Forbidden Area

Three

AMONG THE passengers who landed at Havana Airport Tuesday morning was Robert Gumol. December was a tourist month, but it was obvious that he had come on business. He wore a blue suit of expensive texture, cannily cut to minimize his girth, and he carried a heavy brief case. He bustled down the ramp of the DC-8, and shouldered his way to the front of the line of those moving into the air terminal from Gate 7. At the gate an olive-skinned girl wearing a chic, powder-blue uniform was serving Bacardi cocktails, free. It was not yet ten o’clock, and most of the others refused, but Gumol accepted one and drank it at a gulp. Although it was not unseasonably warm, a rivulet of sweat ran from his sparse, crinkled sideburns, and overflowed the fatty canyons in his neck. His stiff white collar was collapsed and sodden. A lush, the girl thought, getting drunk before breakfast. The truth was that Gumol was quite nervous.

Ordinarily he was the most careful and methodical of men, but now he wondered whether he might have forgotten something. There is always a certain hazard in bringing a large amount of cash into a foreign country. His passport, which he always kept up to date and in the top drawer of his desk, was no worry. Cuba required no visas from North Americans. But if your luggage consists solely of a brief case, a certain curiosity is invited. Customs, finding a stack of cash and noting that he was a banker, might jump to a faulty conclusion, and tip off the American authorities in hope of a reward. The bank examiners would find everything correct in Upper Hyannis, but Treasury agents might inquire about the taxes on such a large sum of money. But even as he considered the hazard, Gumol thought of a way to avoid it. If an explanation was necessary, he would tell Customs that the money was for deposit in the Bank of Cuba to finance a certain transaction in which higher officials of their government were interested. That would grease his way, quickly. Gumol was satisfied. The rum glowed within him, and he took his place in the line waiting for inspection.

The line edged ahead. Immigration glanced at his passport and asked, casually, how long he expected to stay.

“Only a few days,” Gumol said.

“You’re a banker. Business, I suppose?”

“Yes, business.” He saw that Customs, a thin, mustached man standing at the table beyond Immigration, was listening.

He moved on. To his relief, Customs didn’t reach out for the brief case. Customs said, “Go right ahead, sir. Taxis are across the lobby.” The little fat man, Customs thought, is uneasy because his brief case is stuffed with money. He wants to get the dollars to the bank in a hurry. He thinks that if I force him to open the brief case someone will see the money, and he will be robbed, and indeed he might be. It is best, therefore, that the brief case not be opened at this counter. Cuba didn’t care how much money Americans brought into the country, so long as a portion of it remained.

Once in a cab, Gumol did indeed consider taking the money to the bank, but decided against it. That might be dangerous. Banks, even in Cuba, listed and reported the serial numbers of thousand dollar bills. In time Treasury might inquire about the source of his cash. Havana was the center of money exchange in the Caribbean. In Havana were certain traders who would accept currency, of any denomination, without question or remembrance so long as there was a profit in it. These traders avoided the authorities, and it would be safe to deal with them. They would enable him to diversify his assets. He would buy Argentine and Mexican pesos, quietly and slowly. After a successful attack on the United States, what would dollars be worth? Until he got rid of his dollars, he would stay married to this brief case.

At the Hotel Nacional it was unnecessary for Gumol to show his credit cards. He was remembered. He registered, and was escorted to a double room overlooking the harbor. When the bellhop was gone he took off his clothes and fell on the bed, much relieved. He had made it, with ease and safety, and he felt he was entitled to another drink. He picked up the phone, ordered rum, ice, and Cokes, and remembered that he ought to telegraph his wife and inform her that he had arrived safely. Then he decided not to wire her. She could wait. If she worried, it served her right. Let her sweat a while. The rum came and he mixed a drink and walked out on the balcony. On a similar balcony, one floor below, two girls were standing in the sunshine, their hands on the white-painted iron railing, chatting. One of them, a yellow-haired girl with bright black eyes and dark brows boldly painted, looked up at him and smiled. He raised his glass in a silent toast, and invitation. 2

At the same time that Gumol landed in Havana, PFC Henry Hazen, wearing the smart green of the Marines, arrived in Jacksonville from the West Coast, and then caught a bus to St. Augustine. He had three weeks’ leave, which would extend through the holiday season, before shipping out to Okinawa, and he was on the way to visit his family and see Nina Pope, who had been his girl. Whether she was still his girl was unclear. Her letters had arrived with less and less frequency, and their language was stilted and vague. Eighteen months in the Marines had changed Henry. He had gained twenty-five pounds, his chest filled his uniform jacket, and his legs no longer resembled those of a wobbly colt. Anyone who survives the Corps’ boot camp and combat training course grows quickly to manhood.

Among the realities Hazen had absorbed was that you didn’t join the Marines to learn a trade, in spite of what the recruiting posters said and his family believed. Marines were trained for other things, such as fighting a dangerous and wily enemy. At Pendleton he had been taught the nature of this enemy, and thereafter he brooded often on what he had seen, and what he had failed to do, on a moonlit night in June the year before.

He could not banish it from his mind. He had to tell someone.

The leader of his training platoon, at Pendleton, was a Sergeant Asbury, a onetime professional football player who might have made second string on the Redskins had not the Korean War intervened. At first Asbury had seemed formidable, tough and distant, but after a few weeks Hazen learned that Asbury, when you grew to know him, was human and friendly, like a high school athletic coach. So it was to Asbury that Hazen had confided his story of the submarine. Asbury listened without interruption until Henry came to the part about the Buick rolling off the landing barge. Then Asbury laughed and said, “Sure it was a Buick, Slim?”

“I’m almost certain it was a Buick.”

“Come on, Slim, don’t try to snow me. You’re making this up as you go along, aren’t you?”

“No, this is honest-to-goodness truth. Somebody ought to know about it.”

“Well, why tell me? What can I do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You really saw this?”

