Back Channel (52 page)

It had been a long and painful journey from New Rochelle to Garrison to Ithaca to Varna to Washington to this moment, and when she thought of Dr. Harrington, her knees felt like jelly and she wanted to run home. But Agatha, who had known Harrington a good deal longer, was able to remain tough and focused; Margo was determined to do no less.

They had met an hour ago in one of the city’s grimier neighborhoods, on the wrong side of the Anacostia River, where Margo had spent the night at what amounted to a flophouse. Agatha had handed over the promised business clothes, along with the purloined identification, made her up to look ten years older, then schooled her one last time in the details of what she called the operation.

“And where do we meet up afterward?” asked Margo when the minder was done.

“If all goes according to plan, the President’s people will take charge of your welfare.”

Margo had suffered too much recent loss not to recognize the implicit farewell. “When will I see you again?”

“If all goes according to plan, you won’t.” Agatha touched her cheek. “You’ll do fine.”

Now, standing amidst a crowd of pedestrians in Lafayette Park, waiting to cross the street to the White House, Margo wondered why her minder was so certain that they wouldn’t meet again.

The light changed. She lifted her head, patted the handbag that contained Torie Elden’s identification.

The wind was back, swirling Margo’s coat around her long legs. She composed herself.
You aren’t nineteen. You aren’t an intern. You aren’t a college student who’s been secretly meeting the President at a fancy townhouse. You’re thirty, you work in the Labor Department, and you have the right to be here.

Ready. Go.

She began her final march.

On that same Monday morning, Bundy reported to the President and the attorney general that no one had been able to locate
GREENHILL
. Bundy himself had scrutinized the logs of crank calls from people demanding to speak to the President, and the Secret Service records of people who had been refused entrance at the gates.

Nothing.

“If we don’t have
GREENHILL
,” said the President, glumly, “we don’t have Fomin’s reply.”

“Without his reply,” added Bobby, “we have no proof that we’re actually dealing with Khrushchev.” His tone was bleak. “We still don’t know who’s in charge over there. This whole back channel could be a deception to get us to lower our guard.”

Bundy cleared his throat. “The Bureau reports that the Soviet Embassy is burning its papers and has instructed the other Warsaw Pact countries to do the same.”

“Like the Japanese just before Pearl Harbor.” The President rubbed the small of his back. “All right, gentlemen. We’ve done what we could. Let’s go give the ExComm their war.”

In Ithaca, too, it was the Monday. The great Lorenz Niemeyer had his bad right hand on the lectern while his left swept derisively through the air.

“Now, let’s think, children,” he intoned. “As we watch the Cuba crisis advance, let us think about what it means to have an adversary. Plutarch says that Julius Caesar wept when he heard about the death of Pompey, his sworn enemy. Ha. If the story is true, then Caesar was a sentimental fool.” His swiftly surveying glance lingered briefly on the empty seat that should have been Margo Jensen’s. “Here’s the truth about war, gentlemen.
And
ladies. Ponder it as the crisis of the moment wends its way toward one conclusion or the other. Winners do what they have to do. That’s the only secret to war. You do what you have to do, no matter how grubby.”

Somebody raised a nervous hand to ask whether Niemeyer thought there would be a war.

“The war began long ago, Mr. Jimenez. The question you should be asking is what we’re willing to sacrifice for the sake of victory. And whom. Ultimate success often demands the lives of those we love best.” A shadow danced across the pudgy face and was gone. “If you can’t face that truth, I suggest that you return to the nursery and ask Mommy to read you a bedtime story.”

Margo was surprised by her own calm. At the Northwest Gatehouse, she showed her pass to the uniformed guard, who checked it against her face and asked whom she was there to see.

“Victoria Elden for Christopher Gallegos,” she said.

The guard had her sign the book while he called. Gallegos was on the domestic-policy staff, and she had selected him in accordance with Agatha’s coaching: because Torie, according to what the other girls said, dropped by at least once every other week or so. Margo couldn’t hear the conversation, but things evidently went fine, because the guard passed her through and pointed her up the sloping driveway to the West Wing entrance.

