Fail Safe (29 page)

It took only a few seconds for the White House switchboard to make the phone connections. When the President spoke, the War Room in Omaha and the Big Board room in the Pentagon had been added to the conference line. In those two rooms the President's voice came over the loudspeaker system.

"Gentlemen, I have had to make a terrible decision," the President said. "It is the hardest I have ever made. I have not asked your advice because this is not a decision on which one needs or can use advice. I want the responsibility to be entirely mine."

General Bogan listened to the words with his body tensed. He knew fatigue in every bone, but he also knew that in the next moment he might have to direct the attack of hundreds of SAC bombers against the Soviet Union. He felt a basic and immense confusion. He could not conceive of how general war could be avoided. Yet in all of the hundreds of conferences he had attended no situation just like this one had ever been anticipated. He felt crippled, oddly disabled.

In the Pentagon Groteschele whispered to Stark as the President paused.

"He's going to send in a full strike," Groteschele said. "He has to. There is nothing else he can do."

Stark looked at Groteschele and then he licked his

lips, cleared his throat. Groteschele realized that Stark was frightened. The fact amazed him. It also started a tiny root of fear twitching in Groteschele. Suddenly it was no longer an elegant and logical game. Real men in real bombers and real missiles carrying real thermonuclear warheads would soon be in motion. Their targets would be millions of unprotected people. Long ago Groteschele had stopped thinking of war in terms of flesh and blood and death and wounds. He thought in terms of neat strategies and impeccable rules. Now, quite suddenly, in a physical way, he understood what might happen. His mind resisted, but his body trembled with a series of small shocks.

"Two of the Vindicators will, apparently, get through to Moscow and will deliver four 20-megaton bombs on that city," the President said. "Moscow has not been alerted. Premier Khrushchev estimates that it would cause panic and would not save lives in any case. When the bombs fall on Moscow we will know that fact be-.

cause our Ambassador's phone will give off a distinctive

sound as it is burned by the explosion."

The President paused. Buck felt that he should look away, but he could not. The President was about to outline the most sweeping and incredible decision that any man had ever made, and it was a decision which he hated. But he was boxed in, cornered by some accident of history, trapped by some combination of mechanical errors not even fully understood.

"I have attempted to persuade Premier Khrushchev that this was a mistake, a tragic error," the President said. "I have made available to him all of the classified information which his defensive forces required. Premier Khrushchev has not launched his retaliatory forces but he will unless he receives some dramatic evidence of our sincerity. The scales must be balanced-

and right away. The discussion we had is not important. The result is. If Moscow is bombed by our bombers, I must order a group of Vindicator bombers now circling over New York to deliver four 20-megaton bombs on that city. That is all, gentlemen."

Congressman Raskob was the first person at Omaha to respond. For a long moment he was as rigidly uncomprehending as the rest of the men in the room. Like them he stared at the loudspeakers, not sure that he had heard correctly. Then Raskob got to his feet and walked over to General Bogan. He still had the walk like La Guardia, but the cockiness had gone.

"He can't do it, General," Raskob said in a quiet voice. His eyes were blank, like something painted on marble. "You can stop him. Even if they call it mutiny you can stop him." He paused and seemed to be talking to himself. "Emma, the kids, the house, all gone. The whole 46th Congressional District. All gone." Raskob's voice took on a lilting, persuasive, hectoring tone. It was the voice he used in the House. "Congress will support you to the hilt, General. You will go down as the most famous patriot of all time."

General Bogan sensed that by some peculiar psychological quirk the shock had simply turned Raskob's inner thoughts into words. He was talking to save his sanity.

"I'm sorry, Congressman Raskob," General Bogan said. "My God, I'm sorryl I know tour family lives in New York. But eighty or ninety or a hundred million lives in America and as many more in Russia are at stake, Congressman Raskob," and General Bogan realized he was using the title deliberately to bring Raskob back to reality. "Congressman Raskob, think of that. And even if I did not understand his decision, I would not disobey the President."

