Forbidden Area

Nine

THERE WAS very little music on the air the rest of that day. Television was cut off entirely, and all radio shifted to the Conelrad stations, designed to confuse incoming bombers, but a crude World War II device at best, of no use against modern radar. And of course V-2 type rockets, fired from submarines, needed neither radio on which to home, nor radar to see, for their course and destination were pre-set.

At ten-eight Katharine and Margaret Gresham were listening when the Navy announced that three enemy submarines had been attacked and probably destroyed in the Atlantic, and another in the Pacific four hundred miles off Seattle. Other contacts had been reported.

At intervals, thereafter, the radio repeated orders from service heads for all soldiers, sailors, and airmen off duty or on leave to report to their stations and bases and ships at once. Katharine felt that she had to call Jess. She had to know what was going on. Knowing nothing of what had occurred at Hibiscus during the night and early morning, she guessed that he had returned to the BOQ at two or three in the morning, slept for a few hours, and been awakened again when Clint was routed out of bed for the alert. So he would be back in Air Division headquarters, either in Conklin’s office or at the exec desk. She went into the hallway and picked up the telephone and asked the base operator for headquarters.

“Is this an official call?” the operator snapped.

“No, but—”

“Sorry.” The phone clicked. So she was cut off from it. She was, after all, only a woman, a woman without duties, of no use in this emergency. She returned to the kitchen and found Margaret Gresham using a dish towel on her face. But not crying, not openly. “I tried to call Jess,” Katharine said. “They wouldn’t put me through.”

“We’ll just have to wait,” Margaret said, “and listen.”

Ten minutes later the Director of Civil Defense spoke. While no enemy aircraft had been sighted on any of the polar approaches to North America, and the situation was still unclear, he felt it his duty to order the evacuation of the ninety-two primary target cities. He hoped everyone would keep calm and listen to the President’s words. The President would speak to the nation at noon.

Katharine opened the kitchen door and looked up. She could count four B-99’s wheeling and climbing against the clean blue sky, and she could hear others. Clint and Red Gresham might be in one of those planes, but she had no way of knowing. Otherwise, she could detect nothing unusual. Two children left the house next door and mounted bicycles, careful not to dirty their Sunday clothes. Their mother, probably, had not turned on the radio that morning, so, for her, life proceeded as usual. The whole country, she supposed, was in a sense like an enormous battlefield. One person could see only a minuscule part of it, and that imperfectly. Margaret called, “I guess we might as well eat. It’s going to be a long day.”

Commander Stephen Batt was in a position to know more. He had driven to Washington early that morning, expecting something, and something had happened. He had gone to the liaison office of the Eastern Sea Frontier, which he judged would be a quickly spurting fountainhead of information on any action at sea. Again, he was right. Patrol bombers, blimps from Lakehurst, Brunswick, and Key West, shore-based dive bombers, and all available surface craft were speeding out to sweep the Eastern Approaches. The carrier Shangri-La, just arrived in Boston to give the crew Christmas leave after a month in Artic waters, turned around and raced out to sea with half a crew. It took on helicopters and key personnel at a rendezvous two hundred miles offshore, a feat which Batt suggested and helped arrange. The hunter-killer task force vacated the Gulf, rounded Key West, and streaked northeast.

Even in the Pentagon it was difficult to grasp the scope of events that followed the Civil Defense Director’s suggestion that the principal cities be evacuated. Of course no one kept calm, and yet the panic that had been feared, and expected, failed to develop. Since it was Sunday, the cities were already empty of commuters. It was Christmas vacation, with children home from school, and so the mindless terror that results when families are disunited in time of crisis was not a problem. When the news came, no business was being conducted except the sale of Christmas trees, gasoline, and Sunday papers. Families were either at home, at church, or on the highways.

Everything that could move on four wheels took to the roads, but this happened, on a lesser scale, on every bright Sunday, even in winter, providing the day was not too cold. There was simply more Sunday driving, and more exasperating traffic jams, than on any other Sunday in history.

Two million people tried to get off Manhattan Island at approximately the same moment, and by all previous estimates this should have resulted in disaster and carnage. But it was Sunday, and a transportation system capable of handling three or four millions in the weekday rush hours, while momentarily flustered, was not disorganized or strangled. Within a few hours the highways radiating from the New York area were black with refugee armies.

