Arc Light (31 page)

At the very bottom of the nearly empty bag Chandler noticed the final items Barnes had included. Chandler pulled the first book from the bag. “FM 19-21—U.S. Army Armor Operations.” He looked over at Barnes, who appeared not to be paying him any attention. Chandler picked up the stack of manuals and a flashlight and set off to find a quiet place.

“Goddammit,
Paul!” the President shouted over the speakerphone at the Vice President, beside himself with anger. He rose from his seat and leaned out over the conference table. “What in God's name possessed you to give a speech like that? How dare you not clear it with me first!”

“Walter, we've gotta talk.”

“You're damn right we gotta talk! I'm coming down there to
Mount Weather right now! And in the meantime you just dig yourself a hole and crawl in it! No press contact, no public statements, no contacts with any branches of any government, foreign or domestic—”

“Walter,” the Vice President said, but the President snapped, “I'm not through yet!”

“May I ask who is in the room with you?” the Vice President said, and the President for the first time hesitated. “Just Greg Lambert,” he said, “and the military aide,” he added, barely glancing at the stone-faced air force major who sat hugging the football at the end of the table.

“May we speak in private?” Paul Costanzo asked, and Lambert and the major rose to leave. “Greg, you should stay.”

Lambert sank back down, bewildered by the Vice President's suggestion. When the door closed, President Livingston demanded angrily, “What is it?”

“Walter, I told you before, when we spoke, that I didn't agree with your policy of appeasement of the Russians.”

“Appeasement!”
Livingston shouted. “What appeasement? This thing was a mistake! We're not talking Neville Chamberlain here. There was no confrontation, no animosity, before the thing happened.”

“But there is now,” the Vice President said. “There is plenty now. The issues have changed.”

“Now we're talking issues!” Livingston shouted. “Okay! What issues? What are you proposing?”

“The same thing we talked about before.”

“Disarmament?” the President shouted. “You expect me to demand Russian nuclear disarmament after we just dropped five
thousand
nuclear warheads on them in response to their mistake? You weren't a party to the last conversation we had with General Razov, but let me tell you, he was in no mood to hear terms.”

“That's another thing. I think you should include me more in your discussions about the situation—military briefings, discussions with foreign leaders, that sort of thing.”

“You
do,
do you?” Livingston said, a look of angry disbelief on his face. A grin broke out as he shook his head.

“And so do the Speaker, and Jim Bailey,” the Vice President said softly, the latter referring to the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “And by the way, Mr. Lambert, the Speaker wanted me to remind you that your testimony is requested tomorrow at nine
A.M
. at their underground facility at Greenbriar in West Virginia.”

Lambert's first thought was
West Virginia.
Jane was at Snowshoe.
He would see her tomorrow. His heart leapt and spirits soared.

Livingston sank into his seat. The grin was gone. He nodded his head, looking over at Lambert. “So that's what this is all about. I get it. You've gone around behind my back.”

“They all just happened to be here, Walter, and we talked.”

“I want you incommunicado, from this moment forward.”

“I don't think that'll do, Walter,” the Vice President said, again softly.

The President took a deep breath as his anger grew to proportions that Lambert had never before witnessed. “Then I want your fucking resignation.”

There was a long pause, and finally the Vice President said, “I don't think that'll do, either.”

Livingston raised his index finger in the air and poked the button to disconnect the line with a hard jab. His finger fell next on another button on the console. “Put this thing on the ground! I'm going to Mount Weather!”

Lambert descended the stairs of the E-4B. When he got to the bottom, he looked at the identical plane sitting one hundred yards away with its engines idling. The President and First Lady, however, were just disappearing through the door of a helicopter. Close on their heels was the White House legal counsel, who had met the President on the tarmac. He was already talking to the President in his rapid-fire style.

Before Lambert got into the ubiquitous black government car, the helicopter lifted off, rushing the President to Mount Weather for his showdown with the Vice President. Lambert turned to his escort, a Congressional aide.

