"More or less."
"But that would mean a tremendous upheaval in the UN itself. They're not set up for anything like that. You'd have to revamp the whole structure."
"Damned right." Marrett was grinning hugely now,
In those gloomy shadows, with the twisting metal steps snaking off into darkness above and below them, Kinsman felt suspended between—what? Success and failure? Life and death? Heaven and hell?
"Are there people in the UN who'd be willing to consider this?"
"I know one," Marrett said.
"Who?"
"Emanuel De Paolo."
"The Secretary General?"
"The very same."
Wednesday 15 December 1999:
1700 hrs UT
IT WAS PRECISELY noon in Washington, although from the curtained windows of the Oval Office nothing could be seen but the swirling wind-driven snow of the season's first bliz- zard.
"Big wet flakes," the President said, idly gazing out the windows as he leaned back in his desk chair. His eyes were puffy from lack of sleep, his hair tousled. "The kind that's heavy to shovel. I remember, back in Roxbury, when I was a kid, we would . . ."
The Defense Secretary looked pale, drawn. "Mr. Presi- dent, there's no time for childhood reminiscences."
"Oh, no?" the President asked, his mouth tightening. "What else can we do? This, eh, colonel—what's his name?"
"Kinsman," General Hofstader spat.
"Yes. Kinsman. He's got us stopped, doesn't he? We can't lift a missile off the ground. We can't attack, and we can't be attacked. So there's nothing to do except what we used to do in blizzards when 1 was a kid: sit back and enjoy it."
"What makes you certain that we can't be attacked," came the burly man's tortured whisper.
The President blinked in puzzlement and the reflex response of fear. "Why? Do you think . . . ?"
It was eight o'clock in the evening in Moscow, but the same questions were being asked.
"Are we so certain," the Nameless One was asking in his stiletto-thin voice, "that this is not a clever American trick? What guarantee do we have that these lunar rebels will stop an American attack on us?"
The General Secretary shifted his bulk uneasily in his 482 chair. The long table was almost empty. Only Marshal Prokoff, the Minister of State Security, and the Nameless One were present.
"Didn't they shoot down half a dozen American mis- siles?" the General Secretary demanded.
"What are a half-dozen missiles?" the Nameless One countered. "A ruse, a decoy, aimed at lulling us into relaxing our guard. Tomorrow, or next week or next month they could strike while our defenses are in a state of sleepy lassitude."
