The President said, “The Americans referred to the nuclear reactor as Topaz Four.”
Oberstev did not doubt it. Secrecy was the plaything of a bygone era.
“It is as I said!” Sodur claimed. “Their agents are everywhere! Our complacency will lead to our downfall. Only by increasing our vigilance…”
He dribbled off into blessed silence under the stares of a dozen superiors.
The President let the silence linger as he looked around the room, studying each face.
Finally, he said, “Admiral Orlov, do we have submarines in the area?”
Orlov closed his eyes for a moment. “Within forty hours of transit time, I believe.”
“Order them to begin the search. Determine the status of the submersible at Vladivostok. If it cannot be made available immediately, arrange transportation for any other that is available, no matter its location.”
Oberstev thought that Orlov intended to make some kind of protest, then thought better of it. He left the room, shouldering his way through the throng of decision-makers.
“There is another course of action, if I might suggest it,” Janos Sodur said.
“And that is?”
“Leave it there. We need not tell anyone. What will it hurt?”
Oberstev cleared his throat. He thought that his voice might have squeaked a bit when he said, “That course of action is not open to us.”
“Why not, General?” Yevgeni asked.
“This nuclear reactor, Topaz Four, is unlike those that preceded it. I imagine that the automatic controls may have failed upon impact.”
“Meaning?” the President asked.
“Meaning that it will almost certainly achieve a supercritical state.”
“Supercritical state? What supercritical state?”
“The core will eventually become hot enough, then go into meltdown.”
Avery Hampstead waited in the basement corridor outside the Situation Room.
He waited with a dozen other people, many of them in uniform, and all of them under the careful scrutiny of two resplendent and mean-looking marines. Because of some unspoken sense of dire national concerns, or maybe because of the stern countenance of the marines, no one in the hallway spoke to another. In fact, they barely looked at each other. They seemed embarrassed to be there. Or uncertain of which of them had the greatest stature.
After he had been there an hour, someone somewhere had made a decision about courtesy, and the White House-duty marines wheeled a stack of orange plastic chairs into the corridor and distributed them.
Hampstead had smiled his appreciation for a gunnery sergeant and collapsed on his chair. He was dressed in his own uniform, a dark gray wool suit, pinstriped with silver. His black shoes gleamed with paste and elbow polish. His shirt was so white, it looked boiled. The muted gray and maroon stripes of his tie befitted his party — Republican — and his position — undersecretary of commerce.
Though he was presentable, Hampstead had no illusions about his image. He was not handsome in the Hampsteads of Philadelphia family tradition. His face was elongated, and he had oversized ears, with great, dangling lobes. His square-cut, large teeth put William F. Buckley to shame, in a perverse way. He kept his dark hair cut short, though he would really have preferred styling it in a’60s Beatles fashion, to disguise his ears.
There was Hampstead family money, correctly accumulated in steel and railroads, but other than for his education and a Triumph TR-3 when he was an undergraduate, his father did not spread it lavishly among Hampstead and his four siblings. Hampstead earned his living, and he did it in a Hampstead tradition. Most of his ancestors, and two of his brothers and one of his sisters, devoted themselves to public service. It was an honorable calling.
His youngest sister, Adrienne, lived in New York City and promoted gargantuan professional wrestling matches. He loved her dearly.
From time to time, the door to the Situation Room opened and Chief of Staff Balcon or National Security Advisor Amply stuck his head out and beckoned someone inside. The room should have a revolving door on it, Hampstead thought.
He was called at a quarter of seven.
By Carl Unruh.
He had not even been sure that Unruh was in the room.
Hampstead stood up, stretched, tugged his suit jacket into place, and passed through the doorway. It was similar, he thought, to entering an execution chamber. Same effect on the senses.
There were over twenty people in the secured room — Senate and House leaders, Pentagon people, White House people. Unruh introduced him to the group, but did not bother providing the other side’s names. It would not have mattered, anyway. He knew who the President was, and he recognized the congressional faces, along with that of the Director of Central Intelligence, but he would have immediately forgotten the names of all the generals, admirals, and agency heads.
“Mr. Hampstead,” Unruh said, “is an undersecretary in the Department of Commerce. He is responsible for things oceanworthy, primarily in the areas of exploration and development.”
“Thank you for coming over so quickly, Mr. Hampstead,” the President said.
“Not at all, sir. I’m happy to cooperate.” With what, he was not certain.
Unruh indicated two upholstered chairs at the table, and they both sat.
“General Wiggins, would you brief Mr. Hampstead?” the President asked.
Wiggins stood up, and Hampstead vaguely recalled the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was built like an extremely short fire hydrant, and his voice rumbled around large pieces of gravel.
“Mr. Hampstead, first of all, what you learn here this morning is not for public consumption. All contact with the media, or with anyone else, will be made through the White House spokesman.”
“Certainly, General.”
Wiggins crossed the room to a large screen radiating a map of the northern Pacific Ocean. South of Midway Island, there was a red dot. The general picked up a pointer and pointed out the red dot.
“Shortly after midnight this morning, a CIS A2e rocket splashed down at this location directly after launch. It was unintentional.”
The general paused, so Hampstead said, “Yes, sir.”
“We don’t know the current condition of the rocket or the payload, but we do know that the payload was an advanced nuclear reactor.”
“Ooh.” Hampstead did not know whether or not his exclamation was a vocal one.
“We have been briefed by Defense Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission nuclear experts, and we believe that there is a high probability that the reactor may go supercritical, that is, into a meltdown state.”
Hampstead sat upright and placed his arms on the table. He did not know what else to do with them. “Is there a timetable, General?”
“Unknown at this time. Our people are working on it.”
“Have the Russians said anything? There should have been telemetry readings.”
“The Russians are noncommital, Mr. Hampstead,” Warren Amply said.
“I see. Do we know the size of the reactor?”
“Fifteen megawatts or better, at best estimate,” Wiggins said.
That was not large by land-based reactor standards, but Hampstead assumed it was massive in terms of its brothers already in space.
“We think, Avery, that it could put out a massive dose of radiation, on an ongoing basis, over a long period of time,” Unruh said. “The navy oceanographer is double-checking the currents, but seems to think that a large area of the Pacific Rim is at risk.”
Hampstead studied the map. One little red dot on a sea of blue. “The subsurface terrain is intimidating in that region. I’m placing it north of the Mid-Pacific Mountains and east-southeast of Mapmaker Seamount, south of the Milwaukee Seamount.”