Seven Days in May

Sunday

The parking lot stretched away to the north, cheerless and vacant. Its monotonous acres of concrete were unbroken except where the occasional shadow of a maple tree speared thinly across the pavement. In the nearby lagoon that opened out into the Potomac, small craft lay in rows at their moorings as though glued to a mirror. No ripple disturbed the surface of the water where it reflected the early-morning sun that was now rising over the silent domes and roofs of Washington across the river.

Colonel Casey parked at the River entrance of the Pentagon. He stood beside his car for a moment, jingling his keys absently as he eyed the old Ford with disgust. Age had settled upon it. Its enamel, once a deep blue, was faded down to a kind of neutral smudge. A rear windowpane was cracked and the fenders were nicked and dented.

Turning away from his car, Casey looked at the great building. The Pentagon loomed up, opaque and formidable, rows of identical windows marching away around its corners without a single touch of grace or humor, as bleak and grim as the business that kept men busy inside it year after year.

Ordinarily Casey approached Sunday duty with a kind of sunny resignation. But this morning a vague uneasiness had ridden with him, an unwanted passenger as he drove to work.

He couldn't diagnose it. Certainly there were plenty of possible causes. The country at large was in a sullen mood-apprehensive over the treaty, wary of Moscow, angered by the prolonged missile strike, worried about unemployment and inflation, not quite sure of the man in the White House. An immediate irritant, in his own case, was the strike. Only Friday General Seager, the commander of the Vandenberg Missile Center, had warned in a biting, almost sarcastic message that if the strike did not end in a few days the entire Olympus program would be derailed for months.

Casey stepped briskly across the special parking area, trying to shake off his mood. As each foot swung forward, a glint of high polish intruded on the lower fringe of his vision. If a man learns nothing else in twenty years in the Marines, he thought, he learns how to shine shoes.

Colonel Martin J. Casey was director of the Joint Staff, the select group of two hundred officers that served as the research and planning agency for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Once a month Casey took on the chore of Sunday duty officer, a post potentially as vital to the defense chain of command as it was boring to the temporary occupant.

He trotted up the broad steps to the River entrance and pulled open one of the tall wooden doors. The guard at the reception desk put down his newspaper to inspect Casey's pass.

"Tough luck, Colonel," he said. "Nice day for not working, isn't it?"

As Casey entered the Joint Staff area, with its big "restricted" sign, he passed through an electric-eye beam which triggered a two-tone chime to alert another guard. This one, a Navy chief petty officer, sat behind a logbook. Casey signed his name and wrote "0755" in the time-in column of the log.

"Morning, chief," he said. "Everything running smoothly?"

"Dead calm, sir." The guard grinned at him. "But I imagine the colonel would rather be out on the golf course today."

Casey could never quite get over the accuracy of the data which a good enlisted man acquired on the personal preferences of his officers. He winked at the sailor.

"So would you, chief. But someone's got to stand the watch."

"Right, sir." Then, taking a little Sunday-morning license, the guard added: "And probably more gets done, sir, without so many topside."

Casey followed a corridor through the jungle of cubicles and offices which was the cloister of the Joint Staff. Once manned by more than four hundred officers and headed by a lieutenant general, the Joint Staff had in recent years been halved in size and reduced to little more than a personal planning agency for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. This morning the area was as bare as the parking lot. Casey could hear one typewriter; the halting rhythm of the keys told him it must be an officer trying to finish an overdue paper. Casey turned into the large office that went with his job as staff director. The washed-out pale green of the walls told him he was once again at work in the impersonal labyrinth of the Pentagon. With a sigh he hung up his jacket and sat down to look over the Sunday papers he had brought with him.

He skimmed the Washington Post, read two columnists, looked at the baseball scores, and then settled into the New York Times, starting with a line-byline reading of the weekly news summary.

There was trouble everywhere, from Malaya to Milwaukee. The Chinese Communists accused the West of nurturing "spies and saboteurs" in Singapore. A conference of midwestern industrialists denounced the newly ratified treaty. A citizens' committee demanded, in wires to every member of Congress, that striking missile workers be drafted.

But however sour the world's mood, Jiggs Casey had to admit that his own should be bright enough today. For one thing, he felt fit and rested. Beyond his physical well-being, Casey at the age of forty-four had developed a protective skepticism about the woes of the world. It had been going to hell in a handbasket since the year zero zero, as he frequently put it, and if it weren't, who'd need to hire a Marine? His country, which he tended to view with a sort of vexed affection, had managed to survive for almost two centuries and with luck it might sidestep any irreparable injury for the three additional decades which he figured were about the span of his personal concern. But this morning his customary tolerance for the shortcomings of his nation had somehow been strained, if not quite broken. Casey felt uneasy, and he didn't like it.

Colonel Martin J. Casey, USMC, himself seemed built for survivability, as Pentagon jargon would have it. He wasn't handsome, but women had once found him irresistible and still admitted to each other that he was appealing. Men had always liked him. He stood just a hair over six feet and weighed one-ninety now, after almost a year behind his desk. He was about ten pounds overweight by his reckoning, but there was no obvious fat anywhere. A crew cut still masked the beginning of a thinning-out on top. Quiet, green eyes and a short neck gave him a solid look that was mirrored in the photograph of his two sons on the back corner of his desk.

Casey wasn't a crusader and he wasn't brilliant. He had learned at Annapolis, long before the end of his plebe year, that neither was necessarily an attribute of successful military men. But he was a good Marine who had never once pushed the panic button. He hoped he'd make brigadier general before he retired. If you asked him for more, he'd say: That's Casey, period.

