V02 - East Coast Crisis Read online

  She began to dial. "Hi, Kath—Denise. I missed my pro today and came down with a galloping case of the guilts. Want to play for an hour? I can grab a cab and be there in ten minutes." She listened for a moment. "Aw, c'mon, Kath— pretty please? You can get over to Bloomie's tomorrow. I'll even go with you. I've just gotta work the kinks out!"

  The intercom speaker on her phone burbled insistently. "Hang on a second, Kath. My secretary's buzzing me." With a sigh she switched on the intercom. "I'm not here, Paula. I'm dead, and I won't revive without some exercise," she said, managing a convincingly pathetic whimper. She listened for a moment, then laughed tiredly. "Right. There's a giant UFO over New York City, so I can't leave to play tennis ..."

  She was still chuckling humorlessly when the door to her office slammed back and a tieless Dan Rather stood there in his shirt-sleeves, his dark eyes excited, though his face bore its usual calm. Denise forgot her fatigue, realizing that what Paula had reported wasn't her customary zany notion of humor, but the truth. Rather's terse words only confirmed what she knew. "Staff meeting, Bennie's conference room, right now, Denise. UFO over New York and who knows where else. The President has been alerted."

  Then he was gone.

  Numbly Denise punched back in on Kathy's line. "Kath? Dan Rather just told me there's a UFO over New York. I don't think I can play tennis after all. Call you later. Bye."

  Ignoring the sputtering squawks from the receiver, she hung up. The adrenaline was starting to flow the way it always did when a really big story loomed, and the rush banished her fatigue. Denise Daltrey grabbed her notebook and tape recorder as she stood. "Hot damn!" she said aloud. "A friggin' UFO!"

  Lauren Stewart carefully washed a dish, placing it securely into the rack. She ran a finger over the pretty Bavarian floral pattern, remembering how much her mother had loved these dishes, how proud she'd been when her husband's struggling medical practice had blossomed and they'd finally been able to afford this service for eight. That had been shortly after they'd bought this brownstone in Harlem, and Lauren's mother had been so happy keeping everything shining and perfect. Noelani Stewart had never wanted to work outside her home—she'd been perfectly content serving as her husband's receptionist and secretary, and keeping this house the way she'd trained her daughter and her husband to maintain it.

  Gets dishes so clean you can see yourself in them, thought Lauren, rinsing the last plate and holding it up to see if she could see her face in it. Not quite, she thought, seeing only a blurred light-brown oval. Her mind quickly sketched in what the wet surface didn't reveal: her mother's fine-boned Polynesian features, dark-brown almond-shaped eyes, straight black hair, and coloring that fell somewhere between her mother's rich caramel and her father's milk chocolate. She grinned, seeing a white-sugar blur of teeth. Are sweets all you can think of? she wondered, amused at herself. You've been on this diet twenty-four hours and already you're going into carbohydrate withdrawal.

  She laughed aloud, then heard her father's voice behind her. "What're you laughing at, honey?"

  "Myself, Dad. I'm trying to lose five pounds before I start on that overseas goodwill tour with Olav, so I'll have a couple of pounds to play with. You know those diplomatic dinners. And I just realized I'd probably kill for a bag of M&M's— peanut or plain, I wouldn't be fussy."

  Dr. Stewart chuckled. "Lauren, most women would kill to have your figure. I can never understand why the fashions say you have to be ten pounds underweight."

  Lauren carefully put the last dish into the drainer and let the water out of the sink, turning to see her father sit down at the table behind her. "I'm hurt, Dad." She made a face at him. "The medical statistics all back me up—it's better to be underweight than overweight!"

  Dr. George Stewart looked down at his own stomach through his glasses, then patted its comfortable bulge consolingly. "You're right—and you know I think you're gorgeous, baby. Almost as pretty as your mama, and she was the prettiest woman I ever saw." He grinned a lopsided, slightly sentimental grin.

  "Do you remember how Mama worked to take care of this place?" Lauren asked, sitting down opposite him. "I remember once asking her if we couldn't just skip the cleaning for one week, and she just looked at me and said that her house got cleaned every week, and that was that. Like the Ten Commandments or something."

