The Hunt for Red October

THE THIRTEENTH DAY

“Crazy Ivan,” Jones called out again, “turning to port!”

“Okay, all stop,” Mancuso ordered, holding a dispatch in his hand which he had been rereading for hours. He was not pleased with it.

“All stop, sir,” the helmsman responded.

“All back full.”

“All back full, sir.” The helmsman dialed in the command and turned, his face a question.

Throughout the Dallas the crew heard noise, too much noise as poppet valves opened to vent steam onto the reverse turbine blades, trying to spin the propeller the wrong way. It made for instant vibration and cavitation noises aft.

“Right full rudder.”

“Right full rudder, aye.”

“Conn, sonar, we are cavitating,” Jones spoke over the intercom.

“Very well, sonar!” Mancuso answered sharply. He did not understand his new orders, and things he didn’t understand made him angry.

“Speed down to four knots,” Lieutenant Goodman reported.

“Rudder amidships, all stop.”

“Rudder amidships aye, all stop aye,” the helmsman responded at once. He didn’t want the captain barking at him. “Sir, my rudder is amidships.”

“Jesus!” Jones said in the sonar room. “What’s the skipper doin’?”

Mancuso was in sonar a second later.

“Still doing the turn to port, Cap’n. He’s astern of us ’cause of the turn we made,” Jones observed as neutrally as he could. It was close to an accusation, Mancuso noticed.

“Flushing the game, Jonesy,” Mancuso said coolly.

You’re the boss, Jones thought, smart enough not to say anything else. The captain looked as though he was going to snap somebody’s head off, and Jones had just used up a month’s worth of tolerance. He switched his phones to the towed array plug.

“Engine noises diminishing, sir. He’s slowing down.” Jones paused. He had to report the next part. “Sir, it’s a fair guess he heard us.”

“He was supposed to,” Mancuso said.

“Captain, an enemy submarine,” the michman said urgently.

“Enemy?” Ramius asked.

“American. He must have been trailing us, and he had to back down to avoid a collision when we turned. Definitely an American, broad on the port bow, range under a kilometer, I think.” He handed Ramius his phones.

“688,” Ramius said to Borodin. “Damn! He must have stumbled across us in the past two hours. Bad luck.”

“Okay, Jonesy, yankee-search him.” Mancuso gave the order for an active sonar search personally. The Dallas had slewed farther around before coming to a near halt.

Jones hesitated for a moment, still reading the reactor plant noise on his passive systems. Reaching, he powered up the active transducers in the BQQ-5’s main sphere at the bow.

Ping! A wave front of sound energy was directed at the target.

Pong! The wave was reflected back off the hard steel hull and returned to the Dallas.

“Range to target 1,050 yards,” Jones said. The returning pulse was processed through the BC-10 computer and showed some rough details. “Target configuration is consistent with a Typhoon-class boomer. Angle on the bow seventy or so. No doppler. He’s stopped.” Six more pings confirmed this.

“Secure pinging,” Mancuso said. There was some small satisfaction in learning that he had elevated the contact correctly. But not much.

Jones killed power to the system. What the hell did I have to do that for? he wondered. He’d already done everything but read the number off her stern.

Every man on the October knew now that they had been found. The lash of the sonar waves had resounded through the hull. It was not a sound a submariner liked to hear. Certainly not on top of a troublesome reactor, Ramius thought. Perhaps he could make use of this…

“Somebody on the surface,” Jones said suddenly. “Where the hell did they come from? Skipper, there was nothing, nothing, a minute ago, and now I’m getting engine sounds. Two, maybe more — make that two ’cans…and something bigger. Like they were sitting up there waiting for us. A minute ago they were sitting still. Damn! I didn’t hear a thing.”

“We timed that rather nicely,” Admiral White said.

“Lucky,” Ryan observed.

“Luck is part of the game, Jack.”

HMS Bristol was the first to pick up the sound of the two submarines and of the turn the Red October had made. Even at five miles the subs were barely readable. The Crazy Ivan maneuver had terminated three miles away, and the surface ships had been able to get good position fixes by reading off the Dallas’ active sonar emissions.

“Two helicopters en route, sir,” Captain Hunter reported. “They’ll be on station in another minute.”

“Signal Bristol and Fife to stay to windward of us. I want Invincible between them and the contact.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Hunter relayed the order to the communications room. The destroyermen on the escorts would find that order peculiar, using a carrier to screen destroyers.

A few seconds later a pair of Sea King helicopters stopped and hovered fifty feet over the surface, letting down dipping sonars at the end of a cable as they struggled to hold position. These sonars were far less powerful than ship-carried sonars and had distinctive characteristics. The data they developed was transmitted by digital link to the Invincible’s command center.

“Limeys,” Jones said at once. “That’s a helicopter set, the 195, I think. That means the big ship off to the south is one of their baby carriers, sir, with a two-can escort.”

Mancuso nodded. “HMS Invincible. She was over our side of the lake for NIFTY DOLPHIN. That means the Brit varsity, their best ASW operators.”

“The big one’s moving this way, sir. Turns indicate ten knots. The choppers — two of them — have both of us. No other subs around that I hear.”

“Positive sonar contact,” said the metal speaker. “Two submarines, range two miles from Invincible, bearing zero-two-zero.”

“Now for the hard part,” Admiral White said.

