Back Channel (34 page)

“You already fired me, Alfred.” She sat easily in an armchair, projecting far less turmoil than she felt. “You’ve given me my thirty days’ notice. I no longer have a security clearance. Frankly, I’m not entirely sure why you wanted to see me.”

But Gwynn was having too much fun to slow down. “We’ve worked out the details,” he continued happily. “Terms of severance will naturally be generous. And of course we’ll be indulging the usual festivities to mark the occasion—formal dinner and so forth. Testimonials from old friends.” Subtle emphasis on
old.
“You’re a legend,” he added, pressing the knife more deeply into her soul. “Irreplaceable. Well, you’ll hear all of that at the dinner.”

“Sounds glorious.” Harrington knew that he was relishing this final opportunity to gloat before her departure. But she was buoyed by the knowledge that, although she herself might no longer be in the game, her chosen agent was still in play; and, although she would
never admit it, the fact that her titular superior knew nothing of the revived operation constituted a source of particular pleasure.

Gwynn put the papers down. He smiled placatingly. “You’ve had a magnificent career, Doctor. So few of us can truly be called legends in our own time. You are certainly among that fabled few.”

She found a little of the old fire. “Is there an actual purpose for this meeting, Alfred?”

But she could not shake his good humor. “Relax, Doctor. I’m not as wicked as you seem to think. I just wanted to make sure that you understand how much everyone here admires you.” A wise nod, as though she, rather than he, had made the point. A folder on the Cuba crisis was open on his desk: a breach of regulations, given her lack of a clearance, but likely placed there intentionally, to remind her of who was who. “Now, it’s true, if you were to press me, I suppose, given the committee’s findings, we could have dismissed you for cause. S
ANTA GREEN
was a mess. We nearly lost two people, and poor Ainsley at the consulate had his cover blown and had to come home. That could all be laid at your feet, Doctor. Your operation, your competence, your charter.” He sounded positively jolly. “Nobody wants that. You’ve done yeoman service for your country—yeowoman—and I think I speak for the entire committee when I say that we would rather see you retired with every honor you deserve. There’s even talk of an Intelligence Cross, and, as you know, that’s as high as you can get.”

Harrington, as it happened, had been awarded her second cross years ago. She opened her mouth to deliver a suitable rebuke, and that was when the alarm klaxon sounded.

And went on sounding.

Gwynn looked around in panic. “What is that?” he shouted over the piercing din.

“Evacuation,” said Harrington calmly. She stood. “Come on, Alfred. We have to get to the bomb shelter.”

The President was in his helicopter, heading for Site R, the command post tunneled out of Raven Rock Mountain in Pennsylvania. Jackie and the kids had already enplaned for a more distant location.

“What do we know?” he asked Bundy, seated just behind him.
This was the first chance they’d had to talk since the Secret Service barged into Kennedy’s meeting with Commerce and Treasury on trade negotiations and all but carried him out the door, heading first for the bunker, and then, at a crisply radioed order, changing direction and rushing him onto the lawn as the helicopter landed.

Bundy leaned close. Two other aides and four Secret Service agents were with them. A Marine captain sat near the cockpit, handling communication.

Bundy spoke in a furred but clear whisper. “Mr. President, approximately twenty minutes ago, one early-warning satellite and two ground stations detected what appears to be a detonation in near space. The track suggests that it was a man-made vehicle, launched from inside the Soviet Union.”

Kennedy’s face was slack and gray. “You’re saying it’s an ICBM?”

“I’ve told you what we know, sir. The other DEW stations aren’t reporting any activity, but three of them are off-line.” The communications officer handed him a tear sheet. “General LeMay has the fighters and bombers at Homestead ready to take off on your order.”

“Are the missiles in Cuba—”

“There was an overflight this morning. There’s another U-2 in the air now. If they shoot the plane down, it’s a good bet that we’re at war.”

The President turned to the window. Bundy sympathized. Maybe he was worrying about his wife and children; maybe his brother and his family; maybe the many ways he must surely feel he’d failed the country he served. As for Bundy, his own calm was a growing surprise. At Harvard they used to say his heart was an IBM computing machine. Only now did it occur to him that they might be right.

