The president sat up. He set the MCP file on the table and rang for an aide. “Ask Dr. Farber to come in, please,” he said softly.
The NSC advisor moved to the table sleepily. He had his glasses off, rubbing the lenses between folds in his handkerchief, and was unsuccessfully trying to suppress a yawn. He sat down wearily. “Mr.
President.” He held his watch toward the light of the reading lamp. “Home in less than two hours.”
“I’ve been reading that again, Jules,” McKenna said, nodding at the MCP folder. “I’ve been thinking about our entire position with the Soviets.”
Farber placed the glasses over his face. “Yes?”
“I don’t want to be in a position where we allow this situation to slip away from us.”
Farber nodded. “I see,” he said quietly.
“When we land, Jules, I want to call an immediate DefCon Three. I don’t think we can do any less. Do you?”
“You don’t trust Chairman Gorny to keep his word?”
“I have my doubts about the chairman calling the shots, Jules.” McKenna absently drummed his fingers on the edge of the table. “Gorny is a pragmatist. He’s ruthless, but not a fanatic. They call him The Bull, you know. But Dimitri Gorny is success-oriented. In an American high-school graduating class he’d be the one chosen Most Likely to Succeed. He owns a big chunk of life. I don’t think he wants to gamble with it… and I don’t think he would even consider a confrontation with the remotest possibility that it could lead to war.”
“That’s the way I read him, too. But—”
“Did you notice, Jules — there were times during our meeting when he seemed more interested in Rudenski’s reactions than mine?”
“Nervousness?”
“We were all nervous,” the president said quickly. “No, it was something else… as if he were searching for some — I don’t know, acknowledgment, I guess.”
“You think Gorny is on the skids, that the KGB is running the show?”
“I don’t know, Jules. But I don’t want to find out the hard way. We just celebrated Pearl Harbor Day — I don’t understand how we could celebrate it — but I’m not going to be the president that permits it to happen again.”
“A Defense Condition Three is a first step, Mr. President.”
“The Soviets already took their first step.”
“They’re not going to like it.”
“I don’t care if they like it. They’ll understand it. They’ll know it’s a defensive first step. Hell, they probably expect it. The point is, we can step down from a DefCon Three at any time.”
“Or a Two.”
“Or One.” McKenna made a face. “I’m not giving up, Jules. I have every intention of kicking them the hell out of Alaska before…”
“It’s a hell of a game, isn’t it, sir?”
“Christ, they’re pushing when they should be thinking! Doesn’t anyone in the goddamn Kremlin make rational judgments?”
“Wars do not start profoundly, Mr. President. They generally begin with cheap shots or ridiculous accidents.”
“We will not be shoved into war. I will not be the American president who historians say was responsible for nuclear genocide.”
“If there are any historians left, Mr. President, they will do an autopsy on our species… to see what makes us smarter than turnips”—Farber shrugged, reaching for his handkerchief—”if we are.”
MOSCOW
Gorny squinted as the next slide filled the projection screen. He was not in a mood to watch satellite photos at this hour of the morning. He’d only been back from Iceland for a few hours when he received Rudenski’s urgent call to come quickly — the Americans were making military preparations. So he came. He sat in the special Kremlin projection room with Rudenski and Marshal of the Soviet Armies Victor Budner and a handful of other generals from Moscow Center while a colonel with a remote-control button sat mutely to one side and commanded the slides onto the screen with his thumb while Budner and Rudenski provided the narrative. Gorny didn’t like being here. He didn’t need slides. He preferred photos. And, besides, this was the coldest room in the Kremlin.
“These are only two hours old, comrade Chairman,” Marshal Budner was saying. “US Minutemen silos. You see, they have taken crisis-alert configurations.”
Another slide flashed on the screen.
“Notice that our reconnaissance photos reveal security lockups of the missile bases. Undoubtedly they are beginning to seal off underground bunkers.”
Another slide, this time an air base.
“And here, B-52s on alert, Seventh Bomb Wing, Carswell, Texas… Forty-second Bomb Wing, Loring, Maine… Second Bomb Wing, Bossier City, Louisiana…”
“Forty-five minutes ago,” Rudenski said, “the aircraft carrier Eisenhower left Subic Bay. Its departure was unscheduled.”
“And here, comrade Chairman—”
“Enough!” Gorny exclaimed. “Turn off that damn machine, Colonel, and put on the lights.” The overhead lights flickered on and the chairman looked away from the brightness.
“The Americans have instituted a DefCon Three,” Budner said dramatically.
“Of course they have,” Gorny snapped. “What did you expect?” He looked at Rudenski. “And they know that we know they have.”
“The first-stage alert is purely cosmetic,” Rudenski said.
“Nothing from this point will be cosmetic, General Rudenski. President McKenna is a spirited man. He has a keen sense for his people. I would not want to press him too far.”
“He isn’t part of their military clique,” Rudenski countered. “He has no stomach for war, comrade.”
Gorny’s eyes narrowed. “And we do?”
“The Americans will not go to war over grain. They would never institute a first strike under any circumstances.” Rudenski spoke as if he were reading it. “The DefCon Three is for us to see, not for them to use.”
“Any issue of first strike has already been established as far as the Americans are concerned,” Gorny said. “We have combat troops in their country. Any action that they take while that circumstance continues is logically, and legally, defensive.”
Rudenski nodded patiently. “Yes, it is a move, I agree, but just a move. They’re compensating, comrade Chairman. They know as well as we do that a first strike on their part could only trigger our greatly superior second-strike capabilities. The Americans know how to count warheads. We have taught them how to count, if nothing else. They know we can survive their first strike.”
“Do they really?”
“Of course!” Rudenski very nearly shouted. “How many times must you be told that, comrade Chairman?”
“How many times? I’ll tell you how many! A million times! That’s how many times I have to be told we can survive a nuclear war… a million times!”