Winter Hawk

Before, working on Kedrov's estimates, we assumed another week to ten days.'

'Time we no longer have.'

'I know that, sir.'

Calvin continued to pace, dressed in checked shirt and jeans, his hands rubbing through his mop of gray hair. His face was cleaned by shock, blank and tired. When his hands were not busy with his hair, they waved uncertainly, as if fending off the circumstances of the morning.

The winter's morning was bright even through the reinforced glass of the windows. He could still hear the bells. Midmorning services. Kedrov had sent his signal — oh, sometime early Sunday evening, his time. Ten hours ahead of Washington. Come and fetch me, my friends. I am afraid.

The director went on: 'We have to bring Winter Hawk to immediate readiness, sir. Today. The mission profile has a forty-eight-hour maximum time span. That's two days, and the agent and the evidence can be inside a friendly border. Transmission, editing, anything you require done with the films won't be any problem. Sir, it's nine thousand miles to Peshawar from Nevada, a thousand to the target area, a thousand back. Those are the only parameters that really matter. Forty-eight hours maximum, once the mission clock starts running. That's Tuesday or Wednesday — you could blow this up in their faces on the eve of the signing, sir!' The director's hand was clenched into a fist. Unaware, he had screwed Kedrov's final signal into a damp, gray ball of paper. The sight of it shocked him quite out of proportion to the act. As if he had crushed, abandoned…

He shook his head, dismissing the idea. Kedrov was all they had, priceless and unique.

Winter light, aqueous through the tinted glass, fell chill upon Calvin's profile as he continued to pace the room. It gave his features the pointed, marble lifelessness of a corpse. The Washington Monument beyond the glass thrust like a spike at the pale morning sky. Or a launch vehicle, the director could not help thinking. Baikonur, Thursday — close, damn close.

As if to reassure himself as much as Calvin, he reiterated: 'Forty-eight hours maximum. Gant and the other crew can do it, sir. Give me the authority to bring Winter Hawk to readiness.'

'Are they ready, Bill? How long have they trained on those gunships? No more than a couple of weeks? Less? Are they ready?'

'They have to be, sir. They have to be.' The director found himself struggling against Calvin's unmollified expression. He waded upstream against the current Calvin was giving the room. He had hurried there with anxious triumph, to find the party had ended and the guests moved on to another place. Calvin did not share his sense of success. 'They have to be,' he repeated once more, looking down.

Calvin was obsessed with the political coup the Soviet president had gained. Nikitin would coerce a promise to appear at the signing in Geneva, which would give Calvin no room in which to maneuver. He would have to promise the world, in advance, that he would honor the Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty in its present form—

— which excluded all reference to orbiting laser weapons systems, since they did not exist — had not existed until four weeks before, so far as the CIA and everyone else thought.

Calvin said urgently, 'Damn your timetable now, Bill. It s fallen down behind the wardrobe. I am going to have to agree to meet him on Thursday. It wasn't supposed to be Thursday, Bill, it was to be in two weeks' time. I have to agree to meet him or Congress will crucify me, the American people will help them put in the nails, the press has the hammer, and the whole damn world is going to watch while they do the job!' He rubbed his hands through his hair. 'We just ran out of options. They're calling the tune in Moscow right now. I'm hamstrung, Bill.'

He turned his back on the director and pressed a buzzer on his desk. Almost immediately, as if he had been hovering at the door,

Dick Gunther entered. National security adviser to the President. His smile at the director was brief, gloomy, his eyes studying Calvin like those of a concerned wife.

'Well?' he murmured, moving close to Calvin, behind the huge desk, near the windows.

Calvin shook his head. 'No change,' he muttered. The director felt like a terminal patient in a hospital room. Calvin and Gunther turned lugubrious looks on him. He felt very young, irresponsible, seated in his chair.

'Dick, you explain it to the director,' Calvin said. 'I can't make him see we're fresh out of options.' The President's tone was sharp, almost vindictive.

