Fortunes of War

19

Pavel Saratov was in Admiral Kolchak’s control room studying charts of Japanese waters when the XO called down from the sail cockpit. “Better come up here, Captain, and take a look.”

Saratov put down his pencil and compass and climbed the ladder. “Look, Captain.” Askold pointed. On the pier, General Esenin and his troops were milling smartly around a truck carrying four metal containers. A crowd of civilians was unloading welding equipment from another truck. “What is this, Captain?”

“I don’t know.”

“Those look like jet-engine shipping containers. Doesn’t make sense. Ummm. “Those are the sloppiest naval infantrymen I’ve ever seen,” Askold grumped. “They don’t wear their uniforms properly. They don’t know how to care for their equipment. They have little respect for superior officers … “He trailed off when he saw that Saratov had no intention of replying. After a few minutes, Esenin came across the gangway and called up to the officers on the bridge. “Come down, Captain, please.”

Saratov descended the ladder. Askold was right behind him. “I need your technical expertise, Captain Saratov. I wish to weld these four containers to the submarine. Where would you suggest?”

Saratov was dumbfounded. “Outside the pressure hull? Our speed will be drastically affected.”

“No doubt.”

“Worse, the water swirling around the containers will make noise.”

Esenin frowned. “What is in the containers, anyway?”

“We will discuss that later. Suffice it to say, I have been ordered to attach these containers to the hull of this ship and I intend to do so. The only question is where.”

“They are going to be in place when we submerge? While we are underwater?”

“Yes.”

“The noise—“

“Explain.” Esenin flicked his eyes across Saratov’s face.

“The more noise we make underwater, the easier we are to detect.”

“The easier we are to detect,” Askold added, “the easier we are to kill.”

Esenin shot Askold a withering look. “Don’t patronize me, little man. My bite is worse than my bark.”

“What is in the containers, General?” Saratov asked again.

“Each contains a nuclear weapon. They have been carefully waterproofed, packed, and so on. The job was cleverly done, believe me. The containers allow water to flow in and out so they will not be crushed when the submarine goes deep. Our job is to deliver these weapons.”

“Deliver?” Saratov murmured, his voice a mere whisper.

“These are old warheads from ICBMS, from the days when our missiles were not very accurate. To ensure the target would be destroyed even if the missile missed by a few miles, the designers heavily enriched the warheads. Each of these weapons yields one hundred meg-aeons.”

“One hundred million tons of TNT equivalent …” said Askold, staring at the containers.

Saratov scrutinized the general’s face. The man was mad. Or a damned fool.

“You have never been on a dieselstelectric submarine, have you?”

“No,” Esenin admitted.

“Any submarine?” Saratov bored in. “Have you ever been on any submarine?”

Saratov tried to collect his thoughts. “General, I don’t know who made this decision, but it was misinformed. A dieselstelectric submarine is an anachronism, an artifact from a bygone age. Every decision the captain makes, all of them, revolves around keeping the battery charged.”

Esenin looked unimpressed.

“These boats don’t really go anywhere,” Saratov explained. “They merely occupy a position. They can hide, but they can’t run. When discovered, they are so immobile that they can easily be destroyed. Do you understand that?”

“You made it to Tokyo Bay.”

“Indeed. And a heroic feat it was! All the Japanese antisubmarine forces were on the other side of the island, in the Sea of Japan.”

“We will have to be smarter than the Japanese.”

“Smarter? When this boat runs at three knots, it must snorkel one hour out of every twenty-four. At six knots, it must snorkel eight hours out of twenty-four. If we cannot get the snorkel up, we are down to one or two knots, just steerage way.” Saratov felt his voice rise. “I have been pinned before by American ASW forces. In peacetime. You cannot imagine what it is like, knowing they have you, knowing they can kill you if they wish, anytime they wish. My God, man! I’ve had dummy depth charges knock tiles off the sub’s skin.”

“I think you are a coward.”

Saratov took two deep breaths. “That may be the case, sir. But coward or not, I think you are a fool.”

“This boat is the only submarine we have in the Pacific,” Esenin said, shrugging. “It will have to do.”

