Deep Cover

He was carrying an executive call-up—a radio-activated pocket device that would emit a high-pitched whistle if he was needed down below. He kept waiting for it to sound.

He said, “No, it’s not true. We’re programming the missiles to hit sites in the north and west of China. We’re not going to hit the sites on the Yellow Sea and those are the ones that are aimed at the United States. Dangerfield says they haven’t got enough range to get much deeper into this country than the Pacific Coast but that isn’t true either. If that really was the case he couldn’t expect our launch people to believe the Pentagon was under attack by Chinese missiles, could he?”

“You’ve got to get a grip on yourself, Fred.”

He gripped her forearm. The chilly sweat of fear streamed down his ribs. He pulled his head around toward her and said, “Have you thought about it? What we talked about?”

“How could I have thought about anything else?”

“I know. But what I meant was have you decided?”

“No. Not for myself. But I’ll do whatever you decide, darling.”

“Maybe this is one time I’d really rather have you make the decision.”

“I can’t.”

He sat studying the backs of his hands and then turning them over and studying the palms. Finally he pressed them together until the knuckles cracked. She was watching him anxiously and he felt his face color under her stare. “We’re grotesques,” he muttered. “Twenty years leading double lives—twenty years is so long when you break it up into hours but it still isn’t long enough. We’ve become middle-aged Americans. We chose to forsake everything Russian—the flavors and smells and sounds of Russia. You can’t steal the results of the next election from the government safe. You don’t wait for the tramp of police boots, the knock on the door, transportation to penal squads in a slave camp, legions of secret police.… I remember how we used to seal the windows in the wintertime and go to bed very early and sleep in all our clothes because we couldn’t afford fuel.… God, stop me, Celia, I’m babbling.”

She twisted in the seat to grip him on both shoulders. His face slumped forward and he turned unashamedly toward her; she printed warm gentle kisses on his tear-streaked face.

“I had my mind made up,” he said. “I was ready to do it. And then they told me they had someone following Alec—just to keep me in line, they said. Oh Christ. Alec’s just a boy. We can’t make him share in our guilt.”

“He’s twenty-two years old, Fred, and he’s going to suffer whatever happens. He’s going to lose us whatever we do.”

“Should we do it, then?”

“I can’t—I don’t know.”

He thought of Alec, husky with young energy.

She said, “What do the rest of them think?”

“I haven’t asked them. I can’t speak for them. How could I ask them? They’d report me to Dangerfield and we’d both be killed.”

She said nothing. He thought of Barbara, fourteen years old and away in California with her school chums and her silver fingernail polish. He tried to remember whether Sacramento was within fallout radius of the California defense bases. It must be; there were so many bases. Russian roulette: how many missiles did the Chinese have? How many would they launch at California targets? How many would penetrate the ABM defense screen? But all it took was one. He thought of the film lectures: We project a fifty-mile destruction radius for the Chinese twenty-megaton warhead. …

He said, “I’m going to do it,” and the sound of his own voice electrified the skin of his spine. “I’m going to do it, Celia.”

She was watching him; in the bad light he couldn’t make out her expression. He asked softly, “What do you think, then?”

“No. First you decide you’re going to do it and then you ask me what I think. No. If you were sure of yourself you wouldn’t have asked me now—you see what you’re doing, Fred? You want me to tell you you’re wrong, because then you can get all worked up with self-righteousness and indignant rationalizations and you can get angry enough to convince yourself that you are right. But we can’t play that game this time. It’s too much—too much at stake. We can’t decide out of anger.”

He reached for her hand—blindly, timidly; he was looking the other way. “You’re right. I always do that, don’t I.” He wanted the buzzer in his pocket to summon him away because down below, working, he could fix his mind on practical technical things. But it remained still.

“We still have a little time.” He looked at his watch. “Thirty-seven hours and forty-five minutes, to be precise.” His mouth twisted.

“Refusing to make a decision—that can be a decision in itself, you know.”

He nodded. “The idea is we’re all supposed to leave together when it’s done.”

“I know. Nicole talked to me. I’m to be at the airport at five-thirty tomorrow evening. The side gate, where the old entrance used to be.”

“It’s an older runway they don’t use too much anymore. I had to get clearance for a so-called training flight to use it tomorrow evening. I gave them some official-sounding gibberish and they yawned their way through it and gave us permission because they don’t have much air traffic out there at that time of night anyway. They’re flying us to Cuba, you know.”

“Yes, she told me.”

“What’s the point of their keeping us alive after we’ve done the job here, Celia? That’s what keeps nudging me to decide to do it. The feeling that no matter what assurances Danger-field gives us it still makes sense for them to kill us all. He killed Bud Sims, you know. We’ll all be together in that airplane—it wouldn’t be any trouble at all for him.”

“He’d be killing himself too.”

“Maybe he’s willing to do that. Maybe he’s a good German—obeying all orders without question; maybe he’s prepared a parachute for himself. Or maybe at the last minute he’ll arrange to be left behind and the plane will blow up after takeoff. I keep thinking how easy it would be for him to do things like that—there are so many ways. As long as any of us remain alive, even in Russia, we’re a danger to them. We’re no danger dead.”

“I’ve thought of those things too,” she said, “but I can’t put those pictures out of my mind. The ones he showed us—that Mongolian, Manchurian, whatever he is, Tircar. The children tortured and murdered while the parents watched.”

He closed his eyes. That was all he had been able to think of—Alec and Barbara. “That’s what Dangerfield wants us to do. Remember those pictures and obey orders.”

“They’re offering a trade. They’ve made a bargain with us. As long as we put ourselves in their hands our children will be left alone.”

“I don’t know. I keep thinking there must be a way to do it without condemning Alec.”

“Perhaps there is. But I think we must be prepared to make the decision on the basis that we’d be sacrificing Alec’s life if we went against them.”

“I can’t do it now,” he said, and was ashamed when his voice broke. He reached for the door handle. “I’ve got to think it out more clearly. I’ll decide, but I just can’t do it now.”

“My poor darling,” she murmured, and he squeezed her hand tight as if to draw a current of strength from her. When he got out of the car she stared at him with eyes that looked like two holes burned in a blanket.

Chapter Eighteen

When Forrester pulled the door softly shut behind him it drew Top Spode’s glance; Spode had been sitting by the window staring out, eyes narrowed in a thoughtful squint. “Morning.”

“Haven’t you been to bed at all?”

“No. You don’t look like you slept much yourself.”

“Not much.” Forrester’s dreams had left an aftertaste of fear, though all memory of them had gone.

“She all right?”

“I don’t know.” Ro