World War III

McKenna had had one of those nightmares again. It was 1978 and he was outside Lydia’s hospital room. He’d run from the governor’s mansion, in his dream, all the way across the state. The doctor was the same doctor he’d known in every other dream because it was the same doctor in real life. The pained expression on his face never changed. Neither did the words. “I’m sorry, Governor. She’s slipping away. AH we can do is make your wife comfortable, and wait.” She died in his arms, but that was the dream. Actually, she’d lingered on for another day and a half, connected to all the tubes and strobes that couldn’t do anything but monitor the cancer’s damage and report what everyone already knew was happening. He wasn’t there at the end. Nobody was there, just the machines. That’s why he had the nightmare, McKenna thought — to remind him of his guilt when he woke up. The dream was the fantasy, how he wanted it to be. You don’t let something precious slip away from you without a fight, his subconscious seemed to be telling him. It wasn’t like you were putting a pet to sleep. You should have been there. He should have, but he wasn’t.

The president sat up. He set the MCP file on the table and rang for an aide. “Ask Dr. Farber to come in, please,” he said softly.

The NSC advisor moved to the table sleepily. He had his glasses off, rubbing the lenses between folds in his handkerchief, and was unsuccessfully trying to suppress a yawn. He sat down wearily. “Mr.

President.” He held his watch toward the light of the reading lamp. “Home in less than two hours.”

“I’ve been reading that again, Jules,” McKenna said, nodding at the MCP folder. “I’ve been thinking about our entire position with the Soviets.”

Farber placed the glasses over his face. “Yes?”

“I don’t want to be in a position where we allow this situation to slip away from us.”

Farber nodded. “I see,” he said quietly.

“When we land, Jules, I want to call an immediate DefCon Three. I don’t think we can do any less. Do you?”

“You don’t trust Chairman Gorny to keep his word?”

“I have my doubts about the chairman calling the shots, Jules.” McKenna absently drummed his fingers on the edge of the table. “Gorny is a pragmatist. He’s ruthless, but not a fanatic. They call him The Bull, you know. But Dimitri Gorny is success-oriented. In an American high-school graduating class he’d be the one chosen Most Likely to Succeed. He owns a big chunk of life. I don’t think he wants to gamble with it… and I don’t think he would even consider a confrontation with the remotest possibility that it could lead to war.”

“That’s the way I read him, too. But—”

“Did you notice, Jules — there were times during our meeting when he seemed more interested in Rudenski’s reactions than mine?”

“Nervousness?”

“We were all nervous,” the president said quickly. “No, it was something else… as if he were searching for some — I don’t know, acknowledgment, I guess.”

“You think Gorny is on the skids, that the KGB is running the show?”

“I don’t know, Jules. But I don’t want to find out the hard way. We just celebrated Pearl Harbor Day — I don’t understand how we could celebrate it — but I’m not going to be the president that permits it to happen again.”

“A Defense Condition Three is a first step, Mr. President.”

“The Soviets already took their first step.”

“They’re not going to like it.”

“I don’t care if they like it. They’ll understand it. They’ll know it’s a defensive first step. Hell, they probably expect it. The point is, we can step down from a DefCon Three at any time.”

“Or a Two.”

“Or One.” McKenna made a face. “I’m not giving up, Jules. I have every intention of kicking them the hell out of Alaska before…”

“It’s a hell of a game, isn’t it, sir?”

“Christ, they’re pushing when they should be thinking! Doesn’t anyone in the goddamn Kremlin make rational judgments?”

“Wars do not start profoundly, Mr. President. They generally begin with cheap shots or ridiculous accidents.”

“We will not be shoved into war. I will not be the American president who historians say was responsible for nuclear genocide.”

“If there are any historians left, Mr. President, they will do an autopsy on our species… to see what makes us smarter than turnips”—Farber shrugged, reaching for his handkerchief—”if we are.”

MOSCOW