“We are on a fool’s errand, a suicide mission. A competent antisub-marine force will quickly locate and kill us.” Pavel Saratov pointed at the deck. “Don’t you understand? This steel tube will be your coffin.”

“This boat will have to do.”

Saratov couldn’t believe it. “Why don’t you go alone, in a rowboat?

You will have the same chance of success, and sixty other men won’t die with you.”

“Enough of this,” Esenin snarled.

“So if by some miracle we get to Tokyo, we find an empty pier and tie up alongside. Your men steal a truck and you haul the warheads over to the rotunda of the Diet?”

The corner of Esenin’s mouth twitched.

“Better weld them to the deck, here in front of the sail,” Saratov said. He walked forward to the open hatch leading into the torpedo room. The men were loading torpedoes this morning. Four were already in. He stood with his back to Esenin, watching the men work the hoist and manhandle the ungainly fish.

The morning was warm, with little wind. Last year’s autumn leaves were crunchy underfoot.

Janos Ilin stood on a small hill amid the trees smoking a cigarette. His suit coat was open. Leaning against a tree was a rocket-propelled grenade (Rpg) launcher. At the foot of the hill, thirty meters from where Ilin stood, was a paved road.

The road was one of the feeders into the Lenin Hills, north of Moscow. Aleksandr Kalugin had a dacha three kilometers farther north. He would be coming along this road soon, as he did every morning, on his way to the Kremlin with his bodyguards. Kalugin had an apartment in the Kremlin, of course, which he used whenever he did not wish to spend an evening at home with his wife. For reasons unknown to Ilin, last night Kalugin had gone home. He was there now.

Kalugin’s armored Mercedes would soon be along. Two other vehicles would accompany it, both large black Mercedes, one in front of Kalugin’s vehicle, one behind. Each of the guard cars contained five heavily armed bodyguards who normally wore bulletproof vests. These men were competent, ruthless, and very dangerous. Janos Ilin had but himself and four other men. He intended to kill the bodyguards before they could get out of their cars. If he failed, the bodyguards would kill him.

Ilin had picked this spot with care.

Only a short stretch of road was visible here. The cars would come around a curve fifty meters away. The road was banked and wooded on either side here, so the cars could not leave the road. If the road was blocked, the cars would be trapped.

This whole setup gave Ilin a bad feeling, but he could not afford to spend time finding a better one. Unfortunately, Kalugin was paranoid — with good reason one had to admit — and his security force was top-notch. So far, the president’s loyal ones had not caught wind of Ilin’s intentions, a situation that could not last forever. Ilin was well aware of the security dynamics: he must strike soon or not at all.

Smoking the cigarette and enjoying the warmth of the morning air, Ilin wished he had more men. He had considered asking Marshal Stolypin for a few, then decided the gain would not be worth the risk. He had spent five years with the men he had now; trust was something that did not grow overnight. And trustworthy or not, every additional person admitted to the conspiracy increased the likelihood that it would be discovered. Janos Ilin, spymaster, well knew about conspiracies, the building blocks of Russian history.

The day before, he had gone to see Marshal Stolypin with a cassette player and a tape. On the tape was a conversation between Kalugin and one of his lieutenants, who at the time was in Gorky.

Stolypin had said nothing as he listened to the two men discussing the nuclear destruction of Tokyo. They debated the American response, discussed the probability that the Japanese might retaliate, and then got down to it.

“Unless we use extraordinary measures, Japan will inevitably win the war,” Kalugin told his confederate. “Our nation is too poor to finance the effort it will take to win with a conventional army and air force. The gap is too great.”

“You must seize absolute power. Destroy all who oppose you.”

“That would take time, and there is many a pitfall along the way. I have thought long about Russia. No one can take Russia back to where it used to be. No one. And if we try, the deputies will rescind their grants of power. Either the government will fall or Russia will face civil war again.”

“I, too, hear these things.”

“We must defeat the Japanese,” Kalugin said. “Victory or death — those are our alternatives. You understand?”

