11/22/63 полностью

That made me think of Marina, and I winced. It wasn’t the same, but slapping is slapping. And I had been angry as well as scared.

She went to the chair in the corner, sat down, and pulled the towel tighter around her. She looked like a sulky child. “My friend Roger Beaton called. Did I tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“My good friend Roger.” Her eyes dared me to make something of it. I didn’t. Ultimately, it was her life. I just wanted to make sure she had a life.

“All right, your good friend Roger.”

“He told me to be sure and watch the Irish asshole’s speech tonight. That’s what he called him. Then he asked me how far Jodie was from Dallas. When I told him he said, ‘That should be far enough, depending on which way the wind’s blowing.’ He’s getting out of Washington himself, lots of people are, but I don’t think it will do them any good. You can’t outrun a nuclear war.” She began to cry then, harsh and wrenching sobs that shook her whole body. “Those idiots are going to destroy a beautiful world! They’re going to kill children! I hate them! I hate them all! Kennedy, Khrushchev, Castro, I hope they all rot in hell!”

She covered her face with her hands. I knelt like some old-fashioned gentleman preparing to propose and embraced her. She put her arms around my neck and clung to me in what was almost a drowner’s grip. Her body was still cold from the shower, but the cheek she laid against my arm was feverish.

In that moment I hated them all, too, John Clayton most of all for planting this seed in a young woman who was insecure and psychologically vulnerable. He had planted it, watered it, weeded it, and watched it grow.

And was Sadie the only one in terror tonight, the only one who had turned to the pills and the booze? How hard and fast were they drinking in the Ivy Room right now? I’d made the stupid assumption that people were going to approach the Cuban Missile Crisis much like any other temporary international dust-up, because by the time I went to college, it was just another intersection of names and dates to memorize for the next prelim. That’s how things look from the future. To people in the valley (the dark valley) of the present, they look different.

“The pictures were here when I got back from Reno.” She looked at me with her bloodshot, haunted eyes. “I wanted to throw them away, but I couldn’t. I kept looking at them.”

“It’s what the bastard wanted. That’s why he sent them.”

She didn’t seem to hear. “Statistical analysis is his hobby. He says that someday, when the computers are good enough, it will be the most important science, because statistical analysis is never wrong.”

“Not true.” In my mind’s eye I saw George de Mohrenschildt, the charmer who was Lee’s only friend. “There’s always a window of uncertainty.”

“I guess the day of Johnny’s super-computers will never come,” she said. “The people left — if there are any — will be living in caves. And the sky… no more blue. Nuclear darkness, that’s what Johnny calls it.”

“He’s full of shit, Sadie. Your pal Roger, too.”

She shook her head. Her bloodshot eyes regarded me sadly. “Johnny knew the Russians were going to launch a space satellite. We were just out of college then. He told me in the summer, and sure enough, they put Sputnik up in October. ‘Next they’ll send a dog or a monkey,’ Johnny said. ‘After that they’ll send a man. Then they’ll send two men and a bomb.’”

“And did they do that? Did they, Sadie?”

“They sent the dog, and they sent the man. The dog’s name was Laika, remember? It died up there. Poor doggy. They won’t have to send up the two men and the bomb, will they? They’ll use their missiles. And we’ll use ours. All over a shitpot island where they make cigars.”

“Do you know what the magicians say?”

“The—? What are you talking about?”

“They say you can fool a scientist, but you can never fool another magician. Your ex may teach science, but he’s sure no magician. The Russians, on the other hand, are.”

“You’re not making sense. Johnny says the Russians have to fight, and soon, because now they have missile superiority, but they won’t for long. That’s why they won’t back down in Cuba. It’s a pretext.”

“Johnny’s seen too much newsreel footage of missiles being trundled through Red Square on Mayday. What he doesn’t know — and what Senator Kuchel doesn’t know, either, probably — is that over half of those missiles don’t have engines in them.”

“You don’t… you can’t…”

“He doesn’t know how many of their ICBMs blow up on their launch pads in Siberia because their rocketry guys are incompetent. He doesn’t know that over half the missiles our U-2 planes have photographed are actually painted trees with cardboard fins. It’s sleight of hand, Sadie. It fools scientists like Johnny and politicians like Senator Kuchel, but it would never fool another magician.”