Ryan and the four Royal Navy officers who were privy to the mission were on the flag bridge, with the fleet ASW officer in the command center below, as the Invincible steamed slowly north, slightly to the left of the direct course to the contacts. All five swept the contact area with powerful binoculars.

“Come on, Captain Ramius,” Ryan said quietly. “You’re supposed to be a hotshot. Prove it.”

Ramius was back in his control room scowling at his chart. A stray American Los Angeles stumbling onto him was one thing, but he had run into a small task force. English ships, at that. Why? Probably an exercise. The Americans and the English often work together, and pure accident had walked October right into them. Well. He’d have to evade before he could get on with what he wanted to do. It was that simple. Or was it? A hunter submarine, a carrier, and two destroyers after him. What else? He would have to find out if he were going to lose them all. This would take the best part of a day. But now he’d have to see what he was up against. Besides, it would show them that he was confident, that he could hunt them if he wished.

“Borodin, bring the ship to periscope depth. Battle stations.”

“Come up, Marko,” Barclay urged. “We have a message for you, old boy.”

“Helicopter three reports contact is coming up,” the speaker said.

“All right!” Ryan pounded his hand on the rail.

White lifted a phone. “Recall one of the helicopters.”

The distance to the Red October was down to a mile and a half. One of the Sea Kings lifted up and circled around, reeling in its sonar transducer.

“Contact depth is five hundred feet, coming up slowly.”

Borodin was pumping water slowly from the October’s trim tanks. The missile submarine increased speed to four knots, and most of the force required to change her depth came from the diving planes. The starpom was careful to bring her up slowly, and Ramius had her heading directly towards the Invincible.

“Hunter, are you up on your Morse?” Admiral White inquired.

“I believe so, Admiral,” Hunter answered. Everyone was getting excited. What a chance this was!

Ryan swallowed hard. In the past few hours, while the Invincible had been lying still on the rolling sea, his stomach had really gone bad. The pills the ship’s doctor had given him helped, but now the excitement was making it worse. There was an eighty-foot sheer drop from the flag bridge to the sea. Well, he thought, if I have to puke, there’s nothing in the way. Screw it.

“Hull popping noises, sir,” Jones said. “Think he’s heading up.”

“Up?” Mancuso wondered for a second. “Yeah, that fits. He’s a cowboy. He wants to see what he’s up against before he tries to evade. That fits. I bet he doesn’t know where we’ve been the past few days.” The captain went forward to the attack center.

“Looks like he’s going up, Skipper,” Mannion said, watching the attack director. “Dumb.” Mannion had his own opinion of submarine captains depending on their periscopes. Too many of them spent too much time looking out at the world. He wondered how much of this was an implicit reaction to the enforced confinement of submarining, something just to make sure that there really was a world up there, to make sure the instruments were correct. Entirely human, Mannion thought, but it could make you vulnerable…

“We go up, too, Skipper?”

“Yeah, slow and easy.”

The sky was half-filled with white, fleecy clouds, their undersides gray with the threat of rain. A twenty-knot wind was blowing from the southwest, and a six-foot sea was running, its dark waves streaked with whitecaps. Ryan saw the Bristol and Fife holding station to windward. Their captains, no doubt, were muttering a few choice words at this disposition. The American escorts, which had been detached the previous day, were now sailing to rendezvous with the USS New Jersey.

White was talking into the phone again. “Commander, I want to know the instant we get a radar return from the target area. Train every set aboard onto that patch of ocean. I also want to know of any, repeat any, sonar signals from the area…That is correct. Depth of target? Very well. Recall the second helicopter, I want both on station to windward.”

They had agreed that the best method of passing the message would be to use a blinker light. Only someone placed in the direct line of sight would be able to read the signal. Hunter moved to the light, holding a sheet of paper Ryan had given him. The yeomen and signalmen normally stationed here were gone.

“Thirty meters, Comrade Captain,” Borodin reported. The battle watch was set in the control center.

“Periscope,” Ramius said calmly. The oiled metal tube hissed upward on hydraulic pressure. The captain handed his cap to the junior officer of the watch as he bent to look into the eyepiece. “So, we have here three imperialist ships. HMS Invincible. Such a name for a ship!” He scoffed for his audience. “Two escorts, Bristol, and a County-class cruiser.”

The Invincible

“Periscope, starboard bow!” the speaker announced.

“I see it!” Barclay’s hand shot out to point. “There it is!” Ryan strained to find it. “I got it.” It was like a small broomstick sitting vertically in the water, about a mile away. As the waves rolled past, the bottommost visible part of the periscope flared out.

“Hunter,” White said quietly. To Ryan’s left the captain began jerking his hand on the lever that controlled the light shutters.

Ramius didn’t see it at first. He was making a complete circle of the horizon, checking for any other ships or aircraft. When he finished the circuit, the flashing light caught his eye. Quickly he tried to interpret the signal. It took him a moment to realize it was pointed right at him.

The message kept repeating. The signal was jerky and awkward. Ramius didn’t notice this. He translated the English signal in his head, at first thinking it was a signal to the American submarine. His knuckles went white on the periscope hand grips as he translated the message in his mind.

“Borodin,” he said finally, after reading the message a fourth time, “we set up a practice firing solution on Invincible. Damn, the periscope rangefinder is sticking. A single ping, Comrade. Just one, for range.”

Ping!

