To Kill the Potemkin

25

Aboard Potemkin Federov stood before the reactor displays in the engineering room, his face impassive, his ears plugged with cotton balls. The sailors wore no radiation badges, but Federov had managed to acquire a U.S. Navy dosimeter that he kept secret even from his friend Alexis. It verified what he knew already: he was expendable. He was condemned as surely as Kumachov. He found the thought strangely comforting. Knowing was better than not knowing. The radiation would kill him slowly. It could take years, but eventually he would develop leukemia. A genuine patriot, Federov considered the loss of his life a proper sacrifice, but meaningful only if he returned his ship safely home. Potemkin was everything — the future of the Soviet Navy.

He moved to the atmosphere displays. The carbon dioxide concentration was an uncomfortable three-and-a-half percent. Half the crew had headaches miserably aggravated by the rattle and vibration of the racing turbines. Comfort was sacrificed to demonstrate Potemkin's durability to the Americans.

Federov supposed eventually the U.S. Navy would discover Potemkin's titanium hull. Presumably Potemkin's performance would force them to renew their efforts to build a titanium sub, a project they seemed to have postponed. But at least in this one his country had the lead. Potemkin mustn't be further exposed to them.

In the previous few years the Americans had focused on shielding their sailors from radiation, and making their boats quiet. It was a question of priorities, and who knew which was right. He did know that without Acoustical Reproduction Device Number Seven Potemkin was too noisy. All her essential machinery — turbine, electric motor, steam condenser, saltwater pump and coolant pumps for her lead-bimuth reactor — was hard-bolted to the decks, and the decks themselves hard-bolted to the pressure hull without benefit of shock absorbers or acoustic insulation. Everything vibrated, turning the hull of Potemkin into a massive sonic beacon.

Federov was reasonably certain the American picket sub had followed him into the Atlantic, but for how long and how far he didn't know. After eight hours he decided it was safe to change course. Potemkin made a wide turn to the left and continued southeast another three hours. Finally he ordered, "All stop."

In the abrupt silence the men heard their own labored breathing.

"Clear baffles. We're going to snorkel."

Potemkin made a full circle. "No contact, Captain," said Popov. "We're clear."

"Take us up, Alexis. Snorkel depth."

For thirty minutes the snorkel projected above the surface. The carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere inside the ship was pumped out and replaced with fresh ocean air. While the ventilation was taking place, Federov remained in his cabin with Alexis and studied charts of the Atlantic.

"We must have carbon dioxide filters if we are to make it to Murmansk," he said. "Once under the icepack we can't snorkel. Potemkin is many things, but an icebreaker she is not. The sail is not sufficiently hardened to crack through."

"Who can help us? Deflektor?" Alexis named the surveillance ship stationed in the Bay of Cádiz.

"No. They don't carry stores for us. and even if they did, the Americans would follow her if she pulled off-station."

"But we have no tenders in the Atlantic."

"I know. We have better than a tender. As first officer you are entitled to learn a few secrets, my friend."

Federov unlocked his safe and removed a sealed set of documents that contained the disposition of all Soviet Navy vessels throughout the world. He broke the seal, unfolded a chart of the Caribbean and put his thumb on Cuba.

"We can't go there—"

"You're right, but Dherzinski is operating from there, and he can meet us here, where the Americans least expect it."

Federov moved his thumb to a spot five hundred miles southwest of the Azores.

Two thousand miles west, Dherzinski, a Soviet fleet ballistic missile submarine of the Hotel class, hunkered under a half mile of water in the Puerto Rican trench, the deepest part of the Caribbean. Inside her enlongated sail three huge Serb missiles, armed with hydrogen warheads, were aimed at Washington, D.C., Norfolk. Virginia, and Charleston. South Carolina.

Hovering in silence in the Puerto Rican trench was not exciting. The sub drifted slightly in the current, requiring the constant attention of the junior officers to keep her on-station and thereby target her missiles accurately.

On this occasion Captain First Rank Felix Andreivitch Olonov had enjoyed nineteen days of a successful patrol without incident. A chess tournament engrossed the crew. In the engine room the engineers were constructing a model two meters long of the czarist battleship Potemkin at the moment of her famous mutiny in 1917. Detailed with czarist officers hanging from the rigging, maggots in the food and the blood of revolution, the model was nearing completion.

Olonov took no interest in the toy boat. Closer to his heart. First Officer Piznoshov had revealed a craving for English spy novels, of which Olonov had a plentiful store. Occupied with the heroics of George Smiley, James Bond and Sidney Reilly, the commanders of Dherzinski scarcely gave a thought to the three missiles in the sail aimed at America, eight hundred miles northwest, or to the Americans themselves.

Dherzinski's presence so close to the North American mainland and her supply base in Cuba were among the most carefully guarded secrets in the Soviet Navy, second only to the existence of Potemkin. For a year Dherzinski had operated regular twenty-one-day patrols out of Havana, moving in and out of the harbor by steaming directly under Soviet cargo vessels. The huge sub, 328 feet long, never surfaced, and the satellites which frequently passed over Cuba never photographed her. Submerged in the harbor, moored under a Soviet freighter with a false bottom, she took aboard supplies and new crewmen via a submersible elevator that clamped over her forward hatch. The sailors never went into Havana. When they left the ship, they were taken directly to an airstrip and flown to the Soviet Union.

Olonov had seen neither the sun nor the stars in over a year. Seventeen times, by his count, he had piloted his ship into the harbor, stopped under the freighter and watched his crewmen go through the hatch and into the watertight elevator. The lift went up, paused, then returned full of strangers, and Dherzinski went back on patrol.

Olonov was in his cabin reading The Spy Who Came in from the Cold when the nervous voice of the senior radio operator called him to the radio room.

Annoyed, Olonov demanded, "What is it?"

"A very low frequency message is arriving from Leningrad."

"Which code?"

"Priority one-time, book three."

Olonov blinked and tried to swallow. His throat was dry. The code was the one to be used in the event of war. Only he or the first officer could decode the message. Olonov locked himself in his cabin and rendered the transmission into Russian.

Olonov's first reaction was relief. The message was not an order to launch his missiles, but it was almost as bad. He summoned Piznoshov.

"A rendezvous on the surface? With one of our subs?" said the first officer.

"We're not going to rendezvous with Nautilus."

"You can't be serious," Piznoshov said vehemently. "Gorshkov himself has ordered Dherzinski to surface? It's crazy."

"I know," Orlov said. "Obviously the scrubber failed on this ship, and they have a reactor problem. It's happened before."

"Yes, but Gorshkov has never pulled a missile sub off-station. Never. Right now Dherzinski is the most important ship in the Soviet Navy—"

"Perhaps not…"

Olonov was not officially aware of Potemkin's existence, but he was a man of long experience, with many friends, and he had heard rumors of a titanium-hulled attack sub. This was not the kind of information he wished to share with a political officer.

"If the scrubber on this mysterious submarine has failed, why doesn't he simply snorkel back to Murmansk? Why compromise Dherzinski?" Piznoshov made an obscene gesture indicating what he thought Gorshkov should be doing with himself.

"Ours is not to reason why. Comrade First Officer, but I have a rather good idea of what this is all about. And there is no question we have an appointment thirty-five hours and twenty minutes from now. Prepare to make way."