The Day Before Midnight (10 page)

And then he thought he ought to call Megan, just in case, but decided, she’s on her own now, let her
be
on her own.

One of the chief curiosities of modern life, Peter often reflected, was the acceleration of change.

For he had gone, in the space of a twenty-two-minute helicopter ride, during which time his thoughts had remained jangled and painfully abstract, from Hopkins to the middle of a battle zone. He felt as though he’d flown back through time into the Vietnam War, a conflict whose intricacies he had studiously avoided in his lengthy stay in graduate school. It
was like a TV show from his childhood: He heard the young Walter Cronkite intoning, “Everything is as it was, except
You Are There.”

And so he found himself among military killer types all clustered around a dilapidated girl scout camp in rural Maryland. All these lean young combat jocks with crew cuts and war paint on, festooned with a bewildering variety of automatic weapons, as well as ropes, explosive packs, radio gear, exotic knives taped upside down on various parts of their bodies and, worst of all (and Peter could sense it, palpable as the smell of kerosene in the air), an ineffable
glee.

He shivered. He liked his wars abstract and intellectualized; he liked the theory of destruction at the global level and the excitement of thinking in awesome geopolitical terms. This closeness to the actual tools of small-unit warfare—the wet, greasy guns, the snicking, clicking bullets, the
klaklaklakklak!
of bolts being jimmied, the clank of magazines being locked and unlocked (the guys were going crazy playing with their weapons) left him more than a little nervous. The guns especially scared him; guns could kill you, he knew. He shivered again, as some supernumerary, an FBI guy whose name he didn’t quite catch, took him into the cabin proper, and there he got his second massive shock.

He expected on the inside just more of what was on the outside: more special ops pros all talking in hushed tones over detailed maps, discussing their “assault,” or whatever their term was. What he got was something out of Mark Twain: two country cronies sitting hunched together, their faces lost in shadow, swapping tall tales amid the clouds of weed gas and the smell of stale tobacco that brought a pain to your forehead. The butts, in fact, heaped like a funeral pyre in the cheap ashtray between the men. This was Mission Central? This was HQ? It felt like the general store.

“I remember,” he heard one of them saying, “I remember. The world ran on coal in those days.”

“Yep, by golly, and a sight it was, them days. We had over two hundred boys working in the Number Six hole, and, by damn, this was the center of civilization. Not likes he be now, with just a few hangers-on scruffin’ by. Everybody had a
big black car and everybody had a job, Depression or no. Burkittsville was coal and coal was Burkittsville, by damn. I remember it like it was yesterday, not fifty years ago.”

Then one of the fogies looked up, and Peter caught a quick glimpse of his face in the light, even as he felt himself being appraised and then dispensed with rather magisterially. Involuntarily, he swallowed. He recognized the guy.

It had to be the famous or infamous Dick Puller, exactly the kind of nut case you could trust Defense to pull out of the files to take over in an unconventional situation. Even Peter knew of Dick Puller, his many moments of glory in far-off paddies and glades, and his one moment of frozen terror at Desert One.

What Peter saw was a sinewy man in his late fifties with a face that looked as if it were hacked from ancient cotton canvas. He had a tight sheen of short iron-gray hair, almost stubble. He had a flat little hyphen of a mouth. Peter saw also that he had large, veiny hands—strong hands, worker’s hands—and ropy arms. He had a linebacker’s body, lacking the vanity of precisely engineered muscles but possessing—radiating, in fact—a sense of extraordinary strength. He had eyes like an ayatollah: hard, black little stones that glittered. He was in old jungle fatigues, and had a Montagnard bracelet around his wrist. He wore jungle boots. Yes, goddammit, the faded stencil on his ample chest bore the legend
PULLER.

“‘Course that damn cave-in closed it all down,” said the geezer. “A black day for Frederick County, Mr. Puller, if I do say so. The womenfolk wore widder’s weeds for a year Tore they moved away.”

“Dr. Thiokol,” Dick Puller suddenly said, not ever having been introduced formally to Peter, “Mr. Brady here tells me something very interesting about your installation. Something I doubt you even know.”

Peter was ready for this.

“That it’s built a thousand feet above the ruins of an old coal mine? I knew that. We had all the old documents. We took test borings. The mine has been sealed since ’thirty-four, when it collapsed. Our tests indicated no presence of geological instability. That mine is history, Colonel Puller, in
case you had some delusion of going in there as a way of getting into the installation.”

