Back Channel (45 page)

“Yes?”

“I have to go out briefly,” said Ainsley from the next room. She wondered how he’d known she was awake. “There’s eggs and toast for you on the table, and a bag on the sofa with a few other items you might need.”

“Where are you going?”

“To check on a couple of things. Don’t go out. Don’t open the door for anybody. And keep the gun nearby.”

A moment later, she heard his footsteps crossing the room, and she had an instinct that he was intentionally treading loud enough for her to detect him. He gave the impression that if he wanted to, he could walk across broken glass without making a sound.

She waited, then opened the door. Slowly.

Jericho Ainsley was gone.

Margo sat at the table with the gun beside her plate, wondering
whether Donald Jensen ever used to eat this way. She decided arbitrarily that he had. The eggs were overdone, but she didn’t care.

She felt absurdly grateful.

After breakfast, she washed the dishes in the stainless-steel sink and put them in the drainer. Then she turned to the bag on the sofa. Inside, she found slacks and underwear and a sweater, all more or less her size, along with a toothbrush and a hairbrush and deodorant. Had he gone out specially to some all-night clothing store, or did he keep a supply of such things around for his women? Embarrassed at the turn of her own thoughts, she laid out the clothes on the bed and hurried into the bathroom. In the shower, she made a mental note to call Nana later this morning, and maybe Corbin, too, just to be sure everything was as it should be. Not that Ziegler would have any reason to act on his threats. As far as he knew, she’d given the note to Fomin.

As far as he knew.

Because Ziegler’s people couldn’t possibly have followed her. Doing so would entail too much risk—

Wait.

Margo stood there, hot water cascading over her brown body, and frowned. An idea that had been forming in the shadows began to creep toward the front of her mind. Ziegler’s people hadn’t followed her, because of the risk. Bundy’s people hadn’t followed her, because of the risk. But in Ithaca, Fomin and his people had followed her without hesitation. She remembered Niemeyer’s point in class all those days ago about the man with the grenade in the bank, and how the more the robber wants, the less certain we are that he’ll carry out his threat: another of the petits paradoxes.

Fomin’s people had followed her.

In Ithaca.

And Margo saw, with sudden clarity, the answer that had been staring her in the face all along.

She turned off the shower and, deep in her contemplations, dried her hair, wrapped herself in a towel, and walked out of the bathroom—

—only to find Jerry Ainsley seated at the table as he leafed through the Sunday
New York Times.

“Good morning,” he said, eyes averted.

Beet-red, Margo raced into the bedroom and slammed the door.

Another first, she told herself, as she hurriedly dressed. Kissing a President, spending the night in a strange man’s apartment, then letting him see her half naked. She consoled herself with the knowledge that things couldn’t get any worse.

Except, of course, they could.

“It’s a trick,” said General Curtis LeMay. “It’s obviously a trick.”

Around the table there were several nods. The ExComm had returned to the matter left unsettled yesterday: On Friday, via the back channel, Khrushchev had communicated an offer to remove the missiles from Cuba in return for an American promise not to invade. Then, yesterday, Saturday, he had publicly insisted anew that only a trade for the Jupiters would do. Friday’s deal meant peace; Saturday’s deal meant war; the question was whether the President should act as if the Friday deal was still on the table.

Kennedy glanced at his least favorite general. “Which part of it is a trick?” he asked.

“The whole thing. They’re working faster on the launch sites, right?” His tone dripped disrespect. “Khrushchev says they’re willing to take those missiles out, but at the same time, they’re finishing them as fast as they can. Because they know, once they’re finished, there’s nothing we can do. At that point, the deterrent begins to deter.” LeMay drew a page out of the folder in front of him. “The Friday offer obviously isn’t from Khrushchev at all. Or, if it is, he’s not in charge. I have here an assessment from the Agency to the effect that Khrushchev’s hard-liners won’t let him back down.” He shut the folder again. “Friday was a trick. Saturday is their real position, and it hasn’t changed one iota since this blasted thing started. Add to that the fact that they’ve shot down one of our planes and killed one of our people. That shows real recklessness on their part. There’s no longer any choice, Mr. President. We have to go in.”

