The unit, directly responsible to the Prime Minister, had been formed only two weeks previously. Staffed largely by War Office personnel, with a few communications specialists such as Symington recruited from the Air Ministry and industry, its job was to act as an intelligence section handling and sorting all incoming information, and also to serve as the executive agency of the Combined Chiefs of Staff and the Home Office. Its headquarters were situated in the old Admiralty buildings in Whitehall, a rambling network of stately boardrooms and tiny offices in the underground bunkers deep below Horseguards Parade. Here Symington spent most of the day and night, only getting back to his wife-who was expecting her baby within a fortnight at the outside-usually after she was asleep. Along with the wives and families of the other COE personnel, she was housed in the Park Lane Hotel, which had been taken over by the government. Symington saw her daily, and as one of the few employees not resident at the Admiralty he was able to verify personally the reports he spent all day preparing.
TOKYO: 174 mph. 99% of the city down. Explosive fires from
Mitsubashi steelworks spreading over western suburbs.
Casualties estimated at 15,000. Food and water adequate for
three days. Government action confined to police patrols.
ROME: 176 mph. Municipal and office buildings still intact,
but Vatican roofless, dome of St. Peter's destroyed.
Casualties: 2,000. Suburbs largely derelict. Refugees from
rural areas flooding into city, catacombs requisitioned
by government for relief and dormitories.
NEW YORK: 175 mph. All skyscrapers in Manhattan windowless and
abandoned. TV aerial and tower of Empire State Building down.
Statue of Liberty minus head and torch. Torrential seas
breaking inshore as far as Central Park. City at standstill.
Casualties: 500.
VENICE: 176 mph. City abandoned. Casualties: 2,000. Heavy seas
have demolished Grand Canal palazzos. St. Mark's Square
under water, campanile down. All inhabitants on mainland.
ARCHANGEL: 68 mph. No casualties. Intact. Airfield and
harbor closed.
CAPE TOWN: 74 mph. 4 casualties. Intact.
SINGAPORE: 178 mph. City abandoned. Government control
nonexistent. Casualties: 25,000.
Simon Marshall read carefully through the reports, chewed his lip for a moment and then gave them to Deborah to file.
"Not so good, but not so bad either. Tokyo and Singapore, of course, are gone, but one can't expect those cardboard jungles to stand up to winds above hurricane force. Pity about Venice."
A large powerful man of fifty, with a tough handsome face, strong arms and shoulders, Marshall filled the big office, sitting massively at his desk like an intelligent bear. He had built up COE in little more than two weeks, hiring and firing the necessary personnel single-handed, organizing a world-wide coverage of reporters, seizing the services of top meteorological, communications and electronics experts. COE now was one of the Western Hemisphere 's key nerve centers, keeping the Combined Chiefs of Staffs and the government as well informed as they could be.
"Get home all right last night?" he asked Deborah.
"Yes, thanks." She glanced at her wrist watch. It was 10:57, three minutes before Marshall was to give his daily report to the Combined Chiefs, but he had already mastered the entire intelligence picture, was completely relaxed.
As the minute hand of the clock moved on to 10:59, Marshall stood up and left his desk. The meeting took place in the cabinet room at the end of the corridor. As Deborah picked up Marshall 's briefcase, he took it from her with a smile, his hand pressing over hers as he held the handle. The other hand touched her waist, pushed her gently toward the door.
"Time for our tête a tête," he said. "Let's see if we can give them something today to keep them happy."
The other members of the COE cabinet were taking their seats as they entered. There were five members, who reported to the Prime Minister through Sir Charles Gort, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. A trim neat figure in pin-striped trousers and dark jacket, he was a professional civil servant, quiet but firmly spoken, never appearing to volunteer an opinion of his own but adept at reconciling contrary viewpoints.
He waited for the others to settle down, and then turned to Dr. Lovatt Dickinson, Director of the Meteorological Office, a sandyhaired Scot in a brown tweed suit, who sat on his left.
"Doctor, perhaps you'd be good enough to let us have the latest news on the weather front."
Dickinson sat forward, reading from a pad of blue Meteorological Office tabular memos.
"Well, Sir Charles, I can't say that I've anything very hopeful to report. The wind speed is now 175 miles per hour, an increase of 4.89 miles per hour over the speed recorded at 10 A.M. yesterday, maintaining the average daily increase of five miles per hour that we've seen over the last three weeks. The humidity shows a slight increase, to be accounted for by the passage of these enormous air volumes over the disturbed ocean surfaces. We've done our best to make high-altitude observations, but you'll appreciate that launching a balloon in this wind, let alone keeping track of it, is well nigh impossible. However, the weather ship _Northern Survey_ off the coast of Greenland, where the wind speed is down to a mere 85 mph, has reported data indicating, as one would expect, that the velocity of the global air stream declines with decreasing density, and that at 45,000 feet the air speed is approximately 45 mph at the equator and 30 mph over this latitude."
Dickinson momentarily lost his sequence, and while he shuffled the memos Gort cut in smoothly.
"Thank you, Doctor. But boiling it all down, what prospects are there of the wind system's actually subsiding?"
Dickinson shook his head dourly. "I'd like to be optimistic, Sir Charles, but I've every suspicion that it's got some way to go yet before it spends itself. We're witnessing a meteorological phenomenon of unprecedented magnitude, a global cyclone accelerating at a uniform rate, exhibiting all the signs distinguishing highly stable aerodynamic systems. The wind mass now has tremendous momentum, and the inertial forces alone will prevent a sudden abatement.
"Theoretically there are no reasons why it should not continue to revolve at high speeds indefinitely, and become the prevailing planetary system similar to the revolving clouds of gas that produce the rings of Saturn. To date the weather systems on this planet have always been dictated by the oceanic drifts, but it's obvious now that far stronger influences are at work. Exactly what, any of you are free to speculate.
"Recently our monitors have detected unusually high levels of cosmic radiation. All electromagnetic wave forms have mass-perhaps a vast tangential stream of cosmic radiation exploded from the sun during the solar eclipse a month ago, struck the earth on one exposed hemisphere, and its gravitational drag might have set in motion the huge cyclone revolving round the earth's axis at this moment.
Dickinson looked around the table and smiled somberly. "Or again, maybe it's the deliberate act of an outraged Providence, determined to sweep man and his pestilence from the surface of this once green earth. Who can say?"
Gort pursed his lips, eying Dickinson with dry amusement. "Well, let's sincerely hope not, Doctor. We simply haven't got a big enough budget for that sort of emergency. Summing up, then, it looks as if we were optimistic a week ago when we assumed, quite naturally, that the wind would exhaust itself once it reached hurricane force. We can expect it to continue, if not indefinitely, at least for a considerable period, perhaps another month. Could we now have a report of the present position as assessed by the intelligence section?"