It took him nearly an hour to read through the Times, and he made it without interruption. Not that he had expected any. On his once-a-month trick as Sunday duty officer and theoretical alarm bell for the chiefs in case of war, natural disaster, or telephone calls from the President or congressmen, nothing ever happened. The White House had called once, but on a matter so minor that Casey had forgotten its nature. As for the more frequent Congressional calls, it was a matter of working up the proper tone of sympathy, interest and alertness while jotting down the gist of the complaint for someone else's attention on Monday morning.

He was eyeing a stack of old personal mail when Lieutenant (jg) Dorsey Hough, the regular Sunday watch officer in the all-service code room, made his usual casual, and distinctly unmilitary, entrance. The code room handled the Pentagon's radio traffic, and Hough was responsible for encoding and decoding all classified dispatches. He carried a sheaf of flimsies, the carbon copies of messages sent from commands around the globe to the Joint Chiefs.

"No sweat, Colonel," he advised. "All routine. But I'll stay for coffee and thanks for inviting me." He dropped the messages on Casey's desk and slid down into a nearby chair, all but hibernating until one of the enlisted men on the guard detail brought in two big white china mugs of coffee in response to Casey's request.

Dorsey Hough, permanently slouched, wore a perpetual hint of a yawn around his mouth. He was the kind of young officer about whom Casey felt, as his wife Marge put it, "excessively neutral." Hough's level of interest in the Navy stood only a notch higher than his concern for the rest of the world. Life would always bore him, Casey had decided long ago, and he would never wear the scrambled eggs of a commander on his cap visor. But Casey seldom had any pressing duties on Sunday and small talk with Hough had somehow become the custom every fourth weekend.

"So what's new, Dorsey," he asked, "besides girls?"

"I wasted twenty bucks on one at the Hilton last night," Hough replied, ignoring Casey's minor premise. "And no sport. But speaking of sport, Gentleman Jim must have the horse in the Preakness. At least, if he doesn't, he's going to a lot of trouble to collect bets from his pals."

Casey thought absently that in his days as a company-grade officer, he would never have referred to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by a nickname in the presence of a senior officer, especially one who was the chairman's direct subordinate. "Gentleman Jim" was General James Mattoon Scott, U. S. Air Force, holder of the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, and the Distinguished Flying Cross with two oak leaf clusters. He was by all odds the most popular public figure in uniform and probably in the United States, a fact that was of considerable concern to friends of the President. A brilliant officer, Scott demonstrated perfectly that mixture of good will, force and magnetism that men call leadership. The nickname had been hung on him in high school because of an early eye for meticulous personal appearance and a rare ability to grasp the niceties of adult manners. It had stuck to him at West Point and ever since.

Hough rattled on, with Casey giving him no more than half his attention.

"The General's aide, that Colonel Murdock, brings me in a message at oh seven two five this morning before I hardly got my eyes open," Hough said. "He's got five addresses on the thing and it's all about some kind of pool bet on the Preakness. Ah, if the House appropriations committee ever found out about some of the traffic through my little madhouse-especially on Sundays."

Casey eyed young Hough, slumping in his chair, and idly picked up the conversation.

"Well, General Scott knows his horses. What does he like?"

"He didn't say. It was all about getting the entries in to him on time."

Hough reached into the pocket of his newly starched shirt. At least he wears clean shirts, thought Casey. Hough fished out a half-sized message form and read it aloud:

" 'Last call annual Preakness pool. My $10 already deposited with Murdock. Give lengths your pick will win by in case of ties. Deadline 1700Z Friday. Post time 1900Z Saturday 18 May. Scott.' "

Casey reached out for the slip. He noticed it was written in Hough's hand and decided it was time for a small lecture on discipline.

"Dammit, Dorsey, you know the rules. It's a breach of security regulations to take a personal copy of all-service radio traffic out of the code room."

It didn't take. "That'll be the day, Colonel," Hough drawled, "when they convene a board of inquiry to break me for cracking security on Gentleman Jim's bookie operations."

Casey had to grin despite himself. "This must be some annual custom of Scott's. Who's on his sucker list?"

Hough threw him a mock salute. "Sir, I have filed dispatches in Secret Code Blue, the chairman's personal cipher, sir, to the following-named officers:

"General George Seager, Vandenberg Missile Center, California.

"General Theodore F. Daniel, Strategic Air Command, Omaha.

"Vice Admiral Farley C. Barnswell, commanding Sixth Fleet, Gibraltar.

"Admiral Topping Wilson, CINCPAC, Pearl Harbor, and

"Lieutenant General Thomas R. Hastings, commander First Airborne Corps, United States Army, Fort Bragg, sir."

Casey grunted. He had tired of the chatter-and of Hough. He reached for the pile of messages the youth had brought him. Each had to be read, logged and marked for routing to the proper desk in the morning.

"Beat it, Dorsey," he said. "I'll see you later."

The incoming dispatches ranged across the spectrum of military minutiae: Colonel Swain, detached Embassy Buenos Aires, proceeding Washington for permanent change of station, requests permission make personal report General Scott... . R/Adm LeMasters, chief of staff CINCPAC, requesting clarification JCS Directive 0974/AR4 23 April 74. Does this mean doubling submarine patrols Sundays and holidays as well as regular duty days? ... Brig Gen Kelly, commanding Lagens AFB, Azores, urges JCS appeal SecDef ruling limiting Officers Club liquor issue. Ruling damaging morale this station ... Commander 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, requesting explanation subparagraph (c), paragraph 15, JCS critique of airborne performance in last All Red alert ...

Casey made it a practice to do the secretarial chores himself whenever he pulled a Sunday shift. It gave him a chance to see firsthand some of the raw material that came into his shop. So he rolled a typewriter over and typed answers to some of the queries, in triplicate. These were routine matters on which the chiefs had given him discretion to act. The rest of the messages went into a separate box for action by the five top officers themselves. On each of the latter Casey clipped a memo, noting time of receipt in his office. On some he added the number of the applicable JCS order or directive. In the process he had to turn occasionally to one of several loose-leaf notebooks, each stamped top secret, which he pulled from his personal safe.

