William Stark saw clouds of white vapor drifting across the lawn toward the mansion. In the avenue, hundreds of figures were running about madly, their hands to their eyes, handkerchiefs to their faces. Some were retching. Screams of anguish and terror reached the President’s ears. He groaned: “My God.”
Down below, the television networks were recording the scene. Alex Barnett of CBA News was standing on a bench in Lafayette Park commenting to listeners across the country on the extraordinary spectacle in front of the White House. Around him the battle ebbed and flowed. Barnett was describing the state of the marchers, choking and gasping on the grass. His own eyes were watering badly as the gas trailed across the street toward him. While he stood on tiptoes to get a better view, someone tugged at the cuff of his pants. It was Henry Fuller, his mouth puffed from the blow he had received earlier. Fuller was nauseated not from the gas but from the destruction of his dream. He had dragged himself from the pavement and gone back to the front of the line to restore order. But his pleas had gone unheeded. Most of the protesters had been swayed by the ugly implications of the Stark directive. The men who had first passed them out had disappeared. Their handiwork had been examined and accepted as the truth or at least as sufficiently alarming to need further explanation by the Administration. Henry Fuller, tears filling his eyes, had been cast aside.
Fuller had gone to a bench in the park and watched helplessly. When the gas came, he put a handkerchief to his face and retreated to the back edge of the green. Then he saw Barnett recording the event for millions. Fuller ran to him instinctively and grabbed at his leg for attention. Barnett looked down and asked: “Were you gassed by the police, young man?”
Fuller nodded but hastened to explain: “I’m a group leader in the demonstration. This morning we began the march, intending only to file by the White House and offer a silent protest against the Stratton-Seligsohn bill.”
“And the police beat you up and gassed you?”
“No, well, yes. They gassed me, but you should know what brought it about in the first place.” Fuller was straggling to be intelligible through his broken lips. The camera focused on them as the lawyer betrayed himself to the public gaze. “My name is Henry Fuller. I work for a government organization and came here today not to condemn my country but to condemn a bill which will lead to destruction of all freedoms.”
Fuller was beginning to annoy Barnett, who wanted to concentrate on the frenzy eddying around them. He interrupted to ask, “Yes, and the Administration wouldn’t allow a peaceful protest?”
“No, you don’t understand. Somehow some radicals infiltrated us and passed out pamphlets…”
“Haven’t you seen it?” A slim woman standing nearby, her eyes bloodshot and blinking, offered Barnett the handbill. Alex Barnett read it aloud to the entire network while the camera closed in on a montage of clubs crashing against skulls and men and women lying in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue, their heads seeping blood onto the roadway. When Barnett finished, he turned to the camera and said: “This is Alexander Barnett, reporting from Washington, where events of the past two days suggest that something cataclysmic is about to happen.”
Six giant floodlights pinned the khaki-colored helicopter in their glare. Colonel Joe Safcek waited while his three companions boarded the craft. Luba, Peter, and Boris wore the uniforms of Soviet Army lieutenants. Their black boots were shiny with wax. Red epaulets decorated their shoulders. Safcek, impersonating a Colonel Dmitri Adzubei, put out his hand to Karl Richter.
“Karl, your briefings were superb. If we missed anything, it’s our fault.”
Richter’s voice was low, controlled because he did not trust it. “Joe, use the radio when you can. We’ll be listening in every minute.”
Richter was fumbling for a final word. “And we’ll be thinking of you. Good luck, Colonel.”
Richter released his hand from Safcek’s, and the colonel smiled and ran up the steps into the big Chinook helicopter. The door closed, and the blades whirred. Richter put his hands to his eyes to keep out the dust as the chopper leaped into the sky and disappeared to the north, its red lights blinking reassuringly.
Karl Richter watched it out of sight and suddenly the floodlights went off, and he was all alone on the runway.
Three hundred yards away, an American intelligence agent noticed a Pakistani worker at the base run furtively through the shadows to a car in the parking lot. The Pakistani got in quickly and drove to the main gate, where he showed identification and sped off toward Peshawar.
The intelligence agent eased his own car onto the road and followed the worker through the darkness. As the two cars entered the downtown area, the Pakistani slowed and parked across from a movie theater. The streets were crowded. In the crush of bodies, the agent nearly lost the Pakistani as he opened the car door and crossed the street. Then the agent saw a man standing just inside the theater entrance, staring at glossy photographs of coming attractions. The man wore European clothes. His trousers were quite baggy. The Pakistani reached him and spoke a few words. The man nodded and walked down the sidewalk. The Pakistani followed ten paces back. At the intersection the Westerner crossed and reached the other side. The Pakistani stepped out into the road.
The American agent shifted into first and pulled out sharply, twenty-five feet from the worker. He gunned the motor into second and bore down upon the startled man, who turned toward him in sudden terror. The agent closed his eyes as he hit the Pakistani squarely. An anguished scream lifted into the night, and the agent heard the sickening thud as the body bounced under his car all the way to the rear. He gripped the wheel tightly and raced around a corner. Behind him, the broken body lay mute.
The Westerner lit a small cigarette with trembling hands and puffed deeply on it while an ambulance siren moaned nearby. Then he strolled away from the murder scene.
The chopper pilot took the large craft directly north into the mountains. Beside him, a radar operator stared intently at the blue scope recording the topography. The pilot was nervous, terribly afraid of the forbidding land thrusting up at them in the stygian night. He tried to pierce the gloom with his eyes. The radar man, hypnotized by the light before him, wiped streaks of perspiration onto his fatigues.
Five feet to the rear, Joe Safcek huddled with his team in contemplative silence. The roar of the twin jet motors prevented him from speaking clearly to the Russians, who had curled up in the cramped space. Luba had her eyes closed. Pete and Boris strained ahead watching the pilot for any sign of trouble. Safcek lit a Camel and studied its ruby glow. He thought of Martha and Tommy and the neat house on the side street at Bragg. The colonel wondered what they were doing at that moment.
Like most American women, Martha Safcek was sitting in front of her television. She was aghast at the rioting taking place in Washington. Coverage had shifted from the White House briefly to the Pentagon, where tear gas and \ rifle shots created a scene now all too familiar to viewers.