The Big Eye Read Online Free Page B

of spectators spoke up. It was a young soldier.
     
     
"So Allison's meeting Bakhanov. Geez, I hope they work out something!"
     
     
"I doubt it," said an older man. "Talk, talk, talk. Nothing but talk.
That's all we've heard for years. The way it's going to end up, we'll
talk ourselves into six feet under."
     
     
"Well, anyway," said the soldier, "nothing's gonna happen while they're
sitting around a table."
     
     
"Oh no?" The older man laughed harshly. "Listen, sonny, ever hear of a
man named Hull?"
     
     
"Hull?"
     
     
"Yeah. I guess you wouldn't remember, sonny. You were still pretty wet
behind the ears. But Hull was our Secretary of State then. Back in '41,
it was. He was sitting around a table with two Jap diplomats, and no
one thought anything would happen. Not right then, anyway. Then all of
a sudden -- wham! Right in the middle of everything, the Japs let us have
it at Pearl Harbor."
     
     
David listened and remembered. He'd been only eleven then. But he
remembered his father, white-faced and shaking in anger, turning off
the radio. He remembered the bewilderment, the surprise, the disbelief. The Stab in the Back , they had called it then.
     
     
David shivered a little as the gray-haired man on the screen went on:
     
     
"It seems incredible that the peoples of the earth stand on the brink
of holocaust tonight, that the lights have gone out in the great
cities of the world. Tonight, like a great colossus, the Soviet Union
stands astride Europe and Asia, while we have declared our defense
responsibility through the whole of the Western Hemisphere, from Canada,
through South Amer-ica. Tonight the Soviet Union, as well as ourselves,
has the bomb. And tonight the world waits for the zero hour -- the hour
that no one wants to come but everyone expects to come. . . ."
     
     
A soldier on David's left muttered, "Yeah, it's the waiting. It's the
waiting that's tough. It's the waiting that's driving everybody crazy."
     
     
"What I want to know is, Frank, what are we waiting for?" His companion
was emphatic. "Why don't we throw it first, before they do? Somebody's
going to throw it first, and it better be us. Or else . . . !"
     
     
"You can say that again." A sergeant was talking now. "Listen, you guys,
I heard something, and it ain't from the latrine either. The Reds are
supposed to have an atom cocktail planted in one of these here buildings,
or down in the subway somewhere. I dunno, there may be ten of 'em, or
a hundred, for all I know. They've got some kind of gadget where they
can set 'em ofE from Moscow without getting off their fannies."
     
     
There was silence for a moment. The faces of the men looked white and
set and unreal in the glare of the television screen. Then someone in
the rear said:
     
     
"Maybe they're touching off a few rockets right now, headed F.O.B. New
York. How the hell do we know? Why take a chance? Let's give it to
'em and get it over with!"
     
     
That was the popular opinion. Everyone said that when the pay-off came --
not if it came, but when it came -- New York would get it first.
     
     
It was the biggest city in the world, the prime target. It would make
the loudest noise, illustrate the power of the enemy in the most potent
manner, create the most dramatic devastation. Aside from Washington,
which was now a ghost capital by orders of the Army, the big city had
completed a state of evacuation much farther along than any other. It
was possible that the Soviet might pick Detroit, or Chicago, or St.
Louis, or Los Angeles, if they threw the first punch.
     
     
But everyone said, everyone whispered, New York. That was the one,
the big one; that was where it would come first.
     
     
The telecaster up in the illuminated screen was saying:
     
     
"In retrospect, the catastrophe that faces us now was not a matter of
science, of atomic fission, of research or manufacturing techniques.
It was a matter of the human mind, its ability to adjust itself to the
fact that it had