The Orion Protocol (2 page)

PART

I

I dreamt that I was walking with my left side
folded-over.
And I knew somehow that if I could just
unfold it
, I would then be whole and complete and my destiny could be fulfilled.

—Descartes

1

January 27/Oval Office/the White House

“Two months ago, if anybody had said we were gonna catch this in the first hundred days, I’d have thought they were high.”

The fifty-eight-year-old former senator from Colorado and newly elected President of the United States stared out the much-photographed bay window of the Oval Office and into the cut-back winter Rose Garden.

“What was it Truman said?”

On the desktop, the blade end of his letter opener, engraved with the presidential seal, tapped out a rhythmic figure from the William Tell Overture known to Americans who came of age in front of three black-and-white channels of network TV as the theme from
The Lone Ranger
.

“Truman, sir?”

From a clubby wing chair, R. Cabot “Bob” Winston, the President’s national security adviser, recognized the galloping little perididdle and made a private note to include it in his memoirs: one of those little human details people liked to read about from a historic moment.

“When they told him about Fat Boy.” The President clanked the blade into a decorated soup can/pencil holder his youngest daughter once made him for Father’s Day. “Damn it, I know this.”

“Ah, January of forty-five. In this room.” Winston sat up minutely straighter, unconsciously signaling the sense of occasion he felt when past presidents were invoked within these walls.

The new President rocked in his leather chair.

“With Harriman and his whole sleek Ivy League crowd telling poor Harry-the-Haberdasher he had to nuke the Japanese.”

“Or not,” Winston said, in a small bow to the Office.

“Oh, I think Einstein’s group was the only ‘or not.’ “ The President’s dry tone glinted off the darker edge of a sense of humor familiar to his campaign staff. “Jesus, what the hell did he say?”

Winston searched his own mental archives.

A buttoned-down Skull & Bones veteran of executive-branch politics, he had experienced an extraordinary tenure, having served at high levels in the NSA and on the National Security Council in both Bush administrations. His carryover appointment was both an olive branch across the aisle and a gesture of confidence toward Intelligence: a community beleaguered by scandal, Cold War excesses, and spectacular failures, now resurrected and seeking redemption through its mission against global terrorism.

Winston, their point man, produced an answer.

“Yes. Wasn’t it, ‘How much time do I have?’ “

“No, ‘How much time do I
get?
’ “ the President said, in Harry Truman’s flat twang, savoring the Midwest inflection. “How much time do I
get?
”

Winston nodded, composed and ramrod straight.

Younger White House staffers had observed that he seemed to wear alertness like a mask, as if some hard-bitten mentor from the halls of spookdom had once cautioned him that blinking one’s eyes was a sign of weakness. And, though word was passed down that the President regarded R. Cabot Winston as a symbol of national unity, many still referred to him in-house as “Robo-Bob.” It was cruel, but fair.

“Well, I guess that’s my question, too, Bob.”

“We’re a few days out from final testing, sir.”

“Days.” The President’s surprise was eloquent enough.

Winston offered a thin-lipped smile. “With a caveat which I will explain.”

As if triggering a pair of explosive bolts, the national security adviser loudly snapped open the bombproof briefcase handcuffed to his left wrist. He then produced a file stamped
PROJECT ORION/POTUS/EYES
ONLY
and laid it flat on the Oval Office desk. POTUS used reading glasses to inspect it as Winston explained.

“This is the executive order authorizing continuing funding of space shield research and testing. The record enclosed represents decades of development and half a trillion dollars invested, give or take, each phase of publicly funded R & D supplemented with discretionary monies by presidential EO. The line for your initials has been flagged.”

Noting all the previous presidents’ initials displayed in succession, the new Commander in Chief handled the documents like rare historical artifacts prepared for display at the Smithsonian. But he’d have bet his campaign debt that this record would never see the light of day.

“I guess Star Wars didn’t just fade away when the Wall came down,” he said, leafing through the pages.

“Fortunately not, sir.”

Classified above top secret, the file in the President’s hands charted the progress of Project Orion from its Cold War roots as part of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, a.k.a. Star Wars, to its post-911 incarnation as a space-based laser weapons system adroitly repositioned as a shield against rogue terrorist ICBMs.

“Ups the ante from a few missiles on the ground in Alaska, doesn’t it?”

“The photon laser leapfrogs all other missile defense technology, sir.”

The President nodded, his apprehensions intact: space-based weapons more than violated America’s post-ABM strategic defense agreements with Russia. And September 11 no longer provided a free pass for whatever the U.S. wanted in the name of national security.

“So, what’s the damned caveat, Bob?”

Winston presented the facts unadorned, like a nice neat hanging.

“There’s a hard window for deployment, sir. We have twenty-one days.”

“That’s ridiculous. We’re still looking for the johns around here.”

“I understand, sir. But geomechanically, if we don’t deploy Orion within three weeks, NASA says we’ll have to wait a full year before we can try it again, which would be extremely problematic in terms of realpolitik.”

For all the speeches at the UN pledging antiterror solidarity, unilateral deployment of uncodified American superweapons would be like throwing a flash grenade into the 3-D chess game of international relations.

The wariness in the President’s demeanor edged toward anger.

“Why wasn’t the transition team brought up to speed on this two months ago?”

“Need-to-know, sir,” Winston recited the intelligence mantra. “New staff have not been vetted above top secret yet. And frankly, proof of design data was not as hard as it needed to be.”

