Roosevelt and Churchill held several secret summits in the depths of World War II. Less often, both met with Stalin. It was assumed that the Axis Powers had spies in all the Allied capitals, but the leaders still managed to sneak away and meet.
Kyle searched for solace in that imperfectly remembered bit of history. Alas, the one war-time conference he knew by name was the infamous, arguably failed Yalta. He hoped that catastrophic encounter wasn't an omen.
He was one of a handful of Americans in the summit delegation. A Russian contingent of similar size was across the table. The table in question resided in a private estate an hour's drive outside Ankara. As far as the rest of the world knew, this was a gathering of oilmen to discuss new pipeline routes for Caspian Sea crude. The cover story excused secrecy amid tight security.
Also as far as rest of the world (and, hopefully, the aliens) knew, President Robeson and his senior advisors were on retreat at Camp David . . . but when Marine One, the presidential helicopter, had returned to its base in Quantico, Virginia, the summiteers were on board. A low-key motorcade that had to have made the Secret Service cringe took the entourage to the general-aviation section of Dulles International Airport outside Washington. Their Russian counterparts arrived in Turkey by equally circuitous, and, it was hoped, confidential means.
The room had been swept for bugs by the protection details of two presidents. Sergei, whom Kyle was glad but unsurprised to see, accompanied him on another inspection. This was one meeting most definitely not staged for hidden observers. Completing their rounds, they eyed the sumptuous buffet left by their absent host. Kyle hurried to his seat, pausing only to fill a mug with strong, muddy Turkish coffee. No time would be spent coddling the jet-lagged.
"Dmitri Pyetrovich, how are you?" began President Robeson. Dark bags beneath his eyes belied a light tone.
"Fine, fine." President Chernykov impatiently waved his interpreter to silence. A former KGB apparatchik, his English was excellent. "You, me, the bug-eyed monsters, we are all great. Is merely a vacation of old friends." The cigarette trembling in his hand underlined the sarcasm.
"I take your point, Dmitri. We cannot be out of the public eye for long, and we have much to do."
"I hope we can agree on something to do."
Kyle summarized America's findings, Sergei from time to time interjecting corroborative data from the Russian investigations. Kyle tried to be brief, but there were enough new players in the two delegations that much give-and-take was required. When he at last retook his chair, utterly drained, he was hopeful that the gist had been successfully conveyed.
The Galactic orbs, those supposed symbols of peace and unity so freely dispensed by the F'thk, were spying devices. The systematic destruction of the satellites each nation relied on for detecting ballistic missile launches, losses that gave credibility to the innuendoes spread by the aliens on their travels. The many peculiarities of the F'thk visitors. The anomalies of the mother ship: none of the expected gamma radiation, its complete lack of detail when viewed with microwaves, its transparency to X-rays. Human disappearances at sites marked by the signs of a F'thk lifeboat landing—often months before the announced arrival of the aliens. And the pièce de résistance: the alien defector whose shocking explanation—"it's only a movie"—explained every known fact.
A movie intended to climax in the nuclear self-annihilation of Earth.
Chernykov's expression grew uglier and uglier. None of this could have been new to him, but the succinct totality was intense. "Damn these aliens. Damn them. I want to strike. Enough, I say, of science projects." He snarled something in Russian.
General Mikhail Denisovich Markov, Chernykov's military advisor, sat ramrod straight in his chair, looking ill at ease in his civilian clothes. A jagged scar angled down his left cheek. He reddened at his president's words.
"Who speaks today about how we will destroy these evil creatures?" said the American translator. Something in the delivery suggested a serious toning down of Chernykov's comment.
A muttered Russian response. Chernykov cut off the translator. "My military feels we cannot attack. The once-proud Russian armed forces cower from a movie company on a rundown cargo ship."
Kyle's fingers dug into the padded arms of his chair. This was no time for macho crap. Britt might later tear him a new one, but Kyle had to speak. "This movie company has a starship at its disposal. They have a fusion reactor. I've seen their incredibly powerful masers—microwave-frequency lasers—destroy a space shuttle. We know they can fry satellites with X-ray lasers. Swelk, our defector, says the starship uses lasers to blast space junk. If they can vaporize objects hurtling at them at an appreciable fraction of light speed, do you think anything we launch at them can matter? We damn well should be afraid of attacking."
His words tumbled out, faster and faster. "Suppose we attack and do succeed? Will the fusion reactor blow up? Will the stardrive, about which we haven't a clue, explode? How big a crater will be made if that ship does go boom?"
Chernykov, his upper lip curled, studied faces turned ashen at Kyle's outburst. "I thought we had come here to prepare to act. They have blown up your shuttle Atlantis. They have cost each of us one of our finest submarines. Will you ask them, 'Please, go home now' ?"
What of the five crew on that shuttle, or the hundreds on those subs? The never-distant image of the fireball above Cape Canaveral blossomed anew in Kyle's mind. How many millions had to join them? A hand was suddenly squeezing Kyle's forearm. A warning from Britt . . .
