“We’ve got to try, Father.”
He sighed, then got out of the car and opened the trunk. He brought out a small suitcase, opened it on the front seat. “These are clerics’ suits. Get into the darned things and God go with you.”
I am not sure how convincing we were as priests, but the collars and jackets certainly changed our attitudes. To cops we would now seem a lot more confident, a lot more normal.
My black suit fit well. Jim’s was a bit too short. “Well now, Fathers,” Father Dougherty said, “you look like a couple of rascals if ever I saw them.” He showed us the priestly blessing. “People will ask for it, so be ready to give it. God will forgive you for this little impersonation, since it’s in a good cause,” he said. Then he drove us to Union Station and blessed us himself. “Take my advice and buy your tickets on the White Zone trains.” He laughed. “I sound like a broken record, I know. But please. For your own sakes.”
We thanked him and said good-bye.
There was an atmosphere of subdued intensity in Union Station. Along one wall of the waiting room, a high cyclone fence enclosed a makeshift holding area. In it, the morning’s suspects sat on benches, most of them going through their purses and wallets before they appeared before the examiners to verify their right to be in California. These were people who had gotten through the P.O.E. nets, only to be tripped up just when they must have thought they were free.
It does not take long for such scenes to seem normal.
We bought tickets on the Coast Daylight, which was leaving for Oakland in thirty minutes, and sat ourselves down in the Green Zone waiting area with our tickets showing from our top pockets, like everybody else. The economy sections of the train were already full, so we were forced to buy First Class Ultras, which are four times as expensive as normal coach seats. We consoled ourselves with the thought that a police spot check of two priests in the VIP cars was unlikely.
Documents from the Acting Presidency
I believe we must adjourn this meeting to some other place.
The federal government has been in transit since Warday.
Though diminished in size, it is still a complex institution. Because the current President has not been legitimized by the ballot, he considers himself more a caretaker than a leader.
For example, he would not grant me an interview on the premise that it would not be in keeping with his “custodial” role, as he described it. Acting President White is in office simply because he was vacationing at Key Largo on Warday, and had the good sense to stay there for a month rather than attempting to return to Washington. He was Undersecretary of the Treasury, and as such was the highest federal official to both survive the war and agree to serve as President.
I have collected here a sampling of the sort of documents that might cross the President’s desk on a given day. They reflect, more than anything, a government trying to grapple with what happened to it, and to identify the direction of the future.
There was resistance to my getting these documents. Even some recently appointed federal officials are nervous that there will eventually be trials. I think not. I suspect that the people are beyond placing the details of blame.
When I found resistance to my requests, I reminded my contacts that the government has a long tradition of disclosure. The present bureaucracy is very concerned with traditions, right down to the painting of the few government cars with the exact L.A. motor-pool designations they would have had before the war, and the meticulous use of the old bureaucratic forms for every functional detail.
These three documents are about the one effect of Warday that is hardest to grapple with—in a way, the most consistently surprising effect: radioactivity.
It is what worries the acting President the most.
TO: CHARLES F. DURRELL, JR.
Assistant to the President for Emergency War Affairs
FROM: Winston Sajid
Chairman, Committee on Long-Term Effects
National Security Agency
DATE: 30 March 1992
SUBJ: 12th Report on Atmospheric Effects
Concurrent studies by U.S. and United Kingdom task forces suggest a continuing deterioration of stratospheric conditions.
Specifically, there has been an observed depletion or thinning of the ozone layer of the upper atmosphere. Studies conducted in the summer of 1988 have been used as a baseline measure. A full report on all aspects of atmospheric deterioration is complex, but for purposes of summary it can be reported that an overall depletion of approximately 14 percent has occurred in four years.
It must be emphasized that while a further depletion might be expected in future years, it is not possible at this time to project a statistical trend with any certitude. Such a trend is difficult to predict because (1) little data were collected for approximately 18 months following the war, until atmospheric studies were resumed by the U.K. and other Western European nations; and (2) such a dramatic change in ozone levels is unprecedented and existing mathematical models are not sophisticated enough to consider all the variables.
Data are presently being gathered to document the observed increases in skin cancers, increased propensities to skin burns and rashes, and the most significant ecological effects, such as the warming trends at the North and South poles, the disappearance of some subtropical vegetation, and the global depression in crop production.
At this time, the American-based U.K. atmospheric teams are preparing a series of high-altitude rocket surveys, as well as completing, with the University of Tokyo’s Atmospheric Research Laboratory, a multivariate computer model designed to calculate long-term ozonal changes.
The President will be informed as soon as this Agency has had a chance in the next six months to review the results of these studies.
CONFIDENTIAL
DECEMBER 7, 1992
On December 1, 1992, the Livermore National Laboratory completed a six-month effort to assess existing studies on the long-term radiation effects of the October 1988 war. Data from this study were then used to calculate the somatic and genetic effects that can be expected over the next 35 to 40 years. Using information from European and Japanese sources, the study was also able to assess long-term radiation effects on areas (1) outside of the United States affected by fallout, and (2) within the Soviet Union as a result of the American counterattack.
The Soviet attack in October 1988 was directed against three urban centers (New York, Washington, D.C., and San Antonio, Texas) and against the operational SAC bomber bases and ICBM fields located in four upper Central and Western states (Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota). It is believed that some 300+ megatons (MT) of effective yield were realized in this attack. The Soviets employed a strategy against urban centers of detonating their weapons at a height of some 7,000 feet, which was clearly intended to heighten the range of destruction.
Against military targets they employed a mixed strategy of airbursts against airbases and groundbursts against hardened missile silos. Airbursts and groundbursts above cities appear to have averaged some 10 MT each.