“I need to make a call,” Lambert said.

“You can make it from the car,” the aide suggested.

As the car sped off, the aide handed Lambert the mobile phone and Lambert dialed the number of the condo at Snowshoe.

“Jane Lambert, please,” Greg said to the switchboard operator who answered, the anxiety pumping adrenaline into his system.

“I'm sorry, sir, but there is no Jane Lambert—L-A-M-B-E-R-T—staying with us,” the operator said.

Greg felt a slight chill. “Well, is there anybody by the name of Collins? She might be with her parents.”

After a pause, the operator said, “No, sir, I'm sorry. We have no Collins, either.”

“Maybe—are you booked up solid?” Greg asked, finding peace with that explanation.

“Yes, sir,” the operator said. “Everybody from—well, the refugees.”

Greg nodded—their condo was rented out and they had to find some other place—but then thought to ask, “When did you fill up?”

“Oh, a couple of hours ago, I guess,” the operator answered.

Lambert held the phone to his ear.
They should have been there within an hour or so after my call,
Lambert thought.

“Sir?” the operator said.

“Oh, uh, thank you,” Lambert said, swallowing the dryness from his throat.

“Good luck, sir,” the woman said, a sad kindness in her voice.

Lambert looked over at the aide on the seat next to him, but the young man turned away to gaze out the dark window.

With terrible trepidation, Lambert phoned his and Jane's apartment. To Lambert's surprise, the telephone rang. His heart froze into a block of ice as he feared it would be picked up. On the third ring, the answering machine came on and he relaxed. Greg quickly punched in their personal access code. Putting the phone back up to his ear, he heard the familiar computerized voice say, “Number of messages received—three.”

His nerves were taut now. Lambert listened to the first tone. “Honey, if Pavel calls,” Jane said—from the background noise she was clearly in her speeding Saab, to Greg's great relief—“don't forget to tell him Irina's with me. Bye.”

He tried to remain calm as the beep over the phone sounded again. “Greg,” Jane said, and he grew sick at the sound of her voice. She was frightened. “The engine started smoking, and then it just stopped.” He felt the physical effect that the blow of her words had. In the background, Greg could hear the hum of the Emergency Broadcast System. He closed his eyes; the sound of the recording was his world now.

“Tell him about the radio,” Greg heard Irina say. Irina's voice shook.

“The . . . the radio stations went off the air. I'm scared, Greg. Oh, I'm so, so scared.” The quiver in her voice was audible. “I'm gonna hang up now. Mom and Dad may be trying to call. They're coming to get me. Bye,” she said, not seeming to want to hang up. “Bye-bye, darling.”

Greg listened as there was another click. His mouth was dry and his breathing was difficult against the weight forming on his chest.

The third beep, the final one. He heard Jane's voice as if from the pit of his own private hell. “Greg,” and a cough. “Oh, honey, what's happening?” Jane barely managed before the coughing overcame her. Greg heard Irina vomiting in the background.

“I got a call from my sister,” the gray-haired woman in line next to Melissa was saying, pressing a tissue to her nose. “She's in Kansas, just sitting in her house.”

“Oh, that's awful,” Melissa said as they inched forward. “Isn't there anything they can do?”

“No. Everybody's in the same boat. The telephone lines work, so at least they're not alone. She's at the old home place. It's farming country there, you know. Everything is just normal. She's got electricity, and cable TV, and water. But she's dying, she says, she can feel it. The local TV stations say her part of the county got one hundred of whatever it is, radiation.” The tears began to flow. She was so old, and her skin was so white and dry, that Melissa found herself surprised at the volume of tears that rolled down her cheeks.

“Doesn't she have a basement or something?” Melissa asked, hoisting little Matthew higher up onto her aching shoulder, shifting his weight uncomfortably in her weakened state.

