Arc Light (5 page)

“And so Greg tried to lift the car out of the mud with his bare hands. ‘It's only a fucking Fiat,' ” Jane said in a mock, deep-voiced imitation as she regaled them with the distorted tale of their honeymoon. “He could hardly walk for a week. We found a little inn in the middle of Nowheresville, France, and I propped him up in bed and we read
books.
He was
useless.
Completely useless,” she said, turning to Greg. “I swear,” she continued, “with so much testosterone running loose in this world, I don't know how it is that our two countries didn't get into a war all those years.”

In the silence that followed, Greg looked at Pavel, and then Pavel's eyes drifted to the television that hung over the bar. “What is he going to say?”

Greg glanced at the screen. A special bulletin had interrupted the CBS broadcast. “Pavel, can I . . . can we talk?”

“So you didn't come here to see your long lost wife?” Jane said. “That explains it.”

Pavel and Greg were close friends, but it was not the first time that the friendship had been used for professional reasons. Always before, however, there had been a cooperative spirit in the games they played, as befitted the strange alliance their countries had forged during and after the first Russian war with China, in which the U.S. had provided substantial logistical assistance. Greg always asked the questions that Pavel wanted to answer, or vice versa, and each reported the “contact” up the chain of command. “Back channel” communications, they were called. Having become a part of such a channel himself quite by coincidence, Greg had come to realize how important those lines of communication were. But things had been strained since the military coup in Moscow in early spring and the U.S. deployment to Eastern Europe in response that had so inflamed the Russian nationalists, and Greg had shied away from asking tough questions after the first flurry of activity, sensing Pavel's desire to avoid the subject.

“Sure,” Pavel said. “Go ahead.”

Greg looked over at Jane and Irina, who sat there, expectant. “Pavel, we have intelligence to indicate that there were high-level contacts over the last few days between the North Koreans and your Defense Ministry in Moscow.” Pavel's face remained blank. “Any communications traffic,” Greg continued, supplying the source—technical means—in hopes of trading for more, “might create an appearance of impropriety at a time when American lives are at risk.”

Pavel cleared his throat and said, “As you know, Greg, we have
regular relations with North Korea
and
utilize their road grid in the north for resupply of our forces in Occupied China.”

Nothing,
Greg thought with a flash of anger. “Did you have advance warning of the North Korean attack, Pavel? If you did, we're gonna want—the President is going to
expect
—some help, at least on the intelligence side.” Greg was irritated, and he broke the rules of the game by speaking so frankly. Pavel just arched his eyebrows. “Come on, Pavel. I don't have time for this shit. I need something.”

Filipov took another sip of his wine, a furrow deepening between his brows. “We have problems, Greg, of which you are only dimly aware. There are people in my country, people like General Zorin, who view things differently than you and I. They see U.S. troops in Eastern Europe and in the Sea of Japan and think it is a part of some vast Western conspiracy, a continuation of our countries' historical enmity.”

“Don't give me that horseshit about—” Greg stopped mid-sentence. He was too tired and too impatient to play the game, and he had almost made the mistake of hearing only what Pavel had said and not its meaning.
So it was Zorin who talked to the North Koreans,
Greg thought.
That makes sense. They're cut of the same cloth.
Pavel took another sip of his wine, the glass covering his mouth but the amusement evident in his eyes.
He loves the game,
Greg thought for the hundredth time.

“Well,” Greg said, “I hope for both our countries' sakes that Zorin—these hard-line types—can be kept on the reservation.” Pavel said nothing, and Greg's patience again began to wear thin. “So . . . what? Are you saying that Razov needs the supply lines through North Korea so badly that he and Zorin agreed to let the North Koreans slip the leash and invade the South just five months short of reunification? Just after we completed withdrawal of our troops at the insistence of the North? That your old boss Razov is up to his eyeteeth with Zorin in this?”

Filipov didn't bite. It was Irina who blurted out the response. “General Razov hates General Zorin!”

“Irisha,” Pavel said.

