“Yes, sir.”
Sunday—four days to launch
President Fayers looked out the window of his office, wondering why any man would want the thankless job of president of the United States.
“It’s such a lousy job,” he said to his chief aide and good friend. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. The massive responsibility for running a country this size should not be dumped onto the shoulders of one man. It’s too much.”
“Yes, sir,” the aide agreed, not really knowing what his boss was talking about. The president hadn’t been himself lately. He’d been depressed, complaining of sleeplessness, and the aide was worried the press would discover it and blab it all over the nation. Not that it was any of their goddamned business. No—the president is supposed to be perfect. Can’t ever be sick in private. Can’t be a human being. No, the president has to be superman.
“Ed,” the aide said, “are you all right?”
“Yes, of course I am. No, I’m not. Hell, I don’t know. I’m getting old, that’s what.” He sighed heavily. “What is on the agenda for this afternoon?”
“The meeting with the analytical and statistical chief of the CIA’s overseas intelligence operation.”
“Hal Brady, you mean?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Titles. Everybody has to have a title,” Fayers muttered. “When is the meeting?”
“Right now.”
“Send him in.”
Harold Brady limped into the Oval Office, carrying a thick briefcase jammed with papers. His limp was the result of his days with the old OSS during World War II; a leg broken during a jump into France and never properly set.
Brady glanced at the aide. “In private,” he said shortly, as was his manner. Abusive-sounding until one got to know the man.
The aide left the room.
“You look exhausted, Mr. President,” Brady said. “I thank you for seeing me on Sunday afternoon. I know you like to rest on this day. Are you feeling well, sir?”
“As well as could be expected,” Fayers replied, pouring them coffee. “Hilton Logan is privately saying he is unbeatable; he is our next president. God help us all, for he’s probably correct. The unions are bitching and striking—as usual. Every minority group in this nation is complaining—loudly—that I am discriminating against them… and my wife has had a headache for three weeks. At night. Calls me a horny old goat.” President Fayers smiled. “And you think
Brady laughed along with his boss. “Well, sir, at least you’ve managed to keep your sense of humor.”
“Only by straining, Hal. And by keeping in mind that in a few months I will be out of this office. Now then, what glad tidings have you to offer?” He lifted his coffee cup to his lips.
“I believe certain factions within the U.S. are preparing to start a war between Russia and China.”
Fayers dropped cup and saucer to the carpet. “That’s a rotten joke, Hal!” He knelt to pick up the broken bits of chinaware.
“It isn’t a joke,” the CIA man said, opening his briefcase, spreading papers on the president’s desk. “You’d better sit down, sir.”
Behind his desk, his face ashen and suddenly shiny with sweat, Fayers asked, “When is… all this supposed to occur?”
Brady shrugged. “I don’t really know, but I would guess within a week. Maybe less. I just put together the remaining bits and pieces of evidence and supposition this morning.”
“Do you want the secretary in on this?”
“Not just yet. You listen first, sir.”
A half-hour later, President Fayers told his aide, “I don’t want to be disturbed the rest of the evening. I’m going to Camp David to rest and to spend the night. That’s all anybody needs to know.”
Sunday evening—Camp David
“Begging your pardon, Mr. President,” General Travee said, after recovering from his initial shock, “but I… just can’t believe it.”
“You’d better believe it, C.H.,” Brady said. “I’ve been working on this for months. In total secrecy. I just didn’t know who I could trust—not even you. But when the computers turned out this new evidence, I… had to come to the president.”
“Why didn’t you come to me before this, Hal?” Fayers asked.
“Because… I believe your staff—a few of them—are part of this. I don’t know which ones. And the secret service; there again, I don’t know which ones.”
The secretary of state, Rees, had flown to Camp David with Fayers. The Joint Chiefs had joined them an hour later, arriving by car. Barry Ringold, director of the FBI, had driven in, followed by Kelly of the CIA and Hal Brady.
“I resent the fact you did not come to me with this information, Brady,” Kelly said.
“There, again, sir,” Brady replied. “Who to trust?”
The two men glared at each other. But Kelly dropped his gaze after only a few seconds. Kelly was a political appointee; Brady was a career snoop with a lifetime spent in the shadows. Kelly was just a bit afraid of the man.
“Now, let me get this straight,” Ringold said. “You want us to believe there are some five to six thousand rebels—organized and trained and armed—in the U.S., ready to move against the government?”
“That is correct,” Brady said.
“They will be working with certain breakaway units of the armed forces?”
“That, too, is correct, sir—as far as it goes. But please bear in mind that many of those units—if not all of them—are not traitorous; they have been misinformed. They do not know the full scope of the story. Only bits and pieces. That is my theory.”
Ringold nodded. “All right. Now, Bull Dean and Colonel Adams are both alive and well, working with the rebels and the maverick units of the military? Goddamn it, Harold! Dean and Adams are buried out there in Arlington. What kind of fairy tale is this? What have you been smoking?”
Brady flushed, opening his mouth to tell the FBI director to go fuck himself, then thought better of it.
Ringold said, “And China is going to declare war on Russia… you say. But you haven’t, as yet, explained how or why that is going to occur.”
His composure restored, temper in check, Brady said, “May I do so at this time?”
“Please do, sir,” Ringold replied, with greatly exaggerated courtesy.
The two men did not like each other, had never liked each other, and would never, in the time left to them, like each other.
Brady looked at each man in the room before he replied, “Because I believe agents, posing as Red agents, will assassinate the Chinese premier and every member of his party when they visit the town of Fuchin next week.”
“And you believe that will prompt a nuclear war between the two countries?” Kelly asked.
“That will be the start of it. Yes. A missile will then be fired from a submarine lying just off the coast of Russia.” He limped to a huge wall map of the world and thumped a spot. “From right here. The sub will fire its missile, or missiles, probably, from just off the coast of Zapovednyy. I have reason to believe there will be more than one missile, single or multiple-warhead type. I also believe the cities of Harbin, Mutanchiang, and Haokang will be destroyed.”
“Why would Russia want to launch a nuke attack against China?” Ringold inquired. “Half the world might well be wiped out.”
“There are many reasons they’d like to,” Brady said. “But just as it will not be Red agents who kill the premier and his party—it will be Americans—it won’t be the Russians who fire the missiles. They will be American missiles fired from an American sub.”
General Travee had been studying the huge map. He said, “Fired from a Stealth-equipped sub, pulled in so
