The Zero Option Read online

  David Rollins was born in Sydney in 1958 and grew up in a household where politics was consumed at dinner along with lamb chops, peas and mash. David has worked as a journalist and advertising copywriter. His first novel Rogue Element was published in 2003. He lives in Sydney with his family.

  Also by David Rollins

  ROGUE ELEMENT

  SWORD OF ALLAH

  THE DEATH TRUST

  A KNIFE EDGE

  HARD RAIN

  THE ZERO

  OPTION

  DAVID

  ROLLINS

  First published 2009 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  1 Market Street, Sydney

  Copyright © David Rollins 2009

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations) in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Rollins, David A.

  The zero option / David Rollins.

  9781405039178 (pbk.)

  A823.4

  Typeset in 11/15 pt Birka by Post Pre-press Group

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  These electronic editions published in 2009 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  The Zero Option

  David Rollins

  Adobe eReader format: 978-1-74198-623-5

  EPUB format: 978-1-74198-735-5

  Online format: 978-1-74198-567-2

  Macmillan Digital Australia

  www.macmillandigital.com.au

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com.au to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks online. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.

  For the 269

  A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.

  —Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘The Grandmother’

  Contents

  Cover

  About David Rollins

  Also by David Rollins

  Title page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  BOOK ONE

  The Times October 5, 1981

  The New York Times March 5, 1983

  March 4, 1983

  January 2, 2012

  March 5, 1983

  January 3, 2012

  June 7, 1983

  January 4, 2012

  June 21, 1983

  June 23, 1983

  September 1, 1983

  January 5, 2012

  January 12, 2012

  January 13, 2012

  September 1, 1983

  September 1, 1983

  September 1, 1983

  September 1, 1983

  BOOK TWO

  January 13, 2012

  January 14, 2012

  January 14, 2012

  January 14, 2012

  January 15, 2012

  January 16, 2012

  September 1, 1983

  January 20, 2012

  September 1, 1983

  September 1, 1983

  January 24, 2012

  September 1, 1983

  January 24, 2012

  September 2, 1983

  January 27, 2012

  September 4, 1983

  September 5, 1983

  January 28, 2012

  September 6, 1983

  January 29, 2012

  September 8, 1983

  January 30, 2012

  January 31, 2012

  September 10, 1983

  September 11, 1983

  September 16, 1983

  October 10, 1983

  October 11, 1983

  BOOK THREE

  February 2, 2012

  May 10, 1984

  February 4, 2012

  February 6, 2012

  February 7, 2012

  February 8, 2012

  April 6, 1986

  February 9, 2012

  October 3, 1990

  February 9, 2012

  February 10, 2012

  December 6, 1990

  February 11, 2012

  February 12, 2012

  February 13, 2012

  February 15, 2012

  February 16, 2012

  February 16, 2012

  February 17, 2012

  February 18, 2012

  February 19, 2012

  Epilogue

  Author’s note

  Prologue

  September 1, 2011

  Wakkanai, Hokkaido, Japan. Curtis Foxx removed his shoes one at a time, balanced on one leg and then the other as he peeled off his socks. It was late afternoon and the black sand between his toes felt cold but not unpleasant; the violent winter that would eventually sweep down from Siberia was still months away.

  The man he’d come to meet was already down by the water’s edge, quietly chanting a prayer to his gods. It had been on a boat off this stretch of sand, exactly one year after the terrible event, that a bond was forged between them. He watched as the man threw his hands high in the air, tossing chrysanthemums into the waves rolling in from La Pérouse Strait, the bleak stretch of water that separated this far northern tip of the Japanese island of Hokkaido from Russia’s Sakhalin Island.

  The chill breeze carried with it a few words of the Shinto prayer. More flowers were thrown into the waves, which immediately tossed them right back as if the man’s prayer had been rejected, the stems eddying around his ankles. Curtis walked to the water’s edge and into the man’s peripheral vision.

  ‘Yuudai-san,’ Curtis said, his voice a coarse whisper.

  ‘Shh . . . let me finish my goodbye,’ Yuudai Suzuki replied.

  Curtis took half a step back. He’d stopped believing in any kind of god long ago. He folded his arms in an attempt to capture some warmth. Theirs was an odd friendship, bound by a secret. The day was September 1, the anniversary of the crash that had simultaneously joined their lives and changed them forever.

  ‘How long have the doctors given you?’ Curtis asked when his Japanese friend had finished.

  ‘Long enough. Four months. Perhaps more, perhaps less.’

  The ravages of cancer were easy for Curtis to see. Yuudai’s face was bony, the cords in his neck plainly visible. Several bandaids covered sores on his forearms where his paper-thin skin had torn. The clothes he wore hung off him as if they were borrowed from a much larger person. Indeed, when they first met, Yuudai Suzuki had been a big man and his friends had called him Sumo.