“I saw it.”

Asbury looked worried. Maybe the boy had seen a submarine, maybe he hadn’t. Anyway, he thought he had, but he also thought he had seen a car delivered by landing barge, and of course that was ridiculous. Besides, it had all happened more than a year before, and nothing could be done about it now. Asbury had been in the Marines long enough to realize how much trouble a tale like that could cause, if bucked to higher authority and taken seriously. “Know what I’d do if I were you, Slim?” he said. “I’d forget all about it.”

“Forget it? Why?”

“I’ll tell you why,” the sergeant said. “Suppose I take this up with the Captain? Whether he believes you or not, he personally can’t do a thing. He has to buck it to the battalion commander. So what does the Major do? He doesn’t know you, and it sounds real screwy to him. Does he take your word for it and go to the big brass and risk getting laughed at? No, sir. He calls in the post psychiatrist. The psychiatrist talks to you and nods, yes, yes. Then he puts you under observation for two weeks. If you’re still sane after two weeks in the crazy ward, he certifies that you were suffering from a temporary delusion. He says you’ve got an inferiority complex and you were trying to compensate for it by inventing this story to call attention to yourself. So he sends you back to the platoon with a note on your jacket saying you’re emotionally immature and unstable. After that, you’ll never even make corporal. Now, still want to see the Captain?”

Henry knew that Asbury’s reasoning was logical and accurate. It could even be worse. They might kick him out of the Corps with a medical discharge, and after that it would be tough getting a job, any kind of a job, on the outside. He said, “No, don’t tell the Captain. Don’t tell anybody, will you?”

“Okay, Slim,” the sergeant had said. “We’ll just keep it quiet.”

Now, on the bus to St. Augustine, so close to where it had happened, his conscience troubled him again. 3

The alarm clock jolted Katharine out of bed at six-thirty that morning, an hour earlier than usual. She zigzagged into the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, and the cocoon of sleep began to unravel. She recalled that she had been up until two trying to get her brother, Clint, on the telephone. Sometimes the long distance operator had penetrated as deeply as Orlando, more often she could not get beyond Jacksonville, and she had never reached the switchboard at Hibiscus. All the lines into the base were always busy. She had also tried to call Anne, Clint’s girl in Baltimore, but Anne’s line had been tied up too, and this gave Katharine a clue to what was occurring.

Now Katharine turned on the radio, set water to boiling for coffee and eggs, and tried Hibiscus again. She still couldn’t get through. Official traffic would be heavy, of course, but that wasn’t all. There are usually forty crews for the thirty aircraft of a heavy bomber wing, and seven men to a crew. That meant there were two hundred and eighty families competing with each other, and with government and factory priority calls, to learn whether their sons were still alive. Not only families. The flyers’ girls, like Anne in Baltimore, would be competing also. Katharine wondered what happened to communications in a really big disaster—something bigger than two bombers missing—when the names of the lost were unknown.

She called Anne again in Baltimore and reached her this time and told her that Clint was all right. As she suspected, Anne, too, had been up most of the night, and had a call in for Hibiscus.

Katharine reached the conference room at seven-fifty and set the coffee-maker going, her natural chore as the only woman in the group. In a few minutes they began to drift in. All except Raoul looked weary. She had never seen Raoul mussed or unshaven. Jess looked as if he had slept in his uniform, and she said so.

“I did,” Jesse said. “Fell asleep in the office with my feet on the desk. Now I can hardly bend my knees.”

Simmons arrived exactly at eight. “All right,” he said, “let’s get going. I feel this is going to be a long, tough day. I’ve got something hot, but I want to save it for last because I’m sure, from your looks, that you all must have something hot too. Let’s start with AEC.” He nodded to Katharine.

“I haven’t got anything hot at all,” Katharine said. “AEC passes to Army.”

Cragey sat at her left, Jess Price at her right where his good eye was on her. Directly across sat Raoul, flanked by Batt and Felix Fromburg.

Cragey’s face was ascetic, his shoulders too thin and frail for the weight of eagles, but when he spoke of military matters it was with a scholars exactitude and authority. He told, first, of the strange withdrawals of the Russian divisions from the frontiers of Western Europe. Then he said:

“We have something out of Hong Kong. Our military attaché there has a friend in Peiping, a merchant. The merchant exports hog bristles to Hong Kong, and he also exports information. In the hog bristles. Don’t ask me how. This merchant, who, incidentally, was an acquaintance during my years in China, and whom I know to be reliable, has a mistress, a most charming girl, really; educated in India. Happen to know her too. She is a linguist, and works as an interpreter in the War Plans Staff of the Chinese People’s Army. The word from Hong Kong is that Peiping planned to invade Formosa early this month, but that the invasion has been called off. This fits in with what Steve told me last night—the massing of junks at Amoy and Tsingkiang, and then suddenly a cessation of activity.”

“I know why,” said Raoul Walback.

“In just a minute, Raoul,” said Simmons. “Let’s tap the military first. How about air, Jess?”

Jesse Price spoke of the heavy reconnaissance in the polar regions, not unprecedented in the years before the era of conciliation and hope, but now unusual.

Batt rose. He told of the thirty missing submarines, and the possible shadowing of the Forrestal. “Now I have a harder fact,” he went on. “We have just heard from our naval attaché in Stockholm. On five December a Swedish patrol vessel sighted a flotilla of twelve submarines passing out through the Skaggerak.”

Batt paused to give them time to consider this statement. Simmons demanded, “Why are we getting this so late?”

“Hard to say,” Batt said. “The Swedish kid commanding the patrol boat probably didn’t think it important. After all, Sweden is worried about the Baltic, not the Atlantic, and the Swedes see Russian subs maneuvering all the time. So he probably just turned in his sighting in a routine way when he got back to port, and it stayed routine until it got to the Navy Ministry and somebody mentioned it to our man in Stockholm. Same sort of thing happens here, you know.”

