Millie’s resentment of this “joke” was not mitigated by the resignation of two members of the White House staff before noon, one in the economics department, the other in Buck’s public relations department, on the grounds of having been offered “more challenging jobs” elsewhere. Ethel informed Millie that Laura Phipps had elected to go home from hospital (she had not been under sedatives but merely observation), and perhaps it would be tactful if Millie visited her. Millie emphatically agreed, and spent nearly an hour on the telephone, with the aid of Ethel, trying to persuade Laura to allow Millie to come and see her at her Fairfax house. But Laura was adamant, and wanted to be “at home with a friend or two, thank you.” At half past noon, Millie tried to reach Buck by intercom to have lunch with him, but a male voice Millie did not recognize said that the President was going to lunch alone with his new spokesman Vince Donegan.
“New spokesman? What about Chet?” Yes, where had Chet been yesterday or this noon, when the news of Phippy had broken?
“Chet Swanson says he’s overtired, ma’am, and can’t do a good job any more. Those’re his words. . . .”
Millie didn’t bother asking whom she was speaking with. She wished she could be with Buck at lunch, as he briefed the new man on an important job, but she also knew that when Buck was as tense as he was now it might be best without her.
She had a comforting glass of Scotch on the rocks before a lunch of cold roast beef and cottage cheese. Millie had invited Ethel to join her. They turned on the radio news as well as a couple of TV sets in the room where they lunched, and Millie was riled by a statement from the Russian premier. “‘The ball is now in Mr. Jones’s court,’ the Russian leader said on announcing that he had halted all nuclear tests until further notice, and he repeated his offer to reduce by a flat ten percent the number of nuclear warheads at present in the Russian arsenal, if the United States is willing to match this. . . .”
“He’s lying, I don’t believe a word of it,” said Millie, as if to herself, staring at the TV set.
“There has been an unusually large explosion caused by a bomb or bombs dropped on a Gulf port. This news is just coming in,” the radio announcer went on in a taut voice. “According to eye witnesses, the blast lit up the sky like a hundred suns and is still burning. There are rumors that it may have been an atom bomb, but this has by no means been confirmed—as yet. Rumors are said to be circulating as to whether Russia, because of its animosity toward . . .”
“Damn them,” said Millie. She had finished her lunch, having hardly touched her food, and her plans were made. Millie dismissed Ethel before dessert and coffee, and retired to her quarters for fortification in the form of a soothing nip of Scotch in her locked bathroom. Whatever people said, alcohol did both soothe the nerves and give a lift. The important thing was not to overdo it, of course. The number of people even she knew, who simply weren’t able to function without nearly a bottle a day—Well! Yet where would the world be without them? Buck hardly drank anything, and look at him now! Misjudgments right, left and center. Buck hadn’t used to be so, Millie thought. Lately, he was too trusting of people, took it for granted everybody loved him, loved him. Well, maybe they did, but they were out for themselves first and Buck Jones second. Millie set her empty Scotch glass down firmly, checked her short, fluffed hairdo in the looking-glass, and went out.
She went directly to the President’s office, which she knew was empty now, because Buck was still out to lunch. She opened the door of a room off this, a smaller room with a desk and a couple of chairs, and stood looking at a small keyboard set atop the desk. It had fifteen or twenty buttons. Millie pressed the upper right to put the board in operation. The key word for what she wanted was “Replay,” though this scenario had never been played live. She pressed Replay, which nestled upper left among other buttons named Litex, Tryon and such. Three, two, one were next, she recalled, and pressed these. A green light appeared on one button. Millie was pleased with herself for having remembered so well, and for now doing something for her husband and for her country.
