“Perhaps their own information overrode your program. In the computer, I mean?”
“We had access to the same information, to the same profiles, to the same scenarios based upon past performances of everyone from the leaders of the West to the idiosyncrasies of field commanders. All to the best of our knowledge. And now Naya makes sport of everything we have taught her.”
“What are you going to do, General Garishenko?”
Garishenko had known from the moment he had dropped off to a sleep filled with nightmares what he would do if this moment came.
“Damn,” Garishenko said. “In that drawer in the cabinet.”
Lieutenant Baliokov opened the drawer and took out the glass and the bottle of Polish vodka.
The aide poured a glass.
“And yourself.”
“Please, sir, I do not—”
“You will now. This time. You will.”
Lieutenant Baliokov poured a glass of the clear liquid for himself. The two men solemnly threw it down their throats. For a moment, the vodka stayed the pain that had been throbbing in Garishenko’s head. For a moment, it steadied him. He had known what he would have to do.
He pulled out a piece of paper and carefully wrote down an order. Then he tore the paper from the pad and gave it to Lieutenant Baliokov.
“Feed this to Naya now.”
Lieutenant Baliokov looked at the order and then at General Garishenko. “Is this possible?”
“Yes. It’s the only alternative.”
“Sir, would they do this thing?”
“Of course,” Garishenko said.
“But this is monstrous.”
“Defeat is monstrous.”
Again, the young lieutenant looked at the order of battle for the eleventh morning of the game called “Paris.”
“General, I beg you to think of the consequences.”
Garishenko smiled slowly. “What do you think I have thought of for the past two days? What do you suppose I have tried to avoid each time I called the Game Master? Do you suppose the Americans would permit Western Europe to fall within the Soviet sphere of influence without a total struggle?”
“But, sir, there is England still, and France—”
“France is in the pincers of the Soviets now. France is lost. Tomorrow or the next day or the next game, France will be overrun without a shot being fired. Who will France deal with? No. The lesson of history is clear to me, as it is to the Americans. Europe cannot fall.”
And the young lieutenant, who had never known war in his life, stared again at the order:
TO THE COMMANDER OF USS NEPTUNE FROM CC CINCANT (COMMANDER IN CHIEF, US NAVAL OPERATIONS, ATLANTIC): CODE RED, INSTRUCTION Z349; SCRAMBLE BACK, DOUBLE IMPERATIVE. TARGET SOVIET SECTOR 9Z.
Baliokov did not understand all of the order, only enough of it.
“Neptune is a nuclear missile submarine,” Baliokov said.
“Yes,” Garishenko replied wearily. “This is the first part of the order to fire.”
“What is 9Z?”
“A target.”
“But what is 9Z?”
Garishenko looked at him. “Gorki, Lieutenant Baliokov.”
“But they wouldn’t destroy a city. They wouldn’t destroy a Russian city.”
Garishenko shook his head. “They wouldn’t lose Europe.”
“But America would invite…would…”
“It is a risk.”
“But, sir—”
“Please, Lieutenant. Please file this order now and wait. I will be in the operations room in a moment. That’s all.”
And Baliokov could think of no more objections to make.
Except that the horror of the order seemed more real than a game should have been.
15
Evensong had been quite magnificent, Pim thought with satisfaction as he crossed the broad green from King’s Chapel to the commercial heart of the town.
Cambridge was at the most frenzied time of the year, when those about to graduate were racing up and down the narrow streets of the ancient city in caps and gowns, playing the last jokes of childhood, savoring the excitement of being upon a threshold of new life. Pim had come to Cambridge at this time in May for the four years he had been building his network around the American air force base; it refreshed him to think that the weary, cynical world he inhabited was only a small part of a larger, hopeful world all around.
Or perhaps all these young, still unmarked faces were the slivers of hope in the real world of gray. That thought, as well, had crossed his mind many times.
He went up a side street from the campus of the university to an even smaller street called Rose Crescent. It was his habit, before catching the train back to Lakenheath, to stop for two pints at the Rose tavern.
“Pepys drank there, too,” Pim once told Felker.
Felker. Poor Felker; poor Reed. It was all unnecessary in the end. Reed might have been turned and Felker would have been rewarded. Now Felker was dead and Reed was dead and the difficult job of building a new contact had begun. As yet, the Soviets had placed no one at the base.
At least, no one that Pim had discovered.
It had gone well with Auntie at least; Gaunt had done his bit in smoothing it through. Felker had been blamed on Mediterranean Section and there was a shake-up going on there now. Some in Auntie even hinted, somewhat romantically in Pim’s view, that Med Section had done in Felker in Venice to get even with him.
“That would certainly set matters straight,” Pim had joked to Gaunt, but Gaunt had not been amused. He had been nervous through the whole affair as he did his part in shepherding the little lie through Auntie. The lie that said Felker had killed Reed.
“Good evening,” Pim said, entering the public bar.
The patrons of the Rose were mostly a mixture of local businessmen and shopkeepers and a stray don or two from the university itself. The pub had just opened for the Sunday evening trade.
The publican poured him a pint of bitter, and Pim tasted it with appreciation. It had been a satisfactory day; he had arranged to make some surreptitious rubbings from King’s Chapel after permission had been denied him. They were wrapped in oilskin inside his long trench coat. The task of rebuilding the network at Lakenheath and Mildenhall, however tedious, was proceeding well. Gaunt seemed pleased enough, and that meant the superiors in Auntie were pleased enough, and that meant the superiors in Auntie were pleased enough; the incident with Felker had been smoothed over and, if not forgotten, at least the blame had accrued to the right place. It really had been Med Section’s fault in the first place, Pim had assured Gaunt; and Gaunt had wanted to be assured. It was as though the two men had not killed Reed or dumped his body in the broad; Reed had been Felker’s fault, and both of them half believed it.
After a second pint, he started along the winding high street toward the train depot, which was nearly a mile and a quarter from the town center. Pim did not mind the walk; the train was at seven thirty, he had time for a last pint at the public house across from the station itself.
The sun was reluctant to set. May evenings were long and languid, like memories of younger days. Pim thought he felt sentimental for his younger self, the tough and assured young man out of the East End who, by dint of competitive examinations, had refined his accent and tastes and shaken off the odors of nine generations of poor families, poor cooking, and poor expectations of life. He had never gone back to the East End; he had never expected to, once he had gone up to London School of Economics and been recruited by the old MI-6. In the old-boy network then in place in British Intelligence, Pim’s progress had been slow; they knew where he came from, they knew what his accents had really been. When did you decide to refrain from dropping your h’s? one had asked him once. He had not forgotten it; he had taken care of that slur, in his own way, at the end.