Testament? Old Bridges at Groton used to use it at least six times a year for chapel.”
Oh my God, he’s cracking, Buck thought, cracking wide open, and the whole world with him. He found himself actually looking around for means to escape, for a door to run through. But the general’s voice came back calm and reassuring.
“I remember, sir,” Black said. He stood awkwardly over Swenson, holding the red phone. The others around the table in the Pentagon War Room continued the discussion and also watched the board. Black felt a peculiar unreality about the situation. Simultaneously he sensed that this was, somehow, a time for first names, but he could not do it. The half-dozen times he and the President had met in the past few years, the President had always been warm but had called him “General Black” with a grin. But now there was a new tone in the President’s voice. Or perhaps it was the old intimate tone.
“Blackie, keep the story of Abraham in mind for the next few hours,” the President said. Then he paused. “Are Betty and the family in New York?”
“Yes,” Black said. A dread premonition came over him.
“I need your help,” the President said slowly. “Get. out to Andrews Field immediately. Further instructions will be waiting for you there. Things are not good, Blackie. I may be asking a great deal of you.”
“I’ll do what you say,” Black said. He paused. He knew the President was in some private agony. “And you do what has to be done.”
“Good luck, Blackie,” the President said.
Immediately Black wanted to call Betty-to talk with her, and with his two boys. But it was out of the question, he knew. Then he felt a wave of apprehension, vague and inexplicable. He remembered-Betty was spending the day across town with a friend. She and the boys would not be together until late afternoon. The knowledge was unsettling to Black. For a brief instant, memory of the Dream flashed back into his mind. No time. He shook the thoughts off and strode rapidly toward the door.
After hanging up, the President sat perfectly still for a full minute, his eyes dosed. Then he swung his feet from the desk, and looked at Buck.
“Tell the switchboard to get our Ambassador to Moscow and also the Soviet Delegate to the United Nations,” the President said quietly. “Put them directly onto the line which connectj us with Khrushchev. The moment that we can talk to Khrushchev open the conference line again.”
As Buck talked into the phone he looked at the President. The President’s face had undergone a strange transfiguration. Some muscles had relaxed, others had tightened, his eyes were closed. A stranger could not have guessed the President’s age. Nor the meaning of his expression. Then Buck identified it: the President’s face reflected the ageless, often repeated, doomed look of utter tragedy. A tragedy which is no single person’s but the world’s, which relates not to One man’s misfortunes, large or small, but to the human condition.
For The first time since he was a boy of fourteen, Peter Buck felt the need to weep.
On General Bogan’s desk was a “touch” phone which had not been operated in all the time that he had been at Omaha. One operated it merely by touching a button, and out of a small square box the voice at the other end of the line came out magnified and enlarged.
This particular “touch” phone was reserved for the possibility of direct communication with any potential enemy military leaders.
A peculiar aura surrounded it. It was like a piece of contaminated equipment, oddly disconcerting, unnerving, contradictory. The men who tested it did so with distaste. While almost every other piece of equipment in the room was associated with some man, was his “personal” equipment, no one wanted to be associated with the touch telephone. It was almost like the physical presence of the enemy in the War Room. Everyone knew that the phone could not actually overhear them, that it had to be passed through a number of careful checks before it was actually operative, but even so it was a totem of the enemy, awesome, ill-regarded.
Some minutes before, General Bogan had received a call from one of the President’s aides telling him to activate the touch phone as arrangements were being made for direct radio communication with Soviet tactical officers in Russia. Now the light below the touch button glowed red. General Bogan quietly reached forward and pushed the button. There was utter silence in the room. Even those men who were out of hearing range watched tensely.
“General Bogan, Strategic Air Command, Omaha, here,” General Bogan said.
There was a slight static, then a voice spoke in flawless English.
“I am the translator for Marshal Nevsky, Soviet Air Defense Command,” the voice said. “Marshal Nevsky sends his greetings. He tells you that reception here on our end is five by five. How do you read us?”
“We read you five by five,” General Bogan said. “I have no instructions on what we are to discuss. Have you received instructions, Marshal Nevsky?”
The translator spoke Russian very rapidly. An even, strong voice replied.
“We have received no instructions, General,” the translator said. “Only that we should set up communications with your headquarters.”
Then there was silence. Colonel Casdo moved his eyes from General Bogan’s face to the touch phone. He seemed mesmerized, fascinated, by something enormously seductive, but also revolting. The red phone rang.
“General Bogan, this is the President and I should like you to put this call on your intercom so that everyone in the room can hear what I say,” the President said. “I should also like you to open your, touch phone to the Soviet Air Command so that they also can hear me.”
“One moment, Mr. President,” General Bogan said. He turned to Colonel Cascio and gave instructions. The arrangements took only ten seconds.
“Mr. President, when you speak your voice will be beard by everyone,” General Bogan said.
“Gentlemen, this is the President,” the President began and his strong young voice rang through the room, drowning out the endless hum of the machines. The men had, quite unconsciously, all come to attention, their thumbs neatly lined alongside the seams of their trousers, their eyes staring straight ahead. “What I am saying can be heard by the Soviet Air Command, Premier Khrushchev’s personal staff in the Kremlin, our Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, our SAC group in Omaha, our Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and the Soviet delegate to the United Nations. Whatever orders I give to American military or civilian personnel are to be considered as direct personal orders from the Commander in Chief. They are to be obeyed fully, without reservation and instantly.”
The President paused. General Bogan looked around the room. He had a sense of unreality, a kind of smoky twisting in his mind, a surrealistic sense of things dissolving. The whole thing was dreamlike, but it was iron hard and inescapable. There was no possibility of awakening to something else.
“We are caught in a desperate situation,” the President said slowly and emphatically. Over the touch phone General Bogan could hear small hushed Russian voices translating. “By some sort of error, probably mechanical, a group of American bombers has penetrated Soviet air space. It is our best estimate that they will try to press home an attack on Moscow. Each of the bombers is equipped with two 20-megaton bombs. Though all of the planes are under heavy attack from Soviet defenses, in all probability at least two of these bombers will get through. This is a tragic mistake. It is not, I repeat, not, our intention to engage the Soviet Union in warfare. Premier Khrushchev is, at this moment, en route to a headquarters located outside of Moscow. When he again contacts me I will do everything in my power to persuade him of our sincerity.”
Again the President paused. When he resumed speaking his voice was so slow that each word seemed to dangle.
“Those of us on this hookup are the only people who can save the world from an atomic holocaust,” he said. “We must all do everything possible to prevent our planes from attacking Moscow. At the same time, we must make it absolutely clear to the Russians that this is an accident and in no way part of or prelude to an American attack. Already I have done everything I can by myself to achieve these two goals. Recall of our planes has proved impossible, but it has been constantly attempted. All other American offensive and defensive forces have been withdrawn from Condition Red. This the Russians were able to verify on their monitoring systems. The Russians now concede that their Air Defense Command may not be able to intercept our Group 6. They have a momentous decision to make: should they order a retaliatory attack against the United States? Premier Khrushchev tells me that some of his military leaders favor such an attack.” The voice paused or faltered and then came on again. “This is understandable.”
Colonel Cascio listened, immediately understood, and was filled with a terrible confusion. He knew that in the position of these outraged Russian officers he Would feel the same way. Cascio glanced around the room. Everyone