Again, Bundy was disturbed by the growls of enthusiasm around the table.

“Look,” he tried. “Khrushchev turned the
Grozny.
That has to be a signal that he’s ready to deal.”

Admiral George W. Anderson, Jr., the chief of naval operations,
shook his head, and unconsciously echoed the President’s argument from two hours ago. “A signal would be to start dismantling the missile launchers. Speeding up the work isn’t exactly an olive branch.” He turned directly to Bundy. “I’m sorry, Mac. I know you think we can negotiate our way out of this. But from what I can tell, we’ve been had.”

McCone spoke up. “And even if Khrushchev does agree to remove the missiles, there’s still the matter of the IL-28 bombers he’s snuck into Cuba. Lest we forget, they carry nuclear payloads, too.”

“We can handle that quietly,” said the attorney general. “I don’t think the public’s paying too much attention to the bombers. It’s the missiles that have everybody spooked.”

“People are terrified,” said Sorensen. “They’re streaming out of the cities. Buses and trains are overwhelmed. Long-distance lines are so jammed that most calls don’t go through.”

“That’s why we should make Khrushchev’s proposal public,” said Bobby.

LeMay gave him a withering look. “You’re talking like this thing is settled. It’s a long way from settled.” To the President: “Sir, I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. We don’t even know for sure who’s in charge over there in the Kremlin right now. The reason Khrushchev put missiles in Cuba in the first place was to make his hawks happy.” To McCone: “That’s the CIA’s analysis, right?” At large: “You think he’ll have the guts to take them out? Believe me, he won’t. We have to take them out. We have to invade. Today!” Suddenly he was pounding the table. “Mr. President, believe me, if you make a deal with the Reds on this, it’ll go down as the greatest defeat in our history.”

Stunned silence greeted LeMay’s challenge. Nobody could remember a general pounding the table in the face of his commander in chief.

A moment later, a babble of voices rose, but Bobby Kennedy’s was loudest. “That’s enough, General LeMay. There’s a plan, and we’re going to follow it. If we don’t have a deal by tomorrow at two, we start the attack. I don’t see any reason to change that.”

“By tomorrow,” growled Maxwell Taylor, “they could have the rest of those launchers operational.”

“Not likely,” said Bundy. “We can be hawks tomorrow. For today, we turned the
Grozny,
and Khrushchev says he wants to deal. It’s a day for the doves.”

But Bundy was arguing against his own inclination. The hawks were righter than they knew. With
GREENHILL
missing, there was no obvious way to verify that Fomin really did speak for Khrushchev. The war faction of the ExComm had become like a train rolling out of control, and as the argument circled the table, one adviser after another seemed stuck on the invasion express.

At last the President waved everyone silent. “We stick to the plan. We wait another day.”

“Mr. President,” began several members at once.

Kennedy wasn’t finished. “But let’s move up the operation to noon. That’s twenty-four hours from now. At noon tomorrow, if we don’t have a firm deal, and if we don’t know for sure that it’s Khrushchev over there, we go in.”

Bundy stood in the foyer between the Cabinet Room and the Oval Office, watching to see who left with whom, because he knew the President would ask. Gwynn, from State, walked out deep in conversation with General LeMay and Admiral Anderson: hardly the most auspicious of sights. Secretary of Defense McNamara left not with his generals but with Adlai Stevenson, the United Nations ambassador, who was one of the few strong voices for negotiation remaining: a better sight.

Unless, of course, McNamara was trying to persuade Stevenson, rather than the other way around.

By this time, Bundy was seriously worried about the fate of his agent,
GREENHILL
. Warren, the driver assigned her by the Secret Service, had received a priority order by telephone last night, putting him on a plane to Chicago to join the advance team for a presidential trip that turned out not to exist. Nobody knew who had made the call. Nobody knew who had driven
GREENHILL
to and from her rendezvous with Kennedy. According to the director of the presidential protection detail, Warren swore that he’d asked about his usual assignment, and been assured that it was being handled. The caller plainly knew the right codes. Bundy wanted to press for more but didn’t dare: the director, who after all knew only the cover story, seemed to think it was a prank by fellow agents, and therefore the proper subject of a reprimand
if he happened to learn who was responsible. He didn’t think the episode worth a serious investigation, and might find it strange that the national security adviser was so concerned for the whereabouts of a Kennedy girlfriend.