It was almost noon when Casey finished and headed toward the code room with a manila envelope full of replies to be sent. But first he had to put in his daily appearance at the Joint Chiefs' war room. In this big room, with its global maps and smaller "crisis spot" blowups, duty officers maintained a 24-hour vigil for the nation's military leaders. Direct command lines linked the war room to more than a hundred major combat posts, including the Strategic Air Command near Omaha, the North American Air Defense Command at Colorado Springs, and NATO Headquarters in Paris. A "gold" phone and a red phone, for instantaneous transmission of battle commands in case of war, stood on a separate table.

Casey chatted with the duty officer. The charts were almost bare of special military activity, save for a rectangle marked in red crayon in the South Pacific. Six atomic submarines would begin firing Polaris missiles there tomorrow in a routine exercise. Casey left the war room after a few minutes.

As he walked into the Pentagon's central corridor, he paused to look out the window at the sun-filled courtyard. With its small wooden pergola and high concrete walls, the court seemed a strange hybrid, half prison exercise yard and half village common.

The world may be in a mess, he thought, but it's a swell day outside. Down below, a shirt-sleeved civilian sat on a bench with a girl. She has nice legs, Casey thought. I wonder why we get all the old maids? Maybe they're better security risks.

He lingered at the window a moment or two longer. The mild May sun filled the courtyard. Except for tatters of cloud in the southwest, the sky was clear blue. This was the kind of day when a man wished he had a country place, a chair under a big shade tree, and maybe a couple of horses.

Horses. So Gentleman Jim had a pool on the Preakness, huh? Casey grinned. That was the fox in Scott, lulling his top field commanders with a line of chatter about a horse race which would be run off the same day as the All Red alert.

The last All Red, six weeks ago, had pleased no one. Two carrier attack forces were caught in port, half their ships tied up for minor repairs that should have been completed weeks earlier. Only a little more than a third of the SAC planes got into the air on time. Bits of snafu had leaked into the press from half a dozen bases around the world. President Lyman had telephoned twice to find out what was the matter and Scott, who rarely lost his temper, got mad.

The result was a decision to schedule another no-warning exercise this week. For this one the time was closely held. The Joint Chiefs set the date only last Thursday and so far only the five of them, plus the President, Casey and Colonel George Murdock, Scott's personal aide, knew of it. Scott himself picked out the time: this coming Saturday, May 18, at 1900 hours Greenwich Mean Time, 3 p.m. daylight time in Washington.

Not even the Secretary of Defense knew of the plan. Casey had asked Scott about this, only to be told that the President specifically ordered it that way. There was a growing coolness between the Secretary and the President. Perhaps Lyman thought he would catch the Secretary off guard.

Casey believed Saturday's All Red would be a pretty good test of the remedial measures that had been rushed since the fiasco in late March. Certainly the timing would show whether the field commanders had performed as ordered. By 3 p.m. Saturday in Washington, most United States commands would be well into their usual peacetime weekend cycle. If Moscow ever did push the button, you could be sure it wouldn't be between 9 a.m. Monday and 4:30 p.m. Friday.

Now Scott was handing five of his top men in the field a little extra tranquilizer with his message on the Preakness, even setting the "post time" to coincide with the hour he had picked to blow the whistle for the alert. Pretty cute, Casey thought. Some of those people might relax an extra notch, surmising that Scott was sure to be up at Pimlico for the race.

The girl in the courtyard had slipped her head onto the shoulder of the shirt-sleeved clerk as they lazed away their lunch hour in the sun. Casey pulled himself away from the window and continued along the corridor to the guarded door of the all-service code room. Inside, it was largely a Navy operation. Four sailors with headsets manned typewriters. Another door, this one black with "No Admittance" painted on it in large white letters, led into the cryptographic center where young Hough spent most of his time. But today Hough was slouched at an empty desk in the outer room, reading the Sunday comics.

"Hiya, Colonel," he offered. "You got some work for my tigers?"

Casey handed him the envelope. Hough riffled through the messages, pulled out those which he would have to encode himself, and distributed the rest to the operators. Casey nodded to him and started to leave, but Hough tapped his elbow.

"Take a look at this, Colonel."

Casey took the flimsy. It was a copy of an incoming dispatch:

SCOTT, JCS, WASHINGTON

NO BET. BUT BEST RGDS AS EVER.

BARNSWELL, COMSIXTHFLT

"Which proves," Hough said, "that even an admiral sometimes can't get up ten bucks for a bet. Or maybe he thinks it would set a bad example for the fleet."

"If you don't quit sticking your nose into Scott's business," Casey said, "you're likely to wind up setting a good example by being shipped off to the Aleutians."

"Come on, Colonel. Hawaii would be far enough. In fact, Pearl would be just swell. I told Murdock this morning that instead of worrying about horses, he ought to do this stinking town a favor and get me a transfer to the islands. I'd reduce the confusion, don't you think?"

"You sure would, Dorsey, but what have we got against Hawaii? The Aleutians need men like you," Casey said, "to make the Eskimos safe for democracy."

Casey sauntered along the hall and entered the senior officers' dining room for lunch. It was, like the rest of the building, almost empty. A cluster of Navy and Air Force officers crowded around one table. An Army officer, alone at a table in the rear, stood up and waved at Casey.

"Hi, Jiggs!" Casey walked over, pleasantly surprised to see a friend, Mutt Henderson, a Signal Corps light colonel he'd met in the Iranian War three years ago. Only now, judging from the insignia, it was Colonel William Henderson.

"Hey, Mutt, when did you get the chickens?" Casey snapped a finger against the eagle on Henderson's left shoulder, then thumped him on the back. "Good to see you. What brings you here?"

"Somebody's got to straighten you chairborne soldiers out once in a while," Henderson replied. His black eyes were wide and a familiar impish grin creased his round, red face.

