Murder at the Pentagon Read Free Page A

take a billion or two—had rendered Iraq impotent, at least for the time being. Negotiations between Israel and the PLO had taken what appeared to be a few positive steps forward, although they were far from achieving a definitive resolution.
    And then, with a push of a button, the world once again faced the prospect of a nuclear outburst. What governments had always feared was now a fact. Not that a superpower would unleash nuclear devastation, but that the technology would end up in the hands of a renegade, a rogue, an uncivilized and unreasonable despot who would view the use of such a weapon not as a threat to humankind but as a means of achieving commanding power. And, of course, dependingupon the depth of his religious convictions, a hallowed place in heaven.
    The testing of the nuclear device had detonated the Pentagon into a frenzy of round-the-clock activities. Weapons systems that had been put on hold were dragged off the shelf and viewed as viable again. Members of the House and Senate appropriations committees, who’d pushed hard to turn the world’s calm into a moderate peace dividend—unleashing funds at least temporarily freed from defense to rebuild America’s infrastructure, to help ease the growing, grinding rate of poverty and close the widening gap between rich and poor, and to fund needed educational programs to bring America up to par with its leading economic competitors—now seriously rereviewed cuts in the military budget.
    A crew in a Russian missile silo outside St. Petersburg lounged on couches provided for their long, boring shifts. American and Russian negotiators had made considerable strides in reducing the arsenal of nuclear weapons on both sides, but the day had not yet been reached when all such weapons were abolished. Three members of the crew played cards. A radio broadcast Mussorgsky orchestrations of Russian folk themes into the large, windowless room that was the central control for the launching of the silo’s deadly instrument. The word to launch would come by telephone, a simple black instrument on a desk near the much more complex technological apparatus that, once activated, would send the missile into the sky, across the ocean, and, if everything went right, to a direct hit on its still-designated target, a kiosk in the center of five acres of trees and grass surrounded by five walls, a target consisting at the moment of Coke and Pepsi, burgers and dogs, potato chips and popcorn, coffee and tea. The kiosk had, for decades, been Ground Zero, the chosen target for the first Soviet missile launched in the event of war. The bags of potato chips and the walls around them would become, in a flash, indistinguishable
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    “I have a headache,” one of the Russians said
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    “Too much vodka last night,” a major said helpfully
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    “Deal the cards,” an enlisted man at the table said
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    And so it went, shift after shift, week after week, waiting for a phone to ring that had never rung before, and that was less likely to ring with each passing day of détente
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    Unless, of course, the missiles under the Soviet crew’s control were to be turned, from a kiosk in the center of the Pentagon to a white-walled city in the Middle East
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    Margit continued to wander the park, stopping occasionally to introduce herself to people who looked accessible to overtures from a stranger. A sadness had come over her. It wasn’t profound, just there, a moment of melancholy not unknown to her, usually triggered by being alone in a setting in which families prevailed. Being married and having children certainly appealed to Margit, although she wasn’t driven by that need, as evidenced by the proposals she’d declined in her adult life. Her thoughts went to Jeff. Would their relationship develop to the point that they might marry one day? You didn’t push those things; at least, you shouldn’t. If it happened, it happened. Meanwhile, she had work to do.
    She noticed another woman who seemed to be