Torpedo!

CHAPTER 17

“What’s the tactical situation?” Mike Brannon asked. John Olsen walked over to the big chart that covered almost all of one wall of Vice Admiral Brannon’s office.

“The Russians have four nuclear missile submarines in the Atlantic. Here, here, here, and here. All of them are being covered by two or more of our attack submarines. They’ve got six of their missile subs out in the Pacific. Three of them near Pearl, one off Alaska and two near the West Coast. Each of those subs is covered by two attack submarines. The skippers of all our attack ships have let the Russians know they’re there, that they’re riding herd on them. We’ve got our own missile submarines in attack position. If they start anything we can incinerate damned near the whole of the Soviet Union.”

Brannon walked back to his desk. “How about the passive mine arrays?”

“We’re covering them with two submarines at each line of listening devices and mines. If they try to come out without notifying us we can blow them away. We’ve sent messages to the Soviet Admiralty notifying them that we’re holding submerged exercises in those areas and to notify us, as per international custom, if they intend to send any submarines through those areas.”

“They won’t believe that for a moment.”

“Maybe not, but they probably know what we’re talking about.” Olsen lowered his lean length into the cushions of one of the two sofas in the office and nodded his thanks for the cup of coffee Mike Brannon had put on the coffee table in front of the sofa.

“Joan gave me some scuttlebutt last night,” he said, his voice carefully noncommittal. “She was at the weekly bridge party for junior officers’ wives yesterday. Said one of the wives let it slip that Admiral McCarty is after your scalp. And mine. You hear anything about that?”

“Yes,” Brannon said. “I got the word last evening from the Chief Yeoman. He told me about it.”

“What gives?” Olsen asked.

“Our friend Captain Herman Steel is feeling his oats. He’s enlisted old Representative Walter Wendell on his side. Wendell wants a new carrier built in the shipyard in his district. Captain Steel’s testimony before Appropriations could help. Steel’s been responsible for giving Wendell more damned Navy stuff than you can shake a stick at.”

“So Wendell’s paying back the IOU?”

“That’s the way it works around here,” Brannon said. “The Chief told me that Wendell had already run a check on my personal life and my military record and couldn’t find anything to hit me with. He’s even run a check on J. Edgar’s private files. They can’t find anything to use as a lever to force me into retirement so they’re trying to get Admiral McCarty to do their work for them.”

Olsen let out a low whistle. “Heavy guns, Mike. If the Joint Chiefs of Staff tell you to turn in your hat you turn in your hat. Or do you?”

“No, I don’t,” Brannon snapped. “Two people can play at Steel’s little game. He’s got the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee on his side. I’ve got a couple of guns on my side.”

“You wouldn’t care to tell me the caliber of the guns? Seeing as how if you get forced out I’ll probably be carrying your seabag and mine?”

“Moise Goldman,” Brannon said.

“The President’s advisor?” Olsen’s voice was incredulous. “He’s supposed to be untouchable, he’s the, what do you call it, the President’s ‘Eminence grise’?”

“The false Cardinal? I guess so,” Brannon said. “He’s got more power than a chairman of a congressional committee if it comes down to a fire fight. Or the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

“He’s Jewish too, isn’t he?” Olsen said. A grin was beginning to form on his lips.

Brannon nodded. “Yes. I came into this job just after President Milligan was elected. When the President began to get a lot of criticism in the press for his, let’s say his countrified ways, he reached out for help to the New York Times, asked their managing editor if he’d come aboard as Chief of Staff for the President.

“It’s a hell of an honor. Every newspaperman I’ve ever known thinks he can run the country better than the President. Or run the military better than the generals and admirals. So he took the job.” He looked at John Olsen over the rim of his coffee cup.

“By the time he came aboard Captain Steel was already trying to open my sea valves, sink me. He thought that Goldman would be the man to do the job. But he and Goldman didn’t hit it off. They’re like flint and steel. Every time they meet there’s fireworks. So I moved in and cultivated Goldman, did him some favors. He came to trust me, in time. I’ve never called in my IOUs from him.”

“You think he’d help now? If Admiral McCarty is after your scalp Goldman wouldn’t go to bat for you without knowing something about the score of the ball game.”

“He knows the score,” Brannon said softly. “I’ve kept him informed. He’s a hell of a good man. Keeps his mouth shut.”

“He knows about the Sharkfin, about the sinking of the Soviet attack sub?”

Brannon nodded. “Remember back in the old days, in the war? When the Japanese destroyers had us pinned down and we were hunting for a heavy layer of salt water to hide under, so they couldn’t hear us on their sonar?

“Goldman’s my heavy layer of salt water. When I got home last night, after the Chief had tipped me off about Captain Steel and Admiral McCarty, Goldman called me to tell me what was going on. So don’t pack your seabag yet.”