  Her father nodded, his long dark fingers fiddling with the slack of papers from his anatomy class at Cornell Medical Center, which he'd been grading earlier. "I remember. She wanted you to have this house someday, you know. She'd be disappointed to know you won't be living here after I'm gone."

  Lauren stiffened slightly, afraid they might be edging toward one of their painful "discussions." Hastily, she tried to turn the conversation away from her own future. "Is that why you slayed on here after Mama died?"

  "No, no, honey. I stayed here because this neighborhood needs a doctor. Why, who else would answer the phone in the middle of the night to help those folks? All the younger fellows have those answering services."

  "Oh, Daddy ..." Lauren said, half-admiring and half-despairing, as she took his hand in hers. "Those folks would lind another doctor somewhere, you know they would! Half the time they wake you up for something on the order of a hangnail, and then you have trouble getting back to sleep. You're not the only physician in Harlem, you know. When are you going to cut back? Between your practice here and the classes at med school—" She shook her head. "When are you going to take some time for you?"

  "I'm fine, baby!" He grinned at her. "Keeping busy keeps me young. If I didn't have those patients and these students to worry about, I'd sit at home worrying about you—and then where would we be?"

  "I know that," she admitted quietly, patting his hand. "I'm sorry, Dad. Why do we always have this same argument? I can keep a half-dozen Third World delegates from fighting, but I can't keep from fussing with my own father."

  He smiled gently. "Those delegates aren't kin, Lauren. Only folks who love each other can fuss the way we do, baby."

  Lauren grinned. "I'm almost thirty-five and still your baby, huh, Dad?"

  "Always, sweetheart."

  They smiled at each other, enjoying the closeness their weekly visit always brought—and heard the dishes in the drain begin to rattle. Jumping up, Lauren raced over to stand by them protectively, her dark eyes wide. The old house vibrated, then began to shake slightly. The stack of papers slid off the table and across the floor, leaving a white swath on the spotless linoleum.

  "What in the hell—" George Stewart hurried over to the window. Down in the street people were hurrying out of their homes and apartments, looking up and gesturing. As Lauren joined him at the window, George Stewart looked up too.

  Even as Lauren saw the unbelievable apparition of a massive flying saucer hovering over the city, the phone began to ring. Dr. Stewart snatched it up. "Doc Stewart here." He looked up at his daughter. "Yes, she's here."

  He handed the phone to Lauren. "Hello?" she said. "Yes, I can see it. Anything official yet?" She listened for a second, then made a face. "Par for the course. I'll be there as soon as I can. I hope I can get a cab."

  She hung up. "Gotta go, Daddy. Whatever that thing is, there are more like it hovering over other cities all over the world. The whole UN is going bananas—everyone accusing everyone of being responsible, even though they know the odds against that thing being from this planet." She broke off, realizing that it was odd to think of Earth as only one of a myriad of other planets . . .

  Her father kissed her cheek. "Sounds like a job for Super-Diplomat."

  "Yes, but I guess they're stuck with me," she said dryly. "I'll call you as soon as I know anything."

  "I suspect I might be busy too. UFO's coming to pay a visit are bound to give some folks upset stomachs—not to mention heart attacks and strokes."

  "Good luck, Daddy." She started for the door, then reached back to hold his hand tightly. "Remember how much I love you."

  "I love you too, honey." Their fingers slipped apart, and he kissed her again, holding her for a long moment.

  Chapter 2

  Alarums and Excursions

  President Morrow was fortunate that he'd taken his nap, lor it was the last sleep he got for nearly twenty-four hours. The Oval Office quickly became a command post while Morrow spoke with seemingly endless succession of military officials, congressional leaders, and executive branch assistants. The White House switchboard nearly shorted out with ilie volume of calls, and the kitchen staff worked around the i lock preparing meals, sandwiches, and what seemed like oceans of coffee.

  Intelligence agents and station chiefs had begun reporting in from around the globe within minutes of the first sightings. Central Intelligence, National Security, and Defense intelligence personnel vied with each other to see who could bring in the greatest volume of useful information in the shortest order.