Just like that, she was through. Climbing the asphalt, her goal so near after the terror of the night, she felt the dream slip away, replaced at last by the euphoria that came with knowing that she had carried out her mission after all. No burnt, desperate fingers clutched at her legs. No secret police, ours or theirs, materialized from the bushes to snatch her away. The nightmare that had plagued her since Varna was fading at last.

At the top of the driveway, a Marine in dress blues opened the door. Inside, Margo presented the stolen identification card for a second time. At the desk, a second uniformed guard wrote down Torie’s name.

“And whom are you here to see?”

“Mr. Gallegos.”

The guard looked at her card again. “Victoria Elden? From Labor?”

“Yes.”

“One moment,” he said. He indicated a long sofa. “Please have a seat.”

She sat as bidden. A moment later a plainclothes Secret Service agent was in front of her. “Would you come with me, please.” No question mark in his intonation.

He led her into a hallway, where two more agents stood, neither looking friendly.

“What’s this about?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

“May I see your identification card?” said the oldest of the trio, with chilly politeness.

No choice. She was caught, and she knew it. She gave him the card.

“This card is stolen,” he said, handing it to another agent. “It was reported half an hour ago.” To Margo: “Give me your hands, please.”

She did; and was duly cuffed; and duly led away.

Failure after all.

She told them more than once that they were making a mistake, but they seemed uninterested in anything she had to say.

One of the agents opened a hidden door in the smooth white wall. They descended a narrow stair, an agent in front and an agent behind, and emerged in a basement corridor. Black and yellow pointed the way to the fallout shelter, but the agents led Margo the other way. They took her into a small office, sat her down, then undid the cuff from her right wrist and attached it to the chair. Full circle, she thought, remembering Varna.

Two agents left. The third stayed behind.

“Did you really think you’d get away with this?”

“Just call Mr. Bundy,” she said.

“Who?”

“McGeorge Bundy. The national security adviser.” Margo lifted her free hand beseechingly. “Please. Just call him. Tell him I’m down here.”

The agent shook his head. “Out of the question.”

“He’ll want to talk to me.”

“I doubt that. You’ve broken a number of laws this morning.” Ticking them off on long white fingers. “Theft of government property. Impersonating a federal employee. You enter the White House with a false identification card, and you think we’ll make a call on your behalf?” He stood. “Our orders in any case are to hold you incommunicado.”

“Whose orders?”

“Orders,” he repeated. “The FBI will be here soon. You’ll go into their custody, and I’m sure they’ll be happy to let you call whomever you like.”

“You don’t understand. You don’t know what’s going on. I have a vital message for the President and—”

“I’ve heard about that, too.” The Secret Service man was on his feet. “We have to accept the peccadilloes of the people we protect, but we don’t have to like them.” His face was grim. “Really, Miss Jensen. Did you think you were Jack Kennedy’s only little chippy? How stupid are you?”

He locked the door behind him, and this time there was no window.

The ExComm was in an uproar.

The President was trying one last time to persuade the ExComm that the informal message from Khrushchev on Friday trumped the formal proposal of Saturday. Nobody bought it. Even Bundy thought Kennedy was reaching. At this point, they could only accept or reject what was actually on the table. Bundy had warned the President that nobody would believe Khrushchev could be trusted, and Bundy had turned out to be exactly right.

Without the back channel, the Saturday letter was all they had; and the Saturday letter, in the ExComm’s eyes, was cause for war.

“We’re out of options,” said McNamara. “Whatever Khrushchev might have offered informally, he’s obviously changed his mind. Or has there been additional word?”

The question was rhetorical: had there been further communication, Kennedy would have told them as soon as the meeting began.

“There’s no choice any more, Mr. President,” said LeMay. “It’s time to give the order.”

“That was our agreement on Saturday,” said Gwynn, from State: clearly feeling his oats. “Either we have a deal by noon or we go in.”

