“Maybe that’s exactly what happened. It’s hard to believe that anyone would remain indifferent to such an order that is signed by me.”
“Mister President, the directive was distributed on dozens of networks. It would be impossible for them not to intercept and decipher it. It seems more likely that someone there decided that it was false. Maybe because it went through so many networks, their assessment is that this is a bogus threat. Mister President, even the method of their invasion and advance in East Germany indicates that the insurgency there was just an excuse, a cover story for their attack on us. Their forces haven’t entered any city; they are simply racing to the West German border.”
“Go on, Secretary.”
“They are advancing in three columns. We identified their northern column as the primary force, and we assess that it’s heading for Hamburg. This is one of the largest and most important Western European cities, but what seems to be of special interest to them there is the port. If they occupy the port of Hamburg, they will gain incredible abilities for pushing supplies and materiel to their forces.”
The President listened, deep in thought. He smoothed his hair with his palm and watched the others.
“They will also export from Hamburg port — not just import”, the President said.
Secretary Manning seemed to miss the point that the President was trying to make.
“Excuse me, Mister President, what do you mean?”
“They will do exactly what they did in World War Two. They’ll take apart the entire West German heavy industry, load it onto trains and ships and transfer the plants and production lines to Russia. Okay, this isn’t the time to discuss what they will do after conquering West Germany, when we don’t even know what to do now. Secretary Manning, I understand that they are advancing much more rapidly than we estimated a few hours ago. What are your people saying now? How many hours do we have until they cross the border into West Germany?”
“Between sixteen and eighteen hours, Mister President.”
“Great!” the President said sarcastically. “Maybe by then we’ll have held seven or eight meetings like these, with no direction and purpose.”
Nobody spoke, as the President’s desperation reflected what all the others were feeling.
The door opened and CIA Director George Brown hurried in. The President looked at him, hoping that he was bringing some new information that could lift the heavy atmosphere in the room.
“Well”, the President said in a tone lacking optimism. “Maybe, by chance, you have better news, or even a reason to give us hope?”
“Mister President, I have very substantial news that will clarify the picture, although I’m not sure it will change the situation.”
“Go on, go on”, the President said impatiently.
“Mister President, do you remember that there was a report of a single survivor from the Russian trawler, whom the British captured and transferred to us for interrogation?”
“Of course I do.”
“It turns out that the fisherman that we caught is nothing less than a nuclear fisherman. He’s a Red Army Colonel, born in Kazakhstan, and his name is Nazarbayev.”
President Butler was jotting down the Soviet Colonel’s name on a sheet of paper. The CIA director watched him, waiting to continue.
“Go on, go on”, the President said.
“This Colonel is an explosives expert. He’s a tough guy and he didn’t cooperate until he was told, and believed, that a Soviet submarine had sunk his ship and his comrades, and only after we promised him political asylum. It turns out that aboard the trawler, they had a 152- millimeter self-propelled gun, and this gun fired a nuclear shell with a magnitude of one hundred kilotons.”
“What?” the President interrupted. “What did they hope to gain by that?”
“Their operatives here in Washington got their hands on the training program of our assault nuclear submarines. At the time that they fired the shell, our submarine USS 726, the Ohio, should have been right there, underwater. Their idea was to set off the explosion after the Ohio had passed them and was further away, to make the commander of the Ohio believe that a much larger blast had occurred much farther away, meaning here on United States soil. The trawler was also equipped with electronic gear to block all communications from the submarine. They hoped that the Ohio commander would assume that a nuclear attack had been carried out on American soil and that that was why he couldn’t establish communication with home.
“In their estimation, the submarine commander would have given the order to launch two or three nuclear missiles at predetermined targets in the Soviet Union, in accordance with the submarine’s emergency procedure.
“What happened in fact was that a short time before the submarine was due to reach that area, it received an order to abandon the navigation exercise because of the DEFCON 2 alert, so it headed south. The enemy on the trawler was not aware of this, of course, and they fired the shell when the Ohio was already outside their range.”
“And why would they do that?” the President asked.
“All this lunacy was created by their Minister of Defense, one Marshal Budarenko. Two weeks ago, he appointed a top secret special team, which included six senior experts in different subjects, and the Colonel that we caught was one of them. The Minister of Defense met this team almost daily at some top-secret military intelligence base outside Moscow.”
The room fell into absolute silence. Butler shook his head in disbelief.
“That man is a mental case. He is a lunatic and a loose cannon. Is he really willing to sacrifice millions of his people just for an excuse to invade Western Europe and save the Communist regime in the Soviet Union? I simply find it very hard to believe. This is beyond imagination. This is pure madness by a totally deranged individual”, the President said.
The President watched Secretary of Defense Manning, who seemed utterly shocked.
“Of course”, the President continued,”Party General Secretary Yermolov must not have the slightest idea of what this lunatic Minister is conspiring behind his back. Does he?”
“Of course not, Mister President”, the CIA director replied. “The General Secretary is even certain that we tried to destroy the city of Murmansk. There’s something else, Mister President. The source that we activated, with your approval, confirms unequivocally that General Secretary Yermolov has not an inkling of this whole affair.”
President Butler breathed a huge sigh of relief, which sounded like a whistle.
“I made a big mistake, a rookie’s mistake. I went ahead with my speech and played into the hands of this madman. Had I denied any connection with the blast and said that it was a Russian conspiracy, maybe the Party General Secretary would have started suspecting his Minister of Defense. I certainly made a major blunder with my address to the nation.”
The Secretary of State turned to the President, requesting to speak.
“Mister President, when you made that speech, you didn’t know if the Party General Secretary had any idea of what had really happened in the North Sea. Now the question is different. We know exactly who did what and why. How can it help us stop the tanks that are almost on our doorstep? Mister President, what if we display this Russian Colonel on television, so that the Russians can also see him and listen to what he has to say?”
President Butler took a moment to think before replying to his Secretary of State. The Situation Room was silent as every move and motion of the President was followed tensely by all the participants. They all waited eagerly for his decision. The President leaned forward, set his elbows on the table, and turned to the CIA director.