Майкл Ридпат - Launch Code

‘What about the army?’

Donna shook her head again.

‘No one from college?’

‘We all went to Swarthmore. They’re not big on the military at Swarthmore.’ Swarthmore was a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, not too far from where I grew up; it was founded by Quakers, famous for their pacifism. She shrugged. ‘Sorry.’

The Vietnam War had finished the year before I went to the Academy, and probably three or four years before Donna had gone to college, but it certainly wasn’t forgotten, especially by my generation. A lot of people — an awful lot of women — my age seemed to think that you had to be either a moron or a traitor to join the military. A traitor, not to your country, but to the nobler cause of world peace.

I realized that Donna was probably one of those women. It was only then that I noticed the yellow and black ‘No Nukes’ button on the denim jacket draped on the back of her chair.

Donna was definitely one of those women.

Oh well.

‘Hey, Vicky, Bill doesn’t think I look like a banker!’ Donna said.

‘Don’t be fooled,’ said Vicky. ‘Donna was always much smarter at economics than I was. And math. You wouldn’t believe how many bankers I work with who couldn’t figure out a square root if you paid them.’

‘Really?’ said Craig.

‘Oh yeah. You’d run rings round all of them. But they have the gift of the bullshit. They know how to make other people do their square roots for them.’

‘Is it that bad?’ said Craig.

‘No,’ said Vicky. ‘I like it, actually. And I’m pretty good at it.’

‘So what’s it like sailing on a submarine, Craig?’ said Kathleen.

‘I bet it smells,’ said Vicky. ‘All those men. They don’t take proper showers.’

‘Actually, it does smell pretty bad,’ said Craig. ‘At least at first. But you get used to it after a few hours, and then you don’t notice it.’

‘How long do you go underwater for?’ asked Kathleen.

‘Two months, usually,’ said Craig. ‘Sometimes three. The only limit is the amount of food the boat can carry.’

‘And our sanity,’ said Lars. ‘Folks get a bit ratty toward the end of patrol. There’s something called “hate week”, happens a couple of weeks before the end of the patrol when we just all want to go home, see the sky. You get quarrels, the odd fight, guys jumping down each other’s throats.’

‘And does your submarine have nuclear missiles?’ asked Kathleen.

‘It does,’ said Vicky. ‘And they put Craig in charge of them. He’s the guy who presses the button, God help us.’

‘Wow,’ said Kathleen uncertainly.

I glanced at Donna. The mild amusement had left her face. She saw me looking at her and I averted my eyes.

‘There are a bunch of controls,’ I said. ‘Procedures to stop Craig from launching any missiles just because he’s had a bad day and he feels like it.’

‘Well, I’m sure glad to hear that,’ said Vicky.

Everyone around the table laughed. Nearly everyone.

‘Doesn’t it trouble you?’ said Donna. ‘That you might bring humanity to an end?’

Here we go, I thought.

‘What troubles me is that I come back from two months away at work to find my wife has run off with an insurance salesman,’ said Craig, bitterly.

‘I never liked that woman,’ said Vicky.

‘I did,’ said Craig, downing his beer. ‘I still do. That is the trouble.’

More beer. It was Molson, Canadian, fairly strong. The women were drinking it at the same pace as the men and were getting drunker faster. Craig, Lars and I had had lots of practice, despite the enforced two-month stretches of abstinence underwater.

‘No, seriously,’ said Donna. ‘Doesn’t it worry you? That you might be the ones who blow up the world?’

Craig replied, politely. ‘No. I believe that what we are doing on our submarine is stopping the Russians from winning. We’re in a war against the Soviets. It may be a Cold War, but it’s still a war. And the moment we give up, they win. The world will become communist. Starts with Asia. Then Europe. And then New York City.’

‘You don’t really think that, do you?’ said Donna.

‘I do.’

‘And what about you?’ she asked Lars.

Lars took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘Uh-huh,’ he said.

‘And you?’ She turned to me. I thought I saw a flash of hope in her eyes, maybe hope that I would agree with her.

‘Craig’s right.’

‘So it’s better dead than red, is it?’ Donna said. ‘If we ever got rid of all our nuclear weapons, we could use some of the money to help out all those starving people in Africa and Asia, instead of trashing their countries to make sure the Russians don’t get them. We could stop a nuclear holocaust from happening. We have the power to do it.’

‘I disagree,’ said Craig. I admired his patience.

‘What do you think, Vicky?’ Donna asked. ‘Do you think your brother should be riding around in a lethal weapon for months on end waiting to blow up the world?’

‘Donna, I think my brother is serving my country, and I’m proud of him,’ said Vicky. She said it quietly and firmly.

‘Yeah, OK,’ said Donna, realizing she had gone a bit too far. ‘I’m sorry, Craig. I’m sorry, you guys. I know you think...’ She corrected herself. ‘I know you are serving your country, and I know that’s a noble thing to do, and that our fathers’ generation saved us from the Nazis and the Japanese. I get that, and I respect that.’

‘Doesn’t sound like it,’ said Lars.

Donna ignored him. ‘But don’t you see that you are just doing what they want you to? You are being brainwashed.’

‘And who are “they”?’ said Lars. ‘The “military — industrial complex”? What even is that?’

‘Yes, the military. The big corporations, especially the defence companies. President Reagan. Casper Weinberger. It was Eisenhower who came up with the term “military — industrial complex”. He was a general, he should know. They want to make the world safe for American capital and they don’t care who gets hurt on the way. Some of them even think you can win a nuclear war. How can you win a nuclear war?’

‘You can’t win a nuclear war,’ I said. I could feel the impatience in my voice. ‘You have to stop one from starting.’

‘And you really think riding around in a nuclear submarine helps do that?’

‘Yes. It’s called deterrence.’

Donna snorted. ‘Oh yeah. MAD. Why don’t they just call it crazy?’

She was referring to the doctrine of mutually assured destruction.

‘You may call it crazy, but it’s working,’ I said. ‘Have you ever wondered why we haven’t had World War Three yet? When we have the two most powerful nations in the world at loggerheads? When there have been all those flashpoints around the world: Korea, Vietnam, Berlin, Hungary, Czechoslovakia? That Korean Airlines flight that was just shot down? Do you really think if nuclear weapons hadn’t existed we wouldn’t have had a conventional war by now? A bigger and nastier war even than the last one?’

‘Everyone assumes the Russians want to attack us,’ Donna said. ‘We have no proof of that. Just what the CIA and the military tells us.’

‘Hey,’ said Craig. ‘They shot down an unarmed civilian airliner a couple of days ago. Looks to me like they are attacking us.’ A Korean Airlines 747, which had strayed into Russian airspace, had been destroyed two days before. It was still unclear why, or what the United States would do about it. The Soviets were denying they had anything to do with it, but no one believed them.

‘They probably thought it was a spy plane,’ said Donna.

‘The Russians don’t want to attack us, because they know we will attack them,’ I said. ‘And everyone will lose. And that only works if they believe that we will definitely respond. Which we will. Which Craig and Lars and I will. That’s why they don’t attack us. And actually, that’s why we don’t attack them.’