Sani was the last button she pressed, which might as well mean “Fire!” Sani was Frankfurt, and this meant an order to fire a first nuclear warhead at a certain military base and munitions depot within the USSR. It was considered a “warning” compared to what the USA could do, Millie remembered Secretary of Defense Somebody telling Buck. She had not been present when someone had gone through the button-pressing with Buck, but Buck had later taken her into this office, and with great pride and the current off showed her how it worked. She had written down the procedure a few minutes later, or maybe even there on the spot, she couldn’t remember, considering doing so a safety measure against a bumbling fool pushing them at some time, or even Buck in an angry or overconfident moment: she’d at least know what someone was doing if she saw it. But now, the time had been ripe, just perfect, Millie felt. Russia would cower. The world would see that the USA wasn’t paralyzed by silly domestic problems, and wasn’t going to take lying down Russia’s dropping of a nuclear missile smack on to a Gulf port—so vital for oil to the USA and Western Europe!
Frankfurt’s American Forces Nuclear Readiness station fired their missile within twelve minutes of Millie’s button-pressing, and this over the head of a colonel who argued in vain that they ought to radio back for confirmation. The general in command wanted to fire.
Russia’s military base and the munitions there exploded, killing a couple of hundred soldiers and a few civilians at once, sending nearby towns into panic: people fled, shielding their eyes from the fearful blast in the sky which up to now they had merely seen pictures of. Fires broke out in entire villages, though this military base was considered to be in “a thinly populated area.” Moscow was not slow in reacting. A big military plane was dispatched bearing a dummy or drone plane in the direction of the American eastern coast. At the right moment, the mother plane would release the drone, which was programed to head for Philadelphia.
A top-level American general and also an admiral were trying to reach the President: was this nuclear bomb report from Frankfurt an accident? Or had war been declared?
The President, after a long and informal talk with his new spokesman Vince Donegan, had decided to take Vince to meet Laura Phipps, which would be an exercise in diplomacy and finesse for Vince.
“Keep talking—look her in the eye,” said Buck as the chauffeur-driven car slid up to the Phipps house in Fairfax. The President carried flowers. At that moment, the intercom in the President’s limousine sounded, and the URGENT button turned red. Buck picked up the telephone, and said, “Yes?”
“Frankfurt has just dropped a nuclear warhead on Russian soil, sir. . . . Yes, our forces, sir, on orders.”
Buck was just taking this in, looking at the equally shocked and blank face of Vince Donegan, who had heard the voice, when a woman poked her face close to the half-open window on the President’s side.
“You’d better leave, Mr. Jones.” It was the woman friend of Laura Phipps, whom Buck Jones had seen earlier that morning, and she looked grim. “Laura heard the news report about Phippy—saying it was a swimming pool accident. She’s disgusted and she’s going to tell the truth! So—scat, Mr. President!” Her eyes flashed.
Buck had the feeling that a wild tiger was near, about to strike. “Joey—get going! Back to the—back home, please,” Buck said to his driver.
Marines were deploying themselves round the White House when Buck and Vince rolled up the driveway. A gorilla who opened the car door said, “Important news, sir, you’re to go into your office right away.”
The news was that Moscow had launched an aircraft with a drone carrying a nuclear warhead, which the Russians offered to call off, on word from Washington that the Frankfurt firing was an accident.
“Frankfurt firing?” asked Buck. “But who ordered this firing?—Dick! Boy, am I glad to see you!” The President smiled.
Dick Coombes had just trotted up, in shirtsleeves and with his tie loo
sened. “C-come into my office, sir.”
The atmosphere in the big lobby where Buck had just stood had been tense with fear, even unfriendliness, Buck had felt. Four or five men whom he knew well had been standing speechless, looking at him. “That Russian missile’s on the way?” Buck asked when Dick had closed the door of his office.
“Millie pressed the Replay system. Around one o’clock today or just after, sir. It went to Frankfurt and Frankfurt obeyed orders. Now what we—”
“Judas K. Priest! Is Millie out of her mind?” Buck turned toward the door. “Where the hell is she?”
“Sir! We’re pressed for time! Our best bet—and I’ve had time to check with a couple of generals—is to say this was a technical error, human error, what the hell, but an error. And please to call off the plane with the drone. That’s what we ought to say to the Russians.”
“I don’t say ‘please’ to the Russians,” replied Buck Jones, setting his jaw.
“The Russians—” Dick Coombes said with a scared sigh, “said that missile is headed for the Philadelphia area. That’ll affect New York—maybe us here.”