“What will he do, force Steel to retire? That would be the best thing that could happen, as far as we’re concerned.”

“No!” Brannon snapped. “The Navy needs Steel. We need him. All we have to do is to box him in and let him know who’s in charge, who’s really in charge. I figure that Goldman can do that if he has to, if I can’t do it.”

“How?” Olsen asked.

“The Russians haven’t made a move since we blasted their attack submarine,” Brannon said slowly. “Every missile submarine they have in the Atlantic and Pacific is being dogged by our attack submarines.

“That means the skippers of those submarines are going to report to their headquarters that they’re under constant surveillance. No ballistic submarine in the world can hope to survive if they’re attacked by two attack submarines. I figure it this way.” He leaned his elbows on his desk.

“As soon as they realize they’re stymied they’ll begin working out something to ease the pressure. If I’m right I think they’ll get Brezhnev to call the President.”

“That still leaves you holding a hell of a big sack, Mike. You’ll have to explain to the President why you didn’t tell him.”

“That will be tough,” Brannon said. “I won’t be able to tell the President that I kept Goldman informed. But Goldman will argue our case for us in private. He gave me that assurance.”

“And if Brezhnev doesn’t call?”

“Goldman thinks that if that happens then we, I, go to the President and tell him everything and let him announce it publicly. It would be a hell of a feather in his hat, he could take credit for a hardline retaliation to Communist aggression and he’s been accused of being soft on the Communists so often that Goldman thinks he’d jump at the chance.”

“Looks like we’ve got the other side looking down the barrel of a gun,” Olsen said cheerfully.

“Don’t underestimate Captain Steel or Representative Wendell,” Brannon said. “Or Admiral McCarty. He may not be the brightest admiral we’ve ever had but he’s always been a hell of a good seaman and he’s got a good nose for heavy weather.”

A white-faced aide brought the message from the ballistic missile submarine that had been bumped by the Orca into Admiral Zurahv’s office. The aide laid the decoded message on the Admiral’s desk and retreated as fast as his dignity would allow before the storm broke.

Igor Shevenko read the message that had come by diplomatic pouch from Israel and touched a button on his desk console. Sophia Blovin came into his office.

“Get me Comrade Plotovsky on the phone, please,” Shevenko said. He sat, scanning his copy of the New York Times, until his desk buzzer sounded. The rasping voice of the old Communist leader inquired politely after his health and then paused.

“I have a piece of information, sir,” Shevenko said slowly. “The source is absolutely solid. The Americans have set up passive underwater listening networks that cover the exit of our submarines to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, as you are doubtless aware. I am also informed that just beyond those listening networks the Americans have laid an extensive network of mines that are something different, something new.

“The mines are torpedoes that lay inert on the bottom. If they are activated, this is done by an American submarine using sonar, the torpedoes will rise from the bottom when a ship passes over them and chase down the ship, homing in on its propeller, and sink it.”

“Which means?” Plotovsky said.

“It means that we cannot put our submarine fleet at sea to neutralize the American ballistic missile submarine threat,” Shevenko said. “No matter how effective any land-based missile attack might be against the North American continent we would suffer the same devastation. Perhaps worse.”

“Hell of a piece of news to be told first thing in the morning,” Plotovsky growled.

“That’s not all, Comrade. The same source informs us that every one of our ballistic missile submarines now at sea is being shadowed by two or more American attack submarines.”

“The Admiral has put us in an untenable position,” Plotovsky rasped. “You’ll be in your office all day? I’ll call you.”

The phone went dead and Shevenko sat back in his chair and reread the message from Dr. Saul. Sophia came in with a tray covered with a snowy napkin and holding a pot of tea and a plate of pastry. She put the tray down on his desk and drew a chair up in front of the desk and sat down. Shevenko looked at her and smiled.

“Coffee and pastry with you across the desk is much better on my eyes than looking at Stefan each morning. Did you sleep well?”

“No,” she said primly. “I don’t sleep well alone after having you in my bed. When I wake up in the morning there is no one beside me to cherish. I think you should send your wife away for a vacation.”

“Don’t start that again,” he grumbled. “I told you once, she goes on her yearly vacation to the Black Sea in July. She’ll be gone a month. I can’t make any changes in those plans. Be patient.”

She shrugged and poured a cup of tea for him and put a pastry on a paper napkin and placed the food and drink in front of him. She poured her own tea and bit into a crusty croissant with relish.

“The messages this morning are good,” she said. “The intercept of the message to the Admiral about the collision at sea with the American submarine, the information from Israel. All good for your cause.”

He nodded. “Good for us, good for the rest of the world. Old Potato Nose Khrushchev was right, you know. Our grandchildren will bury the West. Not with nuclear bombs, that is madness. We can do it with economics. Ours is a controlled economic system, theirs is free enterprise. No free enterprise system can compete with a controlled state economy in a world market. We can undersell them, cause them to lose money and markets.”

