Launch Code

FORTY-ONE

February 1984, New York City

I shivered as I stood on the small rise overlooking the model boat pond in Central Park. Scraps of brown snow clung to tree trunks and the ankles of Hans Christian Andersen on the far side of the water. The temperature had wavered within a degree or two of freezing for the past week, and the thaw had been slow. What remained of the snow, which had been so pristine when I had visited the city two weeks before, was now grey, shot through with streaks of brown.

I watched as a black poodle lifted its leg a few yards away. And yellow.

‘Got a cigarette?’ said Donna, threading her arm through mine and huddling close, as much to make use of me as a windbreak as through a sudden burst of affection.

I lit one for her, shielding the flame from the cold breeze whipping through the streets of the Upper East Side into the park. ‘She’s late,’ I said, checking my watch.

‘She’s always late,’ said Donna.

‘You didn’t tell me that,’ said Bill. ‘And why didn’t she pick a cafe? It’s freezing out here.’

‘She wants to make sure she’s not being followed.’

‘People follow her?’

Donna shrugged. ‘Maybe. From what you said, people follow me.’

I didn’t answer, but actually I was glad Pat Greenwald was taking precautions. I certainly didn’t want anyone to know I was meeting her.

It had been Donna’s idea. After that night together in her studio in St Mark’s Place, things had moved fast. As expected, I had failed the Personal Reliability Program, which meant I could no longer work on nuclear missile submarines. I had told Commander Driscoll that I had decided I wanted to leave the Navy. And I had sent off for information from business schools, in particular Wharton, which was affiliated with Penn where Donna was applying to law school. A new life was opening up for me, a life with Donna, and I was excited.

So was she.

And then it had all nearly gotten screwed up.

I had arrived in New York on Friday evening, and Donna and I had gone straight to a little restaurant in the West Village for dinner. I had managed to extend the weekend to Monday – Donna had negotiated to take that day off – and I was looking forward to it.

But as soon as we had ordered our food, Donna said she had something to tell me, and she thought she had better tell me right away.

She had told Pat Greenwald that I had been on board a submarine that had been ordered to launch its nuclear missiles.

I was furious. We argued. I announced I would take the first train back to Groton the following morning. I felt she had betrayed my trust. She agreed she had, but she had only done it because I had told her I knew the events on the Hamilton were too important to bury. She said Pat had promised not to tell anyone else, and anyway Donna hadn’t given her any details. It was entirely up to me what happened next.

What can I say? Donna won me over. I was falling heavily in love with her. The life that was suddenly appearing in front of me appealed so strongly, that I couldn’t contemplate losing it. And she was right: after what I had witnessed on board the Hamilton, after what I had done, I could never be in favour of nuclear weapons, or even neutral towards them. She was helping me do what I wanted to do, but was too afraid to.

So I had agreed to meet with Pat Greenwald at lunch time on Monday.

‘There she is,’ Donna said, pointing to a tall woman walking rapidly toward us with long strides.

Pat Greenwald was younger than I had expected – about thirty. She was wearing jeans, a black coat plastered with buttons and a green-and-white woolly hat, similarly splattered. Despite the buttons’ earnest exhortations, the effect was strangely childish, as though she had emerged from a kindergarten school yard.

‘You must be Bill.’ She held out her gloved hand, which I shook. ‘I’m Pat.’

Shrewd blue eyes smiled out of a long face, and dark curly hair leaked out of the hat. Her voice was deep and husky. She had charm – charisma even.

‘That’s me.’

‘Shall we walk?’

I couldn’t help scanning the pond for potential watchers, although I suspected that if they were any good I wouldn’t be able to spot them.

Pat noticed. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve been careful. No one followed me.’ Then she grinned. ‘Actually, it’s good you are worried. Hold that attitude.’

She set off at a good pace. I walked next to her and Donna trailed a couple of feet behind us.

‘You should understand, Bill, that I won’t repeat anything you tell me without your permission.’

‘How do I know I can trust you?’ I asked.