“We’ll intercept it. What’re our interceptors for? Let’s test ’em out on something real. Was that Russian plane picked up on satellite? Are they tracking it?”
“By satellite, yes, sir, but it’s flying very high now, and to hit it—That’s like continuing the war, if you see what I mean. Consider for a minute, sir. Best to say the Frankfurt bomb was—”
A strange moan interrupted Dick Coombes, deep, eerie, penetrating. He didn’t know what it was, but the President did.
“That’s the White House bomb alert. Atom bomb,” said Buck. “Jumping the gun a little, maybe. That Russian plane’s barely past France by now.”
Dick Coombes gulped. “They’re probably taking the Pole, sir, coming in from north-east. Maintenance said they were going to test the alarm.”
Doors opened. Bells rang, bells on Dick’s desk.
Generals were demanding on telephones: Who was in charge? No one could find out for the next forty-five minutes, or even after that. The news of the Russian atom bomb being on its way had reached the media nationwide, and the East Coast in particular was in a state of disorder and panic.
Buck Jones asked for a minute’s time on radio and TV, but his secretary reported back that no radio or TV crew could get to the White House, as local traffic police had declared a state of emergency, mainly for White House protection.
“Okay, give ’em a message—from me,” Buck said. “We’ll smash this bomb coming. We’ll smash it right out of the sky. Got that?” Buck was told that Millie was in her own office, so Buck headed for his wife’s suite, which consisted of ante-room, office, and a bedroom. She was with her secretary Ethel, dictating something, when Buck knocked and was admitted.
“Yes, I sent the Replay message to Frankfurt,” said Millie. “It’s time this Administration recovered its dignity and authority—and this is the way to do it!”
Millie was high as a kite, Buck saw, but he was so uptight himself that some of her confidence invaded him, made him feel slightly better. “Well, Frankfurt sure as hell obeyed,” Buck said. “But listen, honey, we could—still could tell the Russians that Frankfurt was a technical error. Then they’d call off their bomb. One’s coming. Did you know that? Atom bomb heading for Philly?”
“Yes, someone told me. That’s to be expected. Send up a detonator when it’s near enough. Meanwhile, we need to send off one or two more. I was leaving that to you, Buck.” Millie’s tense smile widened slightly. She sat upright on her sofa, erect as a horseback rider. “You go in there and do it.”
Buck knew she meant the control room off his study. He nodded, acknowledged the silent Ethel with the slightest of nods, and turned on his heel. “All signals go,” he said over his shoulder.
Send one off from Munich, Buck Jones was saying two minutes later on a private telephone in the little room off his office. His voice sounded odd in his own ears on this telephone. Oh, you guys figure that one out, Buck said cheerfully, in reply to the question What targets are we supposed to hit? from a general to whom Buck was talking.
By now it was after 3 p.m. Satellite data predicted that the Russian bomb would strike Philadelphia around 7 p.m.
“Unless you call this off, sir,” said Dick Coombes. “The Russians haven’t released that drone yet.”
John B. Sprague was standing in a corner of the President’s study just then, silent, head bent, though his gaze was fixed on Buck Jones.
“That’d be backing down, wouldn’t it?” asked Buck, grinning. “We’re not backing down. We’ve got an arsenal.”
“So’ve the Russians,” said Sprague. “Come on, Buck, want to think for a minute? Half a minute?” Sprague’s bear-like figure in a tweed suit came forward a step or two and he wagged a finger. “We’ve got two or three hours at most, Buck—but I wouldn’t count even on that much—to call this game off. We’d call our bombs off too, of course.”
“What’s this, you being gun-shy, John? Running scared? You think we’re not a match for the Russkies?”
There were a few more exchanges between Buck and the other two, but essentially Dick Coombes and John B. Sprague gave up in regard to persuading the President. There came a time when Buck Jones simply wasn’t listening any more.
“A friend of Phippy’s wife told me to scat today,” Buck added for good measure. “I ain’t scatting.”
