Launch Code

FIVE

There was plenty of food.Despite the fact that there was turkey involved, it was slightly different to an English Christmas. No sausages, no bacon, mashed potato not roast. The stuffing seemed to have much more bread in it than its English equivalent, and there were Pennsylvanian vegetables: creamed dried sweetcorn, sweet potato and green beans in a mushroom sauce, which is where the Campbell’s soup had come in. The cranberry sauce had been smuggled into the country by Brooke. It had all sounded a little weird when Alice had first described it, but it was delicious, in Toby’s opinion. And there were unlimited quantities of a classy Puligny-Montrachet to wash it down.

They were crammed around the table in a dining room that wasn’t quite big enough for the nine chairs. Guth family silver glimmered in the cosy yellow glow of dim wall lights, and the same thick beam ran across the ceiling from the living room next door. Outside, the marsh lurked in the darkness, and the wind from the sea rattled the windows intermittently. Everyone was there, apart from Maya. No one was worried about this; Maya was always late. It would have been more concerning if she had shown up on time.

The conversation flowed like a warm stream around the family, washing over the newer members, like Toby and Justin, and non-family like Sam Bowen and Lars da Silva, drawing them in. Alice and Brooke teased Megan about her future career as a waitress in the Belgian cafe, Megan and Bill teased Alice about how she had almost worked over the Thanksgiving weekend, and all three sisters teased their father about everything.

The dog was involved, of course. He planted himself beneath Sam’s chair, his ears pricked as if listening to the conversation.

‘Rickover seems to like you,’ said Brooke.

‘He’s a nice dog,’ said Sam, fondling the animal behind its ears. ‘Named after the admiral?’ He glanced at Bill, who nodded.

‘I didn’t realize Rickover was an admiral?’ Toby said.

‘He set up the nuclear submarine programme,’ said Bill. ‘He insisted on interviewing every midshipman himself. Scariest half hour of my life.’

‘Then why did you name the dog after him?’ Sam asked.

‘Because Dad just likes telling admirals to sit,’ said Alice.

‘He was a fine man,’ said Bill.

‘And Rickover is a fine dog,’ said Brooke. ‘He definitely likes you, Sam.’

‘And I like him,’ said Sam.

‘Are you sneaking him turkey?’ Alice asked in her most inquisitorial voice.

Sam’s chubby cheeks coloured red. ‘Maybe.’

‘I hope your admiral was less easily biddable,’ Alice said.

‘I never tried feeding him turkey,’ said Bill with a laugh.

‘Is there a Mrs Bowen?’ Brooke asked Sam.

‘My mum?’ Sam said.

‘You know what I mean!’

Sam grinned. ‘Not yet. But soon.’

‘Soon?’ said Alice. ‘Are you engaged?’

‘Since last weekend. There’s an old Roman fort way up in the Pennines we both really like: she’s a historian too. We went for a walk up there on Sunday. That’s where I asked her.’

‘And she said yes?’ said Brooke, her eyes wide.

‘Of course she said yes, dummy,’ said Megan. ‘Otherwise they wouldn’t be getting married.’

Brooke ignored her. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Jasmine. Jazz.’

‘Nice name. Not as nice as Rickover, of course. Have you fixed a date yet?’

‘Not sure,’ said Sam, grinning. ‘We can’t decide whether to have it before or after the baby is due.’

This prompted a slew of highly personal questions from the three Guth sisters, all of which Sam answered with good humour. Toby could see the tough truth-seeking historian wilting under the Guth charm offensive.

Toby was sitting next to the mysterious Uncle Lars. Although he must have been Bill’s age, he appeared ten years older. Short steel-grey hair bristled over the brown dome of his skull, and two deep lines cut downwards one on either side of a full sandy moustache. He was thin and wiry, and looked like he had had a hard life. Jail did that to you, Toby supposed.

‘Are you here on holiday?’ Toby asked.

‘Yeah,’ said Lars. ‘Primarily to see Bill, but I’m planning on going to London and maybe Bath or York. We served together on submarines, back in the day.’

‘I know. I was there when Sam was talking to Bill this afternoon.’

‘Oh, really?’ Lars looked surprised. ‘Did Bill tell him anything?’ he asked quietly. Sam was at the other end of the table, safely out of earshot.

‘No,’ said Toby. ‘A brick wall.’

‘That’s probably a good thing,’ said Lars. ‘Sam came all the way out to Wisconsin to speak with me a couple of weeks ago, and I didn’t tell him anything either. A wasted trip if ever there was one. I don’t understand why Bill invited him to dinner.’

‘You know Bill better than I do,’ said Toby. ‘He’s very hospitable.’

Lars grunted as he stabbed some turkey with a fork and pushed it into his mouth. ‘He is that.’