Katharine’s fingers felt cold and she looked at her hands and saw that the palms were white. Suddenly, she was afraid. It was eerie, the way in which the Russians seemed to be following their plan. It was as if, in childhood, you had scared yourself reading ghost stories which you knew were just stories, and then looked up to see a spook at the window. She started to speak, but decided it was unnecessary. Everyone else was thinking the same thing. She could read it in the stone set of their faces.

Simmons asked a question, the words tiptoeing carefully down the table. “Assuming that the submarine flotilla is headed from the Skaggerak towards our Gulf ports—as our forecast calls for it to do—how soon, Commander Batt, would they reach their target areas?”

Steve Batt leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, and did his computations half aloud. “I’ll give them seventeen knots on the surface, nights, and eleven knots submerged during daylight hours, and they’ll have fifteen hours of darkness, average, each day. I’ll move them west just south of Iceland to thirty degrees, west; then due south; then west again.” His lips moved soundlessly and his eyes closed as he calculated the navigation problem. He said: “They should be in firing position by twenty-four December—certainly not later than the twenty-fifth. You understand it’s only a guess. This isn’t the chartroom in Leningrad.”

So they would know, for sure, within the week. Simmons said, “What has CIA got?”

“Hold your hats,” Raoul said. “We are presently entertaining in our Vienna office a most unusual guest. Simonov. For years he was a hatchet man for the NKVD, and later for the MVD. Pal of Beria’s, and we had expected his throat would be cut in ’fifty-three when they liquidated his chief. Simonov survived. He may have delivered Beria over to Malenkov and Khrushchev. You never can tell for sure about those things. Anyway, Simonov flew to Vienna recently on some murderous mission for Moscow and promptly came over. Said some sort of ruckus was developing in the Kremlin, and his number was up. The important thing is that he gave a reason for what’s going on in China. Seems that the Chinese were planning to hit Formosa this month, just as we heard from Colonel Cragey. They kept it secret, even from the Russians, until a few weeks ago. The Russians were furious when they found out. Simonov overheard a conversation between two of the deputy premiers and the Chinese ambassador to Moscow. The Russians told the ambassador that an outbreak of war in the Far East would spoil everything. They told him that they were withdrawing all Russian air from the area for use elsewhere, and that if the Chinese insisted on striking they could count on no help. Then one of the deputies patted the ambassador on the shoulder and said, ‘If you’ll just be patient a while longer, you’ll be able to swim to Formosa.’”

“Very interesting,” said Simmons. “It appears that the Chinese decided to be patient. In this same connection, there’s been another schism in the Russian high command. Our ambassador doesn’t know exactly what it is, as yet. For one thing, the big military boys haven’t been seen in public recently. No announced purge, understand. But the men behind the scenes, the Party men, are openly seizing executive power. It is good to keep in mind that the Russian military tradition is to defend the homeland, but the Party’s goal has always been one thing—world revolution and hegemony. This split can mean a purge, or it can be that the marshals are now engaged solely in military matters, and therefore have relinquished all their control in internal affairs.”

“It’s coming all right, isn’t it?” Raoul Walback said, more a statement than a question, and more to himself than to his colleagues.

Simmons nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid it’s coming—and very soon. I haven’t quite finished. Two weeks ago, as you know, the Russian ambassador left Washington for Moscow. The announcement was ‘routine consultations.’ He took quite a staff back with him, of rather unusual composition. Only a few were of high rank or proven diplomatic quality. The others were all assistant military attachés and obscure vice-consuls who we have reason to believe are either high in the Party, or agents of the MVD.”

“How about their ambassador to the UN?” Katharine asked. “He’s still here, isn’t he?”

“Yes, and he undoubtedly will remain here. He has been treated for cancer at Memorial Hospital, and told he cannot get well. Now, based on these facts—”

Felix Fromburg spoke. “Just a minute.” Katharine realized that they had all forgotten Fromburg, as usual. Fromburg looked like a younger Harry Truman. He looked like her postman and like one of the guards at the AEC main entrance and like Ed Salinger, her English professor at Sarah Lawrence, and like Mr. Kippel, the patient clerk at Brentano’s on F Street. He looked like everybody.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Felix,” said Simmons. “Didn’t mean to leave you out.”

“I may have a little something,” Felix said. “One of the Tass men in New York is a Party wheel. He flew to Mexico four days ago. His girl, an American, quit her job in a dress shop and went with him. It was quite a good job. She can’t marry him because he’s already married. His wife is still in New York. There has been a quiet exodus of other Russians, not counting those who left with the ambassador’s party. Scandanavian Airlines and BOAC have been doing a very brisk business. All the tickets are one way.”

“What about the people from the satellites?” Raoul asked.

“Oh, they’re still here. For that matter, so are the majority of the Russians. They’re necessary sacrifices. And I doubt that any of the people recalled know what’s up. I can imagine a meeting in Moscow, and somebody checking off the names of those who for one reason or another were considered worth saving. These people were simply ordered home. A few others, like the Tass man in New York, may suspect something is coming and have decided to get out from under, or at least save their families. There were twenty-eight Russian women and children aboard a cruise ship for the Caribbean last week.”

While he listened, Jesse Price’s chair had been tilted back, his pipe pointing at the ceiling. Now his chair cracked to the floor. “I think Christmas Eve,” he said.

“Christmas Eve!” said Simmons. “Why?”

“Because I don’t think anybody can bring himself to get excited about Russia with the holidays coming up. Not in this country, except maybe in this room and a few other rooms. Just as Sunday morning was the right time to hit Pearl Harbor because so many officers and men were ashore or off base, weekending and curing hangovers, so Christmas Eve is the right day to destroy the United States. All the cities will be jammed with shoppers. Everybody in uniform who can get leave will be at home. There’ll be skeleton crews at every command post and duty office and interceptor field and AA rocket emplacement. Key men in government will be scattered all over the map. Every Navy captain will try to have his ship in port, and liberty for his men. That right, Steve?”

