“I gather you don’t agree?”
Dr. Curry harrumphed. “Unmitigated imbecility. Even from one’s wife. Man is an aggressive animal- one of the very few that fights merely for the fun of it. Monday night football is proof. There won’t be peace in our time or anybody else’s time, especially if the president signs those protocols.”
“Why not?”
“It sticks out a mile, doesn’t it? The Russians shift their agricultural labor to manufacturing, giving them the capability to produce plowshares-which can quickly be forged into swords. Meanwhile, we’re all down on the farm wading through pig shit to grow grain for them, which they’ll squirrel away for den Tag. How can we be so dumb as to swallow that bilge?”
The others drank to that, none more deeply than old Oxonian Dr. Herbert Chilton Fallows, naval architect and strategist, who ventured a discreet “Hear! Hear!” and begged to add that it wasn’t just the economic arrangements that disturbed him.
“Look here,” he said, taking a cocktail napkin and placing it flat on the bar. “Here’s the United States, surrounded mostly by sea. Here comes the Russian fleet. According to the protocols, each year they will visit Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, Houston, New Orleans, Charleston, Washington, New York, and Boston.” With his pen he inked nine dots on the periphery of the napkin.
“And which nine ports does the United States fleet call at in the Russian domain?” He took another napkin, and supplied it with nine dots, mostly at one side. “London, Le Havre, Oran, Barcelona, Naples, Pireaus, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, and Tripoli. Kindly observe the difference. The Russian fleet calls at points that almost surround the United States, no part of which is more than one hour by naval aircraft from one of these ports. Our fleet, on the other hand, never approaches the heartland of Mother Russia, which is several thousand miles inland. This bestows on them the capability of all sorts of mischief denied to us.”
“Such as?”
“Oh . . . sneak atomic attacks from their carriers; sowing atomic bombs in the shallows on both coasts, so that radioactive mists would blanket the continent; poisoning our ground-water supplies with botulism or anthrax-any number of unpleasant things, in fact.”
“Then we’re agreed that the Washington Protocols shouldn’t be signed?”
“Yes, I think we are,” said Professor Hamilton Reed, whose specialties were higher mathematics and computer technology. “But they will be, you know. The nation wants it, and Wynn and his Congress will slide down the bear-greased poll of public opinion despite what I understand are their private reservations.”
“Right,” Forte said. “Now, the legislative timetable calls for Congressional hearings on the protocols beginning in March, just two months from now. Then while the Congress is in summer recess, the Soviet fleet arrives-the first of June, I believe-in Seattle. It will spend ten days in each port, coming to Houston the first week in July. The fleet winds up in Washington late August, when the Russian premier is to meet President Wynn for the signing ceremony, after which the Senate is expected to ratify the protocols overwhelmingly.
“All this is contingent, as I see it, on the outcome of the fleet visit. Obviously, the Russians are going to behave like little Soviet gentlemen, to show America what fine, trustworthy fellows they are. But if we can jostle them off balance, make them show themselves for the cynical and nasty types they really are, the United States public will have second thoughts about the protocols. If they do, Wynn won’t sign. It is imperative for our national security, as you all concede, that he does not … Gentlemen, I have asked you here to help me plan a surprise party for the Russian fleet.”
He told them about the Texas, how it was being reconditioned to take part in the Texas Millenary Celebrations, and how it might, with their expert assistance, be the goad that would make the Russian bear say Ouch! and bare its claws.
“My God!” Emilio Salvatore protested. The physicist was on leave from the vice-presidency of the Warfare Systems Division of Allied Aircraft Corporation. “You’re not talking about sending that old hulk out against the Russian fleet, are you? That would be an act of war.”
“Not if it isn’t armed.”