“One ping from the contact area, sir, sounds Soviet,” the speaker reported.

White lifted his phone. “Thank you. Keep us informed.” He set it back down. “Well, gentlemen…”

“He did it!” Ryan sang out. “Send the rest, for Christ’s sake!”

“At once.” Hunter grinned like a madman.

“Distance to target, Borodin?” Ramius asked, wishing he had more time as the message was repeated again and again.

“Two thousand meters, Comrade Captain. A nice, fat target for us if we…” The starpom’s voice trailed off as he saw the look on his commander’s face.

They know our name, Ramius was thinking, they know our name! How can this be? They knew where to find us — exactly! How? What can the Americans have? How long has the Los Angeles been trailing us? Decide — you must decide!

“Comrade, one more ping on the target, just one.”

“One more ping, Admiral.”

“Thank you.” White looked at Ryan. “Well, Jack, it would seem that your intelligence estimate was indeed correct. Jolly good.”

“Jolly good my ass, my Lord Earl! I was right. Son of a bitch!” Ryan’s hands flew up in the air, his seasickness forgotten. He calmed down. The occasion called for more decorum. “Excuse me, Admiral. We have some things to do.”

Whole fleet is chasing after you…Proceed to 33N 75W. What the hell was going on? Mancuso wondered, catching the end of the second signal.

“Conn, sonar. Getting hull popping noises from the target. His depth is changing. Engine noise increasing.”

“Down scope.” Mancuso lifted the phone. “Very well, sonar. Anything else, Jones?”

“No, sir. The helicopters are gone, and there aren’t any emissions from the surface ships. What gives, sir?”

“Beats me.” Mancuso shook his head as Mannion brought the Dallas back in pursuit of the Red October. What the hell was happening here? the captain wondered. Why was a Brit carrier signaling to a Russian submarine, and why were they sending her to a rendezvous off the Carolinas? Whose subs were blocking her path? It couldn’t be. No way. It just couldn’t be…

Ryan was in the Invincible’s communications room. “MAGI TO OLYMPUS,” he typed into the special encoding device the CIA had sent out with him, “PLAYED MY MANDOLIN TODAY. SOUNDED PRETTY GOOD. I’M PLANNING A LITTLE CONCERT, AT THE USUAL PLACE. EXPECT GOOD CRITICAL REVIEWS. AWAITING INSTRUCTIONS.” Ryan had laughed before at the code words he was supposed to use for this. He was laughing now, for a different reason.

“So,” Pelt observed, “Ryan expects the mission will be successful. Everything’s going according to plan, but he didn’t use the code group for certain success.”

The president leaned back comfortably. “He’s honest. Things can always go wrong. You have to admit, though, things do look good.”

“This plan the chiefs came up with is crazy, sir.”

“Perhaps, but you’ve been trying to poke a hole in it for several days now, and you haven’t succeeded. The pieces will all fall in place shortly.”

The president was being clever, Pelt saw. The man liked being clever.

“OLYMPUS TO MAGI. I LIKE OLD-FASHIONED MANDOLIN MUSIC. CONCERT APPROVED,” the message said.

Ryan sat back comfortably, sipping at his brandy. “Well, that’s good. I wonder what the next part of the plan is.”

“I expect that Washington will let us know. For the moment,” Admiral White said, “we’ll have to move back west to interpose ourselves between October and the Soviet fleet.”

Lieutenant Ames surveyed the scene through the tiny port on the Avalon’s bow. The Alfa lay on her port side. She had obviously hit stern first, and hard. One blade was snapped off the propeller, and the lower rudder fin was smashed. The whole stern might have been knocked off true; it was hard to tell in the low visibility.

“Moving forward slowly,” he said, adjusting the controls. Behind him an ensign and a senior petty officer were monitoring instruments and preparing to deploy the manipulator arm, attached before they sailed, which carried a television camera and floodlights. These gave them a slightly wider field of view than the navigation ports permitted. The DSRV crept forward at one knot. Visibility was under twenty yards, despite the million candles of illumination from the bow lights.

The sea floor at this point was a treacherous slope of alluvial silt dotted with boulders. It appeared that the only thing that had prevented the Alfa from sliding farther down was her sail, driven like a wedge into the bottom.

“Holy gawd!” The petty officer saw it first. There was a crack in the Alfa’s hull — or was there?

“Reactor accident,” Ames said, his voice detached and clinical. “Something burned through the hull. Lord, and that’s titanium! Burned right through, from the inside out. There’s another one, two burn-throughs. This one’s bigger, looks like a good yard across. No mystery what killed her, guys. That’s two compartments open to the sea.” Ames looked over to the depth gauge: 1,880 feet. “Getting all this on tape?”

“Aye, Skipper,” the electrician first class answered. “Crummy way to die. Poor bastards.”

“Yeah, depending on what they were up to.” Ames maneuvered the Avalon around the Alfa’s bow, working the directional propeller carefully and adjusting trim to cruise down the other side, actually the top of the dead sub. “See any evidence of a hull fracture?”

“No,” the ensign answered, “just the two burn-throughs. I wonder what went wrong?”

“A for-real China Syndrome. It finally happened to somebody.” Ames shook his head. If there was anything the navy preached about reactors, it was safety. “Get the transducer against the hull. We’ll see if anybody’s alive in there.”