“She's got a storm cellar. That part gets cyclones. I told her to get on down in it, but she was asleep when the damn Russians dropped the bombs and didn't hear about it till the next morning on TV. By then, they were saying, the radiation was already all over the place. If you hadn't stuffed rags under the doors and some such, then it was too late. It was inside the house, and the cellar, and everything, like the old dust storms. Breathed it right into your lungs too, Edith said.” She was shaking her head. “I always said she shoulda come out here with me after Frank—he was her husband, you know—after he passed.”

“Can she get out at all?” Melissa asked. “Even for a quick trip to get some food?”

The woman shook her head. “Can't rightly keep food down anymore, Edith says, so she doesn't even try. Never was much of an eater, always slim as a reed. We're twins, you know,” she said, smiling up through her thick eyeglasses. “Prettiest girls in the county, they used to say.” Her eyes drifted down the line in which they stood. “There are too many people here. I think I'll just come back later.”

“But we're almost there,” Melissa said, nodding at the door just ahead. “There may not be any food later on.”

“I can get food somewhere. I've got a vegetable garden in my backyard. If I have to, I can go ahead and harvest early.”

“Are you sure, ma'am?” Melissa said, reaching out to touch the frail, bony shoulder of the sweet old woman.

“Thank you, darlin'. I think I'll head on back and give Edith a ring. She hung up on me before, sayin' it must be costing a fortune. The more I think about it, I think how silly that is. Who cares how much it costs? But, you know, old ways die hard.” She was off.

Melissa couldn't have felt much worse as she inched forward to the glass door. A large poster was taped to the window beside it.
BY ORDER OF U.S. GOV'T, ONLY PERISHABLES WILL BE SOLD UNTIL JUNE
16
TH
. That much she knew, the word having filtered back down the line half an hour earlier. Her eyes, however, focused on the other large print, this written in bold letters across the front page of the
Los Angeles Times
held by the security guard, who read intently as the crowd filed by in a surprisingly calm fashion. Melissa could barely take her eyes off the paper, looking away just briefly as a man let her go in front of him at the door but being drawn back to reread the banner headlines, which took up nearly one third of the front page. She shook her head, the words still unreal, repeating them soundlessly over and over in her head.
“WORLD WAR III—WORLD WAR III.”

“State your full name, please,” the Majority Leader began.

“Gregory Philip Lambert.”

“And your position.”

“Special Assistant to the President for National Security.”

“Now, Mr. Lambert,” the Majority Leader said as he looked at his notes, “I understand . . . I've heard about your loss, and so I'll be brief. On the night of June eleventh, were you in telephone contact with President Livingston?”

“Yes,” Lambert said, unfazed by the glare of the lights for Congressional film cameras as he sat numbly before the committee.

“I'm sorry, sir,” the Majority Leader asked softly. “Could you speak a little more directly into the microphones.”

Lambert leaned forward into the small bundle of microphones. “Yes,” Lambert repeated with no inflection in his voice.

The Majority Leader glanced out of the corner of his eye at his Republican colleague, and then said, “I'm sorry, Mr. Lambert, but we've got to ask you these questions. Did the President have you get the late Secretary Moore on the telephone that night of June eleventh?”

“Yes.”

“And what did President Livingston say to Secretary Moore?”

“I am not at liberty to discuss the matter,” Lambert said in a monotone, all emotion long drained from him, “on the ground that it might compromise the national security of the United States during the pendency of a defense emergency.” He had recited the sentence three times over the telephone during his one-hour preparation with White House counsel that had preceded the closed-session hearing.

Lambert was focused on the green cloth that covered the Congressmen's dais, his mind a fog when he realized that the Majority Leader was saying something to him.

“Can you repeat your question?” Lambert asked.

“It wasn't a question, it was a statement. You have been asked a direct question during a properly convened hearing of a committee of both houses of Congress. The session is behind closed doors, and everything you say will be held in strictest confidence. Now, I will ask you the question again. What did President Livingston say to Secretary Moore?”