The Golden U-Boat

Chapter Nine

For the entire day Captain Steven Aldridge didn’t budge from his desk. This was the only way he knew how to attack the pile of paperwork that had accumulated during the week that he had been on leave. His first job had been to properly sort through this mess, and eventually he was able to come up with several fairly neat stacks. The largest of these piles held official U.S. Navy documents that included memos from COMSUBLANT, reports from his own XO, policy updates, and various technical papers. Only after addressing this priority material would he get on to several personal letters from ex-shipmates that he would have to answer, and a request from the Naval Submarine League to write an article for their next quarterly journal.

Steven had been a member of the League almost since its inception. It was primarily made up of active and retired submariners, defense contractors, and interested civilians. The League came into being when members of the sub community realized how ill informed the American public was when it came to undersea warfare. Submariners were by their very nature secretive, yet in order to successfully compete for the funds that would guarantee the force’s continued excellence, a way would have to be found to educate the public to the need of a strong underwater fleet. The Naval Submarine League filled this void with its excellent journal and its yearly Washington D.C. symposiums, that Steven made certain to attend whenever possible.

The last stack of correspondence that he would eventually get to was that which he un glamorously labeled junk mail. Included in this pile were unsolicited letters from various financial planners, insurance companies, and several mail-order catalogues.

With the initial job of sorting out of the way, he was now able to actually see his desk blotter. This was a promising sign, and he got on with the task of reading the memos that had been sent to him by an assortment of naval department personnel.

His only break was for a light lunch of grapes, cottage cheese, and oat bran crackers. He was serious about taking off the extra weight that he had recently put on, and since submariners led sedentary lives while on patrol, he would have to watch his diet most carefully.

Before getting immediately back to work, his glance caught the framed photograph that he had just mounted above his desk. This photo showed Susan, Sarah and himself during their recent holiday.

It had been taken by a cooperative deckhand while they were crossing over on the ferry from Oban to the island of Mull. An ancient Scottish castle could just be seen on the shoreline over his right shoulder, and one didn’t have to look close to see that they were having a wonderful time.

Susan looked especially happy. With her brown, pixie-cut hair style, freckled face, trim figure, and the University of Virginia sweatshirt that she was wearing, she didn’t look much different from the young college girl that he had met and fallen in love with over two decades ago. The proof of the years passing was in the face and figure of Sarah.

The six-year-old was getting to be quite the little lady now. She could ride a bike, speak elementary French, and had even had her first course in operating a computer. There was no doubt that she was the spitting image of her mother, and like her mom would be a real heartbreaker by the time she got to junior high school.

Shortly after this picture was taken, while Sarah was playing in the ferry’s game room, Susan brought up the subject that between them they called “the problem.” This hadn’t been the first time that she had talked to him about the difficulties she faced with him gone a good six months out of the year, and it wouldn’t be the last, either.

Why couldn’t he transfer out of the operational end of his business, and get a position with more regular hours, she asked emotionally? In these formative years, Sarah needed a full-time father. And it was hard on Susan as well. Not only did she have emotional and physical needs that went unfulfilled by his long absences at sea, but everyday life was difficult enough for her. During his last patrol, the refrigerator had gone on the blink. And no sooner did she get a repairman out to get it working again, when the toilet backed up all over their new bathroom carpet. And wouldn’t you know that all of this would occur on the same day that Sarah was to come home from school with the measles?

Steven listened to her concerns, but really didn’t know how to solve them. He had told her from the very beginning that his ultimate goal was to get a submarine command of his own. And the day he was named C.O. of the Cheyenne was the pinnacle of his long career.

At forty years of age, Steven was at his prime. To get an attack sub of his own was all that he had ever dreamed of. He figured that he had another five years of sea duty left in him at best. During this time he had hoped to be one of the first to skipper one of the new Seawolf class attack subs.

The Seawolf was the first new class of attack subs to be produced for the navy since the 688 class entered service back in the late 1970’s. It proved to be an exciting, dynamic warship, and Steven wanted to be one of the first to take it to sea. Only then would he be truly satisfied with his career, and seriously think about stepping aside to let a younger man take over at the helm.