“Christ.” The President scowled, brooding behind the desk built for FDR.

Winston squirmed almost imperceptibly before launching into the sell.

“Mr. President, it is not the ideal circumstance. But I’m not exactly the Lone Ranger on this. Langley, Defense Intelligence, the Joint Chiefs, the FBI, key flag officers and National Security Council members, the feeling is very much across-the-board that we
need
this. And in any case, I’m afraid keeping our progress on Orion under wraps for another twelve months is less than realistic.”

The President indicated the Orion file.

“Hell, it’s been under wraps for thirty years . . .”

“True enough, sir, but at this point, with major visible assets necessarily in place and so many partners, secrecy is extremely problematic. However, looking at Russia vis-à-vis NATO, plus the new oil and security agreements, now is probably the best possible opportunity—”

“So, use it or lose it.” The President said, not sounding happy about it. Up on his feet now, he began prowling the blue carpet emblazoned with the same seal engraved on his letter opener. “Fuck the EU and Moscow and Beijing and Congress, too. Field it now and finesse it later. Is that what you’re saying?”

Winston’s unbullied cool reflected his experience on the receiving end of presidential wrath.

“Mr. President, all we’re saying is carpe diem. Place U.S. security interests foremost. The world acknowledges our legitimate right to self-defense and our motives are transparent, whatever diplomatic challenge
that may present. I don’t mean to underestimate whatever State’s objections may be.”

“Oh, you can be sure Secretary Wyman will object. You’ll be able to hear her objections in Maryland and Virginia.”

Beth Wyman, the forty-five-year-old former California senator and newly minted Secretary of State, had been a formidable candidate during the presidential primaries and a vocal campaigner against the militarization of space. Her decision to withdraw from the race and throw her support, along with California’s huge cache of electoral votes, to the party’s ultimate nominee had been shrewdly timed. And assurances about the President’s go-slow position on national missile defense, not to mention the cabinet spot, had been hers for the asking.

“I have every confidence in the Secretary’s ability, sir.”

The President saw how Winston’s formal body language had an almost Boy Scout quality that was not an affectation. He noticed this along with the messenger-killing anger he could hear in his own voice, and consciously dialed it back a few clicks.

“Shit,” he said, stretching his long torso and adopting a more confiding tone. “Just tell me, Bob. Is this thing going to work?”

Winston relaxed a fraction.

“Yes, sir. I also believe that deployment of the space shield could become the most enduring legacy of your presidency.”

If the Commander in Chief thought it a little early in his administration to be invoking the L-word, Winston ignored any hint that he might be presuming.

“Project Orion is an American technology triumph, sir. In one stroke, we can assure that America remains the strongest nation on Earth and the guarantor of world peace for the rest of the twenty-first century. It will be a defining achievement in leadership. People will start to feel safe again. And if we can successfully bring the developed world together under America’s enhanced security umbrella these first four years, sir, I’m absolutely confident the second four years will take care of itself.”

The President thought it was a nice, if hyperbolic, little speech. Although Winston had said “America” three times in one paragraph.

Feeling his morning appointments boxcarring in the outer office, he
suppressed a bleak rebuttal concerning the flip side of Winston’s rosy scenario. Such bold, unilateral defense posturing could just as easily lead to geopolitical disaster: fueling firestorms of anti-U.S. reaction and international paranoia, inspiring more low-tech terror campaigns against the Great Satan and earning him an ignominious one-term presidency.

Still, doing nothing was not an option.

“All right,” he said, initialing the line marked potus on the executive order. “I want any and all options vis-à-vis Project Orion preserved during this twenty-one-day window, whatever that entails.”

“Yes, sir.”

The President could see Winston’s natural mental acuity accelerate a few dozen megahertz, as if a pent-up tactical force of available clock speed had been given a call to arms.

“However, I’m authorizing final testing only, within the bounds of our current international agreements.” He handed over the signed authority. “Deployment will be taken up separately after we see where we are. And tell the FBI to expedite those staff clearances, for Christ’s sake. I need my people.”

“Yes, sir.” Winston’s face stiffened. The President read it as either a stomach cramp or suppressed disappointment. He cut to the chase.

“You knew I wasn’t just going to cowboy-up and green-light this thing. That’s not what the People are paying me for.”

His adviser smiled his patented thin smile, without showing any teeth.

“I knew we had to begin the conversation, sir. I’m sorry that events are giving it more urgency than either of us would have liked.”

Slipping the Project Orion file inside the Kevlar-lined case manacled to his wrist, Winston moved with almost mechanical precision. His long-limbed new boss leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desk.

“Bob, I very much appreciated your willingness to stay on board. And I want a diversity of opinions around here, not a bunch of bobbing heads.”

“I serve at the pleasure of the President.”

Winston pronounced the phrase with all due deference. Yet something
seemed vaguely withheld. Something the President did not fail to register before gifting Winston with his most level gaze.

“What I mean to say is, however it worked around here before, this is my watch. And I need to know everything there is to know that might possibly bear on a decision like this. Everything.”

The security adviser blinked: he had not anticipated this, not completely. But any emotional reaction he had to being semiblindsided was smoothly submerged. He stood up.

“Mr. President, I’ll have a brief on your desk by end of day.”

His face, posture, and handshake: each one now presented a crisp and perfectly unreadable blend of corporate and military can-do spirit. Winston then turned smartly on his heel and headed for the Masonic trompe l’oeil door.