“And it’s almost ten-thirty,” added Taylor.

The President glanced at Bundy. “Perhaps we could go over the military options,” the national security adviser said, playing for time.

McNamara was exasperated. “We’ve gone over them already.”

“Then please be kind enough to go over them for us again.”

There was grumbling around the table, but the Joint Chiefs duly opened their folders.

“Excuse me,” said Bundy as soon as Taylor got two sentences out. “I noticed some visual aids in the foyer.”

“We decided we don’t need them,” the general snapped.

Bundy’s tone became if anything meeker. “I would consider it a great favor if, this once, you would use the easel and the charts. For clarity’s sake.”

An aide was dispatched to bring in the materials. Another aide appeared an instant later and handed Curtis LeMay a message slip.

The Air Force chief of staff jumped to his feet. “Mr. President, with your permission, I apparently have an urgent call with some bearing on the matter before us.”

Kennedy nodded. LeMay left. The aides needed three minutes to set up the easel for Taylor, who picked up a pointer and launched at once into a lecture about the types of planes and ordnance that would be involved in the attacks. The first wave would disable the surface-to-air batteries, the second and third would both target the missile launch sites …

Five minutes into the presentation, LeMay returned to the Cabinet Room. Rather than going back to his seat, he walked around the table to where Bundy was sitting. Taylor was still at the easel, where the map was now covered by a different transparency, marked “
DAY 3
,” showing what seemed to the national security adviser an overly optimistic vision of the progress that the invading troops could be expected to make.

LeMay leaned close. “Mac, may I have a word?”

“This really isn’t a good time,” Bundy whispered back.

“It’s urgent. As a matter of fact, it might be the key to this whole blasted thing.”

Bundy didn’t hesitate. LeMay was gruff, but he was nobody’s fool, and he wasn’t given to exaggeration. The national security adviser hopped to his feet, excused himself, and followed the general from the room, watched closely by the President both men served.

“Make it fast, please, General,” said Bundy as soon as they were in the anteroom.

LeMay was quite unfazed by the little man’s brusqueness. “I just had the darnedest phone call from General Hellman. He’s a two-star, and a good man. I’ve known Hack Hellman for twenty years. Hack tells me that he’s been approached to set up a telephone call between the President’s national security adviser and one Major Miles Madison, who evidently served under Hack in Korea until they rotated back Stateside eighteen months ago.”

“I don’t really have the time—”

“Make time, son. Because, from what I understand from Hack, Major Madison purports to have information vital to the resolution of this crisis. And if Hack Hellman vouches for him, then he’s on the up-and-up.”

A small light went on. “Wait. Madison, you said?”

“That’s right.”

“How soon can you set it up?”

“Hack is on hold right now. Say the word, and I’ll have you on the secure line with Major Madison in five minutes.”

“Make that three. Because, if he’s calling for the reason I think he’s calling, I imagine we’ll be calling him ‘Colonel’ soon.”

At the safe house, Ziegler took the call. He listened, acknowledged, hung up. Then he turned to Viktor Vaganian.

“That was one of Agent Stilwell’s minions. She’s in the White House, but she’s been arrested. She’s under guard, being held incommunicado, as arranged. The Bureau will have her shortly.”

“And then?”

“And then we trade. Do you have that file for me?”

With a small pang, Viktor slid a few pages across the table, details of
the KGB’s penetration of civilians employed in certain defense plants. The FBI would get some nice arrests, and a diplomat or two would be expelled. A small price to pay in order to keep the missiles in Cuba.

Jack Ziegler smiled savagely. “You know they’ll hang you for this, right?”

“We are a civilized people. They will shoot me in the back of the neck.”

“This is Bundy.”

“Mr. Bundy, my name is Miles Madison. I’m a major in—”

“I know who you are, Major Madison. I understand that you have some information for me.”

A pause. “I take it you haven’t spoken to her, then.”

“To whom, Major?”

“A certain young woman you’ve been searching for. She should have arrived by now.”

“Arrived? Are you saying she’s here?”