“Go on,” said Grant.
“They’re bringing Backfires into Kola from their eastern airfields. Maybe a hundred of them.”
“Um-huh.”
“Mister President,” said Hooper, “they don’t aim to hang about. Just as soon as Nemesis zaps us they’ll roll over Europe. We no longer have tactical stuff in Europe and the Brits and French wouldn’t dare use their strategics without us to back them up.”
Bellarmine said, “The temptation must be irresistible. When the asteroid hits us, Europe will be plunged into chaos. The Russians will roll their tanks in faster than decision-making machinery in Europe can assess policy. With us dead and Europe overrun they’ve got the world.”
Cresak said, “Our scenarios assume a two-thousand-second nuclear war. If they’re planning to hit us with nukes what’s the point of starting a mobilization that would take a month to complete? Anyway the dispositions aren’t right for a European incursion. We’ve always looked to a thrust across the plains to the north. Why all the tank movements on the Slovak border?”
“So they’ve had us fooled,” said Hooper.
“The pattern in Europe doesn’t fit an imminent invasion,” Cresak insisted. “Where are the Spetsnaz attacks? Where are the airborne forces? They should be setting up to take Bremen airfield and move towards the Weser and the Rhine. Backfire bombers in Kola make no sense for a European attack.”
“The first and oldest rule of warfare,” said Hooper. “Deception. You’re talking the orthodoxy they put into our heads. The Kola bombers are aimed at us over the polar route. They’re going to finish us off in all the confusion. And with us gone who needs commandos? They don’t need to alert anybody with D-1 incursions. It’s safer to roll over Europe without any softening up.”
“But the Slovak border movements…”
“A lead-up to a flank attack through Bavaria or even a thrust through Frankfurt. Hell, if we’re out of the way they can take Europe any which way they please. Leave soldiering to the soldiers, Cresak.”
“They’re sabre-rattling. What we’re seeing is a defensive reaction to our State Orange,” Cresak insisted. “Nobody’s going to invade anybody.”
What wakened Anton Vanysek was the shaking of his bed.
At first, it sounded as if an unusually heavy lorry was passing below his seventh storey flat. But the rumbling went on and on. He threw back his blankets and opened his window. Bitterly cold air wafted into the room. The street below was empty, but then he saw, between the high-rise flats, dark shapes rumbling on the road about a kilometre away. It was impossible to say what they were in the early morning gloom. He was tempted to go back to his warm bed, but the whole building was vibrating. He quickly dressed, ignoring the sleepy questions from his wife, wrapped up warmly, and ran down the stone stairs.
Trnava was typical of many middle-sized towns in Slovakia. A picturesque old town was surrounded by high-rise flats, white identikit monstrosities built in the days of the communists, whose concrete cladding had long cracked and crumbled. The whole district was connected by a network of cracked and crumbling roads. Interspersing these great rabbit warrens were factories and chemical works whose outputs left strange smells in the air and brought out mysterious rashes in children, nervous complaints in the middle-aged and lung problems in the old.
Anton Vanysek had, for over twenty years, been irregularly paid small sums of money to report on local political activity, gossip, anything at all which might interest his controllers who, he assumed, passed it on to the CIA. Almost always, apart from the heady days of the bloodless revolution, his information was banal, but then, the sums of money were pitifully small.
This morning, however, as he nervously approached the main road which cut through the centre of the town, he was astonished to see that the dark green shapes were tanks. His astonishment turned to fear as he approached closer in the dull light and made out the red stars on their sides.
This information would either earn him a great deal of money or a firing squad.
For the third time in fifty years, Russian tanks were rolling into Slovakia.
The Road to Mexico
In the pale morning light, the hotel looked not so much seedy as tottering. There were a dozen motley guests in the dining room, looking like last night’s collection of stranded travellers; the room smelled of cheap waffles and bacon frying in old fat; but there was something else in the air. Webb joined a little group clustering around newspapers on a table, and looked over shoulders.
The Examiner said
KILLER ROCK THREATENS AMERICA
and followed it up with a lurid and largely fictitious piece about astronomers huddled at secret meetings. Unbelievable words were being put into the mouths of sober colleagues. Only that well-known British expert Phippson, Webb thought, might actually have spoken the words attributed to him. More soberly, the New York Times ran
NEAR-MISS ASTEROID APPROACHING
with the sub-headings
But No Danger, say NASA Scientists
and
Financial Markets Plummet
To ensure the public were not unduly disturbed by false alarms, the orbits of close encounter asteroids were routinely put through a careful refereeing procedure, involving international teams of astronomers, with guidelines for media contact. But there was no mention of this. Had they bypassed the procedure in the name of secrecy? If so, if Nemesis was a secret, how did it get out?
There was something odd about that.
He found a table with a semi-clean cover and asked for bacon, eggs and tea. The waiter, a hunched man with Greek features, came back after some minutes with scrambled eggs and coffee. “Seen the nooz?” he asked.
“Media hype.”
“I reckon. I got shares in Chrysler. Say, you sure you’re the scrambled egg?”
Free Spirit drove Webb back to JFK. The traffic was nose to tail and eventually slowed to walking pace on the approach road to the airport. A group of men and women were parading with hastily constructed placards near the entrance, ignored by the police. A white-haired man with a sandwich-board proclaiming Behold I Come Quickly stepped in front of the car and Free Spirit slammed on the brakes.
“Did you see that, Mister? Did you see that? That’s my problem too,” Free Spirit laughed, clapping his hands.
Within the terminal, chaos ruled. The reassurances of NASA scientists notwithstanding, it seemed that half of New York State had suddenly decided to take a New Year vacation in Europe.
By contrast, the international departure lounge for the flight to Mexico City was a haven of solitude: apparently there had been about two hundred early morning cancellations and a similar number of no-shows. Webb had a coffee and shared the lounge with about twenty families of Hasidic Jews, the men with big beards and broad black hats. Why they were going to Mexico he couldn’t guess. Apart from the Jews and Webb, there was only a scattering of Mexican business types, presumably returning to families back home, and a blonde female wearing a slightly old-fashioned dress with a black shoulder bag. She looked up from her magazine, glanced at him and resumed her reading. Webb took his cue and ignored her.
American Airlines hauled them into a bright sunny sky. They tilted up over Manhattan and the Hudson River and turned south, still climbing. When the plane had levelled out the blonde woman moved across the aisle and sat beside him; they were the only two travelling first class. “Oliver! The hero returns.” Unexpectedly, she kissed him on the cheek. She was still into cheap perfume.