‘Fair question,’ said Pat. ‘I keep my word. And think about it: if I said that a sailor told me that a submarine had been ordered to launch its nuclear weapons, the Navy would deny it. You would deny it. No one would believe me. I would just lose all credibility.’ She turned to me. ‘I need my credibility. And we need for you to say it yourself.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘You must. Don’t you see that we can never know the true danger of nuclear weapons, or nuclear energy for that matter, because every time something goes wrong the authorities hush it up? This may not be the first time a submarine has been ordered to launch nuclear weapons. How would we know? If it had happened before it would have been kept quiet. Not just from the public, but within the Navy. It would be kept quiet from people like you whose job it is to use these weapons. Right?’

‘Right.’

She was undoubtedly correct. That was the trouble: that was the truth I wanted to hide from.

‘So how can we help you make this public? What support would you need?’

I shook my head. ‘I can’t.’

‘It would make a huge difference to the people’s attitude toward nuclear weapons. We have been searching for a way to make the ordinary person in the street realize that we all have to do something about the bombs. This could be it. Don’t you see?’

I saw. But. ‘Sorry, Pat. I just can’t do it.’

‘The public will be overwhelmingly on your side,’ Pat went on. ‘You will be a hero; the man who saved the world. They won’t be able to prosecute you – it would look really bad. We’ll whip up support for you, not just here but all over the world. If you prefer, you can make the announcement from somewhere else. West Germany, for example. Or Switzerland.’

‘So I would be a martyr? Or a fugitive? Those would be my choices?’

‘You would be a brave man,’ said Pat. ‘Doing the right thing.’

‘Donna really didn’t tell you much about what happened, did she?’ I said.

Pat shook her head.

‘The thing is, I killed someone. A good friend. I had to – it was the only way to stop the process. Right at the end, an officer opens a safe containing the trigger for the missiles. Only he knows the combination. I killed that officer, just before he opened the safe.’

‘Oh,’ said Pat.

‘So, you see, the Navy could court martial me for murder as well as mutiny and treason. But they have decided not to.’

‘In return for you keeping quiet?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You just told me you keep your word. Well, I do too.’

She led us deeper into the park into a warren of narrow paths and steep little hills winding through trees. Here, in the cold shade, snow clung to the frozen earth.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I have another idea.’

I waited.

‘You know that our movement is pushing for unilateral nuclear disarmament?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you have a problem with that?’

‘Yes, I do.’ I was glad to have the opportunity to make the point. ‘The only reason there hasn’t been a nuclear war in the last thirty years is that both sides have nuclear weapons. Deterrence has worked. If one side reduces its nuclear arsenal then the other side might think they could win a war. And we’ll have one.’

‘And do you still think that? After what happened on your submarine?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe. But now I’m concerned there will be a nuclear war anyway. An accidental nuclear war.’

‘OK. A few years ago I would have disagreed with you about deterrence. I thought all nuclear weapons were bad and to do anything other than scrap them immediately was insane. But now quite a few of us think that we need to encourage nuclear disarmament throughout the world. Here, but also in Britain and France and China. Maybe soon in Israel. And in Russia.’

‘Russia? How are you going to do that?’

‘We have been in contact with Russians who think like we do. In particular, physicists who understand the damage that nuclear war would do. I know that in the west we assume that the Soviets are itching to wipe America off the face of the earth, but actually they are as scared of nuclear war as we are. Remember the Cuban missile crisis? The Russians blinked. They didn’t want a world war then; they don’t want one now. And, more to the point, they can’t afford more nuclear weapons.’

‘So what are you suggesting? That I speak to the Russians?’

‘Yes. Not to the government, but to the peace activists we know.’

I frowned. ‘Are you sure they aren’t just fronts for the Russian government?’

‘Yes, quite sure. The Russians are not very subtle about the way they try to co-opt our peace movement. They finance the World Peace Council, everyone knows that. The Peace Council tries to give us money; we refuse. No, these people are different. In particular the person I’m thinking of. Donna has met her.’

I glanced back at Donna, who was listening. She nodded. ‘It’s the Gorky Trust Group. Remember I told you about them?’

‘Gorky is a secure Soviet city,’ Pat said. ‘Our contact is a physicist there.’

‘I know Gorky,’ I said. ‘It often turns up in our target packages.’

