This is the Way the World Ends (27 page)

‘A frightening development.’

‘After such an attack, an American President would have only two options – he could surrender, or he could retaliate against Soviet cities.’ Brat chopped the air with his hand. ‘But that would naturally bring reciprocal measures, and then he’s
really
in thick shit.’

‘And your solution was . . . ?’

‘Missile Omega.’

‘The Omegas were effective against the new Soviet missiles?’

‘Such targets place a premium on response time. Omega is a fast mother. She also has terrific accuracy, long range, and ten high-yield warheads on her business end.’

‘Did you ever hear the argument that without a survivable basing mode’ – Bonenfant fixed his mouth in a condescending curve – ‘Omega had little retaliatory potential and was thus a socalled “first-strike weapon”?’

‘We’ve never given up on the basing problem.’

‘What modes have you studied?’

The general splayed his fingers and began ticking them off. ‘So far we’ve considered basing the missiles in blimps, underwater canisters, circular trenches, coal mines, and barges on the Mississippi River.’

‘You should have based them up your ass!’ a young woman called from the gallery. It took Justice Jefferson a full minute of gavel pounding to quell the laughter.

‘You had an unusual nickname around SAC,’ said Bonenfant.

‘I was the MARCH Hare,’ replied Brat. ‘Modulated Attacks in Response to Counterforce Hostilities.’

‘Some people have accused the MARCH Plan of being a warwinning scenario disguised as a deterrent.’

‘The very best way to prevent a nuclear war is to show that you believe you can win one.’

‘The court may have trouble—’

‘Forces that cannot win cannot deter. Is
that
clear?’

‘It’s certainly clear to me. No further questions.’ Bonenfant walked away from the stand with the self-satisfied air of a cat bringing a mouse to the back stoop.

Justice Jefferson invited the chief prosecutor to cross-examine.

‘He was swell, don’t you think?’ said Randstable, concentrating on the chessboard, where he was about to launch a king-side attack against himself.

‘A real pro,’ said Wengernook.

‘He certainly gave them the sort of data they’re looking for,’ said Overwhite.

Forces that cannot win cannot deter. George thought about this particular truth as hard as he could.

‘General Tarmac,’ said Aquinas, sidling up to the stand, ‘I’m bewildered by your Achilles Leg notion. Weren’t America’s landbased missiles kept in concrete silos?’

‘The new Soviet SS-60s had a hard-target kill capacity,’ Brat explained patiently.

‘Hard target?’

‘An ICBM silo is a hard target.’

‘As opposed to a soft target?’

‘Right. We worked long hours on silo hardness, but there are limits – two thousand pounds per square inch or so.’

‘In other words, this whole arms race can be traced to a lot of men trying to get it hard enough?’

‘You can joke about it, Prosecutor, but a vulnerable land-based force is no laughing matter.’

Aquinas assumed a posture of dismay. ‘But didn’t the Triad, being so redundant, allow for vulnerabilities to emerge from time to time?’

‘We had a serious parity problem when it came to land-based missiles,’ answered Brat. ‘We needed the Omegas.’

‘Are you saying that the Triad was ill-conceived, and America should have been mimicking Communist strategy instead?’

‘No, I’m saying that the Russians had more land-based missiles than we did. Why is that so hard to understand?’

‘And you really believed they were about to take out your own fixed ICBMs in a nuclear Pearl Harbor?’

‘This was on the low end of the probability curve, but we were still worried.’

‘And, before the Omega program, the Soviets could have expected to get away with such an attack?’

‘Right.’

‘After which you would have to surrender?’

Brat gulped down his annoyance. ‘Yes.’

‘Why?’ asked Aquinas.

‘We would have been disarmed.’

‘Couldn’t the American President have used the two surviving legs to disarm the Soviets in turn?’

‘Be logical. If the SS-60s have already hit us, then their silos are empty.’

‘So you have to surrender?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I just explained that. We’ve been disarmed.’

‘So have the Soviets. You just explained that, too.’

‘They’ve probably kept a reserve force,’ Brat noted.

‘Then you
could
retaliate,’ Aquinas replied.

‘No. The enemy would protect the reserve.’

‘How?’

‘By launching it.’

‘So you have to surrender?’

‘Yes!’

