The President could hear the man moving briskly out of the room.
“Sedgwick?”
“Sir?”
“You think we have a chance?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“It’s harder than hell to get through to submerged submarines, isn’t it?”
“We often had trouble in peacetime, Mr. President.”
Sedgwick looked long and sadly at the unseeing President. “You have one other problem, sir.” The President rolled his head toward the naval aide, as if to look at him. “Your authenticator card is missing.”
The President took a long, deep breath. “Nurse,” he said, “roll me into the radio room, will you please?”
On the bridge of the Ticonderoga, the captain grimaced as he sucked on a cup of unusually foul coffee. He watched a young ensign stride toward him. “Sir!” The young officer snapped a salute and handed him a brief message.
“Victor?” the fatigued captain asked, his mind never straying from the Soviet submarine silently hounding them.
“No soundings, sir,” the ensign replied. “We still can’t find him.”
The captain turned away, staring into the western horizon, where dark clouds gathered more rapidly now. He moved his eyes down to the flight deck, where a twin-jet S-3A Viking sub chaser caught the restraining cable, jerking to a halt after another sweeping search. Its two air-launched nuclear-tipped torpedoes still were slung beneath its wings, signaling another fruitless mission. He shook his head gloomily.
The ensign, on his first sea duty, lingered longer than he should. It also being his last sea duty, he also ventured more than he normally would dare. “Maybe Victor has forgotten us, sir,” he said tentatively. “Found bigger game.” They both knew that an American submarine, packing the nuclear firepower to take out a good part of the Soviet Union, was a far more attractive target than their floating island.
“Then we better start chasing him, dammit!” the captain snapped. “That’s our job, mister.”
The young officer blushed, and wanted to remove himself quickly. But the captain, in his preoccupation, still had not read the message. “We have an unidentified aircraft, sir.” The captain turned and looked at him without expression. “Confusing,” the ensign continued. “It has the radar profile of a B-52, sir.”
The captain stared at the young officer a moment longer, then dismissed him. He examined the new message, which gave coordinates for a large bomber approaching at a distance of about seventy-five miles. He looked back down at the deck, debating between his F-14’s and the newer F-18 Hornet interceptors, both of which were ready. He wagged his head at the sheer lunacy of it. He chose the F-18’s.
Even unseeing, the President felt incredibly claustrophobic inside the tight confines of the radio room, his bed angled up tightly against an array of communications gear and other paraphernalia. There was little he could say to the Premier, except to ascertain the man’s intentions, express his own, and reopen the lines of communication. The lines had been closed, unfortunately, far longer than the thirteen hours since the missiles flew. He clenched the phone rigidly, trying to will the pain out of his voice, while the two of them moved as quickly as possible through the necessary pleasantries, including the Premier’s genuinely amazed relief that he was alive. They dealt hurriedly and bleakly with the misunderstanding over the Soviet launch at the Chinese and the disastrous American response. The Premier did not mention the coup attempt. The President did not mention the possibility that he had been duped by Icarus. The information was irrelevant now—an irretrievable part of the past like the scores of millions dead and dying. They had no time for the past. The delays for interpretation, which the President had found to be convenient opportunities to plot his next hard-ball response during their past conversations, became almost intolerable irritations now. Both men wanted to move rapidly past the preliminaries.
“I’m afraid I don’t have very reassuring news, Mr. Premier,” the President said. “I need time—perhaps more than you can grant me. But I’m asking you to give me what you can. May I assume that at last we share a common goal and want to stop this madness?”
The President felt sweat forming on his forehead while his words were translated, the hyperactive voice of the Premier responded, and then the Premier’s words were translated.
“Time, Mr. President, is a luxury neither of us has,” the Premier’s response began. “I will give you what I can. You can be assured we share the same goal. However, I cannot control all events here. My people will not absorb much more punishment. It is not a question of fault now, Mr. President. I will accept the fault, if necessary, and history’s judgment of it. You must stop your submarines.”
“Yes, yes, I know that, Mr. Premier.” The President rubbed his aching eyes, wondering how much to tell the Soviet leader. “At the moment, I might have less control over events than you.”
The Premier paused, as if he were pondering the same dilemma about how far to go in this conversation. “You have a pretender aboard your command plane,” he said flatly.
“A pretender? I’m not sure that is the correct term, sir. He apparently believes he is President, legitimized by our Constitution.”
The President heard a low grunt at the other end. “I had been marveling at the efficiency of your political system. We always considered your system to be your greatest weakness. It is so ponderously slow at times.”
“On this occasion it may have been too efficient,” the President said. Then he added ruefully, “In more ways than one.”
“In translation, Mr. President, that sounds threatening. Do you mean it that way?”
“No, Mr. Premier, most certainly not. I merely mean that my control over events is minimal. I need time to put my house in order.”
“This pretender, this other President, he has control?”
“I’m not certain anyone has control here, sir.”
“His intentions are the same as yours?”
“I’m not certain, Mr. Premier.” The President thought a moment. “Your weapons were very thorough in their destruction of our communications system. I have not been able to talk to him.”
Again the President heard a low grunt and then an almost wistful sound in the Premier’s voice. “I thought your man had been talking with me,” the translator said enigmatically.
“Sir?” the President asked in confusion.
“You are aware that your bombers returned home and, in response, I returned mine?”
A great puzzlement spread across the President’s face. He desperately wished he could see Sedgwick, who lay nearby in the doorway, to read his face for some indication of how to evaluate the unexpected information. “No, Mr. Premier,” he replied after a moment. “I did not know that. It is reassuring news.”
“I thought so at the time,” the Premier responded. “Unfortunately, the bombers are not the most serious problem. My intelligence officers inform me that your submarine fleet operates on a preprogrammed attack schedule.”
“That is correct.”
“How much time do we have?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Premier.”
The radiophone seemed to go dead for a moment. Then the President heard a rapid, brief burst of Russian.
“This is no time to be disingenuous, Mr. President.”
“I assure you, Mr. Premier, I would tell you if I knew. You must trust me. I don’t know.”
The pause was longer this time. The President could hear deep and erratic breathing at the other end.