"Dmitri." President Robeson's voice oozed calm reason. Kyle had learned over the past few months that the icy calm masked bottled anger. At whom this anger was directed was not obvious. "We concur on the need to act. That agreement leaves many questions. What are the aliens' vulnerabilities? How can we exploit such weaknesses? When and where can we strike?"
"This is better, Harold. Please tell me more."
"General Bauer will explain, Dmitri."
Ryan went to the head of the table. "Dr. Gustafson raises pertinent points about the complexity of an attack on the aliens."
Chernykov frowned but held his peace.
"The aliens' laser weapons would be a factor in any attack on the ship in flight. We must assume, as the good doctor suggests, that the ETs can acquire and destroy targets quickly. Our bombs and missiles would be nothing more than slow-moving space junk, easily killed."
A burst of Russian words stopped Bauer. The American translator rendered Markov's interruption. "Certainly, General, the starship must handle an occasional meteor. Would it handle many targets at once? Perhaps we can overwhelm their defense with a massed attack."
Bauer's forehead creased in thought.
This was madness—but could he raise another objection without being escorted from the room? Kyle began drumming on the table; as people looked his way in annoyance, he managed to catch Sergei's eye.
"Quite ingenious," said Sergei, taking the hint. "Still, I hope you will indulge a physicist's view of the problem. Our fastest missiles go only a few kilometers per second. In CIA debriefing notes I have been shown, this Swelk claims their ships approach light speed. As you know, the speed of light is three hundred thousand kilometers per second. That's how fast their ship overtakes space junk that's more or less stationary. At even one-hundredth that speed—which rate they surely exceed, or else a trip between even the closest stars would take centuries—they are accustomed to targets moving orders of magnitude faster than anything we can fire."
Britt leaned forward. "Dr. Arbatov, I don't follow you. You discuss the speed at which their ship travels. The issue relates to their ability to counter a massed attack by our missiles."
"Excuse me. I will make the point more directly. Imagine the alien starship overtaking a pebble in space at a thousand times the speed of our rockets. They must spot it, track it, shoot and destroy it, all in an instant. May not their defenses handle each slow Earth-fired missile, one by one by one, each with ease?" He smiled disarmingly at the American general. "Your fine navy has Aegis cruisers that can shoot down missiles traveling at hundreds of miles per hour. How many hang gliders must an assailant deploy to overwhelm an Aegis cruiser?"
Swelk came awake with a whimper, the world whirling around her. At least the spinning tended to stop after her eyes had been open for a while. Why could she not sleep soundly?
Guilt, loneliness, a fault in the bioconverter on which her life entirely depended . . . she had many theories. Perhaps confinement. Perhaps nothing more than the intermittent bonging of the angular ugliness that Darlene called a grandfather clock. A recess of Swelk's mind insisted it had recently heard four bongs.
Climbing shakily to an erect position, she began to prowl yet again what little she was allowed to experience of her adoptive world. The only humans around this late were her guards, outside on patrol or else in their trailer. Enough moonlight filtered through the curtains for her to forego Earth's unpleasant artificial illumination.
Four rooms upstairs, four down. Compared to her cabin on the Consensus, these chambers were luxuriously spacious, but there was no denying her situation. She had traded her own kind's open hostility for the less obvious, but no less real, distrust of the humans.
She was not allowed outside the building. What little news she was given of Earth's peril—due, she could not help reminding herself, to her own gullibility—was highly selective. Her many questions were deflected with polite evasions. And Kyle, the human to whom she had fled in hope and guilt and desperation, had disappeared without explanation.
Blackie stirred at the soft sounds of Swelk's approaching tread. The kitten stretched languorously, rubbing one eye with a forepaw. She tipped onto twos, using her lame limb to scoop up the yawning kitten. The kitten burrowed herself into the complicated three-way juncture between the limb's extremities and broke into a loud purr. That gentle rumble, pressed against the deformity that so defined Swelk, was ineffably soothing.
If only the humans' distrust could be so readily overcome.
Cooler heads prevailed and declared a recess. While most of the summiteers attacked the breakfast buffet, Britt and President Robeson disappeared into the estate's richly paneled, high-ceilinged library. When they reappeared, the President had an index card in his hand. After a final glance at his notes, Robeson cleared his throat.
"The president," and Robeson nodded at Chernykov, "made a comment earlier that we did not pursue. That remark was something like, 'Can we ask them to go home?' It was an idea expressed in the heat of debate, and perhaps we did not give Dmitri Pyetrovich's observation the attention it deserved.
"We are all outraged at the deaths the aliens have caused. Having said that, revenge is seldom a wise basis for policy. Our prevailing interest, I submit, is the avoidance of future losses . . . most particularly prevention of a nuclear war. Our scientific folks," and he saluted Sergei and Kyle with a glass of ice water, "have done us a great service. It is time to focus our minds on 'the man behind the curtain.' May not these Krulirim illusionists, like the great and terrible Wizard of Oz, bow to reality? They have been found out!"
Explaining the simile to the Russians took longer than the whole speech. As that got sorted out, Kyle marveled anew at watching a master politician at work. Crediting Chernykov with wisdom for what had been biting sarcasm . . . what a slick way to let the Russian gracefully distance himself from suicidal attack plans. Not for the first time, Kyle wished he had absorbed a fraction of the people skills to which Washington had exposed him.