Casey ordered a sandwich and iced tea and the two men settled back to look each other over. This, Casey thought, is what I like about the service. A civilian has three or four close friends at the most. A military man can claim them by the dozen. At almost every post a man could find an officer or a noncom with whom he had shared a few seconds of danger, a few months of boredom, a bottle or perhaps a girl. Your past was always around you. You could never pretend you were something you were not; there were always too many who knew too much.

For Casey and Henderson the sharing had included both danger and boredom, as well as a few bottles. They first met on a rainy night in Iran when Henderson, pulling the lead end of a field telephone wire, slid into the foxhole from which Casey was trying to run his battalion. They remained neighbors, and became fast friends, in the months that followed.

Casey bit into his sandwich and leaned forward.

"All right, Mutt, give me the current statistics. Where're you stationed?"

Henderson dropped his voice. "I haven't given a straight answer to that in four months. But with your clearance you know it all anyway. Hell, Jiggs, you probably got me my orders. I'm exec of ECOMCON."

Casey managed a knowing smile. He had never heard of ECOMCON, but if he had learned anything since Annapolis in addition to the techniques of boot-blacking, it was never to let on when you didn't know. Not that there was much of that now, with such unhappy little items as the location of every nuclear warhead in the nation stuffed into his head. A director of the Joint Staff couldn't very well function without knowing these things. Casey surmised Henderson must be using some trick local name for a unit he would know by another designation. He probed lightly.

"So you hate the assignment. Well, don't blame me for your orders, pal. You live on the base?"

Henderson snorted. "Christ, no. Nobody could live in that hellhole. It's bad enough when the Old Man makes me stay there four or five days at a time, the ornery son-of-a-bitch. No, Mabel and I got a little house in El Paso."

He pulled a memo pad out of his pocket and scribbled on it.

"There's my home phone in case you get down there. You know Site Y hasn't got an outside phone on the place except the C.O.'s personal line."

Casey prompted again. "I hear you're doing a pretty fair job for a country boy. How many men you got now? Seems to me I remember you're not up to strength yet."

"Sure we are," Henderson said. "We got the full T.O.-100 officers, 3,500 enlisted. The last ones came in a couple weeks ago. But you know, Jiggs, it's funny. We spend more time training for seizure than for prevention. If I didn't know better I'd think someone around Scott had a defeatist complex, like the Commies already had the stuff and we had to get it back."

What's Scott holding out on me? Casey thought. Maybe he's got orders from the President to keep the lid on. But what is the thing? Some kind of sabotage-control outfit?

Aloud, he responded in a tone that he hoped covered his curiosity.

"Foresight, Mutt, foresight. You tell 'em Washington looks ahead-even if it's in the wrong direction. How long you going to be in town, anyway?"

Mutt grimaced. "Just till tomorrow, while the Old Man briefs Scott and I back him up. We've got a cubbyhole and a phone up on the fifth floor." He consulted another scrap of paper from his shirt pocket. "72291, in case you want me. But we're flying back tomorrow night."

Casey wondered who Mutt's commander was, but didn't ask. Henderson would expect him to know. Instead, he turned the conversation into other channels, first their families, then the war and the politics that flowed from it. They agreed again, as they had the day the word reached them on the line in Iran, that the partition of that country was the blackest mark in American diplomatic history. The Communists had attacked in force and won half a country. Casey and Henderson had joined the top-heavy majority of Americans who unseated Republican President Edgar Frazier in the 1972 election, with the partition of Iran almost the sole issue.

"Jordan Lyman got me with his acceptance speech," Henderson said. "First Democrat I ever voted for. I'll never forget that line of his-'We will talk till eternity, but we'll never yield another inch of free soil, any place, any time.' "

"Me too, cousin," Casey said. He chuckled. "But he wasn't my first Democrat."

"I'm getting a little worried, though," Henderson went on. "Is he going to stand by it? I don't like that new treaty worth a damn, and from what I read and hear I don't think the country does either."

"The treaty's signed, sealed and ratified," Casey said, "so don't fight it. But if you want to know how some people think the President's doing, ask Scott tomorrow. You'll get an earful."

Henderson laughed as he got up from the table. "I don't talk to four-star generals-yet," he said. "I listen."

Casey won the toss for the check and they parted, Henderson heading upstairs while Casey returned to his office.

Casey wondered again about Mutt's ECOMCON. He spent the better part of an hour leafing through JCS orders and directives for the past year, searching for a clue. Nothing turned up. Oh, well, he thought, Scott will tell me when he thinks I need to know about it.

The phone rang. First call of the day, he noted happily. The bland voice of Colonel Murdock came over the line. It was the routine Sunday afternoon check by the chairman's aide.

"Nothing stirring, Colonel," Casey informed him. "The only flap of the day was all yours. You got young Hough all lathered up about race horses."

As Casey anticipated, Murdock was not amused.

"Somebody ought to gag that kid," he snapped.

"Give us all a break and get General Scott to assign him to Pearl Harbor," Casey suggested lightly.

"You've got something there," Murdock said, not at all lightly. "Dammit, that was the General's personal business."

"That's exactly what I told him, Colonel. But as a good aide you might want to check Admiral Barnswell's credit rating. He sounds like he's fresh out of ten-dollar bills."

There was a silence on the line. When Murdock spoke again there was a film of frost on his customary suave purr.

"I'll be at home the rest of the day if any important business comes up." There was just enough emphasis on the adjective to convey Murdock's disapproval of Casey's attempts at humor.

"I've got you on the call list, Colonel," Casey answered, and hung up without saying good-by. As usual, George Murdock had succeeded in irritating him. Casey had never found it easy to like the kind of men who made their careers out of opening doors and carrying briefcases for the brass, and Murdock's cold efficiency made it twice as hard in this instance.

