beck “chiefed” Dickson, it was a warning that the ice was getting thin. “The colonel,” Beck flicked his unholy stare at Netanayhu and then back to Dickson, “and I are going to go ahead with this, unless you’ve got a countermanding order….”
“No, suit yourselves. It’s your funerals, gentlemen. Just don’t tax our meager resources. And…” The heavy-set Israeli colonel was rolling up his map; if he was smirking, Dickson couldn’t see it. “…Colonel Netanayhu, on behalf of the United States, I guess I have to thank you—”
“Thanks are not necessary, Mister Secretary,” said the Israeli, stuffing the map in his rumpled khakis; “not necessary at all. Did you thank us when we went into Beirut after the Palestinian murderers? Did you thank us in ’73? Then don’t thank us now. Even, if you want, be surly. We understand. We have been there. We may be there again,” said the Israeli without a hint of condescension, centuries of warriors looking out through his eyes, “if your country does not recover. So, as it turns out, what we have is yours—even our sympathy.”