Open doors, men racing, arms at their sides—concealed weapons. Oh, my God!
“Apache! Apache, come in!”
“What is it, Outsider?”
“Are those police still in there?”
“They just went in.”
“Go in after them! Now!”
“What?”
“Don’t argue, just do it! With weapons!”
By the time the radio was in his pocket and the .88 in his hand, Charley was halfway across the parking lot, racing as fast as he could toward the emergency dock. He reached the platform and sprang up with one hand on it, legs scrambling, and lunged for the wide metal doors. He crashed them open and dashed past a startled nurse behind a glass-partitioned reception counter, his head turning in all directions, his eyes choosing the corridor straight ahead; it conformed to the Apaches’ position, their immediate sighting of the policemen. He ran down to an intersecting hallway, staring first to his left, then his right. There it was, ten feet away! EXAMINING ROOM. The door was shut; it did not make sense.
Loring approached swiftly, silently, taking long cautious steps, his back pressed against the wall. Suddenly he heard two muted spits and the start of a terrible scream from behind the heavy steel door, and he knew his instincts had been as right as he now wished they had been wrong. He spun around the frame so as to give his left hand free access to the metal handle, then jammed the handle down and threw his shoulder against the panel, sending the door open, then turned back for the protection of the frame.
The shots came, exploding into the wall in front of him; they were high, the spits from deep inside the room, not close by. Charley crouched and dived, rolling as he hit the floor, and fired into a blue uniform. He fired low, bullets ricocheting off obstructing steel. Legs, ankles, feet! Arms, if you have to, but not the chest, not the head! Keep him alive!
The second blue uniform lunged over an examining table—a rushing blur of dark color—and Loring had no choice. He fired directly at the attacking man, who held a pipe-stock repeating weapon in his arms. The killer spun off the padded table, plummeting to the floor, his throat ripped open. Dead.
Keep the other alive, keep the other alive! The order kept screaming in his head as Charley kicked the door shut and lurched, rolling, firing at the ceiling and blowing out the bright overhead fluorescent tubes, leaving only the harsh glow of a small high-intensity lamp on a faraway table.
Three spits erupted from the shadows, the bullets embedding themselves in the plaster and wood above him. He rolled furiously to his left and collided with two lifeless bodies—were they Apaches? He could not tell; he only knew he could not let the man who was alive escape. And there were only two alive in that room-blood, shattered flesh, and corpses everywhere.
It had been a massacre.
A spitting burst of gunfire staccatoed across the floor, and he could feel the searing heat of the bullet that had punctured his stomach. But the pain did an odd thing to him, which he had no time to think about. He could only experience the reaction. His mind exploded in anger, but the anger was controlled, the fury directed. He had lost before. He could not lose again. He simply could not!
He sprang diagonally to his right, crashing into a stretcher table and sending it rolling toward the shadows where the staccato burst had come from; he heard the impact and rose swiftly, held his gun in both hands and aimed at another hand in the shadows. He fired as the screams swelled in the corridors beyond the closed door.
He had one last thing to do. And then he would not have lost.
34
Lieutenant Commander Thomas Decker walked into the study of Sterile Five, escorted by two men from the White House Secret Service. His angular face was set, and he looked both purposeful and anxious. The broad-shouldered frame under the well-tailored blue uniform was that of a man who kept in shape not from enjoyment but from compulsion; the body was too rigid, with too little fluidity in its movement. But it was the face that fascinated Havelock. It was a hard-shelled mask about to crack, and once that process started, it would shatter. Strength, purpose, and anxiety aside, Decker was petrified, and try as he might, he could not conceal his inner terror.
Michael spoke, addressing the Secret Service detail. “Thanks very much, gentlemen. The kitchen is outside to the right, at the end of the hallway. The cook will find you something to eat—beer, coffee, whatever you want. I’m sure I’ve interrupted your dinner break and I don’t know when we’ll be finished here. Make any phone calls you like, of course.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the man on Decker’s left, nodding to his companion, as they both turned and started for the door.
“You’ve also interrupted my dinner, and I expect—”
“Shut up, Commander,” broke in Havelock quietly.
The door closed, and Decker took several angry steps toward the desk, but the anger was too contrived, too forced. It had been summoned to replace the fear. “I have an engagement this evening with Admiral James at the Fifth Naval District!”
“He’s been informed that pressing naval business precludes your being there.”
“This is outrageous! I demand an explanation!”
“You’re entitled to a firing squad.” Havelock rose as Decker gasped. “I think you know why.”
“you! “The officer’s eyes grew wide; he swallowed as the color left his mask of a face. “You’re the one who’s been calling me, asking me those questions! Telling me … a very great man … doesn’t remember! It’s a lie!”
“It’s the truth,” said Michael simply. “But you can’t understand, and it’s been driving you up the wall. It’s all you’ve been thinking about since I told you—because you know what you’ve done.”
Decker became rigid again, brows arched, eyes clouded, a military man having given his serial number but refusing any subsequent interrogation despite impending torture. “I have nothing to say to you, Mr. Cross. It is Cross, isn’t it?”