Commander Batt smiled. “That has been the custom,” he admitted.

“Who wants to fly long range search on the day before Christmas?” Price continued. “What about the men in the radar huts up on the DEW line? Are they thinking about mail, and families, and girls Christmas Eve, or watching their screen for pips? Which do you think?”

“It’s a horrid conception,” Katharine said.

“Perhaps I’m a horrid man,” said Jesse, “but it fits in with Steve’s estimate of the Baltic flotilla’s cruising time to the Gulf ports. And I’ll bet his thirty missing subs, at this moment, are somewhere up there in the fog and winter storms, heading west and south, about a hundred feet submerged and doing eleven or twelve knots. Think of the confusion if it came Christmas Eve. There wouldn’t be any Christmas Day, only confusion, only chaos and savagery.”

Simmons spoke, very quietly, “This is your true, considered opinion?”

“It is.”

“Good. It is mine also. Is there any dissent, any flaw in the reasoning?”

No one spoke.

Simmons leaned forward. “Would each of you stake your life that this is what’s going to happen?” He paused. “I know you think that a strange question. But if we send along an appendix to our forecast, saying that the attack is coming Christmas Eve—and if we are believed—then many others will stake their reputations, yes, and even their lives, on our judgment. There will be mobilization, alerts, the movement of thousands of aircraft and hundreds of ships, and enormous expense. In such a drastic upheaval casualties will be inevitable. Martial Law will be necessary. In some cities, the news may inspire panic buying or even disorganized exodus. The Stock Market will fall on its face. There may be runs on banks, for people may be moved to withdraw all their cash and buy commodities. If we are wrong, not only will we personally be through, forever, but the careers of all who supported us in the past, and believe in us now, will be finished. The United States will be the laughingstock of the world. It’ll be Orson Welles’ invasion from Mars all over again, but much more serious, multiplied a thousandfold. The Administration will be disgraced, and nobody will ever believe a similar alert in the future.”

Jesse Price knocked out his pipe in a glass ash tray. In the silence it sounded like a hammer. Yet when he spoke he was calm, even smiling, for he had made his decision. “I don’t mind laying my life on the line for a sufficient reason, and I consider this sufficient. In my heart I know we are right.”

“We would be taking an awful chance, though, now wouldn’t we?” Raoul said.

Katharine looked across the table at him. Raoul, she realized, was essentially conservative. Simmons had called for unanimity, and she felt impelled to back him up. “Jess is right, Raoul,” she said. “It is like mathematics. There can only be one correct answer to an equation, and this is it. Oh, I know we take a chance, pinpointing the day. But we need shock effect. If the forecast is to be useful, it must be distributed and read—now.”

“It used to be that you could get anything read around here,” Batt said, “by stamping it top secret, or ‘eyes only.’ Now everything is top secret and it doesn’t attract attention.”

The single door to the conference room was flung open, and General Clumb entered, rumbling in his throat like the exhaust of a medium tank. His cropped gray head was down and his wide shoulders held low, as if he expected to tackle someone. His face, rigid and cragged like rough terrain, was scarlet. In his right hand, rolled up as if for swatting flies, and encased in the red plastic jacket that indicated top secret documents, was a sheaf of paper. Katharine knew it was FORECAST OF RUSSIAN MILITARY ACTION, Copy No. 1. 4

General Clumb had been assigned to the Pentagon, duty which he detested, two years before his date for retirement. Clumb was a field general, and more specifically a general of cavalry, or, as it is now called, armor. As commander of one of Patton’s regimental combat teams, he achieved the summit of his fame in the sweep across France. He was photographed, just before the liberation of Metz, standing in the turret of a point tank, tommy gun under his left arm, his powerful right hand flourishing an 1870 sabre he had discovered in a French farmhouse. It was a dramatic photograph, seeming to symbolize the union of Custer with a helmeted Superman, widely published, and perhaps responsible for his first star. Clumb remembered World War II with nostalgia and preferred not to think of wars tanks couldn’t win. Oh, he believed that nuclear weapons would work, all right (although not against armor properly dispersed), but he pretended to ignore their existence, in staff discussions, as a gentleman avoids mention of social diseases in mixed company. If pressed, he announced that neither side would use bombs, A or H. “Just like poison gas in the second World War,” he always said. “Both sides had gas but neither used it.”

Clumb was in command of a NATO division when the atomic cannon and Honest John rockets and Matador pilotless jets began to arrive in Europe. Since he could not seem to find a place for such weapons in his formations, Army was forced to make a decision. Either Clumb or the atom had to go, and it was Clumb who was shipped home. Army assured him that duty in the Pentagon, especially in the august company of the Joint Chiefs, would be a fitting close to a glorious career.

He became Chief, Special Projects Section, Planning Division, Joint Chiefs, a post that carried no specific authority. It was an administrative clearing house for studies and functions that the Joint Chiefs believed essential, but which were still of a quasi-military nature. The Pentagon hoped only that General Clumb would keep his desk reasonably clear, and see to it that papers and reports flowed to the sections where they could be useful. At the bottom of his table-of-organization chart was a small box, Intentions of the Enemy Group. He didn’t understand exactly why it was there, but he was suspicious of that little box from the very start.

They were a weird bunch, including a one-eyed pilot and, of all things, a woman. Four of them were civilians, and their senior member was a State Department striped-panty. It was General Clumb’s conviction that civilians should keep their noses out of military matters until they were called up, in due course, by the draft. As to the military members of this organization, none of them had any rank, really, the Army representative being only a reserve colonel. What useful function this group could perform he could not imagine. They churned around a good deal, and some of them seemed to have influential friends whom they consulted, in person, outside proper channels. He had been waiting for months to put them in their place, or erase the troublesome box from his T.O. entirely, and now the time had come. He had devoted hours of study to their so-called forecast, an abominable and cheeky thing, and now he knew he had ’em.

