The director looked up from the briefcase still balanced on his knees.
"We still have time to get our agent out," he began.
"The guy's off and running!" the President accused.
"Mr. President, if you study his signal, he's confirmed where to pick him up. He knows how our people will come, what to expect. He can estimate times, that kind of—"
"Thursday! While we're all in Geneva, Bill, they're going to put the first of their laser battle stations into orbit, under the guise of a satellite placement mission and a linkup in orbit with our shuttle, Atlantis. They're laughing up their sleeves on this one, Bill — laughing at us." There was evident blame in Calvin's features and in his eyes. He had been let down, left holding the bag.
"We can get him out, sir."
"Bill, you're asking me to stake this country's future on a Russian technician on your payroll."
"He was always our only chance," the director replied softly, firmly. What had Calvin expected, some miracle? He was unnerved by the timetable, by the proximity of the signing of the treaty and the launch of the laser weapon. It was tight, yes, dangerous without doubt — but it could be done.
"What does he have, Bill? Films, rolls of film. Is that going to be enough to convince the world it's being given the biggest shaft in history?" Calvin's confidence of voice, East Coast with Harvard overtones, had deserted him. It had begun to complain, almost to whine. His hand waved without vigor, dismissing Kedrov and his films and the glimpse of hope they offered. He shook his head. "It isn't going to be enough, Bill," he murmured vaguely.
The director brushed the dottle from his cold pipe off the leather of his briefcase. He pondered for some time, weighing the President's mood and his own words. Then he looked up and said, "Sir, you approved all of this. You believed, as I did, as Dick Gunther did, that this was the only way of obtaining proof in the time we had — four weeks maximum." He spread his hands. He reached up and took the Cactus Plant signal by its edge, pulling it from the desk onto his lap. He smoothed the paper. Calvin's shoes paced across the eagle and the scroll woven into the center of the deep-green carpet of the Oval Office. The director cleared his throat. From somewhere outside the thick green glass of the windows, he heard muffled church bells.
"The timetable's more crucial," the director continued, "because we now know it's Thursday for the launch. Before, working on Kedrov's estimates, we assumed another week to ten days."
"Time we no longer have."
"I know that, sir."
Calvin continued to pace, dressed in checked shirt and jeans, his hands rubbing through his mop of gray hair. His face was cleaned by shock, blank and tired. When his hands were not busy with his hair, they waved uncertainly, as if fending off the circumstances of the morning.
The winter's morning was bright even through the reinforced glass of the windows. He could still hear the bells. Midmorning services. Kedrov had sent his signal — oh, sometime early Sunday evening, his time. Ten hours ahead of Washington. Come and fetch me, my friends. I am afraid.
The director went on: "We have to bring Winter Hawk to immediate readiness, sir. Today. The mission profile has a forty-eight-hour maximum time span. That's two days, and the agent and the evidence can be inside a friendly border. Transmission, editing, anything you require done with the films won't be any problem. Sir, it's nine thousand miles to Peshawar from Nevada, a thousand to the target area, a thousand back. Those are the only parameters that really matter. Forty-eight hours maximum, once the mission clock starts running. That's Tuesday or Wednesday — you could blow this up in their faces on the eve of the signing, sir!" The director's hand was clenched into a fist. Unaware, he had screwed Kedrov's final signal into a damp, gray ball of paper. The sight of it shocked him quite out of proportion to the act. As if he had crushed, abandoned…
He shook his head, dismissing the idea. Kedrov was all they had, priceless and unique.
Winter light, aqueous through the tinted glass, fell chill upon Calvin's profile as he continued to pace the room. It gave his features the pointed, marble lifelessness of a corpse. The Washington Monument beyond the glass thrust like a spike at the pale morning sky. Or a launch vehicle, the director could not help thinking. Baikonur, Thursday — close, damn close.
As if to reassure himself as much as Calvin, he reiterated: "Forty-eight hours maximum. Gant and the other crew can do it, sir. Give me the authority to bring Winter Hawk to readiness."
"Are they ready, Bill? How long have they trained on those gunships? No more than a couple of weeks? Less? Are they ready?"
"They have to be, sir. They have to be." The director found himself struggling against Calvin's unmollified expression. He waded upstream against the current Calvin was giving the room. He had hurried there with anxious triumph, to find the party had ended and the guests moved on to another place. Calvin did not share his sense of success. "They have to be," he repeated once more, looking down.
Calvin was obsessed with the political coup the Soviet president had gained. Nikitin would coerce a promise to appear at the signing in Geneva, which would give Calvin no room in which to maneuver. He would have to promise the world, in advance, that he would honor the Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty in its present form—
— which excluded all reference to orbiting laser weapons systems, since they did not exist — had not existed until four weeks before, so far as the CIA and everyone else thought.
Calvin said urgently, "Damn your timetable now, Bill. It s fallen down behind the wardrobe. I am going to have to agree to meet him on Thursday. It wasn't supposed to be Thursday, Bill, it was to be in two weeks' time. I have to agree to meet him or Congress will crucify me, the American people will help them put in the nails, the press has the hammer, and the whole damn world is going to watch while they do the job!" He rubbed his hands through his hair. "We just ran out of options. They're calling the tune in Moscow right now. I'm hamstrung, Bill."
He turned his back on the director and pressed a buzzer on his desk. Almost immediately, as if he had been hovering at the door,
Dick Gunther entered. National security adviser to the President. His smile at the director was brief, gloomy, his eyes studying Calvin like those of a concerned wife.
"Well?" he murmured, moving close to Calvin, behind the huge desk, near the windows.
Calvin shook his head. "No change," he muttered. The director felt like a terminal patient in a hospital room. Calvin and Gunther turned lugubrious looks on him. He felt very young, irresponsible, seated in his chair.
"Dick, you explain it to the director," Calvin said. "I can't make him see we're fresh out of options." The President's tone was sharp, almost vindictive.
He walked away, opened a small door that led to a washroom, then closed it behind him on a glimpse of white towels, gold faucets, dark wood gleaming like satin. The director dimly heard running water, then turned reluctantly to Gunther, who merely shrugged.
"Bill, I think he's right," he said eventually. His tone attempted to soothe, but the director felt lumpy and uncomfortable in his suit, as if his mood had creased and soiled it. He shook his head, staring at the crumpled transcript and the briefcase on his knees. "We re fresh out of options. There's nowhere to go with this."
In the director s briefcase was the entire Laserwatch file: a thin and now outdated collection of signals from Baikonur, reports and assessments from DARPA, presidential demands for action — demands, orders, pleas. When he had received Kedrov's last signal, he had felt the peril of the moment, but also its possibilities. Now they could act, use the gunships to go in and get Kedrov. But he had been upstaged, outsmarted. Nikitin wanted the treaty signed on Thursday. How they must be laughing at his country. Suggesting a rendezvous in orbit, a party up there, for Christ's sake, after they'd launched their first laser weapon!