“It’s never been closer than this. Go to Buffalo.”

She drained her cup, then got up and went to the sink to wash it. After a moment she said: “And what about you?”

“I have to stay here and do what I can to prevent it happening.”

Jacky shook her head decisively. “I’m not going to Buffalo.”

“It would ease my heart mightily, Mom.”

“If you want to ease your heart, pray to the Lord.”

“You know what the Arabs say? ‘Trust in Allah, but tether your camel.’ I’ll pray if you’ll go to Buffalo.”

“How do you know the Russians won’t bomb Buffalo?”

“I don’t know for sure. But I’d guess it’s a secondary target. And it may be out of range of those missiles in Cuba.”

“You make a weak case, for a lawyer.”

“I’m serious, Mom.”

“So am I,” she said. “And you’re a good son, to worry about your mother. But listen to me, now. From the age of sixteen I’ve given my life to nothing but raising you. If everything I’ve done is going to be wiped out in a nuclear flash, I don’t want to be alive afterward to know about it. I’m staying where you are.”

“Either we’ll both survive, or we’ll both die.”

“‘The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away,’” she quoted. “‘Blessed be the name of the Lord.’”

• • •

The United States had more than two hundred nuclear missiles that could reach the Soviet Union, according to Dimka’s uncle Volodya in Red Army Intelligence. The Americans believed the Soviet Union had about half that many intercontinental missiles, Volodya said. In truth, the USSR had precisely forty-two.

And some of them were obsolete.

When the United States did not immediately reply to the Soviet Union’s compromise offer, Khrushchev ordered even the oldest and most unreliable missiles to be made launch-ready.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, Dimka telephoned the missile testing range at Baikonur in Kazakhstan. The army base there had two five-engined Semyorkas, obsolete R-7 rockets of the type that had taken the Sputnik into orbit five years ago. They were being readied for a Mars probe.

Dimka called off the Mars expedition. The Semyorkas were included in the Soviet Union’s forty-two intercontinental missiles. They were needed for World War III.

He ordered the scientists to fit both rockets with nuclear warheads and fuel them.

Preparation for launch would take twenty hours. The Semyorkas used an unstable liquid propellant, and they could not be kept on alert for more than a day. They would be used this weekend or not at all.

Semyorka rockets often exploded on takeoff. However, if they did not, they could reach Chicago.

Each was to be fitted with a 2.8-megaton bomb.

If one managed to hit its target, it would destroy everything within seven miles of the center of Chicago, from the lake shore to Oak Park, according to Dimka’s atlas.

When he was sure the commanding officer had understood the orders, Dimka went to bed.