Clumb charged into the conference room and rapped the rolled-up report on the edge of the table. Colonel Cragey, Commander Batt, and Major Price rose, as military courtesy required. The civilians were either rude or totally untrained in military matters. They all kept their seats. “You may be seated,” General Clumb said, his voice rasping like metal tank treads on concrete. “What I have to say isn’t going to take long. In all my years as an officer, this is the most preposterous and outrageous document that I have ever seen. Rejected!” He tossed the forecast on the table, where it slowly unfolded, as if of itself attempting to regain shape and dignity.

Simmons stood up. “General,” he said, his voice controlled, but loud enough to match Clumb’s, “do you mind explaining what you mean by ‘rejected‘?” Simmons had once faced down a Russian marshal. He was not terrified by rank.

“I mean,” said Clumb, “that there will be no distribution of this document under my name. In other words, there will be no distribution whatsoever.”

“We have been working on this forecast for more than a year. It is our opinion—and I am sure that I speak for all of us—that it is of utmost importance, and should be distributed immediately. This thing is not only going to happen, the facts indicate that it is happening this instant.”

“Ridiculous!”

“Not only that,” Simmons said, “but we have been discussing intelligence received by all the departments and agencies we represent—including State and CIA—over the last twenty-four hours. We have reached the opinion that the United States will be attacked, in exactly the manner outlined in the forecast, on Christmas Eve.”

The general was certain that they had lost their collective minds, and that he could now get rid of them, swiftly and with impunity, and he allowed himself to smile. “Do you mind telling me what time?” he said.

Very casually Jesse Price, half slouched in his chair, said, “I should say at the crack of dawn.”

“Are you being insolent?”

“No, General, I am absolutely serious.” Although his manner was undoubtedly insolent, his voice was still subdued, and very grave, “The enemy submarines will surface, pick up bearings, and launch their missiles at first light.”

Katharine Hume had to speak. Psychologically, they were going at it the wrong way. They had to get Clumb talking. Perhaps if he talked enough he might talk himself into changing his mind. Nobody else, under the rank of lieutenant-general, was going to change it for him. “Sir,” she asked, innocently as a college girl asking for clarification of a lecture, “do you mind telling us what your objections are?”

“What they are? Gad, girl! I wouldn’t know where to start!”

Katharine rose. She was the youngest in the room, and the general was more than twice her age, and it would be politic to offer him her chair. “Do sit down, sir, and tell us about it. After all, we realize your experience outweighs ours.”

Uncertainly, as if doubting the tactic, the general sat down. “All right,” he said, “I’ll tell you. Your plan is full of holes. Now I don’t doubt that the Russians would attack us if they could get away with it, but what do you think our NATO forces would be doing while all this was going on over here? I’ve been reading the intelligence summaries also. The Russian divisions, including armor, are pulling back from all the frontiers. Does that sound like they’re preparing for war? No, sir! When you’re ready for war you mass for an attack. You don’t retreat.”

Colonel Cragey shifted in his chair, looking unhappy. “General, NATO is prepared for defensive action—not attack. The Russian divisions are pulling back simply to remove themselves from the range of NATO’s atomic cannon and missiles.”

“And you’re a colonel!” said General Clumb, sadly. “Do you mean to tell me that the Russians are going to leave the NATO armies intact?”

“What good is an army without a country?” Cragey asked.

The general sucked in his breath and straightened. “Colonel, I consider that remark insubordination!”

“Well, what good is it?” Cragey insisted.

The general ignored him. “And another thing. Suppose the Russians were capable of turning two-thirds of this country into a desert—which of course is as preposterous as all the rest of it—how would it benefit them? Wars are won by occupying the territory of the enemy. That’s the first rule of warfare. You take this territory with tanks, nowadays, and hold it with infantry. What would the Russians want with a radioactive America?”

Katharine saw that all was lost, anyway, and that there was no possible point of compromise, or meeting of minds, between them. She said, quietly, “Perhaps they’ll just put a fence around it and stick up a sign reading, ‘Forbidden Area.’”

The general got to his feet. “I have nothing more to say. Except this. In my opinion this whole outfit is a dangerous boondoggle.” He reached across the table and picked up Copy No. 1. “Every copy of this so-called forecast, except this one which I will keep for presentation to higher authority at a suitable time, will be burned. Meanwhile, duties and activities of this group are suspended. Military members of the group will report to their immediate superiors for such assignment as may be found for them. As to civilian individuals, your further employment is the problem of your respective departments and agencies. Good day.”

He left the field, victorious.

After he was gone, Felix Fromburg was the first to speak. “Don’t get too excited. We’ve licked this sort of thing before. We’ll have to go over his head, and it may take time, but—”

“Time is what we haven’t got,” said Simmons. “Let’s not think about saving our jobs, or the group. Let’s think about saving the forecast. Somebody at the top or near the top has got to see it. I know what I’m going to do. I hope all of you have similar plans, although I cannot, of course, ask you to do anything contrary to the general’s order. I guess we’ve been adjourned, sine die.”

Walking down the main corridor towards the taxi loading ramps at the far side of the building, Katharine Hume saw an unusual sight. A leggy Air Force lieutenant, clutching a sheet of paper in his hand like a relay racer’s baton, sprinted past her at top speed. She considered stopping in at Jess Price’s office to find out if anything important had happened. But Price, like all the others, would be busy. Her curiosity could wait. As for herself, she doubted whether she could enlist a powerful ally within the AEC, although she would try. Only the AEC commissioners would have sufficient prestige to influence the Joint Chiefs and she knew that the commissioners—even if they agreed with the group’s findings—would hesitate to interfere with what was primarily an internal affair of the Pentagon. If help came, it would have to come through the military. All the way home she wondered about the Air Force lieutenant, recalling how his hair bounced on the back of his head with each long step. She had never seen anything, even one of the three-wheel carts pedaled by messengers, move that fast in the Pentagon before. 5

Airman 2/c Smith awoke at three that afternoon, showered, put on his pressed blues, and caught a base bus to Orlando. He sauntered through the lobby of the biggest hotel, the Angebilt, bought an evening paper, and went into the bar to kill time. Betty Jo Atkins, his girl, wouldn’t get home until five-fifteen. She was a waitress at the Sea Trout Inn, and her hours nine to five.

