“So that you may investigate the problem from your computer center, without boarding the rocket?”
“That is true.”
“And what would you do?”
“First of all, compare the programs of all three computers. Perhaps there is simply a misstated instruction in the primary programming. If so, General, the correction will be quickly made.”
“And if not?”
“Then we must examine all of the programming documentation.”
“Or proceed utilizing the secondary computer,” Oberstev suggested.
The director winced.
“I will suspend the countdown for one hour. No longer.”
Shaking his head sadly, the director scuttled for the door. He was a brilliant man, and Oberstev had no doubt that the crunch of time would urge him toward a successful resolution.
Oberstev lifted the telephone handset from its cradle on the console next to him.
The operator responded immediately. “Yes, Comrade General?”
“Tell the launch director to report to me, then connect me with the office of the First Deputy Commander in Chief.”
Oberstev hated making the call to General Burov. Failures or delays were direct threats to his pride and his well-being. He detested the necessity of such admissions.
Chapter Two
Carl Unruh was Deputy Director for Intelligence for the Central Intelligence Agency. As far as he was concerned, his only vanity was the twice-weekly touch-up of the gray at the temples of his dark brown hair. He did not know why he did it. Miriam thought he would look more distinguished if he let the gray shine through.
Other than that, he had come to accept his fifty-three years, the slight paunch protesting his belt, the enlarging bags under his green eyes, the desire for just a few more minutes after the alarm rang. He had also come to accept that most of the desires he had had in twenty-seven years with the CIA, six of them in the operations directorate, were bound to go unfulfilled in his lifetime.
His alarm went off at ten-thirty at night. He had napped for two hours on the sofa in his office. Unruh groaned aloud, pushed himself off the couch, and went into his bathroom to wash his face and shave. Donning a fresh shirt and one of the ultraconservative ties that Miriam picked out for him, Unruh got a fresh pack of Marlboros from his middle desk drawer. He lit one while putting on his suit coat, took three quick drags, and put it out.
He had quit smoking three years before and had been working on it ever since.
He left his office, locking the door behind him, and walked the quiet hall toward the elevators. The doors of all the offices were painted different colors. He thought the decor was asinine.
He took the elevator down to NPIC’s floor and got off to find Jack Evoy standing in the hallway with a Coke can in his hand.
Evoy headed the National Photographic Interpretation Center. He always had a harried look, pulled as he was by the NPIC’s mission to provide photographic analysis gathered from overhead reconnaissance for the entire intelligence community — CIA, DIA, NSA, Army Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, FBI, State, Treasury. All of the acronyms and agencies thought they had first priority.
Evoy’s office was staffed by both civilian and military experts, but he was a civilian, having come up through the ranks in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He was something of a diplomat when it came to saying, “No.” Built along the lines of a greyhound, he was lanky and tall, with a jutting jaw. His suits, though tailored, always seemed too large for him.
“Want a Coke, boss?” Evoy called almost anyone he favored, who was in a superior position, “boss.” His true superior was the Deputy Director for Science and Technology.
“If it has Scotch in it,” Unruh told him.
“Ugh. Sorry, can’t help you.”
“That’s pretty poor social preparation.”
“New austerity, boss.”
Unruh tilted his head down the hall to where a conference room had been set up as an observation post. Light from the room spilled through the open door into the corridor, and he could hear muffled voices. “Are we on time?”
“As far as we can tell, Carl.” Evoy looked at his watch. “Nine minutes, and we’ll know.”
“I wish to hell these people would start launching at civilized hours.”
“It’s a civilized time at Plesetsk.”
“Nothing’s civilized at Plesetsk.”
The two men walked down the hall together and turned into the conference room. It was large, with a boat-shaped table and twenty chairs taking up the center. At the far end, a large screen built into the wall was glowing. An outline map of the Asian continent, along with latitudinal and longitudinal lines, was imposed upon it, and a black circle identified the Plesetsk Cosmodrome close to the Arctic Circle. Major cities were pinpointed by black dots, to provide additional orientation.
Three of Evoy’s staff people toyed with two portable consoles that had been wheeled into the room.
“We’re watching this symbolically,” Evoy said. “All my data feeds will be interpreted by the computer, then shown on the screen.”
“What have you got in place as sources?”
“There’s a Teal Ruby in polar orbit that will give us infrared tracking. The Rhyolite in geo-stationary orbit over the Indian Ocean will help out, as will the Aquacade now cruising the Pacific.”
All of the satellites were sophisticated beyond any dream Unruh might have had as a boy who reveled in reading Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein. They captured their imagery in almost any level of detail and spat it out in the general direction of a communications satellite which grabbed it and relayed it around the world, then delivered it to friendly ground stations.
“How about NSA?” Unruh asked.
The National Security Agency, the largest of the intelligence agencies, was located at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. Beyond the development of communications security, it was responsible for foreign intelligence gathering in the electronic communications realm. The NSA broke cryptographic codes regularly and listened in on the rest of the world through its own network of spy satellites.
“They’re up and running on the frequencies we’re interested in. They’ll send us any pertinent voice or telemetry data on the second console over there.”
Unruh went to a small side table and poured himself a cup of coffee from an insulated pitcher. He carried it to the table and sat down.
Evoy sat down beside him.
They waited.
The operator of the second console looked back at them.
“Mr. Evoy, the countdown has been suspended.”
“Shit,” Unruh said.
“For how long?” Evoy asked.
“Hold on.” The operator spoke into his headset. After a short conversation with whomever was doing the monitoring out at Meade, he said, “Looks like about an hour. They’ve got an intercept of voice communications between the control tower and the chase planes. The pilots have been told to stand down for an hour.”
Unruh said, “I may stretch out on your table and go to sleep.”
“Don’t scratch it, huh?”
“You’re a lousy host,” Unruh complained.
“You know, Carl, we monitor every damned launch the Soviets make as a matter of routine. What’s so special about this one that the DDI wants to watch?”
“Our assets in place tell us it’s another component package for the Red Star space station.”
“So? They’ve been working on that station for two years. Hell, boss, they’ve been running a regular UPS freight service to it.”
“This one’s got a nuclear package, Jack.”