Casey spun the dial on his office safe, placed the red "open" tag on the handle and took out a hand-typed planning book. On its cover, between two top secret stamps, were the words "All Red 74-2." Since Scott, in his present mood, would have little else on his mind all week, Casey felt it behooved him to go through the plan once more. He read slowly, trying to commit it to memory.

The President would go to Camp David, his occasional weekend retreat in the Maryland hills, at ten o'clock on Saturday. He would then get back in his helicopter and fly south to the underground command post at Mount Thunder in the Blue Ridge of Virginia. The five members of the Joint Chiefs would drive to Mount Thunder in separate automobiles, arriving not later than 11:15, shortly before President Lyman was due. Murdock was to go with Scott. Casey was to drive up alone. When the President and chiefs were all in, a mock briefing would begin, setting out bits and scraps of "intelligence" indicating the possibility of hostile action by the Soviet Union. Scott would conduct this briefing. At the proper time, about 2:45, it would be assumed that early-warning radar had picked up the track of missiles rising from Soviet launching pads. At this point the alert process would begin, with Scott and the service chiefs ordering the regular Mount Thunder duty crew to open emergency communications lines. At 3 p.m., President Lyman was to give the order for the All Red. If it went off properly, all missile bases would be armed within five minutes, all SAC bombers would be in the air within ten minutes, all Nike-Zeus antimissile missiles would be armed and tracking, and every warship in the fleet would be either on its way to sea or raising steam. The Army airborne divisions at Fort Bragg and Fort Campbell were each supposed to have a regiment combat-loaded and ready to take off in a half hour. The Air Defense Command's interceptors, loaded with air-to-air missiles, were allowed ten minutes to get their flights to 50,000 feet. And so the specifications ran on, down through all the services. On paper, the nation was ready to meet an attack in minutes. The test would show how much of a gap there was between paper and people.

Also to be tested Saturday was the master communications control system. A flick of a switch at Mount Thunder would cut into every radio and television network, placing control over broadcasting in the hands of the command post. For the alert, it would mean only a 30-second blackout of regular scheduled programs. Viewers would get a "network trouble" sign on their screens while the command post held the circuits open just long enough to be sure they were working properly. In the event of a real attack, the lines would be kept open to allow the President to go on the air. The communications cutout was being tested this time simply for practice. It had worked perfectly the last time-about the only part of the alert that had, in fact.

The plan included a list of officials to be alerted. The list was shorter than usual. Casey's footnotes explained why: Vice-President Gianelli would be out of the country, halfway through his good-will visit to Italy. Congress, which had missed its usual Easter recess this year because of the debate on the treaty, would be in adjournment from Wednesday, May 15, to Monday, May 27.

Casey was still mulling over the plan when his relief arrived at four o'clock. He quickly covered the folder and replaced it in the safe. Casey felt silly, for Frank Schneider was at least as good a security risk as he, but one violation of the need-to-know rule could ruin this alert. Nothing spread faster through the Pentagon than a hot tip on an upcoming operation. Schneider played the game, fussing at the desk and pretending there was no such thing as a private safe in the room.

Even fewer cars stood on the parking lot now than there had been in the morning, and Casey realized unhappily that his old Ford sedan stood out like a soldier out of step. The engine wheezed when he pressed the starter, then coughed like a protesting flu victim as he let in the clutch.

Damn the civilians who run this government, Casey thought as he headed out Arlington Boulevard. Ever since he went to Korea as a second lieutenant fresh out of Annapolis, they had whittled away at the pay and prestige of the military. Half the fringe benefits were gone. There had been only two general pay raises in twenty years. If he'd been passed over for colonel he'd be making more money on the outside. Some of his old pals were pulling down $30,000 a year. Instead, he struggled to make ends meet, paying the mortgage late every month, driving this old crate two years after it should have been scrapped. If it weren't for the little income Marge had from her mother's estate she wouldn't even be able to dress decently in Washington.

The Pentagon had prepared a new, comprehensive bill to give the services a pay raise and reinstate some of the old benefits. General Scott had pressed the matter with the President, Casey knew, but so far Lyman had refused to buy it.

And people wonder, Casey mused wryly, why service morale is bad, why re-enlistment rates are too low, why we aren't as efficient as we ought to be. Oh, well, if civilians had any sense, they wouldn't need guns-or Marines.

The boys were shooting baskets in front of the garage doorway when Casey turned in behind the subdivision house he and Marge had bought in Arlington when this Pentagon assignment came up. Sixteen-year-old Don, already as tall as his father, was a first-stringer on the high school team. Bill, two years younger and six inches shorter-he had Marge's chunky build-never would be as good as his big brother but never would quit trying, either.

"Hi, mob," Casey called, getting out of the car. "Where's the boss?"

"Over at the Alfreds'," Don said, nodding his head toward the next house. He flipped the ball to his father. "Shoot one."

Casey gripped the ball in 1950-vintage style, aimed carefully, and bounced it off the rim of the basket.

"Gee, Pop," Bill complained. "What's the other team do while you aim? Salute, maybe?"

"Lay off," Don said. "You want to talk like a taxpayer, grow up and pay taxes."

Casey grinned at his first-born. Don flipped the ball to his brother and addressed himself to more serious matters. "Say, Dad, can I have the car to take the gang to the movies tonight?"

His father played the tough Marine. "You want to drive your own car, grow up and buy one." It was Bill's turn to laugh. "Seriously, Don, your mother and I are going out tonight. One of the other guys will have to provide transport."

Don shook his head. "That means Harry's old crate. I hope it's running."

Casey took two more turns with the ball and then went inside to change into more comfortable clothes. Midway in the process he decided to lie down for a minute and relax.

When Marge Casey came home a half hour later she found her husband sprawled on the bed in his shorts, sound asleep. With a sigh for the bedspread- for almost twenty years she had been asking him to turn it down-she sat down at her dressing table to repair her nails for the party that night.

