Five hundred yards across the compound, Anatoly Serkin was in the laboratory talking to a bearded technician, who was standing in front of a display case containing samples of chemical solvents and by-products of research experiments. Serkin nodded absently as the man asked if the laser was ready for firing. He was searching the rows of bottles and vials, looking for a special object. As the technician watched curiously, Serkin opened the glass door and picked out a sample of colorless liquid.
“What can you possibly want that tritium for, Professor?”
Serkin pocketed the bottle, started to walk away, then stopped.
“What did you say? I’m sorry, I’m so preoccupied with everything I didn’t hear you.”
“I said, what on earth do you want with that tritium?”
“Oh.” Serkin thought an instant. “I plan to do some experiments with it when things settle down around here. Just a silly idea I’ve been playing with.”
Serkin waved hesitantly to the man and rushed out of the room. The technician shook his head and returned to his own work.
In his office, Colonel Lavrenti Kapitsa of the Soviet secret police had taken off his boots to rest his feet. On duty since word had come to him of the capture of the American intruders, Kapitsa had been dividing his time between interrogating the remarkable Green Beret officer and supervising the search for the remaining plastique charges Safcek insisted he had carried with him. The imminent laser firing was less a cause for anxiety to the KGB officer than the presence of Bakunin. Though immensely pleased that his security staff had foiled the destruction of the laser, Kapitsa could not rest easy while the explosives were still at large.
More important, Bakunin’s prodding and Kapitsa’s own instincts warned him that Safcek was keeping something from him, that the American was hiding an important detail of his mission.
His feet propped up on his sofa, Kapitsa hefted the prized Colt .45 that Safcek had surrendered and was surprised at its weight in the butt. Noticing the black button on the side, the colonel suddenly got up and went to a wall bookcase. He brought down a thin red volume, the International Handgun Register, and leafed quickly to a picture of the Colt .45. It had no button on the butt.
Kapitsa pushed his thumb against the lever on the bottom of the butt and tried to move the clip out, but it did not budge. He tried again, but it failed to give.
The colonel balanced the gun once more in his hand and then slowly, carefully, laid it on the table and picked up the phone.
“Get me Bruk.”
Kapitsa’s hand shook as he lit a cigarette.
“Bruk, come to my office quickly and bring a scanner with you.”
The colonel hung up and blew a huge cloud of smoke across the desk. He sat down heavily on the sofa and stared hypnotically at his trophy lying on his desk.
When Bruk arrived breathless, Kapitsa jumped up and motioned at the pistol. “Run your gadget over this.”
The scientist took a pocket-sized implement from his smock, pressed a switch on it and slowly passed it over the gun. Kapitsa sucked in his breath as the small screen on top of the scanner suddenly lit up, revealing the outlines of a small sphere connected by wires to a tiny cylindrical object. The scientist was subdued. “It is some form of explosive device; that much is certain. Where did you get it?”
“Never mind that. What kind of bomb is it? How powerful?”
Bruk asked Kapista to wait a moment while he got another instrument. When the scientist returned, he had a Geiger counter, which he held over the pistol. The needle jumped to the limit of the radioactivity-detection gauge. Bruk backed away swiftly, colliding with the startled Kapitsa.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, Bruk?”
“Colonel, you are standing in front of an atomic bomb.”
Twelve hundred feet beneath the crest of the Maryland mountain, the President of the United States had heard about Marshal Moskanko’s cable to Serkin. The giant radar installation on the northern coast of Turkey had picked the sentences out of the air and translated the code in one minute and twenty-five seconds. By phone, Stark had absorbed the dreadful news that the Soviet Union was evidently determined to incinerate Los Angeles. Utterly defenseless, it would substitute for Washington, and Stark had no time left to evacuate the new target. Eight million people would die in the next half hour, and he could prevent it only by surrender. Even in surrender the President wondered whether Los Angeles might be annihilated for effect.
He was in a final meeting with his cabinet, most of whom were still trying to cope with the shocking story the Secretary of State, Martin Manson, had just revealed to them. Each had retreated into his own world, thinking of families supposedly spending the night in Virginia or Maryland as part of the general evacuation from title capital. Some had already recovered enough to grapple with the awesome decision to fight or surrender, and, when Stark asked for their views, the room erupted into a babel of divergent opinions. Stark tried to sort out voices but finally threw his hands up and shouted:
“Gentlemen, hold it down. I don’t have any time left to seek all your opinions and frankly I want to apologize for not letting you in on this earlier. But I had my reason, and it was simple. The fewer that knew about this, the better. Newspapermen would have been after you. If they saw cabinet sessions late at night, the word would have gotten out quickly, and I’d have had more trouble answering them than trying to figure out this horrible situation.
“At any rate, I’m glad you’re with me now for the final decision, and I want you to participate in it. Secretary Manson has fully explained my choices. Now with this latest word on Los Angeles, I have precious few minutes to act. We must either send in the SR-71 and notify the Russians as to our intention, or we must surrender. I will not send in hundreds of missiles. Given this insane situation, the single plane General Roarke suggested is a reasonable alternative at this moment. There is little doubt it will get over the target. The only question left then will be the Soviet response. And, as I said, I will tell them by hot line the plane is all we will send against them. If they still choose to fight and launch their missiles against us, the decision is theirs and not mine. But their response could bring death to our civilization.”
Propelled by the emergency before him, Stark was speaking hurriedly. His face was calm, his voice deep and confident. He had come out of his bedroom determined to move firmly toward a resolution of the crisis. He was satisfied he had done all he could to defuse the situation in the past days. Now his options were running out.
“I am going to ask you to vote with me on this issue. Please mark the white slips of paper before you with the word yes or no. You need not sign your name. A yes will signify your willingness to use the atomic bomber. A no would express your decision to capitulate and avoid nuclear war. I have no other reasonable alternatives to offer you.”
Like schoolboys, they glanced furtively at one another and cupped a hand over the word they wrote down. Each folded his paper in two, sometimes three sections before handing it to General Roarke, who walked back and forth collecting the votes. Roarke brought them to Stark, who sat expressionless at the head of the table. He read the first one: “Yes,” then on to another “Yes”; “Yes”; the fourth one was called out: “No,” and General Roarke stared wildly down the ranks of civilians, who ignored him.
Stark now had two piles in front of him. The sixth and seventh both called upon him to surrender, and the atmosphere in the room was heavy with unconcealed tension. Robert Randall knew what he wanted to do. Sam Riordan knew too, but the President had surprised them by asking for this vote, and they were not sure what he had decided. The eleventh vote was for attack, and Stark, betraying no emotion, placed it on the pile to his right. He read the last three aloud, and Randall who had counted them silently figured it as eleven for fighting and three for quiting. He glanced nervously at the President, who checked the clock on the wall — it read 10:32 P.M. Stark pushed all the papers together, and rose briskly from his seat.