‘So you live in Wisconsin?’ Toby asked. ‘Is that where the Lars comes from?’ Toby was dimly aware that Wisconsin had been settled by Scandinavians.

‘That’s right. My mother’s family were Swedes from way back, but my dad came from Brazil. He’s passed, but my mother’s still alive. Barely. She’s in a home now, but I figure she needs someone to come see her. So I decided to move back.’ Lars looked straight at Toby with troubled green eyes. ‘After they let me out of jail.’

Toby thought of saying ‘that’s nice’ but realized that, although the sentiment was true, it sounded trite. He knew he was looking confused; an Englishman trying to be polite and not quite managing it.

‘They did tell you that, didn’t they? I spent eight years in prison in Guadeloupe?’

‘Yes they did. That can’t have been much fun.’

Dumb comment.

‘No, it wasn’t. Then again, prisons in the States are even worse. It wasn’t the best period of my life.’ He changed the subject. ‘So you’re the guy who married Alice?’

‘I am.’

‘She was a beautiful girl,’ said Lars. ‘She’s a beautiful woman now. You’re a lucky man.’

‘I am,’ Toby repeated. And he was. He really was.

He looked over to his wife, who was seated next to Sam, and seemed to be involved in an earnest conversation with him. Her earlier merriment had gone and she was frowning.

They were interrupted by the sound of the front door opening in the hallway, and the youngest Guth sister appeared. Maya was also the tallest, with unfeasibly long legs and long blonde hair that she wore like a club over one shoulder. She was still wearing her airline uniform, having arrived straight from Heathrow. There was a general hubbub of welcome as she greeted everyone and took her place at the table. She was soon plied with turkey and wine.

Bill introduced her to Sam.

‘Are you finally going to tell us what Dad and Lars did on that submarine?’ Maya asked in her English middle-class drawl.

‘That’s my plan,’ said Sam. ‘Once I’ve worked it out myself.’

‘Hey, Sam?’ said Megan, who was at the other end of the table from him. ‘This afternoon, when you were trying to talk to Dad about his submarine, you mentioned that there had been a bunch of near-launches. Is that true?’

Bill frowned at his daughter. But the rest of the table were curious to hear Sam’s answer. Including Lars.

‘There were several that we know of,’ he said. ‘And probably lots that we don’t.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well. In the Cuban missile crisis back in 1962, a Russian submarine was surrounded by US destroyers. The captain and the political officer wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo, but the officer in charge of the flotilla was also on board and he talked the captain out of it.’ He glanced at Bill as he said this. ‘Which is kind of like what might have happened on the Alexander Hamilton.’

If he was hoping for a response from Bill, he wasn’t going to get one. Toby felt Lars shifting in his seat beside him.

‘Also in ’62, a US tactical missile squadron on Okinawa were ordered to fire their nuclear-tipped Mace missiles. The targets didn’t make sense to the captain in charge of the squadron – they included places outside Russia. He asked for confirmation of the order and he got it. But he still didn’t obey the command, and he sent two men armed with pistols to stop the lieutenant at a neighbouring bunker launching his own missiles.’

That might also sound familiar, Toby thought. Both Bill and Lars were listening intently.

‘There was a bear that ran into the perimeter wire at an airfield in Duluth and set off an alarm. Someone got the alarms confused, thought war had started, and scrambled a squadron of nuclear-armed warplanes from a nearby base. There were the false readings at NORAD I told you about. That happened twice, in 1979 and again in 1980.

‘Then, in 1983, the Soviet early-warning centre south-east of Moscow showed that the US had launched a nuclear attack. Fortunately, the officer on the watch had been involved in upgrading the computer system and he didn’t trust it. So he did what we all do when the computer doesn’t work. He turned it off and turned it on again.’

The table laughed nervously.

‘And?’ said Maya.

‘And it still showed the missiles were coming.’

‘So what did he do then?’ Justin asked.

‘Tried it again. Turned the system off and on again. Missiles were still there, but by that stage radar stations in the north of the Russia should have spotted the contacts and hadn’t.’

‘Jesus,’ said Megan. ‘So he could have reported the attack?’

‘Not only could he have, he should have,’ said Sam. ‘No one in the west realized it at the time, but we were really close to nuclear war in 1983. The Soviet leadership were convinced that NATO was about to launch a surprise first strike. They would have launched their own missiles right away.’

There was silence, a rare occurrence with all four Guth sisters present.

Toby looked around the table. The sisters, he, Justin and Sam had all been born after 1983. They wouldn’t have existed. Which would mean they wouldn’t have experienced the firestorms, the global radiation, the death of billions of people, of every living thing on the planet. Or almost every living thing.

Megan raised her eyebrows at Toby. ‘Do you have cockroaches in England?’