She was still sitting there when Casey opened his eyes. He looked at her back, bare now except for the thin strap of her bra, and thought half of lust and half of love and of his luck that with Marge he couldn't tell them apart. At forty-two she still had the small, neat beauty of the girl he met in Newark during his tour there as a recruiting officer right after Korea.

Marge looked up into the mirror and now he saw the wide-set dark eyes and the sprinkling of freckles across her nose. When she smiled, as she did on seeing him awake, a little space showed between her two front teeth. The gap gave her a little-girl look that Casey liked.

"If you were more woman and we had more time," Casey drawled, "this might be a pretty good afternoon for rape."

Marge wrinkled her nose at him, glanced at the clock on her dressing table, sniffed, stood up and closed the bedroom door.

"I sometimes wonder," she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, "if Marines don't talk more than they fight." They both laughed as Casey growled and reached for her bare shoulder to pull her to him.

The sun had set and the coolness of a spring evening was rising as they drove across Western Avenue toward Chevy Chase. Marge was talking, but Casey heard little of what she said. He wasn't intentionally tuned out, just pleasantly oblivious. Once his mind brushed against business, reminding him of something he should have done before leaving home.

"Oh, dammit. I forgot to call Scott. Marge, will you please remind me to call the General when we get home? I've got to get his okay for changing one of his appointments tomorrow."

"Aye, aye, sir," she replied briskly. "The fate of the nation is in good hands. The only thing we have to fear is the day I forget to remind you of the things you can't remember. Hey!" Marge squirmed as Casey's hand squeezed her leg. "Two hands on the wheel, Colonel."

The Stewart Dillards lived in a five-bedroom house on Rolling Road in Chevy Chase. Two towering oaks set off the brick colonial architecture fashionable when the house was built in the late forties. There might as well have been a tag reading "prestige" on the street-number sign beside the flagstone walk.

For a lobbyist like Dillard, who looked out for the interests of Union Instruments Corporation in its continual contract dealings with the Defense Department, it was perfect. It gave him a good northwest address, it was close to the Chevy Chase Club where he did much of his entertaining and played his golf, and there was enough backyard for the big outdoor parties like tonight's at which Dillard from time to time entertained the crowd of casual acquaintances he had to maintain.

The street was already well filled with parked cars. Casey eyed the California license plate on a cream-colored Thunderbird: USS 1. Must belong to Senator Prentice, he thought. He'll probably be Stewart's ranking guest tonight.

Casey parked the elderly Ford a bit down the street and waited while Marge twisted the rear-view mirror, fussed with a curl, and wiped lipstick from the corner of her mouth. Casey held the door open for her.

"Damn girdles." She wiggled and took his arm. "What rating do you give it, Colonel?"

It was their private pre-party game. Casey looked at the other cars. "Oh, upper lower middle," he said. "One senator, from the license plate there. Probably one White House assistant. One military man of some importance. That's me, of course." He went on despite her snort. "Two-three newspapermen, a couple of congressmen, one regulatory commission member, and six couples you never met and will never find out anything about."

"How about a society writer from the Star?"

"Nope. But I'll bet Francine has already called the papers with the guest list. There'll be items tomorrow on the women's pages."

A Filipino in a white coat opened the front door and waved them through to the back lawn. A clatter of conversation burst on them as they stepped off the side porch. The aroma of perfume and new-mown grass hung in the air, and such symbols of the cook-out as cigarette stubs and the tiny punctures made by spike heels were already marking the Dillards' sloping lawn. Francine's teeth flashed and she was beside them, bubbling, delighted, shoulders thrown back, hips thrown forward.

"Marge!" Both hands came out as though she were presenting a loving cup. "You look lovely."

Stew Dillard moved over to do the introductions and Francine peeled off to greet another couple at the back door. As they moved around the yard, Casey found he had been slightly off in his estimate, for he saw no congressmen. But his rating stood. The senator was indeed Frederick Prentice, California Democrat, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, a power in his party and a virtual overseer of the Pentagon. The commissioner was Adolf Koronsky of the Federal Trade Commission, a Republican holdover from the Frazier administration. The ranking newspaperman was Malcolm ("Milky") Waters, who covered the White House for the Associated Press.

The identity of the White House staffer brought a smile to Casey's face. He was Paul Girard, President Lyman's appointments secretary. Casey and Girard had been friends since the days when Girard played basketball for Duke and Casey was a Navy substitute. They had seen each other in Washington, on both business and pleasure, and Casey had sized Girard up several years ago as a man you could trust. He was shrewd, knew where all the bodies were buried on the Hill, and had Lyman's absolute confidence. He was almost ugly, with a head too large for his body, flaring nostrils and sleepy eyelids. Girard was often put down as a clod by strangers who frequently woke up the next morning wondering who had stacked the cards.

"Hi, Jiggs," he said, shifting his whisky to his left hand and offering his right.

"Glad to see you here, Paul. When I get investigated for taking favors from a defense contractor, at least I'll be in good company."

"You know the rule, Jiggs," Girard returned. "Anything you can consume on the spot is okay." He held up his almost empty glass. "And I'm a pretty good consumer."

Casey took a gin-and-tonic from the tray brought over by a waiter who responded to Girard's signal. He looked around for Marge, but she had been swirled away into an eddy of women near the azaleas at the foot of the garden. The pitch of conversation rose steadily, buoyed by alcohol and reinforcements. Casey and Girard found themselves in a group that included Waters and Prentice. The newsman was bracing the senator.

"Did you hear about the Gallup Poll coming out tomorrow?" Waters asked, his voice as noncommittal as it always had been through two administrations at the White House.

"No," said Prentice, "but let me guess. It's about time for another reading on Lyman's popularity, and I'd say he's lucky if he gets 40 per cent."