“It’ll do,” said Havelock, nodding once. “But you’ve got a great deal to say, and you are going to say it. Because if you don’t, a presidential order will send you to the deepest cell in Leavenworth and the key will be thrown away. To put you on trial would be far too dangerous to the security of this country.”
“No! … You can’t! I did nothing wrong! I was right, we were right!”
“The Joint Chiefs and key members of the House and Senate will agree,” continued Michael. “It’ll be one of the few times when the umbrella of national security will be completely valid.”
The mask cracked; the face shattered. Fear turned to desperation as Decker whispered, “What do they say I’ve done?”
“In violation of your oath as an officer and the codes of secrecy you’ve sworn to uphold, you reproduced dozens of the most sensitive documents in this country’s military history and removed them from the Pentagon.”
“And to whom did I deliver them? Answer me that.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does! It’s everything!”
“You had no authorization.”
“That man has all the authority he needs!” Decker’s voice trembled as he tried to regain control. “I demand that you get Secretary of State Matthias on the phone.”
Havelock walked away from the desk, away from the telephone. The movement was not lost on the naval officer. It was the moment to retreat slightly. “I’ve been given my orders, Commander,” said Michael, permitting a degree of uncertainty in his own voice. “By the President and several of his closest advisers. The Secretary of State is not to be consulted in this matter under any circumstances whatsoever. He’s not to be informed. I don’t know why, but those are my orders.”
Decker took a halting step, then another, zeal joining the desperation in his wide, frantic eyes. He began barely above a whisper, the words growing louder with a zealot’s conviction. “The President? His advisers …? For God’s sake, can’t you see? Of course they don’t want him informed because he’s right and they’
re wrong. They’re afraid and he isn’t! Do you think for a moment if I disappeared he wouldn’t know what had happened? Do you think he wouldn’t confront the President and his advisers and force a showdown? You talk about the Joint Chiefs, members of the House and the Senate. My God, do you think he couldn’t call them together and show what a weak, ineffectual, immoral administration this really is? There’d be no administration! It would be repudiated, crippled, thrown out!”
“By whom, Commander?”
Decker straightened his broad-shouldered body, a condemned man knowing that ultimate justice would bring a pardon. “The people, Mr. Cross. The people of this nation recognize a giant. They won’t turn their backs on him because a hack politician and his weak-kneed advisers say so. They won’t stand for it! The world has lamented the loss of great leadership these past few decades. Well, we produced a great leader and the world knows it. And my advice to you is to get Anthony Matthias on the telephone. You don’t have to say anything, I,ll speak to him.”
Havelock stood motionless, something more than uncertainty now in his voice. “You believe there could be a showdown? The President—impeached?”
“Look at Matthias. Can you doubt it? Where in the last thirty years has there been a man like him?”
Michael slowly walked back to the desk and lowered himself into the chair, glancing up at Decker. “Sit down, Commander,” he said.
Decker quickly sat in the chair that Havelock had purposely placed in front of the desk. “We’ve used some harsh words with each other, and for my part I apologize. But you must understand. We are right.”
“I need more than that,” said Havelock. “We know you removed copies of detailed strategies developed by the Nuclear Contingency Committees, documents that spelled out everything in our own arsenals as well as the results of our deepest penetrations of both the Soviet and Chinese systems. You delivered these to Matthias over a period of months, but we’ve never understood why. If you could tell me, give me a reason. Why?”
“For the most obvious reason in the world! It goes back to the key word in the title of those committees. ‘Contingency.’ Contingency, Mr. Cross, always contingency! Reaction—reaction to this, reaction to that! Always replying, never initiating! We don’t need contingencies. We can’t let our enemies think we’ll only respond. We need a master plan, let them know we have a master plan that will ensure their total destruction should they transgress. Our strength, our survival, can no longer be based on defense, Mr. Cross, it must be based on offense! Anthony Matthias understands this. The others are afraid to face it.”
“And you helped him develop this—master plan?”
“I’m proud to say I contributed,” said the officer, his words rushed—the pardon was in sight. “I sat with him hour after hour going over every conceivable nuclear option, every possible Soviet and Chinese response, not a single capability overlooked.”
“When did you meet?”
“Every Sunday, for weeks on end.” Decker lowered his voice, confidentiality joined now with zeal and desperation. “He impressed on me the highly classified nature of our relationship, so I’d drive out in a rented car to his lodge in West Virginia, to a cabin on the secondary road where we’d meet alone.”
“The Woodshed,” said Michael, the word escaping from him.
“You know it, then?”
“I’ve been there.” Havelock briefly closed his eyes; he knew the Woodshed only too well. A small cabin retreat where Anton went to work on his projected memoirs—to talk out his thoughts, every phrase picked up by a voice—activated tape recorder. “Is there anything else? I want you to know I’m listening, Commander. You’re very impressive—and I’m listening.”