Meanwhile, Susan would just have to learn to cope with the situation. He even went as far as suggesting that they should both see a family counselor next time he was home. Susan didn’t like this idea at all, and when it became obvious that he was still very serious about remaining in the operational end, at least for the next few years, Susan brought up the idea of having another child. Steven wondered if this wouldn’t make her life even more difficult.

Yet Susan had apparently given this matter a lot of previous thought, and explained that another baby would help fill the void in her life caused by his naval duty. As to how she would cope at home with another child to care for, she had already talked to her parents about it. They readily agreed to have Susan and the kids move in with them while Steven was on patrol.

As the only son of an only son, Steven was the last in the Aldridge line. A boy would mean a lot to him, and he accepted her offer with open arms.

In fact, they got to work on it that very evening, in the bedroom of their bed and breakfast, high in the heather-filled hills of Mull.

When they parted for this current patrol, Steven felt closer to Susan than he had in years. Their deepest concerns and dreams were out in the open now, and a new honesty prevailed between them.

And, of course, there was always the hope that his seed had already taken, and a new life was forming deep inside Susan’s womb. It was with this hopeful thought in mind that Steven went back to work.

At 17:00 hours exactly, an enticing aroma found its way into his cabin. Ten minutes later, there was a knock on his door and in walked Chief Howard Mallott with a tray.

“Sorry to disturb you, Captain. But it’s time for some supper. I heard about that skimpy lunch that you had, and I figured that you’d be wanting to eat early this evening.”

“You figured right. Chief,” replied Aldridge, who cleared a place on his desk for the tray.

“I realize that you’re counting those calories, Captain.

And there’s nothing here that’s going to hurt you,” said Mallott as he picked up the aluminum plate cover and added, “… there’s the turkey stew that you saw me preparing earlier. That meat’s good and lean with half the fat of ground beef. Then there’s margarine for your rolls and skimmed milk to drink. Your dessert is low-fat raspberry yogurt.”

Wasting no time with formalities, Aldridge picked up his fork and sampled some of the stew.

“It’s simply delicious, Chief.”

“I’m glad you like it, Captain. It does my heart good to see someone really enjoy their chow. If only I could stick to a diet myself. It seems that I’m perpetually fighting the battle of the bulge.”

Mallott patted his pot-belly and turned to exit.

“Enjoy it, Captain. And if you want seconds, just give me a ring.”

As the chief left his cabin, Aldridge got down to some serious eating. He found the turkey balls moist and flavorful. The vegetables that they were cooked with complimented them perfectly. He especially enjoyed the combination of cooked carrots, celery, onions, and potatoes. He used the. wheat roll to sop up the excess gravy, and didn’t even have to use the margarine.

Aldridge polished off his stew, and was well into his yogurt, when his intercom rang. The handset was mounted on the bulkhead right in front of him, and he only had to reach out to grab it.

“Captain here … I understand, Lieutenant Laird. As OOD I’m going to let you take us up to periscope depth. I’m just finishing dinner, and I’ll be right up there to join you.”

As Aldridge hung up the handset he looked to his watch and saw that they were right on schedule.

The Cheyenne’s navigator had just called to inform him that they were rapidly approaching the southern edge of the Odin oil fields. Laird had requested a quick visual scan with their periscope to confirm their position, to which Aldridge readily agreed.

Since even a routine procedure such as taking the Cheyenne to periscope depth was fraught with many unforeseen dangers, Aldridge hurriedly finished his dessert and proceeded to the control room. Lieutenant Andrew Laird was the ship’s youngest officer and was fairly new to submarines. Though fully qualified, he lacked experience, and Aldridge vowed to give him his fair share during this patrol.

As the captain crossed the passageway that would take him directly to the control room, he remembered well his own early days as a neophyte. A decade and a half ago when he first put to sea as a raw ensign, his C.O. had been a tough old veteran, who leaned on him constantly. He was always being put to the test in pressure packed situations, and he emerged a better officer because of it.

Since that time, he had had the opportunity to break in dozens of junior officers himself, and he always made certain to give them their fair share of responsibility from the very beginning. The Cheyenne ‘s current navigator was no exception, and if he was made out of the right stuff, he’d handle himself like the professional underwater warrior that he had trained so hard to be.