“I do. Have you seen the genuine affection the people have for Captain Saratov? Crowds chanting his name, resolutions demanding that he be promoted, decorated, his picture plastered all over Moscow…

Stolypin listened to the rest of it, then shoved the cassette recorder back across the table toward Ilin.

“If we want our country, we will have to fight for it,” Ilin said. “Again.”

The old man rubbed his hair with a hand, looking at nothing. “He is sending a submarine to Tokyo. Nuclear weapons will be aboard. The plan is to put the weapons in a fault on the seafloor. There is a fanatic aboard, a man named Esenin. He swore an oath to Kalugin. If threatened with destruction, he will detonate the weapons in the mouth of Tokyo Bay.”

“Will he do it?”

“By reputation, he is a patriotic zealot. He was an assassin for the GRU.”

“Yuri Esenin?”

“That’s right.”

“I thought he was dead.”

This morning Janos Ilin finished another cigarette without tasting it, then glanced at his watch. It was a few minutes past seven. He stamped his feet impatiently. The radio came to life. “Car.”

Fifteen seconds later, a black Mercedes came around the curve and into view. Nope. One of the ministers. Three of them lived near Ka-lugin along this road. After the car passed the small knoll where Ilin stood, it went by a truck with a high-lift basket and another truck carrying a power pole, then went around the next curve. In the fully extended lift, a man was working on a transformer mounted near the top of a pole. A flagman stood on the road near the lift truck. “Here they come. Three cars.”

Ilin crushed out his new cigarette on a tree as the second truck, the one with the power pole on it, pulled completely across the road, blocking it. The man in the cab jumped down. He had an assault rifle in his hands. Janos Ilin knelt. He picked up the rocket-propelled grenade launcher and flicked the safety off. The first car came around the curve and braked as the flagman waved his red flag. The second and third cars were right behind. Ka-lugin was in the second car. The first and third cars were full of loyal ones. Ilin leveled the grenade launcher at the first car, which was now almost stopped, exhaled, and pulled the trigger. The whoosh of the rocket was loud. The grenade impacted the first car at the passenger’s side door. The car jumped forward, a dead foot on the accelerator, the engine roaring. It crashed into the side of the truck blocking the road. Although the car was dammed firmly against the truck, the engine revved higher and higher as the tires squalled and smoked against the pavement. As Ilin worked feverishly to reload the launcher, the driver of the second car slewed the rear end of his car around in a power slide. Smoke poured from the tires. Over the screeching of the tires, Ilin could hear a machine gun hammering. Ilin got his grenade loaded as the third car slid to a complete stop. The doors of the car were opening as he pulled the trigger. The rocket struck the engine compartment and the shaped charge exploded inward. Men leaping from the car were cut down by machine-gun bullets, which were being fired from the lift basket above. Meanwhile, Kalugin’s car had completed its turn. At least one of Ilin’s men was pouring bullets at it. The bullets made tiny sparks, flashes, where they struck the armor and were deflected. Kalugin’s car shot by the third car on the far side with its tires squalling madly as Ilin slammed another grenade into the launcher. He pointed the weapon at the rapidly accelerating car and pulled the trigger. The grenade smacked into a tree trunk thirty feet in front of Ilin. The charge severed the trunk and the tree began to topple. Ilin grabbed his radio. “He’s coming back north.”

“I can’t get the goddamn engine started.” The man there was supposed to drive another power-line repair truck across the road. “Shoot at the tires! Shoot at the tires! Don’t let him get away.”

With the grenade launcher in one hand and the radio in the other, Ilin ran down the hill and sprinted for the curve. He heard three short bursts of automatic-weapon fire, then silence. As he rounded the curve, he saw Kalugin’s car rounding the far curve, three hundred meters on. Ilin turned and walked back to the ambush site. One of the men lying on the road by the closest car, the trailer, was still moaning. Ilin drew a pistol and shot him in the head as he went by. The other four men who had been in the car were lying on the pavement in various positions, perforated by machine-gun bullets. The engine in the car against the truck had stalled. The five men inside were apparently dead. The flagman was taking no chances. He fired a shot into every head. “Do the ones in the other car, too,” Ilin told him. The man who had driven the truck across the road came over to Ilin. As the single shots sounded, he said apologetically, “We almost pulled it off.”

