The Nightmare
February, 1964
For the third Consecutive night Judy Quale was awakened by her husband's nightmare. He whimpered, twitched, and rattled bits of sentences in Chinese, or maybe Korean. Suddenly his left hand lashed out, striking her thigh, and she wriggled to safer territory. He switched to English and phrases tumbled over one another in senseless bursts. "Time factor critical ... nucs in Shanghai ... they'll never get enough stuff out of Sinkiang ... crazy for us but not the way the Han thinks ... only a trigger in the Gobi ... if Melanie comes through ... Melanie, Melanie, just one more time, Melanie ... for them six is enough ... adds up ... Q. E. D."
His body arched as if straining against bonds. Frightened, she shook his shoulder and he began to come out of it, as he had on the two previous nights. He sat up, chest heaving, sweat shining on his forehead. He blinked, took one deep breath, relaxed, and said, Must've had another nightmare."
"A beaut. You whacked me on the leg."
"I'm sorry, darling." He said, "It's almost five. I might as well get up."
"Don't be silly. You need your sleep. Four hours a night isn't enough and that's been your par for the past week."
"Have to be at the shop early to process the night's input and prevent any increment of my second-priority backlog. I'm briefing at Old State at ten."
"Cal, I wish you'd stop talking Government jargon and relearn English. You spoke good English once. Remember? I wish we were back in California and you were a person again. I wish you weren't a spook."
Calvin Quale, Ph.D., was Chief of the Special Branch, China Division, Central Intelligence Agency, a most sensitive and responsible post for which he was uniquely qualified. But in Washington, and elsewhere, all CIA employees, from directors to stenographers, are known as "spooks," if known at all. He inquired plaintively, "Can't a spook be a person?"
"I'm not sure. For weeks you haven't acted like a person, or anyway a husband, at all. You've treated me like a meal-cooking robot that also cleans house."
"I know you've had hell for a while, but it'll all be over soon, one way or another. Look. I'll serve you breakfast in bed. Orange juice, fried eggs and bacon, toast and coffee. How's that?"
"That's nice, but all I want is coffee."
When he brought coffee, she tasted it and, voice casual, said, "Tell me, dear, who is Melanie?"
His hand jumped and coffee lapped from cup's rim to saucer.
"Don't spill. Just let me have the truth. Such a pretty name, Melanie."
He was suddenly aware of her tenseness, anger, and real concern. It was always a question how much a man in his position could tell a wife. "In this case," Cal said, "Melanie is the code name of a project. And you have no right to know it." This was the truth, but not the whole truth.
"Tell me, Cal, isn't a nuc a bomb?"
"A nuc is any kind of nuclear weapon, A or H. It can be a bomb, a missile war head, mine, torpedo, depth charge, even a bazooka shell. Why?"
"What about those nucs in Shanghai?"
"Judy, you're impossible!"
He recalled the advice of a graying G2 colonel in Seoul: "If you are captured, tell 'em enough so you won't be tortured, because if the bastards torture you you're liable to spill everything no matter how strong you think you are. Never talk about future plans or operations, or anything that might cost a life. Tell 'em what they already know or can guess, and that's all."
"I guess I was dreaming about the first Chinese nuclear test," he said.
"I read that the Chinese were developing a bomb, but I hadn't heard about any test."
"They haven't announced it, and neither have we, but they did have one. Five months ago, in the middle of the Gobi Desert. An air burst. At first we thought the Russians were pulling a sneak test of an antiaircraft weapon at their missile site near the Aral Sea. Then we discovered it was Chinese. Satisfied?"
"Satisfied."
"Keep it within these four walls." He was glad she hadn't pressed him on Shanghai.
• • •
Under a shower was a good place to think. In a shower you could even talk to yourself safely. He thought about Melanie, which was not her name but the code word used by Special Branch for her operation. Her name was Mai Sinling, and her profession was known to only five living Americans. Her dossier was contained in two files, one in a vault under the new CIA headquarters in Virginia, the other in a similar vault in a shelter cavern hollowed out of a Colorado mountain. The Melanie file could be examined only by Calvin Quale or his deputy, Al Boggs, and in the presence of a security officer. Project Melanie was a state secret, and of course any leak would mean death for Mai Sin-ling. With one exception, she was the most valuable secret agent the United States possessed.
