agree — they just wanted to divert some defense spending. Years ahead of us all the time, and overjoyed when we offered to save them billions of rubles so they could spend it on their own SDI! We threw in Talon Gold, our AS AT program, all in good faith, hoping to encourage them to do the same, went ahead with the surveillance satellite program instead — and all the time they had their own laser weapon program going. By God — I won't be forgiven for this — none of us will,' he added darkly, turning to face the others.
Gunther looked down, as did the director, seated next to Anders. The silence loomed, waiting to be filled. Calvin was staring at him, accusingly, it seemed to Anders.
'And now you tell me our last chance is on hold,' he snapped.
Anders glanced at the row of television screens along one wall. The mission room at Langley appeared on four of them in glaring color, from different angles. The scene appeared slow, underwater, almost inactive.
'Mr. President, the repairs they have to effect to one of the two gunships can't be done while they're in the air.'
'How long, Mr. Anders, how long?'
'They can't give me a closer estimate than — maybe tonight.'
'Maybe tonight?'
'I'm sorry, Mr.—'
'That isn't good enough, Anders, and you know it.' Calvin turned his accusing gaze on the director. 'Bill, you pleaded with me to initiate this operation. Forty-eight hours, maximum, that's what you said. They haven't taken off from Nellis yet, and three of your forty-eight have already disappeared.'
The director shifted awkwardly on his chair like a chastened schoolboy.
Calvin sat at his desk, almost an interloper masquerading as President. His eyes looked lost and afraid.
'There's nothing I can say, Mr. President,' the director offered apologetically. There was only disappointment in his voice, and an overwhelming sense of past events.
'What's the extent of the damage to the transport helicopter?' Dick Gunther asked.
'It's in the rotor head,' Anders replied. 'And in the hydraulic control jacks below the rotor head' Calvin appeared impatient with detail, as if he suspected lies or excuses. 'They thought they had time to work on it — they're flat out now, Mr. President,' he said mollifyingly. 'It's a long and difficult job. They can't adapt U.S. parts to fit, not easily—'
'The hell with it, Mr. Anders,' Calvin snapped. 'Just chalk it up as another Company mistake — in your catalog of errors, Bill. You advised me to leave this guy in place in Baikonur until the last moment, you insisted the crews weren't ready to undertake the mission, that more weeks of training were required — and all that it's gotten us is nowhere. We've lost the game, Bill. You've fumbled the pass.'
'I'm sorry, Mr. President.'
Anders was angry, but he controlled his features. His brow began to perspire, and his body felt as if wrapped in hot, constricting towels rather than dressed in his gray suit. Calvin was manifestly unfair. He, too, was angry, but angry only that
He glanced at the Oval Office clocks in turn. One of them, a French clock, gilded and ornate, was placed on a low, darkly shining table. It was the First Lady's choice, he assumed. Its blue-num: bered face showed a little after three. Sunday afternoon. The snow flew beyond the green glass as wildly as the recriminations in which Calvin had indulged.
'Why the hell did they go ahead?' Calvin was asking. 'Why didn't they trust us?'
No one replied. The director lit his pipe. Anders was aware of the lighter tapping softly with nerves against the pipe's bowl. Blue smoke rose in the room, drifting across the windows toward the flag. Anders' gaze slid over Calvin's face, and he was shocked afresh by the deep stains beneath the man's eyes. The thick gray hair no longer added distinction to a strong face; it was no more than an old man's good fortune. He entertained an alternative image of Calvin, coming down the steps of Air Force One, returning to Washington from Vienna. Hands raised like a victorious fighter, grin broad, step quick and confident, almost running to the lectern with a genuine excitement, a need to tell. That had been after the first summit of his term of office, his first meeting with Nikitin. They had agreed on the principles of the arms reduction treaty, and the timetable for negotiation.
The voice had been full and resonant as he stood at the row of microphones. The cameras had continued to click and whir, the lights to flash, as he made his historic announcement.
Calvin turned like someone afraid he was being followed and gazed out of the windows at the flying snow. It was as if he sensed the comparison of images in Anders' mind.
Anders remembered the emotions and the wild excitement the speech had aroused even in himself, a senior career intelligence officer, though he would not have remembered the words except that TV stations had been replaying the damn occasion, over and over, all that week. In the four weeks before, ever since they had first known about Baikonur, the words had become increasingly hollow. Now, at this crisis, the speech — that first one of all of them — was no more than the naive utterance of a duped politician. The signing of the treaty should have crowned Calvin's first term and assured a second. Now he stared ruin in the face; historic and historical repugnance was his inheritance. No wonder the man looked old and weary
The confident Harvard tones had been singing a siren song, and the world had listened greedily. Hoping, at last hoping.
A new beginning. Half the Pershings and cruise missiles and half the Soviet SS-20s had been withdrawn at once, the following day, as a gesture of mutual good faith. The world could hardly believe its luck.
But the world still believed in its luck. It didn't know what the men in that room knew. Anders' face twisted in bitterness. He felt betrayed — yes, that was it, betrayed, as anyone would. As they will when they hear — if they ever hear.
They will, he concluded. The news will leak out some day — this year, next year, the one after that. The Soviets have us by the short hairs, they've got Star Wars instead of us. We're all washed up.
The world had gone on cheering for two whole years, Anders with them. Until Cactus Plant's bombshell out of Baikonur—
Now those raised arms looked like surrender, like newsreel shots of weary and defeated Marines emerging from the hostile Vietnamese jungle. Eventually, Calvin would have to tell the world what had gone wrong, and that he had no answer to the Soviet laser weapons because he'd slowed down the research programs, cut the funds, believed the Russians. They'd crucify him.
Anders realized Calvin was looking at him intently. He felt his cheeks warm under the piercing, accusatory gaze. It was as if Calvin were reading his thoughts.
'You think I've given up, Mr. Mission Officer?' the President asked slowly, acidly. His eyes looked inward, with something like distaste.
'No, Mr.—'
'Never mind. I want your butt on the copilot's seat of a military jet inside of an hour. Get the air force to fly you to Nellis. It should take you three hours, no more. And you're responsible for getting those gunships airborne today. Understand me? Today!'
Mitchell Gant appeared to sip at the can of beer in his hand with the wary delicacy of a cat. Seated in a crouch on the narrow bed against one wall of his cramped room, he seemed absorbed by the television set, as if he were trying to exclude Anders from his awareness. On the screen, the space shuttle
All three major networks were running the same compilation of images and the treaty's text. As it ran, the shuttle was shown over every area of the planet covered by its orbit, all recorded daylight shots, countries and oceans immediately recognizable from two hundred miles above the earth. To Anders, each clause that appeared