‘Why?’

‘How many times do I have to say it?’ Brat snapped an icicle off the stand and crushed it. ‘We’ve been disarmed! Can’t you grasp the most elementary piece of strategic doctrine?’

‘Suppose that, instead of surrendering, the President ordered the strategic submarine fleet to destroy Soviet society?’

‘No President would answer a surgical strike with an all-out attack. That’s jumping far too many rungs on the escalation ladder.’

‘How many American civilians would have been killed in this surgical strike?’

‘Worst-case scenario is twenty-five million.’

‘Might not a President mistake such slaughter for an all-out attack?’

‘Not if he was willing to calm down for a minute and look at
how
those casualties occurred.’

The interview continued in this manner for over an hour, interrupted by a recess for a box lunch of hardboiled penguin eggs and blubber sandwiches, until Aquinas suddenly asked, ‘Wasn’t Omega in fact a first-strike weapon, General Tarmac?’

‘No,’ Brat replied.

‘What was it?’

‘It was a functional and credible second-strike retaliatory deterrent.’

‘A sure-fire deterrent?’

‘A functional and credible second-strike—’

‘No further questions,’ grunted the chief prosecutor, lurching away from the stand in a spasm of exasperation.

Brat rose, folding his arms across his chest. The interview seemed to have bestowed about twenty pounds on him. He sauntered back to the booth and asked, ‘So – how’d I do?’

‘Academy Award time,’ said Wengernook.

‘Hope I come off half as well,’ said Randstable, putting himself in check.

‘I hadn’t realized that forces that cannot win cannot deter,’ said George.

Overwhite was next on the stand. The oil lamps sprinkled flecks of bronze onto his snowy beard as he narrated his life’s story – the Foreign Service, the Diplomatic Corps, the State Department, and, finally, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. To George, Overwhite still seemed like a windbag, but he was obviously a resourceful and intelligent one, a windbag woven of the finest material.

‘Two treaties that you helped negotiate have been read into the record by the prosecution,’ said Bonenfant. ‘Evidently my learned opponent feels that your efforts did not go far enough.’

‘I can see Mr Aquinas’s point of view,’ replied Overwhite, examining himself for jaw tumors. ‘However, let me remind the tribunal that general and complete disarmament was always the stated goal of my agency. Unfortunately, the massive Soviet buildup made this impossible in our time.’

‘But your achievements were still impressive.’

‘Any man would be proud to have on his tombstone, “He negotiated STABLE I and STABLE II.” ’

Design No. 4015, thought George. Vermont blue-gray.

After reviewing the details of both STABLE agreements, Bonenfant concluded that, ‘We might well have introduced them as exhibits for the defense.’

Overwhite agreed.

Bonenfant said, ‘Critics have charged that the STABLE treaties allowed the US military too much latitude with multiple warheads and cruise missiles.’

‘I can understand that sentiment,’ said Overwhite. ‘However, you should always remember that new systems become bargaining chips when you sit down at the negotiating table. They force the Soviets to get serious about reductions.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Justice Wojciechowski. ‘You seem to be saying that by declining to regulate particular weapons, you were serving the cause of arms control.’

‘My point is that technical innovation has diplomatic as well as military benefits.’

Bonenfant asked, ‘In retrospect, Mr Overwhite, could your agency have done anything more to prevent the recent war?’

‘If we knew for a fact that it was coming – yes, we would probably have pressed for certain confidence-building measures. For example, the hotline between Washington and Moscow badly needed upgrading.’

‘Well, nobody can blame you for not owning a crystal ball.’

‘I would have trouble empathizing with such an attitude.’

‘No further questions.’ Returning to the defense table, Bonenfant sniffed emphatically, as if his nose could barely accommodate all the victory it sensed in the sub-zero air.

‘Why does not regulating weapons serve the cause of arms control?’ George asked Brat.

‘Brian just explained that,’ the general replied.

‘This trial must be pretty boring for a guy like you,’ said Wengernook.

‘I’m not bored,’ said George.

The chief prosecutor approached the stand carrying a slab of ice under his arm. ‘Mr Overwhite, if complete disarmament was so dear to your agency’s heart, why didn’t you ever propose an abolition treaty?’

