Forbidden Area

Five

THREE IN the morning is an awkward hour for a man and a woman, unmarried and carrying only weekend luggage, to arrive in Orlando, or anywhere, by plane. The hotels will accept them, of course, but only with a leer, even when they request separate rooms. Katharine Hume and Jesse Price were both stimulated with the heady wine of fresh love, but they were aware that they needed sleep, and would have to sleep, eventually, and that it was best they sleep now, before the business of the day opened at Hibiscus Base.

They spoke of this problem as they waited for the airport bus. “I know we have to sleep,” Katy said, “but I don’t want to go to a hotel. I’m not prudish, or anything, but when we go to a hotel I want you to be able to walk up to the desk, look the clerk in the eye, and sign Major and Mrs. Jesse Price. You are going to marry me, aren’t you?”

“Certainly I’m going to marry you.”

“Well, why don’t you ask? You haven’t, you know. But don’t ask now. Wait for the right time. And I want it to be romantic, with a proper setting. Like under a frangipani tree in the moonlight.”

“I’m not a very romantic guy,” he said. He leaned over, his bristles brushing her cheek, and kissed her.

“Blackbeard the pirate!” she said.

By the time the bus reached the city they had decided to taxi on to Hibiscus. If her brother was listed for a morning mission he’d be up early. If he wasn’t, they’d wake him. Clint lived in the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters so she could not, of course, stay with him. But he undoubtedly would have married friends living on the base, and perhaps one of them might put her up. No problem existed for Jesse. “If there isn’t room in the BOQ or transient quarters,” he said, “all I need is a sack and six feet of floor.”

It wasn’t quite that easy.

At 4:00 A.M. the taxi dropped them at the guardhouse, a one-story structure of concrete block painted white, of the main gate. Over the gate was a gay orange-and-blue sign: “Welcome to Hibiscus A.F.B.—Home of the 83rd Air Division, SAC.” Under the gate stood two Air Police. Jesse noted that they carried tommy guns in addition to their sidearms. Inside the guardhouse was a second lieutenant of the Air Police and four or five enlisted men. All, even a man bent over a typewriter, were armed. Hibiscus was in a condition of alert.

The lieutenant, tall, thin, deeply tanned, and very young, looked them over carefully, almost angrily. He unbuttoned his holster. A sergeant, standing at the other end of the room, stark and bright with tubular lights, lifted a carbine and brought it to rest on the long counter so that it almost, but not quite, pointed at Jess’s middle. The lieutenant spoke. “I don’t know who you people are. But if it’s one of those penetration stunts this is the wrong time to try it.”

Katy said, “Oh!” In spite of her knowledge of war on the theoretical and strategic plane, she had never before encountered armed and hostile soldiers. They looked formidable, and dangerous, not at all like the immaculate Pentagon guards, whose weapons seemed only part of a uniform, like officers’ dress swords.

Jesse understood the lieutenant’s nervousness. Special Investigations teams kept security taut on SAC bases by attempting penetrations, so there was always a running battle between the uniformed Air Police, and the civilian-clad SI. The SI tried to crash the gate in ambulances and fire engines and phone company trucks. Occasionally they landed in an aircraft feigning distress. They posed as newspapermen and doctors, distraught wives and lawyers, and even, on occasion, adopted the identity of general officers. Air Police had been eaten out, and even dismissed from the service, for allowing themselves to be fooled by these teams, and the lieutenant, Hans Fischer, had no intention of allowing anything like that to happen to him. So Jesse, when he spoke, did so with care and precision. “We’re not from SI,” he said. “This lady is Miss Hume. She represents the Atomic Energy Commission, with an assignment in the Pentagon, and is here to see her brother. Her brother is Major Clinton Hume of the Five-Nineteenth Bomb Wing. I’m Major Price, attached to the Joint Chiefs of Staffs. I’m here to see General Keatton.”

From the other end of the room the sergeant said, loudly enough to be heard but not sufficiently loud to be called down for open insolence, “Now I’ve heard everything.”

Lieutenant Fischer said, “If you were here to see General Keatton his aide would have called and left your name. And you wouldn’t be coming in a taxi. You’d be in a staff car, or aircraft. You’ll have to do better than that, mister. Why don’t you two just go away and come back after eight o’clock, when I’m off duty?”

“Can’t,” Jesse said. “Our taxi’s gone. Want to see my ID card? We’ve both got all sorts of credentials.”

“I’ll bet you have,” said Lieutenant Fischer. “They always do.”

“Now look, Lieutenant,” said Jesse, wishing he had worn not only his uniform but decorations, “I was in the Air Force when you were in grammar school.”

“I’m not in grammar school now,” the lieutenant said. “I’ve had a post-graduate course. One of the lessons was not to get conned by the SI.”

Katy saw that the back of Jesse’s neck was becoming red, and she felt that if he said much more things might get even more complicated, and that it was best she intercede. “May I call my brother?” she asked.

“I’m not getting anybody out of the sack at this hour.”

“Well,” said Jesse, “what do you want us to do?”

“I don’t care what you do except don’t try to get on this base.”

“I’m hungry,” said Katharine. “Please, Lieutenant, may I call my brother?”

The lieutenant inspected her, considering the possibilities. She really didn’t look like a spy, but then, a spy wouldn’t look like a spy. Worse than a spy, she might be a WAF officer assigned to Special Investigations. There was only one way to find out. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said. “I’ll call the duty officer at the Five-Nineteenth. If you do have a brother there, and if he comes down and identifies you, then you can go in.”