Aldridge arrived in the control room just as one of the two eight inch thick, steel periscopes rose up from the deck below with a loud hiss of hydraulic oil. Several drops of water could be seen running down the shiny cylinder from its overhead fitting as Lieutenant Laird snapped down the scope’s hinged handles and nestled his eyes up against its rubberized lens coupling.

“Sixty-five feet and holding,” called the diving officer from his console.

The submarine began to level out and Aldridge watched as the young OOD began silently twisting the scope in a full circle. Halfway through this scan, Laird halted.

“We’ve got an oil platform in sight, bearing zero-two-zero,” he eagerly observed.

“It’s lit up out there like a Christmas tree.”

Instead of continuing on with his circular scan, Laird’s line of sight seemed to be locked on the platform. Steven Aldridge was about to instruct him to reinitiate his full recon of the waters above, when the young OOD did so on his own.

As he reached that portion of the sea’s surface that lay immediately behind them, Laird once again briefly hesitated. Yet this was all too soon followed by a frightening cry that emanated from deep within the OOD’s throat.

“Emergency deep! Surface contact headed straight toward us.”

Steven Aldridge’s pulse quickened as he watched his crew snap into action. With a lightning movement, the OOD slapped the scope handles to the vertical and reached over to hit the switch that would lower the periscope back into its well. Meanwhile the helm could be heard ordering, “All ahead full!”

“Full dive on the fall-water planes!” commanded the diving officer, who next instructed that the stern planes be likewise engaged.

The captain didn’t have to say a thing as the chief of the watch began flooding the depth control tank, as the OOD’s emergency deep order was relayed to the rest of the crew over the P. A. system.

They had rehearsed this very same drill hundreds of times before, allowing them to proceed like a well choreographed dance number.

As the submarine pitched over and began its way toward the protective depths, the grinding sound of the surface ship’s screws rose to a deafening crescendo, yet back in sonar this roar was soon replaced by the sound of the Cheyenne own propeller as it frantically dug into the frigid seas to move them out of harm’s way.

Less than a minute later, it was all over. Having no idea how close it had come to ramming them, the surface ship unwarily continued on its northward course, and gradually the sounds of its screws dissipated.

Sweat lined Steven Aldridge’s forehead as he scanned the compartment, his gaze finally resting on the OOD. The young navigator looked badly shaken, and Aldridge knew very well that he was in the process of blaming himself for this near tragic incident.

“That was too close for comfort, Lieutenant Laird. But it’s not unusual for these things to happen.

That’s why we repeat those drills over and over until you can practically perform them in your sleep.”

“I … guess I should have completed my initial scan quicker,” stuttered the navigator.

“That you should have,” returned Aldridge.

“But the boys down in the sound shack deserve their share of the blame also. They should have heard that contact long ago, and warned you to be on the look out for it. But we’ll hash this whole thing out in detail later. Right now, how about taking us back up and taking a closer look at the vessel that almost deep-sixed us?”

Buoyed by the captain’s trust in him, Andrew Laird took a deep breath and called out firmly.

“Secure from emergency deep. Bring us back up to periscope depth, chief.”

A sense of normalcy quickly returned to the Cheyenne as the control room crew pulled the sub out of its dive and guided it back toward the surface. This time though, Laird waited until sonar had the surface contact firmly fixed in the waters in front of them before raising the periscope. Only after a complete 360 degree scan with the scope was completed did the OOD concentrate his gaze on the stern of the ship that lay off their bow.

“I’ve got them, Captain,” said the navigator, a hint of newfound confidence edging his tone.

Aldridge quickly replaced Laird at the scope to take a look for himself. Lit by the bare light of dusk, the gray seas slapped up against the lens, and the Captain had to wait until they were in between swells to spot the square stern of a yellow-hulled ship up ahead. This vessel had twin stacks set amidships, and a large crane dominating its after deck. Yet it was only after increasing the scope’s magnification that he was able to read the ship’s name and port.

“It’s the Falcon out of Haugesund,” he reported.

“Looks to me that she’s a diving support ship that’s probably involved with the offshore oil business.

She sure appears to be hauling ass, completely heedless of that sea-state topside.”

Even at a depth of sixty-five feet beneath the sea’s surface, the Cheyenne found itself rolling in the under-currents produced by this swell.

