Stark asked: “Nothing further from Safcek himself?”
“Nothing, sir. He must have been discovered.”
Richter waited as Stark put his hand over the mouthpiece and told the grim news to Robert Randall and Martin Manson. Then he cut back to Richter saying: “I’ll be waiting right here.”
In Peshawar Karl Richter poured a double Scotch, added an ice cube, and sat back, waiting for the remote possibility that the radio would come to life.
The streets around the United Nations were jammed with pickets and the curious long before the Security Council meeting was due to convene. By 5 P.M., extra police details had been brought in to control the swelling masses who materialized from the caverns of the city to promote their own causes. Ambassador Tolypin’s 11 A.M. press conference had already had its desired impact on the American people. Worried families in the eastern time zone rushed through dinner in order to be at the television set when the fateful debate began at 6 P.M. Some network commentators had begun to make a connection between the forced evacuation of Washington and the Soviet intimation of a fatal breach among the world powers. A terrible uneasiness had filtered out to the suburbs and the prairies, to the high-rise apartments and country towns where parents wondered what tomorrow would bring for their children. Some people went into their bomb shelters, dug years earlier, to check stocks of canned foods and survival gear. Other cursed the fact that they had neglected to provide one.
Everywhere, anxious anticipation was an almost tangible presence, for no word had come from the White House about the Soviet allegations. President William Mellon Stark had issued no response. His press secretary, Edwin Rast, continued to declare that Stark would not deign to reply to such gross insinuations. The American people could only wait for the debate to shed light on the menacing dialogue.
Inside the UN the delegates’ lounges were filled with frantic diplomats trying to get concrete answers to their own governments’ frenzied cables. The British representative, Lord Harkness, an elegantly dressed, pinch-faced veteran of countless crises, had cornered the chief American delegate, Ronald Carlson, and was badgering him with less than subtle demands for information. Carlson had been able to parry most of these searching queries so effectively that the British statesman was losing his aplomb.
Carlson’s greatest problem was his own lack of information. His only orders from the White House had been given that morning after Zarov announced his intention to expose the United States. Carlson, a former president of the World Bank, had been sent to the UN by Stark as a reward for his financial support during election campaigns. Unfortunately, Carlson found himself completely outside the mainstream of politics and policy-making in his new post. He was not called into cabinet meetings. He was merely handed directives to carry out. While he and Stark were still on the best of terms personally, Ronald Carlson intended to resign his position and go back to Kansas at the end of the General Assembly session. He had become tired of being an errand boy.
Carlson was as mystified as anyone else and found it difficult to fend off impassioned delegates such as Lord Harkness, whom he had admired for years. Yet he had no choice. Stark had told him to remain mute and evasive, to deny the Soviet claims, whatever form they took, and to stall any Soviet attempts to censure the United States by vote of the Security Council. Ronald Carlson, faithful to his oath of office, had agreed to these conditions and now braced himself to meet the challenge.
Lord Harkness was completely exasperated. “Carlson, I’ve known you a long time and always had excellent feelings toward you. And yet now I find myself disbelieving your words. You’re deliberately hiding something from me, and I resent it.”
“Lord Harkness, I’ve told you the truth. The United States has no designs on the Soviet Union. Stark has already said the pamphlet yesterday was the work of cranks. And you know him better than to suppose he would ever intend to annihilate anyone. What more can I tell you?”
Harkness was not so easily rebuffed. He looked reproachfully at his friend and said: “Why doesn’t Stark go on television and tell the whole world the Reds are playing their dirty rotten game again? His silence only makes people wonder what in God’s name is going on. I must tell you that my government for one is highly nervous over the situation. Stark has told the prime minister that nothing is amiss in the world. We are not children, you know, and you cannot treat us this way.”
Ronald Carlson felt truly pained for Harkness, who stood with his Scotch and water in the middle of the lounge and begged for some morsel of hard information. He put his hand on Harkness’s shoulder.
“I understand your predicament and your prime minister’s sense of outrage. But I have to repeat my earlier remarks. The Soviet machinations are just that, an attempt to put us in a bad light. They’ve been doing that for years and nothing has really changed, has it?”
Harkness shook his head in impatience and abruptly walked away. While Carlson watched him leave, the chief delegate from Japan, Eisaku Ono, confronted him with the same questions. Sighing, Ronald Carlson repeated his defense of the American position.
At the doorway, Ambassadors Zarov and Tolypin were immediately besieged by a flurry of diplomats who asked them the inside story of the pending council meeting. Both maintained grim faces while they urged patience until the actual debate. Zarov added: “Then you will see the extent of the conspiracy.”
Commissioner Herb Markle had been unable to stay in his office. He went to the scene of the pipeline explosion and walked through the two blocks of misery. He saw the firemen digging in the rubble and began to weep. He was noticed by a policeman, who gently patted the distraught man’s shoulder.
Wrenching away, Markle continued his anguished inspection past smoldering cars, until he suddenly turned and went back the way he had come.
At Lafayette Park, he stood glaring across at the windows of the White House. He stayed there for a long time, smoking one cigarette after another. Then he moved swiftly toward the Presidential mansion. When the guard at the West Gate stopped him, Markle identified himself and asked to see Stark.
Unaware of Markle’s previous encounter with Randall, Sam Riordan authorized him to enter.
Stark shook hands warmly with his friend and asked immediately about the awful situation in Anacostia. Slumped in a chair, Herb Markle told him the gruesome details. When the President seemed too preoccupied to pursue it, Markle lost control and shouted: “How in God’s name can you sit there so calmly while the dead are in the morgues because of you? How can you be so callous?”
Stark kept looking at the phone beside him. His thoughts went to Joe Safcek, lost and unaccounted for in the desert, to the Security Council meeting minutes away, to the laser that threatened to burn down the city in five and a half hours. He forced his attention back to Markle.
“Herb, please calm down, I care very much about those people who died today. And I want you to stop tearing yourself into little pieces because you followed my orders. It’s not your fault.”
The phone rang, and Stark grabbed for it.
“NORAD, sir. Nothing yet from the Tashkent area.”
Stark carefully replaced the receiver and, in what had become a nervous mannerism over the last three days, looked at his watch: 5:45. He turned back to his guest.
“As I said, Herb, stop torturing yourself. I’ll explain things soon, and it’ll make some sense, believe me.”
Markle exploded: “Some sense, for Christ’s sake. Can you make sense out of murder and blasted homes? Can you? Well, I can’t, and I won’t accept any of it. I’ll be goddamned if I’ll be saddled with this outrage for the rest of my life.”