Launch Code

FIFTY-EIGHT

Toby ran back up the path and along the cliff, to where he thought he had seen the figure, but it was difficult to pinpoint the spot exactly. Once again, he slid over the fence and pushed his way through the bushes towards the cliff edge.

Carefully. He didn’t want to step into nothingness.

He reached the edge and looked down. A ledge a few yards wide jutted out into the air ten feet below the rim. Gingerly he eased himself down.

He slid the last couple of feet, until he reached firm rock and pulled himself to his feet.

He was correct; he had seen a figure up there. In fact there were two, standing just a few feet apart from each other.

‘Bill?’ said Toby.

But it wasn’t Bill who answered. ‘Stay exactly where you are, Toby.’

It was the admiral. And in his hand was a gun. And the gun was pointed straight at Toby.

Toby didn’t understand. So the admiral had got to Bill before he had jumped? That was good. And now he was stopping Bill from jumping.

By pointing a gun at him.

That didn’t make sense. Shooting someone was not a great suicide-prevention method.

Toby took a step forward.

‘Stop! Or I’ll shoot you.’

‘OK, OK,’ said Toby, opening his hands to show he wasn’t carrying anything. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Bill. ‘But it doesn’t look good. For either of us.’

The admiral stepped back against the rock so that he could cover both Toby and Bill. ‘Come and stand over here, next to Bill,’ he said.

For a moment Toby wondered whether to obey. It occurred to him that if Bill and he were going to jump the admiral, now would be the best time to do it, while they were sufficiently apart from each other that the admiral could only cover one of them at a time.

Except that the admiral was pointing his pistol straight at Toby’s chest. And he had spent his life in the military; he probably knew how to use it.

Toby moved over to Bill. ‘So why did you send us that message, Bill? ‘ he said.

‘What message?’

‘The goodbye message. Like you were going to kill yourself.’

Bill glanced at Toby. ‘He just told me to jump. My guess is Admiral Robinson sent you that message.’

‘He’s trying to fake your suicide,’ said Toby, beginning to understand. It was impossible to see the admiral’s eyes in the darkness, but the barrel of his pistol glimmered a lighter shade of grey.

‘You gave those secrets to the Russians, didn’t you, Glenn?’ said Bill. ‘You are the spy the FBI asked me about?’

‘I was never a spy,’ said the admiral. ‘I never betrayed my country.’

‘Then why did you give them those secrets?’

‘Why should I tell you?’

‘Because I’m the only man in the world who might understand you,’ said Bill. ‘I gave them secrets too, remember?’

There was silence for a second or two. For a moment, Toby’s body was overwhelmed with a wave of fear, fear which rooted him to the spot and threatened to paralyse his brain.

He fought it.

Stay calm. Stay focused. Just like Bill. Watch out for an opportunity.

They were both only a foot from the cliff edge. The wind roared in his ears and the waves crashed sixty feet below. If they both jumped the admiral, one of them just might overpower him. But the other would be shot, and would probably fall backwards into the sea.

But if they both did nothing, they would both die.

Unless Bill could talk their way out of it.

Wait. Listen. Watch for an opportunity. Conquer the fear.

‘I’d like to hear why you did it, Glenn,’ Bill said, his voice calm and encouraging. ‘There must have been a good reason.’

The admiral spoke. ‘OK, I’ll tell you.’ He paused to marshal his thoughts. ‘What I learned in the Pentagon when I was working on Able Archer 83 exercise really shook me up. And then what happened on the Hamilton made it all clearer. By the 1980s the Russians were never about to grab Europe and roll their tanks into West Germany. At that stage, they were way more scared of us than we were of them. We had a stronger economy and we were building a much bigger and better nuclear arsenal. And Reagan was making our nuclear policy much more aggressive.’

‘I remember,’ said Bill. ‘He was talking about winning the Cold War.’

‘Star Wars. Cruise missiles in Europe. All that talk of the Soviet Union being an “evil empire”. It scared them, almost to the point where they were about to strike us first. And I found out later I was right. I worked with the CIA group that investigated the Soviet reaction to the Able Archer 83 exercise. The Russians really did think we were about to launch a decapitation first strike.’

‘I can believe it,’ said Bill.

‘I was really impressed by what you and Lars did on the Hamilton. So when Pat Greenwald approached me after she had spoken with you, I thought maybe I could do my bit to stop a war starting. I couldn’t change US nuclear policy, but I could help the Russians understand what we were really doing. That we were not really planning a pre-emptive strike. And that if we ever did launch missiles it would be by accident rather than design.’

‘It was worth a shot,’ said Bill. ‘That’s exactly what I was thinking. That’s what we discussed at the fort in Groton.’

‘Yes, it was. I spoke with a Russian physicist who claimed she was a peace activist. Irena. Did you ever talk to her?’

‘Yes,’ said Bill. ‘In Paris.’

‘I was pretty sure she was KGB, but I didn’t care. That was better, really. More certainty that my message would get through to the Russian top brass.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Bill. ‘I was worried she was KGB.’ Toby was impressed by the way Bill was placing himself on the admiral’s side. In fact, he was doing such a good job of it that Toby wondered whether he really meant it. Which was of course what Bill was trying to achieve.

Toby’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it.

‘I went further than you. Told them more over a period of years until the wall came down. I wanted them to know what our nuclear strategy really was; that despite what Reagan was saying, we were never about to launch an unprovoked attack.

‘Lars knew what I was doing,’ the admiral went on. ‘He had spoken with Pat Greenwald and then put her on to me. We talked about it over the years, especially after he got out of jail in the Caribbean.’

Toby joined the dots. Bill had told Lars that Sam Bowen was on to Pat Greenwald. Sam Bowen had died. Lars guessed it was Admiral Robinson who killed Sam. So Lars had died.

Toby didn’t know whether Bill was figuring that out. Probably best not to mention it if he was.

‘I think you did the right thing,’ Bill said. ‘I’ll tell you what. If you leave Toby and me alive, I won’t mention any of this. I respect what you did. I respect why you did it. I’ll keep quiet. Like I have for the last twenty-six years. I took a risk back then to preserve peace. I killed my best friend. I understand.’

Bill’s voice was calm and persuasive. It almost persuaded Toby.

‘I didn’t mean to kill the historian,’ said the admiral. ‘I brought a knife with me in case I had to. I would have preferred not to use it, but when I spoke to Sam at the pub, he had so nearly put everything together I had to stop him. Like I had to stop Pat Greenwald before the FBI got to her.’

So it had been the admiral who had murdered Pat Greenwald in 1996, not some random mugger.

‘I get that,’ said Bill. ‘This stuff is bigger than individual lives.’

‘What about him?’ said the admiral.

‘Toby understands too. You’ll keep quiet, won’t you, Toby?’

That was Bill’s mistake. He might have got away with it if he had ditched Toby, said something like: ‘you can’t trust him but you can trust me’.

‘I understand,’ said Toby.

‘No,’ said the admiral. ‘I’m sorry, Bill. I admire what you did all those years ago. And I admired what Lars did. But he had to die. And so do you.’