“I guess those rough seas kind of take the boys in the sound shack off the hook,” observed the Captain, as he backed away from the scope.

“In this agitated layer, sonar would be practically useless. With all that wave action to contend with, a contact would have to be practically on top of us before they’d hear it.”

“I guess that lays the blame squarely on my shoulders, Captain,” offered the OOD.

“It was up to me to spot that contact the second our scope broke the surface.”

“That’s what the responsibility of command is all about, Lieutenant. But don’t be too hard on yourself.

You spotted that vessel in time, and that’s the bottom line. Yet to make up for any guilty feelings that you might still harbor against yourself, you can wipe the slate clean by being the first to tag that West German sub that we’ve been sent out here to locate.”

It was obvious that the Captain was giving him a second chance, and Lieutenant Andrew Laird quickly rose to accept the challenge.

“I’ll try my best, Sir.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” returned Aldridge, who noted that his XO had just entered the control room.

“Now I’d better go and console the XO. From that stain on his coveralls, I’d say that Lieutenant Commander Stoddard was in the midst of a little turkey stew when our little crash dive came down.”

In an adjoining portion of the Norwegian Sea, yet another submarine was securing itself from periscope depth. The Lena was well on its way to the waters off of Karsto where its recon mission would take place, and so far their sprint down the coast of Norway had been without incident.

“She appears to be a diving support vessel of some sort,” observed Captain Grigori Milyutin as he peered into his video monitor.

Looking over his shoulder, Admiral Alexander Kuznetsov also watched as the bright-yellow hull of this ship crashed into a large swell.

“I still can’t get used to the idea of not having to peer through the customary cylinder-mounted viewing coupling to see such an image,” commented the white-haired veteran.

“Such obsolete equipment doesn’t even exist on the Lena” boasted its Captain.

“Don’t forget, we don’t even carry a traditional hull-penetrating periscope.

Our viewing device is merely mounted into the Lena’s sail, where it’s extended by a single push on my computer keyboard. A fiber-optic cable then relays the signal straight to this video monitor, where I can see what’s going on topside from the comfort of my command chair.”

“This ship continues to astound me,” said Alexander.

“As she does me also, Admiral,” admitted Grigori Milyutin.

The Lena rolled as a result of the rough seas topside, and the captain added, “It’s time to return to the calm depths beneath us. Comrade diving officer, take us down to two-hundred meters.”

“Two hundred meters it is, Captain,” repeated the alert diving officer.

There was a slight shifting forward as the boat’s plane’s were engaged and the Lena nosed downward.

Alexander tightly gripped the back of the captain’s chair to keep his balance, yet soon they were running level once again, and Alexander let go of his handhold.

“I guess that I should be going to my stateroom to complete my speech for tonight’s Komsomol meeting,” remarked Alexander.

“I do hope that this speech isn’t too much of an imposition on you,” whispered Milyutin.

There was a conspirial tone to this statement, and Alexander responded accordingly.

“The Lena’s Zampolit certainly appears to take his position on this vessel most seriously, doesn’t he, Captain?”

“It’s the nature of the beast,” offered Milyutin.

“Why such individuals are still assigned to warships such as this one is beyond me,” said Alexander quietly.

“The days of political instability in the Rodina’s fleet are long gone. The political officer is an anachronism.”

“I agree, Admiral. Having Felix Bucharin aboard the Lena is a complete waste of precious space, especially with a crew of this limited size. Now if he had some sort of operational skill that we could utilize, that would be different. But as it stands now, he knows absolutely nothing about running a warship.

All he does is eat our food and fill our heads with useless, boring political theories that have no practical value whatsoever.”

“I must admit that I’ve heard similar rumblings from other officers in your position, Captain. And at long last your superiors are starting to wake up and take notice. As we in the navy increasingly have to fight for our shrinking share of the Defense Ministry budget, ways are constantly being sought to trim the fat that already exists in the fleet. Several classified reports have already crossed my desk, that question the logic behind the Party statute requiring Zampolit’s on each and every one of the Rodina’s warships. Millions of rubles could be saved yearly if such a nonproductive position was eliminated.”

“Why not just replace them with a videotape?” offered Milyutin.

“That way we could still get our dose of Party indoctrination, without having to carry the extra weight of an additional crew member to take along.”