Dick’s eyes stayed flat and dark as he answered Peter. “But our reports say that original old undeveloped Titan hole was left open to the elements since the late fifties. Lots of rain in thirty years, right, Mr. Brady?”

“Rains a lot in these parts, sometimes like a son of a bitch,” said Mr. Brady. He turned, his leathery old face locking on Peter’s. “Son, you must know about a mess of things, but I have to wonder what you know about coal. You open a coal seam to a mess of rainwater over a period of years, you get some damned interesting formations down through a mountain. Coal is
soft
, boy. Soft as butter.”

Peter looked at him.

Then he looked at Dick Puller.

“You get tunnels, Dr. Thiokol,” said Dick Puller. “You get tunnels.”

Gregor beat a hasty retreat from the embassy to the nearest source of booze, which was Capitol Liquors, three blocks away at L and Vermont, a harshly lit joint with a pretentious wine display for yuppie Washington, as if yuppies wandered into such a place. He went in, fought through the listless crowd of unemployed Negroes who passed the time here, and bought a pint of American vodka (he could not afford Russian) for $3.95. Outside, he opened it quickly, threw down a quick hit.

Ah! His oldest and dearest friend, the one who never let him down. It tasted of wood smoke and fire and bracing winter snows. It belted him like a two by four between the eyes. He filled with instant love. The cars whirling up the street, the American automobiles, endless and gaudy, he loved them. Klimov, little rat Klimov, he loved him. Pashin, Klimov’s powerful sponsor, he loved him.

“To Pashin,” Gregor announced to a man standing next to him, “a hero for our times.”

“You said it, Jack,” said the man, bringing the muzzle of a bottle of Ripple in a paper bag up to his lips, drinking. “Git
all
our asses in trouble.”

Fortified, Gregor lurched ahead. The sun was bright. It hurt his eyes. He put on his sunglasses, cheap things from the drugstore designed to look expensive. He felt much better now. He felt in control. He looked at his watch. He still had some time before his little job.

Gregor wandered around for a few minutes before he finally found what he was looking for, a public phone. You always call from a public phone. That was the oldest rule. In Russia you may be sure the public phones are tapped, but in America you were sure they were not.

Gregor found a quarter, called the number. A woman answered, a new voice, but he asked for Miss Shroyer. There was some fumbling, and finally she came on the phone.

“This is the Sears computer,” he said. “Your order is ready. It’s”—he squinted, reading the number of the phone—“it’s 555-0233. Have a nice day. This is the Sears—”

The phone went dead. He stood, talking into it anyway, holding the button down, seeing her leave her desk in the Crowell Office Building, pick up her coat, nonchalantly mosey down to the drinking fountain, take a long drink, duck into the ladies’ room, her fatness imposing, her huge back and bent shoulders like a cape, her personality bright and phony, to the pay phone in the next corridor.

The instrument against which he leaned produced a squawk surprising Gregor in his reverie, but he freed the receiver button.

“Gregor, good God! The chances you take! Suppose they are watching you? I told you, Gregor, never,
never
call me at—”

“Molly, oh, Molly!” sobbed Gregor. “God, darling, your voice, it sounds so wonderful.”

“You fat bastard, you’ve been drinking already, I can tell. Your words are all mushed together.”

“Molly, listen, please, yes, I had a little taste, that’s all—”

“Gregor, don’t be sloppy, you know how I detest it when you’re sloppy!”

“Molly, please, I had no other place to turn. This Klimov,
he’s really after me this time. He wants me. It’s worse than ever. God, darling, they are going to send me back.”

“Gregor, you pulled this routine months back. It’s where we started.”

Gregor sobbed. The sound of his pain and his fright must have been amplified by the wires of the phone, for it seemed to release in Molly something his implorings had failed to touch: her pity. He sensed her compassion suddenly: he sensed her coming to him. He pressed on.

“Please, please, darling. Don’t fail me. You’ve got to get me something. Something soon. Something big. Something I can give them. Not just your chicken-shit minutes and the gossip. They can get that from the
Post.
No, Molly, if you love me, if you fear for me, if in the smallest, tenderest part of your baby toe you feel for poor Gregor Arbatov, please, please, oh, my Molly, please help me.”

“Jesus, you bastard,” she said. There was almost a laugh in her voice. “You’re so far beyond shame, you’re into squalor.”

“Please,” he begged again.

“Call me in a few days.”