“Then how-”
“What I want is a demonstration that looks to them like an act of war. The ship will roar out among them, at very high speed-speed, gentlemen, will be your number-one concern-shooting its guns in all directions. Its sudden appearance will disconcert, and its speed will discombobulate and terrify them in its unexpectedness, and the gunfire will, I fervently hope, prod them into firing back, before they realize that the barrage consists of blank saluting shells, and that the apparition of the ship among their fleet is merely a big Texas hello! I’m depending on surprise to stampede them into shooting off everything they have and sinking the old Texas before they tumble to the fact that it was only an elaborate and boisterous welcome.”
The four men sipped their drinks, alone with their thoughts.
“Yes, that might work,” one said finally.
Another added: “We’ll film the whole hilarious episode and blanket the TV networks.”
“They’ll look like asses,” said a third, “and what’s more, villainous asses.”
“Christ,” Professor Reed said, warming to the idea, “I can see it now-that huge white ship whipping in between the columns of Russian men-of-war like a PT boat, flames leaping from its muzzles, the gunners- say! If the Russians are supposed to sink the Texas, what about the crew? Who would volunteer to sail her?”
“You, my dear Professor,” said Forte gently. “You’ll sail her. You and your little black boxes. There won’t be a drop of American blood shed aboard the U.S.S. Texas and, if our idea works, anywhere else either, for a long, long time.”
18 JANUARY 1998
Salt Dome-1 was aswarm with talent, with an admixture of genius and a leavening of imaginative madness. Much of the talent and genius had been accumulated over the years by Sunshine Industries, Inc., to fulfill its manufacturing commitments to the U.S. government in the fields of advanced weaponry, communications, high-speed surface transportation, and submarine propulsion. The pool of brains and technological skill had been augmented during the past week by teams of bright young men-and a handful of creative crackpots-temporarily seconded from their regular work by the four experts Gwillam Forte brought in to ramrod the Texas conversion, phase two.
Over the years, the SD-1 work force had settled down into a comfortable routine, cushioned from layoffs by long-term government contracts, made complacent by high pay and ample time off, and deliberately paced rather than hurried in order to assure the highest standards of production and quality control. Into this secure world the outsiders came like a blast of arctic wind, blowing away established methods and procedures, sprinting rather than strolling, speaking in phrases rather than sentences, holding frenzied corridor conferences, drinking gallons of coffee, banging away two-fingered at computer terminals far into the night, and arguing and pleading and cajoling with, overruling, ignoring, sneering at, commanding, warning, evading, lecturing, and defying their nominal superiors according to mood, their insubordination excused by the vast amount of sound work they produced. They were forever building models-clay and mathematical and balsa wood, proposing, testing, perfecting, and rejecting theories, and leaving masses of shredded paper, discarded hypotheses, empty coffee cups, and wounded feelings in their wake.
Gwillam Forte, striding through the drafting rooms, past the test stands, model basins, instrumentation center, and especially the canteen and bar, where it seemed the really important business was being transacted, was invigorated. He didn’t know precisely what was going on, but something was, and his scientists assured him that the Texas would go down, not only in glory beneath the waters of the Houston Ship Channel as planned, but in the annals of naval history as a ship absolutely unique: a man-of-war that sank the enemy’s foreign policy without firing a shot.
On that point Forte had been adamant. There must not be so much as a bullet hole in any of the Russian ships for them to cite as provocation for sinking the U.S.S, Texas. Nor could there be any armament capable of doing the slightest damage aboard the Texas when it slid down into the depths, for the depths of the channel were so inconsiderable-despite dredging so it could accommodate megatankers-that it would be easily accessible to inspection by frogmen.
“But there’s the rub, Mr. Forte,” demurred Emilio Salvatore, the young weapons specialist at a conference convened to discuss the subject. “There must be weapons aboard capable of inflicting major damage or your scenario won’t hold water.”
“No dice,” Forte said firmly. “If we shoot real bullets at the Russians, they’d have every excuse to defend themselves by shooting back. That’s the whole idea- that they sink a defenseless ship. A ship with guns popping off using real ammunition is scarcely defenseless.”