Raskob's eyes came back to life and the look in them

made General Bogan turn away. It was a look of pure

desolation.

"I can understand the decision if I forget it's my home, if I just think of politics. The power balance must be reestablished or the world will explode-I can see that. An eye for an eye, a city for a city. It is the way justice works when it rests on power. We sacrifice a city to save the nation," Raskob said and his voice was gentle and rationaL "But my city-my home-my family-mine--mine-" Raskob lowered his head to the table. Both hands were palm up and he buried his face in them. It was a brief reversion to a gesture of sorrow as old as man himselL But Raskob raised his head quickly. His face was composed. "It must be done," he said simply. "An eye for an eye. There should be some other way, but there isn't." His eyes, that had been marble-dead a moment before, were filling with tears, but his voice was controlled. "Politics is filled with hard decisions, but this is the hardest one ever made.

And it is correct."

"I think it is correct, sir," General Bogan said.

"General, would there be time for me to fly to New York?" Raskob said. "I would like to be with my family."

"No, sir, there would not be time," General Bogan said. "And even if there were I would not allow you to leave this room until the situation was resolved."

Raskob nodded understanding. He walked over and sat down at a desk.

"The machines and the men and the decisions got out of phase," Knapp told General Bogan. "We knew that something like this could happen in theory, but no one wanted to take it past that. No one knew how to turn it into diplomatic terms without seeming to be dealing from weakness."

General Bogan listened, but aside from a sense of

respect for Knapp, he did not follow Knapp's words. He was thinking of Raskob.

He sensed somehow the disbelief that must be gripping Raskob. It was almost beyond grasping that all of the skyscrapers, the scores of office buildings, the tenements, the housing developments, the bridges, and the millions of people would, in a few minutes, be gone. It would be a place of fire, dust, great winds, and a landscape of black mounds of melted steel, carbonized flesh.

Would Raskob ever go back to New York, General Bogan wondered? For no apparent reason he was sure that Raskob would. Not out of morbidity, but out of curiosity as to what the ruins would look like. And out of love for what had been. The ancient image of the Wandering Jew came to Bogan's mind and under it a kind of caption: politician without a constituency.

The General shook his head to clear it of another man's sorrow, only to find that it was his own.

In the Pentagon the heads swung toward Swenson when the President had finished speaking. Most of the people around the table knew that Swenson's family lived in New York and that the headquarters of his business was also located there. Swenson's face did not change expression.

"Are there any papers or documents in New York which are absolutely essential to the running of the United States?" Swenson asked. "And would there be time to get them out of New York, General Stark?"

"No-no, sir, there would not be time," Stark said. He was having trouble with his voice. "There are a nuniber of irreplaceable documents in New York, but none of them are absolutely crucial for the running of the country. Of course, the records of a large number of private companies-"

"They will be able to rebuild without those papers,"

Swenson interrupted. He looked sharply around the table for signs of revolt, cracking nerve, a break in the diain. What he saw he found reassuring.

Because time must be passed and the group might be called upon for further decisions, Swenson forced a discussion of steps that would be taken by companies to reconstruct the records that would be destroyed in New York. The conversation was bizarre. It was led by a man whose entire family might be burnt to death in a very few minutes and carried on by men who had not the slightest interest in the subject matter. But Swenson forced them to it, snapped roughly at the CIA man once, caught Stark in an error in logic.

Groteschele when he had heard the President's words thought first of his family, but only briefly. Chiefly he thought of them because he had always heard that in emergencies men thought of their families. In Scarsdale they would probably escape the effects of the fireball and direct blast. If they survived that they would be able to go to the bomb shelter which Groteschele had bad built in their back yard.

Then, having done his duty toward family, Groteschele thought of his future. If both Moscow and New York were destroyed it would be the end of his present career. After such a catastrophe, triggered by an error which no one could identify, the world would not tolerate further discussion and preparation for nuclear war. Surely the great powers would disarm to a point below the level where such an accident could be repeated.