Alexander thought about this for a moment.

“That’s not a bad idea, Captain. Speeches could be taped in advance, and distributed to every ship in the fleet. They could even be shown to the crew at meal time. At least then the Party could be certain that their audience wouldn’t just sleep through the sessions. Why don’t I give it some further thought, and then perhaps I’ll put this suggestion in writing and send it on up the chain of command.”

The Admiral looked on as the video monitor began filling with data relayed to them by the Lena’s fully automated sonar system. Grigori Milyutin quickly interpreted this information.

“It seems that our brief excursion to periscope depth served to degrade the ship’s acoustic sensors.

Our passive systems are just now coming back online.”

“From the looks of those swells topside, I can see why our hydrophones were temporarily useless,” observed the veteran.

“It’s good to have them back, though, because as we continue to approach our goal, we must be extra vigilant. NATO always has a ship or two in these waters, and since our mission’s success depends upon absolute stealth, we must continue on with the greatest of care.”

“I’ve already cut our speed down substantially, Admiral. As far as NATO is concerned, the Lena is presently all but invisible to their sensors.”

“And let’s keep it that way,” urged Alexander.

“Now the hour is getting late, and I still have to put the finishing touches on my address to the Komsomol. Perhaps I’ll see you afterward.”

“I’ll be right here,” said the Captain.

Alexander stiffly turned for the aft hatchway. The Lends cramped confines were beginning to take its effects on his arthritic knees and ankles, which badly needed a proper stretching.

“This is not an old man’s business,” he mumbled to himself as he painfully climbed down a steep ladder to the deck below. Politely nodding to the two officers who sat at the small wardroom table spooning in their borscht, he headed straight into his cabin.

Just large enough to hold a cot, sink, and a bulkhead mounted desk, this stateroom belonged to the Lena’s Captain. Grigori Milyutin graciously surrendered it to the veteran, and was currently hot bunking with the sub’s senior lieutenant.

Thankful for this space to himself, he sat down before the desk. Before him now was the partially filled legal pad that he had been working on earlier.

Written here were the main points that he wished to convey during this evening’s speech.

He planned to start off by giving a broad overview of the Soviet Navy’s ever expanding missions.

He wanted to be certain to remind the young sailors that the Fleet had grown from a mere coastal defense force into a modern, oceangoing one in a matter of decades. To extend the influence of the USSR. well out into the sea, the Soviet Navy had five basic missions — strategic offense, maritime security, interdiction of sea lines of communication, support of ground forces, and the support of state policy. Since this last mission was the subject of tonight’s meeting, he would dwell on it extensively.

In Alexander’s opinion, the Soviet Fleet didn’t have to be in a declared war to support the State’s policies. Not restricted by the sovereignty of airspace over land or by territorial rights, the fleet could sail where it pleased. Comprised of a variety of warships ranging from carriers, to cruisers, to submarines, the Fleet was a flexible, mobile force able to influence events in coastal countries by extending a military threat to any level, beginning with a mere show of military strength to the actual landing of forces ashore. A strong peacetime fleet was also necessary to assert Soviet rights on the high seas, to protect the interests of the Soviet merchant and fishing fleets, demonstrate support for client states, and most importantly, to inhibit Western military initiatives.

He would end his speech by looking to the future.

Alexander’s vision of twenty-first century civilization was one that increasingly looked to the sea for a variety of necessities. The oceans would provide fuel, food, minerals, and even living space to a world population that was rapidly outgrowing its available land space And to properly police and regulate these operations, the Rodina would rely on its Fleet like never before.

Satisfied with this general outline, Alexander completed the sketch of his speech. He hoped to keep it as short as possible, and leave time for a question and answer period afterward.

Since it appeared as if it was going to be a late night after all he decided that a little nap was in order.

He downed two aspirin to help ease the pain that incessantly throbbed in his inflamed joints, slipped off his shoes and jacket, and laid down on the cot. Sleep was upon him almost immediately, and along with this slumber came a kaleidoscope of dreams.

They started off with a train ride. He was a young soldier once again, being conveyed through the wooded countryside of his homeland along with his brother, Mikhail. An ear-shattering explosion suddenly filled the rail car that they were travelling in with smoke, and he remembered blindly reaching out in a desperate effort to locate his lost twin.