Ilin shouted at the man in the lift basket, who was on his way down. He had an air-cooled light machine gun cradled in his arms. “Did you shoot at Kalugin?”

“I got off just one burst. I saw sparks where the bullets were striking the armor. I’m sorry.”

“We blew it,” Ilin said with a grimace. “Maybe we should get the hell out of here.”

“That is probably a good idea.”

As the limo shot along the two-lane road, Aleksandr Kalugin hung on to the strap in the backseat and shouted at the driver. Still shaken from the assassination attempt, he had already concluded that there was a good chance that his bodyguards, or one of them — perhaps his driver? — had betrayed him. Now he was telling the driver which way to go as they approached each intersection.

It was too dangerous to return to the dacha, so he gave the driver directions for an alternate route into Moscow.

Kalugin pulled the telephone from its storage bracket and dialed an operator. He kept his eyes on the road ahead. He removed his pistol from a pocket and laid it in his lap.

If the driver took a wrong turn, he, Kalugin, would personally put a bullet in the man’s brain. He fingered the automatic as if it were a set of worry beads.

An aide in his office answered. Kalugin told him about the ambush in as few words as possible, keeping strictly to the facts. The aide would know what to do with the information.

In odd moments Kalugin made lists of his enemies. The A list included political opponents and rivals in the Congress, bureaucrats who had publicly opposed him in the past, and candidates who had run against him in past elections. The B list included critics, newspaper editors who had printed damaging editorials or news stories, bureaucrats who didn’t jump when he growled, businessmen who refused to go along with his suggestions — basically carpers and footdraggers. The C list, the longest, contained everybody else that Kalugin thought less than enthusiastic about his leadership of the nation. Some persons had managed to get on this list by avoiding a handshake at parties or receptions. Several were husbands of women Kalugin thought attractive; some were there simply because he had seen their name in a report or in print and thought that person might someday be dangerous.

He had discussed threats to his power with his top aides on several occasions in the past, developed contingency plans, delegated power to men he trusted, men who owed him for their status, their place, the bread they ate.

Even now, as his car raced along, the aides would be ordering everyone on the A list arrested and interrogated. Perhaps the police would discover the culprits before Kalugin’s internal security apparatus did, and if so, fine. Kalugin would proceed on both fronts regardless.

Perhaps something good would come out of this crime against his person. Maybe he could use this event as an excuse to crush some of his most vocal enemies. Their downfall would be a lesson for all the rest.

Three of Kalugin’s men were waiting in his office when right-brace anos Ilin arrived for work that morning. The secretary in the outer office gave him the news.

“What do they want?”

“They didn’t say, sir. They had a presidential pass, so I put them in your anteroom. They went into the office without my permission.”

When you screw up an assassination, this is what happens, he thought. You walk into rooms wondering if you are about to be arrested and tortured or if they want your help chasing assassins.

Janos Ilin didn’t turn a hair. He walked across the anteroom to his office door and opened it. He walked in and stopped. One of them was sitting in his chair, trying to jimmy the locks on the desk drawers.

Another was using a pick on the file cabinet’s locks.

“What the hell is this?”

“Ah, the man with the keys. Sit down, Comrade Ilin. Sit down. And I’ll trouble you for your keys.”

Ilin remained standing.

“Someone tried to assassinate President Kalugin a short time ago. We are investigating.”

“Did they harm the president?”

“Why are you investigating here?”

“Sit, Ilin. Sit. The keys, please.”

They worked for over an hour, flipping through files, reading notebooks, looking at every sheet of paper they could find. All the while, Ilin sat and watched, apparently unconcerned. The only things that he didn’t want these thugs to see were the files on agents in place in foreign countries. Fortunately, those files were in the agency’s central records depository, under continuous armed guard.

“When did this assassination attempt take place?”

“This morning. The president was on his way to the Kremlin.”

“Have you made any arrests?”

“We are trying to decide if we should arrest you.”

Ilin snorted.

“Your sangfroid is quite commendable.”

