Alternities (24 page)

“Norway is small enough that the Soviet Union can afford to ignore them,” O’Neill said in the same even tone. “A flea on a St. Bernard. They wouldn’t be as tolerant of us.”

“Is that so? Let me tell you how I see it. I think they do it because we let them get away with it. Rockefeller created this problem all by himself the first time he settled for a polite note of protest instead of a nitronyl calling card. How the hell are we ever going to get back to a blue-water strategy, Gregory? Tell me that.”

“That Norwegian business caught my eye, too.” Madison said, joining the fray. “I’d sure like to see us take a more aggressive approach to coastal defense. Give our skippers the authority to fire on contact. Hell, let them go hunting. And then pin a medal on the first one to come back with his launchers empty. That’d turn things around.”

“May I point out that their subs are faster than our destroyer escorts?” O’Neill said. “They can just run away from us. They do it all the time.”

“They can’t run from a patrol plane, can they?” the CIA director shot back.

“Or from the Javelins,” Robinson said quietly.

O’Neill was not dissuaded. “If we go out there head-hunting, we’re going to buy a pack of trouble,” he warned.

“Which is why I would suggest that this new policy—if adopted—be announced in advance to the United Nations Maritime Commission,” Clifton said. “Worded properly, of course, so that it doesn’t sound as though we’re accusing anyone of anything. Hazard to shipping and that sort of thing. Kondratyev will have an opportunity to avoid an incident, and we’ll be on firmer ground if there are any.”

O’Neill looked to Robinson, his expression a mixture of disgust and frustration. “Sir, the cold fact is, it doesn’t make a whit of difference strategically whether their subs are sitting two miles offshore or twenty.”

“Perhaps not. But it matters, all the same,” Robinson said. “Besides, if you’re right, don’t you think the Reds will loudly deny everything and quietly pull back into international waters?”

“We can’t count on that.”

“I think we can,” Robinson said firmly. “And I think there is plenty of support for that view in this room.”

Scanning the faces of the others, O’Neill found unwelcome confirmation of that. “I think they’re just as likely to say, ‘Well, come on then, boy, let’s tussle.’ They still have the edge, and they probably think they have a bigger edge than they really do. And it’s perceptions, not reality, that drive behavior.”

“Noted. If it happens that way, you have my permission to say ‘I told you so.’ ”

“We’re talking about the possibility of seeing one of our ships sunk in our own waters.”

“I don’t think so,” Robinson said composedly. “Because Moscow has more to lose by getting in a shooting war with us than they have to gain.”

“Moscow won’t make the decision. That decision will be made by a single sub captain who’s just had his boat rattled in a definitely unfriendly way.”

“Their commanders have rules of engagement, too. I’m betting they say withdraw if challenged. And it feels like a very secure bet. End of discussion, Gregory. The decision is made.”

O’Neill nodded glumly. “Tell me what you want, then.”

“State will draft the policy statement. You sit down with your tactical people and come up with some new rules of engagement for the Coast Guard,” Robinson said, licking the icing residue from his fingers. “Get the Joint Chiefs to sign off on them, and then bring them to me.”

O’Neill frowned, but acquiesced. “It’ll take at least a week.”

“That’s fine,” Robinson said, satisfied. O’Neill was stubborn, but loyal. He knew how to close ranks when the issue was decided. “I’m thinking we’ll hold it until after the next incident. I’m sure the Bear will oblige us before too long.”

He glanced outside at the already dark sky, then at his watch. CIA would have a long list, and he had hardly seen Janice all day. “That’s enough for today, gentlemen. We’ll come back to this tomorrow at ten.”

“Rayne Andrew Wallace.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“Mangled Old German, sir.”

“Mangled?”

“There should be an
r
on the end—Rayner. It was my great-grandfather’s name. Means ‘mighty soldier,’ or something like that. According to my grandmother. Immigration dropped the
r
and he never realized he could do anything about it.”

Matt Kelly smiled and shifted the gum he was chewing to the other side of his mouth. “I’ll guess you took some heat about your name as a kid.”

“Everybody used to think I was saying Ray,” Wallace said with a little shake of the head. “It wasn’t until I was sixteen or so that I started to insist they got it right. By then I could take care of myself.”