So the bombs soared on, and Washington, DC and the USA prepared to take cover, if there was any. And so did Russia. Meanwhile, Europe, the fly-over territory, beseeched both superpowers to call the whole thing off, and hoped that a bomb wouldn’t fall short and hit their own territory, England, France or whatever.
But even at 4 and 5 o’clock Eastern Standard Time, there were doubts, questions in New York and elsewhere. Were the bombs for real, or were both the US and USSR threatening, seeing what the other side would do, or say? The President had not made a statement as yet about firing an atom bomb, and neither had Secretary of State Sprague. The stories of flying bombs were merely leaks via the journalists who hung around the White House’s front steps, asking questions of anybody and everybody.
By 5:30 p.m., a nervous Pete White, speechwriter, reached the President in the latter’s study, and presented him with a statement of a hundred and fifty words typewritten. “It’s an announcement of the oncoming Russian bomb or bombs, sir. The public doesn’t yet know whether to believe it—you see.”
The President was with Dick Coombes and a heavyish man in a general’s uniform, looking at a big map spread before them on a table. The whisky bottle was out, and the general had a glass in hand. “I realize,” said Buck, accepting the page from Pete White. “But to have told people earlier would only have caused panic. Now’s the time, I agree, on the six o’clock news, live. That gives people about an hour to—”
“But excuse me, sir, there’s panic already! The highways are really clogged!—I’ll arrange right away for the TV and radio crews—” Pete White wet his lips. His voice was hoarse.
“They should be heading for air-raid shelters,” Buck said. “Millions of shelters, all over the country!”
Pete White winced, and exchanged a glance with Dick Coombes.
“There may well not be enough shelters, Buck,” said Dick.
The general looked bored with the conversation, and as if he wanted to get back to the map before him.
As the President opened his mouth to reply to Dick, the ominous moan sounded, the bomb alert.
“That’s really it now!” said Pete White, raising his voice in order to be heard. “The bomb’s maybe close!”
“I intend to make that announcement. It’s an historic announcement,” said Buck in the deep authoritative tone he could muster instantly, if need be. “Get those media guys here, Pete. You too, Dick!—Sorry, General—”
“Wyman.”
“Wyman. Sorry, but first things first. I’ll make the announcement, th
en we’ll get back to where we bomb the Russkies.”
President Buck Jones insisted on speaking from the steps of the White House, which made it difficult for the TV crew (only one had been able to arrive) to set up its lights. A dozen mikes were poked toward the President as he intoned:
“Today—this historic day in February—circumstances have compelled the United States of America to hit back against what we perceive as a nuclear attack by Russia upon our interests—thousands of miles away in the Gulf region. It was with the deepest regret that we gave orders for a similar bomb to be launched from our Nuclear Readiness base near Frankfurt, Germany. Now—as we might have foreseen and did foresee—our enemy has chosen to launch a bomb of its own toward our sacred soil. This solemn message is to announce the cause of this peril, and to advise all citizens on the East Coast to leave their houses and apartments and head for their nearest air-raid shelter, and—failing a shelter—to close themselves in their cellars, taking with them water and some dry provisions such as beans, rice and powdered milk. America will win, because her cause is just. God bless you all and keep you.”
This was dramatic timing, as five seconds later the American public who had heard the speech (confirming their worst fears) had barely had time to say, “Whew!” when the bomb fell, not exactly in the center of sprawling Philadelphia, but near enough. The drone had been the target of some ground-to-air missiles fired from a couple of US navy vessels near the coast, but the missiles had missed.
Thousands of people were killed, scorched, blinded in seconds in Philadelphia. Several million others in creeping motor vehicles closed their windows and huddled, terrified, and kept moving southwest and north-west away from the burning, radioactive metropolis. In other regions of the East Coast, people clamored and banged in vain at the closed doors of a few air-raid shelters and of farmers’ cellars and the cellars of country houses everywhere. The air-raid shelters were in mountainsides or sometimes in farmers’ fields, but there were more people than shelters, and in angry resentment some people pushed stones against the doors of shelters and even cellars, hoping the people inside would never emerge. The roads leading out of Philadelphia and New York were bestrewn with abandoned cars that had run out of gas.