It was the countryside, not the cities, that suffered heavily. The city dwellers, in cars, trucks, busses, riding bicycles, and afoot, moved across the landscape like hordes of locusts or migrating army ants. Stocks of food vanished from the roadside inns and diners, then from suburban super-markets, and finally from the most remote country stores. The smarter owners and managers of grocery and hardware stores opened their doors and disposed of their stock in a manner more or less orderly. In some communities windows were smashed and there was looting, for there is a lawless element that waits to prey on its fellow humans in any disaster. Remembering the shortages of the World War II, housewives bought up all the cigarettes and coffee they could find. Whisky almost instantly was selling at a premium, and so were shovels. Millions were digging in.

When the President spoke at noon, no one was so busy in flight that he did not listen. The President said there was no doubt an attack on the United States was underway. He declared Martial Law.

He said he believed the attack would fail, for the enemy had been caught off balance. Each hour brought news of contacts with submarines, and their destruction. The battle going on was taking place far at sea.

The Navy had taken precautions against strange surface craft invading the harbors. All ports had been closed except to military traffic and ferries.

He emphasized that no bombs had yet fallen on American soil, and he was confident that bombers could not penetrate the Continental Air Defense screen to the north.

But his words were directed to the Kremlin as well as to the people. Cable communications to Moscow were dead, and he had not heard from the American embassy all morning. Therefore he felt it necessary to supplement normal diplomatic communications.

“More than half the long-range bombers of the Strategic Air Command are now aloft,” he said. “Some are now within striking range of the Russian cities. They are armed with thermonuclear weapons that can utterly destroy the Soviet Union.”

The world heard the President pause. “We have another weapon,” he continued. “It is called the Intercontinental Ballistics Missile, or ICBM. It is a rocket. Combined with the H-bomb, it is the ultimate weapon. It cannot be shot down. It cannot be deflected from its path by electronics. Fired from this continent, it can reach and obliterate an enemy target city within forty minutes. We have several batteries of such rockets—we call them the Atlas I—emplaced and aimed. One is now aimed at Moscow.

“If there is no capitulation within a reasonable time—I should think three hours is reasonable—there will be no Moscow. Shortly thereafter, there will be no Russia.”

The President’s revelation, in a sense, was hopeful. But millions, listening in their cars, or in strange farmhouses far from their warm and familiar apartments and homes in the cities, or stubbornly remaining in those cities to guard those homes, asked a question:

“Why not now? Why wait? It’s a war, isn’t it? Why give them a chance?” 2

It was already night in Russia when it was noon in Washington. There had been no hint to the Russian people, naturally, of imminent war. Clark Simmons, ever since the first bulletins came in from Hibiscus, had been sitting at his short-wave receiver in the library of his home in Chevy Chase, listening to Radio Moscow. While the President was speaking at noon, Radio Moscow was broadcasting a speech by the Minister of Agriculture, praising certain Heroes of the Land on the collective farms in Kazakhstan.

For forty-five minutes thereafter Radio Moscow maintained its regular programs and then, without explanation, went off the air. Simmons leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and tried to analyze, from his knowledge and experience, what was occurring in the Kremlin. Later, he learned that in part he was right.

The world outside could not guess, but a chill such as comes with a wind from the steppes had swept through Russian cities. Not all Russians were listening to the Minister of Agriculture. A few, at the moment the President spoke, were listening to the Voice of America and the BBC, which re-broadcast his speech from the powerful transmitters in London. In a land where news has been censored, suppressed, and juggled for generations, the whisper supplements and sometimes replaces newspaper and radio. In time of crisis this is invariably true.

In Moscow the whisper spread through a family, and then ran like a flash fire through a whole building. Suddenly all the telephone exchanges were clogged with private calls. It was the same in Leningrad, Kiev, Chita, Alma-Ata, Stalingrad, Vladivostok, all the great cities, the target cities.