“He’s such a truly brilliant man,” continued Decker, his tone close to an awestruck whisper, his eyes gazing on some unseen holy light. “That probing mind, the depth of his every observation, his grasp of global realities—all truly remarkable. A statesman like Anthony Matthias can take this nation to its zenith, bring us to where we were meant to be in the eyes of man and God. Yes, I did what I did and I’d do it again, because I’m a patriot. I love this country as I love the Scriptures, and I would lay down my life for it, knowing that I would retain my honor.… There really is no choice, Mr. Cross. We are right. Pick up the phone and call Matthias, tell him I’m here. And I’ll tell him the truth. Small men who worship graven images have crawled out of the ground and are trying to destroy him. He’ll stamp them out-with our help.”
Michael leaned back in the chair, the weariness, the futility, as complete as they had ever been. “ ‘With our help,’ “he repeated in a voice so low he was barely aware he had spoken.
“Yes, of course!”
Havelock shook his head slowly back and forth. “You sanctimonious son of a bitch,” he said.
“What?”
“You heard me. You sanctimonious son of a bttch!” Michael roared. Then he breathed deeply and continued quietly, rapidly, “You want me to call Matthias? I wish to hell I could, just to watch your goddamn face, to see your steely, self-righteous eyes grow wild when you learn the truth.”
“What are you talking about?” whispered Decker.
“Matthias wouldn’t know who you are! Any more than he knows who the President is, or his aides, or the undersecretaries, or the diplomats he works with every day-or me, who’s known him for over twenty years, closer to him than any other person alive.”
“No … no, you’re wrong. No!”
“Yes, Commander! He broke. More precisely, we broke him. That mind is gone! It’s shattered. He’s insane. He couldn’t take it any longer. And, by Christ, you did your part. You gave him his ultimate authority, his final responsibility. You stole the world’s—yes, the world’s—secrets and told him his genius could handle them. You took a thousand facts and a hundred theoretical strategies, mixed them up, and turned them into the most terrifying weapon this earth has ever known. A blueprint for global annihilation.”
“That’s not what I did!”
“Granted, not all by yourself, but you provided the—what the hell’s that God-awful Pentagonese?—support structure, that’s it. You provided the support structure for a fiction that’s so real there’s not a nuclear expert alive who wouldn’t accept it as truth. Gospel truth, if you like, Commander.”
“We only discussed, analyzed, tore apart options! The final plan was to be his; you can’t understand. His grasp was brilliant! There was nothing he couldn’t comprehend; it was incredible!”
“It was the act of a mind dying, on the edge of becoming a convoluted vegetable. He wanted you to believe, and he was still good enough to make you believe. He had to, and you wanted to.”
“I did! So would you!”
“That’s what I’ve been told by a better man than you’ll ever be.”
“I don’t deserve that. He appealed to a truth I do believe in. We must be strong!”
“I don’t know any sane person who would argue with that, but there are different kinds and degrees of strength. Some work—usually quietly; others don’t, because they’re swollen with bellicosity. The savage explodes from his own tension; he can’t contain himself, he’s got to flex. And somewhere along the line he blows up, setting in motion a dozen responses that are explosions themselves.”
“Who are you? What are you?”
“A student of history who went astray. But I’m not the issue. You are. Everything you gave Matthias is within arm’s reach of the Soviets, Commander. That master plan, which you’re so convinced we must let the world know we have, may in all its details be on its way to Moscow. Because the man you gave it to is insane, was on his way to becoming insane when you delivered the materials to him.”
Decker rose slowly from the chair. “I don’t believe you,” he said, his voice hollow, the words spoken in dread.
“Then why am I here? Why would I say it? Personal considerations aside, do you think anyone with the brains to get out of the rain wants to make that statement
? Have you any idea what it means to this country to know that the mind of its Secretary of State has been destroyed? I’d like to remind you, Commander, that you don’t have an exclusive claim on patriotism. None of us does.”
Decker stared down at Havelock until he could no longer bear the contact. He turned away, the broad-shouldered body somehow shrinking beneath the tunic. “You tricked me. You made me say things I never would have said.”
“It’s my job.”
“Everything’s over for me. I’m finished.”
“Maybe not. As of this moment, I’d guess you are the least likely candidate as a security risk in the Pentagon. You’ve been burned by a legend and it’s a pain you’ll never forget. Nobody knows better than I do how persuasive Matthias could be.… We need help, not prison sentences. Packing you off to Leavenworth would only raise questions no one wants raised. We’re in a blind race; maybe you can help.”
Decker turned, swallowing, his face ashen. “In any way I can. How?”
Michael got out of the chair and came around the desk to face the officer. “For starters, nothing I’ve told you can be repeated.”
“My God, of course not.”
“No, of course not. You’d be hanging yourself.”
“I’d be hanging the country. I have no exclusivity on patriotism, but I am a patriot, Mr. Cross.”
Havelock walked past the coffee table and the couch, and was reminded of Jenna’s absence. Since they had agreed her presence would be inhibiting, she was upstairs; more accurately, she had insisted on not being there. He reached the wall, aimlessly studied a brass plaque, and spoke. “I’m going to guess again, Commander. There came a time when Matthias wouldn’t see you anymore. Am I right?”
“Yes. I phoned repeatedly—not at State, of course—but he never returned my calls.”
“Not at State?” asked Michael, turning. “But you did call there. It’s how I found you.”