“Mr. Bundy.”

He turned. Janet, his secretary, was beside him.

“Did you try the apartment again?”

“Twice. No word. I think I’m getting on her roommate’s nerves.”

“Her roommate. Right. Did we assign protection for her?”

“I took care of it. Mr. Bundy, Director McCone needs to see you urgently.”

He glanced around. “Where is he?”

“Downstairs, in your office.” She bit her lip. “He says he didn’t think you’d want your conversation to be overheard.” She leaned closer. “He said to tell you it’s about
GREENHILL
. And that he didn’t want to embarrass you.”

Doris Harrington was also beginning to worry. On Sunday mornings on P Street in Georgetown, very little ever stirred. But this morning a man she had never seen before walked his dog past her front door twice, and a van bearing the logo of a plumbing service that wasn’t listed in the Yellow Pages parked at the corner for two hours. Shortly before the van left, a stretch limousine with darkened windows pulled up across the street, but nobody got in or out. Around back, a couple was arguing in the yard abutting hers. The woman was nobody she recognized, but Harrington was fairly certain that the man who was shouting, although now dressed casually, was the same one who earlier had been walking the dog.

Surveillance was nothing new to her. She had been encountering it, in one form or another, since her days in occupied Vienna. Long after she stopped running agents, she was still the subject of random checks, as was everyone with her clearance.

But this was different. This wasn’t the FBI watching her briefly, to be sure she didn’t have a hand in the till. This was an open, full-scale operation, the sort that was intended to deter any contact with the subject.

Harrington let the curtain fall. She rarely watched the television in the living room, but now she turned it on, in case there was news about Cuba. But the news was about America: empty store shelves, empty gas pumps, empty houses and apartment buildings in the big cities. For a decade or more, the government had been urging people to build backyard shelters or make evacuation plans. She didn’t know how many had shelters, but the number of frightened evacuees was in the millions.

It occurred to her that she had never made a plan to leave the city—for example, to visit her younger sister in San Diego—in part because she had always assumed that she would be at her desk until the end, helping the President struggle to contain the crisis.

But someone else sat at her desk now, and Harrington had no idea how the negotiations were proceeding. She had become, in national security terms, an unperson.

She went to the kitchen for some apple juice. The arguing couple had vanished, but in the alley a man was down on his knees, working on his motorcycle. Back on the living-room sofa, she sipped her juice and reasoned things through. That a surveillance operation of this scale would begin so suddenly could only mean that some emergency had arisen. She wasn’t sure who was responsible for the large team of watchers, but she very much doubted that they were there for Doris Harrington. They might be official; they might be the other thing. Either way, Harrington herself was a woman of late middle age; if they wanted her, they would have come through the door and taken her.

Which meant that they were there for Margo. It occurred to her that she should probably warn the girl. Unfortunately, she had no idea how
GREENHILL
could be reached.

So she sat, and watched television, and, like the rest of America, waited.

“McCone knows,” said Bundy, alone in the Oval Office with the Kennedy brothers. “He was kind enough to drop by my suite to tell me in private that the Agency has become aware, as he puts it, that I’m running an illegal intelligence operation out of the White House.”

“How did he find out?” asked Bobby.

“He won’t tell me that. Only that his people have worked it out. But it seems that he didn’t get the key piece until this morning. A message came to him, through channels he declines to identify, that
GREENHILL
is safe, and under the protection of the Agency.”

“She’s safe,” breathed the President.

“And under the protection of the Agency,” Bundy said again. It was imperative that they understand the point. “McCone says that our operation—well, he thinks it’s my operation—my operation went off the rails, but one of his people was able to pick up the pieces. I’m sorry, but the director has a habit of mixing his metaphors.” He shrugged. “Anyway, the only good to come out of this is that I don’t think McCone actually has her.”