He had seen her once. She was not exactly beautiful, only arresting, with a body that moved like a leopard's. He had been 18 at the time, and she 25 or so. His father, then attached to the wartime embassy in Chungking, had pointed her out in the dining room of the diplomatic hostel and said, "See that girl? She's the most brilliant female in China – and that includes Madame. She'll be famous someday, if she isn't killed first. Daughter of a White Russian émigré and a Chinese war lord turned Communist back in 1929. Three years at Vassar, another at the Sorbonne, and a year in Moscow. Married to one of Chiang's ministers, but—"
"But what, Dad?" Cal had said.
"As you see, she isn't with him."
It was only then that Cal noticed she was dining with an American officer, for when you beheld Mai Sin-ling it was difficult to see anyone else.
Many years later Cal learned that it was during this period that Mai Sin-ling volunteered to become a sleeper agent. "China," the dossier quoted her as saying, "is going to have a convulsion, and after that a dreadful disease, and will be isolated from the West. It is necessary that China keep some friends in America, and that America have some friends in China." Until September 1950, nothing was heard from her. Then she communicated one single item of news – the Chinese Communists planned to enter the Korean War. She listed armies, corps and divisions, named the generals, described the equipment, and gave the date the first troops would be committed across the Yalu River. In Washington and Tokyo her information was regarded as incredible, and disregarded. Her information was never disregarded again. It was often startling and always accurate.
Until 18 months ago her reports had come in shipments of hog bristles, via Hong Kong, or jade via Bangkok, a slow procedure. Then Cal had arranged a radio relay from Peking to Formosa especially for Project Melanie. Mai Sin-ling paid a small net of subagents, and she had a trusted cutout, an exporter whose skill in accumulating dollars and pounds gave him special value to the regime. If the radio net was blown she would not be involved, unless a subordinate or the exporter talked, but the use of radio was always dangerous. It was also necessary. When a rocket can travel from continent to continent in 24 minutes, vital intelligence must travel at the speed of light.
He often wondered about her motives. Resentment of the system that had despoiled, exiled, and ruined her mother? Hatred of her opportunistic father? Love and respect for an American officer long dead? Money? No, not money. Perhaps she was an excitement-and-intrigue addict. He had known a few. Perhaps she craved power, either for herself or her present lover. Maybe she was simply a spirited, intelligent woman who had seen much of the world, good and bad, understood the difference, recognized the alternatives in her own land, and at heart was an idealist. This last theory was possible. His best agents rarely worked for money, power or thrills, but for ideals. The best spies were patriots. Cal never doubted her reliability, the excellence of her sources, or her absolute courage. Mai Sin-ling was now the mistress of a personage in the Peking regime, an official once the favorite and confidant of Mao, and still influential in the Central Committee.
• • •
It was almost seven when he left the four-room, second-floor flat in Georgetown. He drove his compact across the Arlington Memorial Bridge and then north on the highway to the stone-and-grass monolith which everyone called "the shop." When he reached his office he called the Communications Center and a Marine guard, pistol bouncing at his hip, brought a thin metal case, locked, with the night's priority dispatches for Special Branch, China.
The first decoded message was signed "Melanie," the answer to his urgent (continued overleaf) queries. He flipped through five pages of pink flimsy. Mai Sin-ling was taking a chance, entrusting so long a message to the monitored air. The Peking counterespionage organization would certainly zero in on the CIA transmitter if this sort of thing continued. He began to read, and saw at once that she was justified. She had taken a desperate risk to meet a desperate situation. He read it through once, and then again more carefully, memorizing the key phrases exactly, for of course the letter itself could not leave the building. His analysis of Chinese intentions had been correct, and details of their operational plan were here spread out before him in astonishing and nightmarish minutiae. That he was right didn't make him feel less ill.
