Thorssen nodded glumly. Shaw said, “I’ll take that package back now, please.”
Thorssen went across to the safe and unlocked it. He brought out the brown-paper-covered aerosol. Shaw slipped it into his pocket. Soon after 1100 hours local time the scrambler buzzed and Shaw took it. Kirkham’s voice reported that the Chinese aircraft had crossed the Pacific coast inwards.
With ten minutes to go Tucker, recovered and fitted out with clothing now, was brought out of a police automobile with a gun in his back and a close escort of six plain-clothes officers surrounding him. The group was met by Shaw. He led them straight to the studio where Thorssen and the camera crews were waiting, the same studio that Tucker would have used to make his intercepting appearance if things had gone his way. As they entered, the men from Washington, dropping their roles as privileged sightseers, brought out their concealed guns and assembled them. Shaw told the studio staff crisply that if anyone failed to obey his orders, those guns would shoot to kill. The technicians and cameramen were clearly startled and incredulous, but no one among them gave any noticeable sign of where his loyalties lay. Shaw glanced at the studio monitor; it was alive with a tuning signal. Thorssen said, “We’re already on the hook-up from the White House.”
“Good.” Shaw took Thorssen aside. He said quietly, “You’ll forgive me repeating myself, but I want to stress two vital points, Mr Thorssen. The sound-broadcast mikes go dead with the television when I cut Tucker — and the second time I put Tucker on the air, that monitor has to stay blank unless and until I say otherwise. Right?”
Thorssen said, “That’ll be taken care of, you don’t have to worry.” His big body had taken on a shrunken look; he was worrying badly himself.
Shaw crossed the studio floor again towards Tucker, who was now seated, with the armed plain-clothes escort standing some eight feet away from him, three on either side, where they would be out of range of the cameras when the latter fed Tucker into the hook-up. The atmosphere had a knife-edge quality as the men in the studio waited for the Presidential image to come on the screen from the White House. Shaw looked down at Tucker, at the thick lips and heavy, scarred face. He said, “Here’s what I want from you, Tucker. I want you to make your speech — just as planned. You’ll start when I tell you and you won’t say one word to indicate that you aren’t here entirely under your own steam. Got that?”
Tucker looked rocked; his eyes narrowed to slits. “Why do you want that?” he demanded truculently. “I don’t see—”
“Don’t worry about reasons. Just do as you’re told — if you want to live.”
Tucker glowered; but in point of fact, though clearly surprised still, he recovered his poise quickly and thereafter seemed little worried. The monitor changed its screen pattern, the tuning signal giving way to a thin-faced announcer, who went into a spiel to usher the President on to the air. The seconds ticked away… to very possible catastrophe. Shaw wiped sweat from his face. The gamble was still enormous; if it failed to come off, the White world could be heading for its swan-song within a matter of minutes. All Shaw had was Tucker himself… no one could yet say what the widespread mobs, what the Peking Government, might decide to do — unless Tucker could be made to crack in front of his audience. That was problematical still. Shaw fingered the aerosol container in his pocket, glanced up at the studio clock, his face tight and set. So little time to go… the Chinese high-flying manned bombers, well inwards now from the Pacific coast, would at this moment be streaking across the mid-West for Norfolk.
Shaw looked across at Tucker again; he felt a suddenly increased sense of doubt, of real anxiety, as he did so. Tucker was full of poise, full of authority still. He was calm, almost statuesque, a figure of confident power. His eyes were burning with the fanaticism that was in him — a fanaticism that must have been very close to madness. He seemed quite unaffected by his present situation, as though everything was still going entirely according to plan. It was uncanny and it was bad for Shaw’s nerves. One slip on Shaw’s part, one slip that allowed Tucker to take the initiative, and the race war would still go forward. The police captain had reported that Tucker had refused to talk, even under extreme pressure — even under all-out third degree methods; maybe Tucker knew something yet that Shaw didn’t. Tucker, it appeared, had refused to confirm or deny that he had been in contact with Peking or his outlying command posts by radio, had refused to say a word about whether or not the plan had been altered in any way; and to that extent at least, he did in fact retain the initiative still.…
No one in the studio was speaking as they waited for the preliminaries to be done with in the White House. The cameramen, standing by to feed Tucker into the network when Shaw gave the word, were silent, watchful, tense. Which of them, Shaw wondered, were Tucker’s men? Who, of all those cameramen, of all the technicians who were manning the big gantries running overhead, would in fact obey his, Shaw’s, orders when it came to the final moment? Who would stand by Tucker, despite the guns? Shaw’s gaze roved towards the men from Washington. There were fifteen of them in the studio, plus the six armed detectives and the police captain — enough fire power, surely! Another twenty-five agents, as detailed during the morning, were now scattered around the building, taking control at the vital points, ensuring that no power was cut, no unauthorized interception made to the broadcast.
Again Shaw glanced at Tucker.
Now there was strain in the man’s face at last… but yet he seemed to have no real feeling that anything would in the long run go wrong. The strain was the heady tension of imminent victory, a tension of contained elation. Why? The most likely answer lay, of course, in the Chinese aircraft so far above their heads.
The announcer came to the end of his remarks. The hands of the studio clock moved on to 1300 hours Central Standard Time. There was almost unbearable tension now.
Members of the British Government were grouped around a television screen in the Cabinet room in Downing Street; an emergency Cabinet had been called to keep the situation under minute-by-minute review and to flash immediate orders to the police and armed forces as necessary as things developed. The Chiefs of Staff were present; so was Latymer. Into a dead silence as they waited in those last few seconds for the American President, the Prime Minister said heavily, “Latymer, you know Shaw personally. What’s his judgement like in this sort of situation? What’s your estimate of the chances now?”
“Fifty-fifty, but nevertheless with a bias in Shaw’s favour, sir. He’s well accustomed to taking chances — and his judgement’s first-class. If he sees a real doubt developing, he’ll advise Washington at once.”
“And then they order the blast-off.” The Prime Minister sounded badly on edge and no wonder. “I’m glad I’m not the President today!”
Latymer glanced at his watch and said grimly, “Or Shaw.”
The White House cameras cut in to the image of the President. First there was a long shot of him seated at a desk. Two seconds later he was brought into close-up. Tucker’s face remained impassive but his fingers tightened on the arms of his chair. Shaw watched him closely; a nervous tic started in Thorssen’s face. One of the technicians had a cold in the nose and was sniffing. The sniff rasped at tautened nerves.
The President began calmly, slowly and with deliberation and immense dignity; there was not a flicker to indicate the terrible strain, the overwhelming anxiety that must be in his mind, nothing to show his awareness that his very words, the very fact he was speaking at all, might be about to plunge the world into war of a particularly vicious kind. “Fellow citizens of the United States of America,” he began, quietly but resonantly. “I have made the decision to talk to all of you today after much thought. I would like to talk to every one of you, both here in the continental United States and overseas, and indeed I would like, if I may presume to do so, to talk also to all the White and Coloured peoples of goodwill all over the world… this now so-small world in which all of us live side by side, created by the same God in His image, having the same feelings, sharing the same desires to live out our lives in peace…”