  Unfortunately, all of the services soon found themselves in possession of only a few—and identical—verifiable facts: (1) the ships were there, hovering a mile or more above most of the major cities of the Earth, (2) each measured about five miles in diameter, and (3) there were at least fifty of them hanging over the world's major cities—Washington, New York, Paris, Athens, Tokyo, Moscow, London, Rome, Leningrad, Cairo, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Pretoria, Buenos Aires, Bonn, Peking, New Delhi, Jerusalem . . .

  The huge saucers made no moves or sounds once they'd settled in. Every nation with an air force quickly sent fighter patrols up. Actually, the Israelis had been first, taking matters into their own hands without waiting for the superpowers to push their military bureaucracies into motion. Their F-16's, emblazoned with the Star of David, screamed up from desert bases, flitted around the monstrous ship over Jerusalem, then peeled off to check out its twin hovering over (and dwarfing) the pyramids in Egypt.

  "Wing commander to base," radioed the patrol leader. The signal was patched into Prime Minister Avram Herzog's office. The Prime Minister was an urbane man who displayed little emotion in the face of this, or any other crisis. He sat by as Defense Minister Yitzhak Dinitz answered the call.

  Dinitz, dressed in civilian khaki, was a barrel-chested man whose no-nonsense bearing was softened,by a deceptively quiet voice. "Report, Major. Dinitz speaking. Over."

  There was a spatter of static, and then: "We can't get any closer than about a kilometer, sir. The intruders are jamming our electronics and navigation computers. They don't respond to any of our hailing frequencies. Over."

  "Have they lost anyone?" the Prime Minister whispered to Dinitz. The Defense Minister relayed the question.

  "Us? Of course not," said the pilot, sounding indignant. "Besides, they haven't made any hostile moves. Or any moves at all, for that matter. They're just hovering. Request further orders, sir."

  Dinitz glanced at Herzog.

  The Prime Minister gazed calmly back. "You're the expert, Yitzhak. Do you have a recommendation?"

  "They haven't made any hostile moves, true, but they haven't made any friendly ones either. Not even saying hello. I say we give them one more chance to talk to us, then we fire."

  The Prime Minister raised a dark eyebrow, stroking thoughtfully at his short beard. "If we do that, we could go down in history as the nation that started the first interplanetary war. But we'd like them to talk to us. How about if we aim a bit wide, just to see what they do?"

  Dinitz nodded, and tersely gave the order.

  In seconds they'd added one more fact about the UFOs to world knowledge: weapons fired at the huge ships simply went astray, detonating harmlessly, high in the upper atmosphere.

  And so the world waited. At four in the morning, President Morrow ordered his staff out of the Oval Office. "Come back when you have something new to report," he said. "But not until then. We can sit here and speculate until the stars—or those damned ships—fall out of the sky, and it won't do any of us a bit of good. Beat it, all of you. Get some rest."

  Press Secretary Foster was almost to the door when Morrow's words stopped him. "Not you, Freddy. Stick around, if you don't mind."

  As Foster nodded and came back into the room, Morrow leaned back in his chair, his heels propped on the desk, waving a weary hand at the triple-screen TV showing the continuous coverage on all three networks. "Turn 'em off, Freddy."

  The Press Secretary did so, then sank into a burgundy leather chair facing his boss. Still leaning back, Morrow stretched until his joints cracked. "Ah, peace and quiet at long last."

  "Aren't you worried that you'll miss something, sir?" asked Foster.

  "If anything interesting happens, seventeen people will be trying to squeeze through that door at the same instant, all dying to be the first to tell me. Maybe the old custom of killing the messenger wasn't such a bad idea—cuts down on doorway traffic jams." Morrow chuckled at the look on Foster's face. "Laugh, Freddy. That was a joke."

  "Too close to home, sir. I'm usually a messenger."

  "Hmm. I see your point." Morrow slumped back in his chair. "Any changes in the national reaction to those silent critters?" He hooked a thumb toward the ceiling.

  "The highways out of the cities are beginning to clear out. Seems like the. folks who decided to stay put are still staying put. The ones who ran for it have gotten out of the cities by now."

  "Where'd they all head? The country? Mountains?"