He wished he had not hoarded his suspicions while awaiting word from Mai Sin-ling, for time was running out. He should have been bold and unafraid of ridicule. Impulsively he reached for the phone and then withdrew his hand. His superiors would be in shortly and as a matter of course would see copies of the Melanie dispatch as soon as they arrived. To be certain of this, Cal called Communications, and to be doubly certain he typed a memo and hand-carried one copy to the director's suite, another to the deputy director's, and dropped the third with the duty officer. Cal remembered Pearl Harbor, and the fantastic communications foul-ups that had cost eight battleships sunk or crippled, half the aircraft in the Pacific theater, and lives by the thousands.
When he returned to the office, Miss Meade, his new secretary, one year out of Bennington, was at her desk. "Traffic's frightful today," she said. "Do you want China in your map case?"
"They have maps in Old State," Cal said. He told himself that Miss Meade was very young, and for some reason frightened of him and he shouldn't be so brusque with her. One day he would explain that for months he had been under great strain, concentrating on the solution of an elusive and terrifying problem 8000 miles away.
"Oh! The Interdepartmental Committee called. They've changed rooms on you. You're to brief in General Caudle's office instead of Mr. Thompson's. Does that mean anything?"
"Means I'd better not be late and if the traffic's bad I'd better get going. Goodbye, Miss Meade. Maybe I'll be back this afternoon, maybe not." It meant more. Usually, he gave his situation summary on China in the office of Hal Thompson, who was special assistant for Asian affairs. General Caudle was the President's personal military advisor, so the subject of his presentation, "China's Nuclear Capability," had aroused interest in higher circles. In five minutes he nosed his car into traffic crawling like a thick lethargic snake, without visible head or tail, toward Washington.
Whenever there was time, Cal stopped for a moment to contemplate Old State, a blowsy, sooty dowager of mixed architectural ancestry, part fake French baroque and part genuine Victorian ugly, chaperoning the graceful and elegant White House just across narrow West Executive Avenue. He had special reasons. Once Old State had been State, War and Navy. After World War I it was given over to the State Department alone. State moved to far-larger quarters and Old State now housed agencies of the executive office of the President. In this building Cal's father and grandfather had begun their diplomatic careers. Neither had achieved ambassadorial rank, for both had bogged down in China. It required a lifetime to learn China, and men who learned were too scarce to be rotated elsewhere. Cal had been born in the embassy compound in Peking, and he was traveling the same path.
He entered Old State. The high ceilings, cool corridors and white, shuttered outer doors of the comfortable office suites gave him a warm, familiar feeling, like returning to a family homestead, and whenever he briefed his seniors here, its atmosphere laid upon his shoulders a mantle of confidence. He went directly to the third-floor conference room of General Caudle. He was early by four minutes, and yet seven of the ten chairs around the table's ellipse were already filled, which was most unusual.
Caudle, a tightly knit, trim-waisted man smoking a thin cigar in a dark-briar holder, lounged at one end. He wore a checked Madras sports jacket. He didn't look his 60-odd years and he didn't look like the commander of an armored corps that had split the Nazi armies in France and driven on to the Rhine. He looked as relaxed and unmilitary as a baseball fan in his box at the stadium, watching infield practice before a game. "Morning, Dr. Quale," the general said. "Hear you've got something hot. Your boss just called. He's on the way over. Are these maps OK?"
There were two big maps on the board, one of China, the other the world. The word gets around, Cal thought. He said, "I'll need some markers."
"We've got them in all colors, in that little box under the board." Two more men entered, the general looked at his watch and said, "We might as well begin."
No amenities, no introductions. Never any time for courtesies, not in these days. Nor were they necessary, Cal thought. He had met only three or four of the men around the table, but they all knew his job and background, and he knew theirs. This was not precisely the top level of Government, but it was the next rung under and the most impressive group he had ever faced. The Undersecretary of State was present, and the Deputy Secretary of Defense, along with the Secretaries of Air Force and Army, the Chief of Naval Operations, a member of the Atomic Energy Commission, Thompson, the Far East expert, and Senator Clive, a thoughtful member of the Foreign Relations Committee who could be trusted with secrets.