The communications officer handed over another tear sheet. Kennedy glanced across expectantly.

“Sir, warning site Laredo is tracking two possible inbound missiles over the Atlantic Coast. The Joint Chiefs recommend you set DefCon One and activate Emergency War Warnings to all commands.”

The President was ashen. One of the Secret Service men overheard, and his hand moved instinctively toward his gun.

“My family—”

“They’ve been transferred to a second plane, Mr. President. They’re heading for the dispersal site in Wisconsin.”

Kennedy digested this. “Where’s Bobby?”

“I believe he should be at Mount Weather by now.”

“Can we get him on the radio?”

Bundy was irritated. The President’s brother was smart and tough, but he wasn’t in the chain of command. The Joint Chiefs would have been furious to learn that Kennedy couldn’t make up his mind without talking to Bobby. Nevertheless, Bundy dutifully conferred with the communications officer. “Mr. President, I am advised that the channel isn’t fully secure. The recommendation is to wait until we land to contact Mount Weather.”

“If the missiles are nearing the coast, we can’t wait that long.”

“Yes, sir, that’s why we—”

The helicopter banked hard. Bundy peered down but saw only trees. They couldn’t be over Pennsylvania yet. The craft described a half-circle and headed back the way they had come.

The communications officer tore off another message. Bundy scanned the first few lines, then leaned close to Kennedy. “It was a satellite, Mr. President. Launched this morning, exploded as it reached parking orbit.”

“What about the two missiles?”

“Believe it or not, sir, two more satellites. They didn’t explode. Their observed motion happened to match predicted missile tracks. A remarkable coincidence, Mr. President, but a false alarm.”

“Well, that was an unusually embarrassing episode, I must say.” They were in the elevator, heading back up to Gwynn’s office on the fifth floor. Three or four other functionaries were crowded in with them, and Harrington noticed how they avoided looking at her. The same thing had happened in the shelter. Word, it seemed, had gotten around. Gwynn, meanwhile, raved on, not caring who overheard. “Crowded into a sardine can with the secretaries and the messengers and goodness knows who. Can you imagine weeks or months like that? It staggers the imagination.”

“It would only have been a few minutes,” said Harrington as they stepped off.

“What?”

“In the sardine can, Alfred. We’d only have been there a few minutes.”

He cocked an eyebrow as if suspecting insolence. “And why’s that, Doctor? Would they be whisking us off to some other location? One of the President’s secret hideaways, perhaps?”

“No. But the shelter’s only four levels down. If this had been a real attack, we’d be dead.”

At the entrance to his suite, he turned. His expression was oddly sheepish. “I know you think I’m against you, Dr. Harrington. I’m not. I argued your case in committee.”

And next week, on Halloween, the Easter Bunny is coming down my chimney with presents, she said—but not aloud.

“I’m hoping that you’ll be staying in town,” he continued. “So that we can call on you from time to time. If we need counsel and advice.”

She smiled. Coldly. “What you’re saying is, you’re afraid of my ex-husband, because even now he has better contacts than you do.”

Gwynn began to stutter an angry response, but Harrington was already striding down the hall. She marveled afresh at her own aplomb. She had no children to fear for, and no family other than a sister she never saw. Down in the shelter, waiting to die, all her thoughts had been of
GREENHILL
.

Margo was attending to her makeup when Patsy knocked impatiently. Margo groaned. Patsy, on the rare evenings she spent at home, practically lived in the bathroom, and tended toward annoyance at ever having to wait. This was the second evening in a row when Margo, to use Nana’s argot, had gotten herself dolled up. No doubt Patsy considered her a kindred spirit. Again the fiction: her roommates knew she was getting dolled up
for
somebody, even if they hadn’t guessed who.

“One minute,” Margo called. She had never been much good with lipstick. She didn’t understand how some women applied it so fast.

“It’s the phone, Margo. It’s for you.”

She rubbed her forehead. Of all the times …

The only phone in the apartment hung on the kitchen wall above the counter; and, like the counter, it was yellow and oddly clammy. Margo didn’t like touching it, and in fact had used it only once, to tell Nana where she was staying and what the number was. Patsy was holding the receiver out, jiggling it vaguely in Margo’s direction.

