Alternities (22 page)
“Too bad there’s no TV to go with the guide.”
“Oh, but there is—in the bottom drawer of his dresser. I’d have plugged it in, except I didn’t know how long you’d be gone, and I didn’t want to get caught.”
“A television that fits in a drawer? That I have to see,” Wallace said, struggling up out of the chair. “Arens will be gone for a while. Show me.”
Outside Albert Tackett’s windows, the city was a thousand yellow and white stars scattered across a black carpet.
Inside, the chair behind the paper-laden desk stood empty, and the lights over the desk were dark. A few steps away, Tackett and Monaghan occupied opposite ends of a burgundy leather sofa. In Tackett’s hand was an oversized mug of coffee, spiked with a generous dollop of Golden Harvest from the bottle in the dry sink. In Monaghan’s lap was a clipboard.
“Okay. I’m ready now,” Tackett said, sipping. “How bad was it? From what drifted up here, it sounds like the idea of making this into an Alpha simulation wasn’t one of my best.”
Monaghan shook his head. “On the contrary, our experience today shows just how badly we needed the practice. We learned a lot about how to handle matters at both ends. We’ll be much better prepared if we have to do it for real.”
“Everything back to normal downstairs?”
“We resumed regular operations at 3:20.”
“Against a one o’clock target. Which means the whole operation ran more than two hours over.”
“That’s extremely fixable. It was all execution, nothing structural. We were all doing it for the first time.”
“Good. Because that’s two hours we can’t count on having. How long did the actual move take?”
Monaghan consulted the papers pinned to the clipboard. “Two hours forty-six minutes to move seventy-six people.”
A long sigh escaped Tackett’s lips. “Too slow. Alpha List has ballooned to more than a hundred sixty people, We’ll still be checking the
K
s through when the missiles hit.”
“We can tighten that up a bit, Albert. Toward the end we were clocking about three minutes between transits.”
“We’re still going to have to move a lot of them through preemptively. We can’t wait for the red ball.”
“No. If only the damned gate would stay open long enough to get three through at once.” Monaghan said.
“If only Willie’s knob-and-switch boys could cook up something to keep it from closing at all.” Tackett said referring to the head of the Research Division. He savored a draught of his adulterated brew. “Any feedback from the other side yet?”
“The good news is that everybody came through. But they had some problems, too. Even with the notice, they were manpower short. And they really need to lock up more housing. Even if it’s just a big room to throw them all in.”
“I’ve been promised a two-M supplemental of Blue currency by the end of the month.” Tackett said. “That ought to be enough for them to put the wheels in motion.”
“Kelly will be glad to see it, that’s for certain. Anyway, he’ll make adjustments, we’ll make adjustments. Like I said it was a learning experience. The important thing is that the gate handled the traffic without locking up on us. There was only one focus shift at their end, and none at ours.”
Tackett yawned. “Willie can sleep easy tonight.”
“He’ll find something else to worry about.”
“Probably.” Tackett said, another yawn fighting through. “I have to go to Washington next week. Am I going to be able to tell the President that we’ve got a productive team in place? Or just bodies?”
“I’d stick to bodies,” Monaghan said with a twisted smile. “You promised me sixty days, remember?”
“I’m not changing speeds on you,” Tackett said, setting the mug aside and rising from the sofa. “I just know he’s going to ask. Can you give me an interim report, oh, midday Tuesday before I leave?”
Monaghan joined Tackett standing. “Will do. By then Kelly will have had a chance to look over what we sent him.”
Nodding, Tackett clapped a hand on Monaghan’s shoulder as he passed by en route to the door. “Good enough. Call it a day, Bret. Let’s go home.”
THE JEWELED DAGGER
A film by Stanley Kubrick
Based on the book by Jessame Frank
Reviewed by Richard Barthold
Sixteen years later, “July 3, 1961” and “Norfolk” remain referents which require no explanation, even to those born after the fact. Sixteen years later, the horror is barely diminished, the memories undiluted by time.