“Aye.” The electrician worked the waldo controls as Ames tried to keep the Avalon dead still. Neither task was easy. The DSRV was hovering, nearly resting on the sail. If there were survivors, they had to be in the control room or forward. There could be no life aft.

“Okay, I got contact.”

All three men listened intently, hoping for something. Their job was search and rescue, and as submariners themselves they took it seriously.

“Maybe they’re asleep.” The ensign switched on the locater sonar. The high-frequency waves resonated through both vessels. It was a sound fit to wake the dead, but there was no response. The air supply in the Politovskiy had run out a day before.

“That’s that,” Ames said quietly. He maneuvered upward as the electrician rigged in the manipulator arm, looking for a spot to drop a sonar transponder. They would be back again when the topside weather was better. The navy would not pass up this chance to inspect an Alfa, and the Glomar Explorer was sitting unused somewhere on the West Coast. Would she be activated? Ames would not bet against that.

“Avalon, Avalon, this is Scamp—” the voice on the gertrude was distorted but readable, “—return at once. Acknowledge.”

“Scamp, this is Avalon. On the way.”

The Scamp had just received an ELF message and gone briefly to periscope depth for a FLASH operational order. “PROCEED AT BEST SPEED TO 33N 75W.” The message didn’t say why.

“CARDINAL is still with us,” Moore told Ritter.

“Thank God for that.” Ritter sat down.

“There’s a signal en route. This time he didn’t try to kill himself getting it to us. Maybe being in the hospital scared him a little. I’m extending another offer to extract him.”

“Again?”

“Bob, we have to make the offer.”

“I know. I had one sent myself a few years back, you know. The old bastard just doesn’t want to quit. You know how it goes, some people thrive on the action. Or maybe he hasn’t worked out his rage yet…I just got a call from Senator Donaldson.” Donaldson was the chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence.

“Oh?”

“He wants to know what we know about what’s going on. He doesn’t buy the cover story about a rescue mission, and thinks we know something different.”

Judge Moore leaned back. “I wonder who planted that idea in his head?”

“Yeah. I have a little idea we might try. I think it’s time, and this is a dandy opportunity.”

The two senior executives discussed this for an hour. Before Ritter left for the Hill, they cleared it with the president.

Donaldson kept Ritter waiting in his outer office for fifteen minutes while he read the paper. He wanted Ritter to know his place. Some of the DDO’s remarks about leaks from the Hill had touched a sore spot with the senator from Connecticut, and it was important for appointed and civil service officials to understand the difference between themselves and the elected representatives of the people.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Ritter.” Donaldson did not rise, nor did he offer to shake hands.

“Quite all right, sir. Took the chance to read a magazine. Don’t get to do that much, what with the schedule I work.” They fenced with each other from the first moment.

“So, what are the Soviets up to?”

“Senator, before I address that subject, I must say this: I had to clear this meeting with the president. This information is for you alone, no one else may hear it, sir. No one. That comes from the White House.”

“There are other men on my committee, Mr. Ritter.”

“Sir, if I do not have your word, as a gentleman,” Ritter added with a smile, “I will not reveal this information. Those are my orders. I work for the executive branch, Senator. I take my orders from the president.” Ritter hoped his recording device was getting all of this.

“Agreed,” Donaldson said reluctantly. He was angry because of the foolish restrictions, but pleased that he was getting to hear this. “Go on.”

“Frankly, sir, we’re not sure exactly what’s going on,” Ritter said.

“Oh, so you’ve sworn me to secrecy so that I can’t tell anyone that, again, the CIA doesn’t know what the hell is going on?”

“I said we don’t know exactly what’s happening. We do know a few things. Our information comes mainly from the Israelis, and some from the French. From both channels we have learned that something has gone very wrong with the Soviet Navy.”

“I gathered that. They’ve lost a sub.”

“At least one, but that’s not what’s going on. Someone, we think, has played a trick on the operations directorate of the Soviet Northern Fleet. I can’t say for sure, but I think it was the Poles.”

“Why the Poles?”

“I don’t know for sure that it is, but both the French and Israelis are well connected with the Poles, and the Poles have a long-standing beef with the Soviets. I do know — at least I think I know — that whatever this is did not come from a Western intelligence agency.”

“So, what’s happening?” Donaldson demanded.

“Our best guess is that someone has committed at least one forgery, possibly as many as three, all aimed at raising hell in the Soviet Navy — but whatever it was, it’s gotten far out of hand. A lot of people are working hard to cover their asses, the Israelis say. As a guess, I think they managed to alter a submarine’s operational orders, then forged a letter from her skipper threatening to fire his missiles. The amazing thing is that the Soviets went for it.” Ritter frowned. “We may have it all backwards, though. All we really know for sure is that somebody, probably the Poles, has played a fantastic dirty trick on the Russians.”

“Not us?” Donaldson asked pointedly.

“No, sir, absolutely not! If we tried something like that — even if we succeeded, which isn’t likely — they might try the same thing with us. You could start a war that way, and you know the president would never authorize it.”

“But someone at the CIA might not care what the president thinks.”

“Not in my department! It would be my head. Do you really think we could run an operation like this and then successfully conceal it? Hell, Senator, I wish we could.”

“Why the Poles, and why are they able to do it?”

