Arc Light (43 page)

The phone rang loudly through the open door. She grimaced and quickly covered Matthew with the blanket, rushing on tiptoes to the door and pulling it quietly closed. She heaved a deep sigh of relief as she trudged down the hall, of half a mind to unplug the phone so as not to have to talk to this cousin or that aunt.
The phone companies must be raking it in these days,
she thought as she closed the bedroom door.
Nuclear war is even better for business than Mother's Day.

“Hel-l-o-o-o,” she said, slumping and resting her head onto the earpiece for the long conversation to come.

“Melissa?”

Her entire world shifted its focus onto the faint hiss coming out of the telephone. She held her breath to pick up every sound, and she could feel her heart beating against her chest. “D-David?” She reached up and pressed her fingers to her lips as her eyes watered instantly.

“Oh, God, thank God,” he said, his voice breaking.

She sank into the chair and broke out laughing, tears flooding her eyes. She tried to cry and laugh at the same time, managing only the words, “Are you all right?” which were mangled by the effort required.

“Yeah—yeah,” he said, laughter breaking through a voice that was thick with his own quiet tears.

Melissa dissolved into sobs, her chest bucking so that she was unable to talk.

“How about you?” David asked.

She tried, but she just could not get the words to come out.

“Melissa? What?”

“No-o-o!” she finally said. “We're
fi-i-ine!”

There was nothing but the hiss of the line for several long seconds. “We?” David finally asked.

Melissa forced the words out. “We had a baby.” The sobs seized her for a moment, but then she said, “He's perfect. Don't worry. He's beautiful.”

“A boy,” David said, his voice far away and the connection poor. “Matthew?”

“Yes,” she sniffed, “Matthew.”

“Hah!” he laughed. “A baby!” She grinned on hearing his excitement at the news she had been bursting with desire to share with him. She didn't know where he was, but in the background she heard him laughing and shouting, “It's a boy! I had a boy!” There was laughter, male voices. “And everybody's fine?” he asked. “Everybody? Our parents, everybody?”

“Yes. Nobody was hurt.”

“Unbelievable. I mean, that's unbelievable. Matthew,” he said, sniffing and then laughing again. “Matthew!”

“He's healthy as a horse!” she said, a grin breaking through. “Eight pounds, four ounces. He's red and pimply looking. He's so ugly he's cute.” He asked, and she told him about the delivery. Finally, she asked, “Where are
you?”

“Uhm”—his laughter came to an abrupt halt—“well, I'm not supposed to say.”

“Oh, come on. You're joking?”

“No. You know, they don't want us to give that stuff out.”

“Do you think . . . is there any chance you're coming home?”

There was a long pause. “I don't know.”

“Are you near any of the fighting?”

“What fighting?”

Melissa thought for a second.
Where on earth could he be that he couldn't find out what was happening?
“Well, they're calling it the Phony War, like in Europe before the Blitzkrieg in 1940. But every hour there's a special bulletin about some flare-up somewhere. Mainly in Eastern Europe, but sometimes it'll be, like, the Mediterranean or the Indian Ocean or off Hawaii. And there's this big Russian invasion force near Iceland that nobody knows where it's going.”

Melissa waited for David to respond, but he was quiet. She tried hard to come up with a question, some code, to ask him his whereabouts that wouldn't lead to the same frustrating response, but before she could speak he said, “Honey, I don't have much time. Just five minutes total. Can you tell me what the hell is going on?”

He's not in this country,
she guessed,
or he'd know more. But where?
“What do you mean? With the war zones? The White House
calls them ‘disaster sites,' but everybody else—the news media, the Congress—calls them the war zones. And you know about the Declaration of War?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, and the impeachment trial in the Senate!”

“What about the Russian amphibious force?”

“The what?” Melissa asked.

“The Russian invasion force, off Iceland.”

Iceland!
she thought.
What in God's name is he doing there?
“It's . . . ” she began, suddenly wishing she had paid more attention to that story, “they don't know where it's going, or if it's going anywhere. At first they thought it might be headed toward Norway and the Norwegians even shot at them, but then it kept going and is in the Norwegian Sea and so they think”—she paused to swallow—“they think it may be headed toward Iceland.” A shot of fear trickled down her spine like ice water.

“And the navy is just going to let it go?” David asked, his voice rising.

“Oh, I don't know, David.” He sounded so concerned that she began to cry again. “David, where are you?” she demanded, needing to know something, anything, to arm herself for battle with the demons that tormented her when she was alone. Surely the fears were unfounded. He was in the reserves, not the real army. He put his uniform on and went to meetings once a month, and then sat in an air-conditioned office in Atlanta and pushed papers a couple of weeks every year!

“Are they going to impeach the President?” David asked, ignoring the question.

Melissa shut her eyes, descending into melancholy as the tears drained slowly from her, seeing the days and weeks stretch out before her during which the fears, the demons, would run unchecked and wreak havoc on her already fragile moods.

“Honey? Are they going to impeach President Livingston?”

With her eyes still closed, she said, “I don't know,” in a monotone. “The trial starts tomorrow. They say it'll be short, maybe only one day.”

“Honey, it's time. I've got to go.”

She realized suddenly that she had done all the talking, that he had asked all the questions. She had to have something, something to get her through the ordeal to come. “David, oh, David, can't you tell me something? Anything
at all?”

There was a pause. “I love you, and I love Matthew,” and then the line was disconnected before she could answer.

Chris Stuart poked at the shrimp Creole and chocolate pudding from the emergency rations as he reclined against the wall by the main ventilation duct. Sitting in the darkness and watching the wobbly light signal Langford's return from the escape tunnel, he breathed deeply the warm air that flowed gently from the metal grate—not fresh, but not the thick, stale air that hung heavy in the launch center toward the end of the ventilation system's down time.

