the old days, and people never stopped looking at the big segment of Berlin
Wall that had been on display for years. Especially the old hands, it seemed
to Scott, who felt himself to be one of those. Well, at least he had work to do
this day, and that was a welcome change.
Back in his office, Chris Scott closed his drapes and loaded the slides into
a projector. He could have selected only those he’d made special notes on,
but this was his work for the day-perhaps the whole week if he played his
cards right-and he would conduct himself with the usual thoroughness,
comparing what he saw with the report from that NASA guy.
” Mind if I join you?” Betsy Fleming stuck her head in the door. She was
one of the old hands, soon to be a grandmother, who’d actually started as a
secretary at DIA. Self-taught in the fields of photoanalysis and rocket engi-
neering, her experience dated back to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Lacking a
formal degree, her expertise in this field of work was formidable.
“Sure.” Scott didn’t mind the intrusion. Betsy was also the office’s des-
ignated mom.
“Our old friend the 88-19,” she observed, taking her seat. “Wow, I like
what they did with it.”
“Ain’t it the truth?” Scott observed, stretching to shake off his postlunch
drowsiness.
What had once been quite ugly was now rather beautiful. The missile bod-
ies were polished stainless steel, which allowed a better view of the struc-
ture. In the old Russian green, it had looked brutish. Now it looked more like
the space launcher it was supposed to be, sleeker somehow, even more im-
pressive in its purposeful bulk.
“NASA says they’ve saved a whole lot of weight on the body, better ma-
terials, that sort of thing,” Scott observed. “I really believe it now.”
“Shame they couldn’t do that with their g’ddamn’ gas tanks,” Mrs. Flem-
ing observed. Scott grunted agreement. He owned a Cresta, and now his wife
refused to drive in it until the tank was replaced. Which would be a couple of
weeks, his dealer had informed him. The company was actually renting a car
for him in their vain effort to curry public goodwill. That had meant getting a
new parking sticker, which he would have to scrape off before returning the
rental to Avis.
“Do we know who got the shots?” Betsy asked.
“One of ours, all I know.” Scott flipped to another slide. “A lot of
changes. They almost look cosmetic,” he observed.
“How much weight are they supposed to have saved?” He was right,
Mrs. Fleming thought. The steel skin showed the circular patterns of the pol-
ishing rushes, almost like jeweling on a rifle bolt. . .
“According to NASA, over twelve hundred pounds on the missile
body …” Another click of the remote.
“Hmph, but not there,” Betsy noted.
“That’s funny.”
The top end of the missile was where the warheads went. The 88-19 was
designed to carry a bunch of them. Relatively small and heavy, they were
dense objects, and the missile’s structure had to account for it. Any intercon-
tinental missile accelerated from the moment its flight began to the moment
the engines finally stopped, but the period of greatest acceleration came just
before burnout. At that point, with most of the fuel burned off, the rate at
which speed increased reached its maximum, in this case about ten gees. At
the same time, the structural rigidity lent to the missile body by the quantity
of fuel inside its tanks was minimal, and as a result, the structure holding the
warheads had to be both sturdy and massive so as to evenly distribute the
vastly increased inertial weight of the payloads.
“No, they didn’t change that, did they?” Scott looked over at his col-
league.
“I wonder why? This bird’s supposed to orbit satellites now …”
“Heavy ones, they say, communications birds …”
“Yeah, but look at that part…”
The foundation for the warhead “bus” had to be strong across its entire
area. The corresponding foundation for a communications satellite was es-
sentially a thin steel annulus, a flat, sturdy donut that invariably looked too
light for its job. This one was more like an unusually heavy wagon wheel.
Scott unlocked a file drawer and removed a recent photo of an 88-19 taken
by an American officer on the verification team in Russia. He handed it over
to Mrs. Fleming without comment.
“Look here. That’s the standard structure, just what the Russians de-
signed in, maybe with better steel, better finish. They changed almost every-
thing else, didn’t they?” Fleming asked. “Why not this?”