He ordered a bourbon and water and glanced at the single black headline. FOURTH B-99 IS MISSING! The story was out of Lake Charles, Louisiana. The bomber had taken off that morning on what was described as a routine training mission over the Gulf. Circumstances were identical with the B-99 that had vanished from Hibiscus in November, and the two others that disappeared Monday. Since all available air-sea rescue planes were already occupied in searches, the Air Force had sent out tactical planes, called on the Civil Air Patrol and airlines for help, and was bringing down an additional air-sea rescue squadron from Alaska.

Smith read the story, in its entirety, with relief. At least one of his three companions was on the job. The heat would be off Hibiscus. He felt neither pity nor exaltation. He was certain the crews were dead, just as he was certain that the crews of the first three B-99’s had died, quickly. They were soldiers, as he was a soldier.

A stranger, a civilian of about his own age, edged along the bar, looked at the headline over Smith’s shoulder, and said, “What d’you think’s wrong with those bombers?”

“I wouldn’t have any idea,” Smith said. He knew that SI men were on the prowl all over the place, not only at Hibiscus, but combing the bars and theaters and dance halls in Orlando and Tampa as well. He knew that Special Investigations men customarily wore civilian clothes, so you could not tell a sergeant from a colonel. But if you had long experience with undercover agents, as Smith had, then you could smell them, of whatever rank or nationality. This man was undoubtedly SI, probably a captain, listening for loose talk.

“I think it’s sabotage,” the man said.

“Do you?” said Smith. An agent provocateur, he thought, a clumsy one. Smith finished his drink and walked out. He stopped at a drugstore, twirled a rack of quarter books, and selected one called, Lost at Sixteen, with an undraped, nubile redhead bent back across its cover. Betty Jo liked to read, providing it was about sex. Then he took a cab to her house, south of the city on Orange Blossom Trail.

She wasn’t at home yet and the door was locked so he sat on the steps and waited. The house was one of a row of four-room dwellings, identical except for the color of their roofs, its construction modern but cheap. Betty Jo’s rent was $55 a month. She complained that this was more than she could afford, except during the winter season when the Sea Trout attracted the tourists and tips were good. Northerners tipped fifteen or twenty percent, she said, Southerners rarely more than ten, and the back country crackers sometimes nothing at all. Betty Jo often pointed out that the house was plenty big enough for two. On these occasions he usually gave her a ten or twenty to help out. Money wasn’t all she wanted, or what she was really after, but money stopped her worries and whimpering, at least temporarily. Presently a green-and-white Chevvy turned off the Trail into Kingsley Street and pulled into the carport. “Hi, honey,” he said, opening the door for her. Betty Jo was home.

Betty Jo’s maiden name was Iwanowski. She was wide-hipped, deep-bosomed, and heavily boned, the heritage of Slavic grandparents who had settled in Detroit. Her face was round and pleasant, her hair long and yellow, and her skin tough and tallow-colored, so that no matter how many hours she sunned she never seemed able to acquire a tan.

The men in her family had always worked in the automobile factories, but none had ever graduated beyond the ABC’s of the assembly line. Betty Jo herself was a little backward in her studies, but precocious in other ways. At sixteen she married Atkins, a marijuana-smoking drugstore cowboy, and part-time collector for a neighborhood bookie. She lived with Atkins, off and on, for two years. Then her father loaned her enough to take a bus to Florida and get a divorce. Florida divorces were almost as quick, and much cheaper, considering transportation and living costs, than Nevada divorces. That’s what the union lawyer in Detroit had advised her father. After the divorce came through she had stayed in Orlando. She was now twenty-four and seriously concerned about her future. She hated being a waitress, but it was all she knew. She wanted to get married to a good, solid man like Stanley Smith, with a steady job in the Air Force.

Stan Smith was the most considerate man she had ever known, and the handsomest. He had lunched at the Sea Trout two or three times, Fridays or Saturdays, always finding a seat at one of her tables, before he asked for a date. She had given him a date the first time he asked, and invited him to her house that first night, and not withheld herself from him. He was so handsome that she wondered why he had fallen for her, and inquired, frankly. He said that she reminded him of the girls back home. Back home, she understood, meant Iowa. She’d accepted it as a compliment since she’d known a couple of nice girls from Iowa, both of them pretty, and slim.

Stan had done a wonderful thing for her. He’d bought her a car, a brand-new Chewy hardtop. After that, she wasn’t at the mercy of the lousy bus service and it wasn’t so hard living out on the south end of town. Oh, she understood that it was really his car and he could take it and use it whenever he wanted. But he’d put it in her name, which to Betty Jo’s mind indicated his intention to marry her, because she was sure no man would give her a car unless he expected to get it back.

He was real kind, and generous, in other ways. He only wanted one thing from her, and she needed that too, so they never had any quarrels. Nor did she date anyone else, seriously, because she never knew when Stan would turn up. It could be any evening, early, because he always worked the midnight shift at the base. Generous and dependable as he was, in some ways Stan seemed strange. He could sit for hours, looking at her, without ever really seeing her. He ate anything she put in front of him, never said it was good or bad. Sometimes he talked in his sleep, and threshed wildly about, his right arm jerking as if throwing a baseball. She never understood a word he said, when he was like that, because his language was so garbled. It sounded almost foreign. It sounded like Grandpa Iwanowski when he was drunk.