Strangely, in view of the absolute threat, there was no mass evacuation of these cities. The people of Russia had never been allowed to contemplate the possibility. The rule of the Presidium was omnipotent, the Red soldier and airman invincible. Error by the high command was unthinkable, and it would be an error if American planes could reach the cities. Thus it must always be in the monolithic state. Thus it had been in Nazi Germany, when Goering had said, “If one British bomb falls on Berlin, you can call me Meyer.” So to speak of America’s mastery of the new weapons, or the possibility of enforced flight, was defeatism. It was not allowed. People who spoke of evacuation were subversive, and enemies of the state. In the Russian cities the civil populations could only wait in dumb fear, without guidance.

Even had the Kremlin planned evacuation, it could not have been carried out. The skeletal communications system, wretched transport, and lack of housing and feeding facilities in the countryside would not permit an evacuation—not in the Russian winter.

It was this knowledge that nothing could be saved in the Russian cities—not even people—that may have brought action in the Kremlin. Exactly what transpired in its stone labyrinths may never be known, any more than it will be known, exactly, what occurred on the night that Beria was seized and executed, or the day that Stalin’s nine doctors were arrested and put to torture, or the day that Malenkov humbled himself, lived, and fell. There are few elder statesmen and former premiers in Russia, and no publication of frank and truthful memoirs.

Radio Moscow fell silent for twenty-three minutes. When it resumed broadcasting there was no explanation of having been off the air, but the voice was different. Clark Simmons, listening intently in Washington, realized that Radio Moscow had changed announcers. Knowing how a shift in government is often extended even to the lowest echelon, in so vital an instrument of policy as the state radio, he understood its significance.

The new announcer approached his subject in an oblique manner, which was to be expected. The government was considering certain changes in foreign policy, of great importance. Everyone was urged to keep tuned for an announcement later.

Then Radio Moscow was silent again.

Thirty-five minutes later it resumed broadcasting, this time through the voice of still another announcer. Not only had the policies of the government been changed, this third announcer said, but there had been changes in the membership of the Presidium as well. Except for two deputy premiers, all former members of the Presidium had resigned. There was a new Premier—he named a marshal whose name had vanished from the public prints weeks before.

The Premier’s first act had been to express his hopes for peace. In addition, he announced that all forces then engaged in maneuvers were being recalled. The new Premier admitted that the unhappy disposition of these forces had provided unchallengeable grounds for hostile action. All Red Navy ships adjacent to North American waters had been ordered back to home ports, and the Red Air Force had been ordered to remain on the ground.

This was as close as the Kremlin could come to surrender without losing complete control of the Russian masses, Clark Simmons knew. He deduced that there had been two revolts within the Kremlin. The first had been a division within the Presidium itself. The second, more definitive, had been the rebellion of the Red Army against Party domination.

Simmons decided to drive to New State and report for duty. He felt there was a chance that they might find his knowledge useful. 3

The President had not left the White House. According to his calculations and the Navy’s, danger to his personal safety could not develop before Monday morning, unless enemy planes were sighted at the DEW line. In such an eventuality the executive departments would disperse out of Washington. He and his personal staffs would retire to an underground command post a safe distance from the capital. There were two such shelters, each the center of an elaborate communications network, reserved for presidential use. One had been used in the Civil Defense rehearsals for evacuation. Its location was supposed to be secret, but of course it wasn’t. The location of the second, more distant from Washington, was actually secret, and it was from this second command post that he would continue his functions as Commander-in-Chief, when the time came. On the south lawn helicopters were waiting, their rotors slowly churning.

Now the President sat at his desk in the oval office of the administrative wing, watching the minutes jump up on his electric clock. The office was vast as a small ballroom, and often seemed to him a place awesome and lonely as a haunted wood, but now there was no empty space there. With him in this room were the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the members of the National Security Council, and the Director of Central Intelligence. And others, many others, but these others, while men of prestige and importance in their own spheres, were silent, unimportant, merging gray-white with the ivory panelling of the walls. Later they would tell their children and grandchildren that they had been present, and perhaps describe the scene in articles and books, explaining exactly what really happened. They would magnify their part in it, as the years passed, which is the way of politicians, statesmen, generals, and plain people, but in fact they played no part at all. The Constitution of the United States is so shaped that in a moment of supreme emergency all the responsibility, and therefore all the power, rushes into the hand and heart of one man.