“Looked that way to me. Keeping that must have cost them-what? A
hundred pounds, maybe more?”
“That doesn’t make sense, Chris. This is the first place you want to save
weight. Every kilo you save here is worth four or five on the first stage.”
Both stood and walked to the screen. “Wait a minute …”
“Yeah, this fits the bus. They didn’t change it. No mating collar for a
satellite. They didn’t change it at all.” Scott shook his head.
“You suppose they just kept the bus design for their trans-stage?”
“Even if they did, they don’t need all this mass at the top end, do they?”
“It’s almost like they wanted it to stay the way it was.”
“Yeah. I wonder why.”
14
Reflections
“Thirty seconds,” the assistant director said as the final commercial rolled
for the Sunday-morning audience. The entire show had centered on Russia
and Europe, which suited Ryan just fine.
“The one question I can’t ask.” Bob Holtzman chuckled before the tape
started rolling again. “What’s it like to be the National Security Advisor in a
country with no threat to its national security?”
“Relaxing,” Ryan answered with a wary look at the three cameras. None
had their telltale red lights burning.
“So why the long hours?” Kris Hunter asked in a voice less sharp than
her look.
“If I don’t show up for work,” Jack lied, “people might notice how un-
important I am.” Bad news. They still don’t know about India, but they know
something’s up. Damn. He wanted to keep it quiet. It was one of those things
that public pressure would hurt, not help.
“Four! Three! Two! One!” The assistant director jerked his finger at the
moderator, a television journalist named Edward Johnson.
“Dr. Ryan, what does the Administration make of changes in the Japa-
nese cabinet?”
“Well, of course, that’s a result of the current difficulties in trade, which
is not really in my purview. Basically what we see there is an internal politi-
cal situation which the Japanese people can quite easily handle without our
advice,” Jack announced in his earnest-statesman’s voice, the one that had
taken a few elocution lessons to perfect. Mainly he’d had to learn to speak
more slowly.
Kris Hunter leaned forward. “But the leading candidate to take the
prime ministership is a long-standing enemy of the United States-”
“That’s a little strong,” Ryan interrupted with a good-natured smile.
“His speeches, his writings, his books are not exactly friendly.”
“I suppose,” Ryan said with a dismissive wave and a crooked smile.
“The difference between discourse among friendly nations and unfriendly
ones, oddly enough, is that the former can often be more acrimonious than
the latter.” Not bad, Jack . . .
“You are not concerned?”
“No,” Ryan said with a gentle shake of the head. Short answers on a
show like this tended to intimidate reporters, he thought.
“Thank you for coming in this morning, Dr. Ryan.”
” A pleasure as always.”
Ryan continued to smile until the camera lights blinked off. Then he
counted slowly to ten. Then he waited until the other reporters removed their
microphones. Then he removed his microphone and stood up and moved
away from the working part of the set. And then it was safe to speak. Bob
Holtzman followed Jack into the makeup room. The cosmeticians were off
drinking coffee, and Ryan took a fistful of HandiWipes and passed the con-
tainer to Holtzman. Over the mirror was a large slab of wood engraved on
which was, IN HERE EVERYTHING is OFF THE RECORD.
“You know the real reason behind equal rights for women?” Holtzman
asked. “It wasn’t equal pay, or bras, or any of that crap.”
“Right,” Jack agreed. “It was forcing them to wear makeup. We de-
served everything we got. God, I hate this shit!” he added, wiping the pan-
cake off his forehead. “Makes me feel like a cheap whore.”
‘ ‘That isn’t too unusual for a political figure, is it?” Kristyn Hunter asked,
taking wipes to do the same.
Jack laughed. “No, but it’s kind of impolite for you to say so, ma’am.”
Am I a political figure now? Ryan asked himself. / suppose I am. How the
hell did that happen?
“Why the fancy footwork on my last question, Jack?” Holtzman asked.