“I like his voice,” the Californian whispered with a saucy wink. She disappeared into her bedroom, but Hope continued to sit at the small table, reading her book.

Margo turned her back and hunched over, in the pretense that the conversation would be harder for her roommates to overhear. She said, “Hi, honey,” and he said, “Hi, honey,” back. She said she was sorry she hadn’t called, and he said he was thinking about her, and she said
something equally insipid. She wondered what it meant when you and your boyfriend ran out of things to talk about. Just weeks ago, she had thought herself the luckiest girl in the world to have a brilliant young man like Tom Jellinek at her side. She had sat willingly at his feet as he discoursed on mathematics or politics or whatever he chose at any given moment to dispense. It occurred to her now that Tom, for all his gentle sweetness, rarely asked her opinion.

On anything.

“So—what did you do today?” he asked.

“I was at work.”

“And what are you doing tonight?”

Her breath caught. She knew he heard the sound, and probably was wounded by it. “Going out. Seeing friends.”

Tom digested this. “Anybody I know?”

“I don’t think so. No.”

“Try me.”

She held the phone away from her ear. She sensed without looking that Hope was no longer reading, but studying her instead.

“I need you to trust me,” Margo finally said, voice pitched low, although Hope no doubt could hear. “Will you do that for me? Trust me?”

Even at a distance of three hundred miles, Tom came back hard and fast. “Are you doing something that requires my trust?” She said nothing. “I’m only asking because I care about you,” he hurried on. “Does whatever you’re doing have to do with what happened in Bulgaria?”

Oh, no! Not on an open phone line!

“No, of course not.”

“Then why did you have to go to Washington so fast?”

“The job just became available. I didn’t hear about it until Friday.”

“But you left on Thursday. You have to admit, it’s pretty strange. Tuesday you stand me up for our study date, Thursday you stand me up for coffee, and the next day you have an internship in Washington? That’s one heck of a coincidence.”

He was making it worse, and she had no way to stop him, because he didn’t know about telephones and walls and cars, and how they could listen to you anywhere except the surf.

“Honey, look. I’ll be back in a few weeks. Can all this wait until then? Please?”

Again he was a long time answering. “I don’t like all these secrets,” he said.

“There aren’t any secrets,” she lied. She felt Hope’s judgmental gaze boring at the back of her head. “But there are things that are hard to talk about on the telephone.”

“Is that a fancy way of saying you don’t want to see me any more?”

Margo began to bristle. “Tom, please. Not everything is about you.”

“Then who’s it about?”

“Please, honey. When I get back.”

They rang off inconclusively.

Again the Yenching Palace. Again Fomin. Tonight the Soviet was brusque to the point of rudeness. He had anticipated Kennedy’s message, and had his reply ready. It was short. And angry.

Margo’s anger was rising, too, but she had yet to find a target her own size. She needed Melody Davidson. She needed poor Phil Littlejohn. She needed someone she could defeat with a double dactyl. But with Fomin and Khrushchev on one side, and Bundy and the President on the other, she was a pygmy in the land of the giants.

Only she wasn’t. That’s what Margo kept telling herself as she left the restaurant with the message and headed for the bus stop. This time she would ride all the way down to the Federal Triangle to meet her driver. She wasn’t a pygmy, she whispered into the night wind that whipped her long coat around her ankles. She was Donald Jensen’s daughter, and they needed her. She hadn’t sought out her role as intermediary, but she wasn’t involved in the negotiation merely on the sufferance of the powerful men around her.

She was here because they needed her.

Bundy was in his office when his secretary buzzed. He ignored her. He was studying Nate Esman’s report. Although the
SANTA GREEN
subscription list ran to forty-seven names, only nine people actually possessed enough information to have blown the operation. Of those, only four knew the actual identities of both
GREENHILL
and
GREENDAY
, the
cryptonym for Agatha Milner. Someone could, of course, have alerted the Soviets without having that knowledge, but the precision with which the DS acted strongly suggested that they had hard information. Not even Bundy himself, who had approved the mission, had been privy to their identities. The four who had complete knowledge were Harrington; her boss, Gwynn; her assistant, Borkland; and, from the Agency, Jerry Ainsley, who had been the point man in Bulgaria.