“What about me?” said Jesse.

“Know anybody who can identify you personally?”

“Yes,” Jesse said. “General Keatton and General Conklin.”

“Major,” said the lieutenant, “you’ve got me over a barrel. You know I can’t call any generals. Nobody on this base has been getting any sleep, hardly, and if I woke up a general I’d find myself in Alaska checking Eskimos in and out of igloos. I’ll go this far. If there is a Major Hume, and if he comes down here and identifies his sister, then you can go along to the mess hall or his quarters in his custody. I’ll send two of my men to watch until you’re positively identified by an officer who knows you personally. But don’t try to go near the flight line or any of the hangars, because I’m going to give my boys orders to shoot you if you do. And before either of you go on the base, I’ll have to examine your bags. Now as a starter, let’s see your credentials.”

Forty-five minutes later Jesse and Katharine were eating breakfast with Clint Hume. They sat at one end of a long table in the Officers’ Open Mess, while at the other end, carbines in hand, sat two of the lieutenant’s men, steadfastly watching. Jesse began to doubt his conviction that the B-99 that had exploded over the Red River, and the others as well, had been sabotaged. No saboteur could get on a SAC base. Treason? He could imagine one treasonable or demented airman. Three, on three separate bases, seemed beyond the bounds of credibility.

The problem of quarters had been quickly solved. Jesse could squeeze into Clint’s room at the BOQ. Katy could stay, Clint was sure, at the home of Lieutenant-Colonel Gresham, his aircraft commander. On Hibiscus Base married light colonels rated a three-bedroom, two-bath house, since an Air Force survey showed that by the time an officer reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel he usually had at least two children. The Greshams, however, had no children, and therefore had a guest room. Clint was a combination navigator-radarman-bombardier. For the next three days he would be taking a refresher course in new radar—he gave no further explanation—and Katy and Jesse could use his car.

“I’m glad you won’t be flying,” Katharine said.

“Frankly,” said Clint, “so am I. Lots of the boys think the B-Nine-Nine should stand down until the trouble is located and corrected. Oh, we fly when we have to, but nobody likes it.”

“So you’re convinced something’s wrong with the aircraft?” Jesse asked. Clint seemed a serious, thoughtful man, not handsome, who looked over thirty-five, although Jess knew he was thirty-two. Clint lacked Katy’s pyrotechnic quality of mind, but Jess put him down as a solid citizen, his opinion not to be disregarded.

Clint shrugged. “I like the B-Nine-Nine. She does everything you ask her to do. From the first prototype, she was never anything but airworthy. I flew in the prototypes when they were tested at Eglin. But what else can it be? Some part in the aircraft is dying before its time.”

The airman who had served them hovered, a pot of steaming coffee in his hand, near Jesse’s shoulder. He was a stocky, handsome man with wide-set, intelligent gray eyes, and he held his shoulders like a soldier. “More coffee, sir?” he asked.

“Thanks, yes,” Jesse said. When the Air Force was getting men of this caliber as cooks and kitchen helpers, he thought, it couldn’t be treason.

From the kitchen doorway a sergeant called, “Hey, Smith. Time we started on the flight lunches.”

The airman, Smith, filled Jesse’s cup and departed. Jesse and Clint were finishing their second coffee when Colonel Lundstrom, the Chief, Special Investigations, whose command post was in the Pentagon, came into the mess hall. He recognized Jesse and walked towards their table and Jesse rose and introduced Katy, and her brother, and then said, “Colonel, do you mind identifying me so I can get the guns out of my back?”

Lundstrom turned to the Air Police. “I know this officer personally,” he said. “You men can go back to your post.”

“They’re real careful on this base, sir,” Jesse said.

“Apparently not careful enough,” said Lundstrom. The colonel’s eyes were sunken, and he looked as if he had lost ten pounds since Jesse had seen him in the Pentagon a few days before. 2

Airman Smith walked into the kitchen, cleared a wide, wooden, knife-scarred worktable, and began to make sandwiches and pack the flight lunches, his hands sure and adept as those of an assembly line workman who can do his job blind, drunk, or with his thoughts in another continent. Now, at last, he was beginning to comprehend the full implications and importance of his assignment. Snatches of conversation—like that between the two majors—had been informative, and a pattern was forming, subtly taking a new shape, like an optical illusion if you stare at it long enough. The American officers were beginning to grumble and complain, openly. They confessed fear, without shame. He had even heard one say, “Nobody is going to make me go up in one of those streamlined flying coffins.” Yet Smith’s conclusions were not precisely accurate. The Soviet espionage schools could turn out facsimiles of Americans, just as the Zim factory produced a car that looked exactly like a Buick, but the convictions of childhood, imbedded deep in the subconscious, remained Russian. In Russia overt dissatisfaction, rarely if ever voiced, could only be a prelude to revolt. He had no way of knowing that Americans would gripe and growl and shout defiance of authority, and then go ahead and perform their duty. It was Smith’s conclusion that SAC was on the verge of mutiny. He understood that such a mutiny, like that of the Czar’s sailors in the Baltic Fleet in 1917, could be decisive. He resolved to keep on destroying aircraft until SAC cracked. In the catalogue of Soviet heroes, when all was over, his name would be printed bold as Zhukov’s. Greater, even. Zhukov had only succeeded in conquering the Germans. His goal was the acquisition of the world.

Sergeant Ciocci said, “Stan, how many you got finished?”

Smith counted them. “Eighteen.”

“Okay. Make up two more. Five missions today.”