“But it's true! General Razov is friend of America. We could not have been victorious without America's aid in the last Chinese war, and Pavlik might not be here tonight if America would not have helped.” She was wilting under Pavel's gaze, knowing she should not have interrupted, so she just lowered her head and finished what she had to say. “Zorin is all the time wandering off his reservations.”

Pavel leaned forward. “Okay, I know you're busy. In answer to your question about”—he looked around, and continued in a whisper—“about
General Zorin, all I can say is steps are being taken.” He held up his hands as if to say, “There!”

“Is
STAVKA
going to sack him?”

“The High Command,” Irina whispered to Jane, who nodded, and the two turned to listen. Pavel again said nothing.

“Christ, Pavel, don't tell me there could be trouble in Moscow,” Greg said. “That's the last thing we need right now, and you too, for that matter, with the way things are going in China.” All eyes were on Pavel, and Greg waited in silence for his response.

There was a chirp from the portable phone in Greg's jacket pocket. He pulled the phone out. “Lambert.”

“White House switchboard, Mr. Lambert,” the operator said. “Please stand by.” Everybody watched as Greg listened to the faint tones and a pop over the phone. “Please repeat,” the cool electronic woman's voice of the voiceprint identification system said, “astrologer.”

“Astrologer.”

The waiter appeared behind Pavel. “Colonel Filipov? Telephone, sir.”

“Precocious,” the computer said, not matching on the first try. “Precocious,” Lambert said, enunciating the word carefully. “Voice-print authenticated,” the computer said, and there was a click as Greg watched Pavel excuse himself. “Please hold for Major Rogers,” the White House operator said.
Old Jolly Rogers,
Lambert thought, having already grown accustomed to his paranoid late-night calls about Iranian invasions of Saudi Arabia or Indo-Pakistani nuclear wars.

“Mr. Lambert?”

“What is it, Larry?”

“Sir, we've gone to
DEFCON
3, all forces worldwide. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is executing the Joint Emergency Evacuation Plan. You're a JEEP-1 cardholder, sir. Your point of departure is the White House. You'd better get a move on.”

Greg could no longer hear the buzz of conversations or the faint background clatter from the kitchen. “What's going on?” he asked, his entire being focused on the faint hiss from the phone.

“Attack Condition Bravo, sir.” Greg heard the words, but the tingle along his scalp and the flood of disassociated thoughts prevented him from comprehending immediately. “General Thomas has convened a missile threat conference. That's all I know.”

Greg stared out at the suddenly surreal room of late-night diners. Couples leaned over tables with hands intertwined and faces
close. A crowd of apron-clad busboys at the bar waited for the President to appear on television for his address.

“What is it, sweetie?” Jane asked, looking at his face with concern.

“I'll be right there,” Greg mumbled, placing the phone in his pocket just as Pavel returned. Rather than taking his seat, Pavel leaned to whisper in Irina's ear. Greg saw Pavel's lips form the word
“Moskvu,”
and Irina knit her brows.
The accusative declension of the Russian word Moskva,
Greg silently translated,
meaning “going to Moscow.”
“Jane, can I . . . can I talk to you for a second?” She got up and followed Greg to the bar. Pavel and Irina watched, and Greg turned his back to them. Pavel's early training had been not with the army but with the KGB.

“Honey? Greg, what's . . . ?”

“I want you to get in the car and head up to Leesburg. Better yet, call your parents and tell them you're going to meet them at the condo at Snowshoe.”

“What? Why?” She laughed nervously. “What's going on?”

“I don't know,” he said as his mind raced.
North Korea? Zorin? The Russo-Chinese War? Something else?
“They're evacuating the government, Jane.”

“They're doing what?” she gasped.

He pulled her to his chest and wrapped his arms around her, hugging her close. “Oh, God, honey. There's . . . there's so much I want to say but . . . I've got to go. There's not much time. You understand?”

Jane was ashen, staring up at him and shaking her head. “No. No, I don't understand at all!”