  ‘And you, Curtis?’

  ‘Less.’

  ‘You look okay. They might be mistaken.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  When Curtis happened to catch his reflection in the mirror, what he saw was a virtual cadaver—yellow, gaunt and dying. With a
shot liver and no hope of a transplant, there wasn’t much of anything the doctors could do for him. Still, nothing would have stopped him from making this journey.

  ‘You having second thoughts about going through with it?’ he asked.

  ‘No. We agreed and it is time,’ Yuudai said. ‘You?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is your son ready?’

  Curtis shrugged. ‘How do you get anyone ready for this?’

  ‘It’s a big responsibility. The knowledge will be a burden.’

  ‘I know his mother. She’ll have brought him up right. He’ll figure out what to do.’ Curtis pulled the zipper up tighter under his neck. ‘No way is this secret going to die with us.’

  Yuudai had no children and had never married. As an only child, his line would finish with his death. His private shame was that he had no one to pass anything on to—good or bad.

  ‘What about the girl?’ Curtis asked. ‘You still stalking her?’

  ‘I moved out of her building six months ago. Watching over someone is not stalking.’

  ‘You haven’t changed your mind about her?’

  ‘I got to know her quite well. She has inner strength, as well as every book ever written on the subject. Yes, together, Akiko and your son are our best chance.’

  Curtis, like Yuudai, had signed secrecy agreements. He had sworn to honor them. But on his death, that pact of silence would expire.

  ‘The nightmares are getting worse,’ said Yuudai, changing the subject.

  ‘It’s just your medication.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  The sun was setting, the temperature dropping with it. Neither man spoke as the stiffening late afternoon breeze sliced through their clothes. A wavelet rolled over Curtis’s feet, the sudden cold snap-freezing his blood. It numbed his toes but focused his mind. The event that had brought them together had happened twenty-eight years ago today. He still remembered it with piercing clarity. On that day, also, his son had been born, making it the very best and the very worst day of his life. In time, Curtis thought, perhaps the man his son had become would understand. He hoped so.

  ‘Did you bring it with you?’ he asked.

  Yuudai dug an envelope out of his pocket and passed it to Curtis, who broke the gum seal and peered inside. There it was: twenty-eight minutes and six seconds of tape. Only two men in the world knew for certain of its existence. Soon, his son and Yuudai’s protégée would take possession of it, but not before Curtis and Yuudai were gone from this world.

  BOOK ONE

  THE TIMES

  October 5, 1981

  Soviets Shoot Down President’s Plan

  Washington DC—The Soviet Union announced today that it has formally rejected the ‘Zero Option’ plan proposed by United States President Ronald Reagan to limit the proliferation of nuclear intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBM) on the European continent.

  In broad outline, the plan called for the scrapping of US IRBM Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCM) in exchange for the Soviet elimination of the SS-4, SS-5 and SS-20 intermediate-range missiles.

  Pentagon sources say the Soviet Union has completed the deployment of more than 330 of the new mobile SS-20 missiles, each with three independently targeted warheads, aimed at population centres as well as military sites and storage facilities across Western Europe.

  In response to the Soviet rejection, NATO has announced that it will bring forward the modernization of its intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF), deploying 108 single-warhead Pershing II missiles throughout West Germany and 464 of the single-warhead GLCMs in Great Britain and in Sicily.

  Missile deployment is scheduled for December 1983, despite European fears that introducing the new missiles will make the continent a nuclear battleground.

  THE NEW YORK TIMES

  March 5, 1983

  Protest Blocks US Army Base

  Neu-Ulm, West Germany—Medium-range Pershing II missiles are set to be deployed in West Germany, but the several thousand protesters who blocked the main entrance gate at the Neu-Ulm US Army Base today were determined to prevent that from coming to pass.

  A further series of protests is scheduled to take place this month, culminating in an attempt to ring the base with a human chain of interlocked arms. This would symbolize unity and defiance, said a spokesman for the anti-missile movement. He added that more than 150,000 people were expected to take part, dwarfing even the massive demonstrations organized by British anti-nuclear protesters at Greenham Common recently. The spokesman said 30 special trains and 800 chartered buses would transport the demonstrators to the base, people from all walks of life, and from all over West Germany.

  Today’s protest started peacefully, but the mood deteriorated later in the day when a convoy of army trucks arrived at the base and the police riot squad was called in to clear the road of protesters. The US Army is responding with indifference to the public show of disquiet, maintaining a facade of business as usual. When asked if the new missiles would arrive on schedule later in the year, a US Army colonel who asked not to be identified said it was not the American military’s habit to pass out delivery dates, nor was it policy to either confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons.