The light now steadied, and Stuart could see it flash into the room and then appear at the doorway. He stood up and took the flashlight and Geiger counter from Langford. Waving the wand and light over Langford's protective garments, Stuart heard only an occasional tick of detection.

“You're clean,” he said, and Langford began to remove the gear. “What's it like?”

Langford removed his hood and gas mask in one swipe and huffed a heavy sigh. “Gets hot up at about the fifth or sixth rung from the top. Must be cookin' out there.”

“What about the escape hatch?” Stuart asked, too drained to sound as anxious as he felt about the answer.

“It was dogged tight, but I got it to turn,” Langford said. After a moment of quiet, Langford said, “I vote we go for it.”

“You said it was still hot. Hell, it's less than two weeks. We'd be fried before we could get off the base.” Langford didn't respond. “Look, we can hold out here for another month, I figure. By that time, the levels should be way down. Let's just keep our cool, use our heads.”

In the darkness, Stuart heard Langford's stomach churn with a violent liquid sound. Langford said, “Oh, man,” with a tinge of pain and then, “I gotta go.” He took the flashlight and ran off to the head, vomiting, as occasionally happened, from the stench after emptying his cramping bowels.

Stuart settled back in at the vent in the pitch darkness for the remaining few minutes before they turned the system off to conserve batteries. As always, he quietly rubbed the smooth, cool metal of his Beretta, his only sure way out.

Lambert knocked on the door to the President's quarters.

“Come in!” he heard, and he opened the door to hear the laughter of the President's son and the broad grin of the President.

“Oh, Greg!” President Livingston said, wiping his lips and getting up from the small table.

“I don't want to disturb you, sir,” he said, eyeing the First Lady and their two children, Nancy and Jack, who must have arrived during the night.

“No, nonsense,” he said walking around the table to greet him. “Thanks for coming.”

The First Lady appeared right behind him. She paused just briefly with a look of deep sadness on her face and then reached out to embrace him. Lambert was at first uncomfortable, but when he felt her hand patting the back of his shoulders and heard her saying how sorry she was, he relaxed until she finally drew back, her cool hand cupping his cheek for one final look of compassion.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, his social graces failing him as he stood there confused. She had briefly broken through the barrier he had erected, and he didn't know how to act.

“Come with me for a minute, would you, Greg?” the President said, turning to lead him by the breakfast table and into his bedroom. As Greg passed the two children—Jack, the neatly groomed college student and their daughter Nancy, pretty but with hair shorn short on one side and flowing long on the other, multiple earrings running up one ear—they stared back at him with guarded interest. He nodded, but they didn't reciprocate.

I'm the guy who's going to testify against him,
he thought.
I'm the enemy.

The President closed the door to the bedroom behind him. “Have a seat,” he said, motioning Lambert to the room's one chair while he sat on the unmade bed.

He hunched over immediately, resting his elbows on his knees and running his hands all the way up over his head to the back of his neck as he looked at the floor. He had changed completely, Lambert realized, once the door had been closed.

“I wonder what he's doing right now?” the President asked.

“Who, sir?” Lambert replied, his voice assuming the low and measured tone of the President's own. It was the tone of voice one used in the middle of the night when all were asleep. Or at a funeral.

“Razov. I wonder what he is doing right now? Does he have a
place like this?” The President and then Lambert looked at the bare walls of the small room. Although you couldn't see the heavy stone just on the other side, the low ceilings and always inadequate lighting were an ever present reminder of the great weight that pressed in all around you.

“The Kremlin has a deep-underground command post, yes, sir.”

The President nodded as if he appreciated Lambert's help and then sighed deeply. “Greg, here's the deal. Come this time tomorrow or the day after, I may be heading home to New York a private citizen.”

“Sir, they have no case. You haven't done anything—”

President Livingston held up his hand, and Lambert fell quiet. “We'll just wait and see. But I called you in here in case the worst happens.” The President sat up and stretched his back, sitting more erect than before with his hands on the tops of his thighs. “If I am convicted, and the Vice President accedes to the Presidency, there will be war. Are we ready for that war?”

Lambert opened his mouth to speak, hesitating as he turned the question over in his mind. Finally, he said, “It'll be . . . we'll take casualties. The Russians are already probing across the European borders with regularity, as you know. They know where we are, and they'll be ready. And their subs have begun taking potshots at the Seventh Fleet in the Western Pacific, so they're wise to us there. They've picked up the pace, but it's nothing like what we'll get if the balloon really does go up.”

“And that balloon will go up the moment it becomes obvious that the impeachment vote will carry two thirds of the Senate,” the President said, his eyes straying off into the distance. “That's why I—and Vice President Costanzo—have discussed it with the Senate leadership, and they have agreed that a straw vote will be taken in secret prior to the real vote. If the results of the straw vote indicate that I will be impeached, there will be a four-hour delay before the real vote is taken.” He looked now at Lambert with total concentration. “Four hours, do you understand?”

Lambert nodded.

“Get together with General Thomas. I'd do it myself, but my ‘handlers' say that I'm not supposed to show any sign of weakness. I'm supposed to be totally confident that I will win.”

“Do you think you will?” Lambert asked.

The President glanced once at the door and said, “No, of course not.” He ground his jaws as he stared off into space and said, “It could be close, but the numbers haven't been there for days now.” He heaved a deep sigh and looked up. “That's why I told my lawyers
not to fight for more time by petitioning the Supreme Court at every twist and turn. The Senate leadership is right. We need to be done with this, and to move on.”

A long silence fell over them then, and after a respectful pause Lambert slowly rose to leave.

“One other thing, Greg,” the President said without looking up, and Lambert sank back into his chair. “If I do lose, and we go to war . . . ”