He walked away, opened a small door that led to a washroom, then closed it behind him on a glimpse of white towels, gold faucets, dark wood gleaming like satin. The director dimly heard running water, then turned reluctantly to Gunther, who merely shrugged.

'Bill, I think he's right,' he said eventually. His tone attempted to soothe, but the director felt lumpy and uncomfortable in his suit, as if his mood had creased and soiled it. He shook his head, staring at the crumpled transcript and the briefcase on his knees. 'We re fresh out of options. There's nowhere to go with this.'

In the director s briefcase was the entire Laserwatch file: a thin and now outdated collection of signals from Baikonur, reports and assessments from DARPA, presidential demands for action — demands, orders, pleas. When he had received Kedrov's last signal, he had felt the peril of the moment, but also its possibilities. Now they could act, use the gunships to go in and get Kedrov. But he had been upstaged, outsmarted. Nikitin wanted the treaty signed on Thursday. How they must be laughing at his country. Suggesting a rendezvous in orbit, a party up there, for Christ's sake, after they'd launched their first laser weapon!

'He's on the hook,' Gunther continued. 'Nikitin isn't fooling around on this. He's going on TV to dare the President not to appear in Geneva next Thrusday. The man can't not be there, and Nikitin knows that.'

The director sighed, spreading his large hands.

'Dick, I understand all that. There's no answer, nothing but Winter Hawk. Dammit, the President has to let us try.' He glanced at a group of small, silver-framed photographs ranged near him on the desk. Calvin as college football player, Calvin as naval officer, Calvin receiving an honorary degree in England, Inauguration Day, waving beside the First Lady. The roles the man had played. 'There's no other way the agency can help, Dick.'

'You have to, Bill.'

'How? You want a solution to this mess? Five weeks ago we didn't have the faintest idea the Soviets were within fifteen years of developing a weapon like this and placing it in orbit. We never had an agent at Semipalatinsk — all we had was Cactus Plant, a low-grade agent-in-place at Baikonur, useful for tipping us off when a launch was about to happen and for telling us what kind of satellite they were putting up. Then, he stumbles on — this. We're four days away from the launch date of the first of a dozen satellites, and we haven't even gotten our second wind on this thing.' His voice was firm, but tight and small in his throat; angry, guilty, and maybe afraid, too. 'We're four days away from this country becoming a third-class power, and the President wants a nice neat answer?' Calvin would be listening, of course, but he had to hear it was hopeless unless they relied on Winter Hawk.

Gunther's voice was soothing when he replied, but it rubbed like sandpaper, the implacables of the situation scoured.

'All that's history, Bill, already history. He's delayed as much as he possibly can, but no one can work miracles. We can't get the ring of Nessus surveillance satellites into operation in time to detect the launching of these weapons. Nessus and everything else is going to be at their mercy. That's why Nikitin is hurrying everything forward. The President can't be seen to be dragging his feet now — it's his treaty, dammit. Once the document is signed, there's a two-month ratification period, and by then every ICBM we have left, every satellite — Big Bird, Navstar, Milstar, the whole bag of tricks — will be at the mercy of the laser battle stations. The man is terrified he's going to go down in history as the President who gave his country away on a silver plate. Give him some room to maneuver, Bill — a little elbow room. Work a miracle.'

Gunther had perched himself on the edge of the desk, leaning intently toward the director as he spoke. Now he stood up and walked to the window as he continued speaking. The director felt no slackening of the tension and depression throughout his body.

'He blames everyone, Bill — you, me, our agencies, the chiefs of staff, just about everyone — like he's been betrayed.' The chill light of the windows palsied Gunther's cheek. 'This was his treaty from the beginning. He blames all of us for not guessing what the Soviets were doing at Semipalatinsk. He blames us for advising that he agree to the Soviet suggestion not to bother to include orbiting weapons systems in the treaty. Neither side had them or could have them inside fifteen years, so what the hell, we all said. It was science fiction two years ago, Bill.'