Messages arrived steadily, were passed from hand to hand by the President’s secretaries and assistants, winnowed down to the most urgent and critical. These alone found their way to the President’s desk.

One such message was brought in by the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, typed on a single sheet of paper. The President read it, read it again, frowned, and wished it weren’t there. But it was there, and having reached his desk at this moment had become part of history. It could not be ignored, or ever forgotten. But with a clean, clear decision to make in exactly one hour and eighteen minutes, it complicated his task immeasurably. His responsibility now embraced not only the people of the United States, but the world.

Moscow’s second broadcast, swiftly translated, reached him at once. He read it, looked up to witness the relentless march of the minutes, and shook his head. “That’s not enough,” he said. “Those submarines have got to be surrendered.”

Navy spoke. “I’d rather not have those submarines any closer to our coast than they are right now.”

“Can’t they be boarded at sea?”

“Yes, we can board them at sea. It’s possible, but risky. Even if they’re ordered to surrender, how do we know all their skippers will comply? And, sir, it’d only take one. Some fanatic captain might be willing to trade his life and his command for New York, and maybe Washington too.”

“So we let them get back to Russia?”

“No, sir! I want to sink ’em!”

A general spoke, a four-star general who had fought Germans and Italians for four years on the battlefields of Africa and Europe, and fought the Russians for ten across conference tables in Berlin and Vienna. “Sir,” he said, “we’ve got a lock on them. We can hit them where they live, safely. We’ve caught their fleet at sea. Their planes must be massed on their bases. All we have to do is proceed according to plan. We can smear every base, every industrial complex, once and for all.” The general’s voice cracked. He could not contain his anger and emotion. He held out his fists, clenched. “We can eliminate them, now and forever. That is self-preservation, sir. Our children can live in peace.”

The President watched another minute die. He had fifty-four minutes left. He lit a cigarette, and discovered that one was already burning in his ash tray, a fluted white clamshell bedded in gold, a token from the Japanese Emperor. A present from the Emperor, long ago, in appreciation of America’s forbearance in victory. For the past year, at his wife’s insistence, the President had limited himself to five cigarettes daily. Now he had smoked, or at least puffed on, at least thirty since he awoke with the news from Hibiscus at seven-fifteen that morning. He looked at the clock again. It was 2:09. It was his moment of decision. He said, “We can’t do it.”

He ground out both cigarettes, not heeding the rustle of surprise, the quick drawing of breath, that in the aggregate became a gasp, of the others in the office. “We can’t do it because if we killed Russia we might also kill the United States. We might kill everybody. I mean literally. I have this memorandum from the Atomic Energy Commission.” He picked it up and allowed it to flutter back to his desk. It was a pretty late hour to be getting something like this, he thought. But he knew government. It always took a crisis to blast out a difficult decision. He could imagine that they had argued about this memorandum for months, perhaps years, in the AEC. Probably not all the scientists agreed with it, or all five commissioners thought it properly worded. Probably there was dissent. But a majority had felt that they could not allow him to act until he had seen this caveat. They had unloaded the responsibility on him. That’s the way it always was, and always would be. It was the terrible price of the presidency. Responsibility was the silent assassin whose permanent home was the White House. A minute flipped. They all expected him to say more. They expected an explanation.

“You all know,” he said, “that for many years we have conducted very extensive research into the effects of excessive radiation, short range and long. At one time or another we’ve had at least forty scientific groups, in universities and foundations, look into it. I have just received a warning that an attack such as we have mounted, and are prepared to deliver, will not only eliminate Russia as a power, but will make a large part of Europe and Asia uninhabitable for months, perhaps for years. That’s not all. An attack of this sort will endanger life everywhere in the world. Oh, not instantly. Not all in a day, or a generation. The general speaks of his children. I am thinking of his children’s children as well. I have to. And any lesser attack, not completely crushing, would expose us to reprisal.” He turned his head until his eyes found a blue uniform among the officers clustered at the right of his desk. “Is that not true, General Keatton?”

Keatton was not prepared for the question, but he knew the answer. It had been reached, in staff studies, long ago. “That is true, Mr. President,” he replied at once. “We have to hit ’em everywhere, or nowhere. If we fail to eliminate all their bases we are bound to lose cities. A second attack, and perhaps a third, would be necessary.”