Pursing his lips, Kelly flipped open the cover of the binder in front of him on the desk. “Well,
Rayne
Wallace, this is one fine job you did on Haggerty.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen better, and I’ve seen faster. But I don’t remember anything this complete on a forty-eight-hour turnaround from someone as green as you are. How’d you do it?”

“I guess by not trying to decide what’s important while I was in the field.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, how’d you do it? You’ve got her dress size, the due date for her child, college grade-point average. Individually useless, but impressive in the aggregate.”

Wallace felt a sudden tremor of uncertainty. Maybe he’d gone too far, crossed the line from dedication to zeal. A break-in, a bribe, three impersonations—maybe Kelly wouldn’t be so happy with him after all. “It’s out there, all of it,” he said evasively. “You just have to be creative about getting it.”

Kelly grunted. “Whatever. If you don’t want a chance to brag on yourself, I’ll let it pass. Just don’t forget what worked for you,” he said. “Because as of now, I’m releasing you to operations.”

Suddenly grinning broadly, Wallace straightened up in his chair.

“Thank you, sir.”

“You’ll be in Donn Frederick’s group. Suite 16, the Shelby Street offices.”

“Yes, sir,” Wallace said, starting to rise.

“Wallace—just don’t get too creative, do you hear? Your reputation hath preceded you.”

Wallace’s face fell. “Yes, sir.”
Can’t get away from it
, he thought resignedly.
It’s part of my profile now
—

To Gregory O’Neill’s mind, there was a chilling emperor’s-new-clothes unreality to the charts the CIA director had brought with him, as though anything committed to print and discussed soberly had to be taken seriously, no matter how absurd.

Madison’s words were a cape swirling around the emperor, a noble but vain attempt to mask the nakedness, a skillful effort to disengage the critical faculties of his audience. Astonishment had silenced O’Neill during the first several minutes of the presentation. He stared at the man as though he were staring at a crawling thing, unable to credit what he was hearing:

“The most desirable flight would be an Aeroflot nonstop from a city outside the Soviet bloc. At present, there are three that deserve special consideration: They originate from Madrid, London, and Reykjavik.

“As noted here, using either London or Madrid would require us to take action on the ground, specifically loading the package and replacing the crew. Obviously, that would have to be handled very cleanly and probably would necessitate involving the host country to some degree. Balancing the added risk is the opportunity to use actual Soviet hardware for the penetration.

“The Reykjavik flight is the longest of the three, much of it over water. There are radar dead spots and often long stretches of radio silence. It should be possible to bring down the target airliner over the Norwegian Sea and substitute our own mocked-up Q-plane. The Tu-85s in service on the Reykjavik run and our Boeing-Douglas VC-24 are virtual twins—as they should be, since we cribbed freely from their design. The advantage here is that we can handle it without outside help, since there is no ground interface.

“The choice between the various options would turn on a more careful examination of a detailed action plan, but timing at the other end might become a consideration, too. The optimal trigger windows are the opening session of the twenty-fifth Party Congress, expected sometime next summer, or one of the semi-annual gatherings of the Supreme Soviet. Either one should assure a maximum concentration of the country’s top leadership, both civil and Party—”

O’Neill glanced toward Robinson and was horrified to see the President’s eyes betraying interest. The sight spurred him to break his benumbed silence. “Mr. President, this is the craziest idea I’ve ever heard outside of a union bar,” O’Neill said sharply. “I’m astonished that Dennis would think something this extreme would get a sympathetic hearing. And frankly, I’m surprised at you for letting him go on as long as you have.”

“This is not something that was hatched overnight,” Madison growled, annoyed at the interruption. “Some of my very best people have been working on this for more than a year. I wouldn’t bring you something that I wasn’t convinced was do-able.”

“I take no comfort whatsoever in that,” O’Neill fired back. Bouncing up from his chair, he strode across the room to the chart stand and flung the top chart back, then shuffled roughly through the remaining pages as he continued.

