Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [100]
General Power ( jeez, how had primitives like him and LeMay come to have control over the hardware?) had rigged the IBMs in Montana so that the double-fault fail-safe system that prevented an accidental launch of the missiles could be bypassed. Which meant, without hyphens, that two guys, maybe gone crazy or panicking in their underground bunker, could let go a nuclear missile without checking authorization.
B-52 bombers, permanently, in rotation, were cruising the perimeters of the Soviet Union. Each was loaded with four Mark 28 nuclear bombs. An Mk-28 had seventy times the power of the bomb that had obliterated Hiroshima. An encoded — or wrongly encoded — radio signal could send any one of those planes veering off to drop destruction onto Omsk or Tomsk or Gomsk, or whatever the hell those Russian places were called.
And on this night, divisions of marines had boarded ship in full expectation of swarming through tropical surf to purge the Caribbean of Commies.
And on this night, U.S. ships and planes were searching for the four, maybe more, nuclear-armed Soviet submarines within the quarantine, with orders to regard them as hostile.
And a missile ship, the Grozny, was going to hit the blockade line at dawn.
Kennedy had installed a situation room in the White House: screens, phones, alert young people. It occupied a space that President Eisenhower had used as a bowling alley. The SR tapped him into the information that was fed to the Pentagon. It allowed Kennedy to monitor real-time developments, allowed him to feel that he was in control. But he wasn’t, and he knew it. He was not at all sure who was in control. Who was in control of the Cuban missiles? The Russians, who at least seemed to have some discipline? Or Castro, who might do who knew what?
It seemed to Kennedy that the whole thing was like a pyramid of eggs, or a cluster of bubbles. Unbearable delicacy. Just one component starts to roll, something pops, and poof! the world is gone.
The gray telephone by his elbow tempted him. He could wake his personal assistant. Dave Powers. Tell Dave to get him a woman. Mary Meyer, perhaps. That would be nice. Mary’s husband was a CIA officer, which made her a risky mistress. She was so good, though. Very understanding, very discreet, and accepting of his disabilities. And her husband, if he was doing his job, would not be at home.
Powers answered on the third ring.
IT WAS STILL dark when Ruth heard noises from the bathroom, then the toilet flushing and Win going back to her room, singing to herself.
George was right, Ruth thought. Her mother was going a bit peculiar. And she’d be retiring from the laundry six months from now. A batty old woman in the house all day, oh, my God. Dunt even think about it. Ruth squinted at the alarm clock. Five something? George’s breathing rattled in his chest. The fags. She worried herself back to sleep.
She awoke when George brought the cups of tea in, which was the Sunday arrangement.
“Did you make one for Mother?”
“No,” George said. “There’s no sound out of her.”
“Ent there? Thas rum, ent it? She never sleep this late.”
George kicked his slippers off and got back into bed.
“I better go’n see if she’s all right,” Ruth said, heaving her legs out from under the blankets.
“’Course she’s all right. Drink your tea.”
“She might be ill, George.”
“Ill?” he snorted. “When’s