One minute, the cluster of communities at the confluence of the James River and Chesapeake Bay were quietly riding out the afternoon rain that was dampening holiday plans. The next minute, 31,000 lay dying, murdered when self-proclaimed peace activists, caught inside the Norfolk naval base, triggered the 20-kiloton warhead they had hoped to “confiscate.”
Like Lincoln’s assassination and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Norfolk stands as the signal event of its time, the dividing line between past and future. Norfolk worked irrevocable change on both the nation and the world, and shock waves from the explosion are still rippling through both individual lives and global politics.
The dimensions of the drama have defeated four previous efforts to capture it on film, frustrating directors as able as Herschel Tague (
7-3-61
) and as facile as Byron James (
Rendezvous: Norfolk
). In this, his first film in four years, director Stanley Kubrick has rendered all past and future attempts irrelevant, delivering a cinematic triumph which is at turns brilliant, infuriating, empathic, and prophetic.
As always, Mr. Kubrick takes chances. Unlike in Algonquin, the director’s labored study of the American muse,
The Jeweled Dagger
profits from all of them. Brilliantly intercutting between the hour after the explosion and the weeks before it, Mr. Kubrick weaves a multibraided story which begins at the end and ends at the beginning. Casting against type, Mr Kubrick extracts a career-rescuing performance from June Haver in her startlingly intense portrayal of Earth First organizer Diana Hams.
There is a temptation to enumerate the liberties Mr Kubrick takes with both Mrs. Frank’s narrative and the official record. But Mr Kubrick’s success comes in large part from his ability to see beyond pedestrian details in the pursuit of the essence. The result is a story somehow more compelling than mere truth.
Left untouched and presented with devastating irony is Mrs. Frank’s controversial thesis that the Norfolk disaster was not something Hams and her co-conspirators did to us, but something they did for us. There can be no question that the anguish of Norfolk changed attitudes about nuclear weapons worldwide, effectively aborting the arms race and fueling the drive toward internationalism. But can Hams be credited with farseeing that outcome, and thereby judged a martyr rather than a villain?
Deftly, Mr. Kubrick eschews both sentimentality and propaganda in favor of a Platonic dialogue with the viewer The contrast between a vast military mindlessly creating weapons it did not want to see used and a small band of idealists purposefully using a weapon they did not want to see created has never been more powerfully presented that in
The Jeweled Dagger
’s closing minutes.
There are a hundred images contained in the film’s 142 minutes which vibrate with raw power or reckless pathos. Many are contained in the film’s most daring sequence, the seemingly endless parade of faces of Norfolk victims which opens the film. Invading their privacy, the camera shows them crushed, bloody, burned, and yet tranquil in death.
We do not know them, the soundtrack offers only sounds of a sort that can be heard in a dying fire, and yet Mr. Kubrick manages to make us cry for their loss. By the end of the film, when Mr. Kubrick offers the nuclear fireball as a cleansing flame, a crucible for change, it is possible to see those deaths in a different light. It is a stunning reversal, and the capstone of a landmark film which promises to stand as a signal event in its own right. Bravo, Mr. Kubrick. Bravo.
Uncertified Thoughts
Indianapolis, Alternity Blue
It took nine days to get the new class on the streets.
The first five days were consumed by orientation sessions at the satellite station house on South Shelby Street. Wallace faced slanguage drill, law and custom work, and a heavy dose of Kelly’s house rules for moles. In the technology lab, better known as the toy shop, he was introduced to coinless phones, filmless cameras, and a tabletop photofax machine which seemed like nothing less than magic in a box.
A few hours were spent in hurried cover construction; he kept his runner name, Ray Wallach, but changed his vocation to commercial safety inspector to conform to the cell to which he had been assigned. Wallace decided to be single (to support the living arrangements), a graduate of Indiana Technical College (one of three institutions where the Guard had an agent who could intercept any inquiries), and a native of Chicago (his real hometown being too nearby and thereby too dangerous to claim).
There was even homework: reading the three Indianapolis newspapers in search of puzzling references. Most of them were in the ads, like the employment classified seeking a “chromatic designer” or the house-for-sale listing promising “green-walling, full interlink, and speed bath.”