‘Well, as soon as you entertain radical proposals, you run into horrendous problems deciding which technologies to ban and which to allow. Take delivery systems . . .’

‘Why are delivery systems hard to negotiate?’ Aquinas knitted his momentous brow.

‘Because as warheads get smaller, almost anything can be a delivery system. A Wasp-13 manned bomber is obviously a delivery system, but what about a Piper Cub? What about a hot air balloon?’

‘So you never eliminated any missiles or bombers because you couldn’t tell them from hot air balloons?’

‘I’m saying it’s a real pain arriving at certain definitions.’

‘It’s a real pain having your face burned off, too.’

Bonenfant rose. ‘Your Honors, might we declare a moratorium on cheap shots?’

‘The court was not amused by that last remark, Mr Aquinas,’ said Justice Jefferson.

Aquinas made a modest bow and renewed the examination. ‘STABLE I dealt with missile launchers, right? Each side was granted eight hundred fifty-six submarine tubes and eleven hundred seventy-five hardened silos.’

‘Those were the limits.’

‘They don’t sound very limiting.’

‘If you let the numbers get too Spartan, Mr Aquinas, you increase the temptation to strike first.’

‘So it was inconceivable that you would ever negotiate the launchers down to zero?’

‘We felt it best to err on the side of safety.’

Aquinas held a seal-oil lamp near his ice slab. Graphs and statistics danced in the spectral glow. ‘STABLE II addressed the bombs themselves . . .’

‘We put ceilings on fractionation – twelve warheads per missile.’

‘According to my arithmetic, the number of warheads on both sides increased dramatically after STABLE II.’

‘But each missile carried only a dozen.’

‘Mr Overwhite, did you ever tell a
Time
magazine reporter, quote, “We must not saddle the economy with agreements negotiated just to impress the public”?’

‘I was thinking of those men who wouldn’t be showing up for work if, say, the Omega program were suddenly canceled,’ Overwhite knocked frost from his beard. ‘We had to keep the arms control process from, you know . . .’

‘Escalating?’

‘Falling prey to special interests.’

‘Let’s talk about bargaining chips.’

‘Very well.’

‘Could you please name three fully developed offensive weapon systems that your team relinquished at the negotiating table in exchange for concessions by the Soviets?’

‘We were always retiring bombs and missiles as they became obsolete.’

‘That’s not the question. I want you to name three systems that were bargained away.’

‘I can’t think of three off hand.’

‘Can you name two?’

‘Not two exactly, no.’

‘Can you name one?’

‘Well, as you can readily imagine, once a new weapon is actually in production, it becomes more valuable as a deterrent than as a chip.’

‘Mr Overwhite, it seems to me that, when all is said and done, you and the arms builders were really in the same line of work.’

‘Your bitterness is quite understandable, Mr Aquinas. Your conclusion, however, is not.’

The chief prosecutor shuddered theatrically and told the court that he had no more questions.

‘That was an excellent point about general and complete disarmament,’ said Randstable, tipping over his king to concede defeat to himself.

‘He was in charge all the way,’ said Wengernook.

From the gallery a red-faced old man called, ‘Hey, Overwhite, here’s a weapon for you to control!’ He stood up and hurled an icicle shaped like an independently targetable warhead. The malicious little cone zoomed through the frosty air, missing the negotiator’s head by an inch.

That was uncalled for, George decided.

The next morning the court heard the autobiography of Dr William Randstable, who had worn almost as many hats in his life as there were in Theophilus Carter’s inventory. Chess prodigy. Inventor of the popular computer game
Launch on Warning
(the royalties had put him through M.I.T.). Author of the bestselling science fiction novel,
The Dark Side of the Sun
. Youngest whiz kid at the think tank known as Lumen Corporation. Head of the Missile Accuracy Division at Sugar Brook National Laboratory.

‘I’m impressed already,’ said Wengernook.

‘They don’t hang guys like this,’ said Brat.

‘I’ve always wondered what it’s like to be smart,’ said George.

Randstable finished explaining how he had checkmated a Russian grand master who was also a KGB agent.

Bonenfant said, ‘Now during your early days at the Lumen think tank, you—’

‘Think tank – is that a kind of weapon?’ asked Justice Yoshinobu.

‘No, not a weapon, your Honor,’ said Randstable.