That shut Pat up for a moment. ‘Don’t you see?’ she said. ‘If the Russian peace activists know that the United States nearly launched nuclear weapons at them by mistake, then maybe they will let us know of similar incidents there. And then if we reduce our missiles, maybe they will reduce theirs. The only way we are going to stop this insane race is if Russia and the United States begin to trust each other. The Russians get that. There’s a Moscow Trust Group and now this Gorky one.’

I shook my head. ‘That’s never going to work in the real world,’ I said.

‘It was working!’ Pat said. ‘That’s what the SALT talks were all about. Until Reagan came in and started talking about winning the nuclear arms race just when we were about to wind it down. And you can help that.’

I didn’t answer.

The trees opened up on a lake, surrounded by rocks. It was extraordinary to think that we were in the middle of one of the biggest cities on earth.

‘Well?’ Pat said.

‘No,’ I said.

‘He’ll think about it,’ said Donna.

‘No, Donna,’ I protested, as Pat left us to walk back to Hunter College, and Donna and I headed south through the park.

‘Just think about it,’ Donna said.

‘It would be treason. I would be betraying my country. That’s not something I would be prepared to do.’

‘But don’t you see, you are betraying your country by saying nothing!’ Donna said. ‘And not just your country, every country in the world. The human race!’

I shook my head.

‘Just think about it, please.’

We walked around the lake, together but apart. This worried me. I had hoped that my experience on the Hamilton would bring us closer together, bridge that divide of our views on nuclear weapons. But it looked as if, far from burying the question, it was raising it up between us.

Donna’s fingers found mine. ‘Bill. You can do what you want on this. I like you a lot, and I will still like you if you decide to keep quiet and not see Pat’s contact. I’m not going to try to coerce you to do something you don’t want to do. That’s not how our relationship should work.’

I squeezed her hand: it was what I wanted to hear.

‘Just think about it for a few days. That’s all I ask. And then, if you want, I will tell Pat you don’t want to see her or her Russian friend.’

‘OK,’ I said.

‘Maybe speak to Lars about it? See what he thinks?’

While Lars and I were waiting for our discharges to come through, we remained at the base, but were removed from working with the rest of the Alexander Hamilton’s crew. We were given the kind of superfluous administrative jobs that the Navy excels at creating; mine was in the department responsible for linen supplies. My office was, literally, a linen closet. It felt a bit like life on a submarine: there wasn’t even a window.

Lars had a top-secret filing assignment and was just as bored as me. We had found throwing ourselves around a squash court a good way of getting over our frustration. We were evenly matched: I was the more skilful, but Lars was very quick around the court, and able to reach even my subtlest of drop shots.

A couple of days after I got back to the base from New York we were alone in the locker room after a game when I told him about my conversation with Pat Greenwald and her suggestion that I might talk to the Russians.

He was shocked.

‘Do you think I’m crazy?’ I asked him.

‘Why not just talk to the papers? Off the record,’ said Lars. ‘That way everyone would know, including the Russians. They’ll have people who read our newspapers.’

‘I thought of that,’ I said. ‘And, in fact, that’s what Pat Greenwald originally wanted me to do. Set up a press conference. But even if it is off the record, the Navy would figure out it was me in an instant. Or you. I mean who else could it be?’

‘I see what you mean. But talking to the Russians? That sounds bad. Like spying-against-your-country bad.’

‘Maybe. But, in a weird way talking to the Russians through someone like Pat might be the best thing to do. The Navy wouldn’t find out. And it’s the Russians who are the people I want most to hear about it. They are the ones who have to show restraint if something like this occurs again.’

Lars seemed unconvinced.

‘I wouldn’t tell them anything that would endanger an American submarine.’

Lars blew through his cheeks.

‘Well?’ I said.

‘I don’t know.’

We sat in silence. I felt I had almost convinced him. I had almost convinced myself.

But. I would be spying against my country, at least according to the Navy.

‘Remember that conversation we had with the XO in the wardroom?’ Lars said. ‘The one where he said the Russians should know what happened?’

‘Yeah. I think that’s what got me worrying about all this in the first place.’

‘He’s a smart guy. Maybe you should speak with him?’