Deep Cover

Spode’s voice clacked abruptly, directed at Ro

She twisted away from Forrester. “My mind’s full of gaps, Jaime—I don’t remember everything. Something to do with the base—something to do with the missiles. And we’re all supposed to gather at the airport to get away on a plane. To Cuba, I think.”

Spode had opened the door; he pushed it shut and came back. “We can get through the arroyos, I think. There’s no time at all, you know that—we ought to call the President. Put it in his lap. He can get on the hot line with Moscow and tell them to pull their people out of here or else.”

“Or else what, Top? That’s the point, isn’t it?”

“We can’t just sit on it.”

“We’ve been over that. It wouldn’t be kept secret. Once it got out there would be public hysteria. Even assuming war could be avoided the yahoos would demand war and when they didn’t get it there’d be riots, armed troops, panics, shooting.”

Spode said, “It doesn’t have to get out. There’s machinery. We had to keep it oiled when I was in the Agency. The Office of Emergency Preparedness has a chief censor with powers to clamp the lid on everything in a national emergency. We were ready to use it in the Dominican crisis in sixty-five. Once the President invokes those powers nobody can tell the American public it’s under nuclear attack unless the White House clears it.”

“Top, the minute I’m convinced we’ve got no alternative I’ll call the President. But if I called him now he’d have only one thing to do—he wouldn’t have time to uncover their whole net down here and so all he could do would be to slap Moscow with a war ultimatim. As you yourself put it—get them out of here, or else. But if we can pull this off without the use of the hot line we avoid that risk.”

“Pull it off how?”

“Find this man Belsky. We’ve got an opening now: Ramsey Douglass can lead us to him. That may be enough.”

“Jesus God.”

Spode drove at high speed along the freeway. The whine of the tires echoed off the concrete bridge abutments and the car snickered on the bends. Ro

He felt the touch of her hand. When he turned, her glance locked his with tremendous impact. Her mouth trembled; she shuddered clear through to her fingertips.

Forrester stirred in the chair, groggy; something was cold against the side of his forehead. When he sat up he realized he had been slumping with his head against the window. When he looked out into the dawn it took him a moment to orient himself. They were back in his motel. Outside, the scene had a squinty-eyed hung-over aspect. Travelers were heaving suitcases into jammed trunk compartments, wiping morning dew off their windshields, slamming doors; faintly he could hear them yapping at their children. The aftermath of yesterday’s flooding had left flotsam blocking the corner drains and puddles in the pavement. He saw deep tire tracks in the motel lawn where someone had sought a route to the parking lot when the water had been flowing eight inches deep.

Spode sat with his hand on the telephone. He was shaking a Coke bottle in his fist and spouting foam into his mouth from three inches away. Ro

“Nothing yet,” Spode said. “The sun’s up. We haven’t even got twelve hours left.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Orozco’s got all his people out looking for Douglass. They tried to find him through Nicole Lawrence but she’s dead.” His teeth were showing. “Killed herself.”

Ro

Spode said, “Orozco’s posted a few men at the airport. They’ll start showing up out there but it won’t be until late in the afternoon. We’ve got to get to Belsky sooner than that. Maybe we’ll find Douglass. Maybe not. You’d better set a time limit—when you’re going to call the President.”

Forrester dug at his eyes, yawned wide and stood up tottering. “Just find Ramsey Douglass.”

Ro

The phone rang and Spode jerked it to his ear, grunted, listened, grunted again and put it down. “Douglass isn’t home, he isn’t at Nicole’s, and he’s not at his office. They’re looking around the Air Base for him but that’s a lot of area to cover. May take all day.”

“Just find him,” Forrester said. “Just find him.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Rykov’s face had a puffed look; his eyes were shattered by bloodshot lines. Outside it was still dark, predawn; bare branches were silhouetted against the street lamps, jagged as cracks in a porcelain surface, and patches of snow had drifted across the glossy cobblestones.

Behind him Andrei said, “You shouldn’t stand like that. An assassin could shoot you easily from anywhere on the rooftops across the street.”

“It hardly matters now, does it.” But Rykov unrolled the blind to coyer the window and turned back to his desk. The enormous room seemed mausoleumlike; the only lamp lighted was the orange-shaded one on the desk. “In Arizona now it is past five in the afternoon.”

“About eighty-five minutes to go,” Andrei agreed. “You’ve failed, you know. You may as well signal Belsky to abort.”

“A cause is not lost so long as someone is willing to go on fighting, Andrei. I have not yet failed completely.” He added, “I assume Comrade Yashin has recommended as a matter of public sanitation that I be quietly executed. There can be no three-judge People’s Court of course. No public airing. I am to be terminated without fuss—suicided, perhaps? It would be fitting—Grigorenko would have his opportunity to trumpet that I had displayed the sincerest form of self-criticism. Or perhaps I am to spend the rest of my days in solitary confinement?”

“I shall do everything I can to see that you are comfortably maintained and that no one harms you.”

“Yashin will probably order you to kill me.”

“An order I should disobey.”

“Irrelevant, Andrei. He can always find someone willing to do it. I am not without enemies.”

“We have eighty-two minutes.”

The cabbage soup had gone cold on the desk; the piece of black bread sat on the saucer half-eaten. Rykov put a cigarette in his mouth. He had to hold the match with both hands.