  "Yeah. I wish I'd bought stock in a camping-goods store or a four-wheel-drive lot. General Loman reported that they were having to put the motor pools under tight security—jeeps were disappearing like crazy."

  Morrow made a tch-tch noise. "This mess is going to wreak havoc with the GNP indicators for the year."

  "I agree, sir."

  The two men sat quietly for a long moment. The President swiveled his chair around to peer out the window behind his desk, the one the White house photographer used when he wanted to take a dramatic photo of the Chief Executive working late at night during a worldwide crisis. Sure enough, there was the photographer out on the lawn, shivering as the predawn autumn wind whipped around him.

  As the man saw Morrow looking at him, he raised his hand in a quick salute and left.

  "1 can see the photo caption," Foster observed. " 'Wild Bill' Morrow burns midnight oil trying to solve UFO crisis."

  Morrow chuckled. "Maybe ! oughta put my flannel shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots back on, so folks'll recognize me."

  Foster smiled wearily. "When did you ever get that nickname, sir? Hardly anyone ever uses it anymore—maybe they've tamed the West out of you."

  Morrow's grin flashed for a second. "Shucks, son, you can take the boy out of Texas, but you can't ever take the Texas out of the boy. I got that nickname back in World War Two. When I first ran for state senate back in 1958, the campaign people loved it. Gave me 'color,' they said. But then when I started getting nudges to declare my candidacy for President, they wanted me to downplay my cowboy image—even though that image was really me. I told 'em, hell, no! Americans love cowboys, I said, and this is the way I've always been."

  "Still are, sir. You've been the same guy all along."

  "1 wear more suits than I used to," Morrow admitted. "This job changes you no matter how much you think you can stay the same. You sit up nights worrying about things that other people never even know about."

  Foster grimaced. "Well, at least you're not alone sitting up tonight, sir. Half the population of the country is probably suffering from insomnia."

  "And while we sweat, those little green creeps up there are probably laughing through their teeth—assuming they're green and have teeth."

  Foster was quiet for a while, then asked. "How'd you get the nickname during the war, sir, if you don't mind my asking?"

  "You don't know?"

  "Well ... I heard some rumors. Nothing confirmed."

  Morrow guffawed. "You heard right, Freddy. I used to fly slaloms between telephone poles. Must have been good practice because I came back in one piece from fifty-three bombing missions. Course I was just a youngster in those days—I'd never have the nerve to do anything so foolish now."

  f oster looked at Morrow, seeing a twinkle in the Chief Executive's ye, remembering the time he'd insisted on taking the- controls of Air Force One for a half-hour during the end of a transatlantic flight—the air traffic controller had become incoherent when Morrow had identified himself as the approaching pilot and then requested landing coordinates. The President had convinced all of them he might actually attempt a landing before grinning and relinquishing the controls to his pilot. The Press Secretary grinned wryly now, then sobered, thinking of the UFO hovering over the nation's capital like a blue-silver thundercloud. "Do you think the country will get out of this in one piece, sir?" he asked.

  Morrow sighed. "I wish I knew, Freddy. I wish I knew."

  Activity at the United Nations also continued into the small hours of the night. Lauren Stewart stood beside Secretary Cieneral Olav Lindstrom as they met with ambassadorial delegations and counseled patience. At least, Lauren thought, it was comforting to know that even if their advice was ignored, there was little anyone could do. The invulnerability of the alien craft was a more powerful argument than any the Secretary General or his special assistant could muster.

  Lindstrom was noted for his patience. Depending on who was talking, it was either his most admirable virtue or his biggest failing. Lauren had taken his special seminar at Harvard, while he was the delegate from Sweden and she was completing her master's in International Relations. By the second week of the course, she'd developed a firm and growing admiration for the white-haired man with the neatly trimmed moustache. As she'd listened to him talk about World War Two, how Sweden had managed to walk the fine line of neutrality, not antagonizing the Russians yet still managing to help the British and Americans when they could, Lauren watched his deep, mournful eyes—sad eyes that had learned to observe while others blustered. Lindstrom spoke often about the tactic of calm observation, of finding and seizing the tiniest common ground on which to build a foundation of peaceful coexistence.