“We’ve been hearing for some time about a dissident faction inside their intelligence community, one that does not especially love the Soviets. You can pick any number of reasons why. There’s the fundamental historical enmity, and the Russians seem to forget that the Poles are Polish first, Communists second. My own guess is that it’s this business with the pope, even more than the martial law thing. We know that our old friend Andropov initiated a replay of the Henry II/Becket business. The pope has given Poland a great deal of prestige, done things for the country that even Party members feel good about. Ivan went and spit on their whole country when he did that — you wonder that they’re mad? As to their ability, people seem to overlook just what a class act their intelligence service always has been. They’re the ones who made the Enigma break-through in 1939, not the Brits. They’re damned effective, and for the same reason as the Israelis. They have enemies to the east and the west. That sort of thing breeds good agents. We know for certain that they have a lot of people inside Russia, guest workers paying Narmonov off for the economic supports given to their country. We also know that a lot of Polish engineers are working in Soviet shipyards. I admit it’s funny, neither country has much of a maritime tradition, but the Poles build a lot of Soviet merchant hulls. Their yards are more efficient than the Russian ones, and lately they’ve been giving technical help, mainly in quality control, to the naval building yards.”

“So, the Polish intelligence service has played a trick on the Soviets,” Donaldson summarized. “Gorshkov is one of the guys who took a hard line on intervention, wasn’t he?”

“True, but he’s probably just a target of opportunity. The real aim of this has to be to embarrass Moscow. The fact that this operation attacks the Soviet Navy has no significance in itself. The objective is to raise hell in their senior military channels, and they all come together in Moscow. God, I wish I knew what was really happening! From the five percent we do know, this operation has to be a real masterpiece, the sort of thing legends are made of. We’re working on it, trying to find out. So are the Brits, and the French, and the Israelis — Benny Herzog of the Mossad is supposed to be going ape. The Israelis do pull this kind of trick on their neighbors, regularly. They say officially that they don’t know anything beyond what they’ve told us. Maybe so. Or maybe they gave the Poles some technical help — hard to say. It’s certain that the Soviet Navy is a strategic threat to Israel. But we need more time on that. The Israeli connection looks a little too pat at this point.”

“But you don’t know what’s happening, just the how and why.”

“Senator, it’s not that easy. Give us some time. At the moment we may not even want to know. To summarize, somebody has laid a colossal piece of disinformation on the Soviet Navy. It was probably aimed at merely shaking them up, but it has clearly gotten out of hand. How or why it happened, we do not know. You can bet, however, that whoever initiated this operation is working very hard to cover his tracks.” Ritter wanted the senator to get this right. “If the Soviets find out who did it, their reaction will be nasty — depend on it. In a few weeks we might know more. The Israelis owe us for a few things, and eventually they’ll let us in on it.”

“For a couple more F-15s and a company of tanks,” Donaldson observed.

“Cheap at the price.”

“But if we’re not involved in this, why the secrecy?”

“You gave me your word, Senator,” Ritter reminded him. “For one thing, if word leaked out, would the Soviets believe we’re not involved? Not likely! We’re trying to civilize the intelligence game. I mean, we’re still enemies, but having the various intelligence services in conflict uses up too many assets, and it’s dangerous to both sides. For another, well, if we ever do find out how all this happened, we just might want to make use of it ourselves.”

“Those reasons are contradictory.”

Ritter smiled. “The intelligence game is like that. If we find out who did this, we can use that information to our advantage. In any case, Senator, you gave me your word, and I will report that to the president on my return to Langley.”

“Very well.” Donaldson rose. The interview was at an end. “I trust you will keep us informed of future developments.”

“That’s what we have to do, sir.” Ritter stood.

“Indeed. Thank you for coming down.” They did not shake hands this time either.

Ritter walked into the hall without passing through the anteroom. He stopped to look down into the atrium of the Hart building. It reminded him of the local Hyatt. Uncharacteristically, he took the stairs instead of the elevator down to the first floor. With luck he had just settled a major score. His car was waiting for him outside, and he told the driver to head for the FBI building.

“Not a CIA operation?” Peter Henderson, the senator’s chief aide, asked.

“No, I believe him,” Donaldson said. “He’s not smart enough to pull something like that.”

“I don’t know why the president doesn’t get rid of him,” Henderson commented. “Of course, the kind of person he is, maybe it’s better that he’s incompetent.” The senator agreed.

When he returned to his office, Henderson adjusted the venetian blinds on his window, though the sun was on the other side of the building. An hour later the driver of a passing Black & White taxicab looked up at the window and made a mental note.

Henderson worked late that night. The Hart building was nearly empty with most of the senators out of town. Donaldson was there only because of personal business and to keep an eye on things. As chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, he had more duties than he would have liked at this time of year. Henderson took the elevator down to the main lobby, looking every inch the senior congressional aide — a three-piece gray suit, an expensive leather attaché case, his hair just so, and his stride jaunty as he left the building. A Black & White cab came around the corner and stopped to let out a fare. Henderson got in.

“Watergate,” he said. Not until the taxi had driven a few blocks did he speak again.

Henderson had a modest one-bedroom condo in the Watergate complex, an irony that he himself had considered many times. When he got to his destination he did not tip the driver. A woman got in as he walked to the main entrance. Taxis in Washington are very busy in the early evening.

“Georgetown University, please,” she said, a pretty young woman with auburn hair and an armload of books.

“Night school?” the driver asked, checking the mirror.