“Where are the charts showing American casualties in the war you’ve started?” he demanded. “Where are the tables of burnward beds for half a million survivors? Did your ‘best people’ give so much as one minute of that year to thinking about what happens
after
you pull off your coup? Do you think that killing the Minister of Strategic Rocket Forces removes all launch authority from Soviet command and control?”

Madison scowled. “I’m not surprised by this. You swagger and preen with the best sweat-belt generalissimo, but when it comes to actually using it, you can’t get it up. You made that plain enough yesterday, when you tried to talk the President into keeping the handcuffs on the Coast Guard. We didn’t buy you all that fucking hardware just so you could show it off in parades.”

“An
ad hominem
attack is no substitute for an answer, Dennis,” O’Neill said stolidly. “But then you can’t answer, because the lie you’d have to tell to keep from admitting I’m right would choke you.”

He turned to Robinson. “This is absolutely reckless, Mr. President. Absolutely and unequivocably reckless. There is no such thing as a one-punch fight. Scorching Moscow isn’t going to ‘sap their national will.’ The Soviet people believe in revenge, Mr. President. And they’ll have it.”

Robinson folded his hands over his belt buckle. “Are you so sure of that, Gregory? A people without leaders isn’t a nation. It’s a rabble.”

“I’m not worried about the Soviet people, Mr. President. It’s the captains of the Soviet ballistic missile submarines and the wing commanders of the Soviet bomber squadrons and the generals of the strategic rocket forces that worry me. Turn it around. If Washington were scorched but SAC were still intact, do you think Moscow would be safe?”

“Quite probably,” Madison said. “What about all those SAC simulations where you make the boys in the hole think their boards are live when they’re not? Half of your missile teams refuse the launch order.”

O’Neill steeled himself not to respond to the implied slur. “We conduct those exercises to weed those people out.”

“Which proves that you still haven’t managed to figure out who they are before you put them there. Or why they change after you do,” Madison said, parrying as gracefully as a foil champion. “Mr. President, take it from a Colorado boy: If you cut a rattlesnake’s head off, the body’ll thrash around for a little while. But that sucker’s dead.”

“Is there something in the water over at Spook Central that encourages this sort of hallucination?” O’Neill demanded. “The Soviet Union isn’t a goddamned snake. It’s not a single monolithic organism. It can’t be stunned or beheaded. And it isn’t going to roll over dead even if this crazy scheme worked and we did manage to atomize the Kremlin.”

“You’re the fucking king of
can’t
and
don’t
, aren’t you?” Madison snarled. “Why don’t you get out of the way and let somebody who’s not scared of their shadow get—”

O’Neill was furious enough that his body was trembling with the struggle to contain it, but it was Robinson who interrupted first. “That’s enough of that sort of talk, Dennis. Let’s try to keep this professional, can’t we?”

Robinson’s silence had disturbed O’Neill. Now the President’s support emboldened him. “Mr. President, I can’t say it strongly enough,” he said, turning his back on Madison. “This nonsense doesn’t merit one minute’s further consideration. In my judgment, the risks of succeeding are even greater than the risks of failing.”

He heard the lecturing tone in his voice, but did not care. “This whole plan is dishonest, dishonorable, and, I think, fundamentally disloyal to you, this administration, and this nation. I refuse to have any part in it. If you want to pursue this kind of immorality, you can have my resignation right now.”

He headed for the door without waiting for an answer. It was no dramatic gesture; rather, it was an urgent need to end the conversation before Madison spoke again and sent his anger up past the level where he could control it. He had felt the faint warning touch of the irrational, and he had to back away.

In the seconds it took to reach the door, he heard Madison snicker, Robinson sigh, and E.C, tentatively volunteer, “If we’re taking a break, I need to—”

Whatever the Secretary of State needed was lost in the slamming of the solid oak door. He had meant to avoid the cliche exit, but at the touch of the doorknob in his hand his body took over, like electricity discharging through an accidental ground. It was a childish, petulant, meaningless act. And it felt so good that when he left the cabin, O’Neill slammed that door, too.

It was quiet in the grove north of the cabin. The long-needled red pines blanketed sound, while their detritus cushioned the ground under his feet. Beds, O’Neill remembered as he walked. They used to make beds out of pine needles.