Prentice oozed the self-assurance that comes with years of power, unencumbered by responsibility, as a Congressional committee chairman. He could attack, second-guess, investigate and chide with never a fear of being proved wrong, for the making and executing of policy was always someone else's job.

The senior senator from California was not a particularly striking figure, but he successfully conveyed the impression of being a man who expected to dominate a gathering and usually did. If he was a bit heavy across the midriff, that gave him a certain advantage over men of less ample bulk. If his gestures were a trifle broad, his voice a shade too strong for ordinary conversation, these characteristics seemed appropriate enough in a man more used to being listened to than listening.

Now, as he looked at Waters for confirmation of his guess, there was a hint in his bearing and glance that he did not expect disagreement-and would not welcome it. He got no contradiction from the reporter.

"You're on the right track, Senator, but too high. The poll out tomorrow will show only 29 per cent saying they 'approve' of the way the President is doing his job. The Gallup people say it's the lowest popularity rating for any President since they started taking the thing."

Prentice nodded and stabbed the air with his forefinger.

"It's this simple," he lectured. "The President trusts Russia. The American people don't. The people don't like this treaty. They don't believe the Russians will take those bombs apart on July first and neither do I."

The treaty, the treaty, the treaty. Casey, and indeed all Washington, had heard nothing else since Congress met in January and President Lyman forced the pact through the Senate with only two votes to spare over the required two-thirds majority. It seemed as though everybody in town had chosen sides in the argument, and letters-to-the-editor pages in newspapers all over the country indicated that the same thing was happening everywhere. Casey sneaked a look over his shoulder to see if he could slip away, but he was hemmed in.

He had heard all he wanted to, and then some, about the nuclear disarmament treaty that would go into effect on July 1. On that date, under the agreement reached by Lyman and Soviet Premier Georgi Feemerov in Vienna last fall, identical moves would be made at Los Alamos and Semipalatinsk. Each country, under the eyes of Indian and Finnish inspectors, was to disarm ten neutron bombs. Each month more bombs would be dismantled, not only by Russia and the United States, but also by the other Western and Communist nuclear powers. All of them, including Red China, had subsequently ratified the treaty. The process would continue until the nuclear lockers of both East and West were bare. The target date for completion was two years hence.

"Don't you think there are other factors affecting the poll, Senator?" It was Waters again. "I mean the high unemployment, inflation, and the mess over the missile-base strikes?"

"Don't you believe it, young man," retorted Prentice. "Every President has had troubles like those. But, my God, Lyman negotiated this treaty in defiance of the facts of life. The Russians haven't kept an agreement since the end of the Second World War. You know I fought the treaty with every fiber of my being and I'm proud of it."

"Yeah," said Girard sourly. "We Democrats really stick together."

Prentice swung toward him, his face twisted with irritation and his forefinger in motion again.

"It was the President who left the Democratic party, Girard," he said. "And I say that as a man who went down the line for him at the convention."

"Well, after all, is the President's position so unreasonable?" The new participant in the debate was a man in a cream-colored sports jacket whose name eluded Casey. "I mean, if Russia reneges or cheats, we know it immediately and the deal is off."

"I've listened to that argument for thirty years," Prentice said, "and every time I hear it used to justify a policy we lose something more. The last time was the summit conference in '70 that was supposed to settle the Iran business. Six months later the country was flooded with Soviet guerrillas and now we're left with two Irans, one of them Communist."

"I don't know, Senator. I don't think I can agree with you so far as President Lyman is concerned." The man in the sports jacket wasn't to be put off so easily. "He may be taking a calculated risk, but it seems to me we're protected. And if the President is willing to risk some of his popularity right now to do the one thing that might save the world, I say more power to him."

You know, I think he may be right, Casey thought. Several others in the group nodded silently. But Prentice wouldn't let it go. He leaned toward the President's defender.

"Don't talk to me about Lyman's 'popularity,' young man. He hasn't got any to lose and he doesn't deserve to have any, either."

The temperature of the discussion was rising along with the intake of cocktails. Dillard bustled over to exercise his pacifying functions as host and adroitly turned the talk to pure politics.

"Leaving the merits of the treaty out of it," he said, "I'll make a bet at reasonable odds that the Republicans nominate General Scott in '76. It's a natural. He's got the personality. If anything goes wrong with the treaty, he's solidly on record against it. And if it works, people will be worrying about Russia's conventional forces and will want a strong man like Scott."

"Oh, Christ," said Girard. "I can see the slogan now: 'Scott, the Spirit of 'Seventy-Six.' "

"You White House boys better not make too much of a joke out of it," Prentice said. "I agree with Stew. Scott's far and away the obvious Republican choice. If the election were today, he'd beat Lyman hands down."

"May I convey the compliments of the senator to the leader of his party?" asked Girard with some heat.

"I'm talking facts, sonny," Prentice shot back. "We simply wouldn't stand a chance against Scott."

The porch floodlights blinked on, signaling dinner. Francine Dillard shepherded her guests to the rear of the garden, where a caterer's man in a tall white hat had been grilling steaks. With each steak went a baked potato. When the guests found their seats at the little tables set up on the porch, there was a green salad and a bottle of beer at each place.

Casey's dinner partner was Sarah Prentice, a cheerful, plump woman who spent much of her time in Washington applying salve to the wounds opened by her husband.

"Fred is awfully worked up over this treaty," said Mrs. Prentice, "but I think he'd admire your General Scott anyway."

"He isn't exactly my general," Casey said, with appropriate military neutrality. "I just work for him."

"But don't you think he's a darling?"

"I think he is an extremely competent general."

"Oh, you Marines!" She laughed as if on cue. "I couldn't expect you to say a good word for an Air Force man."