This afternoon, when she stepped out of the car into Stan’s arms, she felt a little guilty. Backing out of her parking place downtown she had rammed the car behind her, creased the left rear fender of the Chevvy, and smashed the left tail light. She hoped he wouldn’t notice. She’d get it fixed after she was paid, Saturday. Inside the house, she kissed him and led him to the bedroom. Later, she cooked steaks. When he called a cab and left at ten-thirty, in time to make the eleven o’clock bus back to the base, she was curled up in bed, reading the book he had bought her.

Another evening had passed without him mentioning marriage. All he’d said, of importance, was that one night soon he’d need the car. He had promised some of his buddies to drive them to Jacksonville. He might be away for only a night, or for several days. It depended on length of leaves. 6

Raoul Walback was the first of the Intentions Group to reach a man on an upper level of government. The CIA Director was in Switzerland that week, but his Deputy Director for Administration, Clarence Clarey, was available. Raoul approached him on the social plane—he had a hunch this was the best avenue to Clarey’s attention—and asked him to dinner at his club, the Lochinvar. Clarey instantly accepted. Most of the CIA executives were upper upper, in New York or Chicago as well as in Washington, but Clarey was definitely upper middle, and his family probably lower middle. Raoul had never seen Clarey at the Lochinvar, or on the course at Burning Tree or even Chevy Chase.

Raoul greeted Clarey in the club foyer and had drinks sent in to the lounge, hung with portraits of the Cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, and the two Presidents who had belonged to Lochinvar. Between the first and second highballs a waiter brought menus and Raoul ordered for them both—Chincoteague oysters, terrapin Maryland, duck stuffed with wild rice, and a spirited Chablis, ’38. He could see that Clarey was impressed, but he refrained from mentioning the troubles at the Pentagon until the liqueur. Then he told the story, with emphasis on the need for haste. “I think you, as Deputy Director, can and should present the whole matter to the National Security Council,” he concluded. “We have to break this forecast out of Clumb’s desk.”

There were certain facts about Clarey that Raoul Walback didn’t and couldn’t know. One of them was that Clarey had been in government for twenty-four years, and he had not achieved his present eminence, and a $15,500 salary, by exposing his neck to the sabres, even though blunted, of major-generals, or by making recommendations, and attracting the attention, of any such powerful bodies as the National Security Council. Nine of those twenty-four years Clarey had spent as a $2,400 clerk three floors below the Archives Building. He escaped from this dungeon in 1941 by transfer to a new organization called the Coordinator of Information, then being established by General Donovan. CIO gave birth to twins, OWI and OSS, and after the war OSS metamorphosed into the CIA. Generals and admirals, professors and professional spies, researchers and administrators came and went. Clarey stayed on. By adhering to the government’s immutable laws for survival—shunning all controversy, buttering his superiors, and keeping in touch with his congressman—through normal attrition he was now deputy director. He had not the slightest intention of jeopardizing his position and eventual pension, not for the hydrogen bomb or anything else. He rolled the stem of his glass between his fingers, pretending deep thought before he spoke. “To tell you the truth, Raoul,” he said, “I’m rather glad it happened.”

“You’re what?”

“I’m glad it happened. We need you back with us. I may say that both the Director and I have been somewhat disturbed by the actions of your group in the Pentagon. Stepping on our toes, you know. Duplication of effort. After all, CIA is responsible for gathering and analyzing strategic intelligence. By sending you as our representative to the Intentions Group, we really weakened our own position.”

“I’m afraid you don’t understand,” Raoul said. “We think it probable that we’re going to be attacked. By Russia, that is. On or about Christmas Eve. After Christmas, there won’t be any CIA, or Pentagon either.”

Clarey leaned back in his chair and laughed. “Oh, come now, Raoul. You’re over-dramatizing the situation. Now I’m no expert on Eastern Europe, but Russia hasn’t got the savvy and know-how and organization to attack this country.”

“They have savvy enough to make hydrogen bombs, and they know how to build aircraft and guided missiles and submarines to deliver ’em, and organization—why, Clarence, the Communist organization controls half the people on earth.”

Clarey said, “One day the whole thing will collapse.”

“Perhaps. But not by this Christmas.”

Clarey finished his crème de cacao. He didn’t want to offend Walback, whom he knew to be on good personal terms with the director, but the young man was talking madness. Obviously, he was overworked. “Raoul,” he said, “you have a place in the country, haven’t you? Why don’t you take off for a week or two, and then come back to us. Speaking personnelwise, we really need you back in CIA operations very badly.”

“I think,” Raoul said, “that a vacation is exactly what I’m going to take.” 7

The Secretary of State, that evening, was delivering a major address on East-West economic problems before the Foreign Policy Association. The Under Secretary was in the Philippines. One Assistant Secretary was waiting at National Airport to greet the Emir of a Middle East principality richly endowed with oil. The other assistant secretaries had already left Washington for the holidays. Since Christmas fell on Tuesday, and Christmas Eve would be devoted to office parties for those government workers remaining in the capital, a long weekend was coming. So Clark Simmons, in desperation, telephoned Walter McCabe at home. McCabe was a special assistant to the Secretary of State, with a nebulous overlordship of Eastern European Affairs.

Unfortunately, McCabe was entertaining the Yugoslav ambassador and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at dinner. He was carving the roast when the phone rang. When the maid said it was a Mr. Simmons, from the Department, McCabe did not at first place the name. McCabe was not a career diplomat. He was a super-market millionaire from Georgia, a generous contributor to the last election campaign. “Tell him if it’s important,” he told the maid, “he can call me back later.”

At ten o’clock Simmons called again, and by then McCabe had recalled that Simmons was the expert on Russia now working on some sort of a hush-hush job in the Pentagon. McCabe’s guests were still there, and both he and Mrs. McCabe were annoyed by the interruption, particularly since the maid publicly relayed Simmons’ insistence that McCabe come to the phone.