“I have nothing to hide. I have not lifted a finger against anyone. You can read those files until doomsday and that fact won’t change.”

When the leader was finished, he seated himself again behind the desk, in Ilin’s chair. From his pocket he produced a list. “You will arrest these men. Jail them in the cells downstairs, begin their interrogations. Tape every interrogation. These instructions are from the president.”

When they departed, they left one man, who now parked himself beside Ilin’s chair. Ilin began making telephone calls as he examined the list. The leaders of opposition political parties, judges, public men … Marshal Stolypin was not on this list. That meant nothing. He might be on another list. Kalugin was wasting no time. This list had not been typed this morning. Ilin called in his deputies, gave instructions.

The Japanese air commander in Siberia, Matsuo Handa, spent a tense night huddled with his top subordinates. The American Squadron was costing them planes and pilots. The missiles that sought out the Zero radar, the invisible F-22’s— there was a lot on the plate. One thing that the Japanese commander knew was that he could not sit idly on the defensive waiting for the Americans’ next move. Fighting defensively went against all of his samurai instincts. Attack was the policy that best fit the Japanese spirit, he believed. The men wanted to attack and so did he. The only question was how. Jiro Kimura’s squadron commander took his young ace with him to the headquarters conference. He remembered Jiro’s comment about the technical feasibility of electronically changing the color of an aircraft’s skin, and he wanted the air commander to hear it, too. “Sir, I do not understand how the American fighters found the Zeros over Zeya,” Jiro Kimura said to Colonel Handa. “The surviving pilot states that at no time did he receive an ECM warning that American planes were in the area. A postflight check of his electronic countermeasures equipment showed that it was functioning properly. Apparently the Americans were not using radar. How did they find our planes?”

“They must have visually acquired the Zeros,” Colonel Handa said. Most of the senior brass seemed to share this opinion. Jiro didn’t believe it. “Sir, if I may express my opinion,” Jiro said. “Waiting in ambush with radars off, relying on the ECM to inform us of the enemy’s presence, is the wrong way to employ the Zero. This airplane was designed as an offensive weapon. We must search with radar, find the enemy before he can find us, and launch our missiles first. Closing to short range with F-22’s is a fatal error.”

“We waited in ambush with our radars off because the F-22 can detect our radar emissions before we can detect the F-22.”

“I understand, sir. Our challenge is to make the Americans fight our fight. We must lure them to a place where we can engage at long range.”

“That’s a wonderful proposal, Kimura,” Handa said. “But it isn’t practical. We have not been aggressive enough. That is why we find ourselves in this deplorable situation.”

The conference, Jiro thought, went downhill from that point. After a discussion of possible options, Colonel Handa decided to lead a daytime strike on Chita. Half the planes would go in low, on the deck, to drop cluster bombs and strafe. The other half would go in high, use their radars for a few seconds out of each minute, and attempt to engage the American fighters while the low planes struck the base. The flight would launch from Khabarovsk, so it would need tankers coming and going. “Colonel Handa,” Jiro suggested, “perhaps we should try a night attack first, to further feel out the American capabilities.”

“The planes strafing and dropping cluster weapons need daylight and decent weather to be effective,” the colonel answered. “We are facing a capable, aggressive enemy who has drawn first blood. We must attack, force him to parry our blows or he will seize the initiative and we will find ourselves on the defensive.”

“We must strike first,” the squadron commanders agreed. Like Colonel Handa, their hearts and minds were geared to the offensive. When Jiro left the meeting at midnight, he was profoundly discouraged. The colonel was playing right into the Americans’ hands, he thought. The enemy expected the Japanese to attack Chita, he argued, so they should not. The colonel’s mind was made up. Cassidy already had Handa on the defensive, and Handa didn’t want to admit it. Jiro wandered over to the most dilapidated hangar on the base, where one of his friends, a helicopter pilot, was quartered. “Tell me, Shoichi, do you people have any of those infrared headsets, the kind you wear when you fly at night?”

“Yes, we have four of them. They are helmets, with earphones, visors, and so on. They will not take an oxygen mask, however.”

“May I borrow one tomorrow?”

“Why?”