“If we had the technology to match them in producing goods,” Sophia said.

“We’ll get that from the West itself,” he grinned. “Capitalists always have to make money. We buy their technology and then improve on it, simplify it so it can be produced more cheaply and fuck them with their own shaft.” She grinned at him lasciviously.

“Stop using love words during business hours, bull of the bed. I’m liable to lock the doors, and rape you.”

“Not before I’ve read the Times,” he said. “You wouldn’t do that to your boss, would you?”

“Fuck the New York Times,” she said in a half whisper. “I can wait until this evening. Then I’ll show you what is more important, the football page or pages I can give you to read.” She reached across the desk and picked up the telephone as it began to ring.

“Comrade Director Shevenko’s office, First Directorate,” she said. “Thank you, Comrade. He will be there.”

“Plotovsky’s office harridan, the old witch,” she said as she raised her cup of tea. “He wants you at his office as soon as you can be there. She said it will be a private meeting.” He nodded and finished his pastry and wiped his lips with a Kleenex. Sophia stood up and looked to make sure the door to the hall was closed. She came around the desk and bent and kissed him, her tongue probing his mouth, her hand fondling his crotch.

“Stop it,” he growled. “You want me to walk into his office with a hard-on?”

She giggled. “It might give him a heart attack. I don’t think he’s had it up in ten years.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Shevenko said. “Old, old Communists are the sneakiest fuckers of all.”

Leonid Plotovsky had the copies of the messages from Shevenko’s office on his desk when Shevenko walked in. The old man hawked loudly and spat into his cuspidor and waved Shevenko to a chair in front of the desk.

“I don’t hate the Americans,” Plotovsky growled. “You know that, Igor. They gave us a great deal of help after the war of 1914, kept us from starving. Kept a lot of us from starving. Herbert Hoover.

“I admire their industry and their technology but damn it, they are going too far! This!” He waved a liver-spotted hand over the stack of messages.

“This is very close to open war, my friend. Very close!”

“It wouldn’t have come to this if the Admiral hadn’t ordered the test of his new torpedo,” Shevenko said.

“I know that,” the old man muttered. “Now we have to get out of this mess and get out gracefully. He looked at Shevenko, his old lizard’s eyes half covered by his eyelids.

“You know the folk tale of the Commissar on his way home in a sleigh with the wolves howling behind him. He saved his family by throwing one of the servants in the sleigh to the wolves.” Plotovsky’s lined face was serene. “The question is, which faithful servant will be thrown to the American wolves?”

“The Admiral seems to have placed himself at the rear of the sleigh,” Shevenko said.

“Do you know where the Admiral is right now?” Plotovsky asked.

“No, sir.”

“He’s asked for a meeting with Brezhnev. He’s seeing him now.” He rocked back in his chair and laced his thin fingers across his lean belly.

“If I were to guess I’d say that he was maneuvering to put someone else close to the rear of the sleigh. Someone named Shevenko.”

Shevenko felt a cold chill. “The evidence of the Admiral’s perversion, his infiltration of my office with Lubutkin, whom we know was a sexual pervert, that has been put to one side?”

“No,” Plotovsky said. “It will be used. But it is of such a nature that it can only be used as a last resort. To face him with such things would be to destroy the effectiveness of the evidence. He would laugh in our faces.” He paused. “The Admiral is a clever man. He knows how to fight a rear-guard action. He knew when he cultivated your aide that he might be caught, that the aide might be caught. He prepared defenses. I am sure of that. But I don’t know what defenses he has.” His eyes narrowed.

“Your life has not been blameless, Igor.” He shook his head as Shevenko started to speak. “Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t disapprove of your screwing women. I still do it myself.” A sly grin crossed his face. “Not that you or your bloodhounds would ever be able to prove that. But there are other things; your contact with the Israelis, for one. Who knows what the Politburo would think of that?”

“To maintain such a confidential contact is important to our national security,” Shevenko protested. “It gives us an opening to the West that is to our advantage. Those dispatches from Dr. Saul this morning, that is proof.”

“Granted,” the old Politburo member said in a soft voice. “But what would my fellow members of the Politburo think of your meeting in Israel with the American CIA agent named Bob Wilson, of drinking coffee with him, and giving him cigars and admitting to him that we were guilty of a criminal act in the sinking of the American submarine? There would be an immediate suspicion that you were a double agent.”

Shevenko felt the cold chill spread through his legs. He shook his head from side to side.

“No!” he said in a low whisper. “No! I would never betray my country!”

“Let us say that I believe you,” the old man across the desk said. “You were educated in America, you know their idioms. Let us play ball together, you and I. Now here is what I want you to do.” He leaned across the desk and began to speak slowly and carefully in a voice barely above a whisper.