  March 4, 1983

  US Army Base, Neu-Ulm, Bavaria, West Germany. It was a fine early spring day, but noisy as hell. The uproar from the besieging hordes beyond the wire was so loud that National Security Agency analyst Roy Garret could feel the vibration through the soles of his boots. He took a deep breath then started heading off the base through a secondary gate. He was joined almost immediately by a spook who’d introduced himself earlier as Hank.

  ‘Mind if I tag along?’ Hank asked.

  Garret shrugged.

  The two men gave the army sentries a nod as they passed beneath the boom towards the barbed wire coiled across the road. A group of demonstrators spotted them leaving and identified them as the enemy.

  ‘He! He sie . . . !’ they called out.

  Garret and Hank ignored them, and once off the base were enveloped by the chanting, dancing, swirling crowd, becoming just another couple of guys among those with ‘Ban the Bomb’ patches on the pockets of their jackets and hand-rolled cigarettes drooping from their lips. Teachers, doctors, merchants, clerks—the middle-aged mainstream—had all been drawn into the protest. Garret observed that many had even brought their kids. This wasn’t just a bunch of hippies, although they were also here in numbers. This was a ground-swell, just as he’d predicted.

  They continued to push their way through into a more conventional peacenik sideshow dominated by incense, patchouli oil and body odor. Garret smelled marijuana. Sinewy hippie types were dancing to Janis Joplin. Other demonstrators painted like skeletons towered over the crowd on stilts. A man dressed as Uncle Sam darted here and there, thrusting his palms smeared with fake blood into people’s faces. Costumed Grim Reapers with scythes prowled among cardboard coffins lying on the ground.

  Placards were everywhere, ranging from the unimaginative ‘Missiles Out’ and ‘Down with the USA’ to the more inventive ‘Smoke the Weed, Not the Ground’ and ‘USAssholes Out!’ A large banner had been painted with ‘USA’ and ‘USSR’ combined to make crosses in a graveyard.

  Above the commotion Hank shouted, ‘These people have no idea.’

  Garret agreed. They didn’t realize that the only barrier between them and a few thousand Soviet T80 tanks rolling across their deluded pacifist asses was the determination of the United States to stop Ivan dead in his tracks. And yes, okay, with nukes. The protesters only saw the mushroom clouds. They didn’t see that the bombs were far more potent just sitting around, deterring.

  At the main gate, the crowd was more condensed and more determined. There was no carnival atmosphere here and the front lines of the protest advanced with arms interlocked.

  ‘It’s like those Vietnam demonstrations, the ones in DC,’ Hank shouted. ‘All those pissed moms and dads, remember?’
>
  Garret remembered. Disenchanted moms and dads made politicians nervous.

  ‘You know,’ said Hank, ‘I was at Greenham, and this ain’t no isolated event. What we’ve got here is a trend. And a trend, my friend, is hard to defend.’

  This Hank guy was getting on his nerves. Garret stopped, the protesters whirling around them. ‘You’re CIA, aren’t you?’

  Hank turned. ‘Nope, State,’ he said with a grin. ‘And you? NSA, right?’

  ‘Peace Corps.’

  ‘We’re both professionals, then,’ said Hank.

  Garret took a moment to give the spook the once-over. He was five eleven, average build. Maybe 180 pounds. A narrow, pinched face with brown hair, brown eyes, skin grafts on one side of his neck, a deep scar on the other. A ’Nam vet, probably.

  ‘Who sent you to spy on me?’ Garret asked, walking toward a patch of less crowded higher ground.

  ‘You’re paranoid.’

  ‘You flew in last night,’ said Garret. ‘A C-130 with no tail markings. I’m guessing it’s a Company plane.’

  ‘Okay, you got me. Think of me as your security.’

  Hank craned his neck to look over the heads of the protesters and watched the crowd flow back and forth like compacted trash in a rolling swell. A water cannon had arrived, along with five buses, all painted black. The bus doors opened and a riot squad surged out.

  ‘Spy, security—same thing. You’re what, early thirties?’

  ‘Close enough,’ said Hank.

  ‘So your pay grade is probably O-4 and therefore too senior to be muscle. And I’m bigger than you, anyway. I could be your security.’

  Hank grinned. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, pilgrim.’

  The Polizei, all in black with clear shields and brandishing long riot sticks, advanced in lock-step toward the protesters, escorting the water cannon. A roar went up from the crowd as a convoy of US Army semi-trailers appeared further down the road, heading for the base at a crawl. The riot police were there to clear a path. People passed around the word: ‘Raketen’. It swept through the crowd like the wind. ‘Raketen’, ‘Raketen!’