Smith packed two more cartons and Ciocci examined, sealed, and stamped them, and in a few minutes the security detachment from the flight line came in to pick them up. The flight-line lieutenant, looking at his list, said, “Three coffees today.”

Ciocci turned to Smith and said, “Which ones you got filled, Stan?”

“Those on the end,” Smith said, pointing. Ciocci took three thermos bottles from the rack and handed them to the lieutenant’s men. The lieutenant counted the cartons, paid Ciocci with chits, and the lunches were stacked and carried away.

Just before he left the mess hall at eight Smith asked a favor of Ciocci, for now it was necessary to plan ahead. “Sergeant, is it okay if Cusack works for me tonight? I’ll take Cusack’s duty Saturday.” Smith’s roommate was a swing man. He worked three days a week, and two nights, Fridays and Saturdays.

“It’s okay with me if it’s okay with Cusack,” Ciocci said. “You crazy, giving up your long weekend? Oh, I get it. You got another girl?”

Smith winked and said, “Man wasn’t made to be monogamous.”

Ciocci wasn’t exactly sure what the word monogamous meant, but he was sure that Stan did have another girl. For a food handler, that Stan was a smart apple, a smooth character, all right. Stan was no square. 3

At nine, that Thursday morning, Felix Fromburg was received by Albert Osborne, Deputy Chief, Counter-espionage Division, Subversives Branch, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Osborne’s office, on the fifth floor of the Justice Department, overlooked Pennsylvania Avenue. He was standing at the window, looking down at the massed traffic, crawling like two thick, lethargic, mottled snakes, when Felix entered. Osborne pretended not to hear him, and when he turned to his desk he said, curtly, “Be with you in a minute, Fromburg.” He sat down and displayed preoccupation with his mail, while Fromburg stood. In the FBI, as elsewhere, there are feuds and jealousies, and petty men.

Felix Fromburg had been given the job that Osborne wanted.

Contrary to popular belief, counter-espionage is not a glamorous profession. Even for the active operatives, it is tedious and frustrating, for it is more rewarding to keep an enemy agent under surveillance, thereby unravelling the net of which he is but a single strand, than to make a spectacular grab and get your name in the papers. Surveillance means riding the subways and busses, not the trans-Atlantic airliners and Orient Express. It means fidgeting, all day every day for months, in a darkened room, with an Eyemo camera and parabolic mike aimed at a door across the street. It means wasting weeks of waiting for a phone to ring—on a tapped line. And administrative jobs, in CE, are worse. Osborne had been through it all, and when the FBI was asked to furnish an experienced CE man for an interdepartmental conference group to sit in the Pentagon, Osborne badly wanted the post.

Instead, Osborne was elevated to deputy chief of division, which meant more money but was a dead end. Fromburg soared around in the stratosphere of government, privy to high level military plans and policy, while he, Osborne, still grubbed in the cellar of administration. He knew that he was certainly more personable than Fromburg, and probably more efficient as well. Fromburg was somewhat undersized and taciturn and not very aggressive. Osborne doubted that Fromburg’s presence in the Pentagon would enhance the FBI’s prestige.

So Osborne could not help being secretly pleased when he learned that Fromburg’s Intentions Group was in trouble. The story, in somewhat garbled form, had been relayed to him by Ginter, his assistant. Osborne scrawled his initials on the last of the morning’s incoming memos, sighed as if he knew the coming interview would be distasteful, looked up, and said, “I was really very much distressed, Fromburg, to hear about your hassle with the Pentagon.”

“It’s your hassle as well as mine,” Felix said, quietly.

“I don’t think we want any part of it.”

“Now, look,” Felix said, “we’ve had hassles before, but this one is different. That forecast—the one Ginter must have told you about—it’s really vital. It was drawn up partly on the basis of information supplied by your division, and I think you, speaking for the Bureau that is, have a right to blast it out of Clumb’s desk.”

“The right, perhaps, but neither the position nor the inclination. In the first place, as you know, Fromburg, liaison between the Bureau and the Pentagon isn’t on my level. It would be up to the Director, or even the Attorney General.”

“Well, will you take it up with the Director?”

“I will not! Certainly the Pentagon has the utmost faith in General Clumb’s judgment, or he wouldn’t be in the job he holds. I can’t very well recommend to the Director that he challenge the judgment of a very senior officer attached to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, now can I?”

“This isn’t a matter of protocol,” Felix said. “I believe this country is going to be attacked Monday.”

Osborne tapped a pen on his desk, thoughtful. “I won’t say that’s preposterous,” he said, “because we have been attacked without warning before. But I will say that it is most presumptuous of you to try to force your personal opinion upon me, and upon the Bureau, and upon the whole executive branch of government. You have failed to implement your directives. You were instructed to sit in with that group and answer questions when required, and act as their security officer. You aren’t supposed to engage in a crusade, or stick the Bureau’s neck out. Felix, I’m really afraid you’ve compromised your status.”

Felix said, calmly as if asking for the afternoon off, “Does that mean I’m fired? I rather hope so, because it would give me a chance to get my family out of the city before Monday.”

He really believes it, Osborne thought, incredulously. He really believes the Russians are going to start dropping bombs in our laps Monday. Yet firing Fromburg without charges or an investigation was out of the question. After all, there were the Civil Service regulations. But it would be better if Fromburg left Washington, because if he kept on milling around he might get the Bureau into trouble. “Fire you? Don’t be silly,” he said. “Plenty for you to do, and I want to say that Ginter may have been off base when he suggested that a man of your experience and seniority do field security checks. Now, I take it that you’re impressed by the exodus of some of the Russian diplomats and consuls?”