“Exams,” the girl said, her voice a trace uneasy. “Psych.”

“Best thing to do with exams is relax,” the driver advised.

Special Agent Hazel Loomis fumbled with her books. Her purse dropped to the floor. “Oh, damn.” She bent over to pick it up, and while doing so retrieved a miniature tape recorder that another agent had left under the driver’s seat.

It took fifteen minutes to get to the university. The fare was $3.85. Loomis gave the driver a five and told him to keep the change. She walked across the campus and entered a Ford which drove straight to the J. Edgar Hoover Building. A lot of work had gone into this — and it had been so easy!

“Always is, when the bear walks into your sight.” The inspector who had been running the case turned left onto Pennsylvania Avenue. “The problem is finding the damned bear in the first place.”

“Gentlemen, you have been asked here because each of you is a career intelligence officer with a working knowledge of submarines and Russian,” Davenport said to the four officers seated in his office. “I have need of officers with your qualifications. This is a volunteer assignment. It could involve a considerable element of danger — we cannot be sure at this point. The only other thing I can say is that this will be a dream job for an intelligence officer — but the sort of dream that you’ll never be able to tell anyone about. We’re all used to that, aren’t we?” Davenport ventured a rare smile. “As they say in the movies, if you want in, fine; if not, you may leave at this point, and nothing will ever be said. It is asking a lot to expect men to walk into a potentially dangerous assignment blindfolded.”

Of course nobody left; the men who had been called here were not quitters. Besides, something would be said, and Davenport had a good memory. These were professional officers. One of the compensations for wearing a uniform and earning less money than an equally talented man can make in the real world is the off chance of being killed.

“Thank you, gentlemen. I think you will find this worth your while.” Davenport stood and handed each man a manila envelope. “You will soon have the chance to examine a Soviet missile submarine — from the inside.” Four pairs of eyes blinked in unison.

The USS Ethan Allen had been on station now for more than thirty hours. She was cruising in a five-mile circle at a depth of two hundred feet. There was no hurry. The submarine was making just enough speed to maintain steerage way, her reactor producing only ten percent of rated power. The chief quartermaster was assisting in the galley.

“First time I’ve ever done this in a sub,” one of the Allen’s officers who was acting as ship’s cook noted, stirring an omelette.

The quartermaster sighed imperceptibly. They ought to have sailed with a proper cook, but theirs had been a kid, and every enlisted man aboard now had over twenty years of service. The chiefs were all technicians, except the quartermaster, who could handle a toaster on a good day.

“You cook much at home, sir?”

“Some. My parents used to have a restaurant down at Pass Christian. This is my mama’s special Cajun omelette. Shame we don’t have any bass. I can do some nice things with bass and a little lemon. You fish much, Chief?”

“No, sir.” The small complement of officers and senior chiefs was working in an informal atmosphere, and the quartermaster was a man accustomed to discipline and status boundaries. “Commander, can I ask what the hell we’re doing?”

“Wish I knew, Chief. Mostly we’re waiting for something.”

“But what, sir?”

“Damned if I know. You want to hand me those ham cubes? And could you check the bread in the oven? Ought to be about done.”

Commander Eaton was perplexed. His battle group was holding twenty miles south of the Russians. If it hadn’t been dark he could have seen the Kirov’s towering superstructure on the horizon from his perch on the flat bridge. Her escorts were in a single broad line ahead of the battle cruiser, pinging away in the search for a submarine.

Since the air force had staged its mock attack the Soviets had been acting like sheep. This was out of character to say the least. The New Jersey and her escorts were keeping the Russian formation under constant observation, and a pair of Sentry aircraft were watching for good measure. The Russian redeployment had switched Eaton’s responsibility to the Kirov group. This suited him. His main battery turrets were trained in, but the guns were loaded with eight-inch guided rounds and the fire control stations were fully manned. The Tarawa was thirty miles south, her armed strike force of Harriers sitting ready to move at five-minute notice. The Soviets had to know this, even though their ASW helicopters had not come within five miles of an American ship for two days. The Bear and Backfire bombers which were passing overhead in shuttle rounds to Cuba — only a few, and those returning to Russia as quickly as they could be turned around — could not fail to report what they saw. The American vessels were in extended attack formation, the missiles on the New Jersey and her escorts being fed continuous information from the ships’ sensors. And the Russians were ignoring them. Their only electronic emissions were routine navigation radars. Strange.

The Nimitz was now within air range after a five-thousand-mile dash from the South Atlantic; the carrier and her nuclear-powered escorts, the California, Bainbridge, and Truxton, were now only four hundred miles to the south, with the America battle group half a day behind them. The Kennedy was five hundred miles to the east. The Soviets would have to consider the danger of three carrier air wings at their backs and hundreds of land-based air force birds gradually shifting south from one base to another. Perhaps this explained their docility.

The Backfire bombers were being escorted in relays all the way from Iceland, first by navy Tomcats from the Saratoga’s air wing, then by air force Phantoms operating in Maine, which handed the Soviet aircraft off to Eagles and Fighting Falcons as they worked down the coast almost as far south as Cuba. There was not much doubt how seriously the United States was taking this, though American units were no longer actively harassing the Russians. Eaton was glad they weren’t. There was nothing more to be gained from harassment, and anyway, if it had to, his battle group could switch from a peace to a war footing in about two minutes.

