“Ingenious,” he said. “It might work. Can it be done in time?”
“We have the equipment,” said Munro. “The time is short, but not too short. I would have to be back in Berlin by seven A.M. Berlin time, ten hours from now.”
“But even if we agree, will Maxim Rudin go along with it?” asked the President. “Without his concurrence the Treaty of Dublin would be forfeit.”
“The only way is to ask him,” said Poklewski, who had finished the memorandum and passed it to David Lawrence. The Boston-born Secretary of State put the papers down as if they would soil his fingers.
“I find the idea cold-blooded and repulsive,” Lawrence said. “No United States government could put its imprimatur to such a scheme.”
“Is it worse than sitting back as twenty-nine innocent seamen in the Freya are burned alive?” asked Munro.
The phone rang again. When Benson replaced it he turned to the President.
“I feel we may have no alternative but to seek Maxim Rudin’s agreement,” he said. “Chancellor Busch has just announced Mishkin and Lazareff are being freed at oh-eight-hundred hours, European time. And this time he will not back down.”
“Then we have to try it,” said Matthews. “But I am not taking sole responsibility. Maxim Rudin must agree to permit the plan to go ahead. He must be forewarned. I shall call him personally.”
“Mr. President,” said Munro. “Maxim Rudin did not use the hot line to deliver his ultimatum to you. He is not sure of the loyalties of some of his inner staff inside the Kremlin. In these faction fights, even some of the small fry change sides and support the opposition with classified information. I believe this proposal should be for his ears alone or he will feel bound to refuse it.”
“Surely there is not the time for you to fly to Moscow through the night and be back in Berlin by dawn?” objected Poklewski.
“There is one way,” said Benson. “There is a Blackbird based at Andrews that would cover the distance in the time.”
President Matthews made up his mind.
“Bob, escort Mr. Munro to Andrews Air Force Base. Alert the crew of the Blackbird there to prepare for takeoff in one hour. I will personally call Maxim Rudin and ask him to permit the airplane to enter Soviet airspace, and to receive Adam Munro as my personal envoy. Anything else, Mr. Munro?”
Munro took a single sheet from his pocket.
“I would like the Company to get this message urgently to Sir Nigel Irvine so that he can take care of the London and Berlin ends,” he said.
“It will be done,” said the President. “Be on your way, Mr. Munro. And good luck to you.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
2100 to 0600
WHEN THE HELICOPTER rose from the White House lawn, the Secret Service agents were left behind. An amazed pilot found himself bearing the mysterious Englishman in the rumpled clothes, and the Director of the CIA. To their right, as they rose above Washington, the Potomac River glittered in the late-afternoon sun. The pilot headed due southeast for Andrews Air Force Base.
Inside the Oval Office, Stanislaw Poklewski, invoking the personal authority of President Matthews in every sentence, was speaking to the base commander there. That officer’s protestations died slowly away. Finally, the national security adviser handed the phone to William Matthews.
“Yes, General, this is William Matthews and those are my orders. You will inform Colonel O’Sullivan that he is to prepare a flight plan immediately for a polar route direct from Washington to Moscow. Clearance to enter Soviet airspace unharmed will be radioed to him before he quits Greenland.”
The President went back to his other telephone, the red machine on which he was trying to speak directly to Maxim Rudin in Moscow.
At Andrews, the commander himself met the helicopter as it touched down. Without the presence of Robert Benson, whom the Air Force general knew by sight, it was unlikely he would have accepted the unknown Englishman as a passenger on the world’s fastest reconnaissance jet, let alone his orders to allow that jet to take off for Moscow. Ten years after it entered service, it was still on the secret list, so sophisticated were its components and systems.
“Very well, Mr. Director,” he said finally, “but I have to tell you that in Colonel O’Sullivan we have one very angry Arizonan.”
He was right. While Adam Munro was taken to the pilot clothing store to be issued with a g-suit, boots, and goldfish-bowl oxygen helmet, Robert Benson found Colonel George T. O’Sullivan in the navigation room, cigar clamped in his teeth, poring over maps of the Arctic and eastern Baltic. The Director of Central Intelligence might outrank him, but he was in no mood to be polite.
“Are you seriously ordering me to fly this bird clean across Greenland and Scandinavia, and into the heart of Rooshia?” he demanded truculently.
“No, Colonel,” said Benson reasonably. “The President of the United States is ordering you to do it.”
“Without my navigator-systems operator? With some goddam Limey sitting in his seat?”
“The ‘goddam Limey’ happens to bear a personal message from President Matthews to President Rudin of the USSR which has to reach him tonight and cannot be discussed in any other way,” said Benson.