“I am.”

“Frankly, I’m not,” said Osborne. “It could be nothing more than coincidence, or a result of this new shakeup in the Kremlin. So far as I can see, there has been absolutely no change in their main policy, conciliation, non-aggression. Why are you so suspicious?”

“No reason,” said Felix. “I’m no more suspicious than I would be if the Capone mob, or the Jersey syndicate, all started studying to be scoutmasters.”

“You can forget the sarcasm. I just wanted to tell you that I have an assignment along the lines in which you’re interested. That is, people getting out of the country. There’s a Pennsylvania banker, name of Robert Gumol, down in Havana. Claims that he was rolled for three hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars. I want you to go down there.”

“Sounds like a job for Treasury.”

“The bank examiners are working on it,” Osborne said, “but that isn’t the point. His wife—they live in Upper Hyannis—called our agent-in-charge in Philadelphia last night. Said she wanted to report him missing. She hasn’t heard from him since he arrived in Havana and thinks he may have been kidnapped by the Commies. She believes he’s had money dealings with the Commies for years. He and his father both. She used to hear them talking, sometimes.”

“Could be desertion,” said Fromburg. “And yet—” He recalled the Tass man’s flight to Mexico.

“I don’t know what it is,” said Osborne. “Up to you to find out. Ginter will get together the file on this case. Have my girl draw up some travel vouchers. You ought to be able to leave for Havana at, say, three.”

“I’ll be ready,” Fromburg said. The thought of activity was welcome. Anything was better than waiting around, frustrated and helpless, in a vacuum.

That evening, while his wife, Sarah, helped him pack, and the children had come in from play and were monopolizing the bathroom and being unusually confusing and disorganized, he wondered what to do about his family. For fifteen years, in the Fromburg household, sudden trips, never explained until his return and sometimes never explained at all, had been common procedure. Sarah accepted these conditions of his employment, and expected them. He and Sarah had been sweethearts since their childhood together, grandchildren of Jewish immigrants, in a section of Baltimore, little better than a slum, not far from the Pennsylvania station. The white steps in the row of red brick houses on their street were of cheap pine, and were not replaced until rotten and hazardous. In Baltimore white marble steps are respectable, white limestone steps acceptable, and whitewashed pine a certificate of poverty. That they had burst out of this environment into the sunlight of security, comfort, and even luxury that goes with a well-paid government job was always a little wonderful to both of them. At twenty Sarah had been petite and vivacious. As she neared forty her eyes were still bright, but her skin was darkening and wrinkling like a prune. Except to Felix she was not a particularly attractive woman.

Ever since the end of World War II, Fromburg’s duties had become increasingly secretive as he was assigned to the more sensitive areas of counter-espionage. It had been Sarah who had decided that Felix should never tell her anything of his work. “If there should ever be a leak,” she’d said, “you’ll never be worried that it was me.” That’s the way it was, and had always been, but now, even as he realized it was necessary to tell her everything, the habit of secrecy inhibited him. He considered suggesting that she take the children to visit her mother over the holidays, but Baltimore was a primary target also. Sarah had a sister in Pittsburgh. That was just as bad, perhaps worse. Sarah was tucking his white saddle shoes into the corners of the suitcase when he spoke. “I wish to God I could take you and the children to Havana with me, but I can’t.”

She straightened, startled by the calm gravity of his voice. “Take the children away from home at Christmas? Why, sweetheart?”

Felix tried to explain, but the phrases would not form themselves. All he could say was, “Yes, out of Washington on Christmas. Out of Washington before Christmas Eve.” He grabbed her by the shoulders.

“But why in the world—” And then she knew. “Do you mean it, Felix?”

“I mean it.”

“When?”

“I believe on Christmas Eve.”

“Why hasn’t an evacuation been ordered?” Two hours a week, Sarah worked for Civil Defense. Not as a spotter. Glasses couldn’t correct her eyesight, except for reading. All Sarah did was sweep out the Civil Defense shack, far down the river, and keep things neat.

“Because—” he knew the futility of explaining to her the intricacies of government—“because opinion is divided. The big boys don’t believe it. Most of them haven’t even heard of it, and probably won’t. Now don’t argue, Sarah. Just trust me. Get the kids out of the city. I don’t know where. Try to find a safe place. You know as much about it as I do.”

She said, “All right, Felix. I’ll take them away in the car Sunday morning. When I find a place I’ll wire you. But where?”

“Care of the consul-general. I’ll have to check in there.”

That’s the way he had left his family. It wasn’t until too late, when he was aboard the night non-stop for Havana, that he began to wish he had told Sarah to follow him to Cuba instead of driving off, with the children and the responsibility, into the unpredictable countryside. 4

General Keatton and Colonel Lundstrom had taken over the base commander’s working space at Hibiscus, and so Brigadier-General Charles Conklin was using his exec’s office when Jesse Price arrived to check in, as courtesy required. An officer without orders does not come to live in somebody else’s bailiwick without making his presence known, particularly when that bailiwick is approximately in a state of siege.

Conklin was only four years older than Jesse, and but for the caprices of two wars their rank might have been identical. In 1943, as lieutenants, they had flown B-24’s to Africa, wingtip to wingtip. Conklin’s curse was a snub-nosed, freckled face that refused to age, and golden hair that refused to gray and insisted on curling no matter how closely cropped. His nickname was Buddy, after Buddy Rogers, the actor who for two generations had managed to remain a juvenile film star. That Buddy Conklin was a brigadier-general at thirty-nine, in spite of these manifest handicaps, attested to his courage as a pilot, his great skill as a tactician, his executive ability, and his luck.

