Майкл Ридпат - Launch Code

Toby thought of saying ‘that’s nice’ but realized that, although the sentiment was true, it sounded trite. He knew he was looking confused; an Englishman trying to be polite and not quite managing it.

‘They did tell you that, didn’t they? I spent eight years in prison in Guadeloupe?’

‘Yes they did. That can’t have been much fun.’

Dumb comment.

‘No, it wasn’t. Then again, prisons in the States are even worse. It wasn’t the best period of my life.’ He changed the subject. ‘So you’re the guy who married Alice?’

‘I am.’

‘She was a beautiful girl,’ said Lars. ‘She’s a beautiful woman now. You’re a lucky man.’

‘I am,’ Toby repeated. And he was. He really was.

He looked over to his wife, who was seated next to Sam, and seemed to be involved in an earnest conversation with him. Her earlier merriment had gone and she was frowning.

They were interrupted by the sound of the front door opening in the hallway, and the youngest Guth sister appeared. Maya was also the tallest, with unfeasibly long legs and long blonde hair that she wore like a club over one shoulder. She was still wearing her airline uniform, having arrived straight from Heathrow. There was a general hubbub of welcome as she greeted everyone and took her place at the table. She was soon plied with turkey and wine.

Bill introduced her to Sam.

‘Are you finally going to tell us what Dad and Lars did on that submarine?’ Maya asked in her English middle-class drawl.

‘That’s my plan,’ said Sam. ‘Once I’ve worked it out myself.’

‘Hey, Sam?’ said Megan, who was at the other end of the table from him. ‘This afternoon, when you were trying to talk to Dad about his submarine, you mentioned that there had been a bunch of near-launches. Is that true?’

Bill frowned at his daughter. But the rest of the table were curious to hear Sam’s answer. Including Lars.

‘There were several that we know of,’ he said. ‘And probably lots that we don’t.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well. In the Cuban missile crisis back in 1962, a Russian submarine was surrounded by US destroyers. The captain and the political officer wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo, but the officer in charge of the flotilla was also on board and he talked the captain out of it.’ He glanced at Bill as he said this. ‘Which is kind of like what might have happened on the Alexander Hamilton. ’

If he was hoping for a response from Bill, he wasn’t going to get one. Toby felt Lars shifting in his seat beside him.

‘Also in ’62, a US tactical missile squadron on Okinawa were ordered to fire their nuclear-tipped Mace missiles. The targets didn’t make sense to the captain in charge of the squadron — they included places outside Russia. He asked for confirmation of the order and he got it. But he still didn’t obey the command, and he sent two men armed with pistols to stop the lieutenant at a neighbouring bunker launching his own missiles.’

That might also sound familiar, Toby thought. Both Bill and Lars were listening intently.

‘There was a bear that ran into the perimeter wire at an airfield in Duluth and set off an alarm. Someone got the alarms confused, thought war had started, and scrambled a squadron of nuclear-armed warplanes from a nearby base. There were the false readings at NORAD I told you about. That happened twice, in 1979 and again in 1980.

‘Then, in 1983, the Soviet early-warning centre south-east of Moscow showed that the US had launched a nuclear attack. Fortunately, the officer on the watch had been involved in upgrading the computer system and he didn’t trust it. So he did what we all do when the computer doesn’t work. He turned it off and turned it on again.’

The table laughed nervously.

‘And?’ said Maya.

‘And it still showed the missiles were coming.’

‘So what did he do then?’ Justin asked.

‘Tried it again. Turned the system off and on again. Missiles were still there, but by that stage radar stations in the north of the Russia should have spotted the contacts and hadn’t.’

‘Jesus,’ said Megan. ‘So he could have reported the attack?’

‘Not only could he have, he should have,’ said Sam. ‘No one in the west realized it at the time, but we were really close to nuclear war in 1983. The Soviet leadership were convinced that NATO was about to launch a surprise first strike. They would have launched their own missiles right away.’

There was silence, a rare occurrence with all four Guth sisters present.

Toby looked around the table. The sisters, he, Justin and Sam had all been born after 1983. They wouldn’t have existed. Which would mean they wouldn’t have experienced the firestorms, the global radiation, the death of billions of people, of every living thing on the planet. Or almost every living thing.

Megan raised her eyebrows at Toby. ‘Do you have cockroaches in England?’

Toby had learned the year before that Thanksgiving wasn’t just about giving thanks, or even about turkey, it was about football. American football.

Bill’s super-smart TV could pick up any US sporting event. Neither of Bill’s favourite teams were playing that day, neither Navy nor the Philadelphia Eagles, but the Washington Redskins were taking on the Dallas Cowboys, and Bill had spent a lot of time in Washington. Despite her professed hatred of Dallas, Megan was happy to root for the Cowboys, continuing what appeared to be a family tradition of supporting everyone else’s enemy.

Alice had seen Sam out, before returning to the kitchen to supervise washing up. Although she seemed calm and business-like, Toby detected a hint of tension in her shoulders, a slight tightening of her lips.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

‘Of course I am,’ she said with a bright smile. ‘Now go and watch the game. We’ve got this.’

The four women were doing the washing up, and the men were doing the TV watching. Toby considered arguing.

‘Don’t argue,’ said his wife, and pushed him out of the room.

Bill, Lars and even Justin vied with each other to explain to Toby what was going on. Toby knew the rules, but not the strategy and tactics, a subject upon which Bill and Lars politely disagreed. Justin was less well informed than the older men, and less sure of his own opinions.

Toby hadn’t spent much time with Justin. Brooke had travelled to England to see her father and elder sister a couple of times without him, and you don’t speak to people much at your own wedding; Toby had attended Justin and Brooke’s in Chicago, and they had both been to his and Alice’s in Holland Park.

Justin was at least five years older than Toby, but he seemed a friendly enough ally. He was tall, with thinning red hair cut short, and brown eyes looking out of a round chubby face with an air of preoccupation, as if he was constantly harassed. The soft face contrasted with the taut, hard torso that nestled beneath his shirt, the neatly constructed muscles of an office worker who spends a lot of time in the gym. Toby suspected, and Alice had confirmed, that it wasn’t Brooke who harassed Justin, but his work. He was employed by an old media company in Chicago that was under attack from new media, and Justin gave the impression of not quite being able to handle it. The gym helped, apparently, just not enough.

But Alice believed he was a good thing for Brooke, who was earning decent money as a dentist, and he treated her well.

Toby was surprised that no one had mentioned that Justin had known the Guth family from his childhood. On the one hand, why should they? On the other, he knew Alice well enough to know that the omission had been intentional.

Another Guth secret.