Throughout the orientation, Wallace felt rushed. It was too much too fast, but at the same time rudimentary—too little for what they were going to be asked to do. Someone was in an awful hurry.
There followed three days of supervised exercises, privately dubbed the dog-and-pony show by the hurried agents. Driving a car that ran on a tank of liquid fuel instead of a phased-capacitance battery. Buying food with a transfer card. Shopping without gaping at the plenty like a tourist from India.
The exercises progressed to errand-running, all of which felt manufactured. Did anyone really need flowers delivered to Crown Hill Cemetery? Or photographs of the mayor of Augusta? Or a land survey on a Lynhurst home?
By the morning of the ninth day, Wallace was reading the message clearly. Fowler was right—the stationmaster did not trust the new class, and he was not the only one. There was deep skepticism on the part of the entire Blue team about the quality of agent they had been sent, a suspicion that the newcomers had not been properly vetted.
A suspicion, Wallace had to concede, which was not without foundation. By the ninth day, three prospective moles had already been demoted to the analysts’ tank where Fowler and the rest of the newcomers were laboring. And there were several others that Wallace would have recommended without hesitation for the same fate.
Of the three miscreants, one had managed to get a station car stolen by letting it run dry on an errand to Trader’s Point and then leaving the keys in the ignition when he went for help. Another had upbraided a local for wearing an American flag patch on his shirt, precipitating a fight that left the mole bloodied and confused. The last, showing true cultural tunnel vision, tried to bribe a city hall clerk to get copies of a public court proceeding.
That morning, the stationmaster himself had come to the satellite station to talk to them. Matt Kelly was a compact, stiff-necked man, older by ten years than anyone else on the staff, a telltale sign that his Blue counterpart was dead. A neatly clipped black beard and large oval glasses minimized the impact of piercing black eyes.
“The Section needs backgrounders on a large number of locals,” he told them while an aide passed out small manila envelopes. “I expect each of you to contribute to this work. What we know about your particular subject is in your assignment packet. Track them down and assemble a profile.”
For the span of ten seconds, the only sound in the room was of tearing paper. Inside Wallace’s envelope was a stiff white card on which was typed:
Barbara J. Haggerty, birthplace St. Francis Hospital, Beech Grove, Indiana, March 2, 1946, no LNA.
Wallace’s thoughts raced. Beech Grove was one of the dozens of little villages in danger of being enveloped by a growing Indianapolis. So this was local work. The kind of work that was easiest to get done. Which meant that if they really cared about Barbara Haggerty, someone would have looked her up long ago.
“How much do you want to know?” one innocent asked.
“Everything,” Kelly said with withering curtness.
The assignment was a rehearsal for the real thing, a final exam, Wallace realized. Blue Section would never see the reports.
“When do you want it?”
Kelly’s tone was chilly. “Yesterday.”
Which meant that Haggerty was almost certainly still somewhere in the metropolitan area. Probably alive. Certainly findable. It was a test, not a wild-goose chase.
“In case those answers confused you, I’ll spell it out,” Kelly was saying. “The perfect report has everything in it that the requestor wants to know, and it’s ready the moment he wants to know it. Which means there are no perfect reports. But at least you have something to shoot for.”
Wallace looked down at the card again. A tough draw. Women were usually harder to track than men. With a man you could work both forward from the past and backward from the present. But marriage made a woman vanish, her identity submerged in her husband’s name. And Haggerty was the right age and era to be married by now.
“Each of you should draw a standard expense advance from the bursar before you leave here,” Kelly said. “And see the transportation manager if you need a vehicle. But make sure you need a vehicle before you ask for it. Janet guards her budget like a mama lion guards a cub. Questions?”
No questions, Wallace thought. He had been hoping for a chance to show himself the equal of the “regulars,” as the station’s veterans had begun to refer to themselves. Barbara Haggerty was that chance.
No questions. Just get out of my way and let me to it.
“My first impression is that it’s a bad deal, at least from our end,” Gregory O’Neill said. “I would think we’d want to try to make sure that at least those ten stay on British soil. Strategically, it makes no difference whatsoever. But there’s some important symbolism there about commitment, about going to the wall if the need arises.”