They had not seen each other since before Korea, and when Jesse walked into the administration building at nine in the morning, showered, shaved, and in fresh uniform, but still groggy after only three hours’ sleep, he was not at first recognized. Conklin sat at a desk in a corner of the exec office, determinedly diminishing a pile of papers before him, reading teletype dispatches, and giving quick decisions on the telephone and intercom system. Busy as he was, his desk was like a small and peaceful island around which surged and eddied a frenzied tide. Hibiscus was in a flap, and had been since Monday. Conklin noted the presence of a strange officer in the room and said, “Yes, Major?”

“General, I’m Jesse Price. Do you remember—”

Conklin got on his feet and stretched out his hand, embarrassed. “Of course. Jesse Price. I’m sorry. Didn’t know—”

Jesse grinned. “It’s the patch, isn’t it? Might as well be wearing a mask.”

“Looks very distinguished. Don’t worry about it. Should have recognized you anyway because I knew you were here. It’s in the morning security report. With a woman. Who is she, your fiancée?”

“No. . . . Yes, of course she is. At least I think so.”

“You aren’t sure?”

“It happened in a hurry. Just yesterday.”

“Well, congratulations, but you won’t find this a very romantic place right now.”

“Didn’t come for romance,” Jesse said. “Came to see General Keatton.”

“Courier run?”

“No. Pentagon business.”

Conklin frowned, no longer boyish or even very friendly. “I’ve got half the Pentagon in here with me now. I don’t advise you to disturb General Keatton today, unless its priority operations. This B-Nine-Nine thing is getting weirder by the minute. Look what came in just a while ago.” He shoved a strip of teletype paper across the desk.

It was the report of the munitions experts at Wright Field. Burns on the clothing of Master Sergeant Lear had been caused by high explosive, probably of a plastic variety sometimes used in mines, shell noses, and bombs. The burns had not been caused by flaming fuel, or by the propellent powder that fired the ejection pod.

What had been in the back of Jesse’s mind, irritating as a forgotten name scratching at the skin of conscious memory, now burst out “I think I’ve got your answers,” he said. “Take me in to Keatton.”

That laboratory analysis from the Wright laboratories was one new factor, among others, that Keatton was considering in his improvised command post at Hibiscus. It was the first tangible fact that definitely pointed to sabotage, and yet it was by no means conclusive. A B-99’s defensive armament included rockets whose warheads contained the same type of explosive that had seared Sergeant Lear’s clothing. Corpus Christi was being asked whether Georgia Peach carried such rockets on its last mission.

At that moment, Keatton’s most troublesome problem centered in Washington. Pressure mounted to ground the B-99. It was reflected in the compendium of newspaper editorials and radio commentary wired nightly from the Pentagon. It assailed his ears as well as his eyes. Within the hour he had been called, long distance, by two influential members of the House Armed Services Committee who were being harassed, in turn, by constituents with sons among the B-99 crewmen. Keatton understood, in full, their concern. The Congress would be back in session again after New Year’s, the Administration majority was thin, and at times non-existent, and there could be a shift in power on such an issue as the B-99. There had been another inquiry, of greater gravity, from the White House. What, if anything, was Keatton planning to do? The general had told a presidential assistant that he could not and would not act until the facts were established. The assistant had said that was all the President wanted, but that time was also a factor. The White House was being buried in mail. The country demanded an explanation.

Now Keatton had a fact—if it was a fact—and yet it was questionable whether the fact, if and when proved, should be made public. Brigadier-General Platt, his public information officer, insisted that the news should be released at once, but Colonel Lundstrom was furious. Lundstrom pointed out that to hint that the B-99’s were being sabotaged would instantly warn off the saboteurs, and compromise his efforts to nail them. Keatton was aware of another possible complication. Announcement that Georgia Peach had been sabotaged would start an outcry for war, and jeopardize activities of which he knew nothing, but which might be going on at any time through the Department of State. A cry for war might stop the latest negotiations on disarmament and endanger the peace.

It was even possible that the Corpus Christi B-99 had blown for one cause, the plane from Lake Charles because of another, and the three lost out of Hibiscus because of still a third.

The commanding general’s suite at Hibiscus was on the third floor of the long, concrete administration building. Its thermopane picture windows, of double thickness with a vacuum to deaden the ear-torturing wail of jet engines and afterburners at full power, overlooked the flight line and the dazzling white runway ribbons that faded into an infinity of white sand in the hazy distance. The building trembled. Jets were firing up. Abruptly Keatton rose from the desk, turned his back on Platt and Lundstrom, and faced the window.

He had never been able to resist the takeoff of aircraft.

One by one, five B-99’s slid from the hard stands out onto the runway. One by one, at two-minute intervals, they took off. They were colossal, and yet their size was minimized by their grace, like heavyweight fighters perfectly proportioned. Their bodies were gray sharks with white underbellies and tapered tails, their wings slender and rakish as fins. Keatton was moved, as when he had sent out his final B-17 mission from Foggia, over the Alps into Austria.

