"She has been designed so that you need exactly thirty seconds of additional training."
There was a buzz in the room.
"Please. Quiet. Most of your training with nuclear weapons-and she is nuclear, comrades, nuclear as hell-has been in the areas of safety and guidance. We will be using the old guidance systems which are not that accurate. We are making up for this with a warhead that had previously been discontinued. A dirty warhead. The big blasters. That's what she has got in her nose."
And then, just before he got down from the stage, he added:
"She's primed and loaded and ready to go."
For a moment there was the silence of a blank universe and then even the youngest of cadets understood. Eleven months out of every training year had to do with all the safeguards to prevent an accidental nuclear war. The reason they needed no more training was that there were no safety devices.
This new ugly weapon was the first nuclear weapon produced in any country without safeguards. The nickname being bandied about for it was the "raw button."
You pressed the button and the missile went. It was like the trigger of a gun. So that was the reason active missile-command officers were not chosen. Any fool could use a first-strike weapon. There were only two choices. War or no war. And to produce something like this meant someone was sure of war, because moving these things was a nightmare.
The weapons had no electronics whatsoever, and they wouldn't need much more aiming than an old cannon. They might hit anywhere, and the warhead was so big that it didn't matter. One warhead could take out an entire quarter-country. All the sender had to hit was North America. Mass murder.
If Petrovich hadn't been so concerned about his wife he would have stepped down. But he had not. For a week now he had been driving incredibly slowly along the bad roads; now there were no roads. He faced bumpy hills, and slowed everything down to less than a mile an hour.
His chart was equally crude. He would establish a new base, one that America could not have identified before because it would not exist until he created it. Then he would take rough aim, and according to his instructions, unless otherwise heard from, he would fire the missile at a specific time two weeks hence. He had been given an old Swiss winding watch so that he would not mistake the time. He was going to start World War III unless he was told not to.
His movements did not go unnoticed by the CIA. It was not the missile itself that was detected from outer space, because it could have been one of the thousands of dummies the Russians had scattered over Siberia. Rather, it was the telephone communication from the retired colonel informing home base he was primed and ready.
From the frequency and the analysis of the code, the Central Intelligence Agency concluded that another of the raw-button batteries had been activated.
Harold W. Smith had privileged access to this information. And more. While the Russians were getting edgier, the President had received a protest from England about the violence attributed to one American agent. He passed it on to Smith, who provided a routine denial used in such instances. The first part was official, bemoaning any violence and offering to help the country in which multiple killings had occurred track down the perpetrator. Informally, the President added a little joke he used when Remo and Chiun were operating outside of the United States:
"If you get their names, we'd like to hire them." The insinuation was that the protesting party had been misinformed, that people really couldn't do those sorts of things. It struck Smith at that time that his country's denial of a weapon threatening the ozone layer was quite similar to the normal cover used for Remo and Chiun. In other words, a lie. Russia had every good reason not to trust America. The truth sounded so much like the normal lie. He could almost understand Chiun's formula:
"They see evil in their own evil."
Of course, the House of Sinanju did not consider the bloodiest Russian czar, Ivan the Terrible, evil. That was because he paid them well. So what Chiun meant by evil and what the West might mean by evil were different things. Smith did not know what Chiun meant by evil, and that made Chiun's formula difficult to use.
The red phone rang again. Smith answered it, glancing out through the one-way windows of Folcroft, that sanitarium in Rye, New York, that covered for the organization. It faced Long Island Sound, gray and bleak this autumn day. Normally the President's line rang three, perhaps four times in a year. This was the third time this day.
"Here," said Smith.
"I think the British believed us. But do you know what your operative did? He went around England collecting security personnel like baggage and then killed I don't know how many men in the Tower of London itself."
"He's located the weapon."
"Where?"
"In the Chitibango province of San Gauta."
"Another Central American problem. Damn. Maybe we should just bomb that province."
"Wouldn't work, Mr. President."
"Why not? In this instance you have to get the weapon and the people behind it. Just destroying one device won't do. It would be like trying to end an atomic threat by destroying one atomic bomb."
"There is no good news out of Russia," said the President.
"Are they close to launch? How much time do we have?" asked Smith.
"They could launch now, with those damn raw buttons. They might have enough to do us in. But they're still building."
"So we do have time," said Smith.
"Until they get frightened enough."
"When is that?"
"Can you read a Russian mind?" said the President. "By the way, we also had to answer to the French on the head of the SDEC. What do the French have to do with this?"
"Are you sure it's our people?" said Smith. "Word I've heard is that he was on some Russian hit list for something. Has been for years."
"They'd like to get rid of him, we know. That's been established. The Russians sent in the Bulgarians some years ago, and then a Rumanian team for hire. Then they gave up. The way he was killed smells of your people."
"What do you mean?" said Smith.
"They're not looking for the person who killed him, but the machine. Some of his bones were fused."
"Maybe one of ours," said Smith. He wondered if it were Chiun. Remo could do many things, but being in two places at the same time was not one of them.
"These are dark days, Smith. I am glad we have you and your people," said the President. He did not know that neither of Smith's personnel was heading anywhere near the fluorocarbon gun.
The generator was sitting in the Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts, Inc. complex off Route 128 outside of Boston, being prepared for another shot.
The news was not good from any front. The Premier had asked Zemyatin to his dacha beyond the city to reassure select members of the Politburo that everything was in control, that Alexei, the Great One, was making the right moves.
Zemyatin was brief and to the point.
"We are not in control of events. We are still struggling to survive them."
"Is it better or worse than it was at the beginning? I've got to have something to give my Politburo."
"Do you mean when should you all go to your shelters?"
"No. Good news. I want good news."
"Then read Pravda. You will see that capitalism is falling on all fronts and we are gaining ground through the will of the masses."
Zemyatin looked at the faces of the other old men. If he had time for pity he would have shown more of it. But he had no time. The old men looked as though they were staring into their own graves. Despite all the talk of being ready for war, none of them were. Despite all the talk of continuous war for the socialist revolution, they were comfortable old men in their dotage who were suddenly at war.
No one spoke. There weren't even any questions. Zemyatin saw the chairman of all armed forces, an accountant by training, lift a trembling glass of vodka to his lips.