In the blink of an eye, he was transferred to a flower-filled glen in the Ukraine. A babbling brook twisted through a thick stand of gnarled oaks, and as he approached the stream to quench his thirst, he spotted Katrina Orlovski sitting on the nearby bank on a blanket, unpacking a picnic lunch. Katrina looked positively radiant with her long red hair cascading smoothly over the white lace dress that she had sewed herself. Alexander called out to the love of his youth, but Katrina seemed completely deaf to his cries. Deciding then to ford the stream and surprise her, he stepped into the icy water and to his horror, found that the stream bed was formed out of quicksand. His frantic cries for help went unanswered as gradually he sank into the swampy morass. He could feel the icy water numb the skin of his neck and arms, as his legs, waist and torso were swallowed. Just when his chin was about to be pulled under water, his brother Mikhail appeared on the nearby shoreline.

In a heartbeat, he was magically conveyed back to the smoke-filled rail car With flames licking the car’s wooden-slat walls, he continued his desperate search for his twin. His stinging eyes were all but useless, and like a blind man he extended his arms outward and groped into the smoldering flames. It was then his hand made contact. New hope filled his spirits as he grasped the hand that he had discovered veiled in the sooty haze and slowly pulled it forward. The face that accompanied this hand belonged to his brother, but how much Mikhail had changed! Gone was his wavy blond hair, smooth blemish less skin and vibrant blue eyes. From a young, handsome soldier he had been turned into a white-haired old man with wrinkled skin and dull gray eyes. It was as Alexander viewed the jagged scar that lined the entire left side of his twin’s face that he awoke.

It took several confusing seconds for him to reorientate himself. With his heart still pounding away in his chest, he scanned the cramped confines of the stateroom as if seeing it for the very first time. All so gradually, elements of his recently concluded nightmare returned.

A train … an explosion… his brother lost in the resulting smoke! And there also was lovely Katrina Olovski, the one and only love of his life.

How very beautiful she had looked sitting there on the stream bank. Why he could still picture her long silky red hair and the white lace dress that she had made for their wedding day. But the fates would not allow it, and when the flood surged down from the mountains and swept his beloved away, lost also was his only hope for a wife and family.

This nightmare had been a very real one, as was the scar that lined the entire left side of his brother’s face. And like the painful moment when he had heard that his Katrina was gone for all eternity, Alexander would never forget his first glance of his twin brother as he was carried off the rail car

The war had been over for several weeks before he received the official notice informing him that Mikhail was still alive. Having long ago given up any hope of ever seeing his brother alive again, Alexander cried out in sheer joy. As one of the handful of survivors pulled out of the BergenBelsen concentration camp, Mikhail was being treated at a Red Cross hospital and would be sent back to the

Soviet Union as soon as he was strong enough.

Fighting the impulse to go to this hospital and see his twin with his own eyes, Alexander anxiously waited for the next notice. It came three weeks later, along with the time, date and train number on which Mikhail would be arriving.

Kiev had never looked so beautiful as on that early summer morning in 1945 when Alexander made his way to the town’s train station. A carnival atmosphere prevailed here as thousands of others waited for their loved ones. The train had originated in Berlin, and was packed with returning soldiers.

There was many a tender moment as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, kissed, hugged and cried, overcome with joy and relief.

It took over an hour for this riotous scene to calm itself, and only when the platform was cleared were the wounded unloaded. First came those with crutches and canes. When Mikhail wasn’t spotted in this sad group, he was forced to wait until the stretchers were all carried out. There were over a hundred altogether, and Alexander had to go down the entire line twice before finally finding his brother.

Actually, it had been the other way around. Because if it wasn’t for Mikhail’s eyes lighting up like they did when his twin passed, Alexander would never have recognized him. Though only four years had gone by since they were separated on that fated August day, Mikhail had aged tenfold. Gaunt and almost skeletal in appearance, Mikhail was speechless as his brother embraced him. There were tears of joy running down his bony cheeks as Alexander pulled back and took his first close look at his twin. It was then he spotted the jagged scar that stretched from Mikhail’s graying temple to his beard stub bled chin.