The B-99 was the last of the big boys. They were untried in battle, their electronic insides a national secret, and yet they were already obsolescent, and probably obsolete. In Keatton’s lifetime the airplane had been born, a flimsy kite of sticks and cotton, had grown to maturity, shrunk the world, decided the greatest of wars, and finally developed into this sleek and lethal creature, its size the largest of its genre, like the dinosaur. And, like the dinosaur, it must bow to evolution. The rockets, ten times faster, were upon it. The latest reports from Wright Field, and the testing mats at Patrick Base, on Cape Canaveral, were astonishing. The Intercontinental Ballistics Missile was no longer a dream of the future. Keatton suspected that if he lived to the age of retirement, these hard stands, if used at all, would support only the ICBM, for the twilight of the heavy bomber was at hand. In time, the ICBM might be supplemented by the IBV—Intercontinental Ballistics Vehicle—which would carry a man in place of the heavier mechanical pilots, would drop a bomb instead of itself being a bomb, and was recoverable.

So he watched the flight of the dinosaurs with pride and pity. Impressive anachronisms they were, their cost heavy not only in dollars. Each had cost the taxes contributed in a year by six or seven thousand clerks and mailmen and laborers, or perhaps by one large corporation. In man hours the cost could hardly be computed. Before the first prototype left the ground, there had been years of theory and planning and testing, then the construction of new factories and retooling, and finally the miracle of mass production. Man hours. Years and years of training for the airmen and ground crews so that eventually one man, in his radarscope, could not fail to see the target. Expensive and obsolete they might be, but at this period in history they were worth it. They were the shields of civilization. Their existence insured the peace. So to Keatton they were beautiful, and he was thankful that at this moment he stood where he could watch their flight.

He heard the door open and the voice of Buddy Conklin saying, “General, Major Price is here to see you.”

He turned, unsurprised, to greet Price. He had lived long enough to always expect the unexpected. “Hello, Major,” he said. “What’s the panic?”

Jesse said, “Sir, I know what’s blowing the Nine-Nines.”

“What?” The word cracked flat and emphatic, like a ruler slapped on the desk.

“Pressure bombs.”

Keatton’s eyes contracted into blue specks. “Pressure bombs?”

“Like the Germans planted on the Cottontails in Italy. Remember, sir?”

“No. I remember hearing that the Cottontails had a lot of trouble, but that was before I was transferred to the Fifteenth. Tell me about those pressure bombs, son.”

Jess looked around the office and noted the blackboard on the rear wall. “Do you mind if I use this to make a sketch?” he asked.

Keatton sat down on the edge of his desk. “Go right ahead.”

“Those bombs,” Jesse said, “were simply explosive devices activated by a simple altimeter. They looked like this.” Jesse drew a foot-long cylinder and divided it in half with a chalk mark. “On this side,” he said, “was an ordinary bellows. In the middle, a battery and fuse. On the other end, explosives. You sneak the pressure bomb into an aircraft. As the plane rises and the outer air grows thinner the air inside the bellows expands. It keeps on expanding until the end of it makes electrical contact with the battery and fuse. It’s as easy as turning on a flashlight. Then up she goes.”

“Very simple,” Keatton said, “and ingenious. What happened with the Cottontails?”

“The Cottontails,” Jesse said, “were a hard luck B-Twenty-Four group based down on the heel of Italy near Lecce. Everything they did went wrong and the Germans began to harass them. The Luftwaffe always liked to pick on stragglers, whether it was a single plane or a tough luck group. They planted an agent in the Cottontails’ base. Planes began to blow up on the way to target. They usually blew just as the Fifteenth was forming up over the Adriatic, at between eight and nine thousand feet. Finally they caught the spy—I don’t know how. They found one of these pressure bombs. They took the spy out on the end of the runway and shot him. After that, the Cottontails became a pretty good group, but it was really hell on morale when their aircraft were blowing.”

“It’s not very good for morale now,” said Buddy Conklin. They all looked at him but that was all he said.

Keatton asked, “What makes you think pressure bombs are being planted in the Nine-Nines?”

“It’s the time factor mostly. I can’t get it out of my mind. The three planes from this base and the one from Lake Charles all disappeared between eighteen and twenty-five minutes after takeoff. That means they all probably blew up—I am assuming that’s what happened to them—somewhere between eighteen and twenty-eight thousand feet at normal rate of climb. But the one from Texas was up an hour before it blew. It just occurred to me that the Texas plane’s flight plan must have called for low level at the start of his mission—ducking under radar or waiting for escort or something like that. If my hunch is right he blew at the same altitude, too. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Exactly right,” said Keatton.

“Then the analysis from the laboratory at Wright triggered my memory. Same kind of plastic explosive you find in a mine—or a booby trap—and I remembered the Cottontails.”

Buddy Conklin asked a question. “Where did the Kraut spy stick these pressure bombs?”

“In the wheel nacelles, under the wings.”

For a moment they were all silent, a mental picture of the B-24 and the B-99 forming in the mind of each, and each estimating the action he now must take. It was Colonel Lundstrom who spoke first. He addressed his words to Keatton. “I think, sir, that we’d better send a warning to every SAC base.”

“Yes,” said Keatton. “That right now.” The SAC commanding general was back in Omaha, working with his staff on the enormous task of reconverting to B-47’s and B-52’s, if and when the order came. Keatton added: “Authorize SAC to stand down for twenty-four hours. There will be complete inspection of all aircraft. Particularly in the wheel nacelles and other openings accessible to ground crews. You’ll write up the order for me, Lundstrom. I want it circulated out of Omaha immediately.”

Buddy Conklin looked up at the clock over the door as if it had shouted at him. With a single quick movement he stepped to the desk and flipped up a key on the intercom. A voice came out of the little box. “Tower.”

“This is Conklin. Recall the mission!”

“What’s that?” The man in the tower spoke like a southerner, and he spoke slowly.