“Gentlemen,” the President said, “I’m not going to pull the trigger.”

Later, the President often wondered what it was in the memorandum that had allowed him to decide so quickly, and with so little hesitation, and with certainty of rightness. He thought it was the sentence about radiostrontium, an uncommon chemical of fantastic toxicity which would be one of the awful by-products of the supers. A ten-megaton bomb would produce only three pounds of radio-strontium. But a tiny fraction of an ounce, scattered over a square mile, would cause bone tumors in humans. It would contaminate the soil and be dangerous for years. He could not bring himself to spread a cancerous cloud around the earth, or sow cancer on any part of it. 4

So there never was an X-Day, or a D-Day, or an H-Hour. The cities lived.

The remnants of the Russian submarine flotilla that had been ambushed by Coral Sea retired across the Atlantic. By no means all the Russian submarine strength was contacted, so it was assumed that this flotilla had been en route to southern targets. The main body, following, remained unseen and unscathed.

The bombers of the 519th Wing went as far as Thule. There they landed and remained for several weeks. In the redistribution of SAC’s strength, bombers were kept aloft, prepared to strike, day and night.

There were casualties. As many people were killed in the evacuation as would ordinarily die on the highways, and by crimes of violence, on a long summer holiday, such as when July 4 falls on a Monday.

It was necessary to postpone the celebration of Christmas, in most homes, until New Year’s. Millions of families, out of food and gas, were stranded in distant towns and villages Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Millions slept in barns, in their cars, in warehouses, railroad stations, and jails. Others were more fortunate, and for a few days lived in luxury and pleasant surroundings such as they had never enjoyed before. Country clubs and resort hotels suddenly discovered they were catering to the masses, free.

Hundreds of thousands from Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Washington, and Richmond had fled to the Cumberlands and Shenandoahs. Of these a lucky hundred or so discovered the Walback lodge near Front Royal. Their host at first had been hostile, actually threatening them with a rifle. But when he saw how many they were, and how determined, he admitted them. At the lodge they had everything they needed for their comfort and pleasure, just as if Walback had been preparing his place for such an emergency. Some of his guests were so impressed with his hospitality that when they left they took with them souvenirs, such as silver spoons and forks, heirlooms fashioned by Kirk of Baltimore, that were more than a hundred years old.

After their last guest departed, the Walbacks returned to Washington. It was early January by then, and the country was pretty well back to normal. Henrietta Walback never tired of telling of her experiences and hardships, when she had been forced to entertain the rabble.

Business quickly restored itself, since people had to work to live. Congress met and approved the President’s action, although a minority faction would always contend that he had been weak and soft.

The two captured saboteurs were tried and executed. Stanislaus Lazinoff, alias Stanley Smith, requested that he be allowed to die before a firing squad, as befitted an officer of the Red Army. His request was denied. He was tried for murder, not espionage or treason. He was electrocuted at the state prison in Raiford, Florida, with five witnesses. There were no flowers. Pravda and Izvestia applauded the executions, branding the saboteurs tools of the previous criminal regime.

Gregg Palmer, the missing man of the four, was never found. Hunting for Palmer was almost as difficult as hunting for a Smith. Felix Fromburg, detailed to the search for six months, was sure that Palmer had never joined the Air Force. It was Fromburg’s opinion that Palmer was the shrewdest of the four. Finding himself in the United States with $40,000 in cash, he had considered the odds carefully and decided to take his chances with the West. He had discarded his synthetic identity and adopted another, and now was lost among 160,000,000 citizens as completely as a single drop of water in a broad lake. Perhaps he had married, bought a farm or business, and joined the Kiwanis Club. It was anybody’s guess. Fromburg felt he would never be found, for his training in Little Chicago had fitted him superbly to mix with the population.

Betty Jo Atkins was questioned, and testified at Smith’s trial. She was fearful that he would curse or rage at her publicly, and was puzzled and then angered by his complete indifference. During the trial he seemed bored, and when she testified glanced at her only once, and in contempt. Actually, Betty Jo benefited considerably from her relationship with Smith. She was paid a thousand dollars to sign her name to her memoirs for a confession magazine, and another five hundred to appear on a television show, and she regained possession of the green-and-white Chevrolet.