McCabe took the call on the extension in the study. “What’s so important that it won’t wait until morning?” he demanded.

“I wouldn’t like to talk about it on the phone. I think I’d better come on over.”

“Oh, come now. Let’s not be security-happy.”

Simmons was a little rattled. He didn’t know McCabe very well. He said, “Mr. McCabe, this is a matter of the national safety.” The phrase, “a matter of the national safety,” was used seldom, and never recklessly, in the Department. Its meaning was at once literal and cabalistic. It meant: “Drop everything else. This is of supreme importance.”

McCabe was not aware of the phrase. “What do you mean?”

“I’d better come on over.”

“Now look, Simmons, I’m entertaining some very important people. You’d better give me a general idea of what you want.”

Ever since he had been created a Foreign Service Officer, Class Eight, Simmons had been taught to take it for granted that all phone calls over unscrambled wires were monitored. He had been told never to say anything into a telephone that you would not care to have broadcast over the NBC combined network. So he found it difficult to phrase what he had to say. “I’d better start in at the beginning. We have been working on this forecast, and it must be got out immediately, and now our group has been abolished by General Clumb. You know he’s . . .”

“Simmons, are you drunk?”

“Certainly not!”

“Well, you sound drunk.”

“Mr. McCabe, I don’t drink!”

“Well, whatever this is, take it up through the proper channels. Goodbye!”

McCabe returned to the living room, smiled, and said, “Hope you’ll pardon me. Some sort of intramural scrap in the Pentagon.” 8

Commander Batt had better luck than Simmons. Since he was of an old Navy family, he had no trouble seeing Admiral Blakeney, and he was able to tell the whole story, in detail. Blakeney, who was also aware of the thirty missing Russian submarines, and the flotilla that had slipped out of the Baltic, was already somewhat worried, and he promised to take action. He could not, he explained, interfere with whatever was going on in the organization of the Joint Chiefs, which after all was on a higher echelon. He could, however, act directly, in his capacity as commander, Eastern Sea Frontier.

There was a hunter-killer task force, two light carriers and six destroyers, under his command. Unfortunately, at that moment the ships were steaming into the Gulf to co-operate with Air Force in the search for the B-99 missing from Louisiana, and on the way they would scout for the two lost off Florida the day before. There would be an uproar, and renewal of inter-service friction, if he called them off on the basis of no tangible threat. As soon as the survivors were found, or the search abandoned, he could use the task force, with its helicopters and dive bombers, for other duty; and the patrol bombers based at Jacksonville, Virginia Beach, and Quonset as well. Batt had to be satisfied with that. 9

Colonel Cragey, Felix Fromburg, Jesse Price, and Katharine Hume could not get through to anyone of influence and importance that day. Air Force, naturally, was in an uproar, and General Keatton constantly in conference. Four of the AEC commissioners had returned to their home towns for Christmas, and Katharine did not know the fifth.

She did, however, speak to a colleague, Dr. Nebel, a scientist of awesome reputation for his work on the H-bomb. “I think you will find,” Dr. Nebel told her, “that the National Security Council is already aware of this threatening situation if it already exists. We—that is, the AEC—might be making fools of ourselves if we called it to their attention.”

“I don’t believe it,” Katharine said. “If this attack is coming off, and the Security Council is aware of it, certainly they would have informed Civil Defense—and I’m pretty sure that hasn’t happened.”

“I’m not at all sure that they’d tell Civil Defense,” the scientist said, “unless attack was actually imminent. Think of the risk of panic. Orderly evacuation plans or not, there’d just be a wholesale rush to get out of the cities. New York traffic is paralyzed when one truck gets stuck for an hour in the Holland Tunnel. Imagine what would happen if two million people tried to get off Manhattan Island at the same moment. No, they wouldn’t say anything until the last minute. Any premature warning would immobilize whatever defensive dispositions the Army and Air Force plan to take. If word of it leaked, nothing would move—except through the air.”

Katharine wasn’t satisfied. “You know people on the National Security Council, don’t you?” she asked.

“Yes, I do.”

“Couldn’t you make an inquiry, unofficially?”

Dr. Nebel hesitated. “I suppose I could, but I’m not going to. To tell you the truth, Miss Hume, on principle I am against interference in political affairs by people in our position. We have our job to do, they have theirs. Whenever we step into their territory, we antagonize them and invite distrust.”

So Katharine had gone home, and to bed. At midnight the phone rang. It was Jess Price. He asked what she’d been able to do, and she said nothing. He said, “I tried to get Keatton all afternoon, and all evening. An hour ago I went out to eat. When I came back he had left his office. He’s on the way to Hibiscus.”

“Not another?” she said.

“No, not another. Not any since the one from Lake Charles this morning.”

She told him, in guarded words, about her disappointing talk with Dr. Nebel. He expressed no surprise. Then she said, “Jess, are you terribly tired?”

“No. Only my eye is tired. I’ve been reading.” He didn’t tell her what he had been reading, while waiting in the hope of seeing Keatton. He had been reading a new, and exciting, top secret report out of Wright Field. There had been a breakthrough in the development of the intercontinental ballistics missile.

It was eleven o’clock. She said, “Would you like to come up to my apartment for a drink, or a coffee?”

He said, “I’ll be right there.”

She hung up the phone, wondering at the boldness of her invitation, trying to analyze her feelings. He certainly wasn’t the type that needed mothering. He was at least as self-sufficient as herself. The truth was, she decided, that she simply felt better when he was around. The days on which she didn’t see him at all, those days seemed empty. This feeling for Jess was not new, but she could not tell exactly when it had begun.

As Jesse left the Pentagon, the guards were busy collecting the day’s secret waste. One of the bags, taken from the Joint Chiefs’ wing to the incinerators in the basement and burned, contained nineteen of the twenty existing copies of FORECAST OF RUSSIAN MILITARY ACTION.