"I apologize, Mr. President, for my unfamiliar reference. Your mastery of English and of our culture are such that I sometimes forget where you are from." Robeson removed his glasses, peered through them at a window, then wiped them vigorously with his handkerchief. (A premeditated moment of quiet, Kyle suspected, for the Russian to take in the flattery.) "The point, I hope, remains valid. We have known for months the aliens' purpose: incitement to nuclear war. For all that time, if I may be allowed another theatrical figure of speech, we have been afraid not to be seen playing our parts. The aliens, we told ourselves, want to destroy us. The owners of that awe-inspiring mother ship could certainly obliterate us if we did not cooperate. Our best theory for the curious indirection of the obvious alien hostility was fastidiousness: their consciences would be cleaner if, in the end, we blew ourselves up.
"But things have changed. Our understanding has changed, thanks to a courageous Krul from whom we now know what is truly going on, thanks to rigorous scientific research to verify what Swelk has told us. There is only the one spaceship that flits from country to country, stirring up trouble. They incite us to self-destruction not from any intent to work indirectly, but because only self-destruction serves their purposes.
"So I return to the Dmitri Pyetrovich's insightful question." Robeson, who had been pacing, halted across the table from Chernykov. "If they are told their cinematic goal will not, and cannot, be achieved, may they not simply go home?"
The atmosphere in the conference room, all morning so gloomy and foreboding, suddenly changed. As only Nixon could have gone to China, only this American president could propose accepting their losses from the aliens and moving on.
Despite exhaustion, jet lag, and incredible pressures, Robeson cut an imposing figure. Kyle could not help but recall his amazing biography. Marine captain and decorated Vietnam vet. Crusading state's attorney, fearlessly pursuing organized-crime families in New Jersey. Trustbuster in the Department of Justice. Two-term senator with a passion for national-security policy. Still early in his first term as President, making headway fulfilling a campaign promise of military reform.
Yes, it was a speech that only Robeson could have made, and he had done so masterfully.
Aw, crap! thought Kyle. Here we go again.
For fear of eavesdropping, all personal electronics had been left outside the conference room. Deprived of his PalmPilot and Net access, Kyle couldn't hope to get the quotation exactly right—and it was probably by Anonymous, anyway. The essence of the line, in any event, was crystal clear. "Every complex problem has a solution that is simple, obvious . . . and wrong."
You haven't lived until the presidents of two nuclear powers scowl at you. But having done so, could you then live long?
Britt, with characteristic poise, asked only, "What's on your mind, Kyle?"
Here goes. "It's possible the Krulirim will go home if we ask. Before their arrival they had no reason to wish Earth ill. That said, there's a small voice whispering in my ear."
He'd just seen a politician at work, flattering Chernykov. "One of my flaws, I freely admit, is the tendency to view everything through the lenses of science and logic. In my early attempts to influence government policy, when you first brought me to Washington, I relied too rigorously on logic. I also crashed and burned far more often than I succeeded. A very wise man"—okay, Britt, recognize yourself here!—"eventually got through to me. I now occasionally know enough to ask, 'Can the other guy afford to live with my logic?' What worries me at this moment is how unclear it is that the Krulirim can afford to just leave.
"To be brief, I wonder . . . will Swelk's former shipmates accept the risk that what they attempted here will remain secret? Is that a gamble they can afford to take?"
Doubts were appearing on faces around the table, including, he was relieved to see, on the faces of both presidents.
"I'm trying to imagine how the conspirators may see their situation. Must they not be asking themselves, Will we ever be held to account for our actions? What if another Krulchukor ship were to discover Earth? If humanity refuses to obliterate itself, how soon until Earth's starships are visiting our worlds?
"What if humans and other Krulirim do meet? Our aliens killed the crew of the Atlantis. They've presumably killed all the people they kidnapped, before their splashy public arrival, to better understand us. They're responsible for yet more deaths, beginning with the submarine catastrophe. We have film of their ship at sites across our planet. We have by now millions of the orbs and a wrecked lifeboat from their ship: technology whose origin they can't refute. In short, the plotters can hardly deny trying to stampede us to self-genocide."
"Even if we do nuke each other, some records may survive." Britt spoke with his eyes shut, deep in thought. "And survivors may still speak with future visitors. And that means . . ."
" . . . And that means," completed Kyle, "there's a very real risk—whether we blow ourselves up or not—that the ETs planned all along to utterly obliterate humanity before leaving our solar system."
"Depend on it, sir," Samuel Johnson is said to have remarked, "when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." The summiteers outside Ankara, eye-to-eye with the extinction of humanity, found their attention wholly focused. That convergence gave birth, at last, to a terrifying plan possessed of but a single virtue—no one saw any reason why the plan was necessarily doomed to failure.
Which wasn't to say a failure wasn't likely.
Attempting to destroy the starship was too risky. Ignoring the starship and hoping it would depart in peace was likewise too risky. And that left . . . capture.
Commandos would strike the next time the starship visited a Russian or an American city.