He stepped to the map wall and said, "I was originally going to talk on China's nuclear capability. I'm adding to the topic. I'm including China's war plan. It is called the One-Two-Three Plan. It can be in effect at any moment. I believe it is now under way."
He wanted their undivided attention at once. Looking down on the oval of unsmiling faces and widened eyes, he saw he had it. "This war will be triggered by nucs, so I have to go into their nuclear capability first. For two years the Chinese have been operating uranium mines in Sinkiang Province." He touched the spot with his finger. "Just here. Low-grade ore. They've found better deposits in Tibet, but they haven't been able to move machinery into Tibet or get the stuff out, so they've been using the Sinkiang ore entirely. It goes by truck to the railhead at Urumchi – here – and then to Lanchow. In the Yellow River Gorge near Lanchow they have built the biggest hydroelectric plant in Asia. To refine uranium, convert it to plutonium, and construct bombs you must have ample water and almost unlimited power supply, and here they have both. That's how we sniffed out the plants in the first place. Four months ago they conducted their first – and last – test explosion. In the Gobi, here."
Senator Clive stirred. "How do we know this?"
"We were lucky. One of our people just happened to see it. Until we got his report we and the AEC believed the Russians had sneaked one off high in the atmosphere near the Aral Sea. Identical upper-air wind stream, you see."
"Right," said the AEC Commissioner.
"Why did it take so long to get this report?" the Senator asked.
Cal smiled. "Our man was traveling by camel at the time, and even after he reached his destination his communications weren't of the best." The agent was a Kazak, hardy and brave, member of a nomad people who wander the Asian wastelands, crossing borders at will. In addition to being a Kazak he was a naturalized American, a graduate of a Los Angeles high school and, like Cal, a veteran of the Korean War. After Korea it became apparent that Kazak-Americans could be extraordinarily useful, if they could be found. Giant machines in the Pentagon, culling millions of personnel records, had found a few. Indeed the (continued on page 175) Nightmare (continued from page 86) Kazak had been at the right place at the right time, but Cal could not tell the full story. Operations of agents abroad were never revealed, not to anyone.
The CIA director entered the room and took the last chair. He fidgeted like a worried banker, and Cal knew he had read the Melanie message. "Since the test," Cal continued, "the Chinese have been able to assemble six weapons. The yield of the test was fifty kilotons, which is pretty efficient. Our information is that they've rigged the test type with U-238, so each of the six will produce a yield of a half megaton. Somewhere along the line the Chinese physicists must have learned a lot from the Russians. But they've had trouble with their breeder reactor lately, so that six is all they're going to be able to make for a while. But with six they plan to start – and win – a war."
The Air Secretary's head snapped up, a signal to halt. "That's crazy!" Air said. "How do they expect to fight a war with six nucs? They don't even have adequate delivery systems – no ICBMs, no longrange bombers, no missile subs. Hell, Doctor, they can't even reach us!"
"I didn't say fight a war, Mr. Secretary. I said start one – the big one – and win it. All they have to do to win it is start it, you see, or at least that's the way they figure. A number of years ago Chou Enlai said: 'At the end of the next war the population of the United States will be 10,000,000, of Russia, 15,000,000, and of China, 300,000,000 people.' " He looked at Thompson. "I believe I've quoted him accurately."
Thompson said, "That's the guts of it, Cal."
"Chou was foreign minister at the time," Cal continued. "Now he's premier. The figures may have changed a little – China's population has jumped a hundred million since then, and ours has increased a lot and so has Russia's, and the number and power of nuclear weapons has increased, too, and in greater proportion. But Chou's basic idea hasn't changed a bit, except that it is now specific and immediate."