PFC Henry Hazen was promoted to corporal.

Clark Simmons was picked as one of the members of an inspection team to visit Russia. Agreement on methods for complete inspection of all armaments production, nuclear weapons, and military strength, seemed really promising, after the years of futile palavering. The Geneva Spirit revived, and everyone hoped that this thaw was permanent.

Colonel Cragey again resigned from the Army and resumed his teaching at Charlottesville.

Steve Batt repaired the hole in his game room, at considerable cost, and was advanced forty numbers towards his captaincy.

Jesse Price remained at Hibiscus on Conklin’s staff. Conklin recommended his promotion to full colonel, skipping the intermediate grade, and he was sure the SAC commanding general, and Keatton, would approve. In an Air Force where crewless rockets were replacing planes, a pilot’s eyesight would be of little importance, since pilots were obsolescent.

The Intentions of the Enemy Group remained dissolved, to General Clumb’s satisfaction. But General Clumb himself was uprooted from the Pentagon and exiled to a desert post in Arizona to superintend the storage and care of obsolete tanks and armored cars.

Katharine Hume wrote the AEC that she was remaining at Hibiscus, on annual leave. Nobody seemed to have missed her.

One night, in the new year, Jesse took Katharine to dinner in the city. The place was noisy, the Florida lobster tougher and stringier than usual. It was not the atmosphere he wanted. Rather abruptly, he suggested they return to the base.

On the drive back to Hibiscus she nestled close to him, saying little, as if she expected him to say much. But traffic was heavy, and with only one eye it was necessary for him to concentrate on driving.

Once on the base he drove to the O Club. It was crowded, for the 519th Wing was newly returned from Greenland, and happily thawing out. Jesse and Katharine had one drink, avoided a dozen gay groups, and he led her back to the car. They drove to a quiet lane near the golf course. Three other cars were parked there before them. He turned back, and drove past the hangars and across concrete to the fence protecting the flight line. The 99’s stood there, moonlight on their wings, the wings drooping like great birds roosted for the night.

“Pretty, aren’t they?” he said.

She dropped her head against his arm. “Yes they are, now.”

He kissed her. “This will have to do for our romantic place,” he said. “It’s the only romantic place left around here. Ready to get married?”

“I’ve been ready.” She was thoughtful for a moment. “Some people think the President was too soft. Men may think that, but not women. I know he was right. If we’d erased Russia, I don’t know that I’d be so anxious to get married. Years ago a fellow wrote a story about all the men being sterilized by a big nuclear explosion. If there had been a war, I don’t think anything so quick and simple would have happened. It would have been much worse. A big bang, and then a long, long whimper.”

“Time of troubles,” Jesse said. “Very dangerous time. Know what I’m worried about? What happens if they get parity in the ICBM? What happens if they won’t disarm?”

She said, “I’m not going to worry now. I’m glad I live in this time. Time of troubles, yes. But also a time of decision. What we do, counts. Just think, Jess, all the generations to come are going to look back at us and say, ‘That was some generation!’ We’re only beginning to learn about nuclear energy. Wait until we harness the meson, and learn all there is to know about cosmic rays. Do you know what we’re doing, Jess? We’re groping our way out of a dark age. And I want to be part of it. I want to reach for the sun.”

His hand tightened on her shoulder. “You don’t want to go back to the AEC, do you, Katy? You know, I’ll be on duty here for at least two years. Maybe I can get Washington duty after that. But who knows?”

“It really is a time of decision, isn’t it?” she said.

“I guess it is,” said Jesse. “Housewife on Hibiscus Base or scientist for the AEC.”

She ruffled his hair and pushed his head. “Don’t be silly!” she said. “I’m staying here. We’ll get married in the base chapel. Jess—”

“Yes?”

“A full colonel rates a pretty big house, doesn’t he?”

“Four bedrooms, two baths, and study.”

“Big enough so I could have a little workroom, a little lab?”

“Sure,” he said. “Anything you want, so long as it doesn’t interfere with the next generation.”