Derek Lambert: The Red Dove

‘A spectacular?’

‘Before the election,’ the President said. He examined the wound in the tree, stared calculatingly at the ranch. To Reynolds who was only a rustic by default it still looked as though the tree would smash through the roof. ‘Three more strikes should do it.’

The President walked to the other side of the leaning redwood and measured his swing. The blade sliced into the hinge of wood still holding the trunk.

Reynolds joined the President who was spacing his last blows. ‘What sort of a spectacular?’ he asked.

‘Think like a Russian,’ the President said. ‘Think what they’d like to do to us – then do it first.’

The second blow thudded into the tree.

‘How long did I invite you for, George?’

‘Three days,’ Reynolds told him.

‘Then that’s how long you’ve got. I’d like an outline of your project before dinner on Saturday.’

‘And if I can’t make it by then?’

‘The atmosphere over dinner will be strained.’

The President wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. The muscles on his arms and chest tensed. He had said the third blow and the third blow it had to be.

Steel met wood. The tree creaked. Swayed. Leaned into space and crashed to the ground twenty-five yards to the right of the ranch-house.

As it happened the idea came to Reynolds just before dinner that night. He wondered if it had occurred to him before only to be rejected by his subconscious because of its sheer audacity.

He was drinking a martini with the President and his wife in the lounge of the ranch-house, a long beamed room stamped with the President’s personality. There were islands of skins on the tiled floor, historical bric-à-brac from the Wild West on the walls and shelves. A stone fireplace that still smelled of winter fires occupied one corner; through an opened window the great outdoors breathed indoors.

The President’s wife, slight and blonde and astute with a smile that was both practised and genuine, held up the cocktail shaker. ‘Another, George?’

He shook his head. One on working days, two on vacations; today, like most days, had developed into a working day.

She didn’t pursue it; she was an accomplished hostess who had brought back The Grand Style to the White House. Dressed now in a French-blue dress, the First Lady even managed to instil sophistication into the Ponderosa setting. Her husband hadn’t tried, he wore a check shirt and slacks.

She said to Reynolds: ‘We thought we’d watch the touchdown before dinner. Is that all right with you?’ Without waiting for an answer she switched on the TV set beside the wall-to-ceiling book-shelves.

Mission Control at Johnson Space Center, Houston, flickered into view, followed by a shot of the 15,000-foot runway at the Kennedy Center in Florida where the fourth Space Train to be sent into orbit was due to land.

The first shuttle had landed on Rogers Dry Lake at the Dryden Space Center in California’s Mojave Desert. Now Kennedy was geared to take most of the traffic.

As far as Reynolds was concerned the space centre that mattered was Vandenberg, not far from the Presidential ranch. From its $200 million launch complex shuttles flew over the North and South Poles keeping most of the populated world under surveillance. Even more important was the Military Mission HQ inside Cheyenne Mountain in Wyoming where they concentrated on spy satellites, beam weapons, war in space…

Shots of the approach to Florida taken by cameras inside the shuttle appeared on the TV screen. But the crowds waiting for landing were nothing compared with the great concourse that had assembled for the first touchdown. Commuting with space had been accepted more smoothly than the first railroad engine.

It was a remark by the First Lady while they were watching the TV that first exploded possibilities in Reynolds’ brain.

The President was talking about a future in which space stations, laboratories, hotels, whole complexes would orbit the globe, their occupants flying back and forth from the earth like New Yorkers commuting between Long Island and Manhattan.

On the screen Columbia with its stocky, delta-winged body and foraging beak, was making its last turn before its final approach. Beneath it Florida and the cobalt-blue Atlantic looked like a relief map.

‘But who owns space?’ she asked. ‘How can it be divided?’ In the same tone, Reynolds reflected, that a president’s wife might once have dismissed pioneers’ claims to the West.

He finished his cocktail and told her: ‘I don’t know the answers to your questions but I do know that, if it is divided, it will be divided through strength. Through strength, not necessarily aggression,’ holding up one defensive hand.

‘At least we got the shuttle up there first,’ the President said. ‘We’ll bargain from power.’

‘That depends,’ Reynolds said, ‘on what the Soviets have got up their sleeves. We know they shelved their own basic shuttle because we got up there first. We know they’ve now launched their own modified ship and we know they plan to assemble a space station in space. What we don’t know is the capability of their new ship and how many of them they’ve got.’

On the screen the Columbia was gliding towards the runway, smoother than a conventional jet.

‘What sort of capability are you talking about?’ the President asked.

‘The capability to command space,’ Reynolds said crisply. ‘To win the next war – if the Russians want one.’

‘Beams?’

‘To put it more definitively CPBs, charged particle beams. Rays capable of travelling at the speed of light,’ he explained to the President’s wife, ‘and penetrating a target instead of just melting its surface like an ordinary laser. You may recall that in ’77 General George Keegan, head of Air Force Intelligence, quit his job because your husband’s predecessor didn’t take his warnings seriously. Well, a lot of people at the Pentagon figure that the Russians have been working on a scheme to equip their shuttles with CPBs. That way they could command the heavens.’

‘Pearl Harbor in space,’ the President said. ‘Except that I have heeded the warnings.’

‘Star Wars,’ murmured his wife. ‘Unbelievable, terrifying.’ And, as Columbia straightened out over the runway, she pointed at the screen and said: ‘If there was such a war that could be a crippled Soviet shuttle landing in the United States,’ which was the remark that, like a depth charge, projected inspiration from the depths of Reynolds’ subconscious.

As he watched Columbia touch down he imagined red stars on its wings. From the cockpit he heard Russian voices. At the head of the stairway he saw a cosmonaut emerge, wave wearily and depart for the medical centre leaving behind at the end of the runway the greatest military prize ever deposited in the lap of the United States.

But why do I only see one cosmonaut? he wondered.

‘George, it’s all over.’ It was the President’s voice but Reynolds heard it from a long way off. ‘George, I’m speaking to you. Dinner’s ready for God’s sake.’

Reynolds followed them into the dining room, sat down and began to eat his prawn cocktail.

The First Lady poured chilled Californian white wine and said: ‘George, are you all right? You look as though you’ve seen a vision.’

Which he had. It seemed extraordinary to him that neither the President nor his wife had seen it. But why only one cosmonaut? There should have been at least two on board, more with mission specialists.

He sipped the wine, held it up to the light of the sunset flaming on the horizon. As he did so he re-focused his attention on his hosts. ‘Forgive me,’ he said to the President’s wife. ‘I was thinking about something your husband said this afternoon.’