Greg had to go. The clock had started, and the timetables were skinny. “Just get out of town. Don't stop for clothes, for food, for anything. Do you have gas in the car?” She stared at him without responding. “Jane,” Greg said, taking her by the shoulders. She instantly wrapped herself in his arms. He hugged her, but softly said, “Jane, is there gas in the Saab?” Her soft hair, just curled at the hairdresser that afternoon, tickled his nose as she nodded, and he pressed his face through the curls to kiss her warm head. “I have to go,” he said, gently prying her arms from around him. “I love you,” he said, staring into her beautiful blue eyes before turning to leave. He said a hurried good-bye to Irina and Pavel and headed out of the restaurant. His driver quickly wheeled up to where he stood. “The White House,” Greg said as he slammed the door. “Use the light.”

Without asking any questions, the driver put the small red bubble light on the roof with a thud, its magnet holding it firmly in place, and he gunned the engine. The car growled to life, throwing Greg's
head back and bouncing him as they rolled onto the street just as he reached for and at first try missed the buttons on his portable phone.

As the car's siren wailed from under its hood, Greg looked back to see Pavel jogging across the parking lot. At the door of the restaurant stood Jane and Irina. Jane was waving as she disappeared from his view, and after a moment he hit the autodial for the White House.

“I can't see any way that the United States will enter the fighting,” the analyst on the CNN special report was saying. Melissa Chandler sat on the sofa in their family room, one ear on the television, the other on the sounds of David's footsteps upstairs. The network military pundit whom David had said earlier didn't sound as if he knew what he was talking about was inset in a box as the main picture showed the press milling about the White House Briefing Room, the podium at the front still empty. “The North Koreans have advanced too far in too short a time. I'm afraid we're going to have to sit this one out and hope the South Korean Army can turn things around by itself, maybe with U.S. air support.”

Melissa's stomach hurt, and her back had begun to freeze up as she sat at an awkward angle holding her swollen belly. She slid farther up on the seat cushion to relieve the pain in her back, but the pressure of her womb on her bladder made her want to go to the bathroom again. The indigestion shot pains through her stomach.
The joys of pregnancy,
she thought, her hand rubbing the top of her taut abdomen.

“What about all of the troop movements that we've been hearing about over the last few hours and in the weeks and months leading up to yesterday's invasion?” the anchorman asked. He looked down at his notes. “Carrier battle group sails from San Diego with partial crew. Marine Expeditionary Force training in the Sea of Japan. Marines depart Camp Pendleton. Two National Guard divisions activated. Two regular army divisions deployed to Germany. Fighter aircraft seen taking off from Yokota Air Base, Japan. Et cetera, et cetera. What do you make of all that?”

She heard David walking quickly across the floor in the bedroom.

“Just an abundance of caution,” the retired colonel, a former whistle-blower on the ill-fated hypersonic bomber, said from his little box on the screen. “Rattle the sabers. But you see, that just
proves my point. All of those forces are recallable. You send them out and call them back, the essence of saber rattling. And the European forces don't have anything to do with—”

“Excuse me,” the anchor cut in as the scene switched to a full-screen view of the anchorman holding his earpiece close to his ear. “We go now to Bob Samuels at the White House.”

The scene shifted to a reporter standing in front of the familiar blue backdrop from a different part of the Briefing Room. “I can now tell you that we were told, about an hour ago, to assemble in the White House Briefing Room,” the reporter said, half turning around to take in the room, “for an announcement. About fifteen minutes ago, we were told to expect an address by the President himself.”

In the background, a door off to the side of the podium opened, and the President, followed by several military officers, entered.

The reporter continued in a hurried voice. “I can also tell you that I'm hearing—and this is unconfirmed—but what I am hearing is that United States Air Force aircraft have, in the past hour, begun combat operations against the invading North Koreans. That contrasts with the earlier information, which was that the employment of U.S. aircraft was exclusively for transportation of critical supplies to the South Koreans. I have also been told that things are not going well for the South—”