Oblivious to the fact that his blond hair was now almost completely white and that even the color of his eyes had faded, Alexander reached under the sheet and picked up his brother in his arms. He was as light as a child, his once muscular frame no more. But that made no difference to Alexander, who proceeded to carry his brother all the way home.

From that day onward, Alexander centered his entire life around getting his brother well once more. It was difficult at first. Mikhail’s starved body was weak, and he seemed to always have a cold or bronchitis. But Alexander persisted. He did whatever was necessary to find Mikhail nourishing foods, even going so far as giving his twin his own portion when food was in short supply. He also made certain to get his brother out in the fresh air whenever possible. Slowly but surely this therapy worked.

Color returned to his once pallid cheeks, and he even began to gain weight again.

It took over a year for his body to recover. But even then there was a sallowness to his skin that never seemed to go away, and of course there were mental scars that Alexander could never begin to heal, or for that matter, even fathom.

Mikhail didn’t talk much about his experiences in the death camp, but it was obvious that something hideous had taken place within the confines of that barbed-wire hell that had changed him forever. Serious and sober, Mikhail no longer knew what it was to laugh and have fun. He seemed to have been vaulted to another level of consciousness, far away from that of the mundane world.

Alexander worried that this morbid state of mind would destroy his brother, the hatred eating him up from the inside like a malignant cancer. A prominent psychiatrist was brought in, and it was this figure who suggested that Mikhail refocus this rage on an outside object. All this was taking place during the time of the infamous Nuremberg trials, and the newspapers were filled with stories telling of Nazis who had fled to Africa and South America to escape the hand of justice. When a Soviet commission was formed to investigate these reports, Alexander saw the perfect opportunity to test the doctor’s theory.

A quick trip to Moscow resulted in Alexander securing his brother a position in this commission.

And when Mikhail was told of this, for the very first time in over a year, his face broke out in a broad smile.

Little did Alexander ever realize that Mikhail would proceed to devote the rest of his life to this cause. Even today, over four and a half decades after the war’s conclusion, Mikhail was still out there on the trail of the Nazi beast.

He currently operated under the auspices of the KGB. There were many in Moscow who called his work a wasted effort, while others said that Mikhail was merely insane. Yet all of these critics were silenced time and again as Mikhail brought Nazi war criminals to justice from far corners of the globe.

Only last year, when Mikhail had returned from a three month stint in the Amazon, Alexander had asked him if he was ready to retire. His brother looked at him as if he were crazy.

“This is no ordinary job that I’m involved with,” explained Mikhail passionately, “It is a lifetime quest!”

“And when will this quest end?” asked Alexander.

His brother answered bluntly.

“Either when I’m dead, or after I’ve succeeded in destroying Werewolf.”

It was at that moment that Alexander realized what was driving his twin so. Werewolf, the code name for a powerful Neo-Nazi group that supposedly had members in America, Europe, South America and Japan. Yet it wasn’t necessarily the group itself that Mikhail was after, but the man who was Werewolf’s self-proclaimed leader — Otto Koch, the same SS officer who had stolen the gold that they had been escorting to Leningrad — the same SS officer who had condemned Mikhail to the living hell of BergenBelsen.

Every morning for the past five decades, Mikhail had only to look into the mirror to be reminded of the day when Otto Koch first came into his life.

Even as Alexander lay there in the stateroom of the Alfa class submarine, his twin brother was out there, somewhere in the world, devoting his every effort to bringing this demon to justice. There could be no more noble cause than this, and Alexander could only wish his brother every success in his efforts.

Having all but forgotten the nightmare that had triggered these vibrant impressions, the old veteran nervously jumped when a firm knock sounded on the cabin’s shut door, accompanied by a scratchy voice.

“Admiral Kuznetsov, it’s Felix Bucharin. I hope you haven’t forgotten, but it’s time for the Komsomol meeting.”

Called thusly back to duty, Alexander replied.

“I hear you, Comrade Zampolit. If you’ll just give me a few more minutes to get my things together, I’ll be with you presently.”

A familiar pain throbbed in the veteran’s aching joints as he struggled to sit up. He managed to limp over to the wash basin where he washed his face in a stream of icy cold water. This served to waken him completely, and as he dried his face with a rough linen towel his thoughts were already redirecting themselves to the speech that he would soon be giving.