“In a few days I’ll be on my way to Latvia or some awful place.”

“There is no Latvia, Gweggy.”

“That’s what I mean. Please, Molly. Oh, please, by tonight. I’ll call you at four.”

“You’re really pushing your luck.”

“Oh, Molly, I knew I could count on you.”

“I can’t—what? Oh, yes, sure.” This last was mumbled to an intruder. In seconds she was back, breathless. “Christ, I have to go, baby doll, they’re calling all of us for something.”

“My sweet, I—”

But she had hung up. Strange, no? he thought. But he felt much better now. He looked at his watch. It was almost eleven. Time for his drive out to Columbia and his little job for the agent Pork Chop.

“Colonel Puller?” It was the FBI agent, Uckley.

“Yes?” asked Puller.

“It’s an eyes-only from White House Operations. They want to know what’s happening.”

“What’s happening?” A quick, angry glance. It was said that Puller had talked to Carter himself from the ground at Desert One. “Tell ’em Delta’s in, we’re working out our assault details, we’re waiting for Air and the Third Infantry and have high hopes for the Rangers. Make something up.”

“They sound mad,” said Uckley, a little unsure at Puller’s lack of interest in Washington.

“I don’t give a fuck what they are,” said Dick sharply. He looked over at Peter. “They’ll want action. What they don’t know, of course, is that the wrong action is worse than no action.
Much
worse. See, I have to fight
them
just as hard as I have to fight what’s-his-face up in the mountain. Now, Dr. Thiokol. Peter, is it? Okay if I call you Peter?”

“Sure,” said Peter.

“Now, Peter, I checked your file. Very smart guy. Great record. A-plus on the report card, all the way through.” His cold little eyes gazed at Peter with regret. “But what’s this shit about Taylor Manor? Some bin in Ellicott City. You had a problem?”

“I had some difficulties when my marriage broke up. But that’s all taken care of now.”

“You flipped, huh? Let me ask you straight out: How’s your head? Screwed on tight and outstanding? Are you crazy anymore?”

“I’m feeling fine,” said Peter evenly, wondering why this bastard hated him so much. Then he concluded that Puller hated everyone. The man was sheer aggression.

“What I need from you is a lot of hard work. I need a genius. I need a guy who knows that mountain who can figure things out for me. See, maybe I can crack that hole if I can figure out how. But I need a genius along to whisper in my ear. Can you give me the help I need, no bullshit games, no little sullen pouts, no prima donna shit. I don’t have time for the star system.”

“I’m fine,” said Peter again. “You can count on me. I guarantee it.”

“Excellent. That’s all I need to know. Now—who’s up there?”

“Search me,” said Peter.

“All right.
Why
are they up there?”

“To launch,” said Peter. “This is the only strategic installation in the United States with independent launch capability. There’s no point to taking it if you weren’t going to make the bird fly.”

“Why? What would be the point?”

“There isn’t one that I can figure,” said Peter. “Unless it’s sheer nihilism. Somebody just wants the world to end. It doesn’t make any kind of strategic sense; when the bird flies, the Sovs launch on warning. Then we all die. The beetles take over.”

“Some kind of crazy death wish, like the guy who took the gun into the airliner and shot the pilot?”

“More than that, but I don’t know what it is. But I guarantee you, there’s more, somehow. There’s some other aspect to the plan, some wit, some-theory, some long-range aspiration. This is only one part of it, that I can tell you. This is part of some larger scheme.”

“Goddammit, I thought you were supposed to be some kind of genius!”

“I am a genius,” said Peter. “But maybe that guy up there is too.”

“When you figure it out,” said Puller, “I want you to tell me first. Right away. It’s crucial. If I know what’s going on, maybe I can figure out who’s doing it. Now, can we get in?”

“No,” said Peter.

“Goddammit,” said Dick Puller.

“No, I don’t, think you can. I understand they have people up there.”

“Sixty well-armed men.”

“Military?”

“The very finest. From what I’ve been able to tell, their seizure op was very crisply handled. Very neat, very impressive. Right now they’ve thrown the goddamned thing under some kind of tarpaulin. We can’t see what they’re doing up there. Pretty damned smart. We’ve got zillion-dollar birds in
the sky that can see through clouds and rain and tornadoes and tell us whether Gorbachev had his eggs up or over easy. But there isn’t a lens alive that’ll see through an inch of canvas. What do you suppose they’re up to?”