“I want to fly with it. I have a theory and wish to test it.”

“For you, Jiro, of course. Here, have a beer.”

When the chief of Asian intelligence at the Japanese Intelligency Agency, Toshihiko Ayukawa, received agent Ju’s message, it had already been decoded and translated. It now rested in a new red file folder. He opened the folder and perused the short, neat columns of Japanese characters. The message read:

Russia has ten atomic warheads. Kalugin has ordered contingency planning for their use against Japan. At least four of the warheads will be delivered by submarine, target unknown.

Ayukawa felt the hairs on the back of his neck tingling. Good of’ Agent Ju. He was the one who said Russia had destroyed the last of its nuclear weapons. Only a fool would bet on that as gospel truth, but no doubt that message had been a factor, one of many, in the Abe government’s decision to invade Siberia. Now Ju had changed his tune. Was he lying then or lying now?

Pavel Saratov was the last man to leave the cockpit on top of Admiral Kolchak’s sail. He took a final look at the four containers welded to the deck, ensured the boat was stationary in the middle of the small lagoon, pointed at the underwater entrance, then went down the hatch and dogged it after him. Esenin was in the control room. He seemed a bit less imperious than he usually was, or perhaps it was Saratov’s imagination. “This is the tricky part,” Saratov said to the chief, who nodded. “We must get steerage way on the boat before it drifts. Let’s dive.”

The chief gave the order while Saratov examined the sonar image on the oscilloscope. Esenin’s executive officer was a major, or at least he wore a major’s uniform. He looked pale, Saratov thought, as air gurgled from the tanks and seawater rushed in. Saratov shook his head in annoyance. He should ignore these two and concentrate on the task at hand, which was getting this boat safely out of the mountain. A half hour later the boat had cleared the tunnel and the shallow water. It was dark up there, and overcast, so Saratov took the boat to snorkel depth and started the diesels. Two hours later when he went to his tiny cabin, Esenin was already there, sitting in the one chair. “Ah, Captain, come in. And please close the door.”

The compartment was very small. Saratov squeezed by the chair and sat on the bunk. “I thought this a good time to discuss our mission, Captain.”

Esenin picked up the rolled-up chart from the desk, removed the string that held it, and spread it out. Saratov looked over his shoulder. “You know Tokyo Bay? The sound to the south of it?”

“I recognize it.”

“As you can see, marked on this chart in red are a number of major geological faults. You can see where they run.” His finger traced several of the longest. “The fault in which we are interested is this one.” His finger came to rest. “It will not be necessary to tie up to a pier and steal a truck.”

Saratov didn’t bother to reply. “I have a recommendation from Revel, a leading geologist in Moscow, who studies these sorts of things with international groups,” Esenin continued. “He thinks the most unstable fault is this one, at the entrance to Tokyo Bay. It has not moved in at least three hundred years, and it is very ready. “Our task is to place our four weapons in a row atop this fault, two miles apart. When the weapons detonate, the concussion should break the eastern plate free, causing it to rise significantly.”

“How significantly?” Pavel Saratov couldn’t take his eyes from the chart. “The geologist thinks the potential is there for a movement on the order of ten feet. Of course, explosions of this magnitude will vaporize an extraordinary amount of water, so the sea will rush in to fill the void. Movement of the plate will merely speed the water along.”

“I see.”

“The tidal wave should be quite extraordinary. A tsunami, I believe the Japanese call it. If the professor’s calculations are correct, the tidal wave should be two hundred feet high when it washes over Tokyo.”

“Only four warheads?”

“We will explode two simultaneously. The second set will be timed to blow exactly three minutes later. Professor Revel believes the earth should be moving down at that moment, on a long oscillation cycle, so the second set of explosions should reinforce that movement. True, we constructed the scenario hurriedly, but we have great faith in Professor Revel’s computer models. It should work. It will work.”

“All we have to do,” Saratov said heavily, “is get over the fault, toss off the weapons, and sail away.”

“I leave it in your capable hands, Captain.”

“I will do all I can, General. Alas, any chance of success lies in the hands of the Japanese. They will be hunting us, and the odds are on their side.”