“This is General Conklin. Recall today’s mission. All five aircraft. Now, damn it!”

“Yes, suh!”

Conklin held the key open and they could hear the man in the tower speaking into the microphone in a clear cadence, an urgent drawl. “Hibiscus Tower to Cornell flight. You are to return to base immediately. . . . Hibiscus Tower to Cornell flight. You are recalled. Return to base immediately. . . . Hibiscus Tower to Cornell One, Two, Three, Four, and Five . . . General says come on home. . . . Hibiscus Tower . . .”

Conklin let the key fall. The administration building was air-conditioned, but sweat beaded his forehead. He looked at the clock again. “Twenty-six minutes from takeoff. That what you make it, sir?”

“I didn’t time it,” said the general. “I saw them off, but I didn’t count time on them.”

They waited, watching the clock. Jess started to fill his pipe, discovered that his fingers wouldn’t behave, and thrust it back into his pocket.

In three minutes Conklin again pressed the intercom key. The voice, shaky, said, “Tower.”

“This is Conklin. Did they acknowledge?”

“Sir, I can’t seem to raise Cornell two and Cornell three. Others are on the way home.”

“Keep trying,” Conklin said. “Let me know if you get them.” He closed the circuit and for an instant placed both palms on the desk, and swayed and seemed about to fall. Then he straightened. His face was white and wet and suddenly he looked very old.

Jesse wanted to speak to General Keatton. He had to tell Keatton all else that was on his mind. “General,” he began, “the reason I’m here—” He closed his mouth. Keatton wasn’t listening. The general was staring through the window, watching for his aircraft, waiting to count his chicks as they came home to roost. Like England, like Italy.

Conklin said, “Jess, come on into the exec office with me. I’ve got to get air-sea rescue going. Lots of other things. Since you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful.”

When they were out in the hallway Conklin put a hand on Jesse’s shoulder and said, “I think we’d better leave the old man to himself for a while. Every time a plane goes in, he dies a little too.” 5

Since he was still under twenty, Phil Cusack regarded Stan Smith as a man of considerable sophistication as well as mature years. Most of the time Smith was taciturn, but once in a while he opened up and spoke learnedly of women, poker, and the ways of rich civilians in big cities, subjects fascinating to Cusack. So Cusack was careful not to antagonize his roommate, and the one thing that made Smith really sore, in addition to having anyone mess around with the gear in his foot locker and closet, was to be prematurely awakened out of sleep. But on this day the news was so big that Cusack shook Smith’s shoulder and woke him up, although it was not quite two o’clock in the afternoon and Smith rarely arose before three. “Say, Stan,” he said, “guess what?”

Smith stirred and growled, rolled over on his back and opened his eyes, and then, surprisingly, sat up in bed without swearing. “Okay, I’ll guess,” he said. “What?”

“Two more Ninety-Nines are gone, and all planes are standing down.”

Smith came out of bed as if his backbone were a bent spring, suddenly released. “We’re standing down? SAC’s standing down?”

“I don’t know. Hibiscus is.” Cusack had never seen Smith move so quickly.

“So there’s been a mutiny, eh?”

Cusack was puzzled. Who in the world ever gave Stan the notion that the aircrews were about to mutiny? Sure, there’d been a lot of griping, but there was griping when nothing went wrong except you served their eggs over lightly when they asked for sunny side up. “No, there hasn’t been any mutiny,” Cusack answered. “All that’s happened is that all missions have been called off for the next twenty-four hours. I hear there’s ape sweat out on the flight line. No off duty for ground crews. They’re practically taking those airplanes apart.”

“Looking for something, I guess. Maybe bombs, maybe sabotage?”

“Yeah,” said Cusack, “maybe bombs. Maybe only a loose nut. How would I know?”

Smith found that he was disappointed. For a moment, there, he had thought his job concluded. He’d thought he wouldn’t have to do another. It was like hearing your number called out in a raffle, only the last digit was wrong. It was a letdown, but still the news was encouraging. It showed the extent of their alarm. To convert alarm to despair or panic, and to ground SAC permanently, perhaps only a few more lost planes were needed. He considered lying low for a while now, and allowing his friends in Louisiana and Texas to finish the job. After all, he had done the bulk of the work, and probably taken most of the risks, thus far. He discarded the thought. Masters, Johnson, and Palmer might not have his freedom of action, and efficiency of operation. He would press on to victory, alone if necessary. The greater his personal effort and risk, the greater his eventual reward. They would make him a marshal of the Soviet Union, no less. He would become the youngest marshal in Russia’s history, perhaps the youngest marshal in all history since Napoleon. With his knowledge of the United States, they might appoint him military governor after the capitulation. He would order the execution of the American war criminals, ride in chauffeured Cadillacs and private planes, possess chic and beautiful women like the one he had seen in the mess with the two majors. He would sit on the Presidium, in later years. If he did his job, and if he lived and received his just reward, he would be at the top, among the rulers. “Phil,” he said, “how would you like Saturday night off?”

“I’d like it fine,” Cusack said. “If I had Saturday night off I’d go to Orlando and get me a girl. What’s the catch?”

“No catch,” Smith said. “You just take my shift tonight and I’ll work for you Saturday night. Ciocci says it’s okay.”

“It’s a deal,” Cusack said. “I’ve got nothin’ to do tonight. What’s with your Saturday night gal? You got another?”

