The man considered what he had just heard.
“I never thought you’d ever be Mrs Brenckmann, Gretchen,” he assured her so lowly he was almost whispering. “Yale is the only time in my life I get to be tarred with an Ivy League brush and I’m okay with that. I just like you, that’s all. I’d have pretended otherwise, but hey, you only live once.”
Gretchen vented a short breath which might have been a cough or a tiny laugh but only she would know which.
“You like me?”
“Yeah. Shoot me now.”
She released his hand and cuffed his arm.
Gretchen had never done that before; it was precisely the sort of spontaneous gesture which risked an intimacy that they had never previously shared.
Dan turned to look at her.
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “I like you just the way you are.”
Gretchen folded her arms, hugging herself as if she was even colder than she actually was after sitting out on the windy porch of the last hour-and-a-half.
“Do you think it is really as bad as they say it is on the radio?” She asked. Mrs Nordstrom had ventured out onto the porch at intervals complaining that all she could receive on the television in the front parlour was a screen full of angry black and white static. At least the radio still worked. “So many people must be dead; it is,” she sighed, “so terrible…”
Dan shrugged.
“There are over a hundred and eighty million people in this country,” he said. “From what we’ve heard on the radio I’d guess that better than nine out of every ten Americans is still alive. Most of them will be like us, sitting in undamaged houses in undamaged towns and cities. I daresay a lot of people will be waking up this morning hearing the news and wondering what all the fuss is about. Perhaps, it’s the same some places in Russia. Nobody will know for a while.”
“Is the war over?” Gretchen asked.
That was a big question!
“I hope so.”
Chapter 24
Robert Francis ‘Bobby’ Kennedy, the United States Attorney General flopped into the armchair and wearily acknowledged the nods of welcome from the other members of the ‘Kitchen Cabinet’ gathered in the Oval Office.
“Dean is still at the State Department,” the President’s younger brother explained, apologising for the absence of Dean Rusk. “We think the Soviets launched a full scale strike on targets in northern China at the same time they carpet bombed Hokkaido and hit Sendai on Honshu. It’s weird. The Soviets don’t appear to have targeted either Hong Kong or Singapore or any of our bases in the Western Pacific.”
“China?” The President asked his younger brother tersely. Reports had been trickling in all night and none of the ones about Soviet attacks on China had made any kind of sense.
“The Soviets seem to have blitzed Manchuria and targets all along the Mongolian border as far west as Bayunnur, that’s five or six hundred miles from Peking. The best thing the analysts at Langley have come up with is that the Soviets only had one war plan and it included attacking China.”
John McCone, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was expected to join the conference in the next few minutes. He had been called out of the room to receive a detailed briefing on the secure line to Langley. As if on cue he re-entered the Oval Office.
“We think the Chinese saw the Soviets’ increased state of readiness over the last few days,” he explained, settling on the sofa next to McGeorge ‘Mac’ Bundy, the United States National Security Advisor, “and the Soviets mistook the Chinese response for being something it probably wasn’t.” He shrugged. “Maybe the Soviets weren’t as ready to launch as we assumed they were yesterday afternoon, Mister President.”
Jack Kennedy’s face wore the grey ashen hue of a man trapped within a nightmare. He saw that the Director of the CIA had passed two sheets of paper to Bundy.
“Mac was about to update us on the latest damage assessments,” he declared in a voice that was very nearly broken. He had been waiting all night for the flash in the sky above the White House that would mercifully release him from the purgatory of knowing that he had personally unleashed the fiery hounds of thermonuclear death and devastation on his nation’s foes. “What’s the latest, Mac?”
McGeorge Bundy’s high, professorial brow furrowed.
“The Chiefs of Staff are still ‘uncomfortable’ about your decision to indefinitely defer the execution of War Plan Alpha Zero-Two, Mister President,” he reported, as he was duty bound to so do. However, as the minutes ticked by without a further Soviet ICBM launch both men, and everybody else in the Oval Office, was beginning to feel, if not vindicated, then at least a little more ‘relaxed’ about the President’s ninety minute old ‘Executive Order’ to recall all bombers in the air and to unilaterally reduce the war alert status of all United States armed forces from DEFCON1 to DEFCON2. NORAD remained in independent operational command of the air space above the North American continent but all authority to deploy and release nuclear weapons by the Joints Chiefs of Staff and commanders in the field and at sea had been unconditionally rescinded. “The Chiefs of Staff have requested that the Polaris boats and at least one wing of B-52s be placed on DEFCON1 alert…”
“NO!” John Fitzgerald Kennedy snarled angrily. He was about to vent more than a little of his pent up despair, but stopped himself just in time. “No, Mac. The war is over. We won,” he shook his head. “Or perhaps, we all lost. Either way, I will not kick a beaten enemy when he is down. Carry on with the latest situation report please.”
“Yes, Mister President.” The US National Security Advisor took a brief moment to organise his thoughts. “I can confirm that although there was Soviet air activity over Alaska early in the exchange that no Alaskan target has thus far been attacked. Presumably, because the Soviets were preoccupied with targets higher up their priority list.”
He shuffled papers on his lap.
“Canada,” he prefaced briskly. “I told you earlier about the Chilliwack strike. NORAD is now putting this air burst in the two to three megaton range. The Canadians believe there will be at least one hundred thousand casualties. There was also a very large air burst over Picton, that’s in King Edward County, Ontario. We have no idea what the objective of this strike — thought to be in the five to six megaton range — was. There are no casualty figures yet but fortuitously the area is relatively sparsely populated. We have two further reports of large explosions in Alberta. Neither were anywhere near centres of population. Many Soviet bombers were brought down over Canadian air space and several may have jettisoned their weapons before they crashed or turned back. We are sending specialist teams to Canada to assist with the location, inspection and safe decontamination of several potentially radioactive locations.”
Nobody said a word.
“Washington State,” Bundy went on. “It is too soon to speculate about casualty numbers for Seattle. However, Governor Rosellini’s office indicates that a substantial part of the centre of Seattle and the eastern metropolitan area and suburbs of that city have been raised to the ground and that currently, several very large conflagrations are burning out of control in the ruins.”
“Remind me what the population of Seattle is?” Bobby Kennedy asked, dry-mouthed. “Sorry, I mean, was?”