“Excuse me. I just moved in down the hall, and my phone isn’t hooked up yet. Would you mind if I made a call?”

Henderson arrived at that decision quickly enough. Five three or so, auburn hair, gray eyes, adequate figure, a dazzling smile, and fashionably dressed. “Sure, welcome to the Watergate. Come on in.”

“Thank you. I’m Hazel Loomis. My friends call me Sissy.” She held out her hand.

“Peter Henderson. The phone’s in the kitchen. I’ll show you.” Things were looking up. He’d just ended a lengthy relationship with one of the senator’s secretaries. It had been hard on both of them.

“I’m not disturbing anything, am I? You don’t have anyone here, do you?”

“No, just me and the TV. Are you new to D.C.? The night life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. At least, not when you have to go to work the next day. Who do you work for — I take it you’re single?”

“That’s right. I work for DARPA, as a computer programmer. I’m afraid I can’t talk about it very much.”

All sorts of good news, Henderson thought. “Here’s the phone.”

Loomis looked around quickly as though evaluating the job the decorator had done. She reached into her purse and took out a dime, handing it to Henderson. He laughed.

“The first call is free, and believe me, you can use my phone whenever you want.”

“I just knew,” she said, punching the buttons, “that this would be nicer than living in Laurel. Hello, Kathy? Sissy. I just got moved in, haven’t even got my phone hooked up yet…Oh, a guy down the hall was kind enough to let me use his phone…Okay, see you tomorrow for lunch. Bye, Kathy.”

Loomis looked around. “Who decorated for you?”

“Did it myself. I minored in art at Harvard, and I know some nice shops in Georgetown. You can find some good bargains if you know where to look.”

“Oh, I’d just love to have my place look like this! Could you show me around?”

“Sure, the bedroom first?” Henderson laughed to show that he had no untoward intentions — which of course he did, though he was a patient man in such matters. The tour, which lasted several minutes, assured Loomis that the condo was indeed empty. A minute later there was a knock at the door. Henderson grumbled good-naturedly as he went to answer it.

“Pete Henderson?” The man asking the question was dressed in a business suit. Henderson had on jeans and a sport shirt.

“Yes?” Henderson backed up, knowing what this had to be. What came next, though, surprised him.

“You’re under arrest, Mr. Henderson,” Sissy Loomis said, holding up her ID card. “The charge is espionage. You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to speak with an attorney. If you give up the right to remain silent, everything you say will be recorded and may be used against you. If you do not have an attorney or cannot afford one, we will see to it that an attorney is appointed to represent you. Do you understand these rights, Mr. Henderson?” It was Sissy Loomis’ first espionage case. For five years she had specialized in bank robbery stakeouts, often working as a teller with a .357 magnum revolver in her cash drawer. “Do you wish to waive these rights?”

“No, I do not.” Henderson’s voice was raspy.

“Oh, you will,” the inspector observed. “You will.” He turned to the three agents who accompanied him. “Take this place apart. Neatly, gentlemen, and quietly. We don’t want to wake anyone. You, Mr. Henderson, will come with us. You can change first. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. If you promise to cooperate, no cuffs. But if you try to run — you don’t want to do that, believe me.” The inspector had been in the FBI for twenty years and had never even drawn his service revolver in anger, while Loomis had already shot and killed two men. He was old-time FBI, and couldn’t help but wonder what Mr. Hoover would think of that, not to mention the new Jewish director.

Ramius and Kamarov conferred over the chart for several minutes, tracing alternate course tracks before agreeing on one. The enlisted men ignored this. They had never been encouraged to know about charts. The captain walked to the aft bulkhead and lifted the phone.

“Comrade Melekhin,” he ordered, waiting a few seconds. “Comrade, this is the captain. Any further difficulties with the reactor systems?”

“No, Comrade Captain.”

“Excellent. Hold things together another two days.” Ramius hung up. It was thirty minutes to the turn of the next watch.

Melekhin and Kirill Surzpoi, the assistant engineer, had the duty in the engine room. Melekhin monitored the turbines and Surzpoi handled the reactor systems. Each had a michman and three enlisted men in attendance. The engineers had had a very busy cruise. Every gauge and monitor in the engine spaces, it seemed, had been inspected, and many had been entirely rebuilt by the two senior officers, who had been helped by Valintin Bugayev, the electronics officer and on-board genius who was also handling the political awareness classes for the crewmen. The engine room crewmen were the most rattled on the vessel. The supposed contamination was common knowledge — there are no long-lived secrets on a submarine. To ease their loads ordinary seamen were supplementing the engine watches. The captain called this a good chance for the cross-training he believed in. The crew thought it was a good way to get poisoned. Discipline was being maintained, of course. This was owing partly to the trust the men had in their commanding officer, partly to their training, but mostly to their knowledge of what would happen if they failed to carry out their orders immediately and enthusiastically.

“Comrade Melekhin,” Surzpoi called, “I am showing pressure fluctuation on the main loop, number six gauge.”

“Coming.” Melekhin hurried over and shoved the michman out of the way when he got to the master control panel. “More bad instruments! The others show normal. Nothing important,” the chief engineer said blandly, making sure everyone could hear. The whole compartment watch saw the chief engineer whisper something to his assistant. The younger one shook his head slowly, while two sets of hands worked the controls.

A loud two-phase buzzer and a rotating red alarm light went off.