“Don’t know yet,” Smith said, and winked. “Let you know in the morning.” He shaved, dressed, obtained a twenty-four-hour pass from Captain Kuhn’s clerk, and walked slowly towards the administration building, thinking of his timing. Betty Jo would be home with the car shortly after five o’clock. It was a three-hour drive, at conservative speed, from Orlando to the point on the beach between Ponte Vedra and St. Augustine where the submarine would be waiting according to his original instructions. If he left Betty Jo at ten he would be at the beach at one. That was the best hour. At one in the morning very few cars would be on that road, and nobody on the beach.

Stan Smith walked past the administration building and leaned on the fence separating the flight line from the unrestricted areas of the base. The aircrews and grease monkeys were having a ball, all right. They were swarming over the planes like ants around beetles. Smith smiled. They wouldn’t find anything today. They’d never find anything, never. That crazy American sergeant with the Russian colonel’s epaulets bouncing on his shoulders had known his way into SAC’s bombers, all right. What was his name? Horgan. Smith wondered how long he had been dead. At four o’clock he sauntered over to the bus stop behind administration and left for Orlando.

Within the administration building Brigadier-general Platt had finally whittled out a news release, and edited it until he hoped it would suit Keatton, and appease Congress, the public, and the press. It was a simple statement of fact:

“General Thomas Keatton, Air Force Chief-of-Staff, has ordered a twenty-four-hour halt in operations of the B-99 intercontinental bomber to facilitate search for possible faults in the aircraft. General Keatton emphasized that there is as yet no proof of either structural failure or sabotage. However, B-47 and B-52 type bombers now in reserve are being prepared to replace the B-99 should extensive modifications prove necessary.”

Platt showed the draft to Keatton and said, “Do you think this is all right, sir?”

Keatton read the release. “You are sure it’s necessary?”

“I am, sir. If you’re busting a couple of thousand planes out of mothballs you can’t keep it a secret for long, and news of the stand down will leak, too. So we might as well tell it first, and tell it straight.”

Keatton initialled the release. “I don’t think it’s going to please anyone this side of Moscow,” he said, “but at least it shows we’re doing something. Gives us a chance to breathe.” 6

At eight o’clock that evening PFC Henry Hazen called for Nina Pope. The Pope house was a two-story example of a type of architecture known as St. Augustine Ugly. That is, it was neo-Spanish with New England Victorian influence, its walls pink stucco and its roof red tin. Nina’s father sat in the living room, his head tilted back against the greasy upholstery of the only comfortable chair, his shoeless feet up on an unstable table. Bill Pope’s coat, belt, and holster hung on the walnut clothes tree. His belly protruded over his waistband. I’d like to see that big tub of lard on the obstacle course, Henry thought, but what he said was, “Evening, Mr. Pope. Nina home?”

Deputy Pope didn’t bother to answer. He shifted in his chair and the table creaked under his feet and he looked at Henry with eyes blank and hostile.

Henry smiled. He wasn’t afraid of Pope any more. He imitated the voice of a drill instructor. “I said: Is Nina home?”

“Why don’t you yell upstairs and find out?” Pope said.

Henry called, “Nina.”

“Coming right down,” she answered, and he heard her footsteps on the stairs. They had been out together each night of his leave, and each night she had worn a different dress. This night it was blue organdie, with silver sandals, for dancing.

She said, “Goodnight, Dad,” and she took Henry’s hand and they started for the door.

Pope’s feet hit the floor and he said, “Where d’you think you goin’?”

“Dancing,” she said.

“Where?”

“Jax Beach.”

“You’re lyin’. Every night you’ve been out with this trash you’ve said you were goin’ to the movies—” he mimicked her voice—“or dancin’. Think I’m stupid? Bed full of sand every morning. You’ve been layin’ out on the beach with him.”

“So what’s wrong with swimming?” Nina said.

“Swimming! That’s a new name for it.”

Nina said, “You’re a dirty old man!” For a long time, for years, she had been wanting to say that, and now it had burst out of her.

Pope got out of his chair. Henry stepped in front of Nina and loosened his shoulders and spread his feet a little. He hoped that Pope would swing on him. If Pope swung Henry knew what he was going to do. He was going to break his arm and then smash his windpipe with the edge of his hand. Of all the courses in the Marine Corps schools, judo had been most beneficial for Henry.

Pope decided not to swing. He said, “I don’t want no more layin’ on the beach.”

Henry turned his back on him and said, “Let’s go, Nina.”

They drove to Jacksonville Beach on AIA, not speaking of what was in their minds. They went to Millie’s and danced and drank beer, but the beer seemed tasteless and there was no rhythm in the music. Finally Nina said, “I guess I’ll get myself my own room tomorrow. I can’t stand him any more.”

“I wish I could take you to the Coast with me,” Henry said.

“Wouldn’t I look good on a troop transport? I can wait, Henry. It isn’t so bad waiting if you’ve really got somebody to wait for. You’re somebody, now.”

He looked at his watch. “Almost twelve. Let’s go back to our place.”

“Do we have to go back there, Henry? It scares me. Why can’t we go somewhere else?”

“It’s just our place.”

“You really want to go back there because you think that thing will come out of the ocean again, don’t you?”

“I keep thinking about it,” he admitted.

She said, “All right, if you have to. But I hope we never see it again.”

He paid the check and they drove south again, past Ponte Vedra and on along the unlighted, deserted highway until they came to their place. There was a soft south wind, and it was a night unusually warm for the season. Henry parked, as usual, off the road so that the car was shadowed by the fronds of palms. She took off her shoes, and Henry found the swim suits and blankets in the back seat, and they got out and climbed over the dunes to the sea. That night, while they undressed, she did not tell him not to look.