They were all very quiet. Cal held up his hands, six fingers extended. "Six weapons, and here's how they're going to use them:
"One – they blow Amoy, one of their own cities, after starting a new fight over Quemoy and Matsu. They will make motions as if actually preparing to invade Formosa, but they won't invade. They won't have to.
"Two – they lay a nuc on Taipeh and another on Manila. A half-meg weapon will simply obliterate cities that size. They have medium-range jets perfectly adequate for the job."
He turned to the map board, found six red rosettes, and pinned three on the targets he had named. He continued: "Three – nuclear mines in three Soviet cities – Vladivostok and Nikolaevsk, on the Pacific, and Khabarovsk, the biggest military and industrial complex in the Eastern provinces." Rosettes bloomed on the Russian cities.
Cal faced the table again. "That's the One-Two-Three Plan. Beautiful, isn't it?"
"So simple," said General Caudle. "And so diabolical."
All the others, except the director, were staring at him, puzzled, and Cal knew he would have to explain a bit further. "They expect this will touch off war between Russia and the United States and that we will destroy each other. This tactic is nothing new with the Han" – he unconsciously used the term by which the Chinese refer to their own people – "nor is it new in Europe. Remember Metternich and Machiavelli. It is as old as the role of agent provocateur. And it will work."
"How?" Senator Clive snapped out the single word.
"It can work in the first stage. The U. S. S. R. has pledged itself to retaliate if China is attacked. The U. S. S. R. may act the instant Amoy goes up."
"Why would the Chinese want to destroy one of their own cities?"
"First, it will eliminate Russian suspicion at the outset. Secondly, one city is a small price to pay for the world. The Han may be resigned to losing two- or three-hundred-million people, and aren't disturbed so long as technical, scientific and political cadres survive.
"Whether or not the Russians strike America in supposed retaliation for Amoy, the bombing of Manila and Taipeh will follow in two hours. When that happens, you can imagine the reaction in this country. We would face an awful decision. Unwarned, we might decide the balloon was up and push the button. Certainly we would have to hit the Chinese air bases with all the stuff we have on Formosa. If the Russians were hesitant after Amoy, they would know for certain China was under attack after Phase Two.
"And if Phases One and Two weren't sufficient catalysts, Phase Three – the disappearance of three major Russian cities – would touch off everything in the U. S. S. R., and that, of course, would spring all our missiles. And SAC would have been in the air ever since Amoy went up. That is it, gentlemen."
The AEC Commissioner winced. "How do you know all this?" he demanded.
"We've tailed those six nucs ever since they left Lanchow. With the help of Navy Intelligence, and a big assist from our cousins, the British, and – well, a few neutral friends." Cal thought of the Indonesian physicist who had learned his trade at Caltech, but of course didn't mention him.
"One went to Amoy. Believe it or not, they shipped it in a coffin. A fractional-megaton weapon is just about man-size. Two went to Shanghai. At the same time two merchant ships were in dry dock for hull modification – antisubmarine equipment, the rumor was. Actually, mine-laying chutes were installed. Those two ships sailed five days ago, headed north. The weapons are aboard."
The admiral said, "Correct."
"Two more," Cal continued, "are on airfields near Swatow. They're the ones programed for Taipeh and Manila."
The Army Secretary said, "That leaves Khabarovsk. That's inland. How do they do Khabarovsk?"
"I didn't know the answer to that until a few hours ago," Cal said, "although we knew the sixth nuc had been trucked to Haokang. It is now buried under a cargo of hides on a barge floating down the Amur River to Khabarovsk. How soon the One-Two-Three Plan becomes operational depends on how fast the Amur flows, and at this season it flows at four knots. Just as a guess, that barge should tie up in Khabarovsk in forty-eight to seventy-two hours."
The Undersecretary of State let out a great breath, audibly. The Deputy Secretary of Defense rested his elbows on the table and prodded at his brows. The Senator said, "It's terribly disturbing. But isn't it only analysis and deduction? Do we really know?"
"We really know," Cal said quietly.
"How do we know?"