After dinner the guests moved out across the lawn again. Casey passed up a proffered highball in favor of a second bottle of Stew's excellent pale India ale. He had taken a single swallow when Prentice came up, took his elbow and steered him out of a group.

"Colonel, I meant what I said earlier. You're lucky to be working for the one man who commands the confidence of the country and who could lead us out of this mess."

Casey answered in his best light party tone. "I'm a military officer, Senator, and it sounds to me as if you might be pushing me pretty near the brink of politics."

"Let's not kid ourselves, Colonel," Prentice said snappishly. "This country's in trouble, bad trouble. Military man or not, you're a citizen, and every citizen has his duty to politics."

Casey laughed, but he felt increasingly uneasy in this conversation. "You'd never make a professor at Annapolis, Senator," he said. "I'm in mufti tonight, but the uniform's in my closet and I put it on tomorrow at 0700."

Prentice peered at Casey in the half-light. The hortatory forefinger came up again.

"Well, if you get a chance, you have a talk with General Scott. I'm serious, Colonel. I'm sure you'll find his ideas on the situation are close to your own- and close to what most good Americans are thinking today."

Casey hadn't the faintest idea where this insistent politician was trying to lead him, but wherever it was, Casey wasn't going. He switched the subject.

"I hope you and Mrs. Prentice enjoy the recess, Senator. I forgot to ask her at dinner where you plan to go."

"I'm staying right here. There's plenty of work to be done." Prentice glanced around. "Besides, somebody on the Hill has to stay alert. Especially on Saturday, right, Colonel?"

The word "alert" took the Marine by surprise. "Why, yes, sir. We should be, always," he said lamely. Prentice slapped him on the arm and walked away.

The party was about ready to break up. Casey found Marge and threw her an inquiring look. He got an answering nod and they said their good-bys, walked back through the house and along the street to their car. Casey drove home with only half his mind on the traffic. Now, just where had Prentice learned of the alert? Only eight men were supposed to know and he wasn't one of them. Of course, Prentice headed the Armed Services Committee and was told just about everything. But Scott had been adamant on security this time. If Prentice knew, did someone else? One thing was sure: he better take it up with Scott first thing tomorrow.

Marge was chattering about the party.

"Who did you have as a dinner partner, Jiggs?"

"Mrs. Prentice. The senator's wife. Nice woman, I guess, but you sure can't say as much for her husband."

"I noticed he was bending your ear at the end there. What was it all about?"

Casey decided not to go into details. "Oh, just the usual Hill gripes."

"He's on the Armed Services Committee, isn't he? ... By the way, Jiggs, don't forget to make that telephone call."

Casey looked at his watch as they passed under a street light. "Oh, hell. It's too late now. I'll have to get up early and call him in the morning."

Bill was asleep when they reached home. Don was still out at the movies. Casey relaxed in the living room while Marge used the bathroom. It was their routine arrangement; he got priority in the morning. He could still hear water running upstairs when the phone rang.

"Dad?" It was Don. "Listen, we just came out of the movie and there's a flat on Harry's car. It's Sunday night and I don't know what we can do, and we live closest, so ..."

"I'll tell you one thing you can do," Casey said. "Change the tire."

"Dad." Don's voice was heavy with pity for the limits of adult comprehension. "Harry doesn't have a spare."

I've been had again, Casey thought. "Where are you?"

Rolling down Arlington Boulevard after getting the theater location from Don, Casey decided to swing by Fort Myer. Scott might possibly be up and, if so, he could tell him about the British Chief of Staff's request to move his appointment up from 9:00 to 8:30 tomorrow morning.

The wide, elm-shaded streets of the old post at Fort Myer were dark and vacant. Scott lived in the sixteen-room house traditionally reserved for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The brick structure, built almost seventy years ago in the bulky, ugly style of officers' quarters of that period, had once been bleak as a county poorhouse, but renovation had left it serviceable and comfortable, if hardly elegant. Set up on the ridge, old Quarters Six commanded a panoramic view of Washington across the Potomac. From his second-floor windows, Scott could look out and down on the Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial and the White House, the residence of his commander in chief.

Casey slowed almost to a stop as he turned the corner and came around in front of the house. His headlights glinted on a rifle barrel where the sentry paced along the walk. The lights also picked up the rear of a cream-colored Thunderbird parked in front of the house. Its license plate, designed to reflect light, jumped into Casey's vision. It was California USS 1.

Hey, that's Prentice's car, Casey thought. He glanced up at Quarters Six. A light was on in a window which he knew was in Scott's study. Otherwise the house was dark.

He accelerated and swung wide into the street past Prentice's car. If Scott was conferring with the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he would not welcome an interruption. Better to call him early in the morning.

On his way home, after rescuing Don and his two pals from the darkened theater parking lot, Casey's thoughts were still on the car in front of Quarters Six. He hadn't known Scott and Prentice were such close friends, although God knows the General had spent enough time testifying before the senator's committee to cement a dozen lifelong friendships. Maybe Prentice rushed over to tell Scott about the Gallup Poll. Scott took no pains to hide his dissatisfaction with Lyman, and Prentice had been pretty outspoken tonight for a man who was supposed to be a leader of the President's party. But why all this in the middle of the night? Casey looked at his watch again. Five minutes after midnight. Pretty late for political chitchat.

And Prentice obviously knew all about the All Red too. So what did it add up to?

Back home, he set his alarm for 6:30, just to be on the safe side. He had to call Scott before seven on the British appointment. Casey thought wearily that his decision not to leave a message had cost him at least a half hour of sleep.

When he crawled into bed, Marge stirred but did not quite waken. Casey tried to settle down, shifting from side to side, then onto his face, finally onto his back. Sleep would not come. The vague uneasiness of the morning had returned and in the small hours of night had become a puzzling anxiety.

"Something wrong, Jiggs?" Marge's voice was thick.

"I don't know, honey," Casey said. "I don't know."