For a moment he felt a pang of theoretical regret. He really would have liked to see the thermonuclear war fought out along the lines which he had debated, expounded, and contemplated. It was not true, he told

himself, that one fears death more than anything. One might be willing to die to see one's ideas proven.

Then Groteschele swung his attention to what his future work would be. If there were drastic cutbacks in military expenditures many businesses would be seriously affected; some of them would even be ruined. A man who understood government and big political movements could make a comfortable living advising the threatened industries. It was a sound idea, and Groteschele tucked it away in his mind with a sense of reassurance.

He threw himself into the discussion about the reconstruction of records with zest. Swenson eyed him carefully and guessed almost exactly what had gone through Groteschele's mind.

"Mr. Secretary, will there be any effort to warn the people in New York about the bombs?" Wilcox said.

Swenson looked sharply at Wilcox. When he spoke his voice was cold.

"That is the President's decision, Wilcox," Swenson said. "I assume he has discussed it with Premier Khrushchev and taken whatever action he considers appropriate."

Stark looked at the Big Board. At one side of it there was a line of buttons, all of them glowing green. One of those buttons would have turned red if an air-raid alarm had been signaled or the Civilian Defense agencies had been alerted. Stark knew that Swenson also knew that, but that Wilcox probably did not.

"A lot of lives could be saved if people had even a few moments to take cover," Wilcox said stubbornly. He was not a man who frightened easily. His voice was controlled and Swenson knew that he had nothing to fear on the score of Wilcox becoming hysterical. But the mood of the room was becoming what Swenson had

anticipated but not found a few minutes before-that of an unbelievable tension, an eerie overcontrol.

Wilcox reached in his brief case and took out that day's copy of The New York Times. He threw it on the table so that it slid to a stop in front of Swenson. Squarely in the center of the front page was a picture of the President's wife. She was in New York for the opening of a new art center.

Everyone at the table except Swenson stared rigidly at the picture. The President's wife was a beautiful woman who had captured the imagination of the American public as few other women in public life before her. With a simple elegance, she did a great many things: painted, dedicated children's hospitals, wore handsome clothes, entertained the great and the powerful, traveled around the world representing her husband, and cared for her children.

Swenson looked sharply at Wilcox, then at the other men around the table. He had read a great deal about how people behaved under stress. One thing emerged from the studies: a group could stand a very high level of tension, of terror even, if they were certain that everyone in the group was equally exposed. Allow even the suggestion of preferential treatment and a composed group would disintegrate into a chaotic melee of desperate individuals.

Was Wilcox trying to suggest that the President's wife would or should receive some sort of preferential treatment? Even officers as magnificently trained as those gathered in this room could be shattered if they thought that the President might be calling New York• to get his wife out of the city.

"T don't quite understand you, Wilcox," Swenson said. "Make yourself clear and quickly."

Wilcox's finger went past the picture of the Presi

dent's wife and pointed at a story in the left-hand column of the Times. "civiu*i.i DEFENSE CHIEF STATES SURVIVAL RATE WOULD GO UP GEOMETRICALLY WITH TIME OF wARNING." It was an article in which the Civilian Defense Director had issued a reassuring statement that with a few hours warning casualties in an all-out war could be cut drastically.

Swenson realized that Wilcox had not even considered the fate of the President's wife. It had never occurred to him that the President would do such a thing as give prior warning to his own family.

Groteschele, Stark, and the CIA man all laughed simultaneously. It was a short, mirthless but relieving laugh. Swenson looked at them and smiled. Wilcox looked at the others in astonishment, then growing irritation.

"On very short notice an alert to a big city would probably do more harm than good," Swenson said. "A couple of hours and people can be dispersed and moved. But with a couple of minutes warning all you would do is produce an enormous amount of panic, crowding of the streets, a frantic searching of parents for children, and the rest. Statistically, more people are in protected spots just before the alarm than they are right after it."