"We have the full details from an absolutely reliable source intimate with the Peking leaders." A nice double-entendre, Cal thought.
"Dr. Quale, I think on a matter of this magnitude we must know more than that about your source."
The CIA director rose. He was neither tall nor imposing, and it was necessary to know him for a time to discover that he was very tough, and very wise. He said, "Senator, I think I can tell you more. This same source told us the Chinese were about to enter the Korean War, and when and with what. This source gave us advance notice of the infiltration of Vietnam and the invasion of India. This source provided us with first word of the ideological split between Peking and Moscow. This source must be protected. Does that answer your question, sir?"
"I've been answered," the Senator said.
General Caudle said, "And your recommendation, Dr. Quale?"
"I think that first – and right now – we have to tell the U. S. S. R."
The general turned to the Undersecretary of State. "Will they believe us?"
"I don't know," State said "It's a gamble – unless we, or they, get hard evidence. But I think we must tell them."
The Army Secretary tapped the table. "Just before I left the Pentagon," he said, "we got a message from Taipeh. The Communists are shooting up Quemoy and Matsu again. Two hundred shells in four hours. That's about average for one of their shoots. But it could be the first sound, like distant thunder beyond the horizon."
Then they were all quiet, and Cal knew he had conducted his briefing creditably and that without ever speaking they had reached a conclusion, a meeting of minds. It was a conclusion only, not a decision. They were decisionmakers, but this decision they could not make, even collectively. On the gravest matters of foreign and military policy, action and responsibility must always rest in the hands of the President. So the Constitution decrees.
The CIA director said what they were all thinking: "This is the reason we've got the hot line between the Kremlin and the White House. Well?"
The general looked up at Cal and said, "I guess you'd better walk across the street with me. We've got to see The Man."
• • •
Cal got home at midnight.
The next night he didn't go home at all, and called from the shop to say he was sleeping on his office couch. On the night following, he went home at three, and managed not to wake her.
Then, on the fourth night, he got home for dinner. He flopped into a chair with a highball and looked about him. Everything that was familiar looked strange, and he realized that this was the first night in a long stretch of time that he had really seen his home, his books, his personal and immediate surroundings, and his wife.
Judy had been absorbing the news on television. "Did you hear about those two Chinese ships?" she said. "Torpedoed, or so they claim."
"Is that so?"
"Yes, it is. And of course the Chinese blame us. Did we do it?"
"I hope not. I think somebody else did it." He knew the Russians had done it. First they'd intercepted that barge floating down the Amur, seized the crew and confiscated the nuc. Then they'd torpedoed the two ships bound for Vladivostok and Nikolaevsk, and after that they'd told the Chinese that the explosion of any weapon, anywhere, would be considered an attack by China on the Soviet Union.
"You're being secretive again," Judy said. "I think we must've done it. But if we did it, why did the Russians recall their ambassador from Peking? What's going on, anyway? Is this another crisis?"
"No. If there was a crisis, it's over."
"I hope you're telling me the truth."
"I am. No crisis ... not this time."
That same night they were listening to the 11-o'clock news and a Hong Kong correspondent quoted a bulletin from Radio Peking: "Mai Sin-ling, a notorious Eurasian prostitute and a paid agent of the American imperialists, killed herself with poison to prevent arrest today. Others in her ring are being hunted."
Cal turned his face to the pillow. He would never see her again, or discover why she did it. She could not be replaced, and yet her loss was not unexpected and he had lost agents before. It was the nature of his business.
Judy poked him with her elbow. "What's the matter with you?" she asked.
"Nothing. I'm going to sleep."
"No more nightmares."
"No. Just sleep. Peaceful sleep."
Like what you see? Upgrade your access to finish reading.
- Access all member-only articles from the Playboy archive
- Join member-only Playmate meetups and events
- Priority status across Playboy’s digital ecosystem
- $25 credit to spend in the Playboy Club
- Unlock BTS content from Playboy photoshoots
- 15% discount on Playboy merch and apparel