“SCRAM the pile!” Melekhin ordered.

“SCRAMing.” Surzpoi stabbed his finger on the master shutdown button.

“You men, get forward!” Melekhin ordered next. There was no hesitation. “No, you, connect battery power to the caterpillar motors, quickly!”

The warrant officer raced back to throw the proper switches, cursing his change of orders. It took forty seconds.

“Done, Comrade!”

“Go!”

The warrant officer was the last man out of the compartment. He made certain that the hatches were dogged down tight before running to the control room.

“What is the problem?” Ramius asked calmly.

“Radiation alarm in the heat-exchange room!”

“Very well, go forward and shower with the rest of your watch. Get control of yourself.” Ramius patted the michman on the arm. “We have had these problems before. You are a trained man. The crewmen look to you for leadership.”

Ramius lifted the phone. It was a moment before the other end was picked up. “What has happened, Comrade?” The control room crew watched their captain listen to the answer. They could not help but admire his calm. Radiation alarms had sounded throughout the hull. “Very well. We do not have too many hours of battery power left, Comrade. We must go to snorkling depth. Stand by to activate the diesel. Yes.” He hung up.

“Comrades, you will listen to me.” Ramius’ voice was under total control. “There has been a minor failure in the reactor control systems. The alarm you heard was not a major radiation leak, but rather a failure of the reactor rod control systems. Comrades Melekhin and Surzpoi successfully executed an emergency reactor shutdown, but we cannot operate the reactor properly without the primary controls. We will, therefore, complete our cruise on diesel power. To ensure against any possible radiation contamination, the reactor spaces have been isolated, and all compartments, engineering spaces first, will be vented with surface air when we snorkle. Kamarov, you will go aft to work the environmental controls. I will take the conn.”

“Aye, Comrade Captain!” Kamarov went aft.

Ramius lifted the microphone to give this news to the crew. Everyone was waiting for something. Forward, some crewmen muttered among themselves that minor was a word suffering from overuse, that nuclear submarines did not run on diesel and ventilate with surface air for the hell of it.

Finished with his terse announcement, Ramius ordered the submarine to approach the surface.

“Beats me, Skipper.” Jones shook his head. “Reactor noises have stopped, pumps are cut way back, but he’s running at the same speed, just like before. On battery, I guess.”

“Must be a hell of a battery system to drive something that big this fast,” Mancuso observed.

“I did some computations on that a few hours ago.” Jones held up his pad. “This is based on the Typhoon hull, with a nice slick hull coefficient, so it’s probably conservative.”

“Where did you learn to do this, Jonesy?”

“Mr. Thompson looked up the hydrodynamic stuff for me. The electrical end is fairly simple. He might have something exotic — fuel cells, maybe. If not, if he’s running ordinary batteries, he has enough raw electrical power to crank every car in L.A.”

Mancuso shook his head. “Can’t last forever.”

Jones held up his hand. “Hull creaking…Sounds like he’s going up some.”

“Raise snorkle,” Ramius said. Looking through the periscope he verified that the snorkle was up. “Well, no other ships in view. That is good news. I think we have lost our imperialist hunters. Raise the ESM antenna. Let’s be sure no enemy aircraft are lurking about with their radars.”

“Clear, Comrade Captain.” Bugayev was manning the ESM board. “Nothing at all, not even airline sets.”

“So, we have indeed lost our rat pack.” Ramius lifted the phone again. “Melekhin, you may open the main induction and vent the engine spaces, then start the diesel.” A minute later everyone aboard felt the vibration as the October’s massive diesel engine cranked on battery power. This sucked up all the air from the reactor spaces, replacing it with air drawn through the snorkle and ejecting the “contaminated” air into the sea.

The engine continued to crank two minutes, and throughout the hull men waited for the rumble that would mean the engine had caught and could generate power to run the electric motors. It didn’t catch. After another thirty seconds the cranking stopped. The control room phone buzzed. Ramius lifted it.

“What is wrong with the diesel, Comrade Chief Engineer?” the captain asked sharply. “I see. I’ll send men back — oh. Stand by.” Ramius looked around, his mouth a thin, bloodless smile. The junior engineering officer, Svyadov, was standing at the back of the compartment. “I need a man who knows diesel engines to help Comrade Melekhin.”

“I grew up on a State farm,” Bugayev said. “I started playing with tractor engines as a boy.”

“There is an additional problem…”

Bugayev nodded knowingly. “So I gather, Comrade Captain, but we need the diesel, do we not?”

“I will not forget this, Comrade,” Ramius said quietly.

“Then you can buy me some rum in Cuba, Comrade.” Bugayev smiled courageously. “I wish to meet a Cuban comrade, preferably one with long hair.”

“May I accompany you, Comrade?” Svyadov asked anxiously. He had just been going on watch, approaching the reactor room hatch, when he’d been knocked aside by escaping crewmen.

“Let us assess the nature of the problem first,” Bugayev said, looking at Ramius for confirmation.

“Yes, there is plenty of time. Bugayev, report to me yourself in ten minutes.”

“Aye aye, Comrade Captain.”

“Svyadov, take charge of the lieutenant’s station.” Ramius pointed to the ESM board. “Use the opportunity to learn some new skills.”

The lieutenant did as he was ordered. The captain seemed very preoccupied. Svyadov had never seen him like this before.