“I talked.”
“And?”
“And he’s going to pitch it to his people.”
“Pitch it! He’s going to pitch it!”
“What would you have him do, Carl? They’re civilians. They’re not like you.”
“Shit. When do we get an answer?”
“I don’t know, but you’ll be the second one to know what it is.”
“What if he won’t go?”
“Then, I think Admiral Delecourt will get to use the submersible.”
“Does he know how to use it?”
“I doubt it.”
“You’re probably right, Avery. Okay, look, the Russians are on the way.” Unruh gave him a rundown on the ships steaming toward the site of the crash.
“I don’t believe any of those that you’ve listed are capable, Carl.”
“It’s mainly a show of force in the area, I suppose. We think they’re moving the Sea Lion in from the Barents Sea. We’ll know more on that in a few hours.”
Avery Hampstead rummaged through his mental file drawers, found the submersible, studied it, and said, “The Sea Lion is designed for seventeen thousand feet. They’re going to be late, and they’re going to be short of capability when they get there, Carl.”
“Maybe they’re optimistic? Hell, at least they’re on the move.”
The communications specialist came back and placed a mug of steaming coffee on the table. Hampstead nodded his thanks and loosened his tie.
“There’s another angle, Carl. They may be operating an acoustically controlled ROV from the submersible. That’s a possible approach.”
“Then they can do it?”
“They can find it, maybe. But I don’t know of any of their non-tethered robots that are big enough to do the job if the wreckage is in a tight place.”
“And we’re back to Brande.”
“Yes.”
“And he’s iffy?”
“Brande’s not, but his coterie of experts may be. You can’t blame them, Carl.”
“Yeah. Well, hell, it may all be academic, Avery.”
“In what way?”
“The nuke people from NRC, DIA, and the New Mexico study group have produced a very short report that says, one, meltdown is a certainty, and two, it could occur at practically any time.”
“Jesus. They don’t have a best estimate?”
“They do, but it looks slippery to me, Avery. No one wants to call it a guess, but they don’t want to have their names attached to a bad guess, either. What it says here, that given their projections of the design evolution from the Topaz Two, and given that there was a malfunction in the automatic controls on impact — they think that’s a certainty — the reactor will reach a critical point anywhere from 0100 hours September ten to 0100 hours September eighteen. That’s local time in the impact zone.”
“Oh, damn. Nine days from now.”
“A little over. That’s what they say. And it’s a hell of a broad range, Avery. I don’t know whether to believe them or not.”
“Does the President believe them?”
“Does he have a choice?” Unruh asked.
“All right. I’ll call Brande.”
“Don’t,” Unruh said.
“But I’ve got to.”
“Let’s not influence his decision with unreliable facts,” Unruh said.
Wilson Overton had not fully appreciated the potential reaction to his story until the wire and TV reports began to filter back from the West Coast.
He had spent most of his time, after the special edition hit the street, drinking endless cups of coffee in the city room with his editor, Ned Nelson.
Nelson mentioned a Pulitzer more than once, but Overton did not want to think about it or talk about it, as if either thought or speech might jeopardize his chances.
He was more concerned about what happened next. He had the political beat in the city, but this had gone international. He fretted and ripped increasing numbers of stories from the printer and forced a lighthearted banter with Nelson.
He had tried to run down a guy named Hampstead who worked with oceanographic research at the Department of Commerce, but had been told he was out of town.
Everyone was quickly getting out of town.
At nine-thirty, the AP correspondent out of Seattle reported that ten people were then hospitalized as a result of the mini-riot that had taken place in front of the seamen’s union hall.
Two thousand fishermen in the San Francisco Bay area had surrounded the CIS Consulate. They were making demands, but both demands and responses were somewhat incoherent.
At eight in the morning in Tokyo, the students were beginning to fill the streets. Extra police had been called to duty. Same thing in Seoul. It was going to screw up their balance of riots, Overton thought. The Korean students usually rampaged in the early summer.
The central thread running through all of the reports, Overton thought, was that people were angry and scared, but they did not know where to direct their anger or how to ease their fears.
Get it up! Get it up!
From where? How deep was it? No one seemed to know. Overton did not know.
He wondered if he had overstated his case. The television networks had quoted him, almost word for word.
He was on the verge of self-recrimination when the phone on Nelson’s desk rang. The editor picked it up, listened, spoke, hung up.
“That was the international desk, Will. It’s your story, you run with it.”
“Whoosh,” Overton let his breath go. “I suspect Defense will get involved. Maybe I’ll go out there.”
“No. You go out to Dulles and catch the first flight you can for Honolulu. While you’re on the way, I’ll arrange a charter boat. Call me the minute you’re on the ground in Honolulu, and I’ll tell you what I’ve lined up.”
When the pilot whispered over the intercom that they were passing over Indianapolis, Overton looked out his window and saw the faraway lights, all checkerboarded. Good old middle America.
He wished he were in it, solidly placed and confident.
Instead of heading into the unknown.
The unknown was the fear.
He pulled his notebook from his jacket pocket and jotted a few notes on that theme.
The skies were overcast, a flattened dome of dull concrete gray that stretched infinitely toward every horizon. The air was chilled, not yet absolutely cold, but threatening. There was probably snow in the forecast, Oberstev thought.
He cracked his window open and sniffed the air. It was tangy with salt.
The car moved through the streets quickly, following the other polished black Zil. Around him, the city, the primary city of the Primorsky Territory, had a frontier flavor. There were newer apartment blocks, but they were interspersed with rows of wooden-framed houses. The people on the streets, most of them dressed roughly, ignored the official motorcade as it sped past them. Oberstev envied them their aloofness.
Janos Sodur tried to strike up a conversation, but he was inept at small talk.
“Have you been to Vladivostok before, Colonel?” Oberstev asked.
“No, never.”
“Then you should take advantage of the opportunity to see it now.”
Sodur, sitting in a jump seat, took the hint and craned his neck to watch the small shops passing by. Free enterprise reigned in some of them.
Oberstev looked across the wide seat toward his aide, Alexi Cherbykov. Cherbykov shook his head minutely. He, too, was agitated that Sodur had finagled his way into this trip.
The three of them were in the back of the second Zil. The first Zil contained Aerospace Subcommittee Chairman Yevgeni and Admired Orlov as